Part 33 (1/2)
The priest smiled, and laid his thin hand on his companion's knee.
”In many characteristics we differ so widely, I have often wondered that you care at all for me.”
”You were so honest and fearless and manly when we met at college. You showed such genuine pluck in that hazing scandal, so much quiet, heroic magnanimity when the official investigation followed. Vernon, for G.o.d's sake, wake up! You have talent; don't doze like a toad under a stone wall. Come out of shadows that paralyze you, and try to make your mark in the world of letters. I do not wish to change my----”
He paused and frowned. A flush tinged Father Temple's sallow cheek.
”You do not wish to consider me unmanly now?”
”That is exactly it, and if you force me to do so I swear I never will forgive you. Don't brood and mope. Go back to Plato and Horace--they are the best brooms for cloistral cobwebs--and promise me you will not stay here next winter.”
”My cousin Allison Kent and Eglah insist I shall spend December and January with them, in Y----, and since I am forbidden to preach at present, I may accept the invitation. I was there on a brief visit several months ago.”
”Tell me about them. It has been long since I heard directly.”
”The judge has grown extremely stout, and says he enjoys the lazy leisure of Southern life among the opulent, but he seemed restless and abstracted, and was often absent on fis.h.i.+ng excursions. Eglah perplexes me. She is graver, more reticent, and far more beautiful, but reminds me of a person walking in troubled sleep, determined, yet vaguely apprehensive. At times it occurred to me that her relations with her father were not as tenderly cordial as I remembered in the Was.h.i.+ngton life; he never caressed her, and she seemed in a certain degree aloof, but her careful deference in manner and speech was exquisite. She told me his retirement from a senatorial position was the supreme disappointment of her life, and her chief solace now is the preparation of a volume of his speeches, prefaced by a biographical sketch she intends to write. I think her father is very unpopular with the majority of old families in Y----, who will never forgive his course while Federal judge, and as they represent the best social element, conditions beyond her control have embarra.s.sed Eglah, but she gives no hint and fronts the situation with admirable cool calmness.”
Leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head, Mr.
Herriott seemed to watch the narrowing circles of a hawk beneath which three frantic pigeons dashed aimlessly round and round, and in the final swift swoop one white bird disappeared in a vanis.h.i.+ng brown shadow.
”You have lost a pigeon.”
”We have none. The lay brothers complain of their depredations in the garden, and sometimes trap those that belong in the city, but they are always carried off and set free.”
”Vernon, why does not your cousin Eglah marry Roger Hull? He is as nearly worthy of her as any man she will ever meet; he is eminently good looking, bright, a spirited debater, and as it is said he carries the votes of his district in his vest pocket, he has an a.s.sured political position where she could gratify her ambition. If he lives he will sit in the Senate. He was very devoted in his attentions. Is he still loyal?”
”No. I hear he is reported engaged to a pretty girl in Was.h.i.+ngton, whose father is a naval officer. Certainly Eglah does not lack beaux. She has very fine horses, rides daily, and one of her most frequent escorts was a Dr. Burbridge, very handsome and a specialist in neurology. I don't know Hull, but he has been twice to Nutwood since Eglah came back from Europe, and Cousin Allison said that she froze him so completely on his last visit that he gave up the chase, and consoled himself with a more responsive charmer. If political life allures her, Hull certainly offered an attractive opportunity, but I am sure her father did not favor that suit, and as her ambition was more for his preferment than from any personal fondness for a congressional career, she will soon cease to regret, and find contentment in her lovely surroundings.”
”I am afraid not. Pardon the simile--but take a thoroughbred filly raised and trained on the race track, and when she is champing her bit, trembling for the signal to start, lead her aside, shut her in a pasture, fasten her to a plough trace, or harness her with a mule on the other side of a wagon-tongue, and do you wonder the load comes to grief, or the furrows are crooked when she sees the racers flash by, and hears the rush of hoofs, the roar of cheering thousands? Eglah knows what she wants, and disdains compromise. The present environment suits her as little as a stagnant millpond would a yacht cup challenger.”
”I wish she could marry happily, but the day I came away we stood at the front steps and I told her I hoped I might have the privilege of performing the ceremony, if during my life she consented to make some man happy. The judge laughed and tapped me on the shoulder. 'I will see you get that wedding fee. When you are needed I shall telegraph you.'
She stepped a little closer to him, put her hands behind her, and looked at him with strange intentness; then turning to me she said, with singular emphasis: 'I shall never marry. As I have been baptized, only one more ceremony can be performed for me, and if Ma-Lila does not insist upon a Methodist minister, I promise that you shall p.r.o.nounce 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust'--when mother earth takes me back to her heart.'
”Just then Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l dropped her basket, and the clatter of keys and scissors broke the strain, which I could not understand. But Eglah's eyes recalled something I have not thought of for years. Do you recollect a picture of the Norns we saw that summer we walked through Wales?”
”Three figures, one veiled? We could not find out who painted it, but I never shall forget the wonderful eyes of Urd.”
”They looked at me again that day in Nutwood. The expression was as inscrutable as the smile of Mona Lisa--not defiance, nor yet renunciation, neither scorn nor bitterness, but deathless pride and a pain so hopeless no sound could voice it.”
There was a brief silence, broken by the m.u.f.fled chanting in the chapel, and Mr. Herriott's hands were gripped so tight behind his head the nails were purple, but his face showed no emotion, and when he spoke his tone betrayed only quiet sympathy.
”For many years I have a.s.sociated her with a pa.s.sage in Jeremiah: '_As a speckled bird, the birds round about are against her.'_' Poor little speckled bird, beating out her life. Battling alone against a host of hawks is dreary work.”
”I suppose you are going to Y----?”
”No, I must get back home. I have been away too long. My poor faithful Susan is dead.”
”I hope you are tired of globe-trotting, and ready to anchor yourself at your own fireside.”