"I am afraid not. Pardon the simile—but take a thoroughbred filly raised and trained on the race track, and when she is champing her bit, trembling for the signal to start, lead her aside, shut her in a pasture, fasten her to a plough trace, or harness her with a mule on the other side of a wagon-tongue, and do you wonder the load comes to grief, or the furrows are crooked when she sees the racers flash by, and hears the rush of hoofs, the roar of cheering thousands? Eglah knows what she wants, and disdains compromise. The present environment suits her as little as a stagnant millpond would a yacht cup challenger."
"I wish she could marry happily, but the day I came away we stood at the front steps and I told her I hoped I might have the privilege of performing the ceremony, if during my life she consented to make some man happy. The judge laughed and tapped me on the shoulder. 'I will see you get that wedding fee. When you are needed I shall telegraph you.' She stepped a little closer to him, put her hands behind her, and looked at him with strange intentness; then turning to me she said, with singular emphasis: 'I shall never marry. As I have been baptized, only one more ceremony can be performed for me, and if Ma-Lila does not insist upon a Methodist minister, I promise that you shall pronounce 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust'—when mother earth takes me back to her heart.'
"Just then Mrs. Mitchell dropped her basket, and the clatter of keys and scissors broke the strain, which I could not understand. But Eglah's eyes recalled something I have not thought of for years. Do you recollect a picture of the Norns we saw that summer we walked through Wales?"
"Three figures, one veiled? We could not find out who painted it, but I never shall forget the wonderful eyes of Urd."
"They looked at me again that day in Nutwood. The expression was as inscrutable as the smile of Mona Lisa—not defiance, nor yet renunciation, neither scorn nor bitterness, but deathless pride and a pain so hopeless no sound could voice it."
There was a brief silence, broken by the muffled chanting in the chapel, and Mr. Herriott's hands were gripped so tight behind his head the nails were purple, but his face showed no emotion, and when he spoke his tone betrayed only quiet sympathy.
"For many years I have associated her with a passage in Jeremiah: 'As a speckled bird, the birds round about are against her.'' Poor little speckled bird, beating out her life. Battling alone against a host of hawks is dreary work."
"I suppose you are going to Y——?"
"No, I must get back home. I have been away too long. My poor faithful Susan is dead."
"I hope you are tired of globe-trotting, and ready to anchor yourself at your own fireside."