A Speckled Bird Part 11

"Then come in to dinner."

"I wasted the whole afternoon trying to find a boy down on the East Side, but when at last I reached the house I was told he had moved from that neighborhood. He is a soloist at St. Hyacinth's, and I had promised him a booklet."

"Leighton Dane?"

"Yes. What do you know of him?"

"That he will sing no more at St. Hyacinth's. Henceforth his solos belong to choirs beyond the stars. The boy is slowly dying of consumption."

"When did you see him?"

"A few days ago. He is at No. 980 ---- Street, Brooklyn. Your cousin Eglah asked me to keep an eye on him. Poor little lad! His battle with pain and loneliness is pathetic, and I rather think the end is not far off."

"Loneliness? Who takes care of him?"

"His mother is away all day at her work, but an old German and his wife living on the same floor of the tenement look after him as best they can."

"Could you deliver the book to him?"

"If you wish it; but why not make another effort to see him?"

"My hands are so full. In two days I must run down to Was.h.i.+ngton, and then back home, where I am needed. How luxurious your quarters are! Less like a bachelor's den than one would expect."

"Next week I give up these rooms, and when I chance to be in the city shall live at the club."

"Is not this decision rather sudden?"

"No. For some time I have contemplated another expedition to Arizona and Montana, in quest of prehistoric records needed for an anthropological paper that Professor De Wette asked me to contribute to the next volume of Reports."

"What date have you fixed?"

"About the middle of July, immediately after the visit to 'Greyledge,'

which Senator Kent and Eglah have promised as soon as Congress adjourns.

I am sorry you could not arrange to join the small 'house party,' and rest yourself by fis.h.i.+ng in the Lake, instead of the turbid pools of humanity."

"What about Calvary House? We expect you there."

"That pleasure must be deferred; but I have thought a good deal about your need of more ground there, and believe I have found just what you want. Come into the library, it is cooler, and I have some papers for you. You know the Ravenal lands--some twenty acres--lie across "Tangled Brook," west of your lines. The property was sold recently by the trustees and my agent bought it. Now you can easily bridge the stream, using the foundation of the old paper-mill dam, and by extending your fences cover the whole. I know the old farmhouse was burned years ago, but those pasture lands are fine, and that hill sloping south will make a good vineyard. Here are all the papers, and my deed to the Brotherhood. Stop! No thanks, not a word, or I cancel the transfer. Some day, when I visit you, I may not be welcome, because I promise you now, if your stewards.h.i.+p does not suit me and things seem mismanaged, I will most certainly turn you all out."

Father Temple laid the bundle of papers on the table and grasped Mr.

Herriott's hand, pressing it warmly, but something in the bright, steady grey eyes warned him to attempt no verbal expression of grat.i.tude.

His host lighted a cigar, and drew from a stand near his elbow a portfolio tied with purple tape.

"Does your reverence ever waste time now in sketches and water-color?"

"Life is far too strenuous for such trifling."

"How do you know that some day you will not be required to dig up that buried talent and answer the charge of neglecting to bring in the expected interest? Nature intended you for one of her artistic interpreters, and if you had been loyal to her commission you might rank to-day as R.A. Last summer I was searching an old trunk for a college text-book, when I happened to find some of your drawings, that were packed by mistake with my luggage in the bustle of leaving the university."

From the pile of loose sheets he held up one, and, after a moment's survey, in which he turned it at various angles, he handed it to his guest.

Father Temple was leaning back in a cus.h.i.+oned arm-chair, and against the violet velvet background his pale, placid, scholarly face was sharply silhouetted. Listlessly raising the sketch sidewise, so that a gas jet on his left shone upon it, he looked at it. The profound repose that habitually rested on his countenance broke up swiftly, as a sleeping pool s.h.i.+vers when a stone is hurled into its motionless depths. His lips whitened, and he laid the paper as a screen over his eyes. Mr. Herriott crossed the floor to the door of the dining-room, and, loitering deliberately, ordered coffee. When he came back, followed by a servant bearing coffee and liqueurs, the priest was standing at an open window, and in the clenched fingers of the hands clasped behind him the sketch quivered as though shaken by the wind.

"Close the door, Hawkins, and when I want you I will ring. Come, Vernon; I remember your fondness for coffee, and this is good and piping hot."

The thin figure in the girded ca.s.sock shook his head and leaned out of the window, staring up at the golden stars throbbing above the roar and din of the crowded street.

After some minutes, during which the host rattled cups and gla.s.ses, Father Temple walked up and down the room, then came back to the table.

The despairing sorrow in his deep, soft eyes made Mr. Herriott rise instantly.

"Vernon, have I wounded you by my reminiscent babble of college days?"

Without a word, the arms of the priest were lifted to the man towering over him, and he laid his head on the shoulder of one who had never failed him.

"Temple, forgive me, dear old fellow, if I have broken rudely into some sacred, sealed chamber."

"You have done me a priceless kindness in restoring my picture, but with it comes the hour of humiliation I always knew must sooner or later overtake me. Noel, your good opinion is so precious to me I shrink from losing it. I have dreaded your condemnation next to that of my G.o.d. You always trusted and respected me, even in what you deemed foolish monkish extremes, and yet--and yet----"

"Sit down, and pull yourself together. You have fasted and prayed your starved nerves into a fit of womanish hysteria. I am no father confessor for you, and if you are not the true, loyal man I have believed you all these years, then, while you are under my roof, I prefer not to find out that you are a hypocrite."

He pushed his friend back into the easy chair, and handed him a gla.s.s of chartreuse, but it was put aside.

"Noel, you must hear me. After the first bitterness I shall feel relieved that you know literally all I can tell, and then you will understand many things in my life. To-day I am what I am, simply and solely in the hope of expiating the sin of my youth. Noel, the sin of my youth found me out early, and this life I lead is an attempted atonement. Do you begin to understand?"

Mr. Herriott held up the sketch, and, as he struck it sharply with his fingers, his face darkened.

"Whose portrait is this?"

"The woman--the young girl--whose life I blighted."

"Good G.o.d! Blighted? Is your villainy so black?"

"I am Father Temple, vowed to celibacy, and somewhere in the wide, cruel world a wife and child of mine may have gone down to perdition because I was a coward--a vile coward, too base for a brave man to recognize. I knew you would despise me, and I kept silent as long as I could. Do you wonder?"

Mr. Herriott stood over him like an avenging Viking.

"You betrayed a woman? Wife, or victim of----"

"Both. I married and I deserted her."

"The marriage was legal--no swindling sham?"

"Legal in form, though I was a minor and she a mere child."

"And you ensnared her deliberately, intending to----"

The priest sprang to his feet and his eyes flashed.