"Senator Allison Kent,Washington, D. C."Strictly Personal."
"Senator Allison Kent,Washington, D. C.
"Strictly Personal."
Both the address and contents were type-written.
Intent on her patchwork, Eliza was bending over a mass of scarlet satin ribbon, when a strange sound startled her: not a cry, nor yet a groan—an anomalous smothered utterance of pain, as from a strong animal sorely stricken.
He had struggled to his feet, and the large, heavy body swayed twice, then righted itself, and he stood staring blankly at the red lily dado on the opposite wall, as though their crimson petals spelled some such message as foreshadowed doom to Babylon. One hand crushed the letter into an inside pocket of the dressing-gown, the other clutched his mustache, twisting it into knots.
The swift, inexplicable change of countenance could be compared only with the startled alertness of a drowsing fox when his dim, snug covert echoes the first far-off blast of the coming hunter's horn. In every life some alluring vision of Arden beckons and beguiles, and to this successful man, basking in the golden glamor of a satisfying attainment of his aim, came suddenly an ominous baying of the bloodhounds of retributive destiny.
"You have bad news, Judge Kent?"
He made no answer, and she seized his arm.
"What is the dreadful news that distresses you?"
As he turned his eyes upon her, all their light and color seemed faded to a dull glassiness, and his voice shook like a hysterical woman's.
"News—did you say? No—I have received no news. None whatever."
"Then what ails you? I shall call Eglah."
She turned, but he clutched her skirt.
"For God's sake, don't ever tell her! Why grieve the child? The truth is—" He caught his breath, and a sickly smile showed how his mouth trembled, as he swept his hand across his brow.
"You are sick?"
"Oh, yes—sick; that is it exactly. Sick—sick indeed. Some oysters I ate, and cheese; later I very foolishly drank ale."
"Then, sir, you must go to bed, and Eglah will send an explanation of your unavoidable absence from the dinner."
Upstairs a door was opened, and a sweet, girlish voice trilled two bars of a Venetian barcarolle.
Judge Kent threw out his arms appealingly.
"I must go to-night. For God's sake, don't let her know anything! Say nothing. I shall tell her I was a little faint from indigestion. Vile compound—oysters, ale, Roquefort! Promise me to hold your tongue; not for my sake, but hers. I am obliged to attend this dinner, and it would spoil her evening if she knew how deadly sick—I—really was a moment ago. Promise me."
"Very well. I suppose you know best what concerns you most. I promise."
"You are the only woman I ever knew upon whom I could rely to hold her tongue. Now, quick as you can, bring the decanter of brandy to my room. Amuse the child with her frills and finery while I dress. I must have a little time."
When she carried the brandy to his door, the hand that grasped it was icy, and the other tugged ineffectually at his white tie.
Humming her boat-song, Eglah trailed silken draperies down the winding stairs and into the library, where she courtesied low to Eliza and swept her train—like a peacock's plumes—up to the grate, putting one slippered foot on the brass fender.
She was gowned in green crêpe of an uncommon tint, that held multitudinous silvery lights in its crinkled texture, and when she moved they glistened and played hide and seek in the clinging folds. Around her fair, full throat a rope of emeralds coiled twice.
"Am I all right—ready for publication and criticism? The damp weather makes my hair so curly I can scarcely keep it in line. Ma-Lila, the clasp of my necklace feels a little rickety, so I must ask you to move it around in front, and cover it securely with this."
She held out a diamond butterfly, and Eliza fastened it in the gold-wire links of the emerald chain. As she settled the jewels in place, she stooped and kissed one lovely white shoulder.
"Solemn little mother! I know exactly what you are thinking. That I am as frivolous a creature as grandmother's heirloom butterfly? You should not lose sight of the psychic symbolism of this much slandered and despised insect. Little white butterflies whose wings are all powdered with shining star-dust are the souls of babies——"
"Pagan nonsense that I won't listen to. Moreover, you ought to be ashamed to jest about your immortal soul as if it were yours exclusively—to play with as you would a ball."
"You darling Puritan! If you do not unlace yours it surely will smother. Really, I thought it was orthodox to believe that in the very last analysis and final adjustment of personal property one's own soul was one's solitary chattel that defied and survived the confiscation of death. Motherkin, don't scold! Kiss me good night, and help me with my cloak, so that I shall not muss all this lace jabot. Is not father ready?"
Eliza laid her long, white velvet cloak around her and tied the ribbons under her chin.
"What keeps father so long? I heard the front door bell ring; is there a visitor?"
"No visitor. Only some document left for the Judge. He is dressing."
Eglah went to the door of an adjoining room and rapped.
"Father, we shall be late. Unpardonable, you know, at a formal dinner."
"Almost ready. Old men need more time for repairs than young beauties."
When he came in, walking briskly, with his overcoat on his arm, Eliza saw that he had rallied surprisingly. Brandy reinforced his nerves, and the cautious, defensive tactics of a lifetime availed now to readjust and restore his equipoise of manner. A flush showed on the full cheeks, and his eyes shone like those of a cat in some dim corner.
"Inexcusably late, father! What can we say?"
"Come, my dear; leave that to me. I shall simply apologize by telling the truth—a spell of indigestion delayed me, but I felt sure one of the Secretary's famous cocktails would rejuvenate me."
Women, secure in their heritage of personal charms, resent as the most unpardonable of affronts to their mental acumen explanations that do not explain, and Mrs. Mitchell was thoroughly exasperated by the flimsiness of the deception which she was expected to accept with unquestioning credulity. Silence under strenuous conditions she could have condoned, because it left her the resource of conjecture; an honest confession of vitally grave business complications she would have regarded as confidential, and loyally held inviolate, but "oysters, ale, and Roquefort" was a stinging challenge to her feminine intuitions. Judge Kent's arrested assertion: "The truth is—" recalled Mrs. Maurice's estimate of his veracity when she had applied to him the sarcasm: "He holds truth too precious to be wasted on everybody." That he cowered under some unexpected blow she was quite sure, but her solicitude included him only as his interests involved Eglah's welfare, and any intimation of coming disaster fluttered this foster-mother, as the faint, grey shadow of a hawk high in the heavens startles a hen into signalling her brood. Ignorant of the quarter whence trouble might approach, how could she shield Eglah, whose safety had been committed to her guardianship? Had she the right to discover the contents of a note that "contained no news"? Did his falsehood entitle her to pry into his correspondence? All the smothered distrust of years was acutely intensified, and she rose and walked to his room. A bright light shone through the transom, but when she turned the bolt she found the door locked. During her residence in the house this precaution had never before been taken, hence she knew the note had not been destroyed. Returning to the library, she rang the bell, and the butler responded promptly.
"Have you locked up the silver? Bring me the key. Close the house for the night. Judge Kent will be out late. Tell Octavia to have good fires upstairs, and then she need not wait for Miss Eglah, as I shall sit up till she comes; and, Watson, you can go home. Should the front door bell ring, I shall be here."
More than once she had suspected that the senator was interested in financial speculations, and, though Eglah's fortune had been carefully tied up beyond his reach, she began to fear he might by some devious process jeopard it. "Hypothecating securities" was a bristling phrase she had never quite comprehended, but it symbolized an ogre she must outwit.
