A Speckled Bird

Father Temple had slowly forced his way along the outer edge of the quivering throng and reached the centre of the square, where in summer a fountain babbled. Some one behind grasped his cassock.

"You are a priest? For the love of God, come to a dying man! Come back."

Death had sounded a temporary truce, and for some moments only whispers passed trembling lips, but the strikers still guarded the rails. Mr. Cathcart wiped off the dust thrown into his face by the explosion, bared his grey head, and lifted his hand:

"Men, don't you think you have worked mischief enough for one night? Eight dead, and only God knows how many wounded! That is an ugly bill the law will surely make you pay. You heard those three shots fired into the air? It was a signal for the armory; the troops are now coming. Who will feed your babies when you are bayonetted?"

A mounted policeman spurred his horse close to the president.

"The soldiers are hurrying down."

The leaders recognized the futility of continued resistance, and, as they slowly fell back from the track the police were in undisputed control of the cars when the hurrying line of soldiers reached the square.

Father Temple and his unknown guide paused beside a stretcher. Two men wearing the Red Cross badge bent over it.

"Stand back; here is a priest."

Both rose, and pointed to the sheet covering a motionless figure.

"Too late. He is dead."

Then one added, as he touched Father Temple's sleeve:

"You might be of use over yonder, where a woman is badly hurt. They are waiting for an ambulance to move her."

When Max Harlberg ordered the retreat of the strikers and jumped from the roof of the car to the pavement, he caught sight of a huddled mass on the step near the motor controller, and simultaneously he and Mr. Cathcart approached the spot.

Mrs. Dane had sunk down in a sitting posture on the step, and her head rested against the shattered edge of the dashboard, her face tilted skyward, where two stars blinked feebly through thinning snow flakes. Blood dripped from the right shoulder, and behind one ear a red stream dyed her golden braids, but the blue eyes were open, and her limp hands lay in the crimson pool deepening in her lap, where the waterproof cloak held it.

"My God, it is my typewriter! Hazleton, Hazleton! Telephone for an ambulance. Hurry! I knew she was mixed up in this deviltry, but didn't think she would actually come to the front and take a hand."

"She did not. She came here hunting Bowen, whose family was burned out to-night, and she had taken some of them to her room. His wife has spasms when she is worried, and was screaming for him, so Mrs. Dane was begging him to go back with her. She wanted a peaceable strike – urged us not to begin any fight – and she snatched a pistol out of my hand. Can't you speak to me, Mrs. Dane? Where are you hurt worst?"

Harlberg stooped to lift her, but Cathcart held him back.

"Stop! You must wait for the doctor. She might bleed to death if you moved her. A pretty night's work in a civilized city! Lord, how I wish all you anarchists had one neck! So Silas Bowen has paid her liberally for helping his family! He threw that bomb – aimed it at Hazleton and me, and when it exploded she was struck by something. Leather-headed, black-hearted scoundrel! The police have just marched him off, and the infernal fool ought to be hung from the first lamp-post."

An ambulance came up at a gallop, and while the surgeon sprang out and hurried toward the group, Father Temple stepped forward. As the electric light shone full on the upturned face and the wide, fixed eyes, a cry broke from the lips of the priest, who tried to thrust all aside.

"My Nona! My own pansy eyes!"

The surgeon pushed him back.

"I must have room to examine her. Help me lay her across the platform. Here, you! Are you her brother? Take her firmly by the shoulders, so; steady, lower her head."

"She is my wife."

What was done, and exactly why, none but the surgeon ever understood; those who looked on knew only that jagged cuts were sprayed and closed and bandaged; that the lovely hair was shorn away from a wound at the back of the head, and hypodermics inserted in the arm.

No word was spoken until the stretcher was ordered close to the car platform, and the patient was lifted tenderly and laid upon it. Then the thin, shaking hand of the priest clutched the doctor's sleeve.

"I have the right to know exactly what you think."

"Then I must be frank. She has received probably fatal injuries to spine and brain, and paralysis has resulted. Whether the paralysis will be permanent I cannot say now, because the extent of the shock has yet to be determined."

"She is not entirely unconscious."

