A Speckled Bird

"I imagine you scarcely comprehend some of the conditions that place me in a peculiarly embarrassing position. Here is the will of your grandmother; I preserved for you the original draft in her handwriting. The last page bears upon the question under discussion. Read it now, and then, whatever your wishes, I individually shall obey them."

Judge Kent seated himself, lifted the decanter in front of him, and filled a glass.

"Meantime, will you join me in a glass of sherry?"

"No, thank you; my doctor restricts me to claret."

Very slowly Eglah read the broad sheet, and her countenance changed, clouded, as she betrayed her annoyance by taking her under lip between her teeth.

"We beg your pardon, Mr. Whitfield; we had entirely forgotten that clause. Unless I marry, your trusteeship continues until I am thirty years old, should I live so long."

"Not necessarily mine. I can resign, or death may release me, but some other person would be required."

"A most unjust and absurd provision," said the judge, draining his second glass, and striving to conceal his remembrance of the fact that Mrs. Maurice had expressly forbidden his connection with the trusteeship.

Mr. Whitfield smiled.

"We lawyers all know testators use only their individual standards of justice, wisdom, and fitness."

Eglah had folded the paper, replaced it in the envelope, and turned to the lawyer.

"It appears that if for any reason you should relinquish this responsibility, your successor is already appointed, and in that event I should become practically the ward of the Chancery Court, which never resigns, never dies."

She looked straight into her father's watching eyes, and continued slowly, distinctly:

"I shall not marry. Your stewardship, dear Mr. Whitfield, involves some additional years of trouble for you, but I am so deeply grateful to you, I shall certainly try to cause as little annoyance as possible."

A shutter swung open, the sun flashed in, and she crossed the room to exclude the glare.

Returning, she paused behind her father's chair, put her arms around his neck, and interlaced her fingers. Without an instant's hesitation he elevated and shook his shoulders so decidedly her hands fell to her side.

"Sit down, my dear."

He built a pyramid with his plump, white, carefully manicured fingers, and the brilliant eyes he fixed on the man beside him held a challenge.

"If the sanctity of wills were not debatable, our profession would be barred from browsing in rich pastures of litigation; and 'undue influence,' fostering injustice, has bred strife since its innings as far back as the wrongs of Esau. As sole heir to the Maurice fortune, my daughter can follow her individual wishes and judgment concerning the management of what is indisputably her own, since there could be no family contestants."

He bowed to Mr. Whitfield.

"Judge Kent, if Eglah so decided, there would be, on my part, no contest."

"You are both mistaken. There would inevitably result a destroying contest, with my conscience and my self-respect."

Mr. Whitfield caught his breath as he noted the transformation of the girl's face into a blanched, stony mask. Carefully replacing every package of papers in the box, she looked under the table to be sure none had fluttered to the floor, turned the key in the brass padlock, and pushed the box toward the lawyer.

"Mr. Whitfield, I have several times regretted that this inheritance was left to me; to-day I deplore it. While I gratefully appreciate your wise and faithful guardianship, I confess I very naturally feel sorry my own dear father cannot manage my affairs; but I believe that all wills of sane persons should be held sacred – absolutely inviolable. If the Maurice estate is mine, it is on specified conditions that I would no more break than the ten commandments. I shall not marry; therefore the trusteeship must continue until I am thirty, and of all men in the world, except my father, I certainly prefer you should retain it. Only in strict conformity to the provisions by which I inherit will I remain at Nutwood or spend its income; but my father's opinions and wishes are very dear to me, and since he objects strenuously to some of the conditions which naturally wound him, I intend to leave to him the decision of the rejection or acceptance of the inheritance. Grandmother declared that if the terms of trusteeship were violated, it was her wish that I should receive merely the annuity allowed me since her death, and that her entire estate – including Nutwood and the plantations – should be given in perpetuity to childless widows of Confederate soldiers in this State; women whose husbands and sons had been lost in defence of the South. That you as trustee might not contest a flagrant violation of the will is merely an expression of your personal reluctance to chide me publicly; but it is a dubious compliment to any sense of right and justice. Now, father, shall we relinquish the estate to the widows and find a home elsewhere? Sometimes I think it would be best for us in many ways, but you shall decide. Shall we go or stay?"

