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XIV.
E have tried everything,” she said
tritely.
Dr. Redmond nodded. Dr. Cortelyou
put the tips of his fingers together.
“On the physical side,” said Miss
Moore.
Dr. Cortelyou stirred in his chair.
Was she going to plunge off into Yogi
philosophy? There were times in his
00
life when he fairly hated psychology. This was
one of them.
‘‘On the mental side,” continued Miss Moore,
“there are one or two things, which we might safely
undertake. ’ ’
“What for instance"?” This from Dr. Redmond.
“Music,” she answered. Dr. Cortelyou heaved
a sigh of relief. At least he would not be called
upon to suggest to the patient that she was entirely
well.
“The grand piano is too far away,” said Dr.
Redmond. He neither approved or disapproved of
the idea. The Nurse had taken charge of the case.
She was the specialist.
“There is a violin,” Miss Moore urged, “in the
hall downstairs.
Dr. Cortelyou smiled at Dr. Redmond. Miss
Moore would not languish for cases, while his office
hours were still on the glass door of his private
room. Dr. Redmond lifted his chin.
“It belonged to Sylvia,” he said not unkindly.
“No one else ever knew how to charm the music
out of it. I only sawed the strings apart.”
Dr. Cortelyou slapped his knee lightly, grimly
amused over the situation, tragical as it was, and
deeply concerned as he was in the result.
“Get it,” said Miss Moore. She commanded
the situation with swift emotion. “I am not a
brilliant performer, but I can play with some degree
of skill.”
“As Jan Kubelik says,” Dr. Cortelyou suggested,
“it’s a sad world. Frankly, Miss Moore, I cannot
see that you will benefit the patient.”
“You may go get me the instrument,” Miss
Moore said to Dr. Redmond. She ignored Dr.
Cortelyou.
Instantly Reece thought of Dr. Merrill’s warning.
And, leaving the room he ran down the stairs with
a celerity which surprised him. “Was it Hope that
had given wings to his feet?”
As he unlocked the case he thought of Sylvia’s
last concert. The remark that he had made at the
time rang in his ears. “Heaven grant that nothing
worse befall you than a shower of rose petals I ’ ’
Miss Moore took the instrument, and Dr. Cortel
you retired to the sitting room. Standing directly
at the foot of the bed, she drew the bow, in a loud
discordant scale, across the strings. It was the
chromatic scale in metamorphosis. Dr. Redmond
retreated to the mantel, shuddering as she repeated
the experiment. He looked longingly at the sitting
room door. Then he fastened his eyes on a copy
of Watts’ famous picture, “Love and Death,”
which hung over the mantel, a weird suggestion of
the battle, which had so long been raging in the
dainty room. The resistless majesty of the figure
of Death chilled his heart. He hated the bony
foot that protruded from beneath the flowing white
robe. Here even Watts, the Mystic, had blundered.
Death was not a pedestal before the House of Life,
but one who sought to enter. Love, in his naked
grace, with appealing face, and outstretched hand,
seemed to shout: “GO BACK!”
The picture was cruelly suggestive, but as Reece
turned around, with the question in his heart
Which will win? Sylvia stirred feebly, and sighed.
The spark of consciousness within her, had respond
ed to the appeal of the violin.
Then Miss Moore changed her music to a distinct
THE MISSION GIRL
By Odessa Strickland Payne,
Author of "Psyche, ” "Esther Terr all's Experiment,” Etc.
The Golden Age for August 20, 1908.
harmony thrilling, entrancing; every vibration
suggested Life, colorful waves of joy, which could
have but one interpretation, the rejuvenation of
the young patient upon the bed.
Suddenly, Sylvia’s eyes opened, and she gazed
fixedly at the amateur musician. Dr. Redmond’s
hand trembled as he poured out a spoonful of
panopeptine. He lifted Sylvia’s head quietly, and
administered the dose without emotion, while the
melody of life, life, beat through the room.
“Lift me up, Reece,” Sylvia exclaimed at last,
with a soft tint of color on her pale cheeks. The
idealistic mind, which shock and grief and suffer
ing had relegated to outer darkness, had come
back into dominion of its own. All that was left
of her had been aroused by the silvery voice of
sound. Reece sat down beside her, took her in his
arms and lifted her against the pillow, so as to
secure her an easy, reclining position. Miss Moore
played on. Dr. Cortelyou returned to the field
and smiled on the tableau. He exchanged a
glance with his colleague.
“Congratulations!” he said, in a reassuring
tone. “Metaphysics are better than physics, some
times.”
“Metaphysics?” said Sylvia. “It is a, long
word, Reece; what does it mean?”
“Music and life,” said Dr. Redmond. He
glanced down at her with a look of profound ten
derness. It was broad daylight then, and he made
an exultant gesture toward the amateur violinist.
“Put a hot water bag to Sylvia’s feet, Miss
Moore. And, please, lower the curtains. We have
won. She has passed the line invisible. Some
day, perhaps, I can thank you properly, but not
now. ’ ’
Within ten days Sylvia was convalescent. The
call of the violin had aroused her mind to its do
minion over the beautiful body, and by some occult
law of psychology, stronger than matter, the
breath of life had been renewed to her on the
brink of the grave. Nobody in the palatial home
knew anything about Dr. Redmond’s appeal through
the Padre to the Inner Circle, but Reece always
felt afterwards that Sylvia Warrenton’s life was
a gift from heaven. “More things are wrought
by prayer than this world dreams of,” indeed!
