A Speckled Bird Part 38

"What do you wish?"

She held out the cup.

"Some water, please."

She reeled, clutched at the wall, and for an instant everything spun round. He placed her in the porter's folding chair, and when he held the cup to her mouth saw that her teeth chattered. She drank spasmodically, and a long, shuddering sigh drifted across her white lips.

"You must lie down and rest. The porter will arrange your berth."

She shook her head and rose.

"You cannot walk alone; lean on me."

"Yes, I can help myself now. I was thirsty and dizzy."

She drew back, but he put his arm around her, holding her firmly against him, and placed her on the seat in the drawing-room. She pointed to the carnations.

"The perfume is overpowering. I can't reach them. Please take them out."

Lifting an arm he snapped the string.

"Like every other souvenir and symbol of to-night, they are simply sickening."

Raising the window he threw the flowers into a river across which the locomotive was cautiously feeling its way. He opened his own satchel, leaning against hers on the opposite seat, took out a silver flask, and poured some ruby, aromatic liquid into the cup.

"You are sadly spent; take this."

"No, I do not need anything more."

"You must. It is merely a mild c.o.c.ktail."

"No, Mr. Herriott, I prefer not."

"A few hours ago did you swear to obey me? Drink it."

She hid her face in her hands and shivered.

"Eglah, try to control yourself."

"Please don't take any trouble on my account; just leave me alone with my torturing forebodings. No one but G.o.d can help me now. The sight of me is painful to you, and I shrink from annoying you. Mr. Herriott, please leave me to myself."

He sat down beside her, the cup in his hand.

"To-night you have made me suffer more than you will ever understand--you have hurt me beyond all possibility of healing--and, perhaps, in the terribly sudden overthrow of beautiful hopes you had called into existence, I may have seemed harsh. If so, you must pardon any desperate words my torture wrung from me. Poor child, you have sorrows enough without any additions from my hand. I cannot trust myself to talk to you; my temper is sometimes beyond control, and you have bruised my heart so sorely I am not sure of self-command. Poor little girl! Do me the favor to drink this, because I ask it."

He held the cup to her lips and she drank. He took a pillow from the opposite seat and put it behind her head.

"If you need anything you have only to open the door and I shall come."

"Mr. Herriott, there is but one thing I shall ever ask you to do for me.

The ring you placed on my finger I took off at your request. Here it is.

With your own hand put it back where it belongs, and it will be there when I die."

She held out her hand with the ring in her palm. He looked at her intently, and his lips tightened.

"Repeat a mockery? A shameful farce!"

He lifted the glittering circle, tossed it up twice, struggling with the impulse to hurl it through the window, then suddenly slipped it on her finger, dropped her hand, and, picking up his satchel, left her.

Would the night never end? If Duncan Keith refused to sell? She thought of quiet, lovely olive-clad plains in Sicily, with pergolas cool in green shadows of vines, where they might retreat from disgraceful publicity. Mr. Herriott scorned, repudiated her, and henceforth she could devote herself entirely to tender care of her father. Ambition and hope were dead, but was there any anaesthetic to still the burning stings of memory? She went to the opposite seat and rested her head against the open window. A thin, sallow, fading old moon hung like a spectre in the sky where the morning star lighted the way for the coming new day, and the dew-sprinkled air swept in, spiced with waves of aroma from a blooming vineyard.

Hamlets, meadows, fields, bridges, the looming shadow of a wooded mountain fled past as the train rocked, hummed, and flew on. Looking up at the quiet heavens, Eglah lifted her hands and heart in pa.s.sionate appeal.

"Dear G.o.d, have mercy upon us! If I did wrong, forgive my sin. Help me now to save my poor unfortunate father, and I will strive to be a better Christian all the remainder of my days."

At eight o'clock a waiter brought her breakfast. Later, when Mr.

Herriott came in, it was evident he had mastered himself; the fury of white heat had chilled to cold steel. He was very pale, and an unusual rigidity locked his features.

