A Speckled Bird

CHAPTER X

Sabbath quietude had laid a finger on thousands of metal lips that screamed the song of labor on other days, and the great city seemed almost asleep as Mr. Herriott entered his carriage at ten o'clock and gave the order, "Brooklyn – Fulton Ferry." After a restless night, spent in searching an old diary for dates and notes, he had gradually untied some knotted memories – vague and conflicting – and straightened a slender thread that might possibly guide to the identification of an elusive personality. On the seat in front of him a basket of purple grapes added their fruity fragrance to the perfume of a bunch of white carnations, and during the long drive the expression of perplexity which had knitted his brows relaxed into the alert placidity that characterized his strong face.

Summer heat, blown in by a humid south wind, touched the sky with an intense blue, against which one long, thin curl of cloud shone like a silver feather, and Brooklyn parks and lawns shook their green banners of grass blades and young, silken foliage. In the middle of a block of old brick tenement houses, Mr. Herriott entered an open door, where two children fought over a wailing black kitten, and went up the inner stairway to a narrow hall, on which opened several doors bearing cards inscribed with the name of occupants of the rooms. At one, labelled "Mrs. Dane," he rapped. It was opened partly, and held ajar.

"Well, who knocked?"

"One of Leighton's friends. Can I see him?"

"Not to-day. He is not well enough for visitors."

"May I come in and see you?"

"Why should you? What do you want?"

Before he could reply, a weak voice pleaded:

"Please, mother! It is Mr. Herriott: let him in. He has been so good to me – please – please!"

"If I do, you are not to talk and bring back that spell of coughing."

The door was swung fully open, and Mr. Herriott confronted "Juno."

"You are Mr. Herriott, as I supposed. Walk in, and excuse the confusion of the rooms. I was up all night, and have not put things in order."

She wore a dark skirt and white muslin sacque, loose at the throat, ungirded, and the sleeves were rolled up, exposing the symmetry of her dimpled white arms. A rich, lovely red stained her lips and cheeks – perhaps from embarrassment, probably from the heat of the oil-stove, on which, evidently, breakfast had been recently prepared. She pointed to an adjoining room, where Leighton lay on a cot close to the open window.

"Oh, sir, are they really for me?" as Mr. Herriott laid the basket and flowers beside him.

"Look, mother! Grapes, grapes! And the smell of the carnations! Was there ever anything so sweet? I don't know how to thank you, sir. I wish I could say something, but when my heart is full I just can't tell it."

His little hot hand caught Mr. Herriott's, and the thin fingers twined caressingly about it.

"You are not to thank me, and you must not talk. Remember, that was the condition upon which I was allowed to see you. Eat your grapes while your mother tells me about you."

"You will spoil him. I can't give him such luxuries as hothouse fruit and flowers, though now and then he has his bunch of violets."

"When was the doctor here?"

"Friday. He changed the medicine, but I can see no benefit as yet."

"If you think it would not tire him too much, I should like to take him out for a drive."

"Thank you, but I could not consent to that."

"Why not? The fresh air is balmy to-day, and would do him good. I have a carriage at the door, and if you are unwilling to trust the boy with me, I should be glad to take you also. May I?"

Her blue eyes glittered and her lips straightened their curves.

"Most certainly not."

"Pardon me, madam; my interest in your child – "

"Does not justify a man of your position in taking a 'department store saleswoman' to drive on Sunday through public places."

"Perhaps you are right. Then I shall efface myself promptly, and you and Leighton can keep the carriage as long as you like."

"Such favors I accept from no man."

"Not even to help your sick boy?"

She put her hand on the child's shining curls, and a world of tenderness glorified her velvet eyes.

"Not even for my very own baby could I incur such an obligation."

"Smell them, mother – like spice! Don't they make you think of the carnation garden in San Francisco, where Uncle Dane used to carry us?"

"How long ago was that, Leighton?" asked Mr. Herriott, watching the woman's face.

"Oh, it was when I was a little chap and wore frocks."

"Were you born in San Francisco?"

"No. He was born in – Territory."

"Mrs. Dane, can you tell me what became of the artist Belmont?"

"Why do you ask me that question?"

