"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 'daemon' 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 'Bacchae,' 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.
She leaned down, snatched Leighton's hand from the priest's clasp,
clutching it between both of hers, and turned her blazing eyes upon the
kneeling man.
"Will you go now? Have you not done harm enough to satisfy even you?
These are my rooms, and I will tolerate your intrusion no longer.
Remember, my decree of divorce is absolute, and it secures to me the
custody of my child."
"I recognize no validity in divorces, and the law cannot annul a
ceremony performed outside of its restrictions and requirements. Because
we were minors we invoked the aid of the Church, and our vows before God
can never be cancelled by any civil statute. Except as a solemn, sacred
rite, there was nothing in our marriage to legitimize our child. This is
my son, not by license of law, but because we swore fidelity to each
other 'until death do us part,' and called God to witness; and no human
decree can rob me of my child--since you dare not name any other man his
father. I defy you to lay your hand on his innocent head and question
his legitimacy, which inheres only in a ceremony no civil law
sanctioned. Months of tedious and well-nigh fatal illness delayed my
return to you, and during my delirium your letters were mislaid. When at
last I accidentally recovered two letters, and went on crutches to bring
you back with me, you had disappeared. All the proofs of my search shall
be laid before you, and though I do not wonder you grew desperate and
cast me out of your heart as unscrupulous and treacherous, the facts
when investigated must convince you I have kept my vows as faithfully as
you kept yours. I felt that somewhere in the world my wife and child
were adrift, through my folly, my cowardly fear of my father, and,
broken-hearted and conscience-smitten, I confessed to the Superior of my
Order in England at that time, that I desired to live a celibate in
expiation of a rash act in my boyhood, which separated me from the wife
I still loved. I took my vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity with
the explicit understanding that they did not absolve me from my marriage
vows, should God mercifully permit me to find my family. I hold supreme
the oath I took under the stars at the Post, and second in sanctity my
vows before the altar in our chapel. For the awful consequences of my
boyish weakness I accuse only myself, and if it be part of my punishment
that I have lost irrevocably the affection and confidence of the mother
of my child, then, at least, there remains for me the comfort of finding
my boy, from whom I will never again be separated; and to him I must
atone for years of unintentional neglect."
He saw that his appeal was futile as the leap of a wave that breaks and
sinks in froth at the foot of basaltic cliffs, and the joyful light died
in his eyes when he began to realize that wishing to believe the worst
she would never accept proofs offered in exculpation.
"Nona, try to forgive me, for the sake of our son, our own beautiful,
innocent boy."
There was no answer but the steady, quick tapping of her foot on the
floor, and her defiant face showed no more softening than an iron mask.
Leaning forward, he kissed Leighton's tearful cheek, and despite his
effort to control his voice it trembled.
"My precious child, I thank God I have found you! Between your mother
and me you must not attempt to judge now. She has suffered terribly on
account of mistakes I made, and she certainly has the best right to you
and to your love. It is painful for her to see me, and I cannot blame
her, but some arrangement must and shall be made by which I can come
often and be with you without intruding upon her. She will select and
name the hours when my visits will give her least annoyance. Good night,
my son. To-day I am happier than I have been since I kissed your dear
mother good-bye."
He tore a blank page from Ugo Bassi's "Sermon," wrote a few lines, laid
the paper near his wife's hand, and went out, closing the door very
gently.
"The hemorrhage was not all blood. I think an abscess has broken, and it
may save his life. He must have a change as soon as it is safe to move
him; but at present it might be fatal. Your money and his in the Boston
bank will make him comfortable, and unless you use it I shall be obliged
to interfere. Let the doctor decide where and when the child should go.
To-morrow at two o'clock I wish to come here, but you can easily avoid
seeing me if you so desire. May God soften your heart towards your
unfortunate but faithful husband."
When Father Temple entered the Herriott library, Noel rose from a desk
where he was sealing letters and put out both hands.
"Herriott, most blessed of friends! How can I ever thank you?"
"You have found your wife and child? Thank God! I could scarcely wait
for the good news I was sure you would bring me."
His eyes were misty, and the grip of his hands was harder than he knew
as he drew the priest to a chair.
"Dear old fellow, it has been rather too much for you. Brace yourself
with this mixture. I had an idea your Reverence might need a tonic,
since 'after the manner of men, you have fought with beasts at Ephesus.'
Drink it! Your spiritual superior would advise it if he could see your
face."
"Tell me, Noel, how you discovered Nona."
