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HOW THE EAST END WAS REDEEMED
(Continued from last week.
“Explain, will you?” _
“I do not know how, except that her part, it
seems to me, in the drama of life, is of the highest
sort, mind-ministry. She apparently gives herself
away to the world, as unconsciously as the roses do,
and as beautifully. She is a semi-invalid, you
know, and we might expect her to be morbid and
introspective at times, but she is not.”
“No, Hildred is a remarkably well balanced
character. Are you very fond of her?”
“Hildred? I am not consciously fond of any
body on earth now, but if I could make a deity out
of a woman, I would select her. Her loveliness
and unselfishness are a continual rebuke to me.”
And then Mrs. Cobb bowed a little coldly, and
took up a German love story, which was not a
translation, and left the room.
Dr. Falkenham smiled. A woman who could
talk like that in cold blood, if enthused and waked
up from her trance of death, and placed in a sunny
atmosphere of appreciation and understanding,
could certainly repay the awakening prince. And,
after this thought, which Dr. Falkenham did not
consider fine and chivalrous as it might be, he lay
down on the couch and crossed his arms above his
classic head.
“May heaven forgive her sorrowful little high
ness!” he exclaimed in surprise; “it has been just
five minutes since I came in and she made her exit
. . . . good!”
Hildred Wightman loved her cousin too truly,
not to make an earnest effort to restore her to
a normal condition. And, besides, she and her hus
band, as sharers in an ideal marriage, could not
help but feel a great sympathy for her. It did not
take any imagination to assure them that the sort
of sorrow appointed her has to be dealt with wisely
if it is ever conquered at all. They loved each
other deeply enough to gauge her loss by their hap
piness, as people who have married for lower rea
sons can not.
Hildred was not strictly beautiful, except
in that higher sort of fashion, which everybody
does not observe. She was a blond, with light
auburn hair and eyes that made you think of the
blue tenderness of mysterious spring skies.
One morning Hildred pulled on her long black
gloves in front of the mirror in the reception hall.
She wore a gray tailor-made gown, with a white
lingerie waist and a black picture hat. But she
seemed to be perfectly oblivious of the fact that
she was looking her be t. She was evidently think
ing deeply upon some subject outside of her own
charming personality. An hour later she surprised
her husband by a visit to his up-town office.
“Well, Hill!” he said, as she appropriated a
great arm chair gracefully, “what is it?”
“I think that you have made an improvement
since I was last here,” she returned, glancing
around. “Those large glass-doored bookcases give
the room quite a library air. It looks almost like
a theological study.”
“Charmed,” he answered, with an indulgent
smile, “to learn incidentally of your approval. Do
I also look like a clergyman?”
“No, you have a supremely judicial look, Harold,
that the veriest child could interpret. And that
makes me think of why I came here. It is about
Guen.”
“We have discussed her a number of times at
home. Hildred,” he answered with a note of sur
prise in his voice, “and I do not remember that we
ever reached any satisfactory conclusion about her.
Did you expert the air of the office to help solve
the problem?”
“No, but I am just from a consultation with
Harold,” she said, making a brave effort to speak
lightly, “and he says that Guen must be aroused
or she will leave us for fairer worlds on high, and
that, too, before long.”
“Certain about the high, Hildred? Well, has my
distinguished uncle any plan to propose for her
rescue?”
By ODESSA STRICKLAND PAYNE, Author ot "Psyche,” "‘Little Cal,” Etc.
The Golden Age for November 8, 1906.
“No, he simply asserts that she ought to be stir
red up mentally, until she is broad awake in every
fibre of her being. But how to achieve this much
to be desired result he does not know—neither do
I.” And Hildred looked pathetically puzzled.
The handsome face opposite grew thoughtful.
“Has your cousin any specialties or fads?” he
asked at last. “Is there any one thing she used
to prefer to do above all others?”
“Why, she can sing, Harold!” Hildred exclaimed
joyfully. “I remember, now that you make me
that she sang like an angel the last time I visited
her. In fact, we used to call her the family Patti.”
Morris got up leisurely, took a rose from a crys
tal vase which sat on his desk, and fastened it on
Hildred’s jacket, looking down on her all the time
with eyes of unspeakable tenderness.
“Remember, Hildred, to thank the Giver of all
perfect gifts that you are not Guendolin Cobb.
And whatever else you do or don’t do, next time,
consult me about the interesting shadow at home.”
Hildred smiled, returning the caress in his eyes,
but she drew herself up a trifle imperiously at his
words, and Morris lifted his hand gracefully and
misquoted:
“ 1 N daughter of the gods, divinely tall, divinely
fair—premeditated effect of a new blue dress.’
Hildred ignored the compliment, but she threw
him a kiss from the doorway as she vanished, con
sciously carrying away with her a thread of hope,
which might develop into a cable of rescue in the
right hands for her cousin.
That afternoon, when Harold Falkenham camg
home, he found his niece alone by the sitting-room
fire. Hildred was engrossed in a piece of Kensing
ton embroidery, and she sat with her back to the
door, the light on her beautiful blond head.
