Its alliterative jingle had probably commended Dairy Dingle to Marcia
Maurice when she selected a name for the new home of the overseer,
Robert Mitchell. Here he brought his bride from Nutwood, where she had
lived since her father's death on the battle-field. A Federal cavalry
raid, intended specially for the looting of Y---- and the destruction of
its factories, had loitered too long at Willow Bend plantation, and
finding Confederate squadrons in hot pursuit, the Union troopers were
forced to retreat, after burning every building in sight except the
cabins of the negroes. General Maurice loved the rambling, airy,
old-fashioned country house where he was born, and here he usually
brought his family to spend Christmas, and make genuine holiday for his
numerous slaves. After the raid only rock chimneys stood as
commemorative pillars, and not a vestige of gin-house, cotton sheds, or
stables was visible. At a hard gallop the fleeing troopers passed an
adjacent grist-mill which supplied several plantations with meal, and
paused long enough to kindle a blaze in a pile of corn sacks. The
miller, a lame negro, extinguished the flames, and preserved a structure
where several generations had brought their contributions to the hopper.
Near this old red mill Mrs. Maurice built a house for her overseer, and
after Eliza's marriage gave it and the adjoining fifty acres of cleared
land to the young wife. It was a small, square box of a house, with four
rooms, broad, low-pitched piazzas, and wide hall running through the
middle. Where the rear gallery ended, a covered way, brick paved, led to
the kitchen and servants' room. On the left, at a sudden dip of the
land, and several hundred yards distant, stood the spring house, or
stone dairy, a low structure built over a small stream running from the
bold spring that gushed out of the hillside a few feet away--and falling
into the creek just above the mill-dam.
A shallow canal dug through the centre of the dairy had been paved with
rock, and here, winter and summer, the milk bowls and butter jars stood
in water rippling against their sides.
While General Maurice lived, he kept only his Jersey herd at Nutwood,
but at Willow Bend his famous Short-horns, red, and red roan, roamed
over pasturage extending hundreds of acres. The "cow pen" and milking
shed were not visible, hidden on the edge of a plateau running far away
to a stretch of primeval, lonely pine woods crossed only by cattle
paths. In a green cup encircled by wimpling hills the overseer's home
nestled like a white bird hovering to drink. The sharply curving creek
that divided it from the plantation was bridged a half mile below the
mill, and a dense growth of trees and vines clothed the banks. In an
opposite direction, beyond the house, and mantling the upland slopes,
lay fields of grain, glistening as the wind crinkled the yellowing
folds.
Locust and china trees, overrun by English honeysuckle, coral, and buff
woodbine, shaded the cottage, and all about the spring house clustered
azaleas--white, pink, orange, scarlet--filling the quiet hollow with
waves of incomparable perfume. Hanging on the bluff above the bubbling
spring a thicket of titi swung exquisite opal plumes, over which bees
drowsed; and crowding to the front for dress parade clung a line of
mountain laurel or "ivy" faintly flushed with pale-rose clusters waiting
to burst into bloom and with their crimped shell-pink cups rival fluted
and tinted treasures from Sevres and Murano.
* * * * *
Into this green, shadowy dingle had come its long absent mistress, and,
closing Nutwood, Eglah shared her foster-mother's secluded home in the
heart of the pine woods.
For many months after her father's death she seemed a mute, breathing
statue rather than a suffering woman, so deep lay the pain no words
could fathom. Close and tender as were the ties linking the two, Eliza
dared not probe the wound, and when Eglah closed the door of her own
room, the loving little mother would have broken into a sealed tomb as
soon as violate her solitude.
Two miles beyond the plantation, across the creek, a new railway line
had established a station called Maurice, and about this nucleus a
village grew with surprising rapidity. The site selected on Eglah's land
by the railway company chanced to be that of the neighborhood
school-house, where, on the fourth Sunday of each month, a Methodist
minister of many mission chapels preached. Mrs. Mitchell had organized a
Sabbath school, and Eglah had given a cabinet organ, but the figure
shrouded in mourning was seen only when driving in her trap, or more
frequently alone on horseback. These long rides through rolling pine
forests and silent sunny glades, where she met none but her own
velvet-eyed, browsing red cattle, and shy, happy rabbits, were hours of
immeasurable relief; yet, at intervals, proved battle-ground on which
she fought the crowding spectres of a sombre, brooding future. Political
and social ambitions were shut forever in her father's grave; domestic
duties ended when the doors and gates of Nutwood had been locked; and
business affairs were in far wiser hands than hers. What should she do
with her empty life?
