Читать книгу: «A Speckled Bird», страница 7

"How tired you poor national Solons must be! But I know one whose day's work is not yet ended, and who must pick a whole flock of crows with me, right now. Why did you change your vote on the 'Bison Head' purchase?"

"Who says I did?"

His face was deeply flushed, but he laughed and pinched her white cheek.

"The chairman has a daughter."

"A leaky gossip. Congressmen ought to be bachelors or childless widowers; but then, my dear, how could I possibly exist without you?"

"Father, what induced you to favor a measure you have condemned so emphatically?"

"Several good reasons I am much too tired to discuss. Don't forget your Emerson, who says 'a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen,' and remember, also, 'a wise man sometimes changes his mind, a fool never.' The bill will not be reported till next session, and conditions alter, so après moi le déluge!"

She walked toward the dining-room, and on the threshold Eliza saw her put both hands to her throat. Drawing her breath quickly, she turned back and threw her arms around him.

"Oh, father! Was it kind, was it merciful to let me learn by chance from strangers that you have determined to resign your senatorship, to end a glorious career in which you know my dearest hopes and pride centre?"

For a moment he made no reply, only clasped her closely, pillowed her head on his breast, and kissed her cold cheek repeatedly.

Then he spoke in a husky tone, as a nervous surgeon might, uncertain of his own diagnosis.

"My darling girl, I confess it was a cowardly dread of the pain I knew my decision would cause you, and I very weakly put off the evil day as long as possible. Immediately after adjournment I intended to tell you all the plans that seem best for our future, and did not anticipate this premature disclosure, which is presumptuous impertinence in its author. In quitting public life even temporarily, my brightest compensation is the prospect of spending my time in the sweet companionship of my precious, incomparable daughter. Forgive your old father the arrant cowardice of keeping silent for a few days."

She clung to him like a frightened child, and he felt her trembling as one in an ague.

"Why must you resign? Why step down when you have a right to expect the new administration will offer you a place in the Cabinet? Why? Don't keep back anything from me now."

"My love, I don't wish to distress you; I shrink from exciting any alarm, but you certainly have a right to the truth. My health does not permit the amount of canvassing work that I believe will be required for my re-election, because our State legislature will be much divided this presidential campaign over vital issues, both local and national. As my term expires soon, I think it best to resign now, and avoid grave complications that threaten our party organization in the State legislature. Recently I have had premonitions that drove me to consult Dr. McLemore, and he advises me to withdraw from active political life, at least for a season. He believes complete rest and freedom from public responsibility are all that my health demands. I did not wish you to know this, but you are such an inquisitive monkey, such an arbitrary minx, that nothing less than the whole truth will satisfy your exacting reason. Now kiss me, my pretty chestnut burr, and let us pick no more crows."

"You have been ill, and we – I – never suspected it?"

She caught her breath spasmodically, stifling a sob. Her father glanced significantly at Eliza, who stood beside the table, lifting a pitcher of iced tea that clinked against its sides in her nervous grasp.

"I see Mrs. Mitchell – always admirably reliable – has kept her promise to me. Now she can tell you I had a very severe attack the night we were so late at Secretary P – 's dinner, and you could not understand my delay in dressing."

"Ma-Lila! You kept me in ignorance of father's danger, when you should have warned me?"

"Your father positively forbade any mention of the matter to you, and as I never saw or heard of a recurrence of what he assured me was merely the result of imprudent indulgence in oysters, cheese, and beer, I had no excuse for disobeying his command to keep silence."

The little woman's eyes sparkled, and an involuntary curl of her lip did not escape Eglah's questioning sorrowful gaze.

"Come, my dear, do not quite strangle what is left of a very tired old man. Now that explanations are completely over, I feel as happy as a boy just returned from the dentist's where he left an aching tooth; and since you know absolutely all that can be told, I should like some tea dashed with cognac, for I have had a hard, tedious day."

He unwound her arms, patted her head, and took his seat at the table.

Eglah squeezed a lemon into a goblet of tea, Eliza stirred the mayonnaise, and Judge Kent helped himself to an anchovy sandwich, while he asked whether they had heard the sad news of the sudden death of a popular attaché of one of the legations, who had been killed an hour before by the accidental discharge of his own pistol. Heroic efforts were made by all to avoid the disturbing theme upon which the Senator had peremptorily rung down the curtain, and to relieve the tension the trio separated as soon as possible.