Steadily she faced him, cool and firm as a granite gargoyle, but his nostrils flared, his teeth gleamed under his grey mustache, and, tilting back his chair, he laughed unpleasantly.

"My dear, histrionism is not becoming to you – especially without chiton, diploïdion, and fillets. Either your Alma Mater is weak along lines of elocutionary training or you do it so little credit you never earned your diploma. Your pretty little prologue is as preposterous as the senseless limitations you are embracing so dramatically; but you are now fully of age – except in Mrs. Maurice's opinion – and since the inheritance is yours, not mine, you must accept the consequences of your own tragic avowal and tie up your hands for some years to come. At least I can congratulate you that all responsibility devolves upon so astute and experienced a trustee as Mr. Whitfield, who will watch over your interests till silver threads adorn your locks and you wear spectacles. Since this matter is settled, be so good as to spare me any – Come in, Aaron. What is it?"

The butler had knocked twice, and now beckoned to some one behind him.

"A boy with a despatch."

The messenger held up the yellow telegram.

"Senator Allison Kent."

Very deliberately he wrote his name in the receipt book, pausing to trim the pencil tied to it; then, bowing to Mr. Whitfield, "With your permission," he opened the envelope. Eglah saw his face flush, and he coughed twice in a peculiar way she knew indicated deep annoyance.

"Any answer, sir?" asked the boy.

"Yes, but you must wait for it."

He took up a pen, drummed with fingers of his left hand on the table, and rose.

"As I find it necessary to consult a record before replying to this telegram, I must beg you, sir, to excuse me. I hope you will have time to enjoy some of our fine fruit to-day."

At the door he called to the butler, standing in a side hall.

"Aaron, order dinner at three o'clock, and the trap at four. I must take the 'cannon-ball train.'"

He and the messenger disappeared, and after a moment Eglah withdrew her eyes from the vacant chair opposite, and turned to her guest.

"I think you brought some papers you wish me to sign. May I do so now?"

"When you have examined them, they must be signed in the presence of a notary public, whom you can find at my office, or, if you prefer, he shall come here."

He laid a roll of type-written documents on the table and rose.

"Shall I leave the box with you for to-day?"

Impatiently she pushed it aside.

"Take it away – keep it. I hope I may never set my eyes on it again."

The brooding shadow on her pale, rigid face made the lawyer's blue eyes cloudy.

"Dear child, I have always been the intimate friend of the Maurice family. I loved your sweet, young mother, and I hope you know I am willing to help you in every way possible, and that you will not hesitate to call upon me."

"Thank you. I am so sure of your sincerity, I shall begin at once to ask your counsel. There are social complications that make a pleasant residence here problematical, and consideration of the course most expedient for me to pursue leaves me in doubt and perplexity. I have thought of opening the house and grounds two weeks hence, in order to celebrate my father's birthday by a fête champêtre, to which every family inscribed on grandmother's visiting list should be invited. I prefer to throw rather than pick up the gauntlet. You thoroughly comprehend the situation, and I should like your advice."

"Wait a while. Go slowly; social wounds do not heal by first intention. Be chary of invitations, and do not hunt for challenges. Hold your own firmly, but courteously, and in time I think you will win. For your father's sake, try to conciliate the members of his church; they are an influential social factor here. Mrs. Maurice's old friends will rally around 'Marcia's baby,' and you must be patient. Later, when sure of your ground, you can give all the festivals you like without receiving an avalanche of 'regrets' that would easily paper your hall. My wife and the girls will call at once, and I hope you will come to us just as often as possible; but whenever you wish to see me, drive down to the office, or write me, as, for some reasons, it is advisable I should be here very rarely. Dear child, while your features are like your handsome father's, you resemble your mother in many ways, and I am glad to find you have the crystal conscience and flawless instinct of honor that all men reverenced in General Maurice. Good-bye. I have overstayed my time. Tell Boynton to bring up the two horses I had broken and trained for your saddle. One of them, the bay, took blue ribbon at the State fair last fall, and there is no better stock south of Kentucky."