One afternoon, goaded by sad thoughts, she had ridden farther than
usual, and, returning, reined her horse in at the brink of a meadow to
tighten her coil of hair, shaken by a rapid gallop. Before her a group
of young, red, dappled calves lay in the thick grass, their soft eyes
wonderingly alert, and all Pan's orchestra seemed rehearsing. A
wood-lark in a crab-apple bush set the pitch, a red-bird followed; two
crows answered from the top of an ancient pine, and among beech boughs a
velvet-throated thrush trilled, while under sedge shadows frogs croaked
a hoarse bassoon. From the edge of a pool dimpling the turf white herons
rose, flitting slowly across an orange sky, where cloud fringes burned
in the similitude of scarlet tulips. If she could cease to be a woman
with an aching heart and an immortal soul, what a peaceful home was here
among the sinless forest children vast mother earth had called to sing
and play in her pine-roofed, grassy nursery. If the sylvan quietude of
this Theocritan retreat had power to witch her surging pulses to
unbroken calm, she might hide for ever in her own green aisles, secure
from stinging shafts of gossip and derision. She lifted the reins and
the horse sprang forward.
A year ago Mr. Herriott had sailed. No tidings reached her; no allusion
to the "Ahvungah" had appeared in any of the newspapers she searched
daily. She knew the vessel would not stop at an American port--would
return directly to Europe from the Arctic circle--but the American press
would chronicle the close of the expedition. If disaster had overtaken
it, how soon could she know?
Was Mr. Herriott frozen fast in the awful desolation of Whale Sound, or
sledging in a race with death across that vast, level, white ice desert
of compacted snow in central Greenland, eight thousand feet above the
sea, swept by Polar winds that never sleep? Wherever Arctic fetters held
him, the moon shone constantly two weeks for him, and after the long
night a returning sun was now gilding the minarets of icebergs and
unlocking the bars of floes.
If he never came back she could indulge the love that so unexpectedly
stirred her heart, that had grown swiftly since he left her; if he
survived and returned she must hide her affection and herself far from
the biting, branding scorn that would always glow in his eyes. How could
she bear the dreary coming years of a possibly long life? There were
hours in which she tried to hope he would not come back; but recalling
that one moment when he held her so tight to his breast, she seemed to
feel again the furious beating of his heart which had never belonged to
any woman but herself, and, as the memory thrilled her, into her wan
face crept a joyful flush. At last, too late, her heart was his, but he
no longer desired or valued it. He had cast her out of his life. Riding
slowly homeward in the star-powdered, silvery-grey gloaming, she locked
her torturing thoughts behind the mask of silence that was becoming
habitual, and near the mill met Mrs. Mitchell's tender eyes on watch for
her.
A few mornings later, Eglah stood in the dairy door, looking up beyond a
sentry line of tall pear trees uniformed in vivid green, to the
hillside, where lay the peach orchard a month before in full flower,
billowing gently like a wide coverlet of pink silk shaken in sunlight.
Followed by Delilah, who knew the haunts of water-rats in the velvet
moss low on the banks, she walked toward the creek. Over one corner of
the deserted red mill a dewberry vine feathered with blossoms rambled
almost to the sagging roof, and along the ruined line of the old race
ferns held up their lace fronds to shade the lilac spikes of
water-hyacinths. It was a cool, lonely place, sweet with the breath of
wild flowers, silent save the endless adagio in minors played by crystal
fingers of the stream stealing down the broken, crumbling stone dam. In
that quiet nook all outside noises seemed intrusive, and Eglah listened
to the beat of a horse's hoofs cantering across the bridge below the
mill. Very soon Mr. Boynton appeared and dismounted.
"Good morning, Miss Eglah. A telegram was forwarded from Y----, and as I
happened to be at Maurice when it came, I brought it at once."
"Thank you very much."
She took the message and walked away a few steps, struggling for
strength to face the worst.
"Mrs. Noel Herriott:
"Amos Lea has been ill for months. To-day I am called to
Chicago to my sick son. Della will not stay here without me.
Some woman ought to come.
"AMANDA ORR."
"I hope it is good news about your husband?"
"Mr. Boynton, it might be worse. Sickness in Mr. Herriott's household
seems to require that I should go to his home for a few days. Please
wait here until I can go to the house and find out what must be done. I
may trouble you to attend to some matters for me."
Mrs. Mitchell sat on the steps at the rear of the cottage, stemming a
bowl of strawberries and warily watching the elusive feints of a white
turkey hen picking her way to a nest hidden in a tangle of blackberry
vines. Eglah held the open telegram before her eyes and waited.
"I suppose you want me to go?"
