"Loyalty is still the same,Whether it win or lose the game."
"Loyalty is still the same,Whether it win or lose the game."
For years he had been entirely hers. Now she lost him hopelessly. His contempt could spare no room for pity; her presence infuriated him.
He had lifted her to a sacred niche where love and reverence jealously guarded her, and she had hurled herself down into the mire of the market place.
"For sale! Any man could have bought you, body and soul."
The words branded her. They seemed burned in by the scorn flaming in his eyes, and she thought of the red letter on Hester Prynne's breast. The world should never know, but she would carry that scar to her grave.
Soon the clock struck three, and simultaneously the outcry of the dogs announced their master's return. Hat and gloves in hand, Eglah went down to the drawing-room, and caught a glimpse of Mr. Herriott hurrying toward the gardener's cottage. Later he went to his own rooms, and when dinner was announced apologized for unavoidable delay.
He had reined himself in with a grip so tight that the only evidence of suppressed excitement was the feverish, steady gleam in his eyes. He talked of Mrs. St. Clair, of Father Temple, of Trix Stapleton, whom he should see for a moment in New York.
During a brief lull in the conversation, Eglah said:
"I found your mother's portrait, which you asked me to look at. In an extraordinary degree you resemble her."
"Thank you. That is a compliment I value. It is indeed a pity she could not have endowed me with the patience and amiability that so endeared her to all who knew her."
Very soon the moment came for parting words, and she went down to the carriage step, leaving him with the servants clustered in the hall, but Amos Lea was not visible. Mr. Herriott handed Eglah to the back seat, and for a moment stooped to speak to and pat the head of each dog. As he entered the carriage and seated himself opposite his companion, slamming the door as signal to the coachman, the housemaid threw up her hands and ran down the steps.
"Please, sir, Mr. Herriott, may I speak to you?"
He put out his head.
"What is the matter?"
"The silk jacket, sir. You told me to carry it to Mr. Lea, but, sir, I can't find it. You must have put it in your trunk."
"No, I wore it this morning after the trunks were locked and strapped."
"Indeed, sir, I have searched your rooms most faithful, and that jacket is not there."
"You will find it somewhere in the den. Good-bye, Della. Drive on, Rivers."
The house fronted the lake, and the carriage road at the rear wound through thick shrubbery, groups of deodars, and a lane of lilacs in full bloom. The iron gates were open, and against one marble pillar Amos Lea leaned. As the horses dashed through, he motioned to the driver. At sight of him Mr. Herriott's face changed, softened; he sprang out and walked back a few yards.
Through a glass in the curtain Eglah saw the old man's brawny hands laid on Mr. Herriott's shoulders, and the harsh voice shook.
"Oh, lad! May the Lord bless you and keep you in the hollow of His hand, and bring your body safely back, and save your dear soul from the snares of the ungodly that go down to the icy sea in ships. Wherever you wander Susan's eyes will follow you until you reach that rest where there is no more night."
"It hurts me sorely to say good-bye to you, Amos. For my sake take extra care of yourself. Let up on moles and slugs and shotbugs in damp weather. Look after my dogs for me, and be good to Aunt Trina when she comes for her visit. One thing more, be sure the tower lamp is lighted every night. When I am groping and stumbling in Arctic darkness, it will cheer me to know that light is shining over a black, stormy lake. Now I must go. I hope God will keep you strong and well. Good-bye."
Then the voice sank so low a few additional words were inaudible to those beyond the gate. He took the gardener's hands, shook them warmly, and re-entered the carriage. As he did so Eglah pointed to the seat beside her, which he accepted, and she saw his eyes were misty.
For some moments neither spoke.
"Aunt Trina is fond of the old place, and I have asked her to spend July here, with any friends she may wish to bring. She and Amos spar like prize fighters over immersion and close communion, and he brands her extreme ritualism 'idolatry rank as the groves of Baal.'"
He looked at his watch, and called to the coachman:
"Rivers, we have very little time to spare."
His closed right hand rested on his knee, and Eglah laid hers upon it.
"Since I was a little girl you have been my faithful, sympathizing, patient friend, and now I can not bear that you should leave me without uttering one kind word of forgiveness for the great wrong I realize at last that I have done you."
"Eglah, for God's sake don't open that door, which shuts out—what I can not discuss again with you, because I must not wound you."
She noticed the suppressed pant in his voice, and as he did not respond to the touch of her hand, her slender fingers crept between and twined around his.
"Mr. Herriott, when you come home——"
"I shall try not to come home."
"If I promise you shall never see me there, perhaps that assurance may tempt you back. You are casting me out of your life, and I have no right to complain, but I wish to say that I hope you will have no fear for the name you gave irrevocably into my keeping."
"You bear my name, my father's name, but I am very sure your little white hands will hold it clean, pure, and sacred. Should you invoke legal aid to free you from merely nominal matrimonial bonds, I prefer you should then resume your father's name. If you choose to make no change, and I do not return, the name will die with you, and I believe you will guard it as you would the Grail."
Unconsciously his hand tightened on hers, until the edge of the ring cut into her finger.
"Mr. Herriott, you will write to me?"
He shook his head.
Looking intently at her, he noticed the deep blue shadows under her eyes, and the first tears he had ever seen her shed rolled slowly over her worn face.
"Unless my letters were hollow shams, they would only distress you, and all future annoyance I wish to avoid. Silence is the only possible peace."
At this moment the carriage stopped, and he looked out.
"Why do you lag, Rivers?"
"A train, sir. Switch engine and gravel cars."
"Drive around it."
"I can't, sir. Red signal just ahead of the horse's nose."
Mr. Herriott stepped out, and walked for some minutes up and down the embankment. Then the train pulled out, and when he re-entered his carriage he took the front seat.
"I sent a telegram to your father, which ought to reach him in Washington, telling him the number of your train, and your hotel in Philadelphia; and I hope your return journey will prove more agreeable than your trip with me. If any necessity should arise that would require you to communicate with me, you will find this card in the outside pocket of your satchel, but the address means only that letters will be forwarded to Upernavik. When we leave there no mail will reach us."
The carriage drew up to the platform, and Mr. Herriott assisted Eglah into the train. With her wraps and satchel he preceded her to the drawing-room.
"This is more comfortable than the one you occupied two days ago, and I trust you can rest well. Here are your tickets and check. This train is almost ready to start, and mine moves in ten minutes. In parting I make only one request. I ask you now to put me out of your life. I want you to forget me, and be happy with your father. Good-bye."
His face was white, and the expression of his eyes she never forgot.
He had extended his hand, but the horrible possibilities of the future swept all proud scruples aside, and she put her arms around his neck, clinging desperately to him.
"Mr. Noel, you shall never, never, be out of my life! I will always belong to my—own—Mr. Noel."
The check rein snapped.
He clasped—strained her against his breast, and she felt the furious beating of his heart. It was barely a moment. Gently he unwound her arms, put her quickly aside, and left her.
The resumption of cordially affectionate relations between Judge Kent and his daughter was marked on her part by increased tenderness and deference, on his by demonstrative caresses particularly conspicuous after years of alienation. His exactions upon her time became despotic; he was dissatisfied when she was out of his sight, and if within reach his hand usually rested on her arm or shoulder. The paramount aim of her life was attained. She was assured that she reigned supreme in her coveted kingdom—his heart. Freed from dread of public exposure, his spirits rebounded, and his jovial, self-indulgent nature enjoyed basking once more before the fire of financial prosperity, exulted in the consciousness that at last the long desired Maurice fortune was at his command. Eglah wondered that from the hour he met her in Philadelphia he asked no questions concerning her bridal journey—no explanation of her unexpectedly hurried return.