"In order to get an answer. He painted your face for his 'Aurora,' and the picture was photographed."

"Yes; I needed money, and Mr. Dane permitted him to come to our house for the sittings. That was my first and last experience as a model."

"I have met you before."

She straightened herself, and answered defiantly:

"Probably I have sold you gloves, or socks, or handkerchiefs – certainly not the right to meddle with my personal affairs."

"I went with a San Francisco friend to see a night school for women, which his mother had established. You were there."

"Yes, I was there two winters. Now, sir, have you a police badge hidden inside your coat? Are you playing reporter – disguised as a benevolent gentleman – hunting up the details of last night's meeting and riot at Newark? You know, of course, that I made a speech there?"

"Indeed? I had imagined you sat up all night with your sick boy."

"There is a strike on down there, and I spoke against arbitrating labor grievances, and against the ghastly sham of getting the rights of the poor from a picked judge and a packed jury. Bombs and boycott make the best mill for grinding out justice to starving, over-worked men and women."

"How long have you been an 'anarchist,' or perhaps you prefer the term 'socialist'?"

"From the day I was sixteen years old, and learned how rich men trample and betray and despise and insult the ignorant, helpless poor."

"It must have been a terribly cruel grievance that transformed into a fury one who was intended for a loving, gentle woman."

She laughed, and her beautiful teeth took hold of the glowing under lip.

"Grievance? We all have one – we are simply born to suffer, as to breathe – but the unendurable the unpardonable comes from the grasping, murderous, fiendish selfishness of rich men. You have been so kind to my boy, I have tried hard to believe genuine benevolence – what you are pleased to call 'Christian philanthropy' – inspired your visits to him during my absence, but you are all alike – you gilded society sultans – and you come here with some cowardly design carefully smothered under flowers, fruit, and candy. So, Leighton, make the most of to-day, for we will see no more of your Mr. Herriott."

"Madam, I shall be as frank as you have shown yourself. There is one woman in this world whose wishes rule me absolutely, and because she requested me to see your child now and then, I have come several times, until my sympathetic interest equals hers. With your career in New York I am acquainted. For your radical views and utterances I have neither respect nor toleration, yet, if you will permit me to explain, there are reasons that lead me to believe I can do you a very great service."

"I am not in need of service from any man. Your formula has not even the ring of originality; I have heard such sickening reiterations of it from false, bearded lips."

"That you have been a cruelly wronged woman I feel assured, but I am equally certain that your worst enemy was no man – was one of your own sex. For your own sake, will you answer two questions?"

"For my own sake, I distinctly refuse to be catechised by impertinent strangers."

"Oh, mother; please mother! He has been so good to me, how could he mean harm to you? Don't worry her, Mr. Herriott. She can't abide men; they fret her, and she hates them – unless they are starved and ragged. Please let her alone, and look at my doves. They come for the crumbs on the window sill. See! Here is a new one, pure white. Mother, scatter some bread on the sheet and they will come in."

She sprinkled some scraps of cake close to his pillow, and, after a little coy skirmishing, the pigeons fluttered in to the feast; but just then a spell of coughing shook the fragile form on the cot, and with a flash and whirr the flock vanished. Mrs. Dane lifted the boy and fanned him, wiping away the moisture that beaded his clustering curls, and Mr. Herriott piled the pillows and cushions behind his shaking shoulders. When the paroxysm ended, and Leighton lay wan and spent, the visitor leaned over him.

"I should like to do several things for you, but your mother will not permit me. Miss Kent wishes you to know she remembers you with interest, and hopes to hear you sing again. The stranger who preached at St. Hyacinth's has not forgotten the poem he promised you, and will bring it soon. I saw him last night. Now, I must say good-bye for to-day. Don't try to speak, I understand everything."

Silently Mrs. Dane followed him to the door. Across the threshold, he turned and lowered his voice.

"A sea voyage is the only thing that will prolong his life. With your consent, it can be arranged at once."

She shook her head.

"Madam, I find I must revise my ideals of maternal devotion. You punish your innocent child for the sins of those who blighted your youth? You harangue a rabble in favor of 'justice' and deny it to a dying boy."

