A Speckled Bird

Before her lay isolation, hidden heartache, the silent surrender of her dearest ambition, and the acceptance of life robbed of all rosy plans.

Remembering how firmly Mrs. Maurice's slim hands had held the reins of government, Eglah followed precedent in all details of domestic management that did not conflict with her father's wishes. While he had amused himself with viticulture and the erection of new glass houses, she was interested in extending and refitting the conservatory, but Mrs. Mitchell's frequent and increasing sojourns at her small farm, many miles distant, disquieted her foster-child, who finally rebelled.

"No, Ma-Lila, it is out of the question. I can not let you go and spend a week. What do you suppose would become of me? You may as well stop packing your trunk."

"O, dearie, you are perfectly well, and your father is always here. It is March and I must go."

"Yes, I am fortunate in having father, but I want to keep you where I can touch you whenever I wish. Ever since I could crawl you have slain my bugaboos, and as I have not outgrown the cowardice of covering my face with the sheet, I find the sight of that prim black head of yours is necessary to my peace of mind. I am jealous of that little den down by the old mill, and if you will sell out and give it up I should be glad to pay double its value. Then you could buy bonds and cut your coupons, and keep your hands white and soft as they ought to be, instead of delving with butter, eggs, honey, and pickles."

"Sell Dairy-Dingle! I would almost as soon sell my husband's grave. Dairy-Dingle, where I had my two years of heaven on earth? When I go there I want to kiss the doorstep where my Robert and I used to sit when his day's work was ended, and in the starlight we listened to the mocking-bird singing in the locust thicket all overrun with red and yellow woodbine. Just now I am obliged to be there to see about the lambs, and to be sure of the settings of eggs for the Plymouth Rocks, and Black Spanish."

"How did the lambs contrive to live all those years when you were away, keeping me in order?"

"Poorly enough, I have not a doubt, judging from the looks of the flock. Ever since I received that letter from Robert's youngest sister, Judith, asking me to help her educate as a civil engineer the boy she named for her brother, I have felt the necessity of increasing the income from my place in order to furnish the required funds. My Robert's namesake shall have the college training he wants. Drought cut off my corn last year, and later rain floods stained my cotton."

"Then let Mr. Boynton manage your place, as he does ours, and you stay here, while I hand you a check for what the boy Robert le Diable may need."

"Thank you, precious baby, but that would be outside charity, and he and Judith are proud. Besides, in working and denying myself there is such a sweetness, such a comfort in helping, as if it were serving my dear dead to aid those he loved. Mere money is not worth half as much as the affection that goes with it, and the labor that earned it; but, my darling, you can't quite feel as I do."

"No, I do not understand. Sometimes I wonder if I am not like a doll stinted in her quota of sawdust; and I am sure my heart is too small, or too cold, or too wicked, to hold more than two persons. I love only father and you, and where you are concerned I shall never be of age. Women who outgrow the need of their mothers repel me, like museum 'freaks.' You must not go away so often, because I miss you, and this is an opportune time to tell you that at the back of my head lurks an ugly mental scare-crow that if at some crisis of my life you happened to be absent, I might go daft and scuttle the ship. Remember, you promised grandmother you would not leave me."

Prescient shadows darkened her appealing eyes, as she bent to press her cool cheek against the rosy one of her companion, and drew her out upon the wide, latticed piazza at the rear of the house.

"She asked that I should stay with you until you married, or were twenty-one years old; but, my baby, I need you far more than you need me. You are my heart, and you know it; and I shall be away from you as little as possible; nevertheless I must not neglect my own patches and pastures. By the by, that Jersey heifer you gave me ought to be registered. What would be a pretty name, easy to call? One that matches her in beauty will be hard to find."

"Her profile entitles her to a classical name, but the appropriateness of its significance must be observed. As 'Hecuba' she would feel in duty bound to add nineteen to your herd."

"No, indeed. That is a mouthful of stuttering ugliness."

