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XXIII.
EECE felt somewhat better, after his
wrathful explosion in the sitting room;
but his brow was still clouded as he
started downstairs. He paused on the
first landing, and, looking at the famil
iar face of the mission clock, he ex
claimed, with a half smile:
“Go on a strike, mon comrade,
monotony is not worth recording! I’d
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stop until the little girl came back again; and
make time, by the charm of her, worth while to
this home.”
One sunny afternoon early in December, Faith
Harris was out in the picturesque garden of the
nurses, engaged in picking violets azure and blue
and semi-purple for a. patient. She was trying to
get the stems long, and it required her undivided
attention. In changing her position she became
aware that the secretary of the mission was coming
toward her. Alicia was bareheaded, and the golden
sheen of her hair was revealed in the . sunbeams.
She was dressed in gray, as usual, but in her hand
she held an ominous yellow envelope.
“I took the privilege of signing for this telegram,
dear,” Alicia said gently, “because I knew that was
the quicker method of securing its deliverance. I
hope that there is nothing of an alarming nature
in it?”
But the girl who was kneeling before the violet
bed got up suddenly, scattering her flowers far
and wide. She took ocher envelope extended to
her, and, holding it with a pretty gesture, unopened
before her brown eyes, she said impulsively:
“Do you believe in psychic revelations, Delicious?
I do. Then Ido not. Let’s test the vibrations. I
know before I open this envelope, that it has with
in it life’s old, old word, 1 Choose!’ Since I have
grown happy in service here, I’ve thought for a
long time that I would be called away. The mo
notonous sunlit road is not for me.”
The quick, musical voice died away, and then
Faith Harris tore off the end of the envelope, and
slowly read the half sheet in her patrician hand.
With apparent unconsciousness of her friend’s
presence she turned and walked a few steps away,
leaning against the marble balustrade around the
fountain. The sun touched softly the fluff of her
hair, and the far-away look in her eyes was sadder
than tears. The long white sweep of the nurses’
apron the stiff little white cap, did not detract
from, but seemed rather to accentuate, the fair
loveliness of her young womanhood.
After a moment, Alicia came and stood beside her,
laying her hand, in a caressing way. upon her
shoulder.
“Was the psychic impression true, Faith?” she
inquired gently.
“Yes, Alicia,” she replied with a shuddering
sigh, “it is a call half across the continent to a
death bed.”
“Perhaps not, Faith. I mean to say, I hope that
your friend will live.”
“I. do not know, Delicious,” Faith said slowly,
“There is always. I suppose, a fighting chance.
But, if I really thought so, nothing could pull me
away from the sheltering peace of this spot. But
the call, Delicious, is definite and imperative. I
have got to leave the Merrill Mission, for a time,
if not forever.”
“Don’t say that, Faith,” Alicia pleaded, “for
you know everybody loves you here, from the Pa
dre to Lon Gris. You are a part of us, and it
seems to me the mission would suffer an eclipse, if
you should go away.”
“No, Alicia, its atmosphere is permeated with a
more enduring brightness,” Faith said, as she re
folded the telegram and slipped it into her apron
pocket. “But Mr. Gris must have his violets,”
she went on, and slipping back to the bed she had
THE MISSION GIRL
By Odessa Strickland Payne,
[Author of "Psyche," ■”Esther Ferrall’s Experiment,” Etc,
The Golden Age for October 22, 1908.
left, Faith picked up one by one the scattered flow
ers upon the asphalt walk. Alicia stooped as if
she would help her, but Faith waved her back,
with something like a sob in her voice.
“Don’t, Delicious,” she sad, “it may be my last
offering of service on the altars of the Merrill Mis
sion. It is a far call to the golden shores of the
Pacific, and who knows when I may be permitted
to return to vou?”
Her friend understood, and, with the hot tears in
her eyes, she turned away.
“Heaven forbid,” she said as she walked slowly
back toward her office; for she knew that Destiny
was calling away from her the brightest comfort
and the dearest inspiration she had known in years.
That same evening, Dr. Redmond called to see
the Padre about the details of some business con
nected with his work. After a half hour spent with
him in the private study, he was leaving the main
building, when he saw a nurse in uniform, standing
by one of the great marble pillars near the pol
ished steps. A nurse was a nurse to Dr. Redmond.
Something, however, in the poise of the head, the
graceful erectness of the figure, arrested his at
tention. The nurse turned as he paused, and said
quietly:
“Dr. Redmond, I believe? Will you be so good
as to allow me a few moments’ conversation?”
“Certainly, . . . ” Dr. Redmond replied.
“I am Miss Harris,” she said coolly, still keep
ing within the shadow of the pillar.
“I am at your service, Miss Harris.” If he had
ever heard of her before his tone did not betray it.
She walked forward into a strip of white moon
light. The patrician head was lifted to the moon’s
mystic face. She took off her nurse’s cap. Her
hair, bronze-brown, wavy and full of enchantment,
was revealed in its sheer, splendid beauty. Her lips
parted; tremulous, tender, musical, she heard her
voice, calling as from a great starry distance:
“REECE!”
