Dreading Eliza's scrutiny, it was with a feeling of temporary relief that she recollected an engagement to attend a "lawn party" held that afternoon at a residence whose owner was laboring to raise an endowment fund for a local charity. When she reached home, a change of costume gave time to marshal all her defensive forces; and, as she came downstairs to join her waiting chaperon, Mrs. Mitchell forbore to comment on the unusual color that burned in her cheeks.
"Little mother, don't sit up for me. I promised Mrs. Ellerbee to assist at the flower table, and may be kept late. Be sure you get your beauty sleep."
Dinner was delayed an hour beyond the usual time, but Senator Kent did not appear, and as such deviations from domestic rule had recently occurred often, and were explained by congestion of business at the Capitol, incident to approaching adjournment, Mrs. Mitchell took her meal alone. It was prayer-meeting evening at the Methodist Church in her neighborhood, and, after the exercises ended, she walked home, took up a magazine, and tried unsuccessfully to read. The political atmosphere was so charged with electricity that she felt a crisis was imminent, and only the extent of the storm was conjectural. How much Eglah suspected the foster-mother merely surmised, because some inexplicable barrier seemed, within the past fortnight, built up to limit their free interchange of thought. It was a sultry, sombre night; city walls and pavements sent up their garnered heat in quivering waves, and the stars were blurred and faint as they retreated behind a dim haze that was not mist. At eleven o'clock the street corner light showed her Senator Kent walking rapidly. She went into the dining-room to arrange the salad and cold tea he always enjoyed after missing his dinner, and while he lingered in the hall Eglah returned. She was bare-headed, very pale, and her lips fluttered, but a brave, tender smile lighted her eyes, and she put her arms about his neck and kissed him twice.
"How tired you poor national Solons must be! But I know one whose day's work is not yet ended, and who must pick a whole flock of crows with me, right now. Why did you change your vote on the 'Bison Head' purchase?"
"Who says I did?"
His face was deeply flushed, but he laughed and pinched her white cheek.
"The chairman has a daughter."
"A leaky gossip. Congressmen ought to be bachelors or childless widowers; but then, my dear, how could I possibly exist without you?"
"Father, what induced you to favor a measure you have condemned so emphatically?"
"Several good reasons I am much too tired to discuss. Don't forget your Emerson, who says 'a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen,' and remember, also, 'a wise man sometimes changes his mind, a fool never.' The bill will not be reported till next session, and conditions alter, soaprès moi le déluge!"
She walked toward the dining-room, and on the threshold Eliza saw her put both hands to her throat. Drawing her breath quickly, she turned back and threw her arms around him.
"Oh, father! Was it kind, was it merciful to let me learn by chance from strangers that you have determined to resign your senatorship, to end a glorious career in which you know my dearest hopes and pride centre?"
For a moment he made no reply, only clasped her closely, pillowed her head on his breast, and kissed her cold cheek repeatedly.
Then he spoke in a husky tone, as a nervous surgeon might, uncertain of his own diagnosis.
"My darling girl, I confess it was a cowardly dread of the pain I knew my decision would cause you, and I very weakly put off the evil day as long as possible. Immediately after adjournment I intended to tell you all the plans that seem best for our future, and did not anticipate this premature disclosure, which is presumptuous impertinence in its author. In quitting public life even temporarily, my brightest compensation is the prospect of spending my time in the sweet companionship of my precious, incomparable daughter. Forgive your old father the arrant cowardice of keeping silent for a few days."
She clung to him like a frightened child, and he felt her trembling as one in an ague.
"Why must you resign? Why step down when you have a right to expect the new administration will offer you a place in the Cabinet? Why? Don't keep back anything from me now."
"My love, I don't wish to distress you; I shrink from exciting any alarm, but you certainly have a right to the truth. My health does not permit the amount of canvassing work that I believe will be required for my re-election, because our State legislature will be much divided this presidential campaign over vital issues, both local and national. As my term expires soon, I think it best to resign now, and avoid grave complications that threaten our party organization in the State legislature. Recently I have had premonitions that drove me to consult Dr. McLemore, and he advises me to withdraw from active political life, at least for a season. He believes complete rest and freedom from public responsibility are all that my health demands. I did not wish you to know this, but you are such an inquisitive monkey, such an arbitrary minx, that nothing less than the whole truth will satisfy your exacting reason. Now kiss me, my pretty chestnut burr, and let us pick no more crows."
"You have been ill, and we—I—never suspected it?"
She caught her breath spasmodically, stifling a sob. Her father glanced significantly at Eliza, who stood beside the table, lifting a pitcher of iced tea that clinked against its sides in her nervous grasp.
"I see Mrs. Mitchell—always admirably reliable—has kept her promise to me. Now she can tell you I had a very severe attack the night we were so late at Secretary P——'s dinner, and you could not understand my delay in dressing."
"Ma-Lila! You kept me in ignorance of father's danger, when you should have warned me?"
"Your father positively forbade any mention of the matter to you, and as I never saw or heard of a recurrence of what he assured me was merely the result of imprudent indulgence in oysters, cheese, and beer, I had no excuse for disobeying his command to keep silence."
The little woman's eyes sparkled, and an involuntary curl of her lip did not escape Eglah's questioning sorrowful gaze.
"Come, my dear, do not quite strangle what is left of a very tired old man. Now that explanations are completely over, I feel as happy as a boy just returned from the dentist's where he left an aching tooth; and since you know absolutely all that can be told, I should like some tea dashed with cognac, for I have had a hard, tedious day."
He unwound her arms, patted her head, and took his seat at the table.
Eglah squeezed a lemon into a goblet of tea, Eliza stirred the mayonnaise, and Judge Kent helped himself to an anchovy sandwich, while he asked whether they had heard the sad news of the sudden death of a popular attaché of one of the legations, who had been killed an hour before by the accidental discharge of his own pistol. Heroic efforts were made by all to avoid the disturbing theme upon which the Senator had peremptorily rung down the curtain, and to relieve the tension the trio separated as soon as possible.
How much of the perfunctory explanation either woman credited neither could determine, but each refrained from probing the other, and both endeavored to bridge the crater by that golden silence that knows no pangs of regretted speech. Lying wide awake, Mrs. Mitchell noted the slow passage of the heavy hours, and day was just below the eastern sky line when the sudden shrill trilling of a canary in the adjoining room told that some restless movement of Eglah's had aroused it. Eliza longed to go and comfort the suffering girl, but every heart has a sanctuary which not even the tenderest affection should dare to violate, and the subtle sympathy of the overseer's wife taught her love's duty was to guard, not force the entrance. After a few moments, Eglah opened the door and came on tiptoe to her bed.
"What is it, dearie? Nobody can sleep on such a suffocating night."
She sat up and put one arm around the white figure, which, instead of yielding to her clasp, held back straight and stiff as steel.
"I thought I heard you stir, else I should not have ventured to disturb you. Ma-Lila, the thought of father's ill health weighs terribly on my heart. Will you please tell me the nature of that attack which you both kept from me? What were the symptoms?"
"He had been dozing in his chair, and quite suddenly sprang up, pale, and evidently much agitated. I wished to call you, and urged him to abandon the idea of leaving the house, but he insisted I should not give you even a hint, and asked for the decanter of brandy, which he was sure would relieve a severe fit of indigestion caused by imprudence at luncheon. He went to his room, and when he came out you saw no sign of serious indisposition."
"He had been annoyed by no visitors?"
"He had seen no one but Watson and myself."
"Do you think there was heart trouble that night? Tell me frankly."