He sedulously avoided all mention of Mr. Herriott, except to rail at the imbecility of Arctic explorers, and suspecting that he smarted from the humiliating knowledge that his son-in-law had possessed proofs of his guilt, she welcomed silence as balm for her sore heart. From the day of her return to Nutwood she severed every social tie linking her with Y——. Of visiting she made an end, all invitations were declined, and she was seen only at church, beside her father. They rode, drove, walked together. On his fishing jaunts she read while he wandered from pool to pool, and made tea for him when, tired and thirsty, he came back to a shaded spot where she waited. Now and then a few of his friends spent an evening in the billiard room, or played cards in the library, and discussed Republican policies. At night Eliza Mitchell usually brought her sewing to the table, Judge Kent smoked in his easy chair, and Eglah arranged the chessboard at his elbow, or read aloud from some volume he had selected. It rarely happened that she received his good-night kiss until she had played anocturneor anétudefor which he asked. He had an ardent, sensuous love of beauty in color, form, sound; impassioned poetry, deep, rich melody, and subtle harmonies entranced him, dimmed his fine, eloquent eyes. His musical taste had been cultivated in accordance with classical standards, and while his daughter's proficiency was not extraordinary, she played skilfully and with a tenderly magnetic touch that justified his compliment: "My daughter has tears in her pretty fingers."
When a proud, reticent, beautiful woman suddenly takes an unusual and totally unexpected step, abrogating fashionable conventions—when, keeping her own counsel, she disdains explanation and shuts herself away from curious questioners—the hounds of gossip are unleashed, and beagles and fox-terriers follow in full cry. Outraged Y—— hummed like a swarming hive.
"Married without a sign of a trousseau, on a few hours' notice, with barely time to get a license, a ring and a minister, and to pack her trunk! Disgraceful!"
Rumors of Mr. Herriott's wealth swelled to fabulous proportions. A sister of Dr. Burbridge, whose young cousin was employed in the office of the telegraph company, plied him with questions, until indiscreetly and reluctantly he confided to her that two telegrams sent by the groom showed that he had not come to Y—— intending marriage; whereupon she set afloat information which merely increased the complexity of the problem. Judge Kent had been so long the community scapegoat that in the final public solution and adjustment of disreputable responsibility, an additional load of selfish, wily iniquity was laid on his sin-stained shoulders. By cunning chicanery he had forced his daughter's sudden marriage, hoping that Arctic dangers, often fatal, would soon make her a widow dowered with millions.
Even the few who witnessed the ceremony, and recalled Eglah's inscrutable white face, understood as little as the resentful uninvited, yet when questioned they loyally maintained reserve.
Bishop Vivian, Mr. Whitfield, and the Egglestons warmly defended the girl, whom secretly they pitied, but society pilloried her.
"She was shamelessly mercenary, absolutely devoid of womanly delicacy, and a shocking disgrace to her poor mother's family."
Henceforth the anti-Kent social element in Y—— resolved itself into a vigilance committee to watch her behavior as a married woman.
Into the whirlpool of tittle-tattle Mrs. Mitchell wisely abstained from plunging. Her own information was too meagre, her uneasiness concerning Eglah's stubborn silence and inexplicable manner too profound to admit of discussion, even in defence. She staid at home, bided her time, and held her peace. Moreover, she was wrestling with conscientious scruples regarding her duty in withholding from Eglah some disquieting facts known only to herself.
The second night after his daughter's departure, Judge Kent had indulged in stimulants to an unprecedented and alarming extent. With a decanter of brandy at his elbow, he dozed in his arm-chair until roused by Aaron, who delivered a telegram. Eliza was going upstairs to her own room, when the boy rang the bell and handed in the message.
"Lock up the house, Aaron. I think the judge is sleepy and will soon go to bed."
An hour later she sat reading her Bible, and heard a sound as of some heavy object falling. Snatching her lamp, she went swiftly to the library. The overturned decanter was slowly emptying itself on the table, and Judge Kent lay on the floor, his head resting against the cushioned seat of his chair. Evidently he had risen, slipped on the polished floor, dropped the decanter, and lost consciousness.
His face was purple, his breathing stertorous. Holding his head, she pushed the chair back and laid him flat on the floor.
Was it apoplectic seizure or intoxication? Her inexperience justified no independent action, yet if drunkenness explained existing conditions, she shrank from publishing the disgrace that would mortally wound Eglah.
Bathing his head and face, she administered such restoratives as she possessed, and loosened his vest and collar. Finally it seemed necessary to summon Aaron and send Oliver for the doctor, but as she rose to ring the bell Judge Kent opened his eyes. A dark, turbid red still stained his face, but his respiration was less labored.
"Don't move. After a little I can get Oliver to help you into bed."
"I had a fall?"
His utterance was thick, his articulation indistinct, and he hiccoughed.
"Yes, sir. You are better, I think, and if you will only lie still a while you can soon be made comfortable in your own room."
She went into the adjoining apartment, saw that the bed had been prepared, and a lamp lighted. When she returned he had struggled into a sitting posture, his arms clasped around his knees. She sat down and waited. On the table lay the brandy-stained telegram sent by Mr. Herriott after he had burned the papers at Carville. She picked it up, read it twice, and laid it down.
"Mrs. Mitchell, if you will help me I can get into a chair."
She took his extended hands, and he rose slowly, staggered against her, and sank into his chair. Five minutes later he slept, but gradually his face resumed its usual color. Eliza brought a basin of water from the bedroom, washed away the brandy streaks from the floor and table, and with a silk handkerchief dried and polished the fine old mahogany, already whitening from its alcoholic bath. She went to an open window and waited. The night was balmy, and loitering, thievish puffs of air came laden with rifled sweetness from multitudinous lips of forest and garden bloom. Far away the muffled monody of the river falls rose towards the stars, whose light wove a golden braid across the water's quivering crystal plunge over granite crags. In the dense shadow of the walnut grove a squirrel barked, and from their red cedar covert the game cocks shrilled midnight.
After two hours Judge Kent awoke and groaned. Mrs. Mitchell handed him a goblet of iced water, which he drained.
"Shall I go and rouse Oliver, or would you prefer Aaron to assist you?"
"I don't want either. If you will help me over this infernally slippery floor to my bedroom sofa, I can manage."
"You do not wish the doctor sent for?"
"No."
She took his arm, guided his unsteady steps to the sofa, arranged a pillow, and unlaced his shoes. Very soon his deep, regular breathing assured her the worst had passed. Was it the brandy, or the telegram or both? What were the "Ely Twiggs" papers, of which Eglah must know nothing, and why was she coming home immediately, instead of going to Sydney, or at least as far as Boston? Could Mr. Herriott have been a party to some scheme whereby she was entrapped into that sudden marriage?
At three o'clock she looked from the library door at the sleeping form on the sofa, and with anxiety allayed, went upstairs to her room. Awaiting a cue, she made no inquiries when he appeared at late breakfast, and with characteristic aplomb his only reference to the previous evening was an apology for troubling her to give him a third cup of tea.