And he reeled o littel with the mad gladness of it
all. Then the great surgeon awoke in him, alert,
fearless, quick-witted. He caught her hands and
wrung them, wrung them with a force that would
have been cruel had he been aware of it.
“SYLVIA!” he said, in a tone that went to her
heart of hearts like the keen flash of a knife, “it
is not you? Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia,” he said call
ing her name as if he would do nothing but call her
name for the rest of his life, “dear Violin Lady,
don’t tell me that you have been here, masquerad
ing as a nurse, within reach of my hand, all these
weary, weary months! Here, shielded by the Pa
dre’s compassion. Here in this atmosphere where
every living thing has a fighting chance. Here,” he
said, talking like a man in a fever, “girl, when I
have imagined you as laboring ... I don’t know
where I have imagined you to be. It seems to me
I have searched all the earth, all the hard, cinder
strewn earth for you. I never once thought that
your spirit would lead you . . . ’ he broke off,
with a sob in his throat, for he was a man behind
all his armor of steel and class poise, and this was
one of the great, burning moments of his life.
What she thought, standing in the strip of white
moonlight, became forever a part of her young life.
Then her eyes cleared, her knees grew steady. She
adjusted her cap, and a wave of sanity swept over
her, as its prim folds half concealed the glory of
her hair.
She felt her way, incomparable actress that she
was, saying things with an evenness of tone that
half surprised her.
“Perhaps, I have not been here. At least you
have not seen me.” Her talk resembled a selection
of Hebrew poetry. “The conditions, if humane,
have been trying enough. The conditions, if mer
ciful, have been hard upon me. I was brought up
like a lily of the field. No, that is not quite right.
I was brought up like a hot-house flower ... to
neither iiol nor spin. Oh, I haven’t meant to be
cruel!” She paused, out of breath. ’’Where was
I, please? I haven’t meant to be cruel. No! No!
No! You might have discovered me, Reece, easily
enough, if . . . you had been led to look . . .
over the family records in the old Family Bible.”
He was so startled by all this that he only man
aged to mutter:
“How?”
She put her finger to her lips.. Then she swept
him a courtesy, graceful as a flower wind blown
to earth.
“My name, sir, is Sylvia Faith Harris Warren
ton.”
Dr. Redmond sat down weakly on the cold, white
marble steps. He was not a player of a game. lie
was not a great surgeon. His powers of observa
tion were waning’.
“\e gods! What an idiot!” he said hoarsely.
Then he laughed, a laugh that was like the silver
echo of the dear gone-by days to the heart of the
girl.
“But, Sylvia, you dare not affirm, in face of the
facts, that you wished to be discovered?”
“No, Reece, not until I had proved myself ca
pable of fighting my own battles. I think that I
have got beyond the breakers now. But, if the
summons to leave had come, if it had come earlier,
I do not know what I should have done, indeed I
think that I would have been utterly dismayed.”
“Well, lam willing to admit,” Reece replied, with
a cordial warmth that was fully appreciated by his
auditor, “that you must have achieved something
worth while, or, you know yon could not have won
the enviable sobriquet—the Mission Girl The
Padre,” he continued, “is not in the habit
of flinging crowns at the undeserving. But I do
not understand what you mean by the summons to
leave, Sylvia Warrenton. Who has any such
right ? ’ ’
“Nobody,” she answered evasively, interlacing
her slender hands in the charming way she had
been wont to do when excited. “But 1 had a let
ter,” breaking her hands apart, “a letter last week,
sir, from Rodney Hill’s”—she watched his face
light up- —“mother. It said her son was ill, indeed,
and that he could not die —without my forgive
ness ! ’ ’
“Send it to him by wire,” said the young savage
on the marble steps.
“Today,” she went on, unheeding his suggestion,
“I received a telegram. It stated that his hours
were numbered. And, that a special train was wait
ing for me on a side track, in New Orleans.”
“And. you are going to him, Sylvia?”
She studied his non-committal question for a mo
ment.
“Tell me what you think I ought to do, Reece?
I realized that I. needed you and Aunt Lila as soon
as I read the message. It would, I believe, have
sent me home to you. ” She spread out her white
hands to him, as a child might have done, a note
for protection in her voice. There was the re-es
tablishment of the old relations in the question, the
childlike leaning on the judgment and rare discrim
ination, which had never failed her.
Reece understood. Sylvia was giving him the
right to choose for her, in this supreme crisis of
her life. He had felt scant sympathy for the weak
ness of Rodney Hill, which had kept him from
appearing, when the hour of Destiny struck. He
knew him to be deficient, at least in one of the all
important fundamentals of character; and he cer
tainly had no desire for his gifted young kinswoman
to mate with a weakling. The right was eternally
right! The man was dying! He craved her bodily
presence, and —her forgiveness. Who could de
ny him? Certainly not a man with a heart like
Reece Redmond’s.
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