Part 50 (1/2)
At nine o'clock on the morning of the 17th, the overseer's wife, desiring to avoid the pa.s.senger train, went in the caboose of a local freight to Sunflower. It was an ”excursion” day in honor of the opening of a Masonic hall just completed, and many strangers strolled about the village awaiting the hour fixed for the dedication ceremonies. At one o'clock, when the fast southbound train paused long enough to deliver the mail-bag, Eliza stood on the little platform, watching the line of dusty cars. As a tall figure, valise in hand, stepped from the Pullman sleeper, she did not promptly recognize the clean-shaven face, wearing grey goggles. Handing his valise to a negro porter sitting on the baggage truck, he glanced about him, and approached the little woman, who was trembling with suspense.
”How are you, Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l?”
He held out his hand.
”Oh, Mr. Herriott! I was not sure it was you. Thank G.o.d! I was so afraid you would not come.”
He took off the goggles and dropped them in his coat pocket.
”I dare say these gla.s.ses partly disguise, but snow-blindness left my eyes rather sensitive, and I wore them as guard against railroad dust.”
”Come with me, Mr. Herriott. This little place is full of strangers to-day on account of a Masonic meeting, but there is a quiet spot in the grove yonder, where a recent picnic party left some benches.”
In silence they reached the grove of old red oaks, and Eliza sat down on a rough, board seat; but he declined to share it, and stood before her, his eyes an interrogation.
”Mr. Herriott, I asked you to come here because you are pursuing a course I think you would abandon if you knew some facts that only I can give you. But first, I want your promise that no matter what the future holds, you will never let Eglah know or suspect that I wrote you, came here, or saw you. If she found it out she would never forgive me; she would desert me, and I am running a great risk. Give me your word of honor to keep this meeting always strictly confidential. If you promise, I shall feel easy.”
”I promise. You may trust me.”
”Thank you, sir. Before I say more, will you tell me if you still love your wife?”
His face hardened and his eyes narrowed.
”Pardon me, madam. I did not come here to be catechised.”
”If you have ceased to love her, then I should betray a holy trust by lifting a very sacred veil. I can speak freely only to a man who loves her as she deserves--and as I have always believed you did. If you no longer love her, I have come on worse than a fool's errand.”
There was a brief silence, and hot tears ran over the little woman's cheeks.
”And if I love her still? Go on, go on.”
”Then why are you breaking her dear heart?”
”Madam, her heart has never been in my keeping. You must know that for years I made every effort to win it, and failing, I abandoned the hope.
Our merely nominal relation was dissolved by mutual consent, and I gave her entire freedom before I started North. I have never been close enough to her heart to wound it.”
”Please, Mr. Herriott, listen to me patiently. I must go back so far.
She did not love you when she married you. Why she so suddenly took that awful step I don't know. She refused to explain. I believed that her father had persuaded her, but she a.s.sured me he had no knowledge of her intention until after she had voluntarily made her decision, and she is absolutely truthful. She is reticent and proud, but of false statements she is incapable. She has never confided the motive of her rash marriage to me, and what she is unwilling to have me know, n.o.body else can ever tell me. Better than any one living I understand her, and when she came back with her father from Greyledge I saw a great change in her; she was not the indifferent girl whom you had taken away. The estrangement between Judge Kent and herself had ended, and she rejoiced in the cordial reconciliation, but some sad mystery in the background overshadowed her and puzzled me. The day she received that express package from you she suddenly seemed to go frantic, and her distress was so overwhelming I was frightened. Never before or since has she shown such pa.s.sionate grief. She told me she had wronged, wounded you, and that you would never forgive her. How she wronged you she would not explain, and I don't know any more now than I did then. But she insisted again and again that you were not to blame--that it was entirely her fault, and she must bear the sorrow she had brought upon herself. She wrung her hands and begged me to pray she might die before you came back and rejected her. When I tried to comfort her, and asked why you should do such a cruel, unjust thing, she wailed: 'You loved your husband; if you had wounded him past pardon, could you bear to talk about it? Don't question me. Think of your Robert, and try to realize how I feel.' All that night she walked the floor of her room, and next morning she looked years older--so white, so silent, as if gazing down into a grave. Since then she has never been the same Eglah. Something in your last message, which I did not see, slew her peace of mind for all time. She shut herself away from society, lived exclusively with her father and with me. When Judge Kent died I dreaded a total collapse in the child who had wors.h.i.+pped him from her babyhood; but she bore the awful strain silently, calmly, surprisingly. Mr. Whitfield put his arm around her shoulder as she stood by the coffin, and, with tears in his eyes, the old man praised her devotion and her bravery. She looked up at him with a strange smile on her bloodless lips.
”'One can suffer only so much, then numbness comes. After the misery of many months a last blow does not crush. The petrified are not always where they belong--in the grave.'
”After the funeral she closed Nutwood, moved her books, piano, and horses down to my little cottage in the heart of the pine woods, denied herself to every one, and there we have lived in strict seclusion.
Day and night she pored over books of Arctic travel, and on the walls of her room she had maps and charts, and what she called her 'comfort calendar,' that she patched together from almanacs, to mark what time day and night began near the Pole and when the new moons were due. It made my heart ache to see her face each day as she searched the papers for some news of you. At last she ceased to expect any, and your name was not mentioned. Mr. Herriott, do you recollect your striped silk smoking-jacket, with pink poppies embroidered on collar and cuffs and down the front?”
”Yes. I had such a jacket.”
”One sultry summer night, about one o'clock, I went on tiptoe into Eglah's room to get a vial of medicine that was kept in a closet there, and, as she slept poorly, I tried not to disturb her. Her window was open, the curtains looped back, and a full moon shone in. She was sitting up in bed, with her face buried in some bright wrapping, and a sort of strangled moan came from her. I went to the bed and asked what the trouble was. Had she neuralgia in her face, that she was m.u.f.fling it on such a hot night? Oh, Mr. Herriott, if you could have heard the quiver in her voice!
”'No, no. Heartache--heartache only the grave can ease.'