If owners of old manorial houses kept frank and faithful log-books,
strange domestic records might now and then be read, rivalling in tragic
incidents those of passing ships. Conspicuously infelicitous was the
stream of events beating against Calvary House and reducing an ancient,
broad estate and handsome three-storied brick residence to a few
impoverished acres, and a rambling structure partly destroyed by fire,
and wholly abandoned to vacancy and isolation in consequence of grewsome
gossip. During eighty years the proprietorship had been vested in only
two families, totally unrelated; in the first, the reckless extravagance
and unbridled careers of four beautiful women depleted the domestic
coffer, necessitated the sacrifice and sale of the property, and drove a
weakly indulgent father to suicide. In the second the vices of sons
plunged the widowed mother into melancholia and an insane asylum.
From time to time portions of land were sold to enable the boys to
continue their wild carousals. Fratricidal strife ensued, and one
brother spent the dismal residue of his days in the penitentiary,
expiating the murder of the other. The vicious round of horse-racing,
cock-fighting, fox-hunting, gambling and drinking once madly run had
ended in the final wreck, and what remained of the estate fell into the
hands of Mr. Herriott's father, whose agent held the mortgage.
Sufficiently grim was the foundation of facts; yet still more appalling
the superstructure of neighborhood traditions, and the ghoulish tales of
superstitious servants. Venerable trees, whose sheltering arms might
have veiled the ruin, had been over-grown by mistletoe, until very few
survived to stand guard, and when a hunter crept with his pointer
through broom-sedge waist high all over the lawn, his cigar spark set
the whole aflame, and only two fine old oaks close to the house were
left as sentinels. Later, a lightning bolt destroyed one; two years
after, an equinoctial gale blew the other half across the mossy roof.
Stark, weather beaten, its broken windows like eyeless sockets in a
skull, the old house, dumb in desolation, stood in dire need of the
mercies of bell, candle, censer, and aspergill to exorcise its garrison
of unholy spectres. Five years after the place had been given by Noel
Herriott to the "Brothers of the Order of Calvary," lime, paint,
wallpaper, patient toil and a wise appreciation of the adaptability of
angles, corridors, dormer windows and verandas, in architectural
alterations, had transformed it into a quaintly irregular but
picturesque structure. Outside mouldy walls were curtained with
ampelopsis lace, while from a circular belfry between the original
square rock chimneys, a deep-toned bell swung below a tall gilt cross,
and uttered its holy message of peace to a troubled and tragic past. The
basement had been converted into a refectory, kitchen and store room,
the large apartments were partitioned into individual cells, and an
infirmary; and the long drawing-room became a chapel, with a small
oratory adjoining. Here a pipe organ sounded through the arch leading
into the chapel, and over this opening a purple curtain fell when
service ended. Beyond and in line with the oratory, a one-story wing
with a wide cloistered piazza looked toward the rear of the house, and
held a sacristy; then three small chambers fronting the vine-draped
cloister behind whose arches paced, book in hand, fathers, brothers and
lay brothers.
In the early stages of the era of renovation the place had resembled an
industrial farm rather than a religious retreat; but gradually, as
orchard and vineyard were replanted, gardens outlined and cultivated, a
solemn, peaceful silence enveloped Calvary House, broken by no ruder
sounds than Angelus, chants from the chapel, low-swelling organ tones,
and that peculiarly sweet, thrilling threnody of hedge sparrows moaning
in a ragged thicket of very old lilacs. Along the front of the sloping
lawn a fence divided it from the turnpike leading into the city, and
over the wide wooden gate sprang an arch bearing in black letters,
Calvary House, and surmounted by a cross. From the gate latch swung the
porter's bell.
Since the day when, standing at an open grave close to Leighton's mound
in Evergreen, Father Temple had read the committal service as his wife's
coffin was lowered, and pronounced the farewell benediction, the springs
of his busy life seemed to have broken. Max Harlberg and the few who had
followed the hearse, stole away, leaving the priest on his knees. Later,
as stars came out to guard the hosts of sleepers, a watchman found him
prone on the damp mound, and in a heavy stupor. An ambulance carried him
to the nearest hospital, where he rallied slowly from an attack of
pneumonia that left his lungs too weak to permit the possibility of
preaching, and the doctors warned him a year's rest was imperative.
Engagements for "missions" and "retreats" were cancelled, and his
superior summoned him home, but after a few days advised him to go South
and visit his relatives in Y---- until the winds of March had blown out
their fury. On his return, still thin and wan, he resumed his duties,
and from Prime to Compline missed no service. After Vespers, the tolling
of the _De Profundis_ bell called all to their knees in silent prayer
for the dead, and his bowed head was always the last lifted. How much
penance was self-imposed none knew, but a change had come into the
habitually sad face; keen mental strife, devouring anxiety, were at an
end, and the large dark eyes told of an inward patience that was not yet
peace, of an acceptance of the verdict that his life spelled hopeless
failure. So marked was the alteration in figure and features, that one
sunny day at Calvary House, as Mr. Herriott grasped his hand, he was
painfully startled.
