A Speckled Bird

To all of us come times when, self-surrendered to depression, some psychic imp drags from mental oblivion and shakes fiendishly before us ghoulish images long forgotten; and now, as purplish-grey shadows gathered in the mill, Eglah saw that vision of "Were-Wolves," the souls of wretched men fleeing from light, hiding in Polar midnight.

"Each panter in the darknessIs a demon-haunted soul,The shadowy, phantom were-wolves,Who circle round the Pole.Their tongues are crimson flaming,Their haunted blue eyes gleam,And they strain them to the utmostO'er frozen lake and stream;Their cry one note of agonyThat is neither yelp nor bark,These panters of the northern wasteWho hound them to the dark."

The voice of Mrs. Mitchell calling her name aroused Eglah, and she staggered to her feet, swaying slightly as from a stinging blow. That silent, yearning tenderness, to which she had gladly yielded for so many months, now appeared an insult to her womanly pride.

Rejected and despised, abandoned forever, made by her husband's repudiation a target for gossip and harsh comment, why should she love him? Why, when too hopelessly late, had her heart so unexpectedly followed him, refusing to relax its quest?

Gathering the scattered papers, she left the mill and walked toward the house. As the core of an opal the west showed bands of pearl, beryl, sapphire, rose, and when twilight stole over hillside and dingle, Venus glowed in a violet sea, so large, palpitating, brilliant, she seemed a golden torch flaring in interstellar currents, to light the way of the thin young moon swimming beneath her. Did both torture the were-wolves?

At the gate Eliza waited, and putting an arm around the girl drew her into the hall of the cottage, where a lamp hung from the low ceiling. Under its light Eglah's face showed white and rigid.

"Little mother, I must ask you to leave me to myself to-night. This has been a sad day in many ways. I miss my father, and one trouble of which I never speak, even to you – the only one who loves me – presses heavily upon me just now. There are the papers. You will find an account of the return of the 'Ahvungah,' but Mr. Herriott preferred to remain another year. Kiss me good-night, and ask God to take me soon, soon – to father."

The following winter was long and cold, with flurries of snow, and rattling of sleet, and it proved monotonously dull to the two women shut in the small house. The rooms were cosey, with curtains falling to the bright carpets; and roaring fires of oak and pine logs reddened the walls of the little parlor, where Eglah's upright piano enabled her to banish, at times, gloomy retrospection. Twice Mr. Whitfield came for a day and night, and cheered them with news of the outside world.

When the weather permitted Eliza to attend her Sabbath-school at Maurice, she occasionally persuaded Eglah to play the organ for the children, but she was annoyed by no obtrusive attention on the part of sympathetic country people, whose warm hearts respected the heavy mourning in which she was wrapped, and recognized her right to complete seclusion. At college one of her favorite studies had been Spanish, and without giving an explanation she now applied herself to it with renewed interest. When Eliza questioned her, she referred vaguely to the liquid melody that charmed her in Spanish poetry, and expressed a desire to translate a volume which pleased her.

No allusion to Mr. Herriott or his home now passed her lips. Mr. Whitfield's anxiety to understand the perplexing conditions, and Eglah's unwavering reticence, led him to interrogate Eliza.

"Mr. Whitfield, I can't tell you what I do not know. Mr. Herriott's name is never uttered by her, never mentioned now by me. She is so silent she would certainly forget how to talk if she were not a woman. She intends to go to Europe, and, as you know, keeps some business matters in readiness, but no date has been fixed. You will be advised in time to draw up her will, of which she talked to me about a week ago. The months come and go, and the dear child is always as you see her, calm, uncomplaining, with lips locked as a statue's, but I must say I feel all the time as if I am walking over a grave that may suddenly crumble and cave in under my feet."

Returning spring was welcome, and early summer brought once more the solace and diversion of long rides through solemn, lonely pine stretches, where only birds, nature's feathered syrinx, sounded in the silence, happy as human children prattling to their mother.

A mute acceptance of the inevitable, as far removed from resignation, as from pleading protest, had sealed Eglah's face in passionless repose, pathetic and inscrutable. Inflexibly she maintained her resolve, and solitude was her refuge. A long delayed monument having been completed at her father's grave, the desire to visit and inspect it dominated her, and one hot day the two women went North. To the devoted child bowed at the feet of a marble angel, the carved lips seemed to whisper her father's farewell words of commendation and tender gratitude for her self-sacrifice in his behalf. Did he know now all it had cost – the branding humiliation, the fierce heart hunger she had found only when she offered herself on an altar that crumbled beneath her?

