A Speckled Bird Part 50

At nine o'clock on the morning of the 17th, the overseer's wife, desiring to avoid the pa.s.senger train, went in the caboose of a local freight to Sunflower. It was an "excursion" day in honor of the opening of a Masonic hall just completed, and many strangers strolled about the village awaiting the hour fixed for the dedication ceremonies. At one o'clock, when the fast southbound train paused long enough to deliver the mail-bag, Eliza stood on the little platform, watching the line of dusty cars. As a tall figure, valise in hand, stepped from the Pullman sleeper, she did not promptly recognize the clean-shaven face, wearing grey goggles. Handing his valise to a negro porter sitting on the baggage truck, he glanced about him, and approached the little woman, who was trembling with suspense.

"How are you, Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l?"

He held out his hand.

"Oh, Mr. Herriott! I was not sure it was you. Thank G.o.d! I was so afraid you would not come."

He took off the goggles and dropped them in his coat pocket.

"I dare say these gla.s.ses partly disguise, but snow-blindness left my eyes rather sensitive, and I wore them as guard against railroad dust."

"Come with me, Mr. Herriott. This little place is full of strangers to-day on account of a Masonic meeting, but there is a quiet spot in the grove yonder, where a recent picnic party left some benches."

In silence they reached the grove of old red oaks, and Eliza sat down on a rough, board seat; but he declined to share it, and stood before her, his eyes an interrogation.

"Mr. Herriott, I asked you to come here because you are pursuing a course I think you would abandon if you knew some facts that only I can give you. But first, I want your promise that no matter what the future holds, you will never let Eglah know or suspect that I wrote you, came here, or saw you. If she found it out she would never forgive me; she would desert me, and I am running a great risk. Give me your word of honor to keep this meeting always strictly confidential. If you promise, I shall feel easy."

"I promise. You may trust me."

"Thank you, sir. Before I say more, will you tell me if you still love your wife?"

His face hardened and his eyes narrowed.

"Pardon me, madam. I did not come here to be catechised."

"If you have ceased to love her, then I should betray a holy trust by lifting a very sacred veil. I can speak freely only to a man who loves her as she deserves--and as I have always believed you did. If you no longer love her, I have come on worse than a fool's errand."

There was a brief silence, and hot tears ran over the little woman's cheeks.

"And if I love her still? Go on, go on."

"Then why are you breaking her dear heart?"

"Madam, her heart has never been in my keeping. You must know that for years I made every effort to win it, and failing, I abandoned the hope.

Our merely nominal relation was dissolved by mutual consent, and I gave her entire freedom before I started North. I have never been close enough to her heart to wound it."

"Please, Mr. Herriott, listen to me patiently. I must go back so far.

She did not love you when she married you. Why she so suddenly took that awful step I don't know. She refused to explain. I believed that her father had persuaded her, but she a.s.sured me he had no knowledge of her intention until after she had voluntarily made her decision, and she is absolutely truthful. She is reticent and proud, but of false statements she is incapable. She has never confided the motive of her rash marriage to me, and what she is unwilling to have me know, n.o.body else can ever tell me. Better than any one living I understand her, and when she came back with her father from Greyledge I saw a great change in her; she was not the indifferent girl whom you had taken away. The estrangement between Judge Kent and herself had ended, and she rejoiced in the cordial reconciliation, but some sad mystery in the background overshadowed her and puzzled me. The day she received that express package from you she suddenly seemed to go frantic, and her distress was so overwhelming I was frightened. Never before or since has she shown such pa.s.sionate grief. She told me she had wronged, wounded you, and that you would never forgive her. How she wronged you she would not explain, and I don't know any more now than I did then. But she insisted again and again that you were not to blame--that it was entirely her fault, and she must bear the sorrow she had brought upon herself. She wrung her hands and begged me to pray she might die before you came back and rejected her. When I tried to comfort her, and asked why you should do such a cruel, unjust thing, she wailed: 'You loved your husband; if you had wounded him past pardon, could you bear to talk about it? Don't question me. Think of your Robert, and try to realize how I feel.' All that night she walked the floor of her room, and next morning she looked years older--so white, so silent, as if gazing down into a grave. Since then she has never been the same Eglah. Something in your last message, which I did not see, slew her peace of mind for all time. She shut herself away from society, lived exclusively with her father and with me. When Judge Kent died I dreaded a total collapse in the child who had wors.h.i.+pped him from her babyhood; but she bore the awful strain silently, calmly, surprisingly. Mr. Whitfield put his arm around her shoulder as she stood by the coffin, and, with tears in his eyes, the old man praised her devotion and her bravery. She looked up at him with a strange smile on her bloodless lips.

"'One can suffer only so much, then numbness comes. After the misery of many months a last blow does not crush. The petrified are not always where they belong--in the grave.'