"Yes, most certainly there was; but, my baby, heart trouble comes from various causes, and I really do not think your father's physical condition justifies any serious uneasiness. He is evidently alarmed, but nervous strain and mental worry are sufficient to produce all his symptoms, and you will find that retirement from congressional complications expedites recovery in such cases."
The girlish form relaxed, and a hot cheek was pressed against the foster-mother's face.
"Don't comfort me with false hopes, unless you are sure I am unduly frightened."
"Listen to me. I am absolutely certain that Judge Kent's health need cause you no alarm in future. Now, shake off that nightmare, and go to sleep like a good child, or I will certainly dose you with bromide."
She kissed her softly, and with an arm about her waist led her back to her bed.
"Ma-Lila, I want to forget the last three weeks. Won't you help me?"
"What is the urgent necessity? I have just held my afternoon mission service, and I am very tired. Noel, why are you so insistent?"
"Perhaps it has been borne in upon my 'subliminal consciousness' that if you wait too long you may possibly regret it. Once or twice I have found profit in following a rule my old nurse taught me when I wore kilts: 'Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.' No 'dæmon' squats at my ear, and I claim no mantic illumination, still I should be glad to know you will make that visit at once."
"You fear the poor boy is dying?"
"Not immediately, but he appears hopelessly ill, and needs all the kind words you may find yourself better able to utter than any one else. Moreover, it would be well that you should see his mother, who is away at work during the week, and as you expect to leave the city so soon, this will be the most suitable opportunity for you to meet her at home. Poor, fierce, bitter soul! She has no milk of human kindness left; it soured and has become acrid—intensely mordacious."
"She belongs then to the unhappy class of frail women who go swiftly to utter wreck in all large cities, where sin is arrayed in rose color and gilt. Strange that the boy of such a creature should remind one of the infant St. John or a seraph of Angelico's."
"Some fragments of her history lead me to believe that she is as trustworthy and pure as any woman to whom you preach. Her morality is beyond cavil, but theoretically she seems to have gone wild among the hedges and ditches of socialism."
"You consider her a conscientious, good woman?"
"As far as I can ascertain she lives irreproachably, bar associating with anarchists. I surmise some man has treated her cruelly, or she thinks so, and now she——"
Mr. Herriott rose, looked at his watch, and laughed.
"Temple, do you recollect one summer night under the elms, when rehearsing for the Greek play, Prescott Winthrop declaimed the herdsman's message from the 'Bacchæ,' and emphasized the portrait of Agave in the frenzy of theThiasusstrangling a calf and fondling a wolf's whelp? To-day Leighton's mother recalled that scene, but she is not dancing to meet Bromius—only hunting revenge on all mankind. Ah, you are going? I suggest a cautious approach. Leave the carriage out of sight, and boldly flourish the promised book as an open sesame. You of the cassock clan enjoy privileges denied to us, the ungirdled sons of Belial. After all, you may prove thedeus ex machina, and through the poor little lad may be able to lay a healing touch on the mother's sick soul. Come to my rooms after your visit, and we will say good-bye until I get back from my long jaunt."
An hour later Father Temple made his way into the tenement house, through a noisy mob of children romping on the pavement, and when he entered the narrow hall outside din was conquered by the deep, swelling music of "Quis est Homo," wailing from a violoncello held between the knees of a man sitting half way up the stairs, a thin, stooping old figure with shaggy grey hair, and bearded as a Welsh harper. The priest ascended, and the musician edged closer to the wall to allow him passage way, but he merely nodded his bowed head, and the solemn strains rose and fell like the sobbing moan of waves settling to calm after lashing blasts. Father Temple lifted his finger.
"Mrs. Dane lives on the next floor?"
"Go ub. She vill see no briests, but her door is oben for de child to hear de music he loves. Dear leedle boy is sick, and my cello sounds more better here dan closer."
He shut his eyes and continued playing. Opposite the undraped west window of the room above, an alley stretched, making clear pathway for the sinking sun that poured a parting flood of radiance into the apartment, and upon the cot where, propped up with pillows, the boy clasped his arms around his knees, and listened, quiet and happy. Between cot and window his mother sat, facing the back of her chair, on top of which she rested one arm, leaning her brow upon it, while the other hand, lying on the cot, slowly stroked Leighton's bare feet. Having washed her hair earlier in the day, it was now brushed out over her shoulders to dry in the sunshine, and the bright mass of waving tendrils seemed to clothe her with light. On the floor were scattered several newspaper sheets—"The Chain Breaker"—and across her knee lay an open copy of "Battle-cry of Labor." Only the mellow voice of the cello sounded, and the room was sweet with the breath of Mr. Herriott's white carnations nodding in a blue bowl on the table. Standing a moment at the threshold, Father Temple's eyes fastened on the veil of golden locks falling to the floor, and his heart leaped, then seemed to cease beating as he recalled a vision of the far West, where just such glittering strands had been twined around his fingers.
"Oh, my St. Hyacinth's preacher!"
At Leighton's glad cry his mother raised her head, started up, and, moving forward a few steps, swept back her hair, holding it with both hands. Before her stood the tall, thin figure in the long, black habit of his Order, cord-girded at the waist; with a soft wool hat and book in one hand; a clean-shaven face, pale, sensitive, scholarly, and suggestive of "lauds and prime," of asceticism without peace, and of brooding regret.
He recognized every line in her lovely features, from the large pansy eyes and delicate, over-arching brows to the perfect oval molding of cheek and chin, and the full, downward curve of scarlet lips. Love is so keen of vision it pierces the changes wrought by ripening years, and he knew the dear face. She did not suspect, love had been dead so long, and she had buried all tender memories in its neglected grave.
"I am surprised a Romish priest wastes his time coming here, and I have no welcome to offer you, because I wish no visitors."
With a swift movement he closed the door, dropped hat and book, and came close to her. The sudden glow on his cheek, the light of exultation in his sad eyes transformed him.
"Look at me. Don't you know me? Look—look!"
Eye to eye they watched each other, and at the sound of his deep, tender, quivering voice recollection smote hard upon her heart, and a vague, shivering pain drove the blood from her face, but she fought the suggestion.
"You are unknown to me."
"I am Vernon Pembroke Temple, and you are Nona, my wife! My Nona—my own wife——"
Words failed him, and he held out his arms. She recoiled, throwing up her hands with a gesture of loathing, and stood as if turned to stone, so strangely hard was a face where eyes kindled and burned with the pent hatred and scorn of long years of sore trial.
"You had not sins enough to sink your soul without adding hypocrisy? A preacher! A priest! Cowardice, perjury, moral leprosy, skulking under a long cloak as black as what is left of your vile heart!"
Each word fell like a red-hot flail, but he did not wince, and neither father nor mother heard the low wail from the cot where childish arms covered a face white with horror.
"You think, you believe I intentionally and pre-meditatedly deserted you, and in your ignorance of facts you certainly had cause to despise me, but——"
"Think—believe! As if it were possible to doubt the villainy planned! The crime you so carefully committed against a mere child, knowing she was a helpless victim, believing she could never redress her awful wrongs. As if you had set a trap and caught an innocent, happy bird, and then broken its wings and tossed it to screaming hawks! Coward—coward as you always were—how dare you face me?"
"Nona, dear Nona—" He put out his hand appealingly, but she struck it aside with stinging force, and stepped backward.
"Out of my sight, or I call the police."
