A Speckled Bird Part 16

"She belongs then to the unhappy cla.s.s of frail women who go swiftly to utter wreck in all large cities, where sin is arrayed in rose color and gilt. Strange that the boy of such a creature should remind one of the infant St. John or a seraph of Angelico's."

"Some fragments of her history lead me to believe that she is as trustworthy and pure as any woman to whom you preach. Her morality is beyond cavil, but theoretically she seems to have gone wild among the hedges and ditches of socialism."

"You consider her a conscientious, good woman?"

"As far as I can ascertain she lives irreproachably, bar a.s.sociating with anarchists. I surmise some man has treated her cruelly, or she thinks so, and now she----"

Mr. Herriott rose, looked at his watch, and laughed.

"Temple, do you recollect one summer night under the elms, when rehearsing for the Greek play, Prescott Winthrop declaimed the herdsman's message from the 'Bacchae,' and emphasized the portrait of Agave in the frenzy of the _Thiasus_ strangling a calf and fondling a wolf's whelp? To-day Leighton's mother recalled that scene, but she is not dancing to meet Bromius--only hunting revenge on all mankind. Ah, you are going? I suggest a cautious approach. Leave the carriage out of sight, and boldly flourish the promised book as an open sesame. You of the ca.s.sock clan enjoy privileges denied to us, the ungirdled sons of Belial. After all, you may prove the _deus ex machina_, and through the poor little lad may be able to lay a healing touch on the mother's sick soul. Come to my rooms after your visit, and we will say good-bye until I get back from my long jaunt."

An hour later Father Temple made his way into the tenement house, through a noisy mob of children romping on the pavement, and when he entered the narrow hall outside din was conquered by the deep, swelling music of "Quis est h.o.m.o," wailing from a violoncello held between the knees of a man sitting half way up the stairs, a thin, stooping old figure with s.h.a.ggy grey hair, and bearded as a Welsh harper. The priest ascended, and the musician edged closer to the wall to allow him pa.s.sage way, but he merely nodded his bowed head, and the solemn strains rose and fell like the sobbing moan of waves settling to calm after las.h.i.+ng blasts. Father Temple lifted his finger.

"Mrs. Dane lives on the next floor?"

"Go ub. She vill see no briests, but her door is oben for de child to hear de music he loves. Dear leedle boy is sick, and my cello sounds more better here dan closer."

He shut his eyes and continued playing. Opposite the undraped west window of the room above, an alley stretched, making clear pathway for the sinking sun that poured a parting flood of radiance into the apartment, and upon the cot where, propped up with pillows, the boy clasped his arms around his knees, and listened, quiet and happy.

Between cot and window his mother sat, facing the back of her chair, on top of which she rested one arm, leaning her brow upon it, while the other hand, lying on the cot, slowly stroked Leighton's bare feet.

Having washed her hair earlier in the day, it was now brushed out over her shoulders to dry in the suns.h.i.+ne, and the bright ma.s.s of waving tendrils seemed to clothe her with light. On the floor were scattered several newspaper sheets--"The Chain Breaker"--and across her knee lay an open copy of "Battle-cry of Labor." Only the mellow voice of the cello sounded, and the room was sweet with the breath of Mr. Herriott's white carnations nodding in a blue bowl on the table. Standing a moment at the threshold, Father Temple's eyes fastened on the veil of golden locks falling to the floor, and his heart leaped, then seemed to cease beating as he recalled a vision of the far West, where just such glittering strands had been twined around his fingers.

"Oh, my St. Hyacinth's preacher!"

At Leighton's glad cry his mother raised her head, started up, and, moving forward a few steps, swept back her hair, holding it with both hands. Before her stood the tall, thin figure in the long, black habit of his Order, cord-girded at the waist; with a soft wool hat and book in one hand; a clean-shaven face, pale, sensitive, scholarly, and suggestive of "lauds and prime," of asceticism without peace, and of brooding regret.

He recognized every line in her lovely features, from the large pansy eyes and delicate, over-arching brows to the perfect oval molding of cheek and chin, and the full, downward curve of scarlet lips. Love is so keen of vision it pierces the changes wrought by ripening years, and he knew the dear face. She did not suspect, love had been dead so long, and she had buried all tender memories in its neglected grave.

"I am surprised a Romish priest wastes his time coming here, and I have no welcome to offer you, because I wish no visitors."

With a swift movement he closed the door, dropped hat and book, and came close to her. The sudden glow on his cheek, the light of exultation in his sad eyes transformed him.

"Look at me. Don't you know me? Look--look!"