"After the funeral she closed Nutwood, moved her books, piano, and horses down to my little cottage in the heart of the pine woods, denied herself to every one, and there we have lived in strict seclusion.

Day and night she pored over books of Arctic travel, and on the walls of her room she had maps and charts, and what she called her 'comfort calendar,' that she patched together from almanacs, to mark what time day and night began near the Pole and when the new moons were due. It made my heart ache to see her face each day as she searched the papers for some news of you. At last she ceased to expect any, and your name was not mentioned. Mr. Herriott, do you recollect your striped silk smoking-jacket, with pink poppies embroidered on collar and cuffs and down the front?"

"Yes. I had such a jacket."

"One sultry summer night, about one o'clock, I went on tiptoe into Eglah's room to get a vial of medicine that was kept in a closet there, and, as she slept poorly, I tried not to disturb her. Her window was open, the curtains looped back, and a full moon shone in. She was sitting up in bed, with her face buried in some bright wrapping, and a sort of strangled moan came from her. I went to the bed and asked what the trouble was. Had she neuralgia in her face, that she was m.u.f.fling it on such a hot night? Oh, Mr. Herriott, if you could have heard the quiver in her voice!

"'No, no. Heartache--heartache only the grave can ease.'

"Next day, while she was away, I searched for that striped thing which I had never seen before. She kept it in a long, satin-lined, sandalwood case, among her perfumed laces, and when I examined it I found a smoking-jacket, with a dog whistle in one pocket, and in the other a handkerchief marked 'Herriott.' I----"

Mr. Herriott had walked away, and after several moments recalled the search for the missing jacket on the day of his departure, and the pride with which Amos only three nights ago, had shown him a warm, quilted cashmere gown "the madam" had sent him because the jacket left for him had never been found. When he came back to the seat, he stood with his face turned from her, and she could see only his profile.

"Sir, if you don't hear me out, you can't understand why I came. Eglah would sit for hours, a book before her, her hands folded in a way peculiar to her--her wedding ring against her lips--so silent, so still, she seemed a stone; but she roused to a manifestation of interest when we heard your old gardener was ill and needed attention. While we were at your house she seemed more like herself than at any time since that express package reached her; but a deep undercurrent of sorrow she could not hide. Over the house and grounds she wandered continually, and that long lake beach was her favorite walk. Every evening she shut herself in one of the rooms downstairs--I think it was your smoking-room--and the last night we were there she spent locked in that room. She sent for a photographer from the city and had copies taken of your mother's portrait and of yours--that one hanging next to your father's in the drawing-room. To-day on her dressing-table stand two pictures of you and one she insists resembles you--the photograph of a French poet she saw once in Arles. She thinks the brow and eyes and nose are yours, and, though she does not like the lower portion of the face, she had the photograph enlarged and framed. I could not keep my tears back when, leaning from the carriage, she took her last look at your home. There was such a world of suffering in her sad eyes, and her dear lips and chin trembled like a little child's.

"'Being here is next best to seeing the master. I can never come again.

When he returns I must be in Europe, out of his way.'"

Mr. Herriott turned suddenly and looked down steadily at his companion.

"Pardon me, Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l. You prefer to stay at home? You do not wish to go abroad?"

His keen eyes searched hers, and their flash answered him.

"Whatever the child thinks is best for her peace I want above everything else; and I am ready and willing to go with her to Europe, Africa, the Fiji Islands--to the ends of the earth. I do love my little home, still more my husband's grave, almost in sight of it; I love my cows and my chickens; but first and last, and better than all, I love my baby, who came to my arms when she was three hours old, and who now, in turning her back upon an unjust world, clings only to me. I never took an oath before G.o.d that I would 'for better, for worse, love and cherish her till death,' but I rather think my love will abide, will stand all tests and trials that have crumbled some other vows she once trusted."

After a moment she added:

"Perhaps I have already said too much, and you may not care to hear more."

"Madam, I wish you to tell me everything you think it best I should know. I am here for that purpose, at your request."

"Eglah was terribly hurt to find Amos had heard twice from you while, consumed with suspense, she had received not even a line. After we went home she grew more and more restless, but I noticed she carefully avoided any allusion to you. One night I heard her moving about, and then she left her room. It is a lonely little place where we live, rather unprotected, and the servants--man and wife--do not wake easily.

Eglah had a way of walking about the gallery and yard when she could not sleep that made me uneasy. I went out to expostulate, and found her sitting on the steps in the moonlight with that jacket of yours in her arms. I sat down and took her hand. In a horrible dream, she had seen you lying dead between two blue slabs of ice, a white owl on your breast, and she was hugging and stroking that striped silk as only those who love can caress the garments of lost darlings. You know she very rarely cries. In all her life I never saw tears on her face more than three or four times. I tried to soothe her, and said that full moon overhead was making the Pole itself bright. She turned suddenly to me, the tears dripping, and, oh, if I could give you the heartbroken tone in which she said:

'The broad noonday was night to me, The full-moon night was dark to me, The stars whirled and the poles span The hour G.o.d took him far from me.'