She caught her breath, leaned against the wall, and covered her face with her hands. When he saw it again the color had ebbed, the lovely eyes were darkened by unshed tears, and the lips were beyond her control.

"My baby – my fatherless little one! Ever since he was born I have struggled so hard to keep his mother's name clean – his mother's name, all he had – clean and beyond reproach! Do you suppose that now, at the last, I would put myself under obligation to a rich man? We may die paupers, he and I, but when we go to the Potter's Field – the only undisputed land labor can claim – we go free, honest, and unblemished, and if there was a God, I could hold up my baby and demand why He had cursed us both in our innocence."

"I am sorry that the circumstances coloring your life have destroyed every vestige of confidence in man's honor, yet I have no alternative but to accept your decision, and I wish you good morning."

He lifted his hat, and had gone half way down the stairs, when she followed and touched his sleeve.

"I did not thank you for much goodness to my child, but I do want to say I am not ungrateful; only I have had so little to be thankful for, I don't quite know how to phrase gratitude. The world has been so hard to me I am suspicious of every rich man in your social circle. You see, my face has handicapped me always – "

She set her teeth and struck one palm resentfully against her cheek, and the passionate, pent-up cry of years of suffering broke through the next words.

"Yes, my face has been my curse, and it was the steel trap that snapped chains on me when I was only a child. Kindness to my Leighton is the one thing that touches what is left of my heart; and how do you suppose I can bear now to listen to his sobbing yonder, because he thinks I have rudely driven you away? Oh, my pretty baby! My own beautiful little one! Cast out, with only his girl-mother to fight for him against this cruel world! And now if I lose him, if my all is taken away from me – "

She wrung her hands, and the blanched face was upturned as if challenging her God.

"Madam, I understand fully, and I intend to help your boy; but be sure I shall visit him when you are absent. Tell him I shall come, with your consent, while he is alone; and some day I think you will trust me, even despite the fact that I happen to have money. Good-bye."

He held out his hand, but she seemed not to see it, and as she turned and walked wearily up the steps he went down to his carriage.

CHAPTER XI

"Miss Kent, it is quite evident that you do not approve of us."

"Will you be so kind as to explain to whom 'us' refers?"

"Our great social world, including government, congressional and diplomatic circles, club life, and all that 'progress' stands for. Instead of moving abreast with the 'advance' current, you have drifted aside into an eddy as contracted, as pitiably narrow as – pardon me, we emancipated new women dare now to speak the brazen truth – as narrow as the hands and feet you Southerners boast as sign of aristocratic blood."

Eglah lifted her grey-gloved hand, examined its outlines critically, and placed it within a few inches of the broad, thick palm which Ethelberta Higginbottom had laid on her own lap as she sat in the gallery of the Senate chamber.

"Thank you very much, Miss Higginbottom. It is traditional in my family to admire slender fingers, but we are not so intolerant as to deny others the privilege of occupying as much space as their digits can cover, and we never brand people as absolutely disreputable because they wear number six shoes and number seven-and-a-half gloves. If degrees of latitude determine the height of insteps, what manifest injustice has been meted out to longitudinal lines that you Westerners so proudly claim? Probably you have forgotten that my father is from New England, and he owns a silver caddy – two hundred years old – that was empty at one time because 'fish drank tea in Boston harbor.'"

"Oh, but your mother was Southern and you represent not heredity, but sheredity, a sociological factor of immense potency, which must be reckoned with, let me tell you, in the near future, when women fully emancipated come to enjoyment of all the rights so long withheld from them. Then mothers, and not fathers will wield the destiny of this great country; and already female colleges are fast spreading the blessed gospel of free and equal rights. Last week some one asserted that you were a graduate of – College, but I contradicted it flatly, as impossible and absurd."

"I am sorry I do my dear Alma Mater such lamentable discredit; but, unfortunately, we were not taught to wear our diplomas on our hats as advertisements of scholarship."

"You certainly amaze me!"

"Perhaps you will excuse my frankness in assuring you that sensation at least is mutual."

"With your educational advantages, to lock up your mind in a stockade of provincialism! Desectionalize yourself!"

"May I ask whether you spell your last verb with an x or a ct? I should prefer first to ascertain which process is demanded of me."