In one corner of the library stood a tall, brass-mounted chiffonier filled with papers, and above it hung an engraving. Behind, and entirely concealed, was a door opening into a small bathroom that formed an alcove in the senator's apartment. After an hour had passed, Mrs. Mitchell placed her shoulder against the chiffonier, that rolled easily on its castors, and she slipped behind it. There was no key in the lock, but a slender steel bolt slid horizontally under her hand, and the door opened a few inches only, barred by a table, which she succeeded in pushing aside. Lifting the portière inside, she entered the sleeping-room, and found therobe de chambrehanging over the back of a chair. The pockets were empty, the drawers of the bureau locked, but under the pillow on the bed she thrust one hand and drew out the object of her search. It contained neither date nor signature, and was type-written in purple ink on thin paper bearing no water-mark.
"A friend to you and to yours believes it a genuine kindness to inform you that the identity of 'Ely Twiggs' has been discovered, and hopes an early knowledge of this fact may be useful to you."
"A friend to you and to yours believes it a genuine kindness to inform you that the identity of 'Ely Twiggs' has been discovered, and hopes an early knowledge of this fact may be useful to you."
She replaced the note beneath the pillow, returned to the library, and rolled back the chiffonier. After all, she had ended her quest in a cul-de-sac. Turning the gas jets low, she sat watching the blue flicker that danced like witch-lights in the grate, and once she smiled at her own discomfiture, realizing that her attempt was futile as would be the trial of a Yale key to open a "combination" vault lock, the arrangement of which was unknown. Keenly alert, she heard the rattle of the night-latch, the closing of the front door, and, after a moment, Judge Kent came slowly into the room. At first he did not notice her presence, and in this brief unguarded interval she saw the countenance without its habitual mask—a face gloomy, perturbed, unnaturally flushed, with restless eyes gleaming like those of a jaded, hunted forest animal.
"Ah—Mrs. Mitchell! Sitting up for Eglah? Didn't she tell you she was going from the dinner to the cotillon? Herriott will see her home. It is a shame to have kept you up, but girls are so thoughtless."
"Eglah is never that, and I knew she would be late at the cotillon. I waited downstairs solely to see you."
"Very kind, I am sure; but I feel much better, thank you. Indeed, I may say I have fully recovered from that sudden, intolerable spell of nausea. You are very good to worry over that little attack, but pray think no more about it. I shall abjure Welsh rarebit and oysters in future. At my time of life, pneumogastric nerves get their innings."
Brightening the light in the gas globe over the mantel, she approached and confronted him.
"Judge Kent, I am not 'worrying' over the condition of your digestive organs, but I do feel deeply interested in the nature of the trouble that has come upon you so unexpectedly, and I cannot sleep until I tell you what I have done to-night. Whatever injures you wounds Eglah, and solely on her account I felt justified in taking a step that no weaker motive could have sanctioned. I sat up to tell you that when I found you would not trust me with the truth, I hunted it by reading the note that fell this evening like a bombshell. I have no hesitation in confessing the fact. I am here for that purpose."
She set her small, white teeth grimly and clasped her hands behind her.
He looked down at her, as a mastiff at a barking pug, and, throwing back his head, laughed heartily, clapping his hands softly.
"Bravo, Methodist burglar! You seem an expert, and find locked doors no barrier. What would Eglah think of your breaking into my room, and into my correspondence?"
"Shall we ask her? Only my promise not to mention this matter to her prevents me from telling her as quickly and frankly as I have told you. May I speak to her?"
"Madam, you possess an arsenal of mental reservations, and I doubt whether you can keep a promise."
"I can be silent against my will, and even in defiance of my judgment. Try me."
"Then consider yourself on probation. Where is my hoax of a note?"
"Under your pillow, where you left it."
His eyes twinkled, and his voice shook as with suppressed laughter.
"A woman's curiosity cost us Eden. My dear little lady, what did you discover in my anonymous letter?"
"That 'Ely Twiggs' is a terrible menace to your peace of mind."
"Would you like a translation of that ugly occult phrase? It is merely a telegraphic cipher. You have conjured up a malignant chimera; rest assured it is only a dingy red-paper balloon, with a flickering taper inside. Good night. Pray allow no compunctious qualms to disturb the peace of your Methodist conscience."
"No church is responsible for errors of its members, and I wish I could believe it possible that your Episcopal conscience will allow you a night of refreshing sleep. For my dear child's sake, I hoped you would confide in me, and I regret that you withhold the truth. Good night, sir."
"Little foster-mother, remember your promise."
He held out his hand, but she declined the overture and walked away.
"My Methodist promise will bear any weight laid on it."
Without premonition, a sudden storm had swept over the city that night, and at two o'clock, when Eglah and Mr. Herriott went down the steps to enter their carriage, the stone pavement held tiny pools and rills of water.
"Wait, Eglah, your slippers will be soaked."
"I can run across on tiptoe."
"You shall not! Permit me."
He stooped, lifted her from the lower step, and placed her on the cushioned seat.
"How strong you are!" she said, laughing, as he entered the carriage and sat down opposite, not beside her.
"Physically—yes. If my force of will equalled my nerves and muscles, I should be a much happier man."
"Infirmity of will? You,—the most obstinate man I ever met! How little you know yourself!"
"You are so sure you read me aright, perhaps you understand why all the strength of my manhood has not saved me from staking my earthly hopes on a venture that may be fatal. Can you explain?"
"Is it some scientific scheme? Some theory that may prove a delusion?"
"It is simply the possibility that the woman I love will not give me her heart. Eglah, I have been patient. I wished you to see and know other men—to form your own ideal, to compare me with some more brilliant and attractive—before I asked for your love. Since the day I first saw you—a grieved child—at Nutwood, my heart has been entirely yours, and all my future is gilded with the hope of a home in which you will reign as my wife. I bring you the one unshared love of my life. May I have the blessed assurance that you will accept it?"
For some seconds Eglah neither moved nor spoke; then she slipped down on her knees and laid her head on his hands, that were folded together.
"Mr. Noel—dear Mr. Noel—I will never marry. Only one man in all the world is necessary to my happiness, and he is my father. What you tell me now is a surprise—a painful surprise to me—because I never thought of you as of some who flattered and even some who have asked my hand. You were always my best friend, my wise, sympathetic companion, and I never could think of you as desiring or needing any woman's affection. You have seemed unlike other men I meet in society, and I believed you cared most for books and scientific experiments, though I thought you always felt a very kind, friendly, brotherly interest in me. Oh, I am so sorry you have uttered such words to-night! You must know I am not like other women in our circle, and I have no intention of marrying. If I should select any man to love it might be you, because I respect and trust you so profoundly; but that could never happen to me. What have I inadvertently done to make you misjudge my feelings? You must forgive me. I never suspected."
As she pressed her face against his hands he felt her lips trembling, and his struggle for self-control was short and fierce. After a moment, he raised and replaced her on the seat and sat beside her.
"I can reproach only myself for a delusion that costs me more than you will ever know. In my loneliness the dream was so beautiful. I could not resist its fascination. Dear little girl, you are the only one I ever wished or asked to be my wife, and because you are so precious to me I will not surrender my hope, unless you force me. Remember the long years I have waited for you. In time, perhaps, you might learn to care for me. May I entreat you to try?"
"Mr. Noel, I trust you, I admire you—in a way I feel attached to you—but I must tell you the truth. I shall marry no one, not even you."