"I wish you to be there with me. I can not go alone."
"Dearie, you can't nurse the gardener. If Mr. Herriott were at home he
would not listen to any such nonsense."
"I like Amos Lea, and I intend to put him in the hands of a good trained
nurse until Mrs. Orr returns."
"That could be done easily by telegraph or letter. But, my baby, if it
would comfort you to be in the house----"
Eglah threw up her hand with a warning gesture.
"I wish to stay only a few days; just long enough to assure myself that
the old man is carefully attended to. I prefer not to start from Y----,
and the train despatcher at Maurice can stop the up train at 11.45. We
need no trunk, and I have the money to pay our way on. I shall write and
have more forwarded from the bank. Ma-Lila, I wish to start to-night.
Can you get ready?"
The little woman's level brows puckered, but the light in her eyes was a
caress.
"Can I refuse any of your foolish whims? I have spoiled you all your
life, and it is rather late in the day for me to undertake to oppose
you. I see Hiram Boynton waiting, and I must arrange with him to have
his boys sleep here and take care of everything in our absence. You know
my pet cow's calf is only three days old, and her udder needs watching."
They reached Greyledge at noon, accompanied by the middle-aged nurse
commended by the matron of a hospital in the neighboring city. At the
sound of carriage wheels on the stone driveway, the dogs greeted them
from the kennels in the stable yard, and several peals from the front
door bell rang through the closed house before the butler, pipe in hand,
opened the door. Speechless from astonishment, he staggered back.
"Good morning, Hawkins. How is Amos Lea?"
"About the same, ma'am, the doctor says. Mrs. Herriott, I hope you will
excuse the looks of things. If I had known you were coming I would have
lighted the furnace and warmed the house and been nearer ready. There is
not a female on the place. Della was that prudish she went with her
aunt."
"Did Mrs. Orr leave all the keys with you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Bring them to me and show me where they belong. Is Rivers here?"
"Oh, yes, ma'am; also his cousin Nelson, who helps with the horses and
dogs; and David Green, the under gardener."
"Hawkins, you know Mrs. Mitchell; she came with me on a visit before my
marriage; and this is Mrs. Adams, who will nurse Amos for the present.
Open the house and make fires in the 'blue room' and two other bedrooms.
I shall be here only a short while, and you must do the best you can for
us as regards meals. When the time comes for feeding the dogs I wish to
be notified. I am afraid they have forgotten me."
"If you please, ma'am, what is the news from Mr. Herriott? When I saw
you I felt sure he must be coming home shortly. We count the days till
we see him."
"I am sorry, Hawkins, but no news reaches me now. It has been a long,
dreary, dreadful time. I came because Mrs. Orr telegraphed me some one
was needed here to look after the sick. Ma-Lila, will you go upstairs
with Mrs. Adams while I see Amos?"
Near the gardener's cottage she met David Green, with a bowl of broth in
his hands and a scowl on his sunburned face.
"How are you, David? Hearing that Amos is sick, I have brought a good
nurse to stay with him till the housekeeper returns. What is the matter
with him?"
"Madam, it is mostly crankiness now, in my opinion. Last fall he had a
spell of fever that left him ailing, and in January he fell into
inflammatory rheumatism that made him as helpless as a baby and
fractious as a bull pup. But he got better of it, and able to hobble
around his room on crutches. Like the mule he is, he would creep down to
the green-houses, hunting something to scold me about, and his crutch
slipped on the ice and he hurt his hip joint. The doctor orders him to
keep still and not move that leg, but, madam, he shuffles around in his
bed for all the world like hyenas in a circus cage. We men take him up
as easy as can be and lay him on a cot and change his clothes; but
cranky! Cross! The angels couldn't please him. I guess he is sore, and
when we jar and hurt him, instead of cursing us with a wholesome, honest
oath we are used to, he throws up his arms, rolls back his eyes till
they are all white balls, and shouts to the Lord to set Jezreel's
hounds, and Og, and the rest of the Bible beasts, and the imps of Belial
upon us! He calls us 'godless goats,' and we don't set up to be
religious, but he passes for pious and stands high in his church, and it
makes us feel creepy, because we don't know when the Lord might happen
to listen to him. You know, madam, he has got a strong pull on the
master. Mr. Herriott humors his whims, and now he is away we are doing
our best for Amos. Every other night I leave my family, three miles
away, and sleep here in his room. Mrs. Herriott, I have come to the
conclusion that if the master does not get home soon the old man will
fret himself to death. Day and night he prays for him. Every morning we
bring him a paper, and his poor hands shake while he holds it and
searches for news of the vessel, as a pointer hunts partridges. My wife
is a first-class cook, and, thinking to please him, she made and sent
him this broth. Just now, when he tasted it, the corners of his mouth
went nearly to his ears, and he asked me please to pour it into Tzar's
pan as I passed the kennel. If I had my choice, I would rather nurse a
bucketful of hornets."