"You must be very tired of this close place, and I am glad we shall change cars. It is a fine day, and the scenery along the route will interest you. Here is our train. Give me your wrap and satchel."

The change was into a parlor car with fresh, linen-covered revolving chairs, and wide windows framing lovely spring pastorals--sheep on a green hillside, cattle knee deep in rock-bedded crystal streams, and everywhere the busy bird world nest building.

Eglah drew a deep breath of relief, and, as Mr. Herriott pushed a ha.s.sock under her feet, she looked up at him.

"Thank you. Will you be so kind as to tell me when we shall reach the place where your ward lives?"

"I think the train has about made up lost time, and we are due at Woodbury at half-past six. It is not on the trunk line, and we take a narrow gauge just beyond Carville."

Both wound their watches, and then, liberally supplied with magazines and papers, settled comfortably in adjoining seats. She was the only woman in the car, and a dozen men were scattered about, a few playing cards, some dozing, others absorbed in newspapers.

Mr. Herriott sat in front of his companion, his chair turned half around and toward the window. After a time he took from his satchel a folded chart and note-book. Spreading the former across his knees, he appeared oblivious of all but the lines and figures, yet the angles in his bronze face did not soften. Eglah had taken off her hat, hoping to ease the teasing pain in her temples. She rested her head against the back of the chair, and held up an open magazine, but no page was turned, and as she laid it in her lap she shut her eyes.

Her thoughts drifted to a small villa near Messina which Judge Kent had expressed a wish to occupy because he chanced to see it in a rosy mantle of almond blossoms. Mr. Whitfield would attend to estate matters, and Boynton could be trusted to manage the plantations, though they were miles apart. She could do as she pleased now with her money, and if she failed in her mission to Woodbury she would ask her father to take her abroad at once, until Mr. Herriott returned. During that time public discussion of "Ely Twiggs" would end, and probably she need never come back to America. Mr. Herriott evidently wished her out of his life, forever out of his sight, and certainly he should be gratified. Her father could not suspect her reason for going to Europe; he knew how to keep newspapers from her, and as he did not dream she knew the dreadful truth, they might resume the dear old life. So profound was her revery that she had unconsciously opened her eyes, and they looked out, seeing, not the farms and forests gliding by the window, but the sapphire sky, the purple sea, the snow of lemon groves, the red glow of oleander-walled gardens, and the silvery grey-green olive orchards where she might hide her father from shame, herself from the withering scorn of Mr. Herriott's cruel eyes.

Glancing at her over the top of the lifted chart, his attention was arrested by the intense abstraction in which she was plunged. Her extreme pallor was relieved only by vivid color in her delicately curved lips, and under the eyes bluish circles told something of her suffering.

He thought of the haunting, wonderful eyes of Urd, and bit his lips as he watched her; so pathetically hopeless, yet unwaveringly proud was the pure face he had loved long and pa.s.sionately.

The door behind them opened, and a naval officer entered, carrying in his arms a crying child about six months old. The bundle of muslin and lace squirmed and struggled as the man strove to pacify it by beating a tattoo on the window, dangling his watch close to the baby's eyes, and bouncing it up and down. He walked about, sat down, laid the infant face downward across his knees, trotted it, patted it, but with no quieting success, and, when the engine blew long and loud for a bridge crossing, the frightened child screamed distressingly.

The officer rose.

"I am sorry to annoy the pa.s.sengers, but the nurse has been taken so ill she cannot hold her head up, and as the boy cries to go to her I was obliged to bring him in here. He never saw me until last night. I was on a cruise when his poor mother died."

Once more he essayed to whistle, and swayed to and fro with a rocking motion, but finally desperate, he turned to a young man in a neighboring chair, who was smiling over a cartoon in "Puck."

"Sir, would you do me the great kindness to hold him just a moment, while I get something from his nurse?"

"All right, I will try; but I happen to be a bachelor, and I never held a baby in my life. Come on, little man. Some day you surely will make a star screamer in opera. Now for it, sonny."