"Willow Creek Plantation,
"Wednesday.
"Mr. Herriott.
"Dear Sir: Permit me to say at the outset that these lines are
intended solely for your eyes, and I beg you will regard them
as strictly confidential. If I were not so sure you are an
honorable gentleman, they would never be written. On the 18th
my foster-child and I expect to leave my little home at Willow
Bend, where we have lived since her father's death. By her
desire we go to Europe, and, as we shall remain there
indefinitely, I should like to talk with you of some matters
that concern you--matters I am unwilling to mention unless we
are face to face. The railway station Maurice is near me, but
if you do me the favor to grant my request, it would be better
for you to avoid Y---- and come directly to Sunflower, ten
miles north of Maurice. If you can be at Sunflower on the 17th,
I will meet you there when the one o'clock train arrives.
Unless you come that day, it would be too late. You will see no
one but me, and no one must ever be told I went to Sunflower,
or saw you. My child is absent in Y----, and will not return
until night of the 17th, when I meet her at Maurice. Do not
write me. Do not telegraph me. I scarcely allow myself to hope
that you will come, and if I do not see you I shall regret it
for many reasons. If I fail in my conscientious effort to right
a great wrong, it will not be my fault.
"Very respectfully,
"ELIZA MITCHELL."
Allowing two days' margin for accidental delays, Eliza indulged no doubt
that this letter would reach its destination in ample time to enable Mr.
Herriott to keep the appointment, should he consent to meet her, and,
after putting on a special delivery stamp, she mailed it at Maurice with
her own hand.
The probability of a change of residence had been so fully discussed
that preliminary arrangements had long been made; but the early date,
suddenly fixed, necessitated great activity to insure readiness for
departure.
Eglah's calm, listless indifference had given place to feverish
impatience in expediting all preparations incident to the journey, and
the perplexed and anxious little woman who watched her movements was
rejoiced when business of importance called her to Y----, where Mr.
Whitfield was confined by gout to his room. Since the day at Calvary
House, Eliza had observed a marked change in Eglah; the wistful,
hopeless expression had vanished, and proud defiance settled on her
face. While tortured by suspense, she had yielded to the tender yearning
of her heart; but the sight of Mr. Herriott, safe, well, and strong,
contentedly planning a future in which he assigned no niche to her,
stung her womanly pride, intensified her longing to evade forever the
possibility of meeting the man who had so completely ignored and
repudiated her.
Some delay in the preparation of papers Mr. Whitfield required her to
sign kept her in Y---- longer than she had intended. He very carefully
wrote her will, in which, following the trend of her grandmother's
sympathies, she bequeathed Nutwood and adjoining lands as a Maurice Home
"to childless widows of Confederate soldiers in the State." To Vivian
and Maurice relatives of her own mother, who refused association with
Marcia after her marriage, and whom Eglah had always avoided, she gave
one plantation--Canebrake. To Mrs. Mitchell Willow Creek Bend was left,
in grateful recognition of her loving care; and all personal property,
stocks, and bonds were devised to the vestry of her father's church, for
the erection and maintenance of a memorial Chapter House.
Business concluded, she telegraphed that on the 17th, at eight P.M., she
would reach Maurice, and wished Mrs. Mitchell to meet her with the trap.
At nine o'clock on the morning of the 17th, the overseer's wife,
desiring to avoid the passenger 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. Mitchell?"
He held out his hand.
"Oh, Mr. Herriott! I was not sure it was you. Thank God! I was so afraid
you would not come."
He took off the goggles and dropped them in his coat pocket.
"I dare say these glasses 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 assured 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, nobody 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 passionate 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
worshipped 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 muffling 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.'
"Next day, while she was away, I searched for that striped thing which I
had never seen before. She kept it in a long, satin-lined, sandalwood
case, among her perfumed laces, and when I examined it I found a
smoking-jacket, with a dog whistle in one pocket, and in the other a
handkerchief marked 'Herriott.' I----"
Mr. Herriott had walked away, and after several moments recalled the
search for the missing jacket on the day of his departure, and the pride
with which Amos only three nights ago, had shown him a warm, quilted
cashmere gown "the madam" had sent him because the jacket left for him
had never been found. When he came back to the seat, he stood with his
face turned from her, and she could see only his profile.
