Eliza took the girl's hands and pressed the soft palms to her own cheeks, as she said, in a voice that faltered despite her will:
"My darling, let us wait. Promise me one thing; do nothing for another year at least. For my sake, baby, I beg of you."
Eglah saw unshed tears in the black eyes that had always shone tenderly on her, and rising she stole one arm around the nurse's neck and kissed her unsteady lips.
"Please don't fret about it. You shall have your wish. Of course I will wait a year if you think it best; but you must help me, because somehow it is harder for me to be good here than it was down at home."
"It is a sacred promise you make me now."
"I told you I would wait. Did I ever deceive you? You ought to know me better than Mrs. Kent, and even she told father yesterday she had been trying to find out whether I had most talent for the piano or the mandolin, and she concluded I really had no talent for anything – showed only genius for telling the truth."
Thenceforth Mrs. Mitchell redoubled her efforts to control the spiritual aspirations of the girl to whom she had devoted her life, and the bargain she made with her conscience was that Judge Kent had the right to train and develop and decorate the body of his daughter, even along lines she deemed Philistine, but the immortal spark – the soul intended for her little Elliot – was immutably hers, to be saved eternally in the faith to which her own hopes were anchored. That night, when she had brushed and braided Eglah's golden-brown hair that no one else ever arranged, she suddenly caught the slim form in a straining embrace.
"God bless my Elliot – my own precious baby!"
"It has been a long time since you called me Elliot, and it sounds queer to give me the name of your boy. Why should you?"
"You are my boy, and my Eglah also; two in one, and my only joy in all the world. Don't argue, dearie; go to sleep."
She lifted her into bed and tucked the silk quilt carefully about her, as though crib days had not ended.
"Ma-Lila, if we should all meet in heaven – and I do hope that somehow I shall get there – I am afraid I shall feel puzzled to know who really is my mother, because it seems to me I belong more to you than to anybody else except father; but then grandmother will certainly be there, and she will carry me straight to that special spot – the heavenly 'west-end' – where all the Maurices dwell, and hand me over to her Marcia: the beautiful one I never saw, my own mother, who would not wait in this world long enough to look at me."
"Hush, my lamb! Good night."
In the adjoining room she sat down at a table where books were piled, and opening one read a marked passage:
"The story was told by the owner of a shop where was sold the amber-tinted syrup of malt given to young children when milk could not be obtained. A pale woman in white came very late for many nights to buy a cup of this syrup —midzu ame– but never spoke.
"One night, when she beckoned him to follow, he went with her to the cemetery, where she suddenly vanished in a tomb, and he heard a young child crying under ground. On opening the tomb there was found the corpse of the woman, and by her side a young infant smiling, who had been fed from a cup of midzu ame in the hand of the corpse. The woman had by mistake been prematurely buried. The child was born in the grave, and love – stronger than death – compelled the ghost to provide nourishment for her baby."
Eliza closed the volume and tossed it across the table.
"As if we needed old heathen Japan to teach us the length and breadth and depth and deathlessness of maternal devotion, when we know from the Bible that though God in heaven forsook His Son, the earthly mother clung to Jesus!"
It was an intensely cold, windless, brilliant moonlight night in January, two years after she came to live in Washington, and when the clock struck eleven she heard a quick but cautious step in the corridor and a slight tap at her door. Mr. Herriott stood at the threshold and beckoned her to the head of the steps.
"Is Eglah asleep?"
"I think she is."
"Come downstairs quietly."
In the lower hall, where the lights burned brightly, she saw that he looked pale and troubled.
"Mrs. Mitchell, a terrible blow has fallen upon us. Mrs. Kent went sleighing with some friends, and the horses became uncontrollable. The sleigh was overturned, and poor Nina, thrown against a stone wall, was killed instantly. Will you do what is best when she is brought home? Don't rouse little Eglah. I am going to find Senator Kent, who is in committee meeting, and break the news as gently as possible. Poor, dear Nina! So merry, so kind hearted! Laughing and chaffing me for my awkwardness when I tucked the lap robe about her feet."
Once more death levelled a wall that in some degree barred Eglah from her father, and from that wintry night she dated the beginning of her happy reign over his undivided affection – a monopoly she had long coveted as the supreme privilege and crown of life.
CHAPTER V
"Has the success of the experiment justified the labor and enthusiasm you spent upon it?"
"Yes, Noel, the result far surpasses my hopes, and I am impatient for you to visit us, not only to understand fully the complete success of the work, but to receive the grateful acknowledgments of every member of the Order."
"Then you bar your doors against me, because any expression of thanks is annoying, and the great pleasure I gave myself in deeding the property to you would be marred. Remember, Vernon, I am not a well-rounded character, measured by your ecclesiastical tape-line, and one of my ugly angles is aversion to thanks. If you have drained the marshland and reclaimed the house from mildew and mice you have made your neighbors debtors."
"The same Noel Herriott of college days!"
"Only more so, if you please. Nothing human is immutable, and if a man does not improve he grows worse. By the way, is your reverence still 'Brother' Temple, or have you climbed the ladder of spiritual promotion?"
"I am always Vernon to you, but the world knows me as 'Father' Temple. When will you come to us at 'Calvary House' and inspect the rich harvest from the seed you sowed? I long for the one thing you have withheld – your deep, hearty sympathy in my grand and holy work."
"Meaning that nothing less than the three vows will assure you of my safety?"
"That is beyond all that I ever dared to hope, but your cordial approbation would cheer me more than the indorsement of any other man. Generous though you are in financial assistance, your mental attitude toward our Order is that of the smiling tolerance with which one watches a child building a house of cards."
"However tentative my opinion relative to the scope and permanence of your religious movement, you cannot doubt that I earnestly desire the success to which the sanctity of your motive entitles you. Partial as I am to gymnastic methods, I allow no athletic feats in my mental processes; I neither run nor leap to conclusions, and you must give me time. You and I always approach vital questions by different paths: you lean generally to collectiveness; I usually prefer the slower leverage of individualism. You are burning the candle of life at both ends, and trying to realize your noble ideals; I plod far behind, with only a feeble taper and indulge no higher hope than to idealize my realities."
"When will you come to the lovely home you have given us? There is one room we have called 'Founder's,' and set apart for you; and, Noel, no sun sets that has not brought us to our knees in prayer for you who made it possible for us to own a chapel. When shall we welcome you?"
"Not now. I must go home, where matters need attention. Strange, is it not, that the magic of a name should outlive all it represents? That lonely old stone house staring at its shadow on the lake has no vital element of home except my horses and dogs, and one Maltese cat that sleeps in my arm-chair. When Nina married Senator Kent the last thread that tied me to anything like domesticity snapped, and I followed my bent and prowled from land to land."
"Why