"Then I shall never repeat my folly. Be sure I will vex you no more; but there is something you can do to lessen my pain. If trouble or disaster or sorrow overtake you, will you promise to confide in me, to allow me to share it, as if I were indeed that elder brother you have tried to believe me?"
"Yes, Mr. Noel. After father I will always turn next to you, and you must not condemn me because, unintentionally, I have been so unfortunate as to hurt you."
"For several reasons I wish your father to know at once all that has been said to-night. He is aware of my intentions, and kind enough to approve them. One final request I trust you will not refuse me. The visit to my house on the Lake has been definitely arranged, and I particularly desire that no change of plan should be made. Henceforth no word of mine will ever recall this interview, and during your stay under my roof I assure you no allusion to my dead hopes shall annoy you. Trust me, and come."
The carriage stopped at Senator Kent's door. As Mr. Herriott led her up the steps, she noticed he barely touched her arm, and when he rang the bell she caught his hand between both of hers.
"Dear Mr. Noel—you do forgive me?"
A neighboring lamp shone full on his handsome face, pale and set, and a sudden consciousness of the unusual charm of his noble personality thrilled her. Withdrawing his hand, he held it behind him, and, as he looked down at her, his lips twitched.
"You have done me no wrong by simply following the true, womanly dictates of your pure heart. Marriage without genuine love is a degradation to which you could never stoop. I will love you always, always; but I find it hard to forgive myself for making utter shipwreck of a man's dearest aim in life. Good night."
As Mrs. Mitchell opened the door, he turned away and went swiftly into the street.
"Eglah! What is the matter? You are crying."
"How can I help it when I have hurt the noblest man in all the world—except father? My one true friend, who never failed to be good to me!"
"You have refused to marry Mr. Herriott? My baby, you will never find his equal. Your father can scarcely forgive this defeat of his pet scheme, dating from the time you were ten years old."
"Herriott, I owe you an apology for coming so late, but feel quite sure you will pardon a delay that was unavoidable. I have kept your dinner waiting half an hour."
"No matter, provided you bring an appetite that can defy overdone fish. I am glad it is only delay, and not total failure. Vernon, you look so spent, may I venture to offer your reverence a tonic—club-labelled 'cocktail'? It is the best antidote I dare suggest for the slow method of suicide you have adopted."
"Thank you—no."
"Then come in to dinner."
"I wasted the whole afternoon trying to find a boy down on the East Side, but when at last I reached the house I was told he had moved from that neighborhood. He is a soloist at St. Hyacinth's, and I had promised him a booklet."
"Leighton Dane?"
"Yes. What do you know of him?"
"That he will sing no more at St. Hyacinth's. Henceforth his solos belong to choirs beyond the stars. The boy is slowly dying of consumption."
"When did you see him?"
"A few days ago. He is at No. 980 —— Street, Brooklyn. Your cousin Eglah asked me to keep an eye on him. Poor little lad! His battle with pain and loneliness is pathetic, and I rather think the end is not far off."
"Loneliness? Who takes care of him?"
"His mother is away all day at her work, but an old German and his wife living on the same floor of the tenement look after him as best they can."
"Could you deliver the book to him?"
"If you wish it; but why not make another effort to see him?"
"My hands are so full. In two days I must run down to Washington, and then back home, where I am needed. How luxurious your quarters are! Less like a bachelor's den than one would expect."
"Next week I give up these rooms, and when I chance to be in the city shall live at the club."
"Is not this decision rather sudden?"
"No. For some time I have contemplated another expedition to Arizona and Montana, in quest of prehistoric records needed for an anthropological paper that Professor De Wette asked me to contribute to the next volume of Reports."
"What date have you fixed?"
"About the middle of July, immediately after the visit to 'Greyledge,' which Senator Kent and Eglah have promised as soon as Congress adjourns. I am sorry you could not arrange to join the small 'house party,' and rest yourself by fishing in the Lake, instead of the turbid pools of humanity."
"What about Calvary House? We expect you there."
"That pleasure must be deferred; but I have thought a good deal about your need of more ground there, and believe I have found just what you want. Come into the library, it is cooler, and I have some papers for you. You know the Ravenal lands—some twenty acres—lie across "Tangled Brook," west of your lines. The property was sold recently by the trustees and my agent bought it. Now you can easily bridge the stream, using the foundation of the old paper-mill dam, and by extending your fences cover the whole. I know the old farmhouse was burned years ago, but those pasture lands are fine, and that hill sloping south will make a good vineyard. Here are all the papers, and my deed to the Brotherhood. Stop! No thanks, not a word, or I cancel the transfer. Some day, when I visit you, I may not be welcome, because I promise you now, if your stewardship does not suit me and things seem mismanaged, I will most certainly turn you all out."
Father Temple laid the bundle of papers on the table and grasped Mr. Herriott's hand, pressing it warmly, but something in the bright, steady grey eyes warned him to attempt no verbal expression of gratitude.
His host lighted a cigar, and drew from a stand near his elbow a portfolio tied with purple tape.
"Does your reverence ever waste time now in sketches and water-color?"
"Life is far too strenuous for such trifling."
"How do you know that some day you will not be required to dig up that buried talent and answer the charge of neglecting to bring in the expected interest? Nature intended you for one of her artistic interpreters, and if you had been loyal to her commission you might rank to-day as R.A. Last summer I was searching an old trunk for a college text-book, when I happened to find some of your drawings, that were packed by mistake with my luggage in the bustle of leaving the university."
From the pile of loose sheets he held up one, and, after a moment's survey, in which he turned it at various angles, he handed it to his guest.
Father Temple was leaning back in a cushioned arm-chair, and against the violet velvet background his pale, placid, scholarly face was sharply silhouetted. Listlessly raising the sketch sidewise, so that a gas jet on his left shone upon it, he looked at it. The profound repose that habitually rested on his countenance broke up swiftly, as a sleeping pool shivers when a stone is hurled into its motionless depths. His lips whitened, and he laid the paper as a screen over his eyes. Mr. Herriott crossed the floor to the door of the dining-room, and, loitering deliberately, ordered coffee. When he came back, followed by a servant bearing coffee and liqueurs, the priest was standing at an open window, and in the clenched fingers of the hands clasped behind him the sketch quivered as though shaken by the wind.
"Close the door, Hawkins, and when I want you I will ring. Come, Vernon; I remember your fondness for coffee, and this is good and piping hot."
The thin figure in the girded cassock shook his head and leaned out of the window, staring up at the golden stars throbbing above the roar and din of the crowded street.
After some minutes, during which the host rattled cups and glasses, Father Temple walked up and down the room, then came back to the table. The despairing sorrow in his deep, soft eyes made Mr. Herriott rise instantly.
"Vernon, have I wounded you by my reminiscent babble of college days?"
Without a word, the arms of the priest were lifted to the man towering over him, and he laid his head on the shoulder of one who had never failed him.
"Temple, forgive me, dear old fellow, if I have broken rudely into some sacred, sealed chamber."
"You have done me a priceless kindness in restoring my picture, but with it comes the hour of humiliation I always knew must sooner or later overtake me. Noel, your good opinion is so precious to me I shrink from losing it. I have dreaded your condemnation next to that of my God. You always trusted and respected me, even in what you deemed foolish monkish extremes, and yet—and yet——"
"Sit down, and pull yourself together. You have fasted and prayed your starved nerves into a fit of womanish hysteria. I am no father confessor for you, and if you are not the true, loyal man I have believed you all these years, then, while you are under my roof, I prefer not to find out that you are a hypocrite."