"I am sure she is. On what do you base your opinion?"

"I know too well the expression of her eyes, and it changed when I spoke to her."

"Her tongue is certainly paralyzed, and she can move neither hand nor foot."

"I do not wish her carried to the charity hospital, though doubtless the treatment is the same. Please take her to the Mercy Infirmary, and will you be so kind as to let me sit close to her in the ambulance?"

Keenly the doctor scanned the convulsed face, where overmastering emotion defied control.

"Your wife, you said? My friend, don't you think it time you laid aside your disguise? Priests are not – in this country – given to acknowledging their wives so publicly. It may be all right, but your marital claims and your clothes don't seem to fit."

"I am not a Romanist. I belong to an Episcopal celibate Order, and my superior understands and directs my movements. If you knew everything you would pity me – "

The surgeon took off his hat, bowed, and waved him to a seat in the ambulance.

In after years, when Father Temple's dark hair had whitened, and vital fires were burning low, to the verge of ashes, he looked back always with supreme tenderness and immeasurable joy to the days that followed the strike, as after some tempest lulls one watches the unexpected lustre of an after-glow where it glints over the wreckage wrought, and waves its banners of gilded rose between vanishing storm clouds and oncoming night.

In that small room at the Infirmary reigned profound quiet, broken only by the low voices of two wise-eyed, tender-handed, know-all, tell-nothing nurses, whose ideals of absolute obedience to staff orders were as starched as their caps and collars. They shared the doctor's opinion that the patient was conscious of nothing, because she neither flinched nor moaned when her wounds were dressed, but the watcher who spent part of each morning beside the bed knew better. Waiting one day until the nurses left the room, he drew from his pocket a photograph of Leighton, leaned down, and held it close to her. The half-closed eyes widened, brightened, and, after a moment, tears gathered.

He laid the picture against her lips and left it on her breast.

With that fine instinct which inheres only in supremely unselfish love, he fought down the longing to fondle her, allowed himself no approach to a caress, remembering that his touch was loathsome to her, and in her present helplessness would prove a cruel insult. He accepted as part of his punishment the fierce trial of bending so close to the precious face her hatred denied him; and only once, when the nurse laid the patient's hand in his, while she tightened a bandage and gave a hypodermic, he bowed his face upon it and kissed the palm.

Sometimes for hours she kept her eyes shut; again, for as long a period, she would not close them, and though her gaze, never vacant, wandered from face to face, it held no inquiry, no sadness, no meaning save of profound introspection, of some subtle mental readjustment; but only a deep, slowly drawn sigh of utter weariness ever crossed her pale lips, from which the blood had been drained. Father Temple felt assured that as she lay motionless, fronting eternity, her self-communion was profound and calmly searching; and ceaselessly he prayed that God's mercy might comfort the brave, lonely, helpless soul.

One morning the nurse reported that during the night Mrs. Dane had moved her right hand and arm, but the improvement did not continue, and while at times fully conscious, her vitality was evidently ebbing, and the pulse began to fail. She had never spoken, and the doctor said she never would. Standing outside the door, Father Temple waited one noon to hear the physician's report. As he came out he put his hand on the priest's shoulder, and answered the mute appeal in eyes that were wells of hopeless grief.

"Don't leave her. I have asked the matron to let you stay now. We have done all we could, and she does not suffer. She may slip away at any moment."

The room was very still, and sweet with violets which Father Temple brought daily. The muslin curtain had been looped back to admit light that fell full on the pillow where lay the beautiful head, shorn of a portion of its golden crown. Her features were sharpened, and the eyes seemed preternaturally large above dark, deep shadows worn by suffering.

The compassionate nurse withdrew, closing the door noiselessly. With locked hands the priest stood, looking down into the whitening face which the fine chisel of pain had reduced to a marvel of delicate perfection, and when her long, brown lashes slowly drooped, he fell upon his knees and prayed, his head bowed on the bed close to her pillow. In the agony of his petition one passionate, broken cry rolled through the solemn silence.

"Lord, visit upon me the punishment of her unbelief! Let me suffer all – everything – because through me she lost her faith. Spare her pure, precious soul and save her! Oh, God, mercifully receive and comfort her dear soul, for Christ's sake!"