"My head is a trifle shaky from the jar of that fall. Men of my age and weight can not afford to sit down so heavily on bare boards, and I shall insist on matting when the carpets are taken up."
The receipt of the telegram requesting him to meet his daughter in Philadelphia was followed by hurried preparations for departure, and Mrs. Mitchell ventured to expostulate.
"Judge Kent, if you realized how serious was your attack in the library, you would not risk the imprudence of a railway journey. You ought to see your doctor. Let me go and meet Eglah in Philadelphia."
His bloodshot eyes twinkled as they met hers.
"Doctor? Absurd! Attack? You mean that unlucky slip? It amounts to nothing except a stubborn stiffness on the side where I struck those diabolical sand-scoured boards. I particularly desire the matter should not be mentioned to my daughter, who would reproach herself severely for that 'dry-rubbed' floor she knows I detest as a cat does swimming."
During his absence a cabinet maker was summoned and removed the ugly grey stains on Eglah's favorite piece of old claw-footed mahogany. For a time the incident seemed forgotten by all save the quiet, silent woman keeping watch for the consequences.
A few days after Eglah's return she sat at a window in her bedroom, noting the deepening glory of the west, where the sun was just sinking behind purple hills. It was the date on which the "Ahvungah" would leave Sydney and begin her voyage to the world of eternal ice.
The day had seemed one of doom, as if set for a funeral, and the going down of the sun brought other shadows—darker than the mists that would soon swim under the stars. If Mr. Herriott had forgiven her she might have gone to Cape Breton, could have been with him till the last moment. Now he was upon the ocean, and only God knew the future that looked so black, so spectral, so full of desolation.
Mrs. Mitchell opened the door and handed her a package.
"Dearie, the express messenger brought this, and I signed for you."
She went back to her own room and resumed her darning.
The parcel was addressed in Mr. Herriott's handwriting: "Mrs. Noel Herriott. Care Hon. Allison Kent." A wave of color flowed over Eglah's pale face as she looked at her new name, and felt assured his eyes had gleamed with scorn as he penned it. A pass-book and check-book of a New York bank, with note from the cashier, were the first objects that met her eye, and were instantly thrown aside; then a square box, elaborately sealed. When she removed the wrapping paper a red morocco case appeared, and around it was tied a note without a personal address.
"Just before my father died he gave me two rings; one the little gold band that hangs on my watch chain—my mother's wedding ring. The other a stone he had given her on the day of their betrothal. When he laid them in my hand, he said: 'Wear one always. If you should ever marry, give the other, with my blessing, to the woman who bears our name.' Because it was his wish, I simply obey his injunction, and trust the ring sacred from my mother's touch will grace the hand it was once my fondest hope, my most ardent wish to claim. This should reach you the day we leave Sydney. The sham is ended. Your freedom is now complete. Do not hesitate to use it in any way that will restore the happiness you so unwisely, so rashly imperilled. If possible, your path in future shall be spared my shadow. Good-bye."Herriott."
"Just before my father died he gave me two rings; one the little gold band that hangs on my watch chain—my mother's wedding ring. The other a stone he had given her on the day of their betrothal. When he laid them in my hand, he said: 'Wear one always. If you should ever marry, give the other, with my blessing, to the woman who bears our name.' Because it was his wish, I simply obey his injunction, and trust the ring sacred from my mother's touch will grace the hand it was once my fondest hope, my most ardent wish to claim. This should reach you the day we leave Sydney. The sham is ended. Your freedom is now complete. Do not hesitate to use it in any way that will restore the happiness you so unwisely, so rashly imperilled. If possible, your path in future shall be spared my shadow. Good-bye.
"Herriott."
The words stung like a scourge, and involuntarily she covered her face with her hands. Time merely increased his bitterness; there was nothing more for her to hope or expect. He intended perpetual separation.
Mechanically she lifted the ring from its velvet bed. It was a superb diamond, marked on the inside of the gold band, "Fergus to Una." The circle fitted only one finger, that wearing the wedding ring, and was too broad to share it. She replaced the jewel in its case and closed it. A little later, when Mrs. Mitchell came in, the stony, despairing face of the girl startled her. She ran forward and took her in her arms.
"What is the matter? You have shut me out long enough; now I will know. You have heard from Mr. Herriott?"
"Yes. He sent me a check-book for money on deposit and a ring that had been his mother's."
"What are you breaking your heart over? O my baby, don't keep your trouble from me! The dreadful night you went away you asked me not to question you, but I must; I can't bear the sight of your dear face. Nobody loves you as I do, and you know you can trust me."
Eglah was silent a moment, and Eliza felt her shiver.
"Yes, I am sure your love is the truest I shall ever possess, and I trust you; but some things are like red coals, and you shrink from handling them. Suppose you had wounded your Robert so deeply, so sorely he never forgave you, would you wish to drag the horror up and talk of the details? Put yourself in my place."
"I cannot understand, because Mr. Herriott loves you so devotedly he would forgive anything you might have done."
"You do not know him; neither did I before I left home. I made the mistake of presuming too far on his love. I wronged him, and he will never forgive me."
"I refuse to believe you wronged him."
"Yes, I did him a great wrong. I did not intend to wound him, and when I realized all that followed, it was too late for remedy. I don't wish to say anything more, even to you. The thought of the red coals scorches my heart. If the time should ever come when I feel I can talk freely, you will not need to question. Until then, love me and be patient, and leave me to myself. To-day Mr. Herriott is at sea—gone on his long voyage. O Ma-Lila! Ma-Lila, pray to God that he may never come home! Or that if he lives, I may die soon."
"You foolish, wicked girl! Are you crazy?"
"I have been, but my late tenants have gone into the swine. A week ago they possessed me, and wild work followed. Since their departure I find it impossible to regain my old self. I have, after frightful nightmare, awakened a very repentant, an exceedingly miserable woman, but the fault was all mine. Mr. Herriott was not to blame. He is even nobler than you know, nobler than I dreamed; but I wounded, injured him past pardon; and now I purpose to bear in silence, and as best I may, a sorrow that I alone have brought upon myself. No one can help me. I only ask to be spared all questions, all reference to my marriage. Father is calling me. Will you give him his tea? Ask him to excuse me. Good-night. I wish to be alone until breakfast."
When Eliza went downstairs next morning, Eglah was coming from the side garden with both hands full of dewy roses for the table vase, and, having listened until two o'clock to the restless footsteps in the room next to her own, the foster-mother glanced anxiously at her.
The cold, passionless repose that comes only after a fierce and vital struggle had settled upon her white, worn face, and the woman who knew her best could not determine whether it meant conquest or surrender.
As summer advanced, Eglah noticed the frequency with which her father fell asleep in the midst of conversation, and when he dozed one day with a bowl of sherbet in his hand, she became alarmed and sent for Dr. Plympton, an old friend of Judge Kent's, who had moved South and settled in Y—— during the dismal days of carpet bag rule.
He gave him tonics, diet regimen on which he laid much stress, and ordered the family away to certain springs in a distant State. Having secured a cottage, Eglah avoided the hotel and maintained complete seclusion. Her father keenly enjoyed the change, and gradually the tendency to drowse was less apparent, but the prohibition of alcoholic drinks fretted him, and that which was tabooed at the cottage was alluringly accessible at the hotel.
When the season closed, he and Eglah decided to stopen routefor a day, to pay their long promised visit to Calvary House.