He pushed his friend back into the easy chair, and handed him a glass of chartreuse, but it was put aside.
"Noel, you must hear me. After the first bitterness I shall feel relieved that you know literally all I can tell, and then you will understand many things in my life. To-day I am what I am, simply and solely in the hope of expiating the sin of my youth. Noel, the sin of my youth found me out early, and this life I lead is an attempted atonement. Do you begin to understand?"
Mr. Herriott held up the sketch, and, as he struck it sharply with his fingers, his face darkened.
"Whose portrait is this?"
"The woman—the young girl—whose life I blighted."
"Good God! Blighted? Is your villainy so black?"
"I am Father Temple, vowed to celibacy, and somewhere in the wide, cruel world a wife and child of mine may have gone down to perdition because I was a coward—a vile coward, too base for a brave man to recognize. I knew you would despise me, and I kept silent as long as I could. Do you wonder?"
Mr. Herriott stood over him like an avenging Viking.
"You betrayed a woman? Wife, or victim of——"
"Both. I married and I deserted her."
"The marriage was legal—no swindling sham?"
"Legal in form, though I was a minor and she a mere child."
"And you ensnared her deliberately, intending to——"
The priest sprang to his feet and his eyes flashed.
"I loved her, and married her secretly, and intended no wrong; but before I could publicly claim her—before I was of age and dared to face my father with the fact of my marriage—I lost her. She disappeared as completely as if the ocean rolled over her."
"Is this the unvarnished truth? There is nothing worse, nothing more heinous than what you have told me?" Mr. Herriott breathed quickly, as his keen, cold eyes searched severely the wan face before him.
"I have told you the whole, bitter truth."
"Then I have not entirely lost my friend. Now sit down; begin at the beginning of this black business, and let me try to share your load of trouble. Don't hurry—be explicit. Keep back nothing. If you intended no wrong, there must and shall be found some way to right it."
"Too late! If you take a white flower and inhale its perfume, and then carelessly drop it where hurrying crowds are sure to trample it into the dust, what hope that, search as you may, you will ever find it, or, finding it, be able to restore the torn, soiled, ruined petals? Wherever she is, no matter what she has become, what sin and shame stain and defile her, she is my wife. I swore before God I would take her for my wife, 'for better, for worse,' and though it is my fault—and mine only—that I did not publish the marriage, I have kept my vows, and am dedicated to life-long celibacy. My boyish cowardice—what awful shipwreck it has made of two lives! You want the details? It is a shameful story, but not long. In the early summer of my nineteenth year I spent vacation in the far Northwest, at an advanced army station, Post ——, where father was in command of his regiment. Hunting was fine but dangerous, as Indians on the frontier were ugly just then, and several tribes were painting for the war path. One hot afternoon, tramping back to camp with my rifle on my shoulder, I went down a steep, wooded hill to drink at a spring, and as I parted the thick growth I saw a cow chewing her cud, while a bare-footed girl stooped and milked into a cedar pail. She sprang up, much alarmed, and stood against a glowing background of scarlet rhododendrons. Her calico bonnet had fallen off, her sleeves rolled up showed her white, dimpled arms, and all over her head and shoulders the gold-colored hair was twisted into little curls and waves and tendrils that glittered like gilt wire. As she stared at me with large purplish-blue eyes, her bright red lips trembled, and—" He paused, and involuntarily wrung his thin white hands.
"I had seen handsome women, and many lovely girls, but never so exquisite a creature as this, and from that moment I lost reason, prudence, everything but conscience, and my heritage of honorable instincts. Nona Moorland was the daughter of a teamster attached to father's command; a brutal, rough man, whose second wife—a selfish, jealous virago—made the step-daughter's life a cruel burden. They occupied a log cabin just outside the Post parade grounds, and the girl was never allowed in sight of drill lines except when under convoy of the stepmother she assisted in carrying to headquarters the freshly laundered clothes of the officers. Having been forbidden, under threat of corporeal punishment, to speak to or be seen with any soldier, save in her father's cabin, she was terrified at the danger of a discovery of our acquaintance; hence our interviews were secret, and adroitly arranged to elude suspicion. Her extraordinary personal beauty and gentleness of deportment more than compensated for illiteracy and humble origin, and after a few days I planned a clandestine marriage, to which she readily assented. The Post chaplain had made a pet of me, because I aided him in some botanical and geological tramps close to the frontier, and finally he consented to help us, provided his agency was never betrayed. We both swore we would not divulge his name or knowledge of our scheme, and so one starry night he and Hill, a private soldier who went as witness, stole out, and met Nona and me in a dense grove of trees near Moorland's cabin. There we were married according to the ritual of the Episcopal Church. I was not quite nineteen, she a slender girl just past her fifteenth birthday. Under the quiet stars that shone as our altar lights, we took solemn, life-long vows as husband and wife, and there, when a written certificate had been given to Nona, we all joined hands and pledged ourselves in the sight of God to keep the secret until I was of age, or thought it prudent to publish the marriage. To her I meant no more wrong than to myself, and kept to the form of law, knowing we were minors, and that no license legalized the ceremony which I believed and argued the Church sanctified. You knew my father sufficiently well to remember how terribly stern he was, how morose he often seemed, and I dared not defy him. For three weeks life was a brief vision of heaven to Nona and me. She was so lovely, so tender, so humbly conscious of her social inferiority and lack of education, so fired with an ambitious zeal for culture and improvement to fit herself for the circle where Colonel Temple's son was born to move. Then the bolt fell. A courier from the nearest telegraph station brought news that father had been promoted, was ordered to Washington, and would soon go abroad on some military commission. I begged to spend the remaining days of my vacation at Post ——, but was sharply refused, and all things were ordered in readiness for our departure next day at sunrise."
Some overwhelming memory arrested the narrative, and Father Temple held the portrait sketch toward the light. Then he crossed his arms on the table and bowed his face upon them. The room was very still, and there seemed suddenly a startling insistence in the harsh sound of an organ that began to grind out "O promise me," on the pavement below. Mr. Herriott threw down a coin, closed the window, and resumed his seat.
"Noel, you must think me weak and unmanly. You are so strong yourself, you can scarcely——"
"Strong? I think if I had to carry your burden I should go out and hang myself."
"That last interview is a perpetual nightmare no noon sunshine ever dispels. Nona was frantic at the unexpectedly sudden separation, and she clung to me like a drowning child; but by degrees she accepted the inevitable, and her trust in me was supreme. She would be patient, and study books the chaplain would provide, and rely on him to forward her letters, and receive and find means to deliver mine. A full moon showed me her tearful face when we stood up to say good-bye. Oh, beautiful, tender, devoted, and pure as any lily God ever set to bloom in a wicked world! As I took her in my arms, she kissed me repeatedly, and I felt her lips tremble on mine as she sobbed:
"'No matter what happens, you must trust me as perfectly as I trust you. If we keep true to each other, all the world can't part us long.'