How much of the perfunctory explanation either woman credited neither could determine, but each refrained from probing the other, and both endeavored to bridge the crater by that golden silence that knows no pangs of regretted speech. Lying wide awake, Mrs. Mitchell noted the slow passage of the heavy hours, and day was just below the eastern sky line when the sudden shrill trilling of a canary in the adjoining room told that some restless movement of Eglah's had aroused it. Eliza longed to go and comfort the suffering girl, but every heart has a sanctuary which not even the tenderest affection should dare to violate, and the subtle sympathy of the overseer's wife taught her love's duty was to guard, not force the entrance. After a few moments, Eglah opened the door and came on tiptoe to her bed.

"What is it, dearie? Nobody can sleep on such a suffocating night."

She sat up and put one arm around the white figure, which, instead of yielding to her clasp, held back straight and stiff as steel.

"I thought I heard you stir, else I should not have ventured to disturb you. Ma-Lila, the thought of father's ill health weighs terribly on my heart. Will you please tell me the nature of that attack which you both kept from me? What were the symptoms?"

"He had been dozing in his chair, and quite suddenly sprang up, pale, and evidently much agitated. I wished to call you, and urged him to abandon the idea of leaving the house, but he insisted I should not give you even a hint, and asked for the decanter of brandy, which he was sure would relieve a severe fit of indigestion caused by imprudence at luncheon. He went to his room, and when he came out you saw no sign of serious indisposition."

"He had been annoyed by no visitors?"

"He had seen no one but Watson and myself."

"Do you think there was heart trouble that night? Tell me frankly."

"Yes, most certainly there was; but, my baby, heart trouble comes from various causes, and I really do not think your father's physical condition justifies any serious uneasiness. He is evidently alarmed, but nervous strain and mental worry are sufficient to produce all his symptoms, and you will find that retirement from congressional complications expedites recovery in such cases."

The girlish form relaxed, and a hot cheek was pressed against the foster-mother's face.

"Don't comfort me with false hopes, unless you are sure I am unduly frightened."

"Listen to me. I am absolutely certain that Judge Kent's health need cause you no alarm in future. Now, shake off that nightmare, and go to sleep like a good child, or I will certainly dose you with bromide."

She kissed her softly, and with an arm about her waist led her back to her bed.

"Ma-Lila, I want to forget the last three weeks. Won't you help me?"

CHAPTER XII

"What is the urgent necessity? I have just held my afternoon mission service, and I am very tired. Noel, why are you so insistent?"

"Perhaps it has been borne in upon my 'subliminal consciousness' that if you wait too long you may possibly regret it. Once or twice I have found profit in following a rule my old nurse taught me when I wore kilts: 'Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.' No 'dæmon' squats at my ear, and I claim no mantic illumination, still I should be glad to know you will make that visit at once."

"You fear the poor boy is dying?"

"Not immediately, but he appears hopelessly ill, and needs all the kind words you may find yourself better able to utter than any one else. Moreover, it would be well that you should see his mother, who is away at work during the week, and as you expect to leave the city so soon, this will be the most suitable opportunity for you to meet her at home. Poor, fierce, bitter soul! She has no milk of human kindness left; it soured and has become acrid – intensely mordacious."

"She belongs then to the unhappy class of frail women who go swiftly to utter wreck in all large cities, where sin is arrayed in rose color and gilt. Strange that the boy of such a creature should remind one of the infant St. John or a seraph of Angelico's."

"Some fragments of her history lead me to believe that she is as trustworthy and pure as any woman to whom you preach. Her morality is beyond cavil, but theoretically she seems to have gone wild among the hedges and ditches of socialism."

"You consider her a conscientious, good woman?"

"As far as I can ascertain she lives irreproachably, bar associating with anarchists. I surmise some man has treated her cruelly, or she thinks so, and now she – "

Mr. Herriott rose, looked at his watch, and laughed.