As Mrs. Mitchell could not be persuaded to enter "an Episcopal monkish institution" of which she disapproved so vigorously, she went back alone to Nutwood and busied herself with household preparations for winter.
When the judge and his daughter reached home, Dr. Plympton expressed himself much pleased with improved conditions which Mrs. Mitchell could not discover, and Eglah's apprehensions were allayed. Her father's increasing dependence upon her touched and cheered her inexpressibly, and for his sake she diligently assisted him in work that forced her thoughts into a new channel. An important appropriation bill, in which Judge Kent's native State was much interested, would be presented to Congress about the middle of December, or soon after the holiday recess, and he had been requested by old friends and constituents to address the Senate committee, advocating a favorable report. The collection and arrangement of necessary statistics kept her busy at his side, and when the last type-written page was added to the pile at his elbow, he patted her hand fondly and complimented her useful accuracy.
Rejoicing in the accomplishment of their tedious task, the trap was ordered, and father and daughter drove until the dinner hour.
She noticed he dozed twice while she talked, although when they reached home he seemed as well as usual, humming a gay little Sicilian song as he divested himself of overcoat and muffler. It had been a perfect autumn day, crisp, crystalline. The deep, vivid yellow of the great undulating mass of walnut foliage hung against the western sky like cloth of gold curtains around a porphyry shrine, above which Venus burned as ministering taper. With her cheek pressed to the window pane in the library, Eglah watched the fading after-glow, and her hands clutched each other. This was the day when from the iron-bound, ice-sheathed fiords of Smith's Sound the sun disappeared. The long Polar night had set in. Would Mr. Herriott ever see the sun again?
She had procured all books written in English that related to Arctic travel, and in the sanctuary of her own room prepared, from an almanac and from explorer's diaries, a calendar, noting the length of each day, the coming of the moon, the date of shortest twilight, the falling of total darkness. Mr. Herriott's voyage began in May; no tidings had reached her. She expected none, but her lips moved: "Oh, God, keep him in safety through the awful night!"
The dreary vision of her imagination contrasted sharply with the luxurious aspect of the library, where a fire of oak logs glowed beyond the marble hearth. A crimson velvet carpet covered the floor, and warm winter draperies enhanced the atmosphere of comfort. On the table an oval cut-glass basket held great clusters of orange chrysanthemums; not the huge, solitary, odorless globes now so popular in cities, but thickly studded, fragrant branches that bloom nowhere with such lavish sweetness as in old Southern gardens.
Mrs. Mitchell brightened the lamp and began to match the squares of a calico "rising sun" quilt she was making as her Christmas present to the Methodist parsonage. Judge Kent leaned back in his arm-chair, his silver-powdered head on the red cushion, good looking, debonair, thoroughly content; and in one hand he held a richly gilded liqueur glass, brimming with an emerald cordial. Eglah came to his side and put her hand on his wrist.
"Father, Dr. Plympton forbids liqueurs. Please do not drink that."
"Only a thimbleful ofcrème de menthe! Babies take mint tea. Even Mrs. Mitchell drinks this."
His fine eyes sparkled mischievously, and he bowed to her.
"No, sir. I make my mint cordial from my own garden, and I know what is in it; but you can't be sure about foreign-fangled mixtures."
"I wish to make sure that delicious gumbo-filé will not give me nightmare."
"Father, I begged you not to touch it, and you had your favorite clam bouillon the doctor commends so highly."
"Bouillon—gumbo-filé? 'As moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.' My duchess, don't scold. Your pretty mouth was made for sweeter uses. Kiss me."
He brushed his white mustache aside, and leaning down she pressed her lips to his.
"Father, are you quite well to-night?"
"Quite well, and absolutely happy. Now, give me some music to round out and seal this glorious, perfect day."
She opened the upright piano, and while she played one of his favorite fugues—Handel's in E minor—he kept time, swinging the tiny, gilded glass. Flickering flames in the wide chimney were reflected on the polished rosewood panels of the piano, and as they wavered up and down before her, Eglah thought of spectral auroral fringes flashing in moonless Polar night, staining with prismatic hues the world of snow, kindling red beacons on pinnacles of immemorial ice.
The fugue ended, and as her fingers left the keys a tinkling crash caused her to turn her head.
The liqueur glass was shattered on the floor and Judge Kent lay insensible in his chair.
Paralysis appeared so complete that for some days Doctors Plympton and Eggleston entertained no hope; but the sufferer rallied surprisingly, and while his utterance was not fully intelligible, and he never regained the use of his lower limbs, he was often conscious.
Mrs. Mitchell and the physicians would have welcomed a passionate outbreak of the silent grief that seemed to have frozen Eglah, as, calm and dry-eyed, she ministered in the sick-room she rarely left. Two faithful men assisted in nursing—one by day, one by night, because she could not lift her father—and she slept on a cot beside him, or across the foot of his bed. She administered all his medicine, fed him with her own hands, caressed, and cheered him.
After a few weeks, though entirely helpless, he was able to be dressed and lifted into a reclining rolling-chair, and when the weather permitted she wheeled him around the sunny side of the long colonnade, where he usually fell asleep. The speech arranged so carefully for the Senate committee she read again critically, made a few corrections, and forwarded it with a brief announcement of his illness to the friends who had employed Judge Kent to prepare and deliver it in committee room.
Her stern self-repression discouraged conversation relative to the sufferer, and she buoyed herself with no false hopes.
A ripple of compassion stirred Y——, and some who had criticized her most severely for her haughty aloofness—some whose sole grievance was her absolute devotion to an "unprincipled father"—left cards, words of sympathy, and flowers for Mrs. Herriott. Except the doctors, she saw no one but Mrs. Eggleston and Mr. Whitfield, who had lost his wife a few months previous. Bishop Vivian had died during the summer, but her father's rector came often. At times the sick man's clouded mind seemed incapable of retaining any impression, but he never failed to respond to music, and when his chair was rolled close to the piano and Eglah played selections he loved best, it comforted her to watch the pleased, contented expression of the placid, handsome old face so dear to her. Noticing how wan and drawn the girl's lips were, the physicians urged Mrs. Mitchell to persuade her to drive or walk.
"No. I will not lose sight of him for a moment. He is my all, and what becomes of me makes no difference. I have but one wish now—to go with him."
One bright, warm day, late in December, Judge Kent appeared surprisingly better, though his articulation continued very indistinct, and his daughter understood him best because she closely watched his lips. The doctors had made their morning visit, and, wrapped in his dressing-gown, the sick man asked to be rolled into sunshine.
Eglah tucked a lap robe carefully about the reclining form, and he feebly lifted the one hand he could move, and pointed to the glass door.
"That way; not through library."
She unlocked and opened it, wheeling the chair out on the colonnade, and some change in his countenance arrested her attention. Bending down, she found tears on his cheeks.
"You opened this door the day Herriott came. Because you heard him tell me about Keith, you married him. You burned the papers—you saved me."
"No, father; no!"
She fell on her knees and hid her face in his gown.
"You tried to keep me from knowing you heard Herriott, but I saw you. You married him for my sake. My blessed child! When I am gone, I want you to remember no other man ever had such a daughter. My Eglah——"
After a moment he sighed, and with great difficulty added slowly:
"My dear, kiss me, and always—always you must know—how precious you—are, precious——"
She kissed him twice, dried his cheeks, and, as he turned his head on the pillow and closed his eyes, she rolled him up and down the colonnade, hoping that during his nap he would forget. He often slept soundly in this way, soothed by the motion like a child in a carriage.