Sylvia was able already, with the nurse’s help, to
walk into her own sitting room, and, reclining in
an invalid’s chair, to watch the blue flicker of the
flames in a clubhouse grate. As a convalescent she
promised to be more of a problem than ever to the
physician and the nurse. She was distressingly obe
dient and alarmingly passive. The charm and
high spirit which had characterized her in other
days it seemed had been burned up in the fiery
ordeal through which she had passed. She did
not rejoice in life; she endured it with a silent,
pathetic grace which told more loudly than words
how she had suffered.
Nothing interested Sylvia. No phase of the
world’s drama as interpreted by her friends ap
pealed to her. She just lay still, in the dark depths
of her invalid’s chair, in a loose crimson house
dress, white and signless as a stone. She never
uttered a word unless she was addressed, and then
she answered as briefly as possible. Sometimes
Reece could command her attention, but he was
the only one who had any marked influence over
her. She seemed to be merely a beautiful specta
tor at the banquet of life, devoid both of interest
and emotion. Reece treated her with unspeakable
gentleness and tenderness, but he longed at times
to know what was going on behind that white
mask of listless indifference.
One morning when Dr. Redmond walked into the
sitting room and found the usual pathetic tableau
by the glowing fire, he stooped, and, taking his
cousin’s hand, inquired in an earnest tone:
“Tell me, Sylvia, do you suffer mentally?”
“No, Reece,” she said with the flicker of a
smile, “the dead do not suffer.”
Dr. Redmond dropped her hand, with a sigh,
and standing beside her, looking in his unconscious
pose as distinguished as sad, he asked tenderly:
“Is there nothing in the world that you desire -
nothing ? ’ ’
“Yes, Reece,” she murmured, “oblivion!”
Reece whirled, went out and down the grand
stairway, with a clouded brow, his finely chiseled
mouth set in a grim line. At the first landing he
paused, and looking at the face of the mission
clock, whose great hands pointed to eight, he solilo
quized :
“I wonder, friend, if you have ticked away al
ready all the happy hours allotted to this home. I
somehow seem unable to believe that Sylvia will
ever stand here again and play her violin with all
the old time charm and abandon.”
But Reece presently gave himself a mental brace
up, and stopping in the hall, he pinned a pink
chrysanthemum on the lapel of his coat.
“Good-morning!” he said to the ladies seated
at the breakfast table.
“Mr. Redmond, merry morning to you, sir,” said
Mrs. Rawson, with gracious intent.
Mrs. Barrow -regarded her handsome brother
thoughtfully across the table.
“Reece,” she said, as she poured the cream on
her oatmeal, “Leighton says that he is weary of
playing the bachelor man, and he thinks, moreover,
that Reece, Jr., would like to renew acquaintance
with his delightful mother.”
“And that means,” her brother said, as he but
tered a roll, “that you expect to leave without
my fraternal permission, Mrs. Barrows?”
“No, not at all, Dr. Redmond, but Aunt Lila does
not really need me now.”
“Sylvia,” said Reece, “needs somebody to rouse
her to the consciousness of life. Suppose you take
up Rodney Hill’s last letter, after breakfast, and
ask her what to do with it.”
“I! Me!”
Mrs. Barrows laid down the sugar tongs with a
gasp. Mrs. Rawson took up her cause.
“Reece, have you lost your senses?”
“No, dear aunt, no, not at all. But that poor
girl, dead girl upstairs, has got to be resurrected.
At present she is merely a breathing automaton.”
“But, Reece,” his sister objected, “if she should
answer H lO Wi—’ n n q allow Rodney Hill to come
back into her life?”
“Then, my dear, she will prove that she belongs
to him,” Dr. Redmond answered, flooding his oat
meal with cream and threatening the neatness of
the table cloth. “By every law of attraction, the
weak to the weak, the like to the like. But I ap
prehend no such result, and, morally speaking, we
have no right to withhold his letters now.”
Perhaps not,” Mrs. Barrows said in a perplexed
tone, but all the same I shrink from being the
advance agent of the prodigal.”
“Nonsense, Bess,” her brother returned, “it’s
an experiment, I admit, but she will go to the asy
lum for the insane if her present mental state con
tinues much longer. Cases that are desperate re
quire corresponding remedies.”
Mrs. Rawson’s face was a study. Dr. Redmond’s
matter of fact attitude with regard to his patient
seemed to furnish her with a psychological prob
lem that she did hot find easy of solution. After
her brother had left the table, Mrs. Barrows looked
triumphantly at her aunt.
“Now you see. Aunt Lila, how much the family
romance is worth. Reece, by his own decree, puts
his rival’s letter into the hands of Sylvia.”
Mrs. Rawson sighed and gazed pathetically at
the golden chrysanthemums in the middle of the
breakfast table.
(Continued on Page 7.)
