A Speckled Bird Part 45

As Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l could not be persuaded to enter "an Episcopal monkish inst.i.tution" of which she disapproved so vigorously, she went back alone to Nutwood and busied herself with household preparations for winter.

When the judge and his daughter reached home, Dr. Plympton expressed himself much pleased with improved conditions which Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l could not discover, and Eglah's apprehensions were allayed. Her father's increasing dependence upon her touched and cheered her inexpressibly, and for his sake she diligently a.s.sisted him in work that forced her thoughts into a new channel. An important appropriation bill, in which Judge Kent's native State was much interested, would be presented to Congress about the middle of December, or soon after the holiday recess, and he had been requested by old friends and const.i.tuents to address the Senate committee, advocating a favorable report. The collection and arrangement of necessary statistics kept her busy at his side, and when the last type-written page was added to the pile at his elbow, he patted her hand fondly and complimented her useful accuracy.

Rejoicing in the accomplishment of their tedious task, the trap was ordered, and father and daughter drove until the dinner hour.

She noticed he dozed twice while she talked, although when they reached home he seemed as well as usual, humming a gay little Sicilian song as he divested himself of overcoat and m.u.f.fler. It had been a perfect autumn day, crisp, crystalline. The deep, vivid yellow of the great undulating ma.s.s of walnut foliage hung against the western sky like cloth of gold curtains around a porphyry shrine, above which Venus burned as ministering taper. With her cheek pressed to the window pane in the library, Eglah watched the fading after-glow, and her hands clutched each other. This was the day when from the iron-bound, ice-sheathed fiords of Smith's Sound the sun disappeared. The long Polar night had set in. Would Mr. Herriott ever see the sun again?

She had procured all books written in English that related to Arctic travel, and in the sanctuary of her own room prepared, from an almanac and from explorer's diaries, a calendar, noting the length of each day, the coming of the moon, the date of shortest twilight, the falling of total darkness. Mr. Herriott's voyage began in May; no tidings had reached her. She expected none, but her lips moved: "Oh, G.o.d, keep him in safety through the awful night!"

The dreary vision of her imagination contrasted sharply with the luxurious aspect of the library, where a fire of oak logs glowed beyond the marble hearth. A crimson velvet carpet covered the floor, and warm winter draperies enhanced the atmosphere of comfort. On the table an oval cut-gla.s.s basket held great cl.u.s.ters of orange chrysanthemums; not the huge, solitary, odorless globes now so popular in cities, but thickly studded, fragrant branches that bloom nowhere with such lavish sweetness as in old Southern gardens.

Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l brightened the lamp and began to match the squares of a calico "rising sun" quilt she was making as her Christmas present to the Methodist parsonage. Judge Kent leaned back in his arm-chair, his silver-powdered head on the red cus.h.i.+on, good looking, debonair, thoroughly content; and in one hand he held a richly gilded liqueur gla.s.s, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with an emerald cordial. Eglah came to his side and put her hand on his wrist.

"Father, Dr. Plympton forbids liqueurs. Please do not drink that."

"Only a thimbleful of _creme de menthe_! Babies take mint tea. Even Mrs.

Mitch.e.l.l drinks this."

His fine eyes sparkled mischievously, and he bowed to her.

"No, sir. I make my mint cordial from my own garden, and I know what is in it; but you can't be sure about foreign-fangled mixtures."

"I wish to make sure that delicious gumbo-file will not give me nightmare."

"Father, I begged you not to touch it, and you had your favorite clam bouillon the doctor commends so highly."

"Bouillon--gumbo-file? 'As moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.' My d.u.c.h.ess, don't scold. Your pretty mouth was made for sweeter uses. Kiss me."

He brushed his white mustache aside, and leaning down she pressed her lips to his.

"Father, are you quite well to-night?"

"Quite well, and absolutely happy. Now, give me some music to round out and seal this glorious, perfect day."

She opened the upright piano, and while she played one of his favorite fugues--Handel's in E minor--he kept time, swinging the tiny, gilded gla.s.s. Flickering flames in the wide chimney were reflected on the polished rosewood panels of the piano, and as they wavered up and down before her, Eglah thought of spectral auroral fringes flas.h.i.+ng in moonless Polar night, staining with prismatic hues the world of snow, kindling red beacons on pinnacles of immemorial ice.

The fugue ended, and as her fingers left the keys a tinkling crash caused her to turn her head.

The liqueur gla.s.s was shattered on the floor and Judge Kent lay insensible in his chair.

Paralysis appeared so complete that for some days Doctors Plympton and Eggleston entertained no hope; but the sufferer rallied surprisingly, and while his utterance was not fully intelligible, and he never regained the use of his lower limbs, he was often conscious.

Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l and the physicians would have welcomed a pa.s.sionate outbreak of the silent grief that seemed to have frozen Eglah, as, calm and dry-eyed, she ministered in the sick-room she rarely left. Two faithful men a.s.sisted in nursing--one by day, one by night, because she could not lift her father--and she slept on a cot beside him, or across the foot of his bed. She administered all his medicine, fed him with her own hands, caressed, and cheered him.

After a few weeks, though entirely helpless, he was able to be dressed and lifted into a reclining rolling-chair, and when the weather permitted she wheeled him around the sunny side of the long colonnade, where he usually fell asleep. The speech arranged so carefully for the Senate committee she read again critically, made a few corrections, and forwarded it with a brief announcement of his illness to the friends who had employed Judge Kent to prepare and deliver it in committee room.

