A Speckled Bird Part 32

"When father heard last, he was in Norway, but since then I read an account of a dinner given to the party of which he was a member, by a geographical society in London."

"You have received no letter?"

"None recently, and I do not expect any."

"Because you do not deserve any. I am so disappointed in him."

"In what respect? I imagined that in your eyes, as in father's, he was simply perfect."

"He is capable of something far better than lounging through life with his hands in his pockets, and loafing around the world. If he could only have the good luck to lose his money, he might accomplish what G.o.d makes such men for."

"He is not an idle tramp. He is kept busy dancing attendance on his exacting bride."

"Bride!" exclaimed Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l, with such startling shrillness that Delilah sprang out of her lap and surveyed her with astonishment.

"Not a bride of pink flesh, on whom he can bestow collars of diamonds, but an old dame of h.o.a.ry locks, whose harsh jargon he considers musical, and who, having taken his purse and tied him to her ap.r.o.n strings, drags him from the bowels of the earth to the mountains of the moon, amusing him with photographs of microbes and eclipses, and with prehistoric skeletons that her relentless h.o.r.n.y claws have stolen from their lawful graves. Long ago he was wedded to 'Science,' and of course he keeps his bridal vows."

"I am sure you do not fully understand him, and I wonder he did not marry Miss Stanley; she is so lovely, and he certainly admired her."

"She is indeed a luscious beauty, and attracted him, but if he really had any serious intentions, I think she lost him that night when the alarm of fire emptied the theatre. Ours was a proscenium box in the second tier. Eleanor Stanley had dined with Captain Sefton's sister, he was her escort, and I went with Mr. Herriott. Of course you know all about the horrible tragedy, but I never told any one what preceded it.

Toward the end, and while the curtain was down, Captain Sefton so far forgot himself as to repeat an unpardonably _risque_ story of a smart set leader, at which Eleanor laughed heartily. I stared at my bouquet of orchids, and lifted them to shield my face where I felt the blood.

Without moving an eyelash Mr. Noel sat like a sphinx, looking steadily at Eleanor, then took my opera gla.s.s and watched a party of pretty girls in the dress circle. His face was as absolutely impa.s.sive as one of the masks frescoed on the ceiling. In the middle of the next and closing act, a scream from the rear of the stage startled us, and almost simultaneously two of the ballet girls rushed from behind the wings, with fire blazing in their short, gauzy skirts. One ran to the corner of the stage just under our box, and the actors fled from her. Mr. Herriott put his hand heavily on my shoulder.

"Do not move an inch till I come."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed his overcoat and my velvet opera cloak, stepped on the railing of the box, measured the distance with his eye and leaped down.

He struck on his feet, and staggered, but the next instant he reached the girl, who ran shrieking up and down, caught her, threw my cloak over her head, pressed her to the floor, covered her with his overcoat, and rolled her over and over as if she were a ball. Of course she was horribly burned, but she lived. The other poor creature kept her hands before her face as a screen from the flames, missed her footing, stumbled over the footlights and fell among the orchestra chairs. The musicians smothered the flames, but she died after two hours of torture.

Mr. Herriott's gloves saved his hands, but one wrist was badly blistered, and his mustache singed. When we were going home I told him how enthusiastically Eleanor admired and praised his bravery, and that she declared she would strive to win his affection were he not so 'goody-goody'; she feared he would expect her to be equally pious. A queer expression I could not understand crossed his face, and when he spoke his voice was stern:

"'I am not pious; more is the pity! At least I am too honest to accept praise I do not deserve. Please be so kind as not to refer again to this evening, several surprising incidents of which I shall be glad to forget.' A few days later he sent to replace my scorched velvet, that gorgeous ivory satin opera cloak brocaded with lilies in silver, which father and you wished me to accept, and I based my refusal on his request, as the mere sight of it would inevitably remind him of a night neither of us wished to recall. Look yonder."