"After that night she guarded herself more closely against any expression of feeling, and carefully abstained from all reference to you until the evening she learned from a Boston paper that your vessel had returned to Europe, and you had preferred to stay in Arctic regions. My poor baby! She looked so white, so stunned, as if some one had struck her a heavy blow."

Eliza sobbed and her tears streamed.

"Mr. Herriott, she felt a.s.sured you would not come home because you feared you might meet her, and then she asked me to keep my promise and go with her to Europe as soon as some stone-cutting designs could be filled. She waited only to see three memorials completed. From the day she learned the 'Ahvungah' had returned, I saw a bitter, resentful element beginning to invade what had been only regretful tenderness, and her lips were locked. The window in the Episcopal Church at Y---- was placed, and soon after we went North to see the monument ordered for her father's grave. I dreaded she would break down there, but she was as quiet as the marble angel of the Resurrection standing on the slab. She showed me where she wished her body laid, close to her father's, and then she asked me to be sure--after she was safe in her coffin--to take off her wedding ring and send it to you, because you had wanted it back from the day you gave it to her. She refused to stop in New York, fearing some of her friends or yours might see and question her. Any allusion to her marriage was as the touch of red-hot irons. On our way home she went one afternoon to Calvary House to see her cousin Temple--the priest--and look at an altar she had given him. I waited outside in the carriage, and she joined me, holding her thick mourning veil over her face. As she and her father designed this altar after one they had seen somewhere abroad, I thought her silence and evident distress resulted from its a.s.sociation with him. After a while she said, in a strange, m.u.f.fled way, that she had done everything she was sure her father would like if he could speak to her, and now her hands were empty, and she wished to sail for Europe at the earliest possible date--probably within a week. As she leaned against me, and I held her hand, I felt her s.h.i.+ver. Then she told me she had just seen you at Calvary House, strong and well, and she must leave America at once."

"She saw me! When?"

Mr. Herriott had grown very pale.

"A week ago yesterday. She said you had brought some sick, blind man there, and you were going home. I asked her why she did not speak to you, and she answered that three years ago you had willed you and she should be strangers; you had built a wall of silence, and no word, no sign from her should ever break it. Un.o.bserved by you, she had seen you in the cloister, heard you talking of your plans for future travel, and, fearing discovery, she had hurried from the chapel. Since then every nerve has been strained to get away."

Mr. Herriott walked a few yards, put on his gla.s.ses, and stood for some time with his hands behind him. A sad, perplexed face met Eliza's eager eyes when he came back, and for the first time seated himself beside her.

"To what portion of Europe are you going?"

"To Spain; to a quiet little place hidden away in the Pyrenees, where she hopes she will meet no one who ever heard of her, and where, having nothing to remind her of three horrible years, she can try to forget her suffering. To avoid all acquaintances, she will not sail from New York, but goes directly to Charleston, and thence to Havana, where she can take a steamer to Spain. I think, sir, no one can understand her terrible humiliation in being rejected. While you were away, surrounded by dangers, and she was on the rack of suspense, tortured almost beyond endurance, only deep and tender love filled her heart. Since she has seen you safe and well--yet no word of remembrance has been sent to her--wounded pride possesses her, and she seems indeed petrified. Even now she maintains with strange composure: 'He is within his rights; he is not to blame. It was all my fault. I made the mistake of presuming too far on his love, which was less than I counted on, and I deserve my punishment; but sometimes I think G.o.d, who saw my heart and knew I did not intend any wrong, might have spared me some of the bitter dregs I have had to drink.' With all her pride, she is acutely sensitive to adverse gossip. From childhood she has borne so much on account of her father's unpopularity in the State, and people do not understand her. In Was.h.i.+ngton her loyalty to the South and to the Maurices subjected her to sneers and much unpleasantness. Her sudden marriage and subsequent events, especially her coming home before you sailed, have caused annoying comment, and now she is hurrying through Y----, anxious to get away before the fact of your return is known there. She does not suspect the opposition manifested by some of the vestrymen to that memorial window. Only the pleadings of the rector and the influence of Mr.

Whitfield, who is not an Episcopalian and who had no cause to like Judge Kent, availed to smother the objections to its erection. This mortification we have managed to save her. Now, sir, you will please pardon me if I speak very frankly. What pa.s.sed between you and Eglah after your marriage I do not know, nor did Judge Kent. Her lips have been sealed, but I have often thought the estrangement arose from your discovery of the fact that she did not love you as she should have done before she married you, and therefore I have come here to try to save you both from making s.h.i.+pwreck of your lives. If that was the cause of the trouble, it exists no longer. She loves you now as devotedly as even you could wish."

He shook his head and swept his hand across his face.