"I saw her at the glove counter where she is employed, and was puzzled
by her resemblance to a face I had admired in San Francisco. I heard out
there that some mystery hung about her, but no hint of any impropriety
on her part. Such delicacy of features and perfect coloring are rare,
and faces so beautiful etch deep on one's memory. Belmont painted her as
'Aurora' in his group, and gave me a photograph of her head; but he
spoke of her with respect, and commented on her proud prudishness in
refusing to sit in his studio. You recollect Sidney Forsyth? He carried
me to a 'night school' for working girls, established by his mother, and
there I first saw 'Aurora,' hard at work in the bookkeeping class. He
admired her extravagantly, and told me that despite her girlish
appearance she was a widow with a child, and lived like a nun in the
very small cottage of an old uncle. Last summer, in hunting through a
discarded trunk hastily packed at Oxford while you were on the
Continent, I found among several sheets from your portfolio that
water-color sketch, and it revived my old suspicion that some early
tragedy had driven you into cloisters. Sooner or later one finds on
almost every man's road through life the sign-post, _dux femina facti_,
and I stumbled against yours when I had ceased to conjecture your motive
for a course that astounded your friends. Last night, after you left me,
I verified a few dates in my diary, and to-day's visit to Brooklyn made
it absolutely certain my identification was correct. I congratulate you,
and am heartily glad that I helped to flush your family covey."
"Congratulations sound grim after all I passed through to-day. Did you
ever dream you were dying from thirst, and just as you stooped to drink
the spring vanished? I have realized that tantalizing vision. Nona will
never forgive me, never accept my explanation, never believe my
statements, never tolerate the sight of me. She hates me with an
intensity that is sickening, and because the child is mine she would
rather see him in his coffin than in my arms. She hugs to her heart the
conviction that I am utterly vile, because she wants to believe the
worst, and furiously rejects any attempt to prove that I am not a doubly
dyed hypocrite and villain. You have been so loyal a friend, I should
like to tell you all that occurred."
When he finished a detailed recital of his interview, he leaned back,
sighed heavily, and closed his eyes.
"I knew you were going into a fiery furnace, for, from what I have heard
and seen of your wife, I fear she is one of the few inexorable women,
impervious to reason, to passionate pleading, to the most adroit
cajolery. The hotter the lava, the harder when it cools. Will you permit
me to offer a suggestion?"
The priest raised his haggard face and laid his hand on Mr. Herriott's
knee.
"I shall be grateful for advice which I sorely need just now."
"You have found the missing, but if you are not wide awake and cautious
you will lose them again, and permanently."
"What do you mean?"
"You told her you would go back to-morrow at two o'clock? I rather think
you will not find her; she will have vanished forever."
"Impossible! The child is too ill to be moved, and she would not risk
the danger to him."
"In her present mood nothing is impossible, and she would dare death if
it were necessary, in order to thwart you. She belongs to more than one
society of communists, and the freemasonry in operation is marvellous.
There are places in this city, in Chicago, and in several New Jersey
towns where she could disappear as successfully as in a Siberian mine;
and you must keep in touch with your beautiful boy, who is much too fine
a porcelain vase to be filled with the vitriol of socialism. Before you
sleep to-night ask the police department to set a special watchman in
sight of that house, with instructions to report to you any indications
of intended removal."
"Then I must go, although I do not share your apprehension that Nona
would rashly risk the boy's safety. Noel, I owe you so much--and for
such various benefits--I am simply bankrupt in expressions of gratitude;
but at least I can pray God to grant you your dearest desire in life, be
that what it may."
He rose, and Mr. Herriott walked with him to the front door.
"Temple, write me fully all that you know I shall wish to hear. Let me
help you in any way possible to secure a change of climate for your
little St. John of the gilded locks. Early to-morrow I go home, and in a
few days your cousins from Washington will be my guests. Are you quite
willing Eglah should know the complications surrounding you at present?"
"Tell her everything, and do not spare me or suffer her to blame the
innocent victims of my rashness. Some day Eglah may help me to soften my
Nona's heart. When and where may I hope to see you again?"
"Very soon I start to Arizona for a short stay, thence to the most
northern of the Aleutian Islands, where I expect to find Eskimo
cliff-dwellers, and later to the region northwest of Hudson Bay. Be sure
to write me, and Vernon--pardon my perhaps unjustifiable
insistence--don't fail to secure police surveillance before you sleep."
When the door closed, Mr. Herriott wrote a telegram to the physician who
attended Leighton, walked to the nearest telegraph office, and heard his
message click over the wires.
A few days later he was not surprised to learn that only the sternly
positive interdict of the doctor had frustrated an attempt to remove
Leighton from Brooklyn at ten o'clock on Monday morning.