A Speckled Bird

After Mrs. Maurice's death, Mr. Whitfield as administrator closed Nutwood, leaving Aaron and his daughter Celia custodians, and Eglah and Eliza went to Washington, where two small rooms were selected for their occupancy in the fashionable "apartments" leased by Senator Kent. His daughter now enjoyed every educational advantage that a governess for modern languages and a tutor for Greek and mathematics could supply, while teachers in the entire range of feminine accomplishments were eager to encourage cultivation of any special talent. In dancing and riding she was found surprisingly proficient, and as Senator Kent was desirous she should enter as early as possible a "woman's college" in his native State where one of his sisters was professor, the child was industriously coached to achieve this purpose.

Standing as it were on the rim of a new world, strewn with the flotsam and jetsam of shattered political, ethical, and domestic systems, where all nations and social conditions found representation, Eglah and Eliza confronted novel customs, strange beliefs, and cosmopolitan diction that clashed sharply on the conservative standards of old Southern usage. Tethered to the pivot of her Methodist discipline, Mrs. Mitchell swung around the narrow circle of conscientious orthodoxy; but Eglah made alarming excursions into ecclesiastical provinces, and their first serious altercation arose from the announcement that the girl had decided to join the class for confirmation in the Episcopal church where Judge Kent worshipped.

"Confirmation? Oh, no; you are too young to take such an important step."

"Now, Ma-Lila, would you say that if I asked to join the Methodist Church?"

"That would be different, because you know more about the Church in which you have been raised."

"I know the Episcopal catechism from cover to cover, and I like the service, and the choristers, and the candles used in some Episcopal churches, and – "

"Dearie, you merely want to follow your father, and, moreover – "

"Did not you follow your father? You are what you are just because your father was a Methodist preacher, and a chaplain who was killed bringing my grandfather off the battle-field. What are fathers for, if not to set us examples?"

"Do you forget your dear grandmother, and her love for the church you were christened in, and could you who owe her so much defy her wishes?"

"Grandmother is so glad to get away and be in heaven that she never will worry over me any more; and if I am only good enough to go where she is when I die, what difference will it make to her how I got there? Seems to me, Ma-Lila, all this strife over different faiths is as foolish as denying people their choice of routes when they go travelling in summer. If we have perfect right to trust our bodies to our favorite railroad, we ought to feel as free to take tickets for our souls on any line that leads to God."

Eliza took the girl's hands and pressed the soft palms to her own cheeks, as she said, in a voice that faltered despite her will:

"My darling, let us wait. Promise me one thing; do nothing for another year at least. For my sake, baby, I beg of you."

Eglah saw unshed tears in the black eyes that had always shone tenderly on her, and rising she stole one arm around the nurse's neck and kissed her unsteady lips.

"Please don't fret about it. You shall have your wish. Of course I will wait a year if you think it best; but you must help me, because somehow it is harder for me to be good here than it was down at home."

"It is a sacred promise you make me now."

"I told you I would wait. Did I ever deceive you? You ought to know me better than Mrs. Kent, and even she told father yesterday she had been trying to find out whether I had most talent for the piano or the mandolin, and she concluded I really had no talent for anything – showed only genius for telling the truth."

Thenceforth Mrs. Mitchell redoubled her efforts to control the spiritual aspirations of the girl to whom she had devoted her life, and the bargain she made with her conscience was that Judge Kent had the right to train and develop and decorate the body of his daughter, even along lines she deemed Philistine, but the immortal spark – the soul intended for her little Elliot – was immutably hers, to be saved eternally in the faith to which her own hopes were anchored. That night, when she had brushed and braided Eglah's golden-brown hair that no one else ever arranged, she suddenly caught the slim form in a straining embrace.

"God bless my Elliot – my own precious baby!"

"It has been a long time since you called me Elliot, and it sounds queer to give me the name of your boy. Why should you?"

"You are my boy, and my Eglah also; two in one, and my only joy in all the world. Don't argue, dearie; go to sleep."

She lifted her into bed and tucked the silk quilt carefully about her, as though crib days had not ended.