"Yes; there must be a picket off that white game yard fence, for I am positive I fastened the gate this morning. Run on ahead and open the gate wide, for when they are driven back they never can find the crack where they came out. That white rooster is all ruffled up for a fight with the red one. Scare the hens back and stand on one side."

When the fugitives had been shut in, the two women stood admiring the flock.

"Dearie, do you know how old these chickens are? Forty years before railroads were built in this state, your grandfather brought them in a champagne basket on the top of a stage-coach from somewhere in Maryland, and the person who gave them to him had imported them from England forty years before. Think of it!"

"I do, with astonishment difficult to express. More than eighty years old, and no sign of decrepitude in crowing, fighting and laying eggs!

Little mother, what are _tarrididdles_?"

Laughing, she put her hands on Eliza's shoulder and shook her gently.

The little woman pinched her ear.

"Don't talk slang to me. You know I did not mean these very identical fowls are those that came in the champagne basket, but the original trio, two hens and a c.o.c.k, were kept in a separate yard, and so the stock has remained pure game for more than forty years. They are such beauties, and to the last day of her life your grandmother was so proud and fond of them. One morning when we were feeding them she told me how General Maurice had laughed over the cunning of one of the negroes whose duty it was to attend to the fowl yards. The general had promised a setting of eggs to a friend in a neighboring county, and ordered the man to bring him one dozen perfectly fresh. The negro protested against a violation of the rule that no one else should own the white games, so that if stolen they could be traced. His master insisted, and when the eggs were handed to him he packed them very carefully in cotton, to prevent jostling, and sent them to his friend. Some time afterward, a letter reached your grandfather, informing him none of the eggs had hatched, and he called the man and read the letter to him.

"'Narry aigg hatched? Well, I made sure they couldn't, for I am 'sponsible for keeping dem chickens safe at home and I 'tends to my bizness. You see, marster, I knowed you was in a mighty tight fix, 'cause natch.e.l.ly you hated to say no when Dr. Glenn axed for 'em, and most natch.e.l.ly you didn't want our yaller-breasted, bra.s.s-winged white games crowing in other folks' yards, and so I just pintedly shuck 'em and shuck 'em like thunder, till they was foamy enough for Celie's omlet skillet.'"

CHAPTER XIX

If owners of old manorial houses kept frank and faithful log-books, strange domestic records might now and then be read, rivalling in tragic incidents those of pa.s.sing ships. Conspicuously infelicitous was the stream of events beating against Calvary House and reducing an ancient, broad estate and handsome three-storied brick residence to a few impoverished acres, and a rambling structure partly destroyed by fire, and wholly abandoned to vacancy and isolation in consequence of grewsome gossip. During eighty years the proprietorship had been vested in only two families, totally unrelated; in the first, the reckless extravagance and unbridled careers of four beautiful women depleted the domestic coffer, necessitated the sacrifice and sale of the property, and drove a weakly indulgent father to suicide. In the second the vices of sons plunged the widowed mother into melancholia and an insane asylum.

From time to time portions of land were sold to enable the boys to continue their wild carousals. Fratricidal strife ensued, and one brother spent the dismal residue of his days in the penitentiary, expiating the murder of the other. The vicious round of horse-racing, c.o.c.k-fighting, fox-hunting, gambling and drinking once madly run had ended in the final wreck, and what remained of the estate fell into the hands of Mr. Herriott's father, whose agent held the mortgage.

Sufficiently grim was the foundation of facts; yet still more appalling the superstructure of neighborhood traditions, and the ghoulish tales of superst.i.tious servants. Venerable trees, whose sheltering arms might have veiled the ruin, had been over-grown by mistletoe, until very few survived to stand guard, and when a hunter crept with his pointer through broom-sedge waist high all over the lawn, his cigar spark set the whole aflame, and only two fine old oaks close to the house were left as sentinels. Later, a lightning bolt destroyed one; two years after, an equinoctial gale blew the other half across the mossy roof.