"That farewell vision abides with me—sleeping, it walks as a living presence through my dreams; waking, it thrusts itself between me and my God; and when I kneel before the marble image of the Mother of my Lord, her holy face is hidden by that of my fair, sweet young wife. It has become an obsession from which I cannot escape. After I went east, two letters reached me; then, in the late autumn when father had sailed, I was stricken with typhoid fever, that kept me prisoner for three months, and the inflammatory rheumatism that followed it so completely wrecked me, I was carried to the country home of an aunt in Massachusetts, in whose care father left me when he went to Europe. In my convalescence I wrote repeatedly under cover to the chaplain, signing only my middle name, Pembroke, but heard nothing until the next June. While still on crutches, I went for a day's visit to college to collect and pack my belongings, and there I found one dusty, mislaid letter from Nona, full of sad forebodings. The chaplain had wandered too far away to a mountain range, accompanied only by an orderly, who reported on his return that his companion had been scalped by Indians while he was examining some rock ledges, and that he had barely escaped by desperate riding. A cavalry troop, sent out to recover the body and avenge the death, was ambushed in a wooded defile and four troopers were killed, among the number Hill. The letter had been written in January—five months before. Both witnesses of our marriage in the grave! Anxiety and distress brought on renewal of rheumatic fever, and I was crippled in hands and feet for six terrible weeks. One day, as I was trying my ability to walk about the room, a delayed letter was forwarded from college—the last I ever received from Nona. Her father had died very suddenly from congestion of the lungs, and his wife returned immediately to her family in Arkansas; but because of my poor Nona's condition, which had subjected her to severe abuse and horrible accusations, the stepmother had cast her off, refused her recognition, and abandoned her. Because she refused to divulge the name of her husband, her declaration that she was a wife only increased the torrent of insults that swept her beyond the pale of respectability. She wrote that one friend—the only person who believed her assertion that she had been lawfully married—was just then leaving the Post for his old home, his time of service having expired, and he had kindly carried her in a covered wagon to a small village some days' travel east of the Post, where he found shelter for her until after the birth of her child. She begged I would send money to pay her board and also to enable her to travel east and live near me, because she was so terror-stricken among strangers. The same day my father summoned me to Europe, having decided I should attend lectures in Germany and at Oxford. By express, I forwarded the money to Nona, in accordance with her directions—"Care of Delia Brown, Thompsonville, —— Territory"—and I wrote her, explaining all the circumstances, assuring her I would join her as soon as I could travel, and that henceforth we should never be separated. A few hours later I was laid up with a severe relapse, and when, finally, I started west in September, I was still so lame any movement was torture. At last the stage coach put me down at the cluster of log houses called Thompsonville, and by the aid of crutches I found my way to a low, dark cabin of two rooms, where Delia Brown made a scanty living by washing and ironing for men attached to a party of prospecting miners. She was a gaunt, sinister looking woman from Maine, with small, deep-set, faded yellow eyes that bored like a gimlet, and as she took a pipe from her ugly bluish lips and greeted me my heart sank. Where was Nona? Gone—with the man who brought her there, and who 'paid well for her keep.' When? Several weeks ago. Did she receive my letter, and had the money reached her? Yes, the money had been delivered to her—Delia Brown—and she had given it to the woman Nona, in the presence of one Josh' Smith. My letter had seemed to terrify the woman, and as soon as she knew I was coming she went away suddenly, saying she was going to New Orleans, and she and the man could take care of the baby. What was the man's name? He called himself Lay' Walker, but she doubted 'if he was not somebody else, and folks had their suspicions about the whole affair.' The baby boy was four months old when the man and woman took it away, but it was 'such a poor, puny, ailing child it had little chance to live.' What I suffered then only God will ever know, but faith in Nona sustained me while I went from cabin to cabin, receiving on all sides confirmation of Delia Brown's statements from women who had met her, and also from the mail and express agent—Josh' Smith—who assured me he had delivered the letter and package of money addressed to Nona Moorland, care of Delia Brown, to the latter, and exhibited her receipt. Lay' Walker was described as a very 'handsome Spanish-looking young fellow,' and he and the woman seemed fond of each other. He spent his money freely on her, and talked about Florida and banana growing, and said they wanted to get to New Orleans, where his friends had a schooner running in the West India fruit trade. After an exhaustive search, I made my way to New Orleans and engaged police assistance, but no clue could be found. Then I arranged advertisements to run six months, and went on to Pensacola and to Tampa. I advertised in two Florida newspapers, asking Nona Moorland to write to me, care of my father's lawyer in Boston. No response, no word, no hint ever reached me. When December arrived and I had no tidings, I deposited money in a Boston bank to the credit of Nona Moorland, and leaving instructions that all mail matter should be forwarded promptly to me, I sailed for Europe, shattered in body, almost hopeless, and the tortured prey of remorseful regret at the awful consequence of my midsummer madness."
A nervous shiver seized him, and he lifted the chartreuse to his colorless lips.
Mr. Herriott's sinewy brown hand closed over the cold white fingers half hidden in the folds of the black cassock.
"And the woman, Delia Brown? What became of her?"
"How should I know?"
"There lies the crux of this dreadful entanglement. She duped you."
"Possibly. When I left Thompsonville she was preparing to remove to Maine, where she had relatives. I doubted her as long as I could; but nearly eleven years of cruel silence have slowly destroyed every vestige of hope, or of faith in Nona's loyalty. Understand, I do not accuse her—I dare not—I accept the blame. The fault was mine; she was an innocent, ignorant child, and what she considered my heartless, wicked desertion has thrown her into the jaws of destruction. If her soul is lost, God will require me to answer for the ruin—and that is the bitterness of my intolerable life. The immortal soul of my wife, of the mother of my child—a homeless, nameless, fatherless waif! I hold marriage indissoluble by human enactment, and while Nona lives I regard her as my wife, no matter what she has become, no matter into what shameful career she may have been driven by my cowardly course of action. When she believed I had abandoned her, the poor girl doubtless grew desperate. What I have told you is known only to my confessor, to the Superior of our Order in England, where I took my vows, and to my father, to whom I promptly confided everything when I joined him in Germany just before his death. That he refused to forgive me you will readily believe. This sketch you have restored to me was enlarged from one I made at Post ——, and its loss greatly grieved me. Oh, Noel, stinging memory is more merciless than sharp-set hair shirts that fret the flesh. When I see happy mothers and children, their laughter smites my heart like an iron hand; and while I minister to the suffering outcast little ones in pauper homes, my bruised soul seems to hear the accusing, piteous cry of my own forsaken, lost lamb—thrown out to hungry wolves."
Sabbath quietude had laid a finger on thousands of metal lips that screamed the song of labor on other days, and the great city seemed almost asleep as Mr. Herriott entered his carriage at ten o'clock and gave the order, "Brooklyn—Fulton Ferry." After a restless night, spent in searching an old diary for dates and notes, he had gradually untied some knotted memories—vague and conflicting—and straightened a slender thread that might possibly guide to the identification of an elusive personality. On the seat in front of him a basket of purple grapes added their fruity fragrance to the perfume of a bunch of white carnations, and during the long drive the expression of perplexity which had knitted his brows relaxed into the alert placidity that characterized his strong face.