"Ma-Lila, if we should all meet in heaven – and I do hope that somehow I shall get there – I am afraid I shall feel puzzled to know who really is my mother, because it seems to me I belong more to you than to anybody else except father; but then grandmother will certainly be there, and she will carry me straight to that special spot – the heavenly 'west-end' – where all the Maurices dwell, and hand me over to her Marcia: the beautiful one I never saw, my own mother, who would not wait in this world long enough to look at me."

"Hush, my lamb! Good night."

In the adjoining room she sat down at a table where books were piled, and opening one read a marked passage:

"The story was told by the owner of a shop where was sold the amber-tinted syrup of malt given to young children when milk could not be obtained. A pale woman in white came very late for many nights to buy a cup of this syrup —midzu ame– but never spoke.

"One night, when she beckoned him to follow, he went with her to the cemetery, where she suddenly vanished in a tomb, and he heard a young child crying under ground. On opening the tomb there was found the corpse of the woman, and by her side a young infant smiling, who had been fed from a cup of midzu ame in the hand of the corpse. The woman had by mistake been prematurely buried. The child was born in the grave, and love – stronger than death – compelled the ghost to provide nourishment for her baby."

Eliza closed the volume and tossed it across the table.

"As if we needed old heathen Japan to teach us the length and breadth and depth and deathlessness of maternal devotion, when we know from the Bible that though God in heaven forsook His Son, the earthly mother clung to Jesus!"

It was an intensely cold, windless, brilliant moonlight night in January, two years after she came to live in Washington, and when the clock struck eleven she heard a quick but cautious step in the corridor and a slight tap at her door. Mr. Herriott stood at the threshold and beckoned her to the head of the steps.

"Is Eglah asleep?"

"I think she is."

"Come downstairs quietly."

In the lower hall, where the lights burned brightly, she saw that he looked pale and troubled.

"Mrs. Mitchell, a terrible blow has fallen upon us. Mrs. Kent went sleighing with some friends, and the horses became uncontrollable. The sleigh was overturned, and poor Nina, thrown against a stone wall, was killed instantly. Will you do what is best when she is brought home? Don't rouse little Eglah. I am going to find Senator Kent, who is in committee meeting, and break the news as gently as possible. Poor, dear Nina! So merry, so kind hearted! Laughing and chaffing me for my awkwardness when I tucked the lap robe about her feet."

Once more death levelled a wall that in some degree barred Eglah from her father, and from that wintry night she dated the beginning of her happy reign over his undivided affection – a monopoly she had long coveted as the supreme privilege and crown of life.

CHAPTER V

"Has the success of the experiment justified the labor and enthusiasm you spent upon it?"

"Yes, Noel, the result far surpasses my hopes, and I am impatient for you to visit us, not only to understand fully the complete success of the work, but to receive the grateful acknowledgments of every member of the Order."

"Then you bar your doors against me, because any expression of thanks is annoying, and the great pleasure I gave myself in deeding the property to you would be marred. Remember, Vernon, I am not a well-rounded character, measured by your ecclesiastical tape-line, and one of my ugly angles is aversion to thanks. If you have drained the marshland and reclaimed the house from mildew and mice you have made your neighbors debtors."

"The same Noel Herriott of college days!"

"Only more so, if you please. Nothing human is immutable, and if a man does not improve he grows worse. By the way, is your reverence still 'Brother' Temple, or have you climbed the ladder of spiritual promotion?"

"I am always Vernon to you, but the world knows me as 'Father' Temple. When will you come to us at 'Calvary House' and inspect the rich harvest from the seed you sowed? I long for the one thing you have withheld – your deep, hearty sympathy in my grand and holy work."

"Meaning that nothing less than the three vows will assure you of my safety?"

"That is beyond all that I ever dared to hope, but your cordial approbation would cheer me more than the indorsement of any other man. Generous though you are in financial assistance, your mental attitude toward our Order is that of the smiling tolerance with which one watches a child building a house of cards."