"'Persephone' rolls softly, like the long swell of a foamless wave settling to rest – but then you could expect no pearly horned progeny, and she might spend her days lowing for her mother. The prettiest short names are already in the herd books. 'Antiope?' She would not take good care of her calves. You don't like mythology because it is pagan, and when I pleaded with you that your cat should be 'Hebe' you turned up your little nose and labelled her 'Delilah.' Such a consistent saint! You prefer Old Testament wickedness to heathen purity. Suppose you compromise on 'Doucette,' and then you can feel sure she will neither kick nor gore."

"If that is the best you can suggest, I shall just suit myself and call her Patricia of Nutwood."

"Madrecita, you can not. It is pre-empted. The mother of our herd was imported from St. Helier by my grandfather, when she was only eight months old, and he registered her in his own herd book, 'Patricia of Nutwood.' Mr. Boynton showed me an old leather-bound copy last winter, when I signed several transfers."

"Then the next best for my brown satin beauty is 'Noela,' in honor of Mr. Herriott."

"I am racked by jealousy that you should overlook the liquid brevity of 'Eglahtina' or 'Eglahkentana.' Let us sit here on the steps, where we can enjoy our leafy canopy. Could anything be more beautiful?"

She threw back her head and looked up. In front of the steps two lines of very old elm trees marked the limits of a walk leading through the "back yard" to the vegetable garden. On each row, planted opposite, white wistaria had been trained so carefully that as the lower lateral elm branches were cut away to keep the arch intact, the vines climbed higher until now, the top boughs of the trees having met, all along the walls and across the pale-green dome of elm leaves swung long, drooping spikes of snowy bloom, amid the olive-tinted wistaria foliage.

"I never saw anything so lovely in Italy," said Eliza, stroking Delilah, and straightening the blue bow on the cat's neck.

"We came too late last spring for the bloom, and we have not seen this living ceiling for so many years. When I was at college I used to shut my eyes and recall it just as we left it. My little 'sundown supper' table on the square of matting yonder, you sitting on the bottom step crocheting mats, grandmother, so tall and thin, walking up and down the side flower garden over there, gathering rose leaves for the big blue china rose jar in the drawing-room, old Hector following her like a lean shadow, and King Herod spreading his tail till I threw him bread crumbs. How often I longed for one of my 'sundown' suppers – my bowl of hominy and cream, my cup of milk, the tea cakes and ginger pone, and blackberry jam. The smell of cloves and cinnamon, and the taste thereof!"

Watching her face, relaxed in dreamy retrospection, Mrs. Mitchell asked:

"Where is Mr. Herriott?"

Without removing her eyes from the long wistaria plumes waving overhead, she answered in a colder tone:

"When father heard last, he was in Norway, but since then I read an account of a dinner given to the party of which he was a member, by a geographical society in London."

"You have received no letter?"

"None recently, and I do not expect any."

"Because you do not deserve any. I am so disappointed in him."

"In what respect? I imagined that in your eyes, as in father's, he was simply perfect."

"He is capable of something far better than lounging through life with his hands in his pockets, and loafing around the world. If he could only have the good luck to lose his money, he might accomplish what God makes such men for."

"He is not an idle tramp. He is kept busy dancing attendance on his exacting bride."

"Bride!" exclaimed Mrs. Mitchell, with such startling shrillness that Delilah sprang out of her lap and surveyed her with astonishment.

"Not a bride of pink flesh, on whom he can bestow collars of diamonds, but an old dame of hoary locks, whose harsh jargon he considers musical, and who, having taken his purse and tied him to her apron strings, drags him from the bowels of the earth to the mountains of the moon, amusing him with photographs of microbes and eclipses, and with prehistoric skeletons that her relentless horny claws have stolen from their lawful graves. Long ago he was wedded to 'Science,' and of course he keeps his bridal vows."

"I am sure you do not fully understand him, and I wonder he did not marry Miss Stanley; she is so lovely, and he certainly admired her."