"Sir, if you don't hear me out, you can't understand why I came. Eglah
would sit for hours, a book before her, her hands folded in a way
peculiar to her--her wedding ring against her lips--so silent, so still,
she seemed a stone; but she roused to a manifestation of interest when
we heard your old gardener was ill and needed attention. While we were
at your house she seemed more like herself than at any time since that
express package reached her; but a deep undercurrent of sorrow she could
not hide. Over the house and grounds she wandered continually, and that
long lake beach was her favorite walk. Every evening she shut herself in
one of the rooms downstairs--I think it was your smoking-room--and the
last night we were there she spent locked in that room. She sent for a
photographer from the city and had copies taken of your mother's
portrait and of yours--that one hanging next to your father's in the
drawing-room. To-day on her dressing-table stand two pictures of you and
one she insists resembles you--the photograph of a French poet she saw
once in Arles. She thinks the brow and eyes and nose are yours, and,
though she does not like the lower portion of the face, she had the
photograph enlarged and framed. I could not keep my tears back when,
leaning from the carriage, she took her last look at your home. There
was such a world of suffering in her sad eyes, and her dear lips and
chin trembled like a little child's.
"'Being here is next best to seeing the master. I can never come again.
When he returns I must be in Europe, out of his way.'"
Mr. Herriott turned suddenly and looked down steadily at his companion.
"Pardon me, Mrs. Mitchell. You prefer to stay at home? You do not wish
to go abroad?"
His keen eyes searched hers, and their flash answered him.
"Whatever the child thinks is best for her peace I want above everything
else; and I am ready and willing to go with her to Europe, Africa, the
Fiji Islands--to the ends of the earth. I do love my little home, still
more my husband's grave, almost in sight of it; I love my cows and my
chickens; but first and last, and better than all, I love my baby, who
came to my arms when she was three hours old, and who now, in turning
her back upon an unjust world, clings only to me. I never took an oath
before God that I would 'for better, for worse, love and cherish her
till death,' but I rather think my love will abide, will stand all tests
and trials that have crumbled some other vows she once trusted."
After a moment she added:
"Perhaps I have already said too much, and you may not care to hear
more."
"Madam, I wish you to tell me everything you think it best I should
know. I am here for that purpose, at your request."
"Eglah was terribly hurt to find Amos had heard twice from you while,
consumed with suspense, she had received not even a line. After we went
home she grew more and more restless, but I noticed she carefully
avoided any allusion to you. One night I heard her moving about, and
then she left her room. It is a lonely little place where we live,
rather unprotected, and the servants--man and wife--do not wake easily.
Eglah had a way of walking about the gallery and yard when she could not
sleep that made me uneasy. I went out to expostulate, and found her
sitting on the steps in the moonlight with that jacket of yours in her
arms. I sat down and took her hand. In a horrible dream, she had seen
you lying dead between two blue slabs of ice, a white owl on your
breast, and she was hugging and stroking that striped silk as only those
who love can caress the garments of lost darlings. You know she very
rarely cries. In all her life I never saw tears on her face more than
three or four times. I tried to soothe her, and said that full moon
overhead was making the Pole itself bright. She turned suddenly to me,
the tears dripping, and, oh, if I could give you the heartbroken tone in
which she said:
'The broad noonday was night to me,
The full-moon night was dark to me,
The stars whirled and the poles span
The hour God took him far from me.'
"After that night she guarded herself more closely against any
expression of feeling, and carefully abstained from all reference to you
until the evening she learned from a Boston paper that your vessel had
returned to Europe, and you had preferred to stay in Arctic regions. My
poor baby! She looked so white, so stunned, as if some one had struck
her a heavy blow."
Eliza sobbed and her tears streamed.