Was he laboring under some delusion of an enfeebled brain—did he dream? Or was it possible he had actually seen her leave his room on her errand of rescue?
A half hour later a veil of cloud drifted across the sun, a blast of wind leaped out of the northwest, and, fearing a change of temperature, she turned the chair toward the door and wheeled it inside.
Leaning tenderly over the sleeper, his quiet, cold, set face told her he had gone to that bar of final trial where, in his Maker's infinite mercy, only He who fashions and reads human hearts and sees entirely around the circle of circumstances, can justly judge.
A low, long-drawn, quivering cry, as of some creature mortally stricken, summoned Mrs. Mitchell, who found the girl huddled over the still form, his grey head lifted to her breast.
Holding her solitary vigil that night beside him, her cheek laid on his shoulder, her hand clasping his icy, interlocked fingers, she found a solace which surprised her in the assurance that he had known the significance of her sacrifice—that he loved her better in consequence of all she had ventured and suffered in his behalf. Her supreme dread had been his discovery of the cause of her marriage, but now and then the scowling menace from which we cower, breaks in smiling, tender benediction. To love, that prompts and sustains in crucial hours of self-immolation, is occasionally added a transforming exaltation that sublimates the unworthy object for whom the sacrifice is borne; and the most pityingly merciful of all angels—Death—extinguishes life with one hand, while the other smooths scars of character, levels unlovely angles, lifts shadows of sin, and gives to memory that magic mantle whose halo never fades.
With singular and unnatural calmness, Eglah had arranged the details of the funeral service next day in her father's church. She telegraphed Father Temple to meet her in Washingtonen routeto the North, and asked Mr. Whitfield to go with her until her cousin joined her on the train.
To lay her father to rest among his enemies in Y—— was unendurable; she would take him to the cemetery in his native State, where his parents and sisters slept, and erect a monument there in sight of his constituents who had honored and loved him.
It had grown very cold; there was no fire in the long drawing-room, where portraits of Maurices and Vivians stared imperiously down at the alien lying motionless under the great cut-glass chandelier. Silent and tearless the girl kept watch. The undertaker had mentioned the date to be inscribed on the casket plate, and she recalled her Arctic calendar. This was the solstice, the sunless midnight, the core of Polar winter. To-morrow the sun would begin to climb back to Mr. Herriott, but the sun of her life had set forever. A shudder shook her, and she nestled closer, laying her lips against her father's throat. Eliza laid heavier wraps around the stooping shoulders, placed a hot blanket under her feet, and now and then kissed the girl's bowed head, but no words, no sob, profaned the sacred silence.
When the body was carried to the chancel of the crowded church, she walked alone, followed closely by the few who best understood her isolation. Shrouded in black, she sat still and silent as her dead; and some persons present who had cause for bitterness against "reconstruction judiciary" forgot their wrongs in genuine pity for the proud and lonely mourner.
Under a fragrant pall, woven of smilax and his favorite double white violets, that covered the casket and fell to its handles, she bore him away to the stony hills of New England.
Its alliterative jingle had probably commended Dairy Dingle to Marcia Maurice when she selected a name for the new home of the overseer, Robert Mitchell. Here he brought his bride from Nutwood, where she had lived since her father's death on the battle-field. A Federal cavalry raid, intended specially for the looting of Y—— and the destruction of its factories, had loitered too long at Willow Bend plantation, and finding Confederate squadrons in hot pursuit, the Union troopers were forced to retreat, after burning every building in sight except the cabins of the negroes. General Maurice loved the rambling, airy, old-fashioned country house where he was born, and here he usually brought his family to spend Christmas, and make genuine holiday for his numerous slaves. After the raid only rock chimneys stood as commemorative pillars, and not a vestige of gin-house, cotton sheds, or stables was visible. At a hard gallop the fleeing troopers passed an adjacent grist-mill which supplied several plantations with meal, and paused long enough to kindle a blaze in a pile of corn sacks. The miller, a lame negro, extinguished the flames, and preserved a structure where several generations had brought their contributions to the hopper. Near this old red mill Mrs. Maurice built a house for her overseer, and after Eliza's marriage gave it and the adjoining fifty acres of cleared land to the young wife. It was a small, square box of a house, with four rooms, broad, low-pitched piazzas, and wide hall running through the middle. Where the rear gallery ended, a covered way, brick paved, led to the kitchen and servants' room. On the left, at a sudden dip of the land, and several hundred yards distant, stood the spring house, or stone dairy, a low structure built over a small stream running from the bold spring that gushed out of the hillside a few feet away—and falling into the creek just above the mill-dam.
A shallow canal dug through the centre of the dairy had been paved with rock, and here, winter and summer, the milk bowls and butter jars stood in water rippling against their sides.
While General Maurice lived, he kept only his Jersey herd at Nutwood, but at Willow Bend his famous Short-horns, red, and red roan, roamed over pasturage extending hundreds of acres. The "cow pen" and milking shed were not visible, hidden on the edge of a plateau running far away to a stretch of primeval, lonely pine woods crossed only by cattle paths. In a green cup encircled by wimpling hills the overseer's home nestled like a white bird hovering to drink. The sharply curving creek that divided it from the plantation was bridged a half mile below the mill, and a dense growth of trees and vines clothed the banks. In an opposite direction, beyond the house, and mantling the upland slopes, lay fields of grain, glistening as the wind crinkled the yellowing folds.
Locust and china trees, overrun by English honeysuckle, coral, and buff woodbine, shaded the cottage, and all about the spring house clustered azaleas—white, pink, orange, scarlet—filling the quiet hollow with waves of incomparable perfume. Hanging on the bluff above the bubbling spring a thicket of titi swung exquisite opal plumes, over which bees drowsed; and crowding to the front for dress parade clung a line of mountain laurel or "ivy" faintly flushed with pale-rose clusters waiting to burst into bloom and with their crimped shell-pink cups rival fluted and tinted treasures from Sèvres and Murano.
Into this green, shadowy dingle had come its long absent mistress, and, closing Nutwood, Eglah shared her foster-mother's secluded home in the heart of the pine woods.
For many months after her father's death she seemed a mute, breathing statue rather than a suffering woman, so deep lay the pain no words could fathom. Close and tender as were the ties linking the two, Eliza dared not probe the wound, and when Eglah closed the door of her own room, the loving little mother would have broken into a sealed tomb as soon as violate her solitude.
Two miles beyond the plantation, across the creek, a new railway line had established a station called Maurice, and about this nucleus a village grew with surprising rapidity. The site selected on Eglah's land by the railway company chanced to be that of the neighborhood school-house, where, on the fourth Sunday of each month, a Methodist minister of many mission chapels preached. Mrs. Mitchell had organized a Sabbath school, and Eglah had given a cabinet organ, but the figure shrouded in mourning was seen only when driving in her trap, or more frequently alone on horseback. These long rides through rolling pine forests and silent sunny glades, where she met none but her own velvet-eyed, browsing red cattle, and shy, happy rabbits, were hours of immeasurable relief; yet, at intervals, proved battle-ground on which she fought the crowding spectres of a sombre, brooding future. Political and social ambitions were shut forever in her father's grave; domestic duties ended when the doors and gates of Nutwood had been locked; and business affairs were in far wiser hands than hers. What should she do with her empty life?