"Temple, do you recollect one summer night under the elms, when rehearsing for the Greek play, Prescott Winthrop declaimed the herdsman's message from the 'Bacchæ,' and emphasized the portrait of Agave in the frenzy of the Thiasus strangling a calf and fondling a wolf's whelp? To-day Leighton's mother recalled that scene, but she is not dancing to meet Bromius – only hunting revenge on all mankind. Ah, you are going? I suggest a cautious approach. Leave the carriage out of sight, and boldly flourish the promised book as an open sesame. You of the cassock clan enjoy privileges denied to us, the ungirdled sons of Belial. After all, you may prove the deus ex machina, and through the poor little lad may be able to lay a healing touch on the mother's sick soul. Come to my rooms after your visit, and we will say good-bye until I get back from my long jaunt."

An hour later Father Temple made his way into the tenement house, through a noisy mob of children romping on the pavement, and when he entered the narrow hall outside din was conquered by the deep, swelling music of "Quis est Homo," wailing from a violoncello held between the knees of a man sitting half way up the stairs, a thin, stooping old figure with shaggy grey hair, and bearded as a Welsh harper. The priest ascended, and the musician edged closer to the wall to allow him passage way, but he merely nodded his bowed head, and the solemn strains rose and fell like the sobbing moan of waves settling to calm after lashing blasts. Father Temple lifted his finger.

"Mrs. Dane lives on the next floor?"

"Go ub. She vill see no briests, but her door is oben for de child to hear de music he loves. Dear leedle boy is sick, and my cello sounds more better here dan closer."

He shut his eyes and continued playing. Opposite the undraped west window of the room above, an alley stretched, making clear pathway for the sinking sun that poured a parting flood of radiance into the apartment, and upon the cot where, propped up with pillows, the boy clasped his arms around his knees, and listened, quiet and happy. Between cot and window his mother sat, facing the back of her chair, on top of which she rested one arm, leaning her brow upon it, while the other hand, lying on the cot, slowly stroked Leighton's bare feet. Having washed her hair earlier in the day, it was now brushed out over her shoulders to dry in the sunshine, and the bright mass of waving tendrils seemed to clothe her with light. On the floor were scattered several newspaper sheets – "The Chain Breaker" – and across her knee lay an open copy of "Battle-cry of Labor." Only the mellow voice of the cello sounded, and the room was sweet with the breath of Mr. Herriott's white carnations nodding in a blue bowl on the table. Standing a moment at the threshold, Father Temple's eyes fastened on the veil of golden locks falling to the floor, and his heart leaped, then seemed to cease beating as he recalled a vision of the far West, where just such glittering strands had been twined around his fingers.

"Oh, my St. Hyacinth's preacher!"

At Leighton's glad cry his mother raised her head, started up, and, moving forward a few steps, swept back her hair, holding it with both hands. Before her stood the tall, thin figure in the long, black habit of his Order, cord-girded at the waist; with a soft wool hat and book in one hand; a clean-shaven face, pale, sensitive, scholarly, and suggestive of "lauds and prime," of asceticism without peace, and of brooding regret.

He recognized every line in her lovely features, from the large pansy eyes and delicate, over-arching brows to the perfect oval molding of cheek and chin, and the full, downward curve of scarlet lips. Love is so keen of vision it pierces the changes wrought by ripening years, and he knew the dear face. She did not suspect, love had been dead so long, and she had buried all tender memories in its neglected grave.

"I am surprised a Romish priest wastes his time coming here, and I have no welcome to offer you, because I wish no visitors."

With a swift movement he closed the door, dropped hat and book, and came close to her. The sudden glow on his cheek, the light of exultation in his sad eyes transformed him.

"Look at me. Don't you know me? Look – look!"

Eye to eye they watched each other, and at the sound of his deep, tender, quivering voice recollection smote hard upon her heart, and a vague, shivering pain drove the blood from her face, but she fought the suggestion.

"You are unknown to me."

"I am Vernon Pembroke Temple, and you are Nona, my wife! My Nona – my own wife – "

Words failed him, and he held out his arms. She recoiled, throwing up her hands with a gesture of loathing, and stood as if turned to stone, so strangely hard was a face where eyes kindled and burned with the pent hatred and scorn of long years of sore trial.

"You had not sins enough to sink your soul without adding hypocrisy? A preacher! A priest! Cowardice, perjury, moral leprosy, skulking under a long cloak as black as what is left of your vile heart!"