"However tentative my opinion relative to the scope and permanence of your religious movement, you cannot doubt that I earnestly desire the success to which the sanctity of your motive entitles you. Partial as I am to gymnastic methods, I allow no athletic feats in my mental processes; I neither run nor leap to conclusions, and you must give me time. You and I always approach vital questions by different paths: you lean generally to collectiveness; I usually prefer the slower leverage of individualism. You are burning the candle of life at both ends, and trying to realize your noble ideals; I plod far behind, with only a feeble taper and indulge no higher hope than to idealize my realities."

"When will you come to the lovely home you have given us? There is one room we have called 'Founder's,' and set apart for you; and, Noel, no sun sets that has not brought us to our knees in prayer for you who made it possible for us to own a chapel. When shall we welcome you?"

"Not now. I must go home, where matters need attention. Strange, is it not, that the magic of a name should outlive all it represents? That lonely old stone house staring at its shadow on the lake has no vital element of home except my horses and dogs, and one Maltese cat that sleeps in my arm-chair. When Nina married Senator Kent the last thread that tied me to anything like domesticity snapped, and I followed my bent and prowled from land to land."

"Why do you not marry some sweet, gentle woman and settle yourself?"

"Scarcely the advice one might expect from the priestly Father of an Anglican celibate order. Has your creed narrowed to such alternatives? Either a cell at Calvary or the snare and disillusions of marriage? Unfortunately for me, women have exerted only a traditional influence on my life. My own young mother died before I could remember her, and I was consigned to tutors when I should have been trundling hoops. I went early to college, and after father's second marriage was rarely at home; hence my acquaintance with women in the home circle is nebulous and legendary. As a boy I disdained sweethearts; as a man they disdain me. The only woman I ever really cared for would no more marry me than a stone slab in a cemetery; so, with many thanks, I cannot utilize your counsel, and it only remains for you to keep a cell for me at Calvary. Some day at eventide I may creep in, and you will kindly shrive and bless me."

Mr. Herriott had been leaning back in his chair, with his hands clasped behind his head, and when he rose he towered six feet two inches, smiling gravely at the upturned face of Father Temple, whose sombre clerical habit contrasted vividly with the white yachting flannels worn by his friend.

"Ah, Noel, what a Viking you look! Save prize fighting, is there anything in the realm of athletics you have not accomplished?"

"I fear you would not compliment me with even that civilized exception if you had seen a skirmish, minus weapons, that I had with a hairy, tattooed Dyak in a Borneo jungle where I hunted orchids. Vernon, if you trained your muscles more, and let up a little on your soul, allowed it a breathing spell, you would not look so flaccid and anæmic. Don't prefer monkish Latin to Juvenal: mens sana in corpore sano! You observe, respect for your Reverence prevents my offering you the Rabelais parody. Come, dine with me to-night."

"No, thank you. I am to give a brief 'retreat.' Tell me about my cousin Eglah; you crossed the ocean in the same steamer."

"You have not seen her?"

"For a few moments only. She is a beautiful girl."

"What remains to be said – since you accord her the mantle of beauty, whose folds, broader even than charity's, hide all defects? Where shall I begin? Being her cousin, you must know what I have merely heard: that she swept through college like a southern tornado – or should I have said like a meteor? – carrying off the honors, and was the youngest graduate who had ever turned the heads of the spectacled lecturers. Yet it appears she values her trophy merely because her laurels pleased her father, at whose feet she sits in adoration. In her physique, gymnastic training leaves nothing to be improved; she won badges, and can hold her own at basket-ball, tennis, rowing, and swimming. Is not the catalogue complete? So much for mental attainments and physical perfection, but in the domain of womanly emotions she is simply an unknown quantity – a latter-day sphinx, fresh and fair before drifting desert sands deface her. If a lover should ever win her heart he will certainly be entitled to it, by the supreme right of discovery. Her affection for Judge Kent absolutely rules her, and in one respect she is unique, she is as utterly incapable of flirtations as an unfledged owl."

"On account of the family connection you have been thrown so intimately into her society that I hoped you could tell me something of her religious tendencies."