She walked with him half way down the hall, and they shook hands.

"Good-bye, Mr. Whitfield; thank you for many things. You will find Ma-Lila in the dining-room, and whatever you think she ought to know of to-day's interview, I prefer you should tell her. She is indeed my second mother."

After a while she went slowly to her father's room. The door was half open, but she paused and knocked.

He stood looking over an old account book, and, without glancing up, said fretfully:

"Well, what is it?"

"Father, I came to pack your valise."

"It is already packed."

"May I come in? I want to tell you – "

"No. You will say nothing that I should wish to hear."

"Will you allow me to see the telegram which I fear annoys you?"

"The ashes only are at your service – all that remains of it."

"Tell me, at least, why you are going, and where?"

"First to Washington. Elsewhere as circumstances may direct."

"Please let me go with you – "

"Most certainly you stay where you are."

"Father – my father!" She advanced toward him, but recalling the shudder with which he had shaken her arms from his shoulders, she stepped back to the threshold.

"Oh, father, you are cruel! You know you are breaking my heart!"

The sob, the passion of pain in her voice, smote and hurt him sorely, but he did not falter an instant.

"In breaking your will, your heart may be healed."

He had not looked at her, and all the while the index finger of his right hand moved up and down columns of figures, searching for some item, which was finally found and marked. Leaning against the door, she watched him until Aaron rang the dinner bell.

"Father, may I drive you to the station?"

"No."

"Then I prefer to say good-bye here, as I am going to my own room."

"As you please. Good-bye, Eglah."

"I wish I could share this trouble, whatever it may be that calls you away; but since you elect to condemn me to the torture of suspense, I have no alternative but to endure it as best I can. Good-bye, my dear father."

She held out both hands, but, instead of approaching her, he opened a glass door leading to the colonnade and disappeared.

The velvet, paternal touch caressing her tenderly from the days of her babyhood had, during the last two years, stiffened, hardened into a steel gauntlet, strangling her.

The betrayal of his selfish and unscrupulous desire to violate the provisions of the will had painfully startled and keenly mortified her; but the barb that sank deepest in her sore, aching heart was the realization of her father's deliberate plan to humiliate and punish her. Was his persistent effort to force a marriage with Mr. Herriott based on the determination to hasten her unlimited control of her grandmother's estate? Until now, this explanation had not occurred to her, because the clause binding her to the trusteeship – which rankled ceaselessly in his mind – had made no impression on her memory. Maturely she deliberated, weighing the past in the light of the new supposition, but this solution was rejected as inadequate. In view of Mr. Herriott's indefinite absence and studied silence, her father's obstinate adherence to his matrimonial ultimatum remained inexplicable. That day ended her overtures for reconciliation; and she laid the ax to the root of her olive tree.

The next morning was Sunday – the first after their return – and she ordered the carriage.

"Little mother, I am going with you to eleven o'clock service, and I am sure you understand it is a tribute of respect to grandmother, that after many years of absence I attend first the church she helped to build."

Curious eyes watched for Miss Kent in another church, where her father had worshipped, and carried her mother, and when, daintily robed in white, Eglah walked with the overseer's wife along the Methodist aisle and sat down in the Maurice pew, a sudden mist blurred the vision of many in the congregation, and old Dr. Eggleston wiped his spectacles and whispered to his wife:

"Poor Marcia's baby! I can never forget her pitiful little wail for an hour after she was born. Ah, her face is like a lily just lifted, hunting for its God."

Henceforth social lines were indicated by an apparently trivial distinction; the small circle that in former years received Judge Kent, and the strangers and new residents of Y – spoke of the mistress of Nutwood as Miss Kent; but to the mass of old families she was always "Marcia's child," or "Mrs. Maurice's granddaughter."

Very few typical Southern homes, representing wealth, liberal education, and cultured artistic taste when 1861 dawned, have survived the jagged wounds of war, the still more destructive bayonet-loaded harrow of "reconstruction," and the merciless mildew of poverty that tarnished ante-bellum splendor.

