A Speckled Bird Part 52

Under the canopy of the mimosa Eglah pa.s.sed, seated herself on the bench, and opened the Baedeker. Through the lace meshes of the foliage filtered sunshine, dappling her mourning gown with gold, quivering in the waves of her hair, and after a while she pushed the book aside, laid her head back against the trunk of the tree, and her long, silky lashes touched her cheeks.

Mr. Herriott's glowing, hungry eyes watched every movement, noted the outline of the full white throat, the listless drooping of the hands at her side, the sad, proud curve of sensitive lips closed on ceaseless pain that no complaint could adequately voice. He was unable to bear any longer the look of patient hopelessness that each moment stabbed his heart. At the thought that this was possibly his last sight of her, that in obedience to his harsh dictates she was pa.s.sing forever out of his life, a wave of invincible protest surged over him, and before its pa.s.sionate fury pride, resolutions, his pledges of renunciation vanished. The longing of many years seized, mastered him. In the sight of G.o.d and man she was his. He would possess his own. With a quick, noiseless stride he crossed the narrow s.p.a.ce that separated them, and entered the arch. His shadow was thrown forward, and she lifted her eyes.

For an instant, a bewildered expression drifted over her countenance, then her features settled into a marble mask. Her eyes shone suddenly with a jewel gleam, as when a lamp flashes over the face of a gem; her lids drooped, and she rose.

They stood only a few feet apart, a little belt of white verbena fluttering flags of truce between them. His bronze face locked, his eager grey eyes starred with the glint of battle probed hers for an instant; she calmly defiant, colorless as the jasmine on her breast.

He held out his hand.

"Eglah!" His voice was a pa.s.sionate appeal.

She interlaced and clasped her own fingers, her hands hanging in front of her.

"Mr. Herriott, I am very glad you have reached home safely. I congratulate you upon escaping the dangers of your Arctic journey."

"You are not surprised to see me in the United States?"

"Not at all. I happened to call at Calvary House recently, and accidentally I saw and heard you talking in the cloister."

"You were so near, so near--yet gave me no intimation of your presence?"

"I have studied and learned thoroughly the lesson you selected and set for me; you wished to avoid me. My schooling was effectual, and I was glad to gratify you."

"When I landed I went first to Calvary House with a suffering human wreck whom I promised----"

"Why trouble yourself to explain what concerns only you and your sick friend? Your reasons I have neither the right to ask, nor any desire to hear."

"At least you will permit me to thank you for all your gracious kindness to Amos Lea. He tells me you saved his life, and thereby I am far more your debtor than is the poor old man."

"Never my debtor. Amos and I understand each other, and I was glad to help take care of him. You owe me absolutely nothing but the fulfilment of your own unsolicited pledges."

"Why do you suppose I came here?"

"Why--indeed; when you pressed on my acceptance the promise that my 'future should be spared your shadow'? I presume you came from a chivalric sense of imaginary duty, or possibly a courteous semi-recognition of what you may have conjectured I might regard as my legal claims. I have absolutely none of any kind, along any lines.

Having renounced and banished me, perhaps you wished to a.s.sure yourself that the condemned is at least not needy in exile? By what right could you expect me--disowned, rejected, scorned--to desire ever to see again a man whom once I trusted, almost as I did my G.o.d? To whom I fled as sole refuge from the infamy that threatened one supreme in my life, and when like a frantic child I clung to him, believing he loved me, he shook me off, as if a worm crawled on his hand. After the whirlwind pa.s.sed, after the black veil of death mercifully interposed and hid us from ruin, I came to my senses--I realized the magnitude of my error. My ideal world had crumbled, you alone survived the wreck; I honored you for your loyalty to the innocent man in his grave, and G.o.d knows I have rejoiced that you denied my prayer, that you refused to perjure yourself, but--your cruel words sank deep. While I could not blame you, my punishment has been as severe as I deserved, as keenly mortifying as you intended and desired. In my helplessness and sorrow you have humiliated me by every means at your command, made me a target for derision and for slander. Three long, sad years, without a line. Yet you found a way to write to your gardener."

"Yes, I knew Amos loved me. You did not."

"As you felt a.s.sured of that fact, I fail to understand why you have come."

"Not from the chivalric motives you have done me the honor to impute to me. I am no walking code of priggish courtesy; I am merely a man who knows exactly what he wants most, and, missing that, deceives himself with nothing less. I am here to-day solely to see, at least once more, the face that has held my heart in bondage since you were a child. To intrude upon you was not my purpose, and I did not intend to violate my self-imposed limit of absolute silence, but I could not resist the longing to look into your eyes, to hear your voice; and I thought I was strong enough to watch you a little while, without your knowledge, and go away forever, leaving you in peace. I might have known better. The sight of you shivered my own compact. I have suffered far more than you, and if my harshness wounded you beyond forgiveness, remember, oh, remember, how long I have loved you!"

"I can remember only that your last spoken words were a vehement request that I should forget you."

Her lower lip fluttered, and she caught it between her teeth.

"Yes, but if farewell utterances are inexorably binding, you must pardon me if I remind you of yours. All through the gloom and bitterness of our separation a sacred, sweet voice has sounded in my ears the precious words of promise you whispered when your arms clasped my neck, and your dear face lay on my heart: 'You will never be out of my life--my own Mr.