"Your Southern bigotry is a mill-stone around your neck. The very word 'emancipation' is a red rag to old slaveholders and their progeny. You never can forgive us for breaking the shackles of groaning millions held in bondage."

Eglah laughed.

"Pardon me, but it certainly is ludicrous that one possessing your 'broad culture and desectionalized' horizon of thought should really believe in that old worn-out 'raw-head and bloody-bones' figure of speech which has done duty so long. It surely is entitled to decent interment where all dilapidated scarecrows cease from troubling. We Southern people no more want our negroes back as slaves than you desire the return of hordes of Indians whom you so completely dispossessed of their native lands in your 'wild and rapacious West,' and whom a 'white, fatherly' government is rapidly reducing to extinction by its beneficent agencies. The white South is 'emancipated' from the moral responsibility of elevating the black race now so happy in 'national' tutelage, where their guardians taught them the system of bookkeeping and all the subtle processes of the 'Freedmen's Bureau.'"

"How lonely you must feel in Washington. You have no more regard for the rights of your own sex than for – " She stammered and coughed.

"Indeed, I have the most affectionate and jealous regard for every right that inheres in my dower of American womanhood. I claim and enjoy the right to be as cultured, as learned, as useful, and – if you please – as ornamental in society and at home as my individual limitations will permit. I have no wrongs, no grievances, no crying need to usurp lines of work that will break down the barriers God set between men and women. I am not in rebellion against legal statutes, nor the canons of well-established decency and refinement in feminine usage, and, finally, I am so inordinately proud of being a well-born Southern woman, with a full complement of honorable great-grandfathers and blue-blooded, stainless great-grand-mothers, that I have neither pretext nor inclination to revolt against mankind."

"Miss Kent, you have rather pretty eyes, but you are so steeped in Southern – what do you call it —dolce far niente, or laissez faire, or semi-stagnation of soul that you are too lazy to open them wide enough to see the thrilling vista of woman's triumph that illumines – "

"Thank you; my much flattered eyes are sufficiently open at this moment to perceive the behavior of that nondescript creature in feminine garments who is flirting so undisguisedly with Senator Smallweed yonder, on your right; one of the early emancipated – an advanced lobbyist."

"You mean that piquant, charming little Mrs. Morrison? Dear soul! She is a pathetically tragic object lesson. Had to get a divorce from a brutal husband and become a bread-winner. Why should not women lobby? They are so nimble witted, nature fitted them admirably for such work."

"And gave them the adroitly nimble fingers to fit the pockets they pick."

"That is some cowardly man's cruel slander. My creed is always to defend my own sex; it is only Christian charity and genuine feminine justice."

"Provided it be not merely lax morality. Sometimes the distinction is not clear to very 'advanced,' zealous people."

"At least your father does not share your narrow harshness. He and Mrs. Morrison are quite 'chummy,' and I happen to know he sees her often."

"How could he avoid it? Shoals of sharks swim in Washington, and since your friend belongs to the 'emancipated' variety, doubtless she indulges an 'elective affinity' for the largest senatorial prey in sight, and hungrily shadows him. Yesterday that 'Bison Head' bill she is working for came to grief in committee, and will be buried to-day. Even sharks occasionally miss a meal."

"Oh, you are not up to date! Before the decision was announced one of the committee weakened, asked for reconsideration; another hurried meeting was held last night, and the bill will not be reported this session. Not killed you understand, just tenderly pigeon-holed, securely wrapped up in parliamentary camphor to scare away opposition moths, and allowed to sleep while its pretty guardian angel has another session in which to smooth the way for its final passage."

At this moment a messenger boy brought a note to Miss Higginbottom, and Eglah rose.

"You do not suspect who the weakening member was?"

"If I cared to ask, I dare say your fair divorcée friend would be able to enlighten me, but the petty political schemes engineered by lobbyists do not interest me."

"One moment, Miss Kent. You did not come to my musicale. I have only one olive twig left. We entertain a few friends to-morrow night in honor of a famous Western woman, who will lecture next season on 'Civic Problems,' for the purpose of raising money to build a vast, up-to-date club temple, where women can proclaim their views on female right to suffrage and expansion. May I have the pleasure of presenting you?"

