A Speckled Bird Part 46

CHAPTER XXIV

Its alliterative jingle had probably commended Dairy Dingle to Marcia Maurice when she selected a name for the new home of the overseer, Robert Mitch.e.l.l. 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 pa.s.sed 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 ca.n.a.l dug through the centre of the dairy had been paved with rock, and here, winter and summer, the milk bowls and b.u.t.ter 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 t.i.ti 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 cl.u.s.ters waiting to burst into bloom and with their crimped sh.e.l.l-pink cups rival fluted and tinted treasures from Sevres 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. Mitch.e.l.l 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 gra.s.s, 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 hoa.r.s.e ba.s.soon. 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, gra.s.sy 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. Mitch.e.l.l'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."

"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. Mitch.e.l.l 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 a.s.sure 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. Mitch.e.l.l; 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 'G.o.dless goats,' and we don't set up to be religious, but he pa.s.ses 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-cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed the kennel. If I had my choice, I would rather nurse a bucketful of hornets."