"I am glad you have all been so good to him; you especially, who have a
wife and children to claim you. I hope Mr. Herriott can soon be at home,
and he will thank you. Now your responsibility ceases, because I have
employed a good nurse, trained in a hospital, who will know what is best
for him and make him obey the doctor's directions. David, I am sure you
men will be considerate and respectful while she remains."
At the door of the gardener's house, Snap dashed out, barking viciously.
She called his name twice and held out her hand, but, eyeing her
suspiciously, he growled and retreated across the threshold. Propped
with pillows, Amos was on a cot near the hearth, and a newspaper lay
across his knees. The room was bright with sunshine, and when Eglah
entered, clad in black, her long crepe veil thrown back and falling
nearly to the floor, the old man stared at her and almost shrieked:
"Has the Lord God taken my lad? You wear widow's black for him?"
"No, Amos. The Lord God took my father, and my mourning is for him."
He threw up his arms.
"God be praised!"
After a moment, he added apologetically:
"Madam, I mean I am thankful Noel is spared. You see, I think only of
the boy."
She drew a chair to the cot and took one of the gardener's wasted,
gnarled hands in hers.
"I did not hear of your sickness till three days ago, and I came at
once, to see if I could not make you more comfortable while Mrs. Orr is
away."
"It makes no difference about my worn-out old body--that is a crippled
hulk. My mind is in torment because of the lad's danger. Where is he
now? In the ice on land, or locked up in the ship of the ungodly name,
that can never break loose from the bergs leaning over her? Tell me, was
your news later than my letter?"
He dragged from his bosom two worn, soiled envelopes and held them
towards her. One was postmarked St. John, N. B., the other Dundee,
Scotland. As she opened them a bunch of yellow poppies and a little
square of moss fell into her lap. She glanced at the dates. The oldest
was from Upernavik, soon after the vessel reached Greenland; the most
recent was from off Cape Alexander, where the "Ahvungah" was frozen in.
"No, Amos, your news is the latest I have heard."
Her voice quivered, and replacing the flowers in an envelope, she laid
the unread letters on the cot.
"Was your last letter from him the same date as mine?"
"No; it was earlier."
The cold, light-grey eyes in their deep, sunken sockets probed hers like
steel.
"Madam, it was your fault he went away."
"No, his word was pledged before our marriage, and I am not responsible
for this journey. I did all that was possible to keep him."
Amos leaned forward and grasped her wrist.
"You know you are to blame. What was it you did to him? That night you
came--a bride--I saw when he took you from the carriage everything had
gone wrong with him. I knew what that grip of his mouth and that red
spark in his eyes meant. You did him some wrong."
She shook her head, and, even in his wrath, the hopeless sorrow in her
eyes touched him.
"You struck him a bitter, hard blow somewhere. You see, since he was a
year old and his mother died, I have watched him. His father was away
with his railroads and his mines out West, and Susan and I had the care
of him till he was put to his books and had a tutor to teach him Latin.
They set him at that stupid business too early. I made his kites, and
played marbles with him, and sailed his little boats, and--" His voice
broke, and he paused to steady it.
"He was always truthful, and honorable, and generous, but--may the Lord
have mercy on him--he was born with the temper of Beelzebub. Not from
his mother did he get it, but from his hard old father, Fergus Herriott,
who somehow managed to keep himself under check-rein and bit. He never
punished the lad but once, and that was when the devil possessed the
child. He was barely ten years old. He fell into a terrible rage with
Susan about the fit of a bathing suit she made for him, and kicked the
clothes into the lake. Then he turned on her like a son of Belial with
rough, ugly, sinful language till she cried. His father happened to be
in the boat house near by. He came out, took him by the shoulders and
shook him, ordering him to apologize instantly to his nurse. The boy set
his teeth and shook his head.
"'If you do not apologize properly to her, I shall thrash you.'
"The lad's eyes blazed.
"'As you are my father, you will do as you like, sir.'
"Then and there he thrashed him, Susan howling, but not a sound from
him. Mr. Herriott sent him to his room, and ordered Susan not to go near
him. There were several railroad officials to dinner that day, and they
staid late. Susan sat yonder by the window, crying fit to break her
heart, when the lad walked in and went close to her. She held out her
arms, and the tears ran down her cheeks.