Nutwood escaped comparatively intact, because, while the owner lived, her revenue – drawn in part from European investments made early in the war by friends in London – enabled her to maintain and repair the property until her plantations could be readjusted under the new régime; and, after her death, the managers of the estate had jealously guarded it from the inroads of decay.

Outside conditions, social and domestic, had changed utterly; new canons prevailed, new manners of strange laxity rolled over former dikes of purity, refinement, and decorum; but the turbid tide of up-to-date flippancy broke and ebbed from the tall iron gates of the old house on the hill. Here decadence was excluded, and one coming into the long-closed mansion inhaled a vague haunting aroma, as if old furniture, glass, china, books, paintings, and silver had been sprinkled with powdered sandalwood, lavender, and rose leaves that blended with the subtle pervading atmosphere of hereditary racial pride.

It resembled other homes in Y – as little as some gallery of brilliant, glaring impressionist pictures suggests a cabinet of exquisite miniatures, rich mosaics, and carved ivory, where the witching glamour of mellowing centuries hovers.

Eglah found only two scars of time. The conservatory was empty and closed, and in the rear of the house several rows of low brick walls showed where formerly stood what Mrs. Maurice called her "grapery," a sunny spot enclosed with glass, alluring to her grandchild, who had climbed a step-ladder to reach shouldered clusters, as large as her head, of translucent, golden Chasselas.

No strange new element invaded dwelling or grounds; the same brown hand that gave her "hot-water tea" when she sat in her high chair now placed her chocolate before her, and she missed only old Hector, who had followed his master to happier hunting grounds, and King Herod, gone, doubtless, to share the punishment of his namesake. The thoroughbred horses and silver-grey Jerseys were fine as she remembered them, and though they now seemed smaller, the white game fowls were as beautiful as of yore, when she toddled after her grandmother to feed them in the enclosure to which they were restricted.

Years had made no alteration, save that a fond, trusting child came back a sadly anxious woman, fronting the world with calm defiance, but shivering silently under a numbing shadow of brooding dread that time might deepen, but could not dispel.

CHAPTER XVIII

After prolonged residence in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Washington, New York, and continental Europe, it was inevitable that returning absentees should find the restricted environment of Y – stiflingly provincial; and, despite the rapid growth of the town, consequent upon construction of new railways and erection of furnaces and cotton mills, its limitations were apparent. There was no lack of individual brains or culture, but Eglah missed keenly the effectively massed mental activity that shrewdly focussed all lights on national questions, political policies, and diplomatic legerdemain in Washington; and especially the stimulating intellectual ozone, the sharpening friction of perpetual debate in congressional circles. An exalted official career at the Capitol lured her like a baleful witch, and transition from brilliant public life to comparatively secluded domesticity in a Southern country home strained her patience.

Gentlemen who composed the most fashionable club in Y – gave an elaborate german to welcome the chatelaine of Nutwood. The small Kent coterie invited the judge and his daughter to several dinners, that were promptly repaid, while, now and then, Eglah was requested to appear at ladies' luncheons, and to assist at five o'clock teas; but more and more she realized and resented keenly that among the proud old families she was tolerated simply because of the powerful hereditary Maurice prestige. Noting the social discrimination against her father, and in some quarters the far from fervent, though courteous acceptance of herself, her few invitations to Nutwood dinners were confined to those who had welcomed him to their board and fireside. By degrees an element of haughtiness, at variance with her youthful grace and beauty, invaded her manner, and her frigid politeness hastened the diminution of the circle revolving about her, and reduced social hospitalities to merely formal visiting. Complete abandonment of the contemplated fête champêtre resulted from the arrival of the mail one morning, three weeks after Judge Kent's return from Washington – a journey to which no one ever alluded.

Leaning back in her low wicker rocking-chair, in a shaded angle of the colonnade, Eglah listlessly watched Eliza's white Angora cat, stretched on the floor and following with avid green eyes the coquettish manœig; uvres of two brilliant red birds that flashed from a tangle of Belgian honeysuckle vines – brocaded with pale-pink satin clusters – to the quivering covert of a neighboring acacia, swinging its long, flowery fringes of vivid yellow.