Noel.'"

A vivid rose stole into her cheeks, and she leaned farther back to increase the s.p.a.ce between them.

"I had not then received my text-book--had not learned the lesson a.s.signed. After that, you wrote your final mandate: 'My freedom was complete,' and you urged me to use it in any way most 'conducive to the happiness so unwisely imperilled' by my rash marriage. I shall endeavor to follow your counsel, and if you had waited one day later, you would have been spared this unpleasant duty-visit. I go away to-night, and never again shall you be annoyed by even hearing of me. Mr. Herriott, in spite of all your wrongs, at the last you trusted your name to my keeping. I have indeed held it 'sacred as the Grail,' and now I return it to you as stainless as when you gave it. I am leaving America to find an obscure resting-place in a strange land where I shall be known only by the name to which I was born; and, once across the ocean, I can escape, perhaps, the social gibbet from which dangle, deservedly, 'women with histories.' I have no need of your name, n.o.ble though it is, to help me keep my oath to G.o.d. Divorce I hold a shameful blot on true womanhood, a menace to domestic and national morality, an insult to the Lord. Human law can no more annul my marriage than my baptismal vow; neither was made to man; both stand on that divine record only death can erase; they are locked among the sacraments of G.o.d, _'so long as ye both shall live.'_ Your freedom is as unconditional as you may wish, and that court of release which you commended to me, is equally open to you."

The pulse in her lovely throat throbbed violently, and watching her lift one hand there with the old childish effort to loosen the stricture, his lips tightened and he stepped closer.

"And if I decline to accept, to permit your renunciation of my name, which is more sacred since you have worn it? To make a football of G.o.d's statute is as little my purpose as is yours. Sometimes I have cheated myself with the forlorn hope that absence might possibly help me to accomplish that which long a.s.sociation failed to bring me. After years of suffering, of sombre retrospection, I hope I have come back less a Tartar than when we parted. Then I surrendered you entirely--absolutely.

I do so still. I claim no more rights or privileges than I possessed before that marriage ceremony made you nominally mine; but if your great pity for the lonely man who never loved any other woman can possibly grow into a deeper feeling, will you try to forgive my harshness that dreadful night? Knowing what you are to me, will you come to me?"

"Come to you who repudiated me! By what right dare you suppose, expect----"

"I have no right even to hope, but my hungry heart dares, and will dare desperate chances."

"You told me your confidence was dead as your love. The scar of that brand can never heal."

"Yes, I said many bitter, cruel things in the hot rage of my disappointment, that I should be glad to forget. In extenuation, you must remember that you beckoned me unexpectedly to heaven, and when I was thrust out the crash unhinged me. It was for your own sake I asked you to put me out of your life; to save you from the horrible martyrdom of unloving wifehood, from dragging through life the ball and chain of a galling, intolerable tie. To put you out of mine I knew was as impossible in future years as I had found it in the past. In my farewell note I considered your peace of mind, not my own. If you could realize all you are to me, perhaps you might understand better what that voluntary surrender of your precious self cost me, when, by the law of G.o.d and of man, you belonged to me."

She had avoided meeting his eyes; the strain set her lips to quivering, increased the strangling grip on her throat, and unconsciously her fingers clutched and wrung one another.

"After three years of dreary absence you have not even a friendly hand to offer to the man who has carried you in his heart ever since you wore muslin ap.r.o.ns--who holds you the one love of his life?"

"Mr. Herriott, you ceased to love me when you ceased to trust me, else all these years----"

She paused, warned by the treacherous quiver in her voice. He stood quite still, and after a moment opened his arms.

"My sweetheart, will you try me? Will you grant me the privilege of convincing you?"

She shook her head. Something in his eyes dazzled her, and an alarming pallor overspread her face, blanching her lips.

"If you have found happiness in forgetting and excluding me entirely from your life and your future, I cannot complain that you followed my counsel; but I will accept that positive a.s.surance only from your own truthful lips. Your peace of mind is more to me than my own. Have you shut me out of your heart forever?"

She tried to move aside, to pa.s.s him, but he barred her escape with an outstretched arm, and she shrank back.

"If you care no more for me now than when I left you, I have no alternative but to live alone; and I will never again intrude, never annoy you by the sight of my face. I will not accept compa.s.sion, or friendly sympathy. All--or none. I want love--love that brings a pure woman gladly to her husband's breast. Once you took some solemn vows for me, invoking the presence of the Lord you worship. Now, trusting you implicitly, knowing you will not deceive me, I must ask you to give me one final pledge. If you cannot love me as I wish--if your heart, your whole heart will never belong to me--then, calling G.o.d to witness the truth of your words, look me straight in the eyes and tell me so."

She trembled, shut her eyes, and, as a rich red rushed into her white cheeks, she covered her face with her hands.

A gust of wind shook the mimosa, and on her bowed head drifted the pink silk filaments, powdering her brown coil and puffs.

Very gently Mr. Herriott took the trembling little hands, kissed the palms, and, drawing her slowly, tenderly toward him, lifted her arms to his neck, holding them there.

With a low, broken cry she surrendered.

"Mr. Noel, you have broken my heart."

He waited to steady his voice.

"My proud darling, there seemed no other way. When it heals, please G.o.d, I shall have my throne inside."