Each word fell like a red-hot flail, but he did not wince, and neither father nor mother heard the low wail from the cot where childish arms covered a face white with horror.

"You think, you believe I intentionally and pre-meditatedly deserted you, and in your ignorance of facts you certainly had cause to despise me, but – "

"Think – believe! As if it were possible to doubt the villainy planned! The crime you so carefully committed against a mere child, knowing she was a helpless victim, believing she could never redress her awful wrongs. As if you had set a trap and caught an innocent, happy bird, and then broken its wings and tossed it to screaming hawks! Coward – coward as you always were – how dare you face me?"

"Nona, dear Nona – " He put out his hand appealingly, but she struck it aside with stinging force, and stepped backward.

"Out of my sight, or I call the police."

She pointed to the door. He turned, locked it, put the key in his pocket, and his eyes steadily met the challenge in hers. The banked, smouldering fires that flashed up must burn lower before he could plead. So they stood: he flushed, smiling, happy; she shaken by a tempest of rage that blanched her to a livid pallor and set all the glittering rings of hair quivering, as if innumerable golden serpents coiled and uncoiled around her trembling form.

In the pause he lifted the hanging ends of the knotted cord.

"Do you understand what this habit means?"

"Don't I? A holy cloak to hide every sin that makes this world a hotter hell than even God could fashion – if God were possible. You drape it over the ten commandments, blotting them out, while you sing psalms, and rob the toiling poor, and ruin young lives, and murder innocent souls. Oh, yes, to my sorrow, I understand all it means!"

"It means my consecration to celibacy when you fled from me, and I had exhausted all efforts to find you."

"Celibacy! Celibacy! I needed no nunnery to help me keep clean and pure, but you ran behind monastery walls to protect yourself from retribution at a wronged woman's hands. Coward from first to last! When I fled from you? You must indeed be possessed of the devil to dare such language to me."

"Nona, there has been some awful mistake – "

"Yes, a mistake that I was not scalped, or that a merciful bolt of lightning did not strike me dead that day – that cursed day – when first I set my eyes on your false, treacherous face! If you could only know how I hate, despise, utterly despise the bare thought, much more the horrible sight of you!"

"No wonder, since circumstances were apparently all against me at – "

"Circumstances are no shelter for honest, honorable men, if there be any left; and the hard, bitter, murderous facts of your shameful life would find you out if you dodged under the very throne of the God you blaspheme by professing!"

"Will you listen to the truth?"

"You could not speak it if you tried. I listened to you once too often, and you wrecked me, and I am no longer a fool."

"Why did you leave Thompsonville after you received my letters, and the money I sent you, and when you knew I was coming there to take you away with me?"

For an instant she looked at him with startled curiosity, then laughed hysterically.

"I left Thompsonville because you wrote no letters, sent no money, and took no notice of my frantic appeals for help in my hour of horrible trial. A sick woman with a frail, feeble baby, facing starvation, abandoned, slandered, and trampled in the mud, I could only snatch at the hand held out to me by the one man I have found honest, honorable, loyal, and true, as he was pitying and kind."

"But when I reached Thompsonville Delia Brown told me – "

Her scornful laugh drowned his words.

"'When you reached Thompsonville' in your dreams – after a night's carousal at college! Even a congenital idiot would sicken at that."

No shadow of impatience crossed his happy countenance; the intensity of her scoffing bitterness was part of his punishment – the harvest that sprang from his own sowing – and he must not complain until she understood fully.

"I can prove that I went to Thompsonville, and I have the sworn testimony of Delia Brown that she delivered into your hands my letters and the package of money I sent to her care through the express agent. On a scrap of paper I have also a receipt in pencil from you to Delia Brown."

She shook her head and smote her palms together.

"Forgeries one and all. I would not believe you on your oath, unless the grave yawned, and Leighton Dane – dead six years – came back as witness in your favor."

"'He was the handsome Spanish-looking man' Delia Brown told me stole my wife and child and disappeared suddenly – going to Florida or Cuba to grow bananas – when you heard I was coming to Thompsonville?"