She pointed to the door. He turned, locked it, put the key in his pocket, and his eyes steadily met the challenge in hers. The banked, smouldering fires that flashed up must burn lower before he could plead. So they stood: he flushed, smiling, happy; she shaken by a tempest of rage that blanched her to a livid pallor and set all the glittering rings of hair quivering, as if innumerable golden serpents coiled and uncoiled around her trembling form.
In the pause he lifted the hanging ends of the knotted cord.
"Do you understand what this habit means?"
"Don't I? A holy cloak to hide every sin that makes this world a hotter hell than even God could fashion—if God were possible. You drape it over the ten commandments, blotting them out, while you sing psalms, and rob the toiling poor, and ruin young lives, and murder innocent souls. Oh, yes, to my sorrow, I understand all it means!"
"It means my consecration to celibacy when you fled from me, and I had exhausted all efforts to find you."
"Celibacy! Celibacy! I needed no nunnery to help me keep clean and pure, but you ran behind monastery walls to protect yourself from retribution at a wronged woman's hands. Coward from first to last! When I fled from you? You must indeed be possessed of the devil to dare such language to me."
"Nona, there has been some awful mistake——"
"Yes, a mistake that I was not scalped, or that a merciful bolt of lightning did not strike me dead that day—that cursed day—when first I set my eyes on your false, treacherous face! If you could only know how I hate, despise, utterly despise the bare thought, much more the horrible sight of you!"
"No wonder, since circumstances were apparently all against me at——"
"Circumstances are no shelter for honest, honorable men, if there be any left; and the hard, bitter, murderous facts of your shameful life would find you out if you dodged under the very throne of the God you blaspheme by professing!"
"Will you listen to the truth?"
"You could not speak it if you tried. I listened to you once too often, and you wrecked me, and I am no longer a fool."
"Why did you leave Thompsonville after you received my letters, and the money I sent you, and when you knew I was coming there to take you away with me?"
For an instant she looked at him with startled curiosity, then laughed hysterically.
"I left Thompsonville because you wrote no letters, sent no money, and took no notice of my frantic appeals for help in my hour of horrible trial. A sick woman with a frail, feeble baby, facing starvation, abandoned, slandered, and trampled in the mud, I could only snatch at the hand held out to me by the one man I have found honest, honorable, loyal, and true, as he was pitying and kind."
"But when I reached Thompsonville Delia Brown told me——"
Her scornful laugh drowned his words.
"'When you reached Thompsonville' in your dreams—after a night's carousal at college! Even a congenital idiot would sicken at that."
No shadow of impatience crossed his happy countenance; the intensity of her scoffing bitterness was part of his punishment—the harvest that sprang from his own sowing—and he must not complain until she understood fully.
"I can prove that I went to Thompsonville, and I have the sworn testimony of Delia Brown that she delivered into your hands my letters and the package of money I sent to her care through the express agent. On a scrap of paper I have also a receipt in pencil from you to Delia Brown."
She shook her head and smote her palms together.
"Forgeries one and all. I would not believe you on your oath, unless the grave yawned, and Leighton Dane—dead six years—came back as witness in your favor."
"'He was the handsome Spanish-looking man' Delia Brown told me stole my wife and child and disappeared suddenly—going to Florida or Cuba to grow bananas—when you heard I was coming to Thompsonville?"
"He was a good old man, my father's best friend, who took his place as teamster—and when I was literally driven out of the cabin one rainy night by my stepmother, he was the only human being who believed I was not vile. He pitied me and carried me in one of the Government wagons to Thompsonville, and paid my board until I was able to earn my bread by helping Delia Brown wash and iron. His term was expiring soon, and when he started back to his home in California, he came by to see if I needed anything.
"Finding I was ill in body, distracted in mind, desperate, because I knew then I was utterly deserted, and had no hope of help, he offered to carry me West and protect me on account of his friendship for my father. Oh, bless him—for ever and ever! He made an humble little home for us, and shielded and respected me, and pitied and believed in me with all the strength of his great, true heart, and was a second and a much better father to me in my shameful desolation and helplessness. He adopted me and my baby, and when he died he left his small savings to us; and so I named my outcast little one Leighton Dane for the one loyal friend who helped me to feed and clothe him when his own father rejected and abandoned him. I had no proof except the certificate you made me swear I would conceal for two years, and your ally, the devil, worked well for you when the mice nesting in my trunk cut it into shreds while I was ill. The chaplain and Ransom Hill were dead; I had none to speak for me; but Mr. Dane believed my words, and he put his big hand on my head and comforted me.
"'Poor little girl, don't worry; just be easy in your mind, for I know you are telling the truth. I know you are good as your own baby, and if every mouth in America swore against you I would trust you as I always trusted my own mother.'"
A mist clouded her eyes, as dew softens the tint of a violet, but she clenched her hands, and bit her lip hard to still its tremor, adding with sullen emphasis:
"In all these black years the one star of comfort I can ever see shines in the assurance that the only truly good man I have found, who knew me well, respected and trusted me as he did his dead mother."
"You never saw or heard of the advertisements I published in various papers, asking you to inform me where I could find you?"
The contempt in her ringing answer stung him like a whip-lash.
"People who are neither 'lost, strayed, nor stolen' spend no time hunting for imaginary advertisements that never go to press."
"You shall read them in the papers with their printed dates. Copies have been filed and preserved with reports of unsuccessful search from chiefs of police in Louisiana and Florida, whom I paid to hunt for some trace of you. They are deposited in a Boston bank, with a sum of money placed to your credit—all to be delivered to the order of Nona Moorland Temple. Write to Noah Giles, cashier of Orchard Street Bank. I will telegraph, vouching for your right to the tin box bearing your name, and in two days you shall possess absolute proof that I am not the hardened scoundrel you think me. Weak, rash, cowardly I certainly was, but as God hears me, never forgetful, never unfaithful, never intending the wrong for which you have suffered so frightfully."
The gaze of each fastened on the other, neither had noticed the cot or its occupant.
Leighton slipped slowly down till his feet touched the floor, and he clung to the mattress for some seconds, measuring the distance to the pair standing in the middle of the room. Weak from emotion that almost overwhelmed him, he felt his limbs would not support him, and, gathering his cotton nightgown about him, he sank on his knees and crawled noiselessly forward. Between father and mother he crouched, then laid his head against the feet of the priest and feebly raised his arms.
"My father——"
The sight, and all it implied as judgment of evidence in defence, drove her to jealous frenzy, and she sprang forward as a panther leaps to succor her young.
"Don't touch him! Don't you dare to lay your finger on him! You have no more right to him than to an archangel! He has no father, has only his downtrodden girl-mother. Don't you dare to put your sacrilegious hand on his holy head. He is not yours!"
With his right arm he held her back, as she stooped to snatch the boy away, and, kneeling, he passed his left hand under the prostrate form, gathered him close to his breast, and looked up smiling into her eyes.
"Not mine! If I am not his father—who is?"
"He is mine, solely mine; body and soul, he belongs only to me! Before he was born you turned us adrift in the world to perish, and now that for ten years I have worked day and night, fought for bread and shelter, carried him on my bosom, slept with him in my arms, you—who robbed me of everything, even my good name—you dare—dare claim my outcast baby! I would rather shroud my darling than hear him call you father."
Leighton's arms stole round the priest's neck, and his tangled yellow curls touched the dark head bent over him. Father Temple kissed the little quivering face, strained him to his heart, and the long-sealed fountain broke in tears that streamed upon the clinging child.
"My baby, my son, my own lost lamb, for whom I have searched and prayed—God knows how faithfully, how sorrowfully—all these long, dreadful years!"