Some moments passed, and while he knelt, his crucifix pressed against his breast, he felt a cold hand laid on his bowed head and a faint effort to pat it. In the wonderful blue eyes a new light had dawned.

"My darling Nona, will you forgive me? You cannot speak, but, oh, try – try to press my hand! Have pity on me!"

He had risen, and her hand was clasped in his, as he stooped over her. Feebly the icy fingers contracted in his palm.

"Vernon, I have forgiven everything. I could have spoken after the second day, but I was not ready. I wanted to be sure this was the end. So much to count over. Vernon, I was too – too – hard – on you – but – "

Breath failed her, and she gasped painfully.

"My wife, my darling wife! Tell me you are not afraid now."

She looked steadily into his eyes, and after a little while there came, brokenly, an echo as of a voice drifting away into immeasurable wastes.

"I go to my long sleep – no bad dreams. Too tired – to be afraid – "

A moment passed, while she struggled for breath, and over her face stole a smile.

"If it – is – something – else – better, my baby will be – there – my – baby – "

He felt a tremor in her fingers, as with a long, low sigh the frozen lips closed, but the calm, brave gaze did not waver.

At last, after long years, it was his privilege to hold her to his heart and kiss down the stiffening lids that veiled forever the smiling pansy eyes.

CHAPTER XVII

For political rancor time is not an emollient panacea. Sectional hatred bites hard on memory, as acid into copper, and the perspective of years of absence failed to alter in any degree the rough angles, ugly scars, and deep shadows that characterized the people's portrait of Judge Kent. Impotence to correct intensifies public sense of wrong, and compulsory submission to injury borne silently garners bitterness which in actual strife would effervesce. Only those who lived in the Southern seaboard and Gulf States during the long, stinging years that followed the surrender at Appomattox can understand why the names of Grant and Sherman stirred little enmity, when compared with the unfathomable execration and contempt aroused by the civil Federal vultures that settled like a cloud over State, county, and municipal treasuries. The battening of this horde soon reduced Southern finances and credit to a grewsome skeleton. In that stifling Ragnarok, family estates feudal in extent were seized as "abandoned lands" and parcelled out to freedman, who had been enticed to abandon them in order to succeed their masters in ownership. "Patriots are paupers now," was the grim proverb current among Confederates, and the very few who showed conditions bordering on comfort were, in public estimation, required to "stand and deliver" an explanation of the fortuitous circumstances that saved them from the general ruin.

Judge Kent's judicial career had been disastrous to the interests of many throughout the State, and among the legions who improved their fortunes by coming south to "reconstruct and to dispense justice," he was especially detested by the citizens of Y – . To Eglah, his insistence upon returning to Nutwood was explicable solely on the hypothesis that speculative reverses had demanded the sale of his own property and swallowed the result; hence his resources were exhausted.

Recollection of slights, insinuations, invectives, and jeers that had imbittered her childhood did not lend beckoning glamour to the home-coming; and without the powerful protection of Mrs. Maurice's presence she suspected she was making a social plunge with no net spread to succor. Deliberately and systematically she planned the gradual renovation and, to a limited degree, the refurnishing of the beautiful old house where it now seemed her future must be spent. A new close carriage and stylish trap were shipped in advance, and Mrs. Mitchell went down to superintend preparations for occupancy of Nutwood, leaving Judge Kent and his daughter to follow a week later.

Old Aaron was stooping badly and stiff with rheumatism, but refused to relax his grasp on the butler's reins; Celie maintained her iron sway in the kitchen; her two daughters were eager to discharge the duties of housemaids, and Oliver, hopelessly bed-ridden, claimed that his son had the best right to succeed him as coachman.

When, on the morning after her arrival, Eglah entered the cedar-panelled dining-room, and seated herself at the head of the table, where glittered the tall, silver coffee urn with Dirce and her beast in bold relief, she almost expected to see her grandmother's face reflected there as in days gone by, and involuntarily looked over her shoulder with a telepathic impression that behind her chair stood the stately, old, crêpe-coifed dame disputing usurpation. Judge Kent drained his second cup of creamless tea, held up the thin, fluted china to examine the twisted signature of the manufacturer, listened to its protest as he carefully thumped it, and pushed it aside.