One afternoon, goaded by sad thoughts, she had ridden farther than usual, and, returning, reined her horse in at the brink of a meadow to tighten her coil of hair, shaken by a rapid gallop. Before her a group of young, red, dappled calves lay in the thick grass, their soft eyes wonderingly alert, and all Pan's orchestra seemed rehearsing. A wood-lark in a crab-apple bush set the pitch, a red-bird followed; two crows answered from the top of an ancient pine, and among beech boughs a velvet-throated thrush trilled, while under sedge shadows frogs croaked a hoarse bassoon. From the edge of a pool dimpling the turf white herons rose, flitting slowly across an orange sky, where cloud fringes burned in the similitude of scarlet tulips. If she could cease to be a woman with an aching heart and an immortal soul, what a peaceful home was here among the sinless forest children vast mother earth had called to sing and play in her pine-roofed, grassy nursery. If the sylvan quietude of this Theocritan retreat had power to witch her surging pulses to unbroken calm, she might hide for ever in her own green aisles, secure from stinging shafts of gossip and derision. She lifted the reins and the horse sprang forward.
A year ago Mr. Herriott had sailed. No tidings reached her; no allusion to the "Ahvungah" had appeared in any of the newspapers she searched daily. She knew the vessel would not stop at an American port—would return directly to Europe from the Arctic circle—but the American press would chronicle the close of the expedition. If disaster had overtaken it, how soon could she know?
Was Mr. Herriott frozen fast in the awful desolation of Whale Sound, or sledging in a race with death across that vast, level, white ice desert of compacted snow in central Greenland, eight thousand feet above the sea, swept by Polar winds that never sleep? Wherever Arctic fetters held him, the moon shone constantly two weeks for him, and after the long night a returning sun was now gilding the minarets of icebergs and unlocking the bars of floes.
If he never came back she could indulge the love that so unexpectedly stirred her heart, that had grown swiftly since he left her; if he survived and returned she must hide her affection and herself far from the biting, branding scorn that would always glow in his eyes. How could she bear the dreary coming years of a possibly long life? There were hours in which she tried to hope he would not come back; but recalling that one moment when he held her so tight to his breast, she seemed to feel again the furious beating of his heart which had never belonged to any woman but herself, and, as the memory thrilled her, into her wan face crept a joyful flush. At last, too late, her heart was his, but he no longer desired or valued it. He had cast her out of his life. Riding slowly homeward in the star-powdered, silvery-grey gloaming, she locked her torturing thoughts behind the mask of silence that was becoming habitual, and near the mill met Mrs. Mitchell's tender eyes on watch for her.
A few mornings later, Eglah stood in the dairy door, looking up beyond a sentry line of tall pear trees uniformed in vivid green, to the hillside, where lay the peach orchard a month before in full flower, billowing gently like a wide coverlet of pink silk shaken in sunlight. Followed by Delilah, who knew the haunts of water-rats in the velvet moss low on the banks, she walked toward the creek. Over one corner of the deserted red mill a dewberry vine feathered with blossoms rambled almost to the sagging roof, and along the ruined line of the old race ferns held up their lace fronds to shade the lilac spikes of water-hyacinths. It was a cool, lonely place, sweet with the breath of wild flowers, silent save the endless adagio in minors played by crystal fingers of the stream stealing down the broken, crumbling stone dam. In that quiet nook all outside noises seemed intrusive, and Eglah listened to the beat of a horse's hoofs cantering across the bridge below the mill. Very soon Mr. Boynton appeared and dismounted.
"Good morning, Miss Eglah. A telegram was forwarded from Y——, and as I happened to be at Maurice when it came, I brought it at once."
"Thank you very much."
She took the message and walked away a few steps, struggling for strength to face the worst.
"Mrs. Noel Herriott:"Amos Lea has been ill for months. To-day I am called to Chicago to my sick son. Della will not stay here without me. Some woman ought to come."Amanda Orr."
"Mrs. Noel Herriott:
"Amos Lea has been ill for months. To-day I am called to Chicago to my sick son. Della will not stay here without me. Some woman ought to come.
"Amanda Orr."
"I hope it is good news about your husband?"
"Mr. Boynton, it might be worse. Sickness in Mr. Herriott's household seems to require that I should go to his home for a few days. Please wait here until I can go to the house and find out what must be done. I may trouble you to attend to some matters for me."
Mrs. Mitchell sat on the steps at the rear of the cottage, stemming a bowl of strawberries and warily watching the elusive feints of a white turkey hen picking her way to a nest hidden in a tangle of blackberry vines. Eglah held the open telegram before her eyes and waited.
"I suppose you want me to go?"
"I wish you to be there with me. I can not go alone."
"Dearie, you can't nurse the gardener. If Mr. Herriott were at home he would not listen to any such nonsense."
"I like Amos Lea, and I intend to put him in the hands of a good trained nurse until Mrs. Orr returns."
"That could be done easily by telegraph or letter. But, my baby, if it would comfort you to be in the house——"
Eglah threw up her hand with a warning gesture.
"I wish to stay only a few days; just long enough to assure myself that the old man is carefully attended to. I prefer not to start from Y——, and the train despatcher at Maurice can stop the up train at 11.45. We need no trunk, and I have the money to pay our way on. I shall write and have more forwarded from the bank. Ma-Lila, I wish to start to-night. Can you get ready?"
The little woman's level brows puckered, but the light in her eyes was a caress.
"Can I refuse any of your foolish whims? I have spoiled you all your life, and it is rather late in the day for me to undertake to oppose you. I see Hiram Boynton waiting, and I must arrange with him to have his boys sleep here and take care of everything in our absence. You know my pet cow's calf is only three days old, and her udder needs watching."
They reached Greyledge at noon, accompanied by the middle-aged nurse commended by the matron of a hospital in the neighboring city. At the sound of carriage wheels on the stone driveway, the dogs greeted them from the kennels in the stable yard, and several peals from the front door bell rang through the closed house before the butler, pipe in hand, opened the door. Speechless from astonishment, he staggered back.
"Good morning, Hawkins. How is Amos Lea?"
"About the same, ma'am, the doctor says. Mrs. Herriott, I hope you will excuse the looks of things. If I had known you were coming I would have lighted the furnace and warmed the house and been nearer ready. There is not a female on the place. Della was that prudish she went with her aunt."
"Did Mrs. Orr leave all the keys with you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Bring them to me and show me where they belong. Is Rivers here?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am; also his cousin Nelson, who helps with the horses and dogs; and David Green, the under gardener."
"Hawkins, you know Mrs. Mitchell; she came with me on a visit before my marriage; and this is Mrs. Adams, who will nurse Amos for the present. Open the house and make fires in the 'blue room' and two other bedrooms. I shall be here only a short while, and you must do the best you can for us as regards meals. When the time comes for feeding the dogs I wish to be notified. I am afraid they have forgotten me."
"If you please, ma'am, what is the news from Mr. Herriott? When I saw you I felt sure he must be coming home shortly. We count the days till we see him."
"I am sorry, Hawkins, but no news reaches me now. It has been a long, dreary, dreadful time. I came because Mrs. Orr telegraphed me some one was needed here to look after the sick. Ma-Lila, will you go upstairs with Mrs. Adams while I see Amos?"
Near the gardener's cottage she met David Green, with a bowl of broth in his hands and a scowl on his sunburned face.