“I feel the presence of my uncle!” she exclaimed,
“the atmosphere grows radiant, Dr. Falkenham
must be in the room.”
“Thanks,” he answered, “you make me feel
like an angelic assistant at a seance. Where is
your cousin, Mrs. Cobb?”
“She is in her room,” she said, with a sigh.
“She is out of harmony with the world today.”
“Go up and ask her if she will go to ride with
me. , It is lovely out this afternoon.”
“Go up and ask her to take a broom-stick flight
to the moon,” Hildred returned, sarcastically.
“Have you lost your senses, Harold? Don’t you
know she will not ride with you?”
“I can’t,” he replied, calmly, “unless you deliver
my message, and she replies negatively.”
“Very well, then, you can have my assurance
made doubly sure, if nothing else will content you.”
And Hildred bowed low and gracefully to her un
cle as she left the room, consciously excited over
her mission.
Hildred came back in a few minutes with Mrs.
Cobb leaning on her arm. Mrs. Cobb greeted Dr.
Falkenham, and expressed her regret'that she could
not ride, briefly but decidedly. Hildred picked up
her work, and, with a significant smile at her uncle,
left the room. Mrs. Cobb sat down before the fire
in a luxurious chair, clasped her hands in a medi
tative mood and straightway forgot Dr. Falkenham’s
existence. She looked very pale and unspeakably
sad—evidently the woman so richly dowered by
the gods had not a particle of interest in anything
under heaven.
Dr. Falkenham stood, and leaning one elbow on
the mantel-shelf, looked down on Mrs. Cobb with
eyes of comprehensive gloom.
“Do you know,” he asked in a deep tone, that
somehow sounded half tender, “what the great
French philosopher says, Mrs. Cobb, lurks like a
masked spectre behind such mioods as you in
dulge?”
“No, what is it?”
“Atheism. To doubt the love of God, is to doubt
everything. In other words, it makes life not worth
living.”
A slight bitter smile crossed her mouth.
“I am sure I do not assert,” she answered in a
dispassionate tone, “by any phase of my person
ality, that it is.”
“And yet if your friends are to be believed,” he
returned, warmly, you used to 'be a bright, im
perial force for good.”
“That was before I was annihilated—when the
sun shone in my world and the birds sang. You
must know,” she continued with something like an
appeal in the dark gray eyes, “that a happy heart
is the best inspiration for service, and that I will
never, never number among my possessions again.”
“How do you know?” he answered, not unmoved.
“I thought so, too, when I buried the fresh hopes
of my young manhood in a woman’s grave.”
“You!” she cried, incredulously, “you have not
suffered; in that supreme, unbearable fashion—im
possible!”
“Why should you think so?” he asked, with in
finite gentleness. “Well; call the discipline by
what name you will, but because of it, my life
trembled on the brink of insanity and suicide at
one time for many months.”
“If you did not swing back into harmony,” she
answered, evidently interested, “on your love for
some other woman, I shall be charmed to listen to
your story. I assure you, I should like very much
to know why you ever cared to live again.”
‘Well, first, being a man of active temperament,”
he returned in a matter of fact tone, “I grew tired
of my selfishness, for a great grief becomes nothing
else when you indulge it too long. I read a poem
from the pages of a daily paper one night to a
friend, and it proved to be the bugle call back to
the world. I have forgotten all the lines, except
one verse, which threw a flash-light on Immortal
Service—great work :
“ ‘lf God thou searest,
Rise up and do, thy whole life through,
The duty that lies nearest.’ ”
“Go on,” she commanded, gently.
“ ‘The friendly word, the kindly deed.
Though small the act in seeming,
Shall, in the end, unto thy soul
Prove mightier than thy dreaming’
“I went to my office the following day, and that
afternoon a woman brought her blind son to my
rooms to have a cataract removed from his eyes.
The case interested me. I forgot myself; I began
to be willing to do the next thing, to desire to live
for others, in other words. And then, you under
stand, the worst part of the conflict was over.”
“Yes,” she answered, thoughtfully, “the pro
cess seems easy enough in your case. After your
awakening, you neccesarily found inspiration in
your vocation, or more properly, profession. I
haven’t a profession.”
“You have the vocation of womanhood,” he said,
with an inscrutable smile, “which is always, and
unalterably the profession of loveliness. One of
its tenets, I think, is to be obliging, is it not?”
“Certainly.”
“I sent Hildred just now,” Dr. Falkenham said,
simply, “to ask you to ride with me; you refused.
Will you go now?”
Mrs. Cobb rose abruptly and walked to the win
dow, her pale face luminous with conflict.
Heavens! to surrender like other people, to be
commonplace in her grief; to appear to forget her
beautiful dead and live for the benefit of a world
in which she had no interest, but the grave. She
turned back to Dr. Falkenham with a flat denial
trembling on her lips.
“Mrs. Cobb,” he said, anticipating her half
sternly, “I have not a particle of interest in you
except as one other human being I would be glad to
help. Do you wish to suffer as you do now, for
years to come? Are you not ready yet for the com
pensations by the way?”
(Continued next week.)
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