Part 48 (1/2)
The last day of her stay was unusually warm for the season, and after reading to the sick man and leaving a bunch of jonquils near his cot, Eglah went quite late in the afternoon for a farewell walk along the beach. She coaxed the dogs unavailingly. Pilot, the collie, followed as far as the stone stile, and then deserted her. Beyond the end of the curve, where silver poplars came to the water's edge, she found a white marble seat, shaped like a horseshoe, with broad arms and an arched back elaborately carved. Winter rains had rippled and drifted the sand over its feet, and across one corner a bramble strayed. It was here Mr.
Herriott had spent his last night at home. She brushed aside dead leaves, sat down, and plucked away the encroaching vine. Deep in her heart sang his final words to Amos: ”I have loved her since she was ten years old.” Living or dead, he was hers; angry and estranged, but hers--always hers.
She thought of what life might have been with him here, remembered the warm, close clasp of his hand, the lover light in his fine eyes that was a caress that first hour on the cars; and recalling the last moment, when he strained her to his breast, her fair face flushed, her sad heart thrilled. Now that beautiful ”might have been” lay irrecoverable as the ”lost land of Lyonnesse,” under its transparent shroud, and haunting echoes of tender tones tolled faintly, like buried bells of Folge Fond.
The day had been sultry, but the wind rose with the full, red moon that swung now above the cliffs, a globe of burnished copper, taking on the glory of gold as it climbed higher, and from some distant belfry a vesper benediction, low and sweet, slowly drifted over the great lake.
The water, gla.s.sy an hour before, thrilled and swelled in answer to the fingers of the wind, as a viol to the touch of its bow, and wavelets widened, s.h.i.+mmered as they ran. An eastbound schooner, all sails set, midway from sh.o.r.e to horizon, followed the path of light like a gigantic white moth fluttering upward to the moon. Where did her rays find Mr.
Herriott to-night? Sleeping his last sleep in the wind-carved marble sepulchre of glittering sastrugi, with that white moon of the ”Great Ice” silvering the face now so dear to his abandoned wife? Or frozen and embalmed under the lee of towering blue hummocks, in the grim shadow of looming iron-bound sh.o.r.es? Or dying of starvation in a lampless, rent, ruined, iglooyah, with only Innuit corpses encircling him?
She fell on her knees, bowed her head on the seat, and prayed as never before for his safety.
The wind freshened from the south, and far away in some mountain lair thunder growled. Eglah looked long at the beautiful curve of the land, at the s.h.i.+vering poplars turning white in antic.i.p.ation of storm, at the irregular outline of the old stone pile projecting its spectral shadow on the s.h.i.+ning water lapping the terrace wall. Two hours later a gale swept the lake, and under bluish glare of lightning the waves showed their flas.h.i.+ng teeth.
With fine feminine instinct that penetrates far below the surface, yet gives no hint of the depths, Eliza divined that the unhappy woman desired unbroken solitude, and the foster-mother went early to her own bedroom.
Slowly Eglah mounted the spiral stairs that led to the billiard room and thence to the tower. The former was dark, and as she placed her candle on the table something fluttered and fell. It was a Chiriqui quetzal, perched upon a small slab brought from Palenque and fastened as a bracket above the fireplace. She picked it up, smoothed the brilliant, drooping feathers, and set it securely on the table, but a legend she had a.s.sociated with it made her s.h.i.+ver as she opened the door and stepped into the tower.
High above her, and just under the roof, the great lamp with its reflector threw light far out over the tossing waste of water, kindling crowns of fire where the wave crests broke. She sat down on a wooden bench at one of the open arches, and watched the departing cloud fringe of the storm rus.h.i.+ng from the far, sweet, throbbing South, to the icy silence of a more distant North; listened to the fitful moan of tired waves, trying to sob themselves to rest. Would the fleet _fohn_ reach Greenland, melt the blue cables strong as steel that held iceberg ranges, domed with frosted silver--open the yellow eyes of poppies, and waft the ivory gulls back to weary watchers? Often a blessing there, it was sometimes a curse. Could that fierce, hot, southern breath battle against the ceaseless wind, snow-laden even in suns.h.i.+ne, that sweeps forever from palaeocrystic seas across the white desolation of the great ice cap? Persistent study of Northern travels had so completely filled Eglah's mind with Arctic images, that by an inevitable magnetism every change of atmospheric conditions pointed to the Pole.
As the night waned, the moon emerged from ragged clouds, and gradually the lake quieted to its wonted crooning monologue, broken only by the strophe and antistrophe of startled water-fowl scattered by the storm.
Eglah heard the clock strike two, and went down to the billiard room.
The candle was flickering, and in its spasmodic light the eyes of the Quiche holy bird had a preternatural, sinister glitter. She hurried downstairs and locked herself in the den, the master's favorite room.
Cabinets were sealed, busts shrouded in cambric hoods, pictures veiled.
Only Mr. Herriott's desk remained as she remembered it, and here, with her arms crossed on the morocco cover and her face hidden upon them, she watched the night depart, saw the dawn of the day that would take her away forever from the home she had learned to love too late.
CHAPTER XXV
Heavy are the brakes with which suspense and anxious longing clog the wheels of time, yet seasons end; the spokes spin and come again, insistent reminders to waiting watchers of the endless, inexorable procession of years.