"She is indeed a luscious beauty, and attracted him, but if he really had any serious intentions, I think she lost him that night when the alarm of fire emptied the theatre. Ours was a proscenium box in the second tier. Eleanor Stanley had dined with Captain Sefton's sister, he was her escort, and I went with Mr. Herriott. Of course you know all about the horrible tragedy, but I never told any one what preceded it. Toward the end, and while the curtain was down, Captain Sefton so far forgot himself as to repeat an unpardonably risque story of a smart set leader, at which Eleanor laughed heartily. I stared at my bouquet of orchids, and lifted them to shield my face where I felt the blood. Without moving an eyelash Mr. Noel sat like a sphinx, looking steadily at Eleanor, then took my opera glass and watched a party of pretty girls in the dress circle. His face was as absolutely impassive as one of the masks frescoed on the ceiling. In the middle of the next and closing act, a scream from the rear of the stage startled us, and almost simultaneously two of the ballet girls rushed from behind the wings, with fire blazing in their short, gauzy skirts. One ran to the corner of the stage just under our box, and the actors fled from her. Mr. Herriott put his hand heavily on my shoulder.

"Do not move an inch till I come."

He snatched his overcoat and my velvet opera cloak, stepped on the railing of the box, measured the distance with his eye and leaped down. He struck on his feet, and staggered, but the next instant he reached the girl, who ran shrieking up and down, caught her, threw my cloak over her head, pressed her to the floor, covered her with his overcoat, and rolled her over and over as if she were a ball. Of course she was horribly burned, but she lived. The other poor creature kept her hands before her face as a screen from the flames, missed her footing, stumbled over the footlights and fell among the orchestra chairs. The musicians smothered the flames, but she died after two hours of torture. Mr. Herriott's gloves saved his hands, but one wrist was badly blistered, and his mustache singed. When we were going home I told him how enthusiastically Eleanor admired and praised his bravery, and that she declared she would strive to win his affection were he not so 'goody-goody'; she feared he would expect her to be equally pious. A queer expression I could not understand crossed his face, and when he spoke his voice was stern:

"'I am not pious; more is the pity! At least I am too honest to accept praise I do not deserve. Please be so kind as not to refer again to this evening, several surprising incidents of which I shall be glad to forget.' A few days later he sent to replace my scorched velvet, that gorgeous ivory satin opera cloak brocaded with lilies in silver, which father and you wished me to accept, and I based my refusal on his request, as the mere sight of it would inevitably remind him of a night neither of us wished to recall. Look yonder."

"Yes; there must be a picket off that white game yard fence, for I am positive I fastened the gate this morning. Run on ahead and open the gate wide, for when they are driven back they never can find the crack where they came out. That white rooster is all ruffled up for a fight with the red one. Scare the hens back and stand on one side."

When the fugitives had been shut in, the two women stood admiring the flock.

"Dearie, do you know how old these chickens are? Forty years before railroads were built in this state, your grandfather brought them in a champagne basket on the top of a stage-coach from somewhere in Maryland, and the person who gave them to him had imported them from England forty years before. Think of it!"

"I do, with astonishment difficult to express. More than eighty years old, and no sign of decrepitude in crowing, fighting and laying eggs! Little mother, what are tarrididdles?"

Laughing, she put her hands on Eliza's shoulder and shook her gently. The little woman pinched her ear.

"Don't talk slang to me. You know I did not mean these very identical fowls are those that came in the champagne basket, but the original trio, two hens and a cock, were kept in a separate yard, and so the stock has remained pure game for more than forty years. They are such beauties, and to the last day of her life your grandmother was so proud and fond of them. One morning when we were feeding them she told me how General Maurice had laughed over the cunning of one of the negroes whose duty it was to attend to the fowl yards. The general had promised a setting of eggs to a friend in a neighboring county, and ordered the man to bring him one dozen perfectly fresh. The negro protested against a violation of the rule that no one else should own the white games, so that if stolen they could be traced. His master insisted, and when the eggs were handed to him he packed them very carefully in cotton, to prevent jostling, and sent them to his friend. Some time afterward, a letter reached your grandfather, informing him none of the eggs had hatched, and he called the man and read the letter to him.

"'Narry aigg hatched? Well, I made sure they couldn't, for I am 'sponsible for keeping dem chickens safe at home and I 'tends to my bizness. You see, marster, I knowed you was in a mighty tight fix, 'cause natchelly you hated to say no when Dr. Glenn axed for 'em, and most natchelly you didn't want our yaller-breasted, brass-winged white games crowing in other folks' yards, and so I just pintedly shuck 'em and shuck 'em like thunder, till they was foamy enough for Celie's omlet skillet.'"