"I am such a confirmed tramp that my visits to the family have been brief and interrupted by long absences. Eglah always appealed peculiarly to my sympathy because of the pathetic antagonism of her environment. Your cousin, Judge Kent, was very much disliked at the South, where sectional political rancor was, is, and will be rife, and his child suffered keenly on that account. When she came north to live, her social surroundings were even worse, because she furiously resented every reflection upon the people of the South, where the Maurices were conspicuous in war records. Her efforts at loyalty all around the circle have not made smooth sailing for her, and her motives were doubtless complex. You are curious about her 'religious tendencies'? If you are wise you will not stir any Calvary leaven into the pure sweet flour of her soul, unless you covet war á outrance with that nondescript personage Mrs. Mitchell – an anomalous blend, alert as a lynx, wary as a fox, stealthy as a cougar – who serves Eglah in divers and sundry capacities: an amalgamated foster-mother, housekeeper, maid, companion, chaperon, and confidante. She is a Simon-pure puritan, prim as Priscilla, and her processes of reasoning are quite as broad as the edge of a razor. That she viciously opposes all forms of 'ritualism' I happen to know from listening to a discussion between her and Eglah, in which the whole bundle of dogmas was thrashed out, from 'historic episcopate' and 'confession' to incense, candles, and 'reservation of the sacrament.' What a pile of chaff they built! Eglah's appreciation of sensuous beauty and classical music inclines her to gorgeous vestments, jewelled windows, and the rhythmic chanting of choristers that lift their chins like Raphael's cherubs, but Mrs. Mitchell finds in the severe simplicity of her own tabernacle an added sanctity, and your Calvary House will be to her that of Rimmon. In Rome Judge Kent had a touch of fever which frightened Eglah into telegraphing for me at Basle, where I was attending a scientific congress, so we came home together."

"If Eglah's enthusiasm could be aroused in our mission work, she would wield an incalculable power for good."

"Vernon – pardon the lapse into argot – 'don't!' Let the child pick her own way to peace. She is not addicted to enthusiasms: one attack long ago destroyed her susceptibility to subsequent seizures; she can be enthusiastic over only one teraph – her father. Must you go? Wait a moment. Friendship is frank, and I am sorry to see you losing the vigor that in college days distinguished you. Fast less, and sleep more. Come home with me and hunt and fish and row, and let other people's souls enjoy a vacation."

As they shook hands Father Temple asked:

"And what have scientific congresses done for your soul, Noel?"

"Drawn me closer, I hope, to the Creator whose subtle and inexorable laws are best revealed to the faithful student that fearlessly analyzes His universal work. The sole aim of scientists is 'to admit nothing false, and to omit nothing true.' Vernon, have faith in me as of old, and keep a cell whitewashed for me at Calvary House. Truly —

"So many paths lead up to God,'Twere strange if any soul should miss them all."

With his hand on the stair rail the minister paused and looked back.

"One thing I wish to ask is whether Eglah had any special admirers abroad? American heiresses are attractive."

"She had as many beaux as she chose to permit. Two attachés of American legations were particularly attentive, and a handsome English naval officer whose father is a duke will doubtless cross the ocean to renew his acquaintance. Possess your soul in patience. Her heart is as sound asleep as when she dreamed in her crib, and the man who wakes and wins it will travel no macadamized road. Before Lent she will be in New York for a week, and when Congress adjourns the family will come to me on the Lake for a visit."

Given a man of thirty-three, unusually good-looking, possessing by inheritance a large fortune, dowered with infinite leisure upon which no professional duties laid intrusive claim, handicapped by no church obligations, and the world assumes that he has inevitably run the gamut of those iniquities set by Satan as snares for the idle rich. Intensely virile as was Noel Herriott, his polished placidity of manner and courteous conservatism masked in some degree the strength and tenacious obstinacy of a character that presented enigmatical phases to those who knew him best. Heredity and education had combined in kneading him physically, mentally, and morally along rather peculiar curves during the plastic period of boyhood, and the finishing touches that determined the mould came from his parting interview with his Presbyterian father, when Fergus Herriott sent him away to college.