Summer heat, blown in by a humid south wind, touched the sky with an intense blue, against which one long, thin curl of cloud shone like a silver feather, and Brooklyn parks and lawns shook their green banners of grass blades and young, silken foliage. In the middle of a block of old brick tenement houses, Mr. Herriott entered an open door, where two children fought over a wailing black kitten, and went up the inner stairway to a narrow hall, on which opened several doors bearing cards inscribed with the name of occupants of the rooms. At one, labelled "Mrs. Dane," he rapped. It was opened partly, and held ajar.
"Well, who knocked?"
"One of Leighton's friends. Can I see him?"
"Not to-day. He is not well enough for visitors."
"May I come in and see you?"
"Why should you? What do you want?"
Before he could reply, a weak voice pleaded:
"Please, mother! It is Mr. Herriott: let him in. He has been so good to me—please—please!"
"If I do, you are not to talk and bring back that spell of coughing."
The door was swung fully open, and Mr. Herriott confronted "Juno."
"You are Mr. Herriott, as I supposed. Walk in, and excuse the confusion of the rooms. I was up all night, and have not put things in order."
She wore a dark skirt and white muslin sacque, loose at the throat, ungirded, and the sleeves were rolled up, exposing the symmetry of her dimpled white arms. A rich, lovely red stained her lips and cheeks—perhaps from embarrassment, probably from the heat of the oil-stove, on which, evidently, breakfast had been recently prepared. She pointed to an adjoining room, where Leighton lay on a cot close to the open window.
"Oh, sir, are they really for me?" as Mr. Herriott laid the basket and flowers beside him.
"Look, mother! Grapes, grapes! And the smell of the carnations! Was there ever anything so sweet? I don't know how to thank you, sir. I wish I could say something, but when my heart is full I just can't tell it."
His little hot hand caught Mr. Herriott's, and the thin fingers twined caressingly about it.
"You are not to thank me, and you must not talk. Remember, that was the condition upon which I was allowed to see you. Eat your grapes while your mother tells me about you."
"You will spoil him. I can't give him such luxuries as hothouse fruit and flowers, though now and then he has his bunch of violets."
"When was the doctor here?"
"Friday. He changed the medicine, but I can see no benefit as yet."
"If you think it would not tire him too much, I should like to take him out for a drive."
"Thank you, but I could not consent to that."
"Why not? The fresh air is balmy to-day, and would do him good. I have a carriage at the door, and if you are unwilling to trust the boy with me, I should be glad to take you also. May I?"
Her blue eyes glittered and her lips straightened their curves.
"Most certainly not."
"Pardon me, madam; my interest in your child——"
"Does not justify a man of your position in taking a 'department store saleswoman' to drive on Sunday through public places."
"Perhaps you are right. Then I shall efface myself promptly, and you and Leighton can keep the carriage as long as you like."
"Such favors I accept from no man."
"Not even to help your sick boy?"
She put her hand on the child's shining curls, and a world of tenderness glorified her velvet eyes.
"Not even for my very own baby could I incur such an obligation."
"Smell them, mother—like spice! Don't they make you think of the carnation garden in San Francisco, where Uncle Dane used to carry us?"
"How long ago was that, Leighton?" asked Mr. Herriott, watching the woman's face.
"Oh, it was when I was a little chap and wore frocks."
"Were you born in San Francisco?"
"No. He was born in —— Territory."
"Mrs. Dane, can you tell me what became of the artist Belmont?"
"Why do you ask me that question?"
"In order to get an answer. He painted your face for his 'Aurora,' and the picture was photographed."
"Yes; I needed money, and Mr. Dane permitted him to come to our house for the sittings. That was my first and last experience as a model."
"I have met you before."
She straightened herself, and answered defiantly:
"Probably I have sold you gloves, or socks, or handkerchiefs—certainly not the right to meddle with my personal affairs."
"I went with a San Francisco friend to see a night school for women, which his mother had established. You were there."
"Yes, I was there two winters. Now, sir, have you a police badge hidden inside your coat? Are you playing reporter—disguised as a benevolent gentleman—hunting up the details of last night's meeting and riot at Newark? You know, of course, that I made a speech there?"
"Indeed? I had imagined you sat up all night with your sick boy."
"There is a strike on down there, and I spoke against arbitrating labor grievances, and against the ghastly sham of getting the rights of the poor from a picked judge and a packed jury. Bombs and boycott make the best mill for grinding out justice to starving, over-worked men and women."
"How long have you been an 'anarchist,' or perhaps you prefer the term 'socialist'?"
"From the day I was sixteen years old, and learned how rich men trample and betray and despise and insult the ignorant, helpless poor."
"It must have been a terribly cruel grievance that transformed into a fury one who was intended for a loving, gentle woman."
She laughed, and her beautiful teeth took hold of the glowing under lip.
"Grievance? We all have one—we are simply born to suffer, as to breathe—but the unendurable the unpardonable comes from the grasping, murderous, fiendish selfishness of rich men. You have been so kind to my boy, I have tried hard to believe genuine benevolence—what you are pleased to call 'Christian philanthropy'—inspired your visits to him during my absence, but you are all alike—you gilded society sultans—and you come here with some cowardly design carefully smothered under flowers, fruit, and candy. So, Leighton, make the most of to-day, for we will see no more of your Mr. Herriott."
"Madam, I shall be as frank as you have shown yourself. There is one woman in this world whose wishes rule me absolutely, and because she requested me to see your child now and then, I have come several times, until my sympathetic interest equals hers. With your career in New York I am acquainted. For your radical views and utterances I have neither respect nor toleration, yet, if you will permit me to explain, there are reasons that lead me to believe I can do you a very great service."
"I am not in need of service from any man. Your formula has not even the ring of originality; I have heard such sickening reiterations of it from false, bearded lips."
"That you have been a cruelly wronged woman I feel assured, but I am equally certain that your worst enemy was no man—was one of your own sex. For your own sake, will you answer two questions?"
"For my own sake, I distinctly refuse to be catechised by impertinent strangers."
"Oh, mother; please mother! He has been so good to me, how could he mean harm to you? Don't worry her, Mr. Herriott. She can't abide men; they fret her, and she hates them—unless they are starved and ragged. Please let her alone, and look at my doves. They come for the crumbs on the window sill. See! Here is a new one, pure white. Mother, scatter some bread on the sheet and they will come in."
She sprinkled some scraps of cake close to his pillow, and, after a little coy skirmishing, the pigeons fluttered in to the feast; but just then a spell of coughing shook the fragile form on the cot, and with a flash and whirr the flock vanished. Mrs. Dane lifted the boy and fanned him, wiping away the moisture that beaded his clustering curls, and Mr. Herriott piled the pillows and cushions behind his shaking shoulders. When the paroxysm ended, and Leighton lay wan and spent, the visitor leaned over him.
"I should like to do several things for you, but your mother will not permit me. Miss Kent wishes you to know she remembers you with interest, and hopes to hear you sing again. The stranger who preached at St. Hyacinth's has not forgotten the poem he promised you, and will bring it soon. I saw him last night. Now, I must say good-bye for to-day. Don't try to speak, I understand everything."
Silently Mrs. Dane followed him to the door. Across the threshold, he turned and lowered his voice.
"A sea voyage is the only thing that will prolong his life. With your consent, it can be arranged at once."
She shook her head.
"Madam, I find I must revise my ideals of maternal devotion. You punish your innocent child for the sins of those who blighted your youth? You harangue a rabble in favor of 'justice' and deny it to a dying boy."