Stark, weather beaten, its broken windows like eyeless sockets in a skull, the old house, dumb in desolation, stood in dire need of the mercies of bell, candle, censer, and aspergill to exorcise its garrison of unholy spectres. Five years after the place had been given by Noel Herriott to the "Brothers of the Order of Calvary," lime, paint, wallpaper, patient toil and a wise appreciation of the adaptability of angles, corridors, dormer windows and verandas, in architectural alterations, had transformed it into a quaintly irregular but picturesque structure. Outside mouldy walls were curtained with ampelopsis lace, while from a circular belfry between the original square rock chimneys, a deep-toned bell swung below a tall gilt cross, and uttered its holy message of peace to a troubled and tragic past. The bas.e.m.e.nt had been converted into a refectory, kitchen and store room, the large apartments were part.i.tioned into individual cells, and an infirmary; and the long drawing-room became a chapel, with a small oratory adjoining. Here a pipe organ sounded through the arch leading into the chapel, and over this opening a purple curtain fell when service ended. Beyond and in line with the oratory, a one-story wing with a wide cloistered piazza looked toward the rear of the house, and held a sacristy; then three small chambers fronting the vine-draped cloister behind whose arches paced, book in hand, fathers, brothers and lay brothers.

In the early stages of the era of renovation the place had resembled an industrial farm rather than a religious retreat; but gradually, as orchard and vineyard were replanted, gardens outlined and cultivated, a solemn, peaceful silence enveloped Calvary House, broken by no ruder sounds than Angelus, chants from the chapel, low-swelling organ tones, and that peculiarly sweet, thrilling threnody of hedge sparrows moaning in a ragged thicket of very old lilacs. Along the front of the sloping lawn a fence divided it from the turnpike leading into the city, and over the wide wooden gate sprang an arch bearing in black letters, Calvary House, and surmounted by a cross. From the gate latch swung the porter's bell.

Since the day when, standing at an open grave close to Leighton's mound in Evergreen, Father Temple had read the committal service as his wife's coffin was lowered, and p.r.o.nounced the farewell benediction, the springs of his busy life seemed to have broken. Max Harlberg and the few who had followed the hea.r.s.e, stole away, leaving the priest on his knees. Later, as stars came out to guard the hosts of sleepers, a watchman found him p.r.o.ne on the damp mound, and in a heavy stupor. An ambulance carried him to the nearest hospital, where he rallied slowly from an attack of pneumonia that left his lungs too weak to permit the possibility of preaching, and the doctors warned him a year's rest was imperative.

Engagements for "missions" and "retreats" were cancelled, and his superior summoned him home, but after a few days advised him to go South and visit his relatives in Y---- until the winds of March had blown out their fury. On his return, still thin and wan, he resumed his duties, and from Prime to Compline missed no service. After Vespers, the tolling of the _De Profundis_ bell called all to their knees in silent prayer for the dead, and his bowed head was always the last lifted. How much penance was self-imposed none knew, but a change had come into the habitually sad face; keen mental strife, devouring anxiety, were at an end, and the large dark eyes told of an inward patience that was not yet peace, of an acceptance of the verdict that his life spelled hopeless failure. So marked was the alteration in figure and features, that one sunny day at Calvary House, as Mr. Herriott grasped his hand, he was painfully startled.

"Vernon! You are little more than a holy shadow! If starving is the regimen prescribed here, I do not feel tempted to tarry even for a day."

"Noel--G.o.d bless you, dear old fellow! At last you have remembered us, and how well you look! The bare sight of your superb strength is tonic.

Come into the chapel. Terce bell is sounding. After a little the Brotherhood will greet you."

Under the guidance of Father Superior Elverton, a gaunt man of unusual height, with the ascetic jaw of a Trappist, and dreamy eyes mystical as Hugo of St. Victor, Mr. Herriott was shown fields, garden and buildings, and after dinner in the refectory, where, in honor of his presence, conversation was allowed, he asked the privilege of being left alone with Father Temple. It was a warm day, and drawing chairs to a shaded recess of the cloister, Mr. Herriott said:

"I am so glad the weather favored me to-day for this visit. It will rain soon."