"Mr. Herriott, she felt assured you would not come home because you
feared you might meet her, and then she asked me to keep my promise and
go with her to Europe as soon as some stone-cutting designs could be
filled. She waited only to see three memorials completed. From the day
she learned the 'Ahvungah' had returned, I saw a bitter, resentful
element beginning to invade what had been only regretful tenderness, and
her lips were locked. The window in the Episcopal Church at Y---- was
placed, and soon after we went North to see the monument ordered for her
father's grave. I dreaded she would break down there, but she was as
quiet as the marble angel of the Resurrection standing on the slab. She
showed me where she wished her body laid, close to her father's, and
then she asked me to be sure--after she was safe in her coffin--to take
off her wedding ring and send it to you, because you had wanted it back
from the day you gave it to her. She refused to stop in New York,
fearing some of her friends or yours might see and question her. Any
allusion to her marriage was as the touch of red-hot irons. On our way
home she went one afternoon to Calvary House to see her cousin
Temple--the priest--and look at an altar she had given him. I waited
outside in the carriage, and she joined me, holding her thick mourning
veil over her face. As she and her father designed this altar after one
they had seen somewhere abroad, I thought her silence and evident
distress resulted from its association with him. After a while she said,
in a strange, muffled way, that she had done everything she was sure her
father would like if he could speak to her, and now her hands were
empty, and she wished to sail for Europe at the earliest possible
date--probably within a week. As she leaned against me, and I held her
hand, I felt her shiver. Then she told me she had just seen you at
Calvary House, strong and well, and she must leave America at once."
"She saw me! When?"
Mr. Herriott had grown very pale.
"A week ago yesterday. She said you had brought some sick, blind man
there, and you were going home. I asked her why she did not speak to
you, and she answered that three years ago you had willed you and she
should be strangers; you had built a wall of silence, and no word, no
sign from her should ever break it. Unobserved by you, she had seen you
in the cloister, heard you talking of your plans for future travel, and,
fearing discovery, she had hurried from the chapel. Since then every
nerve has been strained to get away."
Mr. Herriott walked a few yards, put on his glasses, and stood for some
time with his hands behind him. A sad, perplexed face met Eliza's eager
eyes when he came back, and for the first time seated himself beside
her.
"To what portion of Europe are you going?"
"To Spain; to a quiet little place hidden away in the Pyrenees, where
she hopes she will meet no one who ever heard of her, and where, having
nothing to remind her of three horrible years, she can try to forget her
suffering. To avoid all acquaintances, she will not sail from New York,
but goes directly to Charleston, and thence to Havana, where she can
take a steamer to Spain. I think, sir, no one can understand her
terrible humiliation in being rejected. While you were away, surrounded
by dangers, and she was on the rack of suspense, tortured almost beyond
endurance, only deep and tender love filled her heart. Since she has
seen you safe and well--yet no word of remembrance has been sent to
her--wounded pride possesses her, and she seems indeed petrified. Even
now she maintains with strange composure: 'He is within his rights; he
is not to blame. It was all my fault. I made the mistake of presuming
too far on his love, which was less than I counted on, and I deserve my
punishment; but sometimes I think God, who saw my heart and knew I did
not intend any wrong, might have spared me some of the bitter dregs I
have had to drink.' With all her pride, she is acutely sensitive to
adverse gossip. From childhood she has borne so much on account of her
father's unpopularity in the State, and people do not understand her. In
Washington her loyalty to the South and to the Maurices subjected her to
sneers and much unpleasantness. Her sudden marriage and subsequent
events, especially her coming home before you sailed, have caused
annoying comment, and now she is hurrying through Y----, anxious to get
away before the fact of your return is known there. She does not suspect
the opposition manifested by some of the vestrymen to that memorial
window. Only the pleadings of the rector and the influence of Mr.
Whitfield, who is not an Episcopalian and who had no cause to like Judge
Kent, availed to smother the objections to its erection. This
mortification we have managed to save her. Now, sir, you will please
pardon me if I speak very frankly. What passed between you and Eglah
after your marriage I do not know, nor did Judge Kent. Her lips have
been sealed, but I have often thought the estrangement arose from your
discovery of the fact that she did not love you as she should have done
before she married you, and therefore I have come here to try to save
you both from making shipwreck of your lives. If that was the cause of
the trouble, it exists no longer. She loves you now as devotedly as even
you could wish."
He shook his head and swept his hand across his face.
"Madam, she pities me, she deplores my disappointment; perhaps she
censures herself unduly, but love! She knows no more of love than a baby
in its cradle. She never will. She is absolutely incapable of loving any
man. Too many have tried zealously to touch her heart, and failed as
signally as I certainly did."
Mrs. Mitchell's black eyes sparkled through her tears.