As she stood above them, barred by that tense right arm, noting the tight clasp of the thin hands locked behind the father's head, an impotent rage made her long to scream out the agony that found no vent save in a rapid beating of one foot on the bare floor—much like the lashing tail of some furious furred creature, crouching to spring, yet warily hesitant.
Father Temple's outstretched hand caught a fold of her skirt, and with it a strand of floating hair.
"Nona, my wife—my own wife——"
She twitched her dress from his grasp and shook it.
"I am not your wife! Thank God, I am no man's wife! I am free as I was before you came—an ever-lasting blot between me and the sunshine. I kept my promise to you. I set my teeth and was silent under a fiery storm of slander and foul accusations that blistered my girlish cheek with shame, but I waited till the years you named had passed, and you had reached your majority, and plucked up courage to face your father, and had a legal right to ratify what the Church sanctioned through the chaplain. Then I told my only friend all the facts. I ceased to hope, because I had lost faith, but Mr. Dane pleaded for you: 'Wait one year more, give him the last chance to do right.' He wrote to a friend in the old regiment and inquired about all the officers, and his answer told us that your father was in Europe, and that the major thought you were with him. Then I laid my case before one of the human vultures that batten on the wreckage of broken vows—a lawyer, expert in snapping matrimonial chains. He sent you all the necessary notices—sent them to your college address, the only one I could give him. Very soon the decree of absolute divorce was rendered, and I dropped all right to a name I had never publicly claimed—cast it off as gladly as I would some foul garment worn by a leper. Free—free to live my life as I pleased; Mrs. Dane and her boy Leighton—free to go wherever I wished, after death took the only real protector I ever had. And I chose, for my baby's sake as well as my own, to lead the hard life of a working woman, but clean, and honorable, and innocent as that of any abbess safely stored away from temptation behind brick walls and iron gates, and though my own little one may well be ashamed of his father, he will never need to blush for his mother when the peace of death hides her from an unjust and a cruel world."
Sunshine had vanished, the room was darkening, and the last glow from a topaz band low in the west flickered over the woman's head, as she swayed in the wave of passionate protest that rocked her from all trammels of control. There was a brief silence, broken by a strangling sob and cough, and over the breast of the priest's cassock a warm red stream trickled. He rose quickly with the boy in his arms and carried him to the window.
"Nona, a hemorrhage!"
"Lay him down. If you have killed him, it is the fit ending of all my wrongs at your hands. Now stand back! Back! Do you hear—you curse of my life!"
She sponged the child's face, laid a wet compress on his throat, and kept one finger on his pulse, not daring to give medicine while the narrowing red stream oozed more slowly. She lighted a lamp, flew into a recess near the stove, and came back with a hypodermic syringe.
"Now, mother's man, don't flinch."
Pushing up the sleeve, she injected a colorless fluid into his arm, held it some seconds, and laid her lips near the puncture. Then with one hand she held his head raised slightly, and with the other sponged the lips until the flow ceased and the gasping breath grew easy.
"Swallow your medicine slowly, don't strangle. You must lie perfectly still. Mother's own little man needs to go to sleep now and forget all he has heard to-day."
Father Temple had fallen on his knees at the opposite side of the cot, clinging to one of the boy's hands, and suddenly the child turned his head and looked imploringly, first at father, then at mother. Both understood the mute prayer in the beautiful, tender eyes. A quavering sound—part sob, part cough—made their hearts leap.
"I never will be fatherless any more. So glad! Don't leave me, father."
"Leighton, you shall always be fatherless. This man can be nothing to us. Because of his deceitful promises I suffered the disgrace of smarting from a horse-whip laid on my shoulders when one night I was driven out of my father's cabin by his wife, and to shelter myself from sleet and rain crawled into a covered wagon and slept on hay and corn, until Uncle Dane found me there, and had mercy on me. I owe to this priest every sorrow and trouble that have darkened my life and yours. All these years we have had only each other, and you must understand your mother is the one who has the sole right to your love. My darling, you and mother can be happy together, and we need only each other."
She struggled for composure, but there was an ominous pant in her veiled voice.
"I want my father! Oh, I want him—I—want him!" Tears glided over his cheeks.
She leaned down, snatched Leighton's hand from the priest's clasp, clutching it between both of hers, and turned her blazing eyes upon the kneeling man.
"Will you go now? Have you not done harm enough to satisfy even you? These are my rooms, and I will tolerate your intrusion no longer. Remember, my decree of divorce is absolute, and it secures to me the custody of my child."
"I recognize no validity in divorces, and the law cannot annul a ceremony performed outside of its restrictions and requirements. Because we were minors we invoked the aid of the Church, and our vows before God can never be cancelled by any civil statute. Except as a solemn, sacred rite, there was nothing in our marriage to legitimize our child. This is my son, not by license of law, but because we swore fidelity to each other 'until death do us part,' and called God to witness; and no human decree can rob me of my child—since you dare not name any other man his father. I defy you to lay your hand on his innocent head and question his legitimacy, which inheres only in a ceremony no civil law sanctioned. Months of tedious and well-nigh fatal illness delayed my return to you, and during my delirium your letters were mislaid. When at last I accidentally recovered two letters, and went on crutches to bring you back with me, you had disappeared. All the proofs of my search shall be laid before you, and though I do not wonder you grew desperate and cast me out of your heart as unscrupulous and treacherous, the facts when investigated must convince you I have kept my vows as faithfully as you kept yours. I felt that somewhere in the world my wife and child were adrift, through my folly, my cowardly fear of my father, and, broken-hearted and conscience-smitten, I confessed to the Superior of my Order in England at that time, that I desired to live a celibate in expiation of a rash act in my boyhood, which separated me from the wife I still loved. I took my vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity with the explicit understanding that they did not absolve me from my marriage vows, should God mercifully permit me to find my family. I hold supreme the oath I took under the stars at the Post, and second in sanctity my vows before the altar in our chapel. For the awful consequences of my boyish weakness I accuse only myself, and if it be part of my punishment that I have lost irrevocably the affection and confidence of the mother of my child, then, at least, there remains for me the comfort of finding my boy, from whom I will never again be separated; and to him I must atone for years of unintentional neglect."
He saw that his appeal was futile as the leap of a wave that breaks and sinks in froth at the foot of basaltic cliffs, and the joyful light died in his eyes when he began to realize that wishing to believe the worst she would never accept proofs offered in exculpation.
"Nona, try to forgive me, for the sake of our son, our own beautiful, innocent boy."
There was no answer but the steady, quick tapping of her foot on the floor, and her defiant face showed no more softening than an iron mask.
Leaning forward, he kissed Leighton's tearful cheek, and despite his effort to control his voice it trembled.
"My precious child, I thank God I have found you! Between your mother and me you must not attempt to judge now. She has suffered terribly on account of mistakes I made, and she certainly has the best right to you and to your love. It is painful for her to see me, and I cannot blame her, but some arrangement must and shall be made by which I can come often and be with you without intruding upon her. She will select and name the hours when my visits will give her least annoyance. Good night, my son. To-day I am happier than I have been since I kissed your dear mother good-bye."
He tore a blank page from Ugo Bassi's "Sermon," wrote a few lines, laid the paper near his wife's hand, and went out, closing the door very gently.
"The hemorrhage was not all blood. I think an abscess has broken, and it may save his life. He must have a change as soon as it is safe to move him; but at present it might be fatal. Your money and his in the Boston bank will make him comfortable, and unless you use it I shall be obliged to interfere. Let the doctor decide where and when the child should go. To-morrow at two o'clock I wish to come here, but you can easily avoid seeing me if you so desire. May God soften your heart towards your unfortunate but faithful husband."