Eye to eye they watched each other, and at the sound of his deep, tender, quivering voice recollection smote hard upon her heart, and a vague, s.h.i.+vering pain drove the blood from her face, but she fought the suggestion.

"You are unknown to me."

"I am Vernon Pembroke Temple, and you are Nona, my wife! My Nona--my own wife----"

Words failed him, and he held out his arms. She recoiled, throwing up her hands with a gesture of loathing, and stood as if turned to stone, so strangely hard was a face where eyes kindled and burned with the pent hatred and scorn of long years of sore trial.

"You had not sins enough to sink your soul without adding hypocrisy? A preacher! A priest! Cowardice, perjury, moral leprosy, skulking under a long cloak as black as what is left of your vile heart!"

Each word fell like a red-hot flail, but he did not wince, and neither father nor mother heard the low wail from the cot where childish arms covered a face white with horror.

"You think, you believe I intentionally and pre-meditatedly deserted you, and in your ignorance of facts you certainly had cause to despise me, but----"

"Think--believe! As if it were possible to doubt the villainy planned!

The crime you so carefully committed against a mere child, knowing she was a helpless victim, believing she could never redress her awful wrongs. As if you had set a trap and caught an innocent, happy bird, and then broken its wings and tossed it to screaming hawks! Coward--coward as you always were--how dare you face me?"

"Nona, dear Nona--" He put out his hand appealingly, but she struck it aside with stinging force, and stepped backward.

"Out of my sight, or I call the police."

She pointed to the door. He turned, locked it, put the key in his pocket, and his eyes steadily met the challenge in hers. The banked, smouldering fires that flashed up must burn lower before he could plead.

So they stood: he flushed, smiling, happy; she shaken by a tempest of rage that blanched her to a livid pallor and set all the glittering rings of hair quivering, as if innumerable golden serpents coiled and uncoiled around her trembling form.

In the pause he lifted the hanging ends of the knotted cord.

"Do you understand what this habit means?"

"Don't I? A holy cloak to hide every sin that makes this world a hotter h.e.l.l than even G.o.d could fas.h.i.+on--if G.o.d were possible. You drape it over the ten commandments, blotting them out, while you sing psalms, and rob the toiling poor, and ruin young lives, and murder innocent souls.

Oh, yes, to my sorrow, I understand all it means!"

"It means my consecration to celibacy when you fled from me, and I had exhausted all efforts to find you."

"Celibacy! Celibacy! I needed no nunnery to help me keep clean and pure, but you ran behind monastery walls to protect yourself from retribution at a wronged woman's hands. Coward from first to last! When I fled from you? You must indeed be possessed of the devil to dare such language to me."

"Nona, there has been some awful mistake----"

"Yes, a mistake that I was not scalped, or that a merciful bolt of lightning did not strike me dead that day--that cursed day--when first I set my eyes on your false, treacherous face! If you could only know how I hate, despise, utterly despise the bare thought, much more the horrible sight of you!"

"No wonder, since circ.u.mstances were apparently all against me at----"

"Circ.u.mstances are no shelter for honest, honorable men, if there be any left; and the hard, bitter, murderous facts of your shameful life would find you out if you dodged under the very throne of the G.o.d you blaspheme by professing!"

"Will you listen to the truth?"

"You could not speak it if you tried. I listened to you once too often, and you wrecked me, and I am no longer a fool."

"Why did you leave Thompsonville after you received my letters, and the money I sent you, and when you knew I was coming there to take you away with me?"

For an instant she looked at him with startled curiosity, then laughed hysterically.

"I left Thompsonville because you wrote no letters, sent no money, and took no notice of my frantic appeals for help in my hour of horrible trial. A sick woman with a frail, feeble baby, facing starvation, abandoned, slandered, and trampled in the mud, I could only s.n.a.t.c.h at the hand held out to me by the one man I have found honest, honorable, loyal, and true, as he was pitying and kind."

"But when I reached Thompsonville Delia Brown told me----"

Her scornful laugh drowned his words.

"'When you reached Thompsonville' in your dreams--after a night's carousal at college! Even a congenital idiot would sicken at that."

No shadow of impatience crossed his happy countenance; the intensity of her scoffing bitterness was part of his punishment--the harvest that sprang from his own sowing--and he must not complain until she understood fully.

"I can prove that I went to Thompsonville, and I have the sworn testimony of Delia Brown that she delivered into your hands my letters and the package of money I sent to her care through the express agent.

On a sc.r.a.p of paper I have also a receipt in pencil from you to Delia Brown."

She shook her head and smote her palms together.