"He was a good old man, my father's best friend, who took his place as teamster – and when I was literally driven out of the cabin one rainy night by my stepmother, he was the only human being who believed I was not vile. He pitied me and carried me in one of the Government wagons to Thompsonville, and paid my board until I was able to earn my bread by helping Delia Brown wash and iron. His term was expiring soon, and when he started back to his home in California, he came by to see if I needed anything.

"Finding I was ill in body, distracted in mind, desperate, because I knew then I was utterly deserted, and had no hope of help, he offered to carry me West and protect me on account of his friendship for my father. Oh, bless him – for ever and ever! He made an humble little home for us, and shielded and respected me, and pitied and believed in me with all the strength of his great, true heart, and was a second and a much better father to me in my shameful desolation and helplessness. He adopted me and my baby, and when he died he left his small savings to us; and so I named my outcast little one Leighton Dane for the one loyal friend who helped me to feed and clothe him when his own father rejected and abandoned him. I had no proof except the certificate you made me swear I would conceal for two years, and your ally, the devil, worked well for you when the mice nesting in my trunk cut it into shreds while I was ill. The chaplain and Ransom Hill were dead; I had none to speak for me; but Mr. Dane believed my words, and he put his big hand on my head and comforted me.

"'Poor little girl, don't worry; just be easy in your mind, for I know you are telling the truth. I know you are good as your own baby, and if every mouth in America swore against you I would trust you as I always trusted my own mother.'"

A mist clouded her eyes, as dew softens the tint of a violet, but she clenched her hands, and bit her lip hard to still its tremor, adding with sullen emphasis:

"In all these black years the one star of comfort I can ever see shines in the assurance that the only truly good man I have found, who knew me well, respected and trusted me as he did his dead mother."

"You never saw or heard of the advertisements I published in various papers, asking you to inform me where I could find you?"

The contempt in her ringing answer stung him like a whip-lash.

"People who are neither 'lost, strayed, nor stolen' spend no time hunting for imaginary advertisements that never go to press."

"You shall read them in the papers with their printed dates. Copies have been filed and preserved with reports of unsuccessful search from chiefs of police in Louisiana and Florida, whom I paid to hunt for some trace of you. They are deposited in a Boston bank, with a sum of money placed to your credit – all to be delivered to the order of Nona Moorland Temple. Write to Noah Giles, cashier of Orchard Street Bank. I will telegraph, vouching for your right to the tin box bearing your name, and in two days you shall possess absolute proof that I am not the hardened scoundrel you think me. Weak, rash, cowardly I certainly was, but as God hears me, never forgetful, never unfaithful, never intending the wrong for which you have suffered so frightfully."

The gaze of each fastened on the other, neither had noticed the cot or its occupant.

Leighton slipped slowly down till his feet touched the floor, and he clung to the mattress for some seconds, measuring the distance to the pair standing in the middle of the room. Weak from emotion that almost overwhelmed him, he felt his limbs would not support him, and, gathering his cotton nightgown about him, he sank on his knees and crawled noiselessly forward. Between father and mother he crouched, then laid his head against the feet of the priest and feebly raised his arms.

"My father – "

The sight, and all it implied as judgment of evidence in defence, drove her to jealous frenzy, and she sprang forward as a panther leaps to succor her young.

"Don't touch him! Don't you dare to lay your finger on him! You have no more right to him than to an archangel! He has no father, has only his downtrodden girl-mother. Don't you dare to put your sacrilegious hand on his holy head. He is not yours!"

With his right arm he held her back, as she stooped to snatch the boy away, and, kneeling, he passed his left hand under the prostrate form, gathered him close to his breast, and looked up smiling into her eyes.

"Not mine! If I am not his father – who is?"

"He is mine, solely mine; body and soul, he belongs only to me! Before he was born you turned us adrift in the world to perish, and now that for ten years I have worked day and night, fought for bread and shelter, carried him on my bosom, slept with him in my arms, you – who robbed me of everything, even my good name – you dare – dare claim my outcast baby! I would rather shroud my darling than hear him call you father."

Leighton's arms stole round the priest's neck, and his tangled yellow curls touched the dark head bent over him. Father Temple kissed the little quivering face, strained him to his heart, and the long-sealed fountain broke in tears that streamed upon the clinging child.

"My baby, my son, my own lost lamb, for whom I have searched and prayed – God knows how faithfully, how sorrowfully – all these long, dreadful years!"

