A Speckled Bird Part 19

"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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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--Labna, 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 a.s.sure 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 G.o.d'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 c.o.o.n, 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 be _in 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 cla.s.sification of her as a fossil. She is alive to her finger tips with enthusiasm for his work, in which she is his ablest a.s.sistant, 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 subst.i.tute; 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--a.s.sociation. 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 cla.s.s 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 b.u.t.terfly to cla.s.sify 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 b.u.t.terflies. On top of Mount Washington survives a colony of b.u.t.terflies 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 the _OEneis_ household 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-gla.s.ses 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 Phaedra Swan Hall, whose mission seems to be the emanc.i.p.ation of her s.e.x from bondage to G.o.d 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 role 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 a.s.sented with alacrity. When he promptly married the woman chosen, Mrs. Helen Phaedra 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 Phaedra 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 a.s.sist 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 Phaedra 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 sanct.i.ty, and fireside _lararium_, 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 aegisthus as Agamemnon to Chryseis.'

As if the G.o.ds 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 G.o.d's decree of the s.e.xes? 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 it _chic_ to 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. Mitch.e.l.l 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. Mitch.e.l.l 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.