When Father Temple entered the Herriott library, Noel rose from a desk where he was sealing letters and put out both hands.
"Herriott, most blessed of friends! How can I ever thank you?"
"You have found your wife and child? Thank God! I could scarcely wait for the good news I was sure you would bring me."
His eyes were misty, and the grip of his hands was harder than he knew as he drew the priest to a chair.
"Dear old fellow, it has been rather too much for you. Brace yourself with this mixture. I had an idea your Reverence might need a tonic, since 'after the manner of men, you have fought with beasts at Ephesus.' Drink it! Your spiritual superior would advise it if he could see your face."
"Tell me, Noel, how you discovered Nona."
"I saw her at the glove counter where she is employed, and was puzzled by her resemblance to a face I had admired in San Francisco. I heard out there that some mystery hung about her, but no hint of any impropriety on her part. Such delicacy of features and perfect coloring are rare, and faces so beautiful etch deep on one's memory. Belmont painted her as 'Aurora' in his group, and gave me a photograph of her head; but he spoke of her with respect, and commented on her proud prudishness in refusing to sit in his studio. You recollect Sidney Forsyth? He carried me to a 'night school' for working girls, established by his mother, and there I first saw 'Aurora,' hard at work in the bookkeeping class. He admired her extravagantly, and told me that despite her girlish appearance she was a widow with a child, and lived like a nun in the very small cottage of an old uncle. Last summer, in hunting through a discarded trunk hastily packed at Oxford while you were on the Continent, I found among several sheets from your portfolio that water-color sketch, and it revived my old suspicion that some early tragedy had driven you into cloisters. Sooner or later one finds on almost every man's road through life the sign-post,dux femina facti, and I stumbled against yours when I had ceased to conjecture your motive for a course that astounded your friends. Last night, after you left me, I verified a few dates in my diary, and to-day's visit to Brooklyn made it absolutely certain my identification was correct. I congratulate you, and am heartily glad that I helped to flush your family covey."
"Congratulations sound grim after all I passed through to-day. Did you ever dream you were dying from thirst, and just as you stooped to drink the spring vanished? I have realized that tantalizing vision. Nona will never forgive me, never accept my explanation, never believe my statements, never tolerate the sight of me. She hates me with an intensity that is sickening, and because the child is mine she would rather see him in his coffin than in my arms. She hugs to her heart the conviction that I am utterly vile, because she wants to believe the worst, and furiously rejects any attempt to prove that I am not a doubly dyed hypocrite and villain. You have been so loyal a friend, I should like to tell you all that occurred."
When he finished a detailed recital of his interview, he leaned back, sighed heavily, and closed his eyes.
"I knew you were going into a fiery furnace, for, from what I have heard and seen of your wife, I fear she is one of the few inexorable women, impervious to reason, to passionate pleading, to the most adroit cajolery. The hotter the lava, the harder when it cools. Will you permit me to offer a suggestion?"
The priest raised his haggard face and laid his hand on Mr. Herriott's knee.
"I shall be grateful for advice which I sorely need just now."
"You have found the missing, but if you are not wide awake and cautious you will lose them again, and permanently."
"What do you mean?"
"You told her you would go back to-morrow at two o'clock? I rather think you will not find her; she will have vanished forever."
"Impossible! The child is too ill to be moved, and she would not risk the danger to him."
"In her present mood nothing is impossible, and she would dare death if it were necessary, in order to thwart you. She belongs to more than one society of communists, and the freemasonry in operation is marvellous. There are places in this city, in Chicago, and in several New Jersey towns where she could disappear as successfully as in a Siberian mine; and you must keep in touch with your beautiful boy, who is much too fine a porcelain vase to be filled with the vitriol of socialism. Before you sleep to-night ask the police department to set a special watchman in sight of that house, with instructions to report to you any indications of intended removal."
"Then I must go, although I do not share your apprehension that Nona would rashly risk the boy's safety. Noel, I owe you so much—and for such various benefits—I am simply bankrupt in expressions of gratitude; but at least I can pray God to grant you your dearest desire in life, be that what it may."
He rose, and Mr. Herriott walked with him to the front door.
"Temple, write me fully all that you know I shall wish to hear. Let me help you in any way possible to secure a change of climate for your little St. John of the gilded locks. Early to-morrow I go home, and in a few days your cousins from Washington will be my guests. Are you quite willing Eglah should know the complications surrounding you at present?"
"Tell her everything, and do not spare me or suffer her to blame the innocent victims of my rashness. Some day Eglah may help me to soften my Nona's heart. When and where may I hope to see you again?"
"Very soon I start to Arizona for a short stay, thence to the most northern of the Aleutian Islands, where I expect to find Eskimo cliff-dwellers, and later to the region northwest of Hudson Bay. Be sure to write me, and Vernon—pardon my perhaps unjustifiable insistence—don't fail to secure police surveillance before you sleep."
When the door closed, Mr. Herriott wrote a telegram to the physician who attended Leighton, walked to the nearest telegraph office, and heard his message click over the wires.
A few days later he was not surprised to learn that only the sternly positive interdict of the doctor had frustrated an attempt to remove Leighton from Brooklyn at ten o'clock on Monday morning.
The first view of "Greyledge" suggested a stone crazy-quilt, so multitudinous were its angles, so incongruous its medley of styles; but examination showed architectural strata superimposed in such trend that the paradoxical dip had uplifted the oldest to the crest. Three stories,échelon, looked as if they had frozen in dancing a minuet, each receding yet rising, and when, as a bride, Nina Herriott stepped out of her carriage, she gayly made three very low bows to the dwelling that appeared courtesying to welcome her. The long first story was a piazza or loggia, with wide, round arches upheld by double shafts, closed in winter by glass doors and storm shutters, in summer noons sheltered from the glare of sun-smitten water by white and blue awnings. No railing divided it from the broad stone terrace just below, overhanging the lake that mirrored its carved and fluted balustrade where vine-fringed vases glowed with flowers for three months of each year. At the north end of the arcade, a round tower, rising one hundred and fifty feet, held a lamp with brilliant reflector that shone far out over the apparently shoreless lake on moonless and stormy nights, and at the south corner one of several flights of steps led to an arched and domed pavilion where boats were moored.
The second floor flowered into bay windows, mullioned and diamond paned; and the third might have slipped from some Swiss hillside, so full it seemed of small balconies, sharp gables, dormers, and deep recesses, and the steep roof that crowned the whole overhung like an Alpine hat the frivolous impertinence of trefoil and stained glass. Rains had bleached and snow storms pumiced the stone walls to a smooth, cool grey, silvered in spots by films of lichen, while on two turreted chimneys ivy had braved ascent to weave a cloak of glossy green across the sombre smoke stains garnered during many generations. The most elevated portion of the composite structure had been built on the side of a rocky hill, at some distance from the lake edge, and gradually the declivity had been graded for the later additions that finally advanced until they could see their own irregular façade reflected in the water spraying their foundations; consequently the floors were on different levels, and one went up and down short flights of steps to reach apartments in the same story.