"You are very kind, Miss Higginbottom, but as we leave Washington at the end of the week, I regret that I shall not have time for any new engagements. Pray accept my thanks for several courtesies."

"I used to wonder why you are so unpopular, but it soon ceased to be a mystery, and it will be no sacrifice to you to give up Washington, in retiring from public life. When Senator Kent formally resigns – as is the burden of a little bird's song that utters no false notes – he will, doubtless, consign you to a more congenial circle of friends."

"In saying good-bye, I shall find some solace in the assurance that at least you will not mourn inconsolably because of my final departure. Please present my best wishes to Mrs. Higginbottom, who has shown me much kindness, and whom I may not be able to see again. Good-bye."

She stood a few seconds, smiling mischievously into the florid face of the large-featured woman of most certain age, whose light-yellow eyes flashed back unmistakable malice, then, amid the roar of applause that greeted the peroration of a white-haired senator in the chamber below, she quietly stole out of the Capitol, and sought a favorite corner of the Smithsonian grounds.

Walking slowly, she asked in a spirit of self-chastisement why she had allowed waspish stings to provoke a retaliatory tone, at variance with that cool repose of well-bred urbanity and imperturbable courtesy on which she prided herself; and was not the condescension of retort an unladylike and mortifying weakness?

Now and then come radiant days when a noon sun shines hot, and no faintest film flecks the stainless blue, yet one grows vaguely conscious of waning brightness, and gradually the horizon blanches to a deadly grey, while leaden clouds creep into view like spectral fingers of some vast hand groping across the sky to smother the sun. Shadows projected by the invisible unnerve natures that fearlessly face tangible, well-defined danger, as 'the sallow, weird light preceding an eclipse is more menacing than its total darkness, where friendly stars still shine.' For Eglah, the clock of fate had begun to chime that mauvais quart d'heure which Mrs. Maurice had known would inevitably overtake her, and the preliminary whirring of the hidden cogs had found her unprepared. Blind faith in her father's sagacity, political steadfastness, and incorruptibility, had built a pedestal from which he smiled down benignantly upon her, making life a festival; but when the needle of doubt pricked the fine veil love spun across her vision, and she dared allow herself to question, a shivering and nameless dread shook her happy young heart, as unexpectedly blighting as a shower of sleet on an August passion-flower. When Jove nods his worship wanes.

Since the night of the cotillon, several inexplicable circumstances, comparatively slight yet cumulative, had perplexed this fond and loyal daughter, who began to find the maze of Senator Kent's political methods too tortuous for her exploration.

Startled by his abrupt reversal of judgment on more than one important question involving party allegiance, she had sought an explanation, which he laughingly evaded, and, when she pressed the matter, his avoidance was marked by an irritability of speech and gesture hitherto unknown in the domestic circle. The undisguised graciousness of his demeanor toward Mrs. Morrison had surprised and annoyed her, and she was painfully astonished by his efforts to conciliate Senator Higginbottom, who belonged to the opposite party, and was a loud, aggressive, and hirsute apostle of the silver gospel so dear to his constituency, and so conducive to his individual interest as a mine owner. Mrs. Higginbottom, a plain, kind-hearted, motherly old woman, who knew much more of sheep-shearing and beehives than of fashionable etiquette and diplomatic technicalities, Eglah had found it possible to receive cordially, but the daughter, Ethelberta, was an intolerable offence to all her feminine instincts, and when Judge Kent insisted, with some asperity, that the "Higginbottoms must be cultivated," the ordeal of playing hostess to this "advanced and emancipated new woman" proved peculiarly unpleasant. A certain watchful restlessness in her father's manner did not escape her notice, nor the recent accession of sphinx-like non-committalism in Mr. Metcalf, and she pondered uneasily a question of Mrs. Mitchell's:

"Dearie, did it ever occur to you that in some way Judge Kent seems rather afraid of Mr. Herriott, or perhaps I should say is always so guarded in his presence?"

"Never! Impossible and absurd. He has supreme confidence in him, and once, not long ago, he scolded me sharply because I could not consider him head and shoulders above all other men."