" – to fly no signalThat the soul founders in a sea of sorrow,"

When the slab was covered with white violets, and she had pressed her lips to the name chiselled on the scroll, she put one hand on Mrs. Mitchell's shoulder and pointed to a grassy plot at her feet.

"Little mother, I hope it will not be long before I can shut my tired eyes forever, and when that happy day comes I want you to bring me here and lay me close to father, at his left side. One other thing you must not fail to do; after I am in my coffin be sure you take off my ring – my wedding ring – and if Mr. Herriott be living give it into his hand. He has wanted it back since the day he placed it on my finger, and only God knows how glad I shall be to surrender it. 'So long as ye both shall live' it is mine, but in the grave God gives us back our vows and sets us free."

The cold, hopeless renunciation in face and voice was more than the loving little woman could endure, and with a burst of tears she threw her arm about the girl, pressing her to her heart.

"My baby, have you no mercy for me, that you talk so cruelly? I shall be asleep by my Robert long before death calls one so young and strong and beautiful as my own dearie. Please have some consideration for me, and don't discuss such dreadful matters. I see from your eyes you want a promise. Well, if I outlive you – preposterous – I will forget nothing, provided you spare me all heart-sickening talk in future."

On the return journey Mrs. Mitchell wished to stop in New York, but Eglah shrank from the possibility of meeting old friends, dreading questions. As she intended to see her cousin Vernon Temple for a day, she went on to the hotel in the city near Calvary House, where her foster-mother joined her after a day's shopping tour in New York. At the time of Eglah's visit of a few hours here with her father, and while her cousin was at Nutwood, they had discussed plans for a new altar much needed in the chapel, and during her residence at the Dingle she had submitted a design duplicating in many respects a carved and pillared shrine she and Judge Kent had seen near Avignon. The Father Superior and her cousin gratefully accepted her offer, and before she started to New England a letter announced the completion of the altar, and expressed the hope that she would be able to see it. If Mr. Herriott never returned, she locked deep in her heart an intention to make it a memorial to him, the donor of house and estate to the Brotherhood. The Provençal model was guarded by two seraphs; these she would add later, if the White North kept the wanderer folded forever to her breast of snow.

Of celibate organizations, Romish or Protestant, Mrs. Mitchell distinctly disapproved, and she had listened with ill-concealed annoyance and uneasiness when at Nutwood Vernon Temple expatiated upon the noble work accomplished by Episcopal deaconesses in sisterhood homes. She had always dreaded his influence over his cousin, especially since her father's death. Calvary House was as the threshold of Rimmon, and when the carriage approached it she exclaimed:

"I have no intention of going inside that monkish den. How a sensible, level-headed man like Mr. Herriott could give away property for such fanatical use passes my understanding. I may be an ecclesiastical ignoramus; I certainly am a 'narrow Methodist'; but, my dear baby, I can't broaden even to please you, and you must excuse me. I had a catalogue from the great poultry farm that I hear is only a mile or two farther out on this road, and while you see your cousin and examine the things you gave the chapel, I will drive on and order some white guineas. Here, don't forget your box of embroideries. I shall wait at the gate for you."

The bell on the latch rang as Eglah passed under the gilt cross, and at the front door the porter, a young lay brother, looked at her in amazement.

"I wish to see Father Temple. I am his cousin, Eglah Kent."

"He is not here. He went to Philadelphia yesterday."

"Then tell the Father Superior – he knows me – that the lady who gave the new altar wishes to speak to him about it."

"Father Superior is holding a mission in New York."

"Where is the sacristan?"

"'Free time' has just begun, and he has gone to look after his beehives. I can call Father Phillips."

"No. I do not care to meet any of the Brotherhood who do not know me. I was here once with my father, and Father Temple has visited my house in the South. I came merely to look at the new altar, and bring some fresh covers to the sacristan. Do not disturb any one; this is 'free time,' and I must not keep you. Please say nothing about me now. I shall go into the chapel – I know the way – and then return to my carriage."

He opened the nearest door of the chapel, bowed, and disappeared.

Before the carved panel in the centre of the altar she stood some moments, rejoicing that the sculptor had succeeded so well in reproducing the cherub heads running as a frieze between the columns. From the box she shook out two pulpit-falls, one embroidered with iris, one with passion flowers; then a chalice veil of shimmering white silk marked with a Greek cross. Beneath these lay a long altar cover of snowy linen cambric, "the fair linen cloth," studded with crosses along the centre, and bordered with annunciation lilies.

She smoothed and arranged it on the polished surface of the shrine, while a vision of an added seraph, standing in memoriam at each end, shone before her. She recalled Tennyson's inscription in Westminster Abbey, where one wife, widowed by Polar perils, had set her tribute of love. To her the sympathy of the world went out, and the nations, sharing her long search, shared her sorrow.

