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EXAS slipped by like the pcture of a
dream, and still the veteran engineer
held to the thread of the main line.
New firemen’s faces gleamed at his el
bow. A new trainmaster grasped at the
swaying bell cord, coughed at the rage
steam and dust, but the veteran engi
neer only heard the words of his far off
chief—
T
“Bring her, Jim, Rodney’s dying!”
Then New Mexico and the long Arizona desert,
unmeasured, mystic, as in the days when the
Mormons had tracked across it, came to gaze upon
a special in full flight.
“Oh, we’ll get there, if this stroke keeps up!”
said the veteran engineer. “I have made a steady
sixty, and now I am running eighty-five to the
hour. ’ ’
“How is your nerve?” the new firemen asked
him, and he smiled upon them.
“Bully!” he said, waving them to their toil.
Sylvia gazed upon a mirage. A salt lick far off
in the desert touched by the rays of the burning
sun; and she seemed to see the towers and spires
of a city rise to view. Then the waters of a
crystalline lake, where cattle browsed ankle deep
among the semi-tropic foliage!
Dr. Redmond sauntered over from the farther
side of the car, and sat down by her. He had not
talked much with her -on the swift journey. They
were breaking records at every mile.
“Well, Sylvia,” he said, “how does it feel to be
the lady of the occasion, with all this at your
feet?”
'She looked very charming, in her brown travel
ing suit. The sadness of her heart lay in the
deep gloom of her eyes. The dying lover’s appeal
was growing louder, with every mile of the magic
journey, and the remorse of her real, sensitive
soul was finding her out. She might have at least
opened some of his last letters. She might have
read his explanation of his non-appearance that
fatal wedding night. She did not think of the
millions, of which the car was an artistic expres
sion, but of the parental love which had cleared
the track of the Southern Pacific, for the sake of
an only son.
“I could enjoy it immensely, Reece,” she an
swered at last, in a tone of sweet gravity, “but for
the thought of what awaits me at the end of the
journey, of the hopes that hang on this mad ex
periment.”
“I should not worry, Sylvia. I believe he only
wants your forgiveness. I surmise this from what
Mrs. Hill had to say, in her last letter.”
“Perhaps,” said Sylvia, a certain reservation in
her tone.
“Then you are afraid that he will demand
more ? ’ ’
“I don’t want to think, Reece. I’m weary of
thinking and remembering. I dread the ordeal
unspeakably, in all its aspects. Bid me forget!
Today, at least, is ours, and tomorrow is not. Be
my good comrade, Reece. The firing line is su
perlatively hot.”
He had not expected this. The strain of the
journey was beginning to tell. The ceaseless roar
of the steam giant, the long, monotonous heave of
the desert were attacking her.
“I am fighting myself, Sylvia,” he said hoarsely.
“I am trying to give Rodney a long, square deal.”
“Please go and sit with Aunt Lila,” she com
manded. “Don’t let us make each other miser
able!”
XXV.
At the close of a long, dusty day of travel, when
the special train in its thunderous, swift onward
rush had been “Halcyon” within the sumptuous
car, only in name, the brakeman turned one of the
complex silver handles of the door of the observa-
THE MISSION GIRL
By Odessa Strickland Payne,
Author of "Psyche,” "Esther Terrall's Experiment,” Etc,
The Golden Age for November 5, 1908.
tion section, and shouted to the weary inmates, vo
ciferously :
‘ ‘ California ! ’ ’
Later the salt tang of the wind from the broad
waves of the Pacific greeted the travelers through
the open car windows. It was December. The
day had been warm and sultry for the season, and
the fresh breeze from the ocean was like a breath
of life-giving balm to the tired party.
Sylvia leaned her bright head against the window
frame nearest her.
“I have heard,” she said to her cousin who sat
beside her, “that people never grow tired in the
wonderful land for which we are bound; that the
atmosphere is as invigorating as wine; that it im
parts an enviable energy.”
“The vim of the climate, the vivific energy,” Dr.
Redmond answered, “has been assigned, I believe,
for the magnificent attainments of the Forty-Niners,
at least that was one of the reasons or causes.”
“What a pity,” iSylvia nodded, “that the magic
air could not be boxed up and expressed free to
all the tired world.”
“Children,” Mrs. Rawson chimed in, from her
seat on the other side of the car, “do you realize
that you are in California? I hope that you are
duly impressed with the fact. True, we can’t see
much, because the darkness has fallen from the wing
of night. Now, I believe I have quoted somebody;
but anyway the train goes very fast, and so far as
I can see, it is a rolling country, rich in verdure, late
as the season is.”
“I wouldn’t strain my eyes, Aunt Lila,” Reece ad
vised in a humorous tone. “California will keep
till tomorrow.”
A night of rapid travel brought them almost to
the end of their journey, in sight of the wonderful
bay, environed in blue hills, whose charm the trav
elers acknowledged with bated breath. It reminded
them of the Bay of Naples, as they crossed the big
Oakland ferry.