Herriott tradition claimed that early French pioneers had here destroyed an Indian fort, and that their rude hunting lodge was succeeded by a missionary station, where a semi-circular excavation in the rock had served as oratory; in proof whereof an old wooden cross, partly gilded with tarnished, tattered gold leaf, still hung in the small stone cave that once echoed the antiphony of Latin chants, and held forever in its mossy crannies subtle, spicy survivals of sanctifying incense. Sheltered on the north by hills, clothed with vineyards along their southern face, the courtyard and shrubbery nestled close to the rocks, but eastward stretched wide fields and level meadows bounded by dense woods rising on steep uplands, blue in the distance; and south lay a garden of olden time, with primly boxed beds, walks hedged with lilacs, snow-balls, glistening rhododendrons, and masses of roses that ran riot to the foot of a high enclosing stone wall, where a shining mantle of ivy climbed to match its verdure with the velvet of hills that here circled like a clasping arm, reaching from far-away forests to the lake margin. The courtyard was so nearly on a level with the rear of the house that only three shallow steps were needed for entrance, and at this spot the range of color had been exhausted by masses of lilies, irises, peonies, and foliage plants—so brilliant that in the summer sunshine benignant nature seemed to have paved the place with a flawless prism.
On the morning after the arrival of Mr. Herriott's guests, breakfast had been served on the long, arcaded piazza, where stood three circular tables, each bright and fragrant from central piles of flowers and fruit. At the middle one Mr. Herriott sat with Eglah and Judge Kent, around that on his left were Miss Katrina Manning—an aunt of Noel's mother—Professor Cleveden, and Eliza Mitchell, and grouped at his right were Beatrix Roberts, a cousin of Miss Manning's, Dana Stapleton of New York, and Roger Hull, the young congressman from a northwestern State, whose devotion to Eglah had long been undisguised.
It was a cloudless summer day, and the crisp wind from the west drove the crystal water of the great inland sea into ruffles of foamy lace against the stone face of the terrace. If she had floated down from a Fragonard panel, or stepped out of a Watteauclavecin, Miss Manning could not have represented more picturesquely a dainty type of the long by-gone. Low in stature, slight and graceful, this airy old lady, with silver hair piled high on her head, where jewelled side combs held her curls close—habitually wore grey silk or velvet, and her bright, restless round eyes increased her likeness to a bird, hence Noel's pet name was "Auntie Dove." Her gowns were many years behind the reigning mode, and she shook her voluminous skirts in indignant scorn of close-clinging garments then coming rapidly into vogue. When her favorite young cousin Beatrix plucked up courage to denounce "antediluvian fashions," the grey old dame seized her by the shoulders and shook her till her teeth chattered.
"Trix, you are an impertinent minx! My gowns are decent and fit my morals, and I would as soon change the cover on the Manning family Bible. You young people have no longer any sense of proportion; your skirts are so skin-tight you might all be 'artist's models,' and your manners and your disgraceful slang are about as unlaced as the bohemians. If your refined grandmother Manning could move in her portrait frame, she would most certainly turn her back to you and her shocked countenance to the wall."
To-day she lifted her tortoise-shell lorgnette to examine the rather unusual pattern of Professor Cleveden's black onyx sleeve buttons, which represented tarantulas with prominent diamond eyes.
"Noel, are we all permanently arranged in trios? Because, if so, you have been cruelly unkind in condemning the professor to sit next to an orthodox old woman who knows no more science than a blind kitten, who is no bugologist, no apostle to moths, and who bitterly disapproves of crucifying butterflies on pins."
"Aunt Trina, you will not be allowed to monopolize each other, no matter how earnestly you both may desire to do so. Shall we change groups once a day, or at each meal, in order that the collective wit and wisdom may be impartially distributed?"
"I suggest that all names be deposited in a box and that we draw for places," said Mr. Stapleton, fearful of losing his neighbor, Miss Roberts.
"Dana, what a rash challenge to chance! She can be spiteful, that classic, grinning old jade, and might roll up three women to one table, leaving a solitary charming belle—presumably myself—to the tender mercies of five furious men. Fancy the impotent wrath of the beauless trio robbed of their legitimate prey! Noel, do not risk any such dire disaster, but try the democratic plan of rotation in office, whereby I shall afflict each of you for only a few hours of my term. What delicious apricots! Surely old Amos Lea did not grow them?"
Miss Manning held up a twig on which twin, luscious apricots glowed.
"They were ripened by the hot suns and spiced by Pacific breezes in lower California, where I have a friend who now and then sends a hamper from his fruit farm. Beauties, are they not? My old gardener Amos, jealous of the fame of his own orchard, snorted contemptuously and assured me they tasted like stale sawdust."
"Does he still employ David, St. Paul, and the prophets as proxies to curse his enemies?" asked Professor Cleveden, helping himself liberally to cherries.
Catching sight of Eliza Mitchell's rebuking eyes, Mr. Herriott laughed.
"Yes, he sternly restricts his imprecations to Biblical quotations. When I was a boy I ruined some very rare tulips by setting mole traps in the border, and in his rage he called on 'fat bulls of Bashan' to gore me. Years later I imported a stock of pigeons, and when they literally devoured his early crop of sweet peas, he seized me by the coat collar, showed me the havoc, and shouted, 'May the Angel of the Lord chase you and your devilish English thieves.' He has tyrannized over us all so long, that his wrath knew no bounds when my amiable young stepmother, who desired some alterations in the hothouse, defied his arguments and wishes, and insisted on an annex for orchids that necessitated the removal of his pet carnations. Whereupon, raising his hand, he shook it furiously and hissed: 'Madam, you have done me much evil. May the Lord requite you according to your works!' With tears in her eyes Nina fled to my father."
"A grumpy curmudgeon is old Amos Lea, but his religious convictions are so earnest that I would sooner house a swarm of wasps inside my vest than tread on his Baptist toes. He objects strenuously to my association with Herriott, having overheard some of our heretical geologic discussions as we strolled through the gardens, and he eyes me as if I were the foul fiend at Herriott's heels, prodding him downward with a pitchfork. I wish that somewhere in the great outside world I had such a loyal, godly friend to pray for my soul."
"Dear me! I thought you scientists disdained such a superstition, and that you had reduced souls and minds to mere 'reflex sensory' action, and 'cerebral sinuosities,' and 'psychoplasm,' and 'inherited instincts,' and deposits of phosphorus?" interjected Miss Roberts, as she dipped her jewelled hand into her finger bowl to bruise the lemon blossoms.
"My dear young lady, pray do not join the multitude in stoning the prophets. If there be ghosts—blessed are the grammarians who invented a subjunctive mood—those of martyred students of science will one day haunt you, more terrible than 'an army with banners.' Herriott is a much more attractive target than I—younger and handsomer—why not call him into the witness box and swear him on the case of souls?"
"Trix, there is no need to pester yourself about Noel's soul. Old Amos Lea made sure of his safety when he baptized him the second time. Noel, tell her about it. How your poor father laughed that day!"
"Being a rigid Baptist and an elder, Amos scouted my Presbyterian christening as totally inadequate to neutralize what he considered my unusually large share of original sin, and as his wife, Susan, was my nurse, they began to grieve over my reprobateness as soon as I was old enough to lay claim to moral responsibility. When I was about sixteen I was out yonder on the lake fishing. Two friends were with me, and we all swam well, or thought we did. A sudden squall capsized the boat, and I was caught and held under it in such a way that I could not extricate myself. The boys hovered around, trying unsuccessfully to help me, but just then Amos kicked off his boots, plunged in, and swam to the rescue. He was strong as a whale, raised the end of the boat with his shoulder and dragged me out. I was slightly stunned, and he swam with me into shallow water, where he could stand up. Then he lifted me horizontally, as if I had been a baby in long clothes, and repeating with triumphant fervor the baptismal formula of his Church, he immersed me so thoroughly that I regained consciousness, and he turned me over to Susan and hot blankets, as a 'brand snatched from the burning,' and properly baptized."