"How are you, David? Hearing that Amos is sick, I have brought a good nurse to stay with him till the housekeeper returns. What is the matter with him?"
"Madam, it is mostly crankiness now, in my opinion. Last fall he had a spell of fever that left him ailing, and in January he fell into inflammatory rheumatism that made him as helpless as a baby and fractious as a bull pup. But he got better of it, and able to hobble around his room on crutches. Like the mule he is, he would creep down to the green-houses, hunting something to scold me about, and his crutch slipped on the ice and he hurt his hip joint. The doctor orders him to keep still and not move that leg, but, madam, he shuffles around in his bed for all the world like hyenas in a circus cage. We men take him up as easy as can be and lay him on a cot and change his clothes; but cranky! Cross! The angels couldn't please him. I guess he is sore, and when we jar and hurt him, instead of cursing us with a wholesome, honest oath we are used to, he throws up his arms, rolls back his eyes till they are all white balls, and shouts to the Lord to set Jezreel's hounds, and Og, and the rest of the Bible beasts, and the imps of Belial upon us! He calls us 'godless goats,' and we don't set up to be religious, but he passes for pious and stands high in his church, and it makes us feel creepy, because we don't know when the Lord might happen to listen to him. You know, madam, he has got a strong pull on the master. Mr. Herriott humors his whims, and now he is away we are doing our best for Amos. Every other night I leave my family, three miles away, and sleep here in his room. Mrs. Herriott, I have come to the conclusion that if the master does not get home soon the old man will fret himself to death. Day and night he prays for him. Every morning we bring him a paper, and his poor hands shake while he holds it and searches for news of the vessel, as a pointer hunts partridges. My wife is a first-class cook, and, thinking to please him, she made and sent him this broth. Just now, when he tasted it, the corners of his mouth went nearly to his ears, and he asked me please to pour it into Tzar's pan as I passed the kennel. If I had my choice, I would rather nurse a bucketful of hornets."
"I am glad you have all been so good to him; you especially, who have a wife and children to claim you. I hope Mr. Herriott can soon be at home, and he will thank you. Now your responsibility ceases, because I have employed a good nurse, trained in a hospital, who will know what is best for him and make him obey the doctor's directions. David, I am sure you men will be considerate and respectful while she remains."
At the door of the gardener's house, Snap dashed out, barking viciously. She called his name twice and held out her hand, but, eyeing her suspiciously, he growled and retreated across the threshold. Propped with pillows, Amos was on a cot near the hearth, and a newspaper lay across his knees. The room was bright with sunshine, and when Eglah entered, clad in black, her long crêpe veil thrown back and falling nearly to the floor, the old man stared at her and almost shrieked:
"Has the Lord God taken my lad? You wear widow's black for him?"
"No, Amos. The Lord God took my father, and my mourning is for him."
He threw up his arms.
"God be praised!"
After a moment, he added apologetically:
"Madam, I mean I am thankful Noel is spared. You see, I think only of the boy."
She drew a chair to the cot and took one of the gardener's wasted, gnarled hands in hers.
"I did not hear of your sickness till three days ago, and I came at once, to see if I could not make you more comfortable while Mrs. Orr is away."
"It makes no difference about my worn-out old body—that is a crippled hulk. My mind is in torment because of the lad's danger. Where is he now? In the ice on land, or locked up in the ship of the ungodly name, that can never break loose from the bergs leaning over her? Tell me, was your news later than my letter?"
He dragged from his bosom two worn, soiled envelopes and held them towards her. One was postmarked St. John, N. B., the other Dundee, Scotland. As she opened them a bunch of yellow poppies and a little square of moss fell into her lap. She glanced at the dates. The oldest was from Upernavik, soon after the vessel reached Greenland; the most recent was from off Cape Alexander, where the "Ahvungah" was frozen in.
"No, Amos, your news is the latest I have heard."
Her voice quivered, and replacing the flowers in an envelope, she laid the unread letters on the cot.
"Was your last letter from him the same date as mine?"
"No; it was earlier."
The cold, light-grey eyes in their deep, sunken sockets probed hers like steel.
"Madam, it was your fault he went away."
"No, his word was pledged before our marriage, and I am not responsible for this journey. I did all that was possible to keep him."
Amos leaned forward and grasped her wrist.
"You know you are to blame. What was it you did to him? That night you came—a bride—I saw when he took you from the carriage everything had gone wrong with him. I knew what that grip of his mouth and that red spark in his eyes meant. You did him some wrong."
She shook her head, and, even in his wrath, the hopeless sorrow in her eyes touched him.
"You struck him a bitter, hard blow somewhere. You see, since he was a year old and his mother died, I have watched him. His father was away with his railroads and his mines out West, and Susan and I had the care of him till he was put to his books and had a tutor to teach him Latin. They set him at that stupid business too early. I made his kites, and played marbles with him, and sailed his little boats, and—" His voice broke, and he paused to steady it.
"He was always truthful, and honorable, and generous, but—may the Lord have mercy on him—he was born with the temper of Beelzebub. Not from his mother did he get it, but from his hard old father, Fergus Herriott, who somehow managed to keep himself under check-rein and bit. He never punished the lad but once, and that was when the devil possessed the child. He was barely ten years old. He fell into a terrible rage with Susan about the fit of a bathing suit she made for him, and kicked the clothes into the lake. Then he turned on her like a son of Belial with rough, ugly, sinful language till she cried. His father happened to be in the boat house near by. He came out, took him by the shoulders and shook him, ordering him to apologize instantly to his nurse. The boy set his teeth and shook his head.
"'If you do not apologize properly to her, I shall thrash you.'
"The lad's eyes blazed.
"'As you are my father, you will do as you like, sir.'
"Then and there he thrashed him, Susan howling, but not a sound from him. Mr. Herriott sent him to his room, and ordered Susan not to go near him. There were several railroad officials to dinner that day, and they staid late. Susan sat yonder by the window, crying fit to break her heart, when the lad walked in and went close to her. She held out her arms, and the tears ran down her cheeks.
"'Susan, I am sorry I was such a beast. I am ashamed of what I said, and I beg your pardon. Dear Susan, forgive me.'
"My poor wife, how she hugged and petted him, only he never would let any one kiss him on his lips. As he sat in her lap, with one arm around her neck, his face was deadly white and his eyes looked like two red stars; the devil had not loosed his grip. Then his father called at the doorstep, 'Amos, is Noel here?' When the old man came in, the boy was standing in the middle of the floor, with his hands behind him, and Susan ran forward.
"'If you please, Mr. Herriott, I am sure he is not well. I thought so at the lake side, and he is feverish. His head is hot.'
"'Yes, Susan. Truly his head is too hot. Come, my son.'
"He held out his hand, but Noel did not move. His father went to him, put an arm around him, and forced him away. Next morning the doctor was sent for, found him in a raging fever; said it was measles, but Susan knew better. For a week Mr. Herriott never left that room, even for his meals, and he chastised him no more. Each day he was prouder and fonder of the boy. Madam, I am telling you all this that you may be sure I make no mistakes about him. He was hard hit the day he went away. There is a place far around the beach bend, a stone bench, where he has fought battles with himself since he wore frilled shirts. It is his stamping-ground when his blood is up, and the devil squats at his ears. Now I want to know why he spent his last night at home down there alone?"