"'Susan, I am sorry I was such a beast. I am ashamed of what I said, and
I beg your pardon. Dear Susan, forgive me.'
"My poor wife, how she hugged and petted him, only he never would let
any one kiss him on his lips. As he sat in her lap, with one arm around
her neck, his face was deadly white and his eyes looked like two red
stars; the devil had not loosed his grip. Then his father called at the
doorstep, 'Amos, is Noel here?' When the old man came in, the boy was
standing in the middle of the floor, with his hands behind him, and
Susan ran forward.
"'If you please, Mr. Herriott, I am sure he is not well. I thought so at
the lake side, and he is feverish. His head is hot.'
"'Yes, Susan. Truly his head is too hot. Come, my son.'
"He held out his hand, but Noel did not move. His father went to him,
put an arm around him, and forced him away. Next morning the doctor was
sent for, found him in a raging fever; said it was measles, but Susan
knew better. For a week Mr. Herriott never left that room, even for his
meals, and he chastised him no more. Each day he was prouder and fonder
of the boy. Madam, I am telling you all this that you may be sure I make
no mistakes about him. He was hard hit the day he went away. There is a
place far around the beach bend, a stone bench, where he has fought
battles with himself since he wore frilled shirts. It is his
stamping-ground when his blood is up, and the devil squats at his ears.
Now I want to know why he spent his last night at home down there
alone?"
His bony hand tightened its grip like the claw of an eagle on her wrist,
and beneath the shaggy white brows his keen, fiery eyes demanded answer.
"Madam, you drove him there."
"Mr. Herriott was very angry with me. Unintentionally I had wounded him,
and he did not forgive me; I fear he never will. He is not to blame. I
did what seemed right and necessary at the time, but afterward I found I
had made a terrible mistake. It is all my fault, not his. Amos, I am
very unhappy, far more so than Mr. Herriott; but some matters I discuss
with no one, and you must ask me no more questions."
"Of course he was not to blame; he never is. You did not read his
letters." He held them toward her.
"No, they were intended solely for you."
"But I am more than willing you should see what he says about the
God-forsaken den of bears and wolves where he is blundering around in
the dark."
"Thank you, Amos, but they would only distress me."
Watching her pale, beautiful face, the old man sighed.
"Madam, if you are not to blame for his going on this wild, godless
chase, I must not feel so bitter against his young wife as I have done.
Dear lad! The very last words he spoke to me that day at the gate were,
'If I never come back, do all you can for Mrs. Herriott, for my sake.
Amos, I have loved her since she was ten years old.'"
There was a tap at the door, and the doctor entered. Eglah rose and drew
her veil over her face, but Amos clutched her sleeve.
"Doctor, this is Mrs. Herriott, the lad's wife."
"I am glad to see you here, doctor. Knowing Mrs. Orr was called away, I
have a trained nurse, who will help you get Amos Lea out of bed. I shall
send her at once to you for instructions."
Without attempting to analyze her complex emotions, Eglah surrendered
herself to the strange new comfort of wandering hour after hour about
the house, where every nook and corner babbled of the owner. Despite her
efforts to placate and win the dogs, they sullenly rejected her
overtures, echoing the repudiation of their master, and watching her
with suspicious enmity. On the second afternoon the doctor and nurse
assured her the gardener would soon be relieved by electricity, massage,
and tonics, and when a letter from Mrs. Orr to Hawkins announced her
expected return two days later, there seemed no reason for prolonging
Eglah's visit. She wished to avoid an interview with the housekeeper,
and arranged to start south a few hours earlier than the time fixed for
her arrival. In the stone cottage she spent a portion of each day; had
gone carefully over Arctic maps and charts with Amos, outlining the
probable course of the exploring party. She explained some terms, and
gave him a duplicate of the calendar she had made for herself, whereby
he could tell when and how long the moon shone, what day the sun set,
and when, after months, it would rise again. As the old man watched
through his silver spectacles the sad, worn, pallid face, and realized
that she too suffered, his resentful antipathy diminished, and Mr.
Herriott's farewell charge began to invest her with an unexpected
sanctity.
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, glassy 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, shimmered as they ran. An eastbound schooner, all sails set,
midway from shore 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 shores? 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 shivering poplars turning white in anticipation of storm, at the
irregular outline of the old stone pile projecting its spectral shadow
on the shining water lapping the terrace wall. Two hours later a gale
swept the lake, and under bluish glare of lightning the waves showed
their flashing 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 associated with it made her shiver 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 rushing 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 _foehn_ 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 sunshine, 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.