The Golden Gate opened its portals for the morn
ing sun to stream through, in a splendor of radiance
and beauty, and the light of day glimmered on spire
and steeple, on long lines of business blocks, on the
picturesque water front, on China-town, on the mem
orable castles adorning Nob’s Hill.
Dr. Redmond and his party had hardly swung into
Market street, when they were confronted by a lux
urious, green-bodied motor, striped with gold, which
glittered resplendent in the morning sunshine.
A young man who sat by the chauffeur observed
them. He jumped lightly to the earth, came to meet
them, and swept his hat from his head.
“Dr. Reece Redmond, I believe?” His tone was
cordial, his hand outstretched to Reece. “I am
Laurence Hill, the envoy of my uncle, Rodney Hill,
who sent me to welcome you, Dr. Redmond, Miss
Warrenton, Mrs. Rawson,” reading from a card in
his hand, “to San Francisco.”
“ You may consider yourself formally introduced
to the ladies, Mr. Hill,” said Reece. “If I may be
permitted to say so, they are both quite young, and
you may have some difficulty in picking out Miss
Warrenton.”
“Yes, quite right,” said Mr. Hill, smiling upon
Aunt Lila, and offering his arm to assist her into the
green and gold dream of speed and luxury.
As Dr. Redmond stepped back, Mr. Hill explained.
“My uncle expects the whole party at the man
sion on ‘The Nobs,’ if you will be so good as to
come now, Doctor. Your bagyage has been looked
after, and we are in touch with the Western
Union.”
“If you will put me out at the Palace Hotel, Mr.
Hill,” said Aunt Lila, “I will be greatly obliged.
I think my trunks were directed there.”
“Yes, quite right,” said Mr. Hill, looking at an
other card. “The Palace Hotel, please.”
Dr. Redmond, true to the trust reposed in him, ac
companied Sylvia, very willingly, to the house of
mourning. For that was what the Palace on “The
Nobs” was, as Laurence Hill explained very grave
ly:
“The physicians in charge of my cousin’s case,
Dr. Redmond, hold out no hope of his recovery.”
Dr. Redmond put a few professional questions.
He made no criticism of the conduct of the case. It
was not his method.
Sylvia was not so much impressed by the grand
eur of the marble Palace on “The Nobs,” at first as
she was later on.
Aunt Lila, however, safely bestowed in a private
sitting room of the Palace Hotel, soon became inti
mate with a lady who knew the history of the fam
ily. Some startling facts, in regard to their opu
lence, came into her possession. The cost of the
house had been something over $2,000,000. The
grand stairway alone had consumed a fair fortune,
SIOO,OOO. The hall of sculpture, with its stained
glass dome, had absorbed fifty thousand more. The
ball room and. its mural painting of Spring, had cost
a fabulous sum, making one artist and one con
tractor, at least, proportionately happy. The pic
ture gallery had been adorned with the best, work
of the American school, causing a thrill of horror to
go through the nerves of so-called great critics of
painting, but putting new life and joy into those
who had been benefited, and the list was large, as
Mr. Hill had not consulted anybody, save his own,
good, simple, California taste. If a picture told the
truth about its subject, it was Art, Ruskin’s kind of
art, and Rodney Hill opened his big heart and am
ple purse and bought it. There was life and zest
upon his walls. All that made his country great
and beautiful glimmered there. And, as he paced
his long, sunlit picture gallery, he was glad that he
had rescued from obscurity American art.
In the dining room he had been good to the old
world. He had spent SIO,OOO for a hand-woven Per
sian rug. The tapestry had been transferred from
an Italian chapel. The hand of Raphael might have
designed one piece at least. But the heir to all this
splendor of environment was slowly slipping away
from all earthly things. What did it all matter?
His father’s millions could not buy back his
squandered youth. He could not re-purchase the
grand part assigned him in the Drama of Human
ity, to play the game nobly, joyously, well. He had
sealed his own doom. Not by his intoxication on
the night when he could have married Sylvia War
renton, but by a series of drunken sprees, which had
wrecked a constitution of hardihood and splendid
animal courage. Now he lay on the verge of the
grave!
Rodney Hill, Sr., as he received his guests in the
high vaulted drawing room, was a figure imposing,
powerful, magnetic. His coat, with its deep silk
lapels, was of faultless black. A pearl pin glowed
like the mysterious elixir of life itself in the lilac
crossed folds of his tie. His pantaloons showed the
fashionable stripe worn by men of his class. Per
sonally, he was remarkably handsome. His blue
eyes cut like steel when Wall Street tried to water
his pet road-; now, in the hour of his sorrow, they
gleamed gently as the December sky, in its turquoise
and azure tints. Above the eyes was the evenly
balanced head, with its gray, slightly grizzled, hair.
In his left hand, with the solid gold ring on the lit
tle finger, he held his New York Herald.
“Miss Warrenton,” he said, stooping to her
slightly, for he was a tall man, “I hope everything
from your coming. You make an old man very hap
py, by yielding to his wish.” He patted Sylvia’s
gloved hand as if to encourage her, marveling over
her loveliness, half of the beauty of which had never
been told him.
(Continued on Page Four, 3rd Col.)
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