His bony hand tightened its grip like the claw of an eagle on her wrist, and beneath the shaggy white brows his keen, fiery eyes demanded answer.
"Madam, you drove him there."
"Mr. Herriott was very angry with me. Unintentionally I had wounded him, and he did not forgive me; I fear he never will. He is not to blame. I did what seemed right and necessary at the time, but afterward I found I had made a terrible mistake. It is all my fault, not his. Amos, I am very unhappy, far more so than Mr. Herriott; but some matters I discuss with no one, and you must ask me no more questions."
"Of course he was not to blame; he never is. You did not read his letters." He held them toward her.
"No, they were intended solely for you."
"But I am more than willing you should see what he says about the God-forsaken den of bears and wolves where he is blundering around in the dark."
"Thank you, Amos, but they would only distress me."
Watching her pale, beautiful face, the old man sighed.
"Madam, if you are not to blame for his going on this wild, godless chase, I must not feel so bitter against his young wife as I have done. Dear lad! The very last words he spoke to me that day at the gate were, 'If I never come back, do all you can for Mrs. Herriott, for my sake. Amos, I have loved her since she was ten years old.'"
There was a tap at the door, and the doctor entered. Eglah rose and drew her veil over her face, but Amos clutched her sleeve.
"Doctor, this is Mrs. Herriott, the lad's wife."
"I am glad to see you here, doctor. Knowing Mrs. Orr was called away, I have a trained nurse, who will help you get Amos Lea out of bed. I shall send her at once to you for instructions."
Without attempting to analyze her complex emotions, Eglah surrendered herself to the strange new comfort of wandering hour after hour about the house, where every nook and corner babbled of the owner. Despite her efforts to placate and win the dogs, they sullenly rejected her overtures, echoing the repudiation of their master, and watching her with suspicious enmity. On the second afternoon the doctor and nurse assured her the gardener would soon be relieved by electricity, massage, and tonics, and when a letter from Mrs. Orr to Hawkins announced her expected return two days later, there seemed no reason for prolonging Eglah's visit. She wished to avoid an interview with the housekeeper, and arranged to start south a few hours earlier than the time fixed for her arrival. In the stone cottage she spent a portion of each day; had gone carefully over Arctic maps and charts with Amos, outlining the probable course of the exploring party. She explained some terms, and gave him a duplicate of the calendar she had made for herself, whereby he could tell when and how long the moon shone, what day the sun set, and when, after months, it would rise again. As the old man watched through his silver spectacles the sad, worn, pallid face, and realized that she too suffered, his resentful antipathy diminished, and Mr. Herriott's farewell charge began to invest her with an unexpected sanctity.
The last day of her stay was unusually warm for the season, and after reading to the sick man and leaving a bunch of jonquils near his cot, Eglah went quite late in the afternoon for a farewell walk along the beach. She coaxed the dogs unavailingly. Pilot, the collie, followed as far as the stone stile, and then deserted her. Beyond the end of the curve, where silver poplars came to the water's edge, she found a white marble seat, shaped like a horseshoe, with broad arms and an arched back elaborately carved. Winter rains had rippled and drifted the sand over its feet, and across one corner a bramble strayed. It was here Mr. Herriott had spent his last night at home. She brushed aside dead leaves, sat down, and plucked away the encroaching vine. Deep in her heart sang his final words to Amos: "I have loved her since she was ten years old." Living or dead, he was hers; angry and estranged, but hers—always hers.
She thought of what life might have been with him here, remembered the warm, close clasp of his hand, the lover light in his fine eyes that was a caress that first hour on the cars; and recalling the last moment, when he strained her to his breast, her fair face flushed, her sad heart thrilled. Now that beautiful "might have been" lay irrecoverable as the "lost land of Lyonnesse," under its transparent shroud, and haunting echoes of tender tones tolled faintly, like buried bells of Folge Fond.
The day had been sultry, but the wind rose with the full, red moon that swung now above the cliffs, a globe of burnished copper, taking on the glory of gold as it climbed higher, and from some distant belfry a vesper benediction, low and sweet, slowly drifted over the great lake. The water, glassy an hour before, thrilled and swelled in answer to the fingers of the wind, as a viol to the touch of its bow, and wavelets widened, shimmered as they ran. An eastbound schooner, all sails set, midway from shore to horizon, followed the path of light like a gigantic white moth fluttering upward to the moon. Where did her rays find Mr. Herriott to-night? Sleeping his last sleep in the wind-carved marble sepulchre of glittering sastrugi, with that white moon of the "Great Ice" silvering the face now so dear to his abandoned wife? Or frozen and embalmed under the lee of towering blue hummocks, in the grim shadow of looming iron-bound shores? Or dying of starvation in a lampless, rent, ruined, iglooyah, with only Innuit corpses encircling him?
She fell on her knees, bowed her head on the seat, and prayed as never before for his safety.
The wind freshened from the south, and far away in some mountain lair thunder growled. Eglah looked long at the beautiful curve of the land, at the shivering poplars turning white in anticipation of storm, at the irregular outline of the old stone pile projecting its spectral shadow on the shining water lapping the terrace wall. Two hours later a gale swept the lake, and under bluish glare of lightning the waves showed their flashing teeth.
With fine feminine instinct that penetrates far below the surface, yet gives no hint of the depths, Eliza divined that the unhappy woman desired unbroken solitude, and the foster-mother went early to her own bedroom.
Slowly Eglah mounted the spiral stairs that led to the billiard room and thence to the tower. The former was dark, and as she placed her candle on the table something fluttered and fell. It was a Chiriqui quetzal, perched upon a small slab brought from Palenque and fastened as a bracket above the fireplace. She picked it up, smoothed the brilliant, drooping feathers, and set it securely on the table, but a legend she had associated with it made her shiver as she opened the door and stepped into the tower.
High above her, and just under the roof, the great lamp with its reflector threw light far out over the tossing waste of water, kindling crowns of fire where the wave crests broke. She sat down on a wooden bench at one of the open arches, and watched the departing cloud fringe of the storm rushing from the far, sweet, throbbing South, to the icy silence of a more distant North; listened to the fitful moan of tired waves, trying to sob themselves to rest. Would the fleetföhnreach Greenland, melt the blue cables strong as steel that held iceberg ranges, domed with frosted silver—open the yellow eyes of poppies, and waft the ivory gulls back to weary watchers? Often a blessing there, it was sometimes a curse. Could that fierce, hot, southern breath battle against the ceaseless wind, snow-laden even in sunshine, that sweeps forever from palæocrystic seas across the white desolation of the great ice cap? Persistent study of Northern travels had so completely filled Eglah's mind with Arctic images, that by an inevitable magnetism every change of atmospheric conditions pointed to the Pole.
As the night waned, the moon emerged from ragged clouds, and gradually the lake quieted to its wonted crooning monologue, broken only by the strophe and antistrophe of startled water-fowl scattered by the storm. Eglah heard the clock strike two, and went down to the billiard room. The candle was flickering, and in its spasmodic light the eyes of the Quiché holy bird had a preternatural, sinister glitter. She hurried downstairs and locked herself in the den, the master's favorite room. Cabinets were sealed, busts shrouded in cambric hoods, pictures veiled. Only Mr. Herriott's desk remained as she remembered it, and here, with her arms crossed on the morocco cover and her face hidden upon them, she watched the night depart, saw the dawn of the day that would take her away forever from the home she had learned to love too late.