CHAPTER XIX

If owners of old manorial houses kept frank and faithful log-books, strange domestic records might now and then be read, rivalling in tragic incidents those of passing ships. Conspicuously infelicitous was the stream of events beating against Calvary House and reducing an ancient, broad estate and handsome three-storied brick residence to a few impoverished acres, and a rambling structure partly destroyed by fire, and wholly abandoned to vacancy and isolation in consequence of grewsome gossip. During eighty years the proprietorship had been vested in only two families, totally unrelated; in the first, the reckless extravagance and unbridled careers of four beautiful women depleted the domestic coffer, necessitated the sacrifice and sale of the property, and drove a weakly indulgent father to suicide. In the second the vices of sons plunged the widowed mother into melancholia and an insane asylum.

From time to time portions of land were sold to enable the boys to continue their wild carousals. Fratricidal strife ensued, and one brother spent the dismal residue of his days in the penitentiary, expiating the murder of the other. The vicious round of horse-racing, cock-fighting, fox-hunting, gambling and drinking once madly run had ended in the final wreck, and what remained of the estate fell into the hands of Mr. Herriott's father, whose agent held the mortgage. Sufficiently grim was the foundation of facts; yet still more appalling the superstructure of neighborhood traditions, and the ghoulish tales of superstitious servants. Venerable trees, whose sheltering arms might have veiled the ruin, had been over-grown by mistletoe, until very few survived to stand guard, and when a hunter crept with his pointer through broom-sedge waist high all over the lawn, his cigar spark set the whole aflame, and only two fine old oaks close to the house were left as sentinels. Later, a lightning bolt destroyed one; two years after, an equinoctial gale blew the other half across the mossy roof. Stark, weather beaten, its broken windows like eyeless sockets in a skull, the old house, dumb in desolation, stood in dire need of the mercies of bell, candle, censer, and aspergill to exorcise its garrison of unholy spectres. Five years after the place had been given by Noel Herriott to the "Brothers of the Order of Calvary," lime, paint, wallpaper, patient toil and a wise appreciation of the adaptability of angles, corridors, dormer windows and verandas, in architectural alterations, had transformed it into a quaintly irregular but picturesque structure. Outside mouldy walls were curtained with ampelopsis lace, while from a circular belfry between the original square rock chimneys, a deep-toned bell swung below a tall gilt cross, and uttered its holy message of peace to a troubled and tragic past. The basement had been converted into a refectory, kitchen and store room, the large apartments were partitioned into individual cells, and an infirmary; and the long drawing-room became a chapel, with a small oratory adjoining. Here a pipe organ sounded through the arch leading into the chapel, and over this opening a purple curtain fell when service ended. Beyond and in line with the oratory, a one-story wing with a wide cloistered piazza looked toward the rear of the house, and held a sacristy; then three small chambers fronting the vine-draped cloister behind whose arches paced, book in hand, fathers, brothers and lay brothers.

In the early stages of the era of renovation the place had resembled an industrial farm rather than a religious retreat; but gradually, as orchard and vineyard were replanted, gardens outlined and cultivated, a solemn, peaceful silence enveloped Calvary House, broken by no ruder sounds than Angelus, chants from the chapel, low-swelling organ tones, and that peculiarly sweet, thrilling threnody of hedge sparrows moaning in a ragged thicket of very old lilacs. Along the front of the sloping lawn a fence divided it from the turnpike leading into the city, and over the wide wooden gate sprang an arch bearing in black letters, Calvary House, and surmounted by a cross. From the gate latch swung the porter's bell.

