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always loved to watch the people on the
eet,” she said, drawing her heavy veil through
her beautiful