An early frost had hastened autumnal effects usually due a month later, and the atmosphere was crisp and sparkling. White oaks, maples, and sweet gums rustled their amber leaves sprinkled with red, black gums swung scarlet torches from every bough, wild grape vines festooned supporting trees with fluttering lace-of-gold, and crimson and bronze berry-brambles had colored warmly under the first frost kiss. Close to the little wire gate of the Dingle a tulip tree shook its burnished, brocaded banners, and in and around its branches coiled a muscadine, hung with glossy, purplish-black cl.u.s.ters that filled the air with delicious, challenging fragrance.
With an unopened roll of newspapers in her hand, Eglah leaned for some moments on the gate, admiring the superb vestments of yellow and red that nature hung out to bar the cold--a small cloud island of ruby near the horizon against which an acacia etched its slender lines, and listening to the song of a mocking-bird, that rose like a flute above the whistle of a partridge astray in feathery broom sedge. On the orchard slope Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l, basket in hand, groped and peered amid tufts of golden-rod, hunting a belated brood of young turkeys. Eglah pa.s.sed through the gate, went into the mill, and found a seat on one of the circular grinding stones. The wall had partly fallen on the west side, and the glow of a sinking sun lighted the dusty, cobwebbed rafters that upheld what remained of the roof. The chant of a portion of the stream rolling from mossy rocks to the ruined, sluggish race was low and soothing as a lullaby.
It had been a sad day, marking two years since the evening in the library when Judge Kent had been stricken; the beginning of a slow death. Dwelling upon the indelible incidents, an acute pain was added to the chronic ache from which his daughter's heart was never free. While missing her father sorely in her sorrowful isolation, she realized that death had come at the behest of mercy. As long as he lived his enemies could a.s.sail him at any moment; now he was comparatively safe under the snow of his native hills. If it were possible to recall him, she would not; she preferred to suffer alone that he might rest in peace. Two days before she had gone for a few hours to Y---- to see in his favorite church the recently completed tall, arched window, ablaze with rose, purple, crimson, and emerald gla.s.s, erected by her, ”To the glory of G.o.d and in memory of Allison Kent.”
Depressed and heartsick, she often sought the solitude of the mill, but in the grey gloom of the rafters above her head a pair of wrens had dwelt for several seasons, and now resented her presence, twittering their protest. Opening the New York and Boston papers, she glanced over one and laid it aside. Unfolding another, her fingers clutched the sheet, where headlines had been reprinted from an English journal:
”RETURN OF THE 'AHVUNGAH.'”
”After an absence of more than two years, the 'Ahvungah' has brought back the scientific explorers who, having investigated the phenomena of Arctic midnights, are glad to return to less rigorous temperatures. The second winter the vessel, while frozen in, was lifted upon ice hummocks in Whale Sound. Deeming the 'Ahvungah' fast until early summer, some of the party, availing themselves of a continuously s.h.i.+ning, two weeks' moon, and in order to avoid sun glare later in the season, made a sledging trip inland over the 'Great Ice,'--the _Sermiksoak_, but the loss of their dogs cut short the journey. During their absence the floe holding the vessel had been broken from the sh.o.r.e-ice by some upheaval unusual at that season, and had drifted many miles. While travelling on the 'ice-foot' to overtake the 'Ahvungah,' the members of the sledging party suffered very severely. Only two deaths occurred during the long voyage; a sailor was drowned in attempting to jump across a lead that closed suddenly after he fell, and the meteorologist, Herr Sprotmund, succ.u.mbed to heart disease while climbing a glacier. The 'Ahvungah' touched here only long enough to land the surgeon, Dr. Klinehurst, and the mail for America, then went on to The Hague. It was learned from the surgeon that two gentlemen of the party preferred to remain in Polar regions at least another year--Professor Roy, the palaeontologist, and Mr. Herriott, of New York, who is much interested in ethnography. Having studied the Eskimos of the Greenland coast, they crossed to the west sh.o.r.e of Smith's Sound, and will make their way slowly through Ellesmere Land, hunting traces of an Innuit tribe they believe to be the descendants of the Onkilon of Siberia. These gentlemen expect to meet whalers next year somewhere along the west coast, but should their plan fail, still another winter will imprison them.”
Until this spasm of pain seized her heart, Eglah had not realized or acknowledged that she cherished any hope, save that G.o.d would preserve the life of the man who so completely renounced her. If she had vaguely trusted time might soften and remove his bitterness, she understood at last the mockery of a delusion that she had unconsciously indulged.
Above the evensong of the rippling water at her feet, rang his pa.s.sionate words that last day in the carriage: ”I shall try not to come home.” To escape the possibility of proximity to her he had plunged into unknown wilds, where only the trails of foxes, wolves, bears, could thread the silent desolation, and at all hazards he would keep the promise of his farewell note: ”Your path in future shall be spared my shadow.” Wandering into the jaws of death, rather than see her again; for how elusive, how slender, the chances of meeting whalers. As in a mirage she seemed to see him on the colonnade at Nutwood, as he stood looking with eloquent, happy eyes at her, a.s.suring her father: ”When I know she is waiting at home for me, do you suppose all the ice in Greenland can shut me away from her?” And now the Arctic Circle would hold his chosen grave, because she could never cross it. The mail for America held no word for her; but doubtless kind messages had come to an old man whose sunken eyes would s.h.i.+ne with delight over tidings from ”the lad.”
To all of us come times when, self-surrendered to depression, some psychic imp drags from mental oblivion and shakes fiendishly before us ghoulish images long forgotten; and now, as purplish-grey shadows gathered in the mill, Eglah saw that vision of ”Were-Wolves,” the souls of wretched men fleeing from light, hiding in Polar midnight.
”Each panter in the darkness Is a demon-haunted soul, The shadowy, phantom were-wolves, Who circle round the Pole.