She caught her breath, leaned against the wall, and covered her face with her hands. When he saw it again the color had ebbed, the lovely eyes were darkened by unshed tears, and the lips were beyond her control.
"My baby—my fatherless little one! Ever since he was born I have struggled so hard to keep his mother's name clean—his mother's name, all he had—clean and beyond reproach! Do you suppose that now, at the last, I would put myself under obligation to a rich man? We may die paupers, he and I, but when we go to the Potter's Field—the only undisputed land labor can claim—we go free, honest, and unblemished, and if there was a God, I could hold up my baby and demand why He had cursed us both in our innocence."
"I am sorry that the circumstances coloring your life have destroyed every vestige of confidence in man's honor, yet I have no alternative but to accept your decision, and I wish you good morning."
He lifted his hat, and had gone half way down the stairs, when she followed and touched his sleeve.
"I did not thank you for much goodness to my child, but I do want to say I am not ungrateful; only I have had so little to be thankful for, I don't quite know how to phrase gratitude. The world has been so hard to me I am suspicious of every rich man in your social circle. You see, my face has handicapped me always——"
She set her teeth and struck one palm resentfully against her cheek, and the passionate, pent-up cry of years of suffering broke through the next words.
"Yes, my face has been my curse, and it was the steel trap that snapped chains on me when I was only a child. Kindness to my Leighton is the one thing that touches what is left of my heart; and how do you suppose I can bear now to listen to his sobbing yonder, because he thinks I have rudely driven you away? Oh, my pretty baby! My own beautiful little one! Cast out, with only his girl-mother to fight for him against this cruel world! And now if I lose him, if my all is taken away from me——"
She wrung her hands, and the blanched face was upturned as if challenging her God.
"Madam, I understand fully, and I intend to help your boy; but be sure I shall visit him when you are absent. Tell him I shall come, with your consent, while he is alone; and some day I think you will trust me, even despite the fact that I happen to have money. Good-bye."
He held out his hand, but she seemed not to see it, and as she turned and walked wearily up the steps he went down to his carriage.
"Miss Kent, it is quite evident that you do not approve of us."
"Will you be so kind as to explain to whom 'us' refers?"
"Our great social world, including government, congressional and diplomatic circles, club life, and all that 'progress' stands for. Instead of moving abreast with the 'advance' current, you have drifted aside into an eddy as contracted, as pitiably narrow as—pardon me, we emancipated new women dare now to speak the brazen truth—as narrow as the hands and feet you Southerners boast as sign of aristocratic blood."
Eglah lifted her grey-gloved hand, examined its outlines critically, and placed it within a few inches of the broad, thick palm which Ethelberta Higginbottom had laid on her own lap as she sat in the gallery of the Senate chamber.
"Thank you very much, Miss Higginbottom. It is traditional in my family to admire slender fingers, but we are not so intolerant as to deny others the privilege of occupying as much space as their digits can cover, and we never brand people as absolutely disreputable because they wear number six shoes and number seven-and-a-half gloves. If degrees of latitude determine the height of insteps, what manifest injustice has been meted out to longitudinal lines that you Westerners so proudly claim? Probably you have forgotten that my father is from New England, and he owns a silver caddy—two hundred years old—that was empty at one time because 'fish drank tea in Boston harbor.'"
"Oh, but your mother was Southern and you represent not heredity, but sheredity, a sociological factor of immense potency, which must be reckoned with, let me tell you, in the near future, when women fully emancipated come to enjoyment of all the rights so long withheld from them. Then mothers, and not fathers will wield the destiny of this great country; and already female colleges are fast spreading the blessed gospel of free and equal rights. Last week some one asserted that you were a graduate of —— College, but I contradicted it flatly, as impossible and absurd."
"I am sorry I do my dearAlma Matersuch lamentable discredit; but, unfortunately, we were not taught to wear our diplomas on our hats as advertisements of scholarship."
"You certainly amaze me!"
"Perhaps you will excuse my frankness in assuring you that sensation at least is mutual."
"With your educational advantages, to lock up your mind in a stockade of provincialism! Desectionalize yourself!"
"May I ask whether you spell your last verb with an x or a ct? I should prefer first to ascertain which process is demanded of me."
"Your Southern bigotry is a mill-stone around your neck. The very word 'emancipation' is a red rag to old slaveholders and their progeny. You never can forgive us for breaking the shackles of groaning millions held in bondage."
Eglah laughed.
"Pardon me, but it certainly is ludicrous that one possessing your 'broad culture and desectionalized' horizon of thought should really believe in that old worn-out 'raw-head and bloody-bones' figure of speech which has done duty so long. It surely is entitled to decent interment where all dilapidated scarecrows cease from troubling. We Southern people no more want our negroes back as slaves than you desire the return of hordes of Indians whom you so completely dispossessed of their native lands in your 'wild and rapacious West,' and whom a 'white, fatherly' government is rapidly reducing to extinction by its beneficent agencies. The white South is 'emancipated' from the moral responsibility of elevating the black race now so happy in 'national' tutelage, where their guardians taught them the system of bookkeeping and all the subtle processes of the 'Freedmen's Bureau.'"
"How lonely you must feel in Washington. You have no more regard for the rights of your own sex than for—" She stammered and coughed.
"Indeed, I have the most affectionate and jealous regard for every right that inheres in my dower of American womanhood. I claim and enjoy the right to be as cultured, as learned, as useful, and—if you please—as ornamental in society and at home as my individual limitations will permit. I have no wrongs, no grievances, no crying need to usurp lines of work that will break down the barriers God set between men and women. I am not in rebellion against legal statutes, nor the canons of well-established decency and refinement in feminine usage, and, finally, I am so inordinately proud of being a well-born Southern woman, with a full complement of honorable great-grandfathers and blue-blooded, stainless great-grand-mothers, that I have neither pretext nor inclination to revolt against mankind."
"Miss Kent, you have rather pretty eyes, but you are so steeped in Southern—what do you call it—dolce far niente, orlaissez faire, or semi-stagnation of soul that you are too lazy to open them wide enough to see the thrilling vista of woman's triumph that illumines——"
"Thank you; my much flattered eyes are sufficiently open at this moment to perceive the behavior of that nondescript creature in feminine garments who is flirting so undisguisedly with Senator Smallweed yonder, on your right; one of the early emancipated—an advanced lobbyist."
"You mean that piquant, charming little Mrs. Morrison? Dear soul! She is a pathetically tragic object lesson. Had to get a divorce from a brutal husband and become a bread-winner. Why should not women lobby? They are so nimble witted, nature fitted them admirably for such work."
"And gave them the adroitly nimble fingers to fit the pockets they pick."
"That is some cowardly man's cruel slander. My creed is always to defend my own sex; it is only Christian charity and genuine feminine justice."
"Provided it be not merely lax morality. Sometimes the distinction is not clear to very 'advanced,' zealous people."
"At least your father does not share your narrow harshness. He and Mrs. Morrison are quite 'chummy,' and I happen to know he sees her often."
"How could he avoid it? Shoals of sharks swim in Washington, and since your friend belongs to the 'emancipated' variety, doubtless she indulges an 'elective affinity' for the largest senatorial prey in sight, and hungrily shadows him. Yesterday that 'Bison Head' bill she is working for came to grief in committee, and will be buried to-day. Even sharks occasionally miss a meal."