"Vernon! You are little more than a holy shadow! If starving is the
regimen prescribed here, I do not feel tempted to tarry even for a day."
"Noel--God bless you, dear old fellow! At last you have remembered us,
and how well you look! The bare sight of your superb strength is tonic.
Come into the chapel. Terce bell is sounding. After a little the
Brotherhood will greet you."
Under the guidance of Father Superior Elverton, a gaunt man of unusual
height, with the ascetic jaw of a Trappist, and dreamy eyes mystical as
Hugo of St. Victor, Mr. Herriott was shown fields, garden and buildings,
and after dinner in the refectory, where, in honor of his presence,
conversation was allowed, he asked the privilege of being left alone
with Father Temple. It was a warm day, and drawing chairs to a shaded
recess of the cloister, Mr. Herriott said:
"I am so glad the weather favored me to-day for this visit. It will rain
soon."
"No; look at that deep blue, clear sky. I see no prophecy of rain, but
you have tried so many climates, doubtless you are weather wise."
"If a man who has slept often in tents, open boats and on the bare
ground learns nothing of nature's atmospheric signal code, he is far
below savages in intelligence, and more ignorant than brutes. You of the
shut-in clan are not skilled meteorologists, but time is too precious to
be wasted in idle weather chat. Vernon, there is much I should like to
know, yet I shrink from questioning you. Many letters have been lost,
and my home news came in snatches, sometimes with no connection, no
coherence. I have thought of you constantly, and now what you are
willing to tell me of all that has happened since we parted in New York
that Sunday night, I shall be glad to hear."
Leaning his elbow on the brick base of an arch and bowing his head in
his palm, Father Temple narrated the circumstances that attended the
death of his wife and son, withholding nothing. His muffled voice was
steady and passionless, as if reading from the breviary, and when the
face lifted it showed only the quiet hopelessness in eyes of one going
back over a battle-field where all that was cherished went down.
"Thank you, Temple. It might have been worse, and at least you must be
comforted in knowing that at the last she relented and did you justice."
"The last has become first. All that preceded it I have cast away, and
that final hour of forgiveness, that touch on my head--that feeble
clinging of her fingers--is what remains of my past life--what sustains
me for the future."
"Try to avoid morbid retrospection. Your expiation has been so complete
you have no grounds for self-reproach; you are still a young man, and
your life work is ahead of you."
The priest threw out one hand, and his trained tone broke suddenly.
"Expiation will never end while I have breath to pray--not until the
same grave that holds my victims covers me. You can not understand,
because you know no more about love than the rubric! If you had ever
felt your wife's lips on yours, or the clasp of your child's arms, and
heard his glad, tender cry of 'father!'--you would realize that no
expiation could be sufficient, if your hand had smitten them to ruin."
"Perhaps I do understand the torture more thoroughly than you imagine,
and you must allow me to say that were I as sadly circumstanced as
yourself, I should set my back to the past, and resolutely hunt for
sunshine in coming years. Deliberate, intentional villainy was never
your sin, and for a foolish boy's rash haste you did everything possible
to atone. I shall be sorry to see you so unmanly as to sink down in the
mildew of an abject melancholy. Your surroundings invite morbid
memories, and just here, Vernon, let me say I do not like your
refectory. It is dark, damp, mouldy, and you must make a change.
I should enjoy breakfasting in the catacombs quite as much. Ask your
superior to estimate the cost of building a refectory on this floor, say
to the left yonder, and perhaps the matter may be arranged
satisfactorily. Another bell! What office comes next?"
"That is to notify us 'free time' is over for the day. We have an hour
in which to employ ourselves without direction. Below the vegetable
garden Brother Theodore comes from his pet strawberry bed, and over
yonder, what looks like a huge black bird with flapping white wings is
Brother Aristide dusting the leaves of his grapevines with some
insecticide powder. He came from Burgundy, and believes that ledge
behind the line of cherry trees lying south-southeast will give him
Chambertin equal to the best in Cote d'Or. You see even here each
trundles his recreation hoop once a day."
An east wind had spun fine silver cloud lines curving across the blue,
clustering, widening into two vast, fleecy pinions that were floating
slowly to the gates of the west. Despite sunshine, chilliness edged the
air, and Father Temple coughed hoarsely.
"Your reverence should not stay here next winter. It is too humid. As
the crow flies and the wind sweeps, the Atlantic can not be more than
twenty miles away, and when northeast gales howl from Barnegat to
Hatteras, this is no sanatorium for you. If you have no special
preference for tuberculosis, and have not vowed slow suicide on that
altar, I should be glad if you would select some other mode of exit when
you finally say good-bye. Consumption robbed me of my father--I hope I
shall not lose my friend also thereby."
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 God'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 fishing 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 Washington
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 embarrassed 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 vanishing 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 assured 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 Washington, 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 pronounce
'ashes to ashes, dust to dust'--when mother earth takes me back to her
heart.'