As she stood above them, barred by that tense right arm, noting the tight clasp of the thin hands locked behind the father's head, an impotent rage made her long to scream out the agony that found no vent save in a rapid beating of one foot on the bare floor – much like the lashing tail of some furious furred creature, crouching to spring, yet warily hesitant.

Father Temple's outstretched hand caught a fold of her skirt, and with it a strand of floating hair.

"Nona, my wife – my own wife – "

She twitched her dress from his grasp and shook it.

"I am not your wife! Thank God, I am no man's wife! I am free as I was before you came – an ever-lasting blot between me and the sunshine. I kept my promise to you. I set my teeth and was silent under a fiery storm of slander and foul accusations that blistered my girlish cheek with shame, but I waited till the years you named had passed, and you had reached your majority, and plucked up courage to face your father, and had a legal right to ratify what the Church sanctioned through the chaplain. Then I told my only friend all the facts. I ceased to hope, because I had lost faith, but Mr. Dane pleaded for you: 'Wait one year more, give him the last chance to do right.' He wrote to a friend in the old regiment and inquired about all the officers, and his answer told us that your father was in Europe, and that the major thought you were with him. Then I laid my case before one of the human vultures that batten on the wreckage of broken vows – a lawyer, expert in snapping matrimonial chains. He sent you all the necessary notices – sent them to your college address, the only one I could give him. Very soon the decree of absolute divorce was rendered, and I dropped all right to a name I had never publicly claimed – cast it off as gladly as I would some foul garment worn by a leper. Free – free to live my life as I pleased; Mrs. Dane and her boy Leighton – free to go wherever I wished, after death took the only real protector I ever had. And I chose, for my baby's sake as well as my own, to lead the hard life of a working woman, but clean, and honorable, and innocent as that of any abbess safely stored away from temptation behind brick walls and iron gates, and though my own little one may well be ashamed of his father, he will never need to blush for his mother when the peace of death hides her from an unjust and a cruel world."

Sunshine had vanished, the room was darkening, and the last glow from a topaz band low in the west flickered over the woman's head, as she swayed in the wave of passionate protest that rocked her from all trammels of control. There was a brief silence, broken by a strangling sob and cough, and over the breast of the priest's cassock a warm red stream trickled. He rose quickly with the boy in his arms and carried him to the window.

"Nona, a hemorrhage!"

"Lay him down. If you have killed him, it is the fit ending of all my wrongs at your hands. Now stand back! Back! Do you hear – you curse of my life!"

She sponged the child's face, laid a wet compress on his throat, and kept one finger on his pulse, not daring to give medicine while the narrowing red stream oozed more slowly. She lighted a lamp, flew into a recess near the stove, and came back with a hypodermic syringe.

"Now, mother's man, don't flinch."

Pushing up the sleeve, she injected a colorless fluid into his arm, held it some seconds, and laid her lips near the puncture. Then with one hand she held his head raised slightly, and with the other sponged the lips until the flow ceased and the gasping breath grew easy.

"Swallow your medicine slowly, don't strangle. You must lie perfectly still. Mother's own little man needs to go to sleep now and forget all he has heard to-day."

Father Temple had fallen on his knees at the opposite side of the cot, clinging to one of the boy's hands, and suddenly the child turned his head and looked imploringly, first at father, then at mother. Both understood the mute prayer in the beautiful, tender eyes. A quavering sound – part sob, part cough – made their hearts leap.

"I never will be fatherless any more. So glad! Don't leave me, father."

"Leighton, you shall always be fatherless. This man can be nothing to us. Because of his deceitful promises I suffered the disgrace of smarting from a horse-whip laid on my shoulders when one night I was driven out of my father's cabin by his wife, and to shelter myself from sleet and rain crawled into a covered wagon and slept on hay and corn, until Uncle Dane found me there, and had mercy on me. I owe to this priest every sorrow and trouble that have darkened my life and yours. All these years we have had only each other, and you must understand your mother is the one who has the sole right to your love. My darling, you and mother can be happy together, and we need only each other."

She struggled for composure, but there was an ominous pant in her veiled voice.

"I want my father! Oh, I want him – I – want him!" Tears glided over his cheeks.