"No; look at that deep blue, clear sky. I see no prophecy of rain, but you have tried so many climates, doubtless you are weather wise."

"If a man who has slept often in tents, open boats and on the bare ground learns nothing of nature's atmospheric signal code, he is far below savages in intelligence, and more ignorant than brutes. You of the shut-in clan are not skilled meteorologists, but time is too precious to be wasted in idle weather chat. Vernon, there is much I should like to know, yet I shrink from questioning you. Many letters have been lost, and my home news came in s.n.a.t.c.hes, sometimes with no connection, no coherence. I have thought of you constantly, and now what you are willing to tell me of all that has happened since we parted in New York that Sunday night, I shall be glad to hear."

Leaning his elbow on the brick base of an arch and bowing his head in his palm, Father Temple narrated the circ.u.mstances that attended the death of his wife and son, withholding nothing. His m.u.f.fled voice was steady and pa.s.sionless, as if reading from the breviary, and when the face lifted it showed only the quiet hopelessness in eyes of one going back over a battle-field where all that was cherished went down.

"Thank you, Temple. It might have been worse, and at least you must be comforted in knowing that at the last she relented and did you justice."

"The last has become first. All that preceded it I have cast away, and that final hour of forgiveness, that touch on my head--that feeble clinging of her fingers--is what remains of my past life--what sustains me for the future."

"Try to avoid morbid retrospection. Your expiation has been so complete you have no grounds for self-reproach; you are still a young man, and your life work is ahead of you."

The priest threw out one hand, and his trained tone broke suddenly.

"Expiation will never end while I have breath to pray--not until the same grave that holds my victims covers me. You can not understand, because you know no more about love than the rubric! If you had ever felt your wife's lips on yours, or the clasp of your child's arms, and heard his glad, tender cry of 'father!'--you would realize that no expiation could be sufficient, if your hand had smitten them to ruin."

"Perhaps I do understand the torture more thoroughly than you imagine, and you must allow me to say that were I as sadly circ.u.mstanced as yourself, I should set my back to the past, and resolutely hunt for sunshine in coming years. Deliberate, intentional villainy was never your sin, and for a foolish boy's rash haste you did everything possible to atone. I shall be sorry to see you so unmanly as to sink down in the mildew of an abject melancholy. Your surroundings invite morbid memories, and just here, Vernon, let me say I do not like your refectory. It is dark, damp, mouldy, and you must make a change.

I should enjoy breakfasting in the catacombs quite as much. Ask your superior to estimate the cost of building a refectory on this floor, say to the left yonder, and perhaps the matter may be arranged satisfactorily. Another bell! What office comes next?"

"That is to notify us 'free time' is over for the day. We have an hour in which to employ ourselves without direction. Below the vegetable garden Brother Theodore comes from his pet strawberry bed, and over yonder, what looks like a huge black bird with flapping white wings is Brother Aristide dusting the leaves of his grapevines with some insecticide powder. He came from Burgundy, and believes that ledge behind the line of cherry trees lying south-southeast will give him Chambertin equal to the best in Cote d'Or. You see even here each trundles his recreation hoop once a day."

An east wind had spun fine silver cloud lines curving across the blue, cl.u.s.tering, widening into two vast, fleecy pinions that were floating slowly to the gates of the west. Despite sunshine, chilliness edged the air, and Father Temple coughed hoa.r.s.ely.

"Your reverence should not stay here next winter. It is too humid. As the crow flies and the wind sweeps, the Atlantic can not be more than twenty miles away, and when northeast gales howl from Barnegat to Hatteras, this is no sanatorium for you. If you have no special preference for tuberculosis, and have not vowed slow suicide on that altar, I should be glad if you would select some other mode of exit when you finally say good-bye. Consumption robbed me of my father--I hope I shall not lose my friend also thereby."