Misunderstood and censured, Eglah bore her burden alone, and now, sinking to her knees, with her forehead pressed against the marble, she prayed that the wanderer in desolate lands might be guarded from every ill and brought safely home. Prayer always deepened her impression that he would return, and as she rose and loitered a moment in admiration of the chiselled stone, her sad lips whispered to her lonely heart:

"He will come, —Ay, he will come! I can not make him dead."

Suddenly her heart leaped, then seemed to forget to beat. A voice rich, mellow, unmistakable, came from the arched gallery beyond the little oratory opening into the chapel:

"Roy, you are no baby, and my singing days are over."

A feeble, nervous tone answered:

"Herriott, you sang life into me that awful night after you carried me in your arms behind a snow drift, rubbed my frozen hands, and tied our last dog to my legs to keep me warm. 'It shall be light, it shall be light!' How the song soared and echoed in the terrible silence of the ice desert, as if spirits of the snow caught up the refrain! Do you remember that ghastly red thread of a moon on the glacial line above us, like a swooping bloody sickle? Even in my blindness that infernal moon haunts me still. Just then, as the echo died, out of the blackness, as if an answer to a prophet's prayer, the swift glory of the aurora swept down and enveloped us. You saved my life, and before you leave me here I should like to hear that song once more. I suppose I am childish yet, but in my blindness you might humor me. Who wrote that song?"

"You are such a hopeless pagan you do not recognize the Bible? It is an arrangement of two verses in the Old Testament: 'And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear. But it shall come to pass that at evening time it shall be light.' When I was attending lectures in Germany, one of the professors set the words to the tune of an old Latin hymn, and the students began to chant it. That night when I was obliged to keep you awake, it occurred to me. Roy, I can't humor you now, but I intend to take you and an old man at home down to Arizona to thaw the Arctic poison out of you. When we are stretched on a sunny mesa where the air quivers with heat, if you feel the need of more light, I promise to chant your song. I am not willing to abandon the goal that we were so near. If you had not broken down, we should have found those stone ruins with the inscriptions, and I intend to see them. After a while I shall fit out an expedition to suit myself, and if you can get rid of your horror of that baby moon that in your delirium you swore was a bloody scythe coming to cut your throat, I hope to number you among my impedimenta."

The purple curtain, caught back only during service, hung over the arch; but at one side a narrow aperture, close to the gilt organ pipe in the oratory, admitted outside light.

Irresistibly drawn by the voice that set her pulses surging, Eglah had gone to the arch, and grasping the velvet folds looked cautiously through the cleft between organ and curtain, across the small oratory and down the cloister. On a cot lay an emaciated man whose eyes were bandaged. By his side and fronting the oratory stood Mr. Herriott, his hands in his pockets.

He looked taller, rather gaunt, somewhat bleached in complexion, and the absence of mustache showed the fine curves of his peculiarly firm, thin lips. His eyes were lowered to the sick man's countenance, and the thick black lashes veiled their grey-blue depths, but over the handsome face had come a subtle change, etched by corroding memories. It was graver, colder, less magnetic.

As Eglah watched him her breath fluttered; involuntarily she stretched her arms an instant toward him, and her eyes lighted with a tender glow. "My own Mr. Noel. My own!" was the unspoken claim of her heart, momentarily happy at sight of him. Then Mr. Herriott put his fingers over his friend's pulse.

"Vernon promised to get back to-morrow, and the oculist will look after you until I can go home and see about my neglected household. In order to avoid press publicity and inevitable interviewing, I am keeping my return secret for a few days; and, clean-shaven and goggle-eyed, hope to reach my house unrecognized, where I can smooth out the tangles that years of absence tie. Later, business will force me to New York, and I shall be glad of a glimpse of my old club life, but meanwhile you will not be forgotten. Now, Roy, you must come in. One of the lay brothers will help me lift your cot."

As he advanced toward the steps near the end of the cloister, Eglah covered her face with her heavy veil, and went swiftly through a side door of the chapel, down the gladiolus-bordered walk to the gate, where the carriage waited. As she sank back in one corner, keeping her features veiled, Mrs. Mitchell laid a hand on her knee.

"Well? Are you satisfied, and did the altar cloths fit? Did you find what you expected?"

She did not answer immediately, and when she spoke her voice quivered through the effort to strangle a dry sob.