Removing the ice from the yellow heart of his melon, Judge Kent glanced around the table.
"Owning such a paradise as this home, do you not all share my amazement that Herriott can prefer to shut it up and wander contentedly over the continent, searching its rough crannies—Labná, Mitla, Casa Grande, and where not—for what he pedantically calls the 'primeval anthropological nidus'?"
"Oh, bless you, Senator Kent, it is just in his blood, and he can no more keep still than a flea can stop hopping. His father was a surveyor—civil engineer—always roving, and Noel is exactly like him; which none of you will doubt when I assure you his mother really was an absolutely beautiful woman. He is a hopeless tramp. He gravitates to the wildest places of creation, as you and Mr. Hull to the cultivation of votes, and Dana to Wall Street kites, and this insecticide professor to picking the lock of God's workshop when He has closed the door and gone to His seventh day rest."
"Aunt Trina refuses to believe that my ambition to become acquainted with our prehistoric family relatives is a laudable method of climbing the genealogical tree. She is not enthusiastic on ancestry."
"That depends, my dear boy, on the 'strain' you are hunting. If the first hatching of brown skins in that 'primeval nidus' of your dreams had only been as wise and prudent as modern cattle and horse raisers, and fixed rules of pure-blooded pedigree, we might not fear to grope backward lest we find only 'grades' in our family group. Now, climbing a genuine, decent, civilized ancestral tree is much better sport than twisting up slippery totem poles with a coyote, or a coon, or a vulture perched on top, as head of the family."
"And, pray, what of the sacred menagerie of heraldry? The quadrupeds, birds, flowers of armorial blazonry—all that makes heraldic pomp picturesque—are but survivals of primeval totem symbols throughout the world. Auntie Dove, your book-plate and your family seal bear a leopard couchant, very dear to your orthodox, patrician heart, and some day your hereditary pet beast may have glared down upon a Tlinkit teepee."
"Marriage is the only cure for Herriott, and it would effectually tether him," said Mr. Hull, keeping his eyes on Eglah.
"It appears that you have carefully avoided taking your own prescription," answered his host.
"It is by no means my fault. Though futile, my efforts have been heroic."
Professor Cleveden leaned forward.
"You good people do not understand how deeply Herriott is imbued with the conviction that contemporary 'differentiation' is not a synonym for desirable advancement. The complex, hybridized, neurotic creature he meets in society does not always impress him as vastly superior to the primeval female type, and you may all expect that whenever matrimonial shackles restrict his pasturage, which will not bein Wyandot lines, he will be hobbled by 'some savage woman' whose accomplishments are limited to the slim schedule set down by that jilted cynic of 'Locksley Hall.' The 'new woman' incites us to pray fervently for swift reversion to type. Now, Miss Manning, I am sure you are preparing to tell me that——"
"That of course in such matters tastes differ, and not one of us feels disposed to deprive Professor Cleveden of his coveted female simian companion; but, as Noel never has had a flirtatious 'Cousin Amy' to rub him the wrong way, he has no provocation to present to me a squaw as my great niece."
"It is very evident the professor viciously remembers his own 'Amy,'" said Miss Roberts, who was watching keenly for some manifestation of consciousness in Noel and Eglah.
"Miss Beatrix, no scapegoat 'Amy' bears away my sins of temper, because, as a naturalist, I am unalterably opposed to the marriage of cousins. I never owned but one sweetheart. She took my unfeathered young affections into her tender hands when she was only ten years old, and so carefully has she preserved them that after twenty years of married life she remains my charming sweetheart—my pearl of womanhood—the supreme joy of my existence. She is the one priceless fossil in my collection, guarded with jealous watchfulness, because she no more resembles the new feminine type than a snowy dove a blind, broken-winged, snapping hawk."
"When I marry, my ambition will soar beyond being bottled in alcohol or boxed in sawdust or cotton wool, like a centipede or a cracked egg of the great auk. I should imagine that men who spend their work days among musty, stuffy fossils would rather enjoy the variety of an up-to-date, cultivated wife who kept in touch with social tides and currents. Now, Mr. Herriott, you who prowl about laboratories and museums until you understand their dreary jargon as fully as you do leading a german or playing polo, ought to be a wiser umpire than this one-sided shut-in scientist, who prefers dry bones to living pink flesh."
"In the first place, Miss Beatrix, I must, in the absence of Mrs. Cleveden, protest against her husband's classification of her as a fossil. She is alive to her finger tips with enthusiasm for his work, in which she is his ablest assistant, and knowing something of his charming home life, I consider him the most enviable man of my acquaintance. We who are not so fortunate in the matter of sweethearts, must content ourselves with the best available substitute; and you know, 'if one cannot have what one loves, one must love what one has.'"
"A defence of fickleness quite unworthy of you; and moreover, Noel, utterly untrue, for of all people in the world you are the very last to surrender anything you really want."
"Aunt Katrina, would you have me spend my life wailing for the moon?"
"Pooh! You are not so fatuous as to want to drag a surveyor's chain across its cold chasms and jagged heights; and after a brief study of your frozen charmer you would turn your telescope on something accessible and more valuable. Miss Kent, do you consider Noel a fickle person?"
Eglah looked up, and, meeting the eyes of her host, they both laughed.
"Certainly not. His life-long devotion to you ought to shield him from all suspicion of inconstancy."
"Aunt Trina, she is not an impartial umpire. The first time I saw her, a little girl wearing a snowy muslin with blue ribbon bows on her shoulders, we entered into a compact, adopted each other as half-brother and stepsister, and now in supreme trust we form a sort of mutual aid, mutual defence—on my part, admiration—association. If she saw fifty fatal flaws in me she would loyally conceal them from you, who are such a terribly severe censor."
"Herriott ought to go into politics; don't you think so, Miss Manning?" asked Mr. Hull.
"By no means. I prefer he should keep his hands clean."
"Senator Kent can tell you, madam, that we do not all dabble in mud or pitch."
Mr. Herriott leaned forward, and spoke more quickly than usual.
"She is afraid I might not swell the class of distinguished exceptions which you and Senator Kent represent. Aunt Trina, may I trouble you for a second cup of coffee and an extra lump of sugar?"
Beatrix had completed her inventory of Eglah's points of attraction, and now, as her eyes rested on the graceful figure daintily gowned in lilac muslin, the result annoyed her.
"Miss Kent, has your college training fitted you to believe all the marvellous tales these two wise scholars tell us; as, for instance, that this lovely spot—this suburb of paradise where we are sitting—was once buried for ages under ten thousand feet of glacial ice?"
"I am sorry to confess my course of study carried me only far enough to see the border land of a kingdom I never expect to explore. Unless one specializes, four years at college make no experts. You might as well ask a butterfly to classify all the blossoms it hovered over, or measure the depths of glaciers."
The professor pushed aside his cup, and looked at her.
"And why not? It can teach us infinitely more than its human, club-crazy sisters. My dear Miss Kent, we who are in bonds to science exact great accuracy even in the selection of metaphors, and you will pardon me if I rise to defend the usefulness of butterflies. On top of Mount Washington survives a colony of butterflies found nowhere else south of Arctic snows and ice; descendants of a family which retreated with the great glacier that once overflowed New Hampshire and left only the pinnacle of Mount Washington uncovered. When theŒneishousehold moved back to Labrador and Greenland, these silk-winged stragglers, flirting in corners, were abandoned by their chaperons, and for thousands of years their progeny have flitted around that stone crest to show us the depth of the glacier."