"Just then Mrs. Mitchell 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 muffled 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 associated her with a passage 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."
"As yet I have made no definite plans; have been considering two recent
offers. One is the presidency of a great railroad system--a position I
might possibly fit myself to occupy if I went into the machine shops and
roundhouses and worked hard for the next five years. It happens that the
shares and bonds of one short but very important line which my father
practically owned when the middle West was comparatively undeveloped,
have appreciated enormously, and now that road is the link absolutely
necessary to the contemplated consolidation of a new route that will
touch the Pacific. I cabled my refusal to sell out, and the next bait
was the presidency. Mr. Stadmeyer and I have controlling interests and
our views accord. Two days ago we had a meeting, at which I declined
office, and we leased our road for thirty years. That relieved me from
one horn of the dilemma; the other still threatens. A Polar expedition
will be ready next year, and I have been asked to take a place aboard
ship."
"Noel, I beg of you, dismiss that thought. Of all scientific follies,
that Pole-hunting mania is the wildest, the most indefensible. To add
your bleaching bones to the cairns heaped on the eternal ice altar of
Polar night is no ambition worthy of you. Don't think me childish, but
the sight of you is such a comfort I could not bear to have you risk
your life searching for mares' nests so far away."
Mr. Herriott laughed--a genial, hearty, deep-chested sound rarely heard
in cloisters.
"Get rid of that cough, and I will take you along as chaplain to
christen the Pole--presumably it is pagan at present. I wish you would
go down to New Mexico or Arizona and make a sensible effort to build up
your constitution, which seems suing you for damages. Leave medicine and
the breviary in your cell, and lie under the stars and inhale that
wonderful, healing air. When you wish to pray go down into the Grand
Canyon, you will find you can succeed without needing a book to help you.
In that sky verily 'the heavens declare the glory of God; and the
firmament sheweth His handiwork.' Mission work, and to spare, would
interest you at a Moqui Pueblo, and I can recommend one whose primeval,
idyllic repose dwells in my memory like an eclogue of Virgil's. It is
spread over the crown and sides of a precipice where terraces tilt their
outer edges upward to prevent water from draining the little gardens.
Masonry-lined cisterns gleam under moonlight like molten silver, sheep
and goats bleat in their stone enclosures, a frieze of kids runs below
the cornice of brown cupids drowsing on the wall, and all about the mesa
a pink cloud of blooming peach trees and a yellow mist of acacias. Weigh
this cure scheme, discuss it in Sanhedrim, and if you think favorably of
it let me hear from you before October, as I have several friends among
ranchmen, and some of the Moquis have not forgotten me."
"Do you intend to settle down now at your lake-shore house?"
"Yes, for the present. I have been invited to write for two scientific
magazines, and one of the subjects suggested rather appeals to me--a
comparison of the fiords of Norway with those of Alaska and British
Columbia, but I have not fully decided. However, I am committed to help
Chalcott verify numerous citations from Strabo's tenth book, relative to
Crete, and I must brush up my classics. Chalcott is sanguine of 'great
finds' around the site of ancient Knossos in the near future. He has
been stung by the Pelasgian bee, and I have promised to hunt and copy
some passages from Strabo."
He took his hat from the floor and rose.
"Now I must say good-bye to father superior and the brethren."
"We hoped you would spend at least one night with us, in the room we
have named and set apart for you."
"I must get back to Philadelphia in time for a meeting to-morrow of
stockholders and directors of our railroad. Mr. Stadmeyer requested me
to attend, though he is really our watchdog. Don't delay the refectory
improvements, and since you are all so good as to give me a special
penitential apartment, I wish you would brighten it up with a cheerful
paper, and allow me the privilege of sending some human derelict to
anchor here in peace. God knows, there are fleets of souls adrift, and I
should be glad if, for my sake, you can tow some into the snug harbor of
my cell, until the day comes when my sins culminate and force me here
for penance."
When the two walked down to the outer gate, the contrast between the
virile athlete and the shadowy black form of the priest was pathetically
vivid.
The busy shuttles of the east wind had spread their cirrus laces even
along the western horizon where the sun had vanished, and the sky was
one huge arching shell enamelled with mother-of-pearl, as the cloudlets
burned in the after-glow.
"Vernon, don't look back. You have balanced your books with the past.
Dear old fellow, I wish to think of you as fulfilling the rich promise
of our college days."
"Assure me you will give up that Arctic whim. The thought of it
distresses me."
"Do not worry about me. The expedition could not be ready to start for
at least a year, and by that time I may not need to go. Sir John
Franklin's ghost may chat with mine and tell me all the secrets of the
Pole, which doubtless he discovered when Arctic ice claimed his body."
He laughed, they shook hands, and parted.
At a bend in the road he turned, looked back and waved his hat to the
watching figure standing under the gilt cross, and silhouetted in sharp
lines against the opal dome of the west.