Her stern self-repression discouraged conversation relative to the sufferer, and she buoyed herself with no false hopes.

A ripple of compa.s.sion stirred Y----, and some who had criticized her most severely for her haughty aloofness--some whose sole grievance was her absolute devotion to an "unprincipled father"--left cards, words of sympathy, and flowers for Mrs. Herriott. Except the doctors, she saw no one but Mrs. Eggleston and Mr. Whitfield, who had lost his wife a few months previous. Bishop Vivian had died during the summer, but her father's rector came often. At times the sick man's clouded mind seemed incapable of retaining any impression, but he never failed to respond to music, and when his chair was rolled close to the piano and Eglah played selections he loved best, it comforted her to watch the pleased, contented expression of the placid, handsome old face so dear to her.

Noticing how wan and drawn the girl's lips were, the physicians urged Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l to persuade her to drive or walk.

"No. I will not lose sight of him for a moment. He is my all, and what becomes of me makes no difference. I have but one wish now--to go with him."

One bright, warm day, late in December, Judge Kent appeared surprisingly better, though his articulation continued very indistinct, and his daughter understood him best because she closely watched his lips. The doctors had made their morning visit, and, wrapped in his dressing-gown, the sick man asked to be rolled into suns.h.i.+ne.

Eglah tucked a lap robe carefully about the reclining form, and he feebly lifted the one hand he could move, and pointed to the gla.s.s door.

"That way; not through library."

She unlocked and opened it, wheeling the chair out on the colonnade, and some change in his countenance arrested her attention. Bending down, she found tears on his cheeks.

"You opened this door the day Herriott came. Because you heard him tell me about Keith, you married him. You burned the papers--you saved me."

"No, father; no!"

She fell on her knees and hid her face in his gown.

"You tried to keep me from knowing you heard Herriott, but I saw you.

You married him for my sake. My blessed child! When I am gone, I want you to remember no other man ever had such a daughter. My Eglah----"

After a moment he sighed, and with great difficulty added slowly:

"My dear, kiss me, and always--always you must know--how precious you--are, precious----"

She kissed him twice, dried his cheeks, and, as he turned his head on the pillow and closed his eyes, she rolled him up and down the colonnade, hoping that during his nap he would forget. He often slept soundly in this way, soothed by the motion like a child in a carriage.

Was he laboring under some delusion of an enfeebled brain--did he dream?

Or was it possible he had actually seen her leave his room on her errand of rescue?

A half hour later a veil of cloud drifted across the sun, a blast of wind leaped out of the northwest, and, fearing a change of temperature, she turned the chair toward the door and wheeled it inside.

Leaning tenderly over the sleeper, his quiet, cold, set face told her he had gone to that bar of final trial where, in his Maker's infinite mercy, only He who fas.h.i.+ons and reads human hearts and sees entirely around the circle of circ.u.mstances, can justly judge.

A low, long-drawn, quivering cry, as of some creature mortally stricken, summoned Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l, who found the girl huddled over the still form, his grey head lifted to her breast.

Holding her solitary vigil that night beside him, her cheek laid on his shoulder, her hand clasping his icy, interlocked fingers, she found a solace which surprised her in the a.s.surance that he had known the significance of her sacrifice--that he loved her better in consequence of all she had ventured and suffered in his behalf. Her supreme dread had been his discovery of the cause of her marriage, but now and then the scowling menace from which we cower, breaks in smiling, tender benediction. To love, that prompts and sustains in crucial hours of self-immolation, is occasionally added a transforming exaltation that sublimates the unworthy object for whom the sacrifice is borne; and the most pityingly merciful of all angels--Death--extinguishes life with one hand, while the other smooths scars of character, levels unlovely angles, lifts shadows of sin, and gives to memory that magic mantle whose halo never fades.

With singular and unnatural calmness, Eglah had arranged the details of the funeral service next day in her father's church. She telegraphed Father Temple to meet her in Was.h.i.+ngton _en route_ to the North, and asked Mr. Whitfield to go with her until her cousin joined her on the train.

To lay her father to rest among his enemies in Y---- was unendurable; she would take him to the cemetery in his native State, where his parents and sisters slept, and erect a monument there in sight of his const.i.tuents who had honored and loved him.

It had grown very cold; there was no fire in the long drawing-room, where portraits of Maurices and Vivians stared imperiously down at the alien lying motionless under the great cut-gla.s.s chandelier. Silent and tearless the girl kept watch. The undertaker had mentioned the date to be inscribed on the casket plate, and she recalled her Arctic calendar.

This was the solstice, the sunless midnight, the core of Polar winter.

To-morrow the sun would begin to climb back to Mr. Herriott, but the sun of her life had set forever. A shudder shook her, and she nestled closer, laying her lips against her father's throat. Eliza laid heavier wraps around the stooping shoulders, placed a hot blanket under her feet, and now and then kissed the girl's bowed head, but no words, no sob, profaned the sacred silence.

When the body was carried to the chancel of the crowded church, she walked alone, followed closely by the few who best understood her isolation. Shrouded in black, she sat still and silent as her dead; and some persons present who had cause for bitterness against "reconstruction judiciary" forgot their wrongs in genuine pity for the proud and lonely mourner.

Under a fragrant pall, woven of smilax and his favorite double white violets, that covered the casket and fell to its handles, she bore him away to the stony hills of New England.