Of the town, nearly two miles distant, church spires and factory chimneys were visible; but beyond the roaring river and far away, rose against blue sky a battlement of hills, tapestried with that tender, purple mist woven only in the loom of distance. With less than usual interest, Eglah began to examine the papers and letters lying in her lap. One heavy envelope contained samples of sprigged muslin for curtains; in another, that was so light it seemed empty, she found a newspaper clipping carefully folded in a blank sheet of thin notepaper.

"Special Correspondence.

"Washington:

"From a source always well informed and usually accurate, it has been whispered that the sudden change of policy in a certain senator – whose resignation surprised his congressional colleagues – finds explanation in the menaced divulgement of some damaging facts connecting the ex-senator's votes with crooked syndicate dealings in the West. How this record was unearthed is not yet known, but it is rumored a blondined Circe of the lobby Ææa used her knowledge of it quite successfully in furtherance of the Bison Head bill that hung so long in committee room, and also to secure the senator's resignation in favor of a rival candidate for whom she shows deep sympathy. Her threat to place her information at the service of the approaching Legislature of the incumbent's native State hastened his resignation some months prior to the expiration of his term, and he promptly 'left his country for his country's good,' to recuperate in foreign lands. Truly, 'God's fruit of justice ripens slow,' – but fate takes care to shake the tree. Now and then we have proof in public life that 'Dieu paie, mais il ne paie pas tous les Samedis.'"

The name of the paper did not appear in the clipping and date and signature had been erased. The envelope bore postmark of a Colorado town, and the address was type-written. It was not from the State represented in the Senate by the Hon. Rufus Higginbottom, but Eglah's intuitions assured her the extract had been sent by the hand of Miss Ethelberta. Doubtless it had appeared while they were in Europe, but whether the press circulated it freely she was now barred from investigating.

A moan she could not repress escaped her usually well guarded lips, and she shivered as if a freezing wind swung her to and fro.

A stealthy hand creeping around the dial had reached that predestined hour she so vaguely dreaded, and its strokes sounded the knell of her life's dearest hope.

Was it merely a party libel – one of the scandalous personalities used in retaliation for some stinging blow her father had dealt Democracy – a foul partisan aspersion such as political opponents hurl with shameful recklessness?

Two years ago she would have hurried to her father for denial, and published proofs that his hands were clean; but to-day, for some moments after the shock, doubt seemed the only land of promise where she could dwell with any semblance of peace. Looking back over all that made their last two months in Washington so painful to her, recalling the inexplicable nervousness that was invariably exhibited when American letters and papers reached them at Aix les Bains, she connected incidents that formerly had no visible relation, and filial faith began to rock and drift from its life-long moorings. Yet with obstinate tenacity she swung back to the only comforting supposition – that political hatred and the unscrupulous ambition of a rival candidate had combined to fabricate this atrocious calumny. Were it possible for Judge Kent to vindicate himself, why had he failed to do so promptly in print? Again and again she read the clipping, carefully committing to memory the entire article, and when quite sure it was literally indelible, she tore the paper into innumerable fragments and tossed them to the wind singing through the venerable tree tops.

A different nature might, perhaps, have utilized the printed statement as a bridge over the chasm gaping between her father and herself, but intense pride and yearning love prompted her to shield him from the great shame of knowing she had read the blistering libel. That the burned telegram related to this publication, was an explanation of his reluctance to acquaint her with the contents, that appealed now to her tenderness, and her eyes softened in a passionate longing to throw herself into his arms, as in happier days.

Doubtless the press in Y – had copied this assault upon his political integrity, his many enemies were gloating over it, and henceforth she would make no attempt to level the bristling hedge of social distrust. As one who snatches from the grave some beloved dead, and battles in frantic hope of resuscitation, she grappled closer, to warm at her heart the wan, fading remains of loyal filial confidence. It was an hour of exceeding bitterness, of intolerable humiliation, but undaunted by the severity of a blow smiting her where most vulnerable, she girded herself to struggle in defence, faintly cheered by a vague yet obstinate hope that in coming years her Biography might avail to rehabilitate the character so unjustly assailed.