A Speckled Bird Part 30

"I think you brought some papers you wish me to sign. May I do so now?"

"When you have examined them, they must be signed in the presence of a notary public, whom you can find at my office, or, if you prefer, he shall come here."

He laid a roll of type-written doc.u.ments on the table and rose.

"Shall I leave the box with you for to-day?"

Impatiently she pushed it aside.

"Take it away--keep it. I hope I may never set my eyes on it again."

The brooding shadow on her pale, rigid face made the lawyer's blue eyes cloudy.

"Dear child, I have always been the intimate friend of the Maurice family. I loved your sweet, young mother, and I hope you know I am willing to help you in every way possible, and that you will not hesitate to call upon me."

"Thank you. I am so sure of your sincerity, I shall begin at once to ask your counsel. There are social complications that make a pleasant residence here problematical, and consideration of the course most expedient for me to pursue leaves me in doubt and perplexity. I have thought of opening the house and grounds two weeks hence, in order to celebrate my father's birthday by a _fete champetre_, to which every family inscribed on grandmother's visiting list should be invited. I prefer to throw rather than pick up the gauntlet. You thoroughly comprehend the situation, and I should like your advice."

"Wait a while. Go slowly; social wounds do not heal by first intention.

Be chary of invitations, and do not hunt for challenges. Hold your own firmly, but courteously, and in time I think you will win. For your father's sake, try to conciliate the members of his church; they are an influential social factor here. Mrs. Maurice's old friends will rally around 'Marcia's baby,' and you must be patient. Later, when sure of your ground, you can give all the festivals you like without receiving an avalanche of 'regrets' that would easily paper your hall. My wife and the girls will call at once, and I hope you will come to us just as often as possible; but whenever you wish to see me, drive down to the office, or write me, as, for some reasons, it is advisable I should be here very rarely. Dear child, while your features are like your handsome father's, you resemble your mother in many ways, and I am glad to find you have the crystal conscience and flawless instinct of honor that all men reverenced in General Maurice. Good-bye. I have overstayed my time.

Tell Boynton to bring up the two horses I had broken and trained for your saddle. One of them, the bay, took blue ribbon at the State fair last fall, and there is no better stock south of Kentucky."

She walked with him half way down the hall, and they shook hands.

"Good-bye, Mr. Whitfield; thank you for many things. You will find Ma-Lila in the dining-room, and whatever you think she ought to know of to-day's interview, I prefer you should tell her. She is indeed my second mother."

After a while she went slowly to her father's room. The door was half open, but she paused and knocked.

He stood looking over an old account book, and, without glancing up, said fretfully:

"Well, what is it?"

"Father, I came to pack your valise."

"It is already packed."

"May I come in? I want to tell you----"

"No. You will say nothing that I should wish to hear."

"Will you allow me to see the telegram which I fear annoys you?"

"The ashes only are at your service--all that remains of it."

"Tell me, at least, why you are going, and where?"

"First to Washington. Elsewhere as circ.u.mstances may direct."

"Please let me go with you----"

"Most certainly you stay where you are."

"Father--my father!" She advanced toward him, but recalling the shudder with which he had shaken her arms from his shoulders, she stepped back to the threshold.

"Oh, father, you are cruel! You know you are breaking my heart!"

The sob, the pa.s.sion of pain in her voice, smote and hurt him sorely, but he did not falter an instant.

"In breaking your will, your heart may be healed."

He had not looked at her, and all the while the index finger of his right hand moved up and down columns of figures, searching for some item, which was finally found and marked. Leaning against the door, she watched him until Aaron rang the dinner bell.

"Father, may I drive you to the station?"

"No."

"Then I prefer to say good-bye here, as I am going to my own room."

"As you please. Good-bye, Eglah."

"I wish I could share this trouble, whatever it may be that calls you away; but since you elect to condemn me to the torture of suspense, I have no alternative but to endure it as best I can. Good-bye, my dear father."

She held out both hands, but, instead of approaching her, he opened a gla.s.s door leading to the colonnade and disappeared.

The velvet, paternal touch caressing her tenderly from the days of her babyhood had, during the last two years, stiffened, hardened into a steel gauntlet, strangling her.

The betrayal of his selfish and unscrupulous desire to violate the provisions of the will had painfully startled and keenly mortified her; but the barb that sank deepest in her sore, aching heart was the realization of her father's deliberate plan to humiliate and punish her.

Was his persistent effort to force a marriage with Mr. Herriott based on the determination to hasten her unlimited control of her grandmother's estate? Until now, this explanation had not occurred to her, because the clause binding her to the trusteeship--which rankled ceaselessly in his mind--had made no impression on her memory. Maturely she deliberated, weighing the past in the light of the new supposition, but this solution was rejected as inadequate. In view of Mr. Herriott's indefinite absence and studied silence, her father's obstinate adherence to his matrimonial ultimatum remained inexplicable. That day ended her overtures for reconciliation; and she laid the ax to the root of her olive tree.

The next morning was Sunday--the first after their return--and she ordered the carriage.

"Little mother, I am going with you to eleven o'clock service, and I am sure you understand it is a tribute of respect to grandmother, that after many years of absence I attend first the church she helped to build."

Curious eyes watched for Miss Kent in another church, where her father had worshipped, and carried her mother, and when, daintily robed in white, Eglah walked with the overseer's wife along the Methodist aisle and sat down in the Maurice pew, a sudden mist blurred the vision of many in the congregation, and old Dr. Eggleston wiped his spectacles and whispered to his wife:

"Poor Marcia's baby! I can never forget her pitiful little wail for an hour after she was born. Ah, her face is like a lily just lifted, hunting for its G.o.d."

Henceforth social lines were indicated by an apparently trivial distinction; the small circle that in former years received Judge Kent, and the strangers and new residents of Y---- spoke of the mistress of Nutwood as Miss Kent; but to the ma.s.s of old families she was always "Marcia's child," or "Mrs. Maurice's granddaughter."

Very few typical Southern homes, representing wealth, liberal education, and cultured artistic taste when 1861 dawned, have survived the jagged wounds of war, the still more destructive bayonet-loaded harrow of "reconstruction," and the merciless mildew of poverty that tarnished ante-bellum splendor.

Nutwood escaped comparatively intact, because, while the owner lived, her revenue--drawn in part from European investments made early in the war by friends in London--enabled her to maintain and repair the property until her plantations could be readjusted under the new regime; and, after her death, the managers of the estate had jealously guarded it from the inroads of decay.

Outside conditions, social and domestic, had changed utterly; new canons prevailed, new manners of strange laxity rolled over former dikes of purity, refinement, and decorum; but the turbid tide of up-to-date flippancy broke and ebbed from the tall iron gates of the old house on the hill. Here decadence was excluded, and one coming into the long-closed mansion inhaled a vague haunting aroma, as if old furniture, gla.s.s, china, books, paintings, and silver had been sprinkled with powdered sandalwood, lavender, and rose leaves that blended with the subtle pervading atmosphere of hereditary racial pride.

It resembled other homes in Y---- as little as some gallery of brilliant, glaring impressionist pictures suggests a cabinet of exquisite miniatures, rich mosaics, and carved ivory, where the witching glamour of mellowing centuries hovers.

Eglah found only two scars of time. The conservatory was empty and closed, and in the rear of the house several rows of low brick walls showed where formerly stood what Mrs. Maurice called her "grapery," a sunny spot enclosed with gla.s.s, alluring to her grandchild, who had climbed a step-ladder to reach shouldered cl.u.s.ters, as large as her head, of translucent, golden _Cha.s.selas_.