Professor Cleveden adjusted his eye-glasses and moved his chair so as to look straight at Miss Manning, who at once put up her lorgnette to probe his gold spectacles.
"Are you an enthusiastic club-woman?"
"Why don't you ask me if I approve of perjury, arson, and poisoning?"
"My dear madam, did I not hear you last evening quoting the sonorous periods of Mrs. Helen Phædra Swan Hall, whose mission seems to be the emancipation of her sex from bondage to God as well as to man?"
"Oh, no, Mr. Cleveden! It was I who asked Mr. Hull to explain the bill she is trying to have introduced in Congress. Cousin Katrina thinks all such advanced women should be locked up as lunatics, but she is too extreme and hopelessly narrow for this generation, while I like to keep up with the procession. Do tell us about this prophetess."
"Her husband was a mild man, reputed a faithful husband and a devoted father, but the female comet he was yoked with indignantly spurned such slavish rôle as wifehood and maternity involved, and she ranted around clubdom and through the press, striving to enlighten the world, until, finally, she determined to break her domestic chains and shake off all impedimenta of marriage obligations. Having deliberately selected as successor a friend whose opinions proved quite as lax as her own, she promoted an intimacy that resulted in accordance with her scheme. Then she suggested divorce to Hall, who very naturally assented with alacrity. When he promptly married the woman chosen, Mrs. Helen Phædra Swan gladly abandoned all care of her own children to the new wife, washed her hands of maternal responsibility, and proclaimed herself free to work for the rights of woman and the enlightenment of the world. Soaring eagles scorn to perch at one man's hearthstone, and behold the comical climax of her flight above the laws of decency and good taste. She has swooped down on a new husband, and, for a season at least will call herself Mrs. Helen Phædra Swan Butler. Such, Miss Roberts, is your 'prophetess.' Having heard that the pet theme of her present lucubrations is the 'ideal education of children,' I suggested to my own connubial serf, my 'true love,' that the study of the views of this experienced seeress might assist us in the training of our one ewe lamb, our old-fashioned little maid, and the reception of my proposition was of a nature conjugal loyalty forbids me to describe. Mrs. Helen Phædra Swan Butler is merely a degenerate imitation of the Amazons, who changed their husbands annually and deserted their children. A survival of polyandry, if you please. Formerly women looked sternly and sorrowfully from their lofty pure plateau upon polygamy and bigamy as the horrible heinous luxury of wicked, despotic men; now they are stepping down into the mire, claiming equal rights in sin, and the emancipated new female clamors for easy divorce and the freedom of polyandry. In other days, before 'higher education, club-culture, and female rights' had abolished home life, domestic sanctity, and firesidelararium, all good women held Clytemnestra the infamous archetype of feminine depravity, but the doctrine of 'equality' lowers the old high standard, and the new code reads: 'She had as good a right to Ægisthus as Agamemnon to Chryseis.' As if the gods failed to overtake both in their sins."
Miss Manning rang a silver bell, and, rising, tapped the professor's arm with her lorgnette.
"Yet you have the audacity to ask me if I condone creatures whose real aim is to reverse God's decree of the sexes? Trix thinks I should like them locked up in insane asylums? By no means. I should prefer to see all such 'removed' by the methods you men employ when brutes become afflicted with rabies and glanders. I am an old woman, Mr. Cleveden, but I do object to the way in which you 'scientists' dispense with conventional verbal draperies in discussing some questions. After all is said, I presume that 'truth' you are worshipping must wear clothes, and there is no need to confiscate her garments. Moreover, you are not to believe for one instant that Miss Roberts means half of the idiotic rubbish she talks. Girls nowadays think itchicto affect fads, but Trix is no more a 'new woman' than I am a winged saint. Noel, what is the order of the morning?"
"The senator and the professor wish to fish; Stapleton and I are bound to the stable and kennel, and later to the billiard table to settle an old debt; Mr. Hull, Eglah, and Miss Beatrix will go out on the launch, and the phaeton and your ponies will take you and Mrs. Mitchell to see the finest views of the lake and hills."
"I much prefer to see your dogs and watch your billiard game, if I may," said Miss Roberts, picking from the table vase some scarlet poppies that she fastened in her belt.
"Miss Manning, do come with us on the lake; the day is so lovely." Eglah laid an appealing hand on the grey silk sleeve, and Miss Katrina's keen eyes softened.
"You are very good to want a crusty old woman as ballast, but I am not fond of the water. The wind is no respecter of grey hairs, takes such impertinent liberties with my maidenly curls, and, beside, if an accident should occur I can swim only as far as a cannon ball might, and of course in an emergency Mr. Hull would devote himself exclusively to saving me, hence you would probably drown. Thank you, Miss Kent, but Mrs. Mitchell and I shall do our best to strangle time till luncheon."
During that long drive Eliza was kept constantly on guard, parrying questions that betrayed an earnest curiosity relative to Mr. Herriott's standing in the senator's family; and she readily divined that Eglah was considered a formidable obstacle to a marriage long desired between their host and Beatrix Roberts, the youngest of several unmarried daughters whose father was Miss Manning's second cousin.
"And why do you think Noel will never marry?"
"Of course, madam, I can only conjecture; but from what I have seen of Mr. Herriott, I think he is very happy as he is, and if he desired or intended to wed any one, he would scarcely be so eager to renew his travels in distant lands."
"And Miss Kent? Lovely, refined-looking woman, but cold as a frozen mill pond. We hear she has had some fine offers. The world wonders for whom she is waiting."
"As far as I know, she is absolutely indifferent. For her father she has a peculiarly strong and tender affection, and I shall be very much surprised if she ever marries."
When she returned to her own room, she felt that she had stepped down from the witness stand after an adroit cross-examination, in which she had maintained her non-committal rôle. As the pleasant days passed, she and Judge Kent watched their host, hoping for some manifestation of tenderness, or pique, or consciousness of past suitor-claims that might portend possibility of renewal. No faintest evidence of other than calm, friendly, hospitable interest rewarded their scrutiny. If it were indeed complete surrender of hopes once cherished, would there not have been traces of disappointment, some bitterness, some cloud on face and manner?
Although she was unusually free from coquetry, Eglah was too familiar with the moods of rejected lovers not to observe the exceptional demeanor of the master of Greyledge, and his coolinsouciancewould have perplexed her had she not recollected his assurance that no word of his should ever recall the painful interview in the carriage. She noticed that he never touched her arm or hand if it could be avoided, and, if he really cared for her society, why did he invite Roger Hull to his house and afford him every opportunity to monopolize her? The weather continued favorable; the guests could not fail to regret the approaching end of their visit, and Mr. Herriott seemed unusually happy, yet he had abstained from being alone with Eglah.
On the last day, at the close of dinner, the host proposed that coffee and cigars should be served on the terrace overhanging the water. The afternoon had been hot and sultry, and the full moon rose out of a tawny haze that smouldered at the horizon but silvered and glistened as the light swam through. Eliza stole away to pack the trunks, and Senator Kent, the professor, and Mr. Hull strolled up and down smoking, while Miss Roberts and Mr. Stapleton followed Mr. Herriott to the pavilion, where he unlocked a boat and fitted the oars. Miss Manning's favorite anisette had accomplished its mission, and her white head was bowed on the billowy lace fichu that covered her neck. Noiselessly Eglah slipped into the loggia, down the steps leading to the garden beyond the courtyard, and ran along a walk, dark under dense overhanging boughs. For a little while she must be alone to ponder the first really stern words her father had ever spoken to her. They were writing letters in the library that morning, when Senator Kent turned to her.