"Eglah, I do not like the room where I slept last night, and I wish a change made to-day."

"Why, father? I selected the handsomest room in the house for you. That has always been considered the best – set apart as the guest-chamber."

"Well, as I am not a guest, I have no desire to appropriate the perquisites. I prefer the room opening into the library."

"Not my grandfather's room – not where grandmother hoarded sacred – " She paused, and the silver fruit knife, with which she peeled a peach, clanged sharply as it fell.

"Exactly. I mean the museum of rebel relics. I wish them removed at once, and my own things unpacked and arranged there."

"Father, it was grandmother's expressed wish to keep that – "

"It is rather late to evoke sentiment in her behalf. She left nothing undone to hamper, annoy, and inconvenience us, and – "

"Father! De mortuis – ! Although I am her grandchild under protest on her part, she gave me her estate, and the one room she loved ought to be reserved just as she wished."

As she leaned to the right of the urn, to look squarely at her father, her face was close to Mrs. Mitchell, who noted its pallor and an ominous curve in the thin lips. Judge Kent beat a muffled tattoo with the prongs of his fork on the handle of a spoon lying near. He smiled, eyed her fixedly, and inclined his head in dismissal.

"It is not a question for discussion, but a simply imperative matter of obedience to instructions. I must have the change made at once, and if extra help is needed Aaron will see immediately that it is secured."

From the bowl of flowers in the middle of the table he selected a sprig of ruby stock-gilly, inhaled its fragrance, fastened it in his coat, and strolled out on the front colonnade.

Over the girl's white face flowed a deep, dull red, and for a moment her slender hands covered it. Then she touched the bell at her left, and smiled bravely at the butler who answered it.

"Uncle Aaron, put a pitcher of tea on the ice, so that whenever father needs it I can have it cold. Tell Ma'm Celie I have not had such a good breakfast since I wore short skirts and my hair down my back. Her coffee was perfect, the waffles and beaten biscuit the very best I ever tasted, and the brain croquettes could not be improved."

"Yes, Missie, she thought she would please you. She don't forget how you loved waffles and honey when you used to wear bibs and set in your high chair."

Having invested all in a teraph of fine gold, its votary sees with vague uneasiness a gradual dimness blur the sheen, and when, under friction, the gilt surface melts away and only corroding brass remains, the shock is severe. However slow the transformation, the final disillusion is not softened.

Standing in the memorial room, with her arms resting on the mantel shelf, Eglah looked up at the frank, noble patrician face of General Maurice, until an unsuspected undercurrent of pride and tenderness suddenly surged at the thought that his blood ran in her veins. Whatever ills might overtake her, no bar sinister could ever mar, no breath of blame could cloud the lustre of this side of her family shield. Studying the portrait above her, and that of her lovely young mother on the opposite wall, she began for the first time to take possession of her Maurice birthright, conscious that here her pride could never drag anchor. The room that from her nursery days had always been Marcia's remained unoccupied after her death, and to this apartment Eglah and Eliza removed every cherished object Mrs. Maurice had stored in her husband's old study, arranging pictures, books, furniture as she had left them. No word of comment passed the locked lips of either woman, but, when all had been adjusted, Eglah fastened the door and handed the key to Mrs. Mitchell.

"You know she preferred 'Grand Dukes' and Cape jasmines, so we will keep some in front of the portrait, and once a week we must see that no dust collects here."

In the future, stretching before the young mistress of Nutwood gleamed two goals – friendly, social recognition of her father, and the compilation and publication of a volume containing a sketch of his career, written by herself, selected speeches delivered in Congress, and certain judicial decisions relative to Confederate property, individual and corporation, which had tarred him heavily throughout the State, where they were promulgated. To the attainment of these aims she purposed to devote her energies, believing that the accomplishment of the biographical scheme would inevitably remove the barrier of estrangement that had shut her from her father's confidence.