Since the day when, standing at an open grave close to Leighton's mound in Evergreen, Father Temple had read the committal service as his wife's coffin was lowered, and pronounced the farewell benediction, the springs of his busy life seemed to have broken. Max Harlberg and the few who had followed the hearse, stole away, leaving the priest on his knees. Later, as stars came out to guard the hosts of sleepers, a watchman found him prone on the damp mound, and in a heavy stupor. An ambulance carried him to the nearest hospital, where he rallied slowly from an attack of pneumonia that left his lungs too weak to permit the possibility of preaching, and the doctors warned him a year's rest was imperative. Engagements for "missions" and "retreats" were cancelled, and his superior summoned him home, but after a few days advised him to go South and visit his relatives in Y – until the winds of March had blown out their fury. On his return, still thin and wan, he resumed his duties, and from Prime to Compline missed no service. After Vespers, the tolling of the De Profundis bell called all to their knees in silent prayer for the dead, and his bowed head was always the last lifted. How much penance was self-imposed none knew, but a change had come into the habitually sad face; keen mental strife, devouring anxiety, were at an end, and the large dark eyes told of an inward patience that was not yet peace, of an acceptance of the verdict that his life spelled hopeless failure. So marked was the alteration in figure and features, that one sunny day at Calvary House, as Mr. Herriott grasped his hand, he was painfully startled.

"Vernon! You are little more than a holy shadow! If starving is the regimen prescribed here, I do not feel tempted to tarry even for a day."

"Noel – God bless you, dear old fellow! At last you have remembered us, and how well you look! The bare sight of your superb strength is tonic. Come into the chapel. Terce bell is sounding. After a little the Brotherhood will greet you."

Under the guidance of Father Superior Elverton, a gaunt man of unusual height, with the ascetic jaw of a Trappist, and dreamy eyes mystical as Hugo of St. Victor, Mr. Herriott was shown fields, garden and buildings, and after dinner in the refectory, where, in honor of his presence, conversation was allowed, he asked the privilege of being left alone with Father Temple. It was a warm day, and drawing chairs to a shaded recess of the cloister, Mr. Herriott said:

"I am so glad the weather favored me to-day for this visit. It will rain soon."

"No; look at that deep blue, clear sky. I see no prophecy of rain, but you have tried so many climates, doubtless you are weather wise."

"If a man who has slept often in tents, open boats and on the bare ground learns nothing of nature's atmospheric signal code, he is far below savages in intelligence, and more ignorant than brutes. You of the shut-in clan are not skilled meteorologists, but time is too precious to be wasted in idle weather chat. Vernon, there is much I should like to know, yet I shrink from questioning you. Many letters have been lost, and my home news came in snatches, sometimes with no connection, no coherence. I have thought of you constantly, and now what you are willing to tell me of all that has happened since we parted in New York that Sunday night, I shall be glad to hear."

Leaning his elbow on the brick base of an arch and bowing his head in his palm, Father Temple narrated the circumstances that attended the death of his wife and son, withholding nothing. His muffled voice was steady and passionless, as if reading from the breviary, and when the face lifted it showed only the quiet hopelessness in eyes of one going back over a battle-field where all that was cherished went down.

"Thank you, Temple. It might have been worse, and at least you must be comforted in knowing that at the last she relented and did you justice."

"The last has become first. All that preceded it I have cast away, and that final hour of forgiveness, that touch on my head – that feeble clinging of her fingers – is what remains of my past life – what sustains me for the future."

"Try to avoid morbid retrospection. Your expiation has been so complete you have no grounds for self-reproach; you are still a young man, and your life work is ahead of you."

The priest threw out one hand, and his trained tone broke suddenly.

"Expiation will never end while I have breath to pray – not until the same grave that holds my victims covers me. You can not understand, because you know no more about love than the rubric! If you had ever felt your wife's lips on yours, or the clasp of your child's arms, and heard his glad, tender cry of 'father!' – you would realize that no expiation could be sufficient, if your hand had smitten them to ruin."

"Perhaps I do understand the torture more thoroughly than you imagine, and you must allow me to say that were I as sadly circumstanced as yourself, I should set my back to the past, and resolutely hunt for sunshine in coming years. Deliberate, intentional villainy was never your sin, and for a foolish boy's rash haste you did everything possible to atone. I shall be sorry to see you so unmanly as to sink down in the mildew of an abject melancholy. Your surroundings invite morbid memories, and just here, Vernon, let me say I do not like your refectory. It is dark, damp, mouldy, and you must make a change. I should enjoy breakfasting in the catacombs quite as much. Ask your superior to estimate the cost of building a refectory on this floor, say to the left yonder, and perhaps the matter may be arranged satisfactorily. Another bell! What office comes next?"