"Oh, you are not up to date! Before the decision was announced one of the committee weakened, asked for reconsideration; another hurried meeting was held last night, and the bill will not be reported this session. Not killed you understand, just tenderly pigeon-holed, securely wrapped up in parliamentary camphor to scare away opposition moths, and allowed to sleep while its pretty guardian angel has another session in which to smooth the way for its final passage."
At this moment a messenger boy brought a note to Miss Higginbottom, and Eglah rose.
"You do not suspect who theweakeningmember was?"
"If I cared to ask, I dare say your fairdivorcéefriend would be able to enlighten me, but the petty political schemes engineered by lobbyists do not interest me."
"One moment, Miss Kent. You did not come to mymusicale. I have only one olive twig left. We entertain a few friends to-morrow night in honor of a famous Western woman, who will lecture next season on 'Civic Problems,' for the purpose of raising money to build a vast, up-to-date club temple, where women can proclaim their views on female right to suffrage and expansion. May I have the pleasure of presenting you?"
"You are very kind, Miss Higginbottom, but as we leave Washington at the end of the week, I regret that I shall not have time for any new engagements. Pray accept my thanks for several courtesies."
"I used to wonder why you are so unpopular, but it soon ceased to be a mystery, and it will be no sacrifice to you to give up Washington, in retiring from public life. When Senator Kent formally resigns—as is the burden of a little bird's song that utters no false notes—he will, doubtless, consign you to a more congenial circle of friends."
"In saying good-bye, I shall find some solace in the assurance that at least you will not mourn inconsolably because of my final departure. Please present my best wishes to Mrs. Higginbottom, who has shown me much kindness, and whom I may not be able to see again. Good-bye."
She stood a few seconds, smiling mischievously into the florid face of the large-featured woman of most certain age, whose light-yellow eyes flashed back unmistakable malice, then, amid the roar of applause that greeted the peroration of a white-haired senator in the chamber below, she quietly stole out of the Capitol, and sought a favorite corner of the Smithsonian grounds.
Walking slowly, she asked in a spirit of self-chastisement why she had allowed waspish stings to provoke a retaliatory tone, at variance with that cool repose of well-bred urbanity and imperturbable courtesy on which she prided herself; and was not the condescension of retort an unladylike and mortifying weakness?
Now and then come radiant days when a noon sun shines hot, and no faintest film flecks the stainless blue, yet one grows vaguely conscious of waning brightness, and gradually the horizon blanches to a deadly grey, while leaden clouds creep into view like spectral fingers of some vast hand groping across the sky to smother the sun. Shadows projected by the invisible unnerve natures that fearlessly face tangible, well-defined danger, as 'the sallow, weird light preceding an eclipse is more menacing than its total darkness, where friendly stars still shine.' For Eglah, the clock of fate had begun to chime thatmauvais quart d'heurewhich Mrs. Maurice had known would inevitably overtake her, and the preliminary whirring of the hidden cogs had found her unprepared. Blind faith in her father's sagacity, political steadfastness, and incorruptibility, had built a pedestal from which he smiled down benignantly upon her, making life a festival; but when the needle of doubt pricked the fine veil love spun across her vision, and she dared allow herself to question, a shivering and nameless dread shook her happy young heart, as unexpectedly blighting as a shower of sleet on an August passion-flower. When Jove nods his worship wanes.
Since the night of the cotillon, several inexplicable circumstances, comparatively slight yet cumulative, had perplexed this fond and loyal daughter, who began to find the maze of Senator Kent's political methods too tortuous for her exploration.
Startled by his abrupt reversal of judgment on more than one important question involving party allegiance, she had sought an explanation, which he laughingly evaded, and, when she pressed the matter, his avoidance was marked by an irritability of speech and gesture hitherto unknown in the domestic circle. The undisguised graciousness of his demeanor toward Mrs. Morrison had surprised and annoyed her, and she was painfully astonished by his efforts to conciliate Senator Higginbottom, who belonged to the opposite party, and was a loud, aggressive, and hirsute apostle of the silver gospel so dear to his constituency, and so conducive to his individual interest as a mine owner. Mrs. Higginbottom, a plain, kind-hearted, motherly old woman, who knew much more of sheep-shearing and beehives than of fashionable etiquette and diplomatic technicalities, Eglah had found it possible to receive cordially, but the daughter, Ethelberta, was an intolerable offence to all her feminine instincts, and when Judge Kent insisted, with some asperity, that the "Higginbottoms must be cultivated," the ordeal of playing hostess to this "advanced and emancipated new woman" proved peculiarly unpleasant. A certain watchful restlessness in her father's manner did not escape her notice, nor the recent accession of sphinx-like non-committalism in Mr. Metcalf, and she pondered uneasily a question of Mrs. Mitchell's:
"Dearie, did it ever occur to you that in some way Judge Kent seems rather afraid of Mr. Herriott, or perhaps I should say is always so guarded in his presence?"
"Never! Impossible and absurd. He has supreme confidence in him, and once, not long ago, he scolded me sharply because I could not consider him head and shoulders above all other men."
The session of Congress was within two days of its close, and that morning, as Senator Kent rose from an untasted breakfast, he astounded Eglah and Eliza by the ejaculation, "God knows, I shall be glad to get out of this grind!"
Fearing sickness had robbed him of his appetite, Eglah followed him to the library, but he waved her back.
"Metcalf is waiting to show me a paper, and I must not be interrupted. My dear, my time is not my own—even for you."
Hitherto she had never been an interruption, and it seemed as if some iron door was shut suddenly between her life and his. "The Bison Head" purchase bill, for which Mrs. Morrison flitted to and fro, had been fought by Senator Kent in committee room, where the contest was close, but Senator Higginbottom was chairman, and when Miss Ethelberta announced that a member had "weakened" and the bill might be saved by postponement, Eglah knew who had changed front, and she began to realize how ancient pilgrims felt when, at Delphi, the oracle said no to-day and yes to-morrow. Idolatrous habit was strong; the pedestal trembled, but it was a far cry to its overthrow, and she wrestled stubbornly to defend inconsistencies that humiliated and staggered her. Time, the master magician, would perhaps show her the Senator's reasons woven into a crown of laurel—as unexpected as the garland of glowing roses that spring out of a naked sword blade, at the gesture of a juggler. To-day she recalled her grandmother's softened face with eyes of tender compassion on that morning when the news of the second marriage had been brought to Nutwood. After all, was there just cause for the old lady's contempt and aversion, and were the rumors rife in Y—— shadows of grim and disgraceful facts that must cling to her father's name, fateful as the philter of Nessus? The thought stifled her, and she put her hand to her throat with the old childish habit that always betrayed intolerable pain. She could not go home—must not meet Eliza's eyes until she strangled this crouching horror. Through the Smithsonian she wandered, apparently examining its treasures, but now she saw only the pitying countenance of her grandmother, and now the malicious triumph in Miss Higginbottom's eyes, as she exulted in some impending misfortune. "Formal resignation"—adumbrated by more than one innuendo—portended the summary collapse of a political career that she had believed would culminate in elevation to a Cabinet seat during the next administration. For her, obstinate confidence was to-day the sole refuge, and she set her teeth as she verified Mrs. Maurice's prediction: "'Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.' My own father cannot betray the faith of his loyal child."