"My son, God gave you a remarkably fine body. Neither neglect nor abuse it, but be sure you master it from the start, else you will be the slave of your own flesh. Bad habits are the leeches that would suck a Hercules to effeminacy. Steer as clear of the sins labelled "Thou shalt not" as you would of that leper island down in the Pacific. The ten commandments are equal links in the moral chain, and it is no man's privilege to pick and choose which he will break or which he will keep; because if he violates one, it is merely a question of temptation, necessity, and opportunity when he will transgress all. If he bears false witness and lies, he will steal money as he filched character; if he covets his neighbor's wife, the time comes when he murders her husband. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. You are going where you will hear much fine talk about 'lofty, broadening, philosophic ideals' and 'progressive, altruistic standards of humanitarianism and honor.' Now mark you, God's laws are not 'progressive,' they are absolutely fixed, and when you are as old as I am you will have learned that 'man's honor,' unless based on them, is merely a sliding scale set up on a quicksand. My boy, try to lead such a clean life that when the mirror of records is held up to you in the final judgment you will not squirm and want to look the other way; and now, my last word is, you had the great misfortune to lose your dear, sweet mother in this world – be sure you deserve to find her in the next."

During the journey to college he found in his well-filled pocket-book a folded sheet containing additional memoranda in his father's cramped, old-fashioned writing.

"Be honest first, then generous – never wasteful. Pose on no pedestals and you will escape falls. Avoid priggishness, which is detestable mental dry-rot; and flee from cant, the convenient domino of hypocrisy. Cultivate genuine sympathy for all suffering humanity, and remember that a man's safest companion is his own conscientious, incorruptible self-respect."

Doubtless in the years that followed Noel realized that indeed but that he succeeded fairly well might have been inferred from a certain scar on his throat, received while chastising two of his classmates who had caricatured him in doggerel under the title of "Sir Dandy Galahad." Misled by the quiet reserve of his manner, and an inborn courtesy that made him as good a listener as talker, strangers never suspected the existence of a temper fierce and, when fully aroused, well-nigh implacable. In his third collegiate year the death of his father left him untrammelled in the selection of a profession, and soon after he entered into possession of a fortune so large that its golden key would have opened the door of almost any career he might have chosen. His mental trend was toward scientific studies, and his dominant scheme of investigation embraced the elusive problems of anthropology. His individual and favorite hypothesis involved the genesis of aboriginal American man, and to secure all prehistoric and especially pre-glacial data he had attended post-collegiate lectures at several European universities, supplemented by sojourns in Central America, Pacific Islands, and British North America.

"Souls were dangerous things to carry straightThrough all the spilt saltpetre of the world;"

Since the death of his stepmother, Mr. Herriott had established temporary headquarters in New York in "apartments" not far from the old Herriott house, which by provision of his wife's will was now the property of Judge Kent. While the family of the senator usually remained in Washington, Eglah and Mrs. Mitchell frequently spent a week in New York, and on such occasions, if Noel chanced to be in the city, they relied upon him to serve as escort when needed. That he had successfully run the gauntlet of Eliza's years of cautious, suspicious observation, and finally commanded her admiring confidence, contributed in some degree to the easy camaraderie maintained between Eglah and himself: on her part a genuinely trusting friendship, pure and simple; on his that cool, watchful quietude that holds in leash the one deep passionate love of a strong nature and a lonely life. From the day he first saw the little quivering white-clad girl standing in the sunset glow that flooded the fragrant, flower-filled dining-room at Nutwood, he had opened the empty temple of his heart, and where no image dwelt – save the memory of his father – he lifted this child to a pure altar, and offered silent homage.

CHAPTER VI

"Of course, Mr. Herriott, you are vastly amused by my ambitious pretension."

"Why Mr. Herriott? And why assume amusement which I certainly have not expressed?"

"Not verbally; but I quite understand that look in your eyes, when by sheer force of will you hold your lips from smiling. Only courtesy keeps in check your contempt for our 'higher education.'"

"Eglah, be a little more just in your generalizations. If the education be really 'higher' and thorough, no reasonable man could afford to disparage it. You have spent the morning over volumes of tedious statistics, extracting figures on ad valorem and 'specific' schedules that only a custom-house clerk or a tariff expert could utilize by eliminating nonessentials and compiling valuable tables. Why waste this perfect day over metric puzzles – dekameter, hectoliter, myriagram?"