"I found far more than I expected, and the altar is lovely. Everything I could possibly do that would have pleased father I have done. My father, my father, have I spared even myself! Memorial window, monument, the altar here, all are finished, and now nothing remains for my empty hands. My dear little mother, you are so good to me; you promised you would go abroad when I felt it best to start. At last the time has come, and I wish to leave America within the next week if possible."

After a moment a long, shuddering sigh made her voice unsteady.

"I have just seen Mr. Herriott – safe, strong, and well. He will never know I was so near; he could not see me. Accidentally I heard his voice, and looked through a curtain, and – "

Mrs. Mitchell had drawn her into her arms, but the black crêpe was held over her face.

"The public will be kept in ignorance of his return for a few days, and before his arrival is announced and people begin to question and speculate, I must be on the ocean. I was so close to him – so close – and yet – "

A wave of tenderness drowned words.

"Oh, my baby! Why did you not speak to your husband?"

After a struggle for composure she answered, with a cold, rising ring in her tone:

"He does not consider himself my husband. More than three years ago he willed we should be strangers. He built the wall of separation, of absolute silence between us, and no word, no sign from me shall ever cross it. He is within his rights. I dispute nothing. I claim only the privilege of helping him in his effort to avoid me, and I must have the ocean between us. He will breathe freely when he feels sure that by no possible accident the sight of my face can ever again affront him."

CHAPTER XXVI

"Willow Creek Plantation,

"Wednesday.

"Mr. Herriott.

"Dear Sir: Permit me to say at the outset that these lines are intended solely for your eyes, and I beg you will regard them as strictly confidential. If I were not so sure you are an honorable gentleman, they would never be written. On the 18th my foster-child and I expect to leave my little home at Willow Bend, where we have lived since her father's death. By her desire we go to Europe, and, as we shall remain there indefinitely, I should like to talk with you of some matters that concern you – matters I am unwilling to mention unless we are face to face. The railway station Maurice is near me, but if you do me the favor to grant my request, it would be better for you to avoid Y – and come directly to Sunflower, ten miles north of Maurice. If you can be at Sunflower on the 17th, I will meet you there when the one o'clock train arrives. Unless you come that day, it would be too late. You will see no one but me, and no one must ever be told I went to Sunflower, or saw you. My child is absent in Y – , and will not return until night of the 17th, when I meet her at Maurice. Do not write me. Do not telegraph me. I scarcely allow myself to hope that you will come, and if I do not see you I shall regret it for many reasons. If I fail in my conscientious effort to right a great wrong, it will not be my fault.

"Very respectfully,"Eliza Mitchell."

Allowing two days' margin for accidental delays, Eliza indulged no doubt that this letter would reach its destination in ample time to enable Mr. Herriott to keep the appointment, should he consent to meet her, and, after putting on a special delivery stamp, she mailed it at Maurice with her own hand.

The probability of a change of residence had been so fully discussed that preliminary arrangements had long been made; but the early date, suddenly fixed, necessitated great activity to insure readiness for departure.

Eglah's calm, listless indifference had given place to feverish impatience in expediting all preparations incident to the journey, and the perplexed and anxious little woman who watched her movements was rejoiced when business of importance called her to Y – , where Mr. Whitfield was confined by gout to his room. Since the day at Calvary House, Eliza had observed a marked change in Eglah; the wistful, hopeless expression had vanished, and proud defiance settled on her face. While tortured by suspense, she had yielded to the tender yearning of her heart; but the sight of Mr. Herriott, safe, well, and strong, contentedly planning a future in which he assigned no niche to her, stung her womanly pride, intensified her longing to evade forever the possibility of meeting the man who had so completely ignored and repudiated her.

Some delay in the preparation of papers Mr. Whitfield required her to sign kept her in Y – longer than she had intended. He very carefully wrote her will, in which, following the trend of her grandmother's sympathies, she bequeathed Nutwood and adjoining lands as a Maurice Home "to childless widows of Confederate soldiers in the State." To Vivian and Maurice relatives of her own mother, who refused association with Marcia after her marriage, and whom Eglah had always avoided, she gave one plantation – Canebrake. To Mrs. Mitchell Willow Creek Bend was left, in grateful recognition of her loving care; and all personal property, stocks, and bonds were devised to the vestry of her father's church, for the erection and maintenance of a memorial Chapter House.

Business concluded, she telegraphed that on the 17th, at eight P.M., she would reach Maurice, and wished Mrs. Mitchell to meet her with the trap.

At nine o'clock on the morning of the 17th, the overseer's wife, desiring to avoid the passenger 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. Mitchell?"

He held out his hand.

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

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

"I dare say these glasses 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 assured 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, nobody 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 passionate 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 worshipped 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.