After a week spent in looking over Nutwood, visiting Mrs. Mitchell's home and inspecting the condition of gin houses, mills, fences, and cabins on the plantations, the appointed day arrived when Mr. Whitfield came with books and a large tin box to give a detailed account of his stewardship.

Eglah noticed that while he held and pressed her fingers cordially, he merely bowed, and seemed not to see Judge Kent's proffered hand. After the interview she understood, when Eliza told her that during the period habeas corpus was suspended by Federal authority the husband of Mr. Whitfield's only sister had been imprisoned for "treasonable language" by the desire and co-operation of Judge Kent, and that distress of mind and anxiety on her husband's account had precipitated the death of the wife before his release from jail.

Thin, wiry, grizzled, keenly alert, the lawyer's light-blue eyes dwelt chiefly on the girl's face, save when her father asked a question or a fuller explanation of some statement. Now and then Judge Kent, watchful but studiedly debonair and suave, glanced over a paper, and once he challenged the accuracy of a computation of interest, which on revision proved correct. They were grouped around an oval table in the library, an open tin box in the centre, flanked by two ledgers and piles of papers, and Eglah sat close to Mr. Whitfield's right, while her father took his place immediately opposite her.

She leaned a little forward, her arms crossed on the mahogany, and looked up steadily at the lawyer, but when he offered a paper for examination she smiled and shook her head.

"You must perceive the farcical futility of talking business to such an inexperienced girl," said Judge Kent, stretching out his hand to take a bundle of stock certificates his daughter had motioned away.

"Really you surprise me, because, from all we have heard of her college training, I was prepared to find Marcia's child an expert."

"Father knows I can calculate interest, and that I understand bookkeeping, but he would be ashamed of me if I suspected or hunted for errors in the accounts of a friend who for so many years has kindly guarded my financial interests."

The lawyer patted her hand and smiled.

"That sounds like your dear mother, and I am glad you have her low, clear voice, like the melody of a silver harp string; but your father is quite right in urging careful inspection of matters that have been so long intrusted solely to me. Now, I believe we have gone over the important points, except that railroad muddle, which is still undecided. I brought suit over a year ago, and as the new branch and spurs run through the middle of one of your best cotton fields on Willow Creek plantation, I hope the next term of court will give us a satisfactory settlement. Boynton is a good overseer – not a graduate of a college of technology nor an agricultural chemist, who knows from looking at the soil the exact day when the Noachian flood left your lands dry, nor is he a new-fangled 'manager,' but he is just an overseer of auld lang syne; a trifle lax, but our old-fashioned plantation rules are dead as Pharaoh, and he winks at lapses he cannot prevent. However, he keeps the repair machinery busy on fences and stables, the negroes like him, and you will find your leases and contracts all signed properly. Of course you are aware your grandmother left instructions that when you married, or as soon as you were twenty-one, $5,000 should be paid to Mrs. Mitchell. I consulted the bishop, and we thought it best to defer this matter until her return to America, but it should not be delayed longer, and here is the check, which you can hand to her. With the payment of this legacy her annual allowance ends."

Eglah opened the table drawer, drew out an envelope, and laid it before him.

"Enclose, address, and seal it. Before you leave the house, please deliver it to her."

"Have you any questions to ask? Do not hesitate, if there is anything else you do not understand, anything you wish to know."

"Absolutely nothing, except an adequate way of thanking you for all your patient goodness. If you can explain how I shall accomplish this, you will increase my huge debt."

Judge Kent rose and smiled benignly.

"Eglah, I wonder it has not occurred to you that a proper recognition of the value of Mr. Whitfield's services ought to involve a willingness and effort on your part to relieve him entirely of the burden of responsibility he has borne so long, and which, under my guidance, you are quite capable of assuming. You are of age, and the trusteeship should end at once."

For fully a moment she pondered the suggestion, then laid her hand on the lawyer's arm.

"Tell me frankly whether you prefer to surrender the management of our business affairs? Irrespective of my individual feeling, your wishes alone must decide the matter, and you can best determine if the tax upon your time is too onerous."

Mr. Whitfield drew the tin box before her, and pointed to a large envelope marked "Last Will and Testament of Patricia Maurice."