"Mr. Herriott, since she was three hours old she has been my child. I
know her as well as I know myself. I am a woman; I loved my husband
better than my life, and when I see genuine, loyal, tender love in a
wife I know it as surely as you know where the sun rises. My baby did
not love you when she took her marriage vows, but you were deep in her
heart when she came home; and her love has grown until it is now so
strong it is a slow torture, from which she would gladly escape if she
could. Do you suppose a woman proud, reserved, cold as Eglah is would
treasure and caress, and sleep with her cheek on a man's faded old
smoking-jacket if she did not tenderly love the wearer whose touch had
made it sacred? Oh, Mr. Herriott, if you could have seen her all these
years--her patient, hopeless face! If you could realize the life she
leads in the overseer's house and contrast it with that brilliant past
when you saw her admired and sought in New York--even in London--you
might perhaps understand how changed she is. I longed for you to know
that your wife's heart is wholly yours, because I have believed you
would always love her. If she ever suspects I have told you her secret
she will never forgive--she will disown me. You must not cause me to
lose my child. Just now she is sorely mortified and resentful, but----"
Eliza paused and looked at the man beside her, but she could not see his
eyes.
"Please do me the kindness to finish your sentence."
"But if you could meet her and----"
Again she hesitated, discouraged by the expression settling around his
mouth.
"In consequence of a voluntary pledge on my part, I could not now
intrude upon her."
"If you called and asked to see her, I am sure she would decline to
receive you; but if you really desire to see her before she sails, it
could be arranged without her knowledge or co-operation. We go from
Maurice to-morrow night at eight o'clock and pass through Y---- without
stopping. Eglah comes from Y---- at eight to-night. To-morrow she will
be at my house all day until four o'clock, when she goes over to the
Willow Bend plantation to say good-bye to the Boyntons and negro
tenants, and also the tenants and field hands from Canebrake plantation,
whom Mr. Boynton will have present. Eglah usually takes a book and
spends the morning under the trees in my front yard, or in the old mill,
where she often sits for hours. If you merely want to see your wife
again before she passes forever out of your life you can easily do so
from the shelter of my butter-bean arbor, which is near the trees, and
she will never know it. If you care to speak to her, you may be sure of
no interruption. Mr. Herriott, God took my husband, but I could not have
borne my loss if my Robert had voluntarily taken himself from me. My
heart aches for Eglah. She is indeed my all in this world, and I have
risked a great deal to put you in possession of the truth. She loves you
as earnestly and tenderly as you could wish, but it remains for you to
make her admit it--to compel her to confession. Her pride has been so
sorely wounded she would die sooner than move one inch toward
reconciliation."
She looked at her watch and rose.
"My train will soon be due."
As they walked toward the small station-house, Mr. Herriott held out his
hand.
"Whatever the future may hold, I shall always thank you inexpressibly
for the confidence, the sacred trust you have reposed in me, and I will
never betray it. I doubt the wisdom of seeing Eglah. I know only too
well the difference between true love and that regretful compassion her
kind heart indulges. There are reasons that make me unwilling to violate
my own pledge to her, but if I should decide to go to your house, will
you direct me how to find it?"
"You can drive to Maurice, ten miles south, or take the night train,
which will not stop here unless it is flagged. Once at Maurice, any one
will show you Willow Bend road. When you pass the plantation, which is
quite a settlement, cross the bridge, turn to the right, and you will
soon see an old red mill in front of my gate. Here comes my train."
"No, madam; not your train. That is only a freight-engine and gravel
cars."
"I came on it, and I go back the same way. For many reasons I prefer to
keep this trip as secret as possible, at least until after to-morrow,
when we leave home; so I avoided the passenger train that brought up
some Maurice Masons. The smaller the place, the wider the eyes, the
keener the ears, and the more nimble the tongues that dwell there. Rufus
Boling, the conductor yonder, expects to marry my favorite Sunday-school
pupil, Minna Gaines, to-morrow night, and I have done all I could for
the child's wedding. Consequently, though the railroad officials grumble
and forbid, he consented to let me ride in the caboose, provided I would
not sit at the window, and promised not to sue for damages if I lost a
limb or an eye on the trip. Are you ready, Rufus? Good-bye, Mr.
Herriott. I have done my best for my child and for you. God help you
both!"
He took her hand and pressed it cordially.
"In any event, you may rest assured I never shall cease to thank you for
your effort; and life will always be sweeter because of some facts you
have given me."
He assisted her into the close, smoky caboose, lifted his hat and, as
the engine pulled slowly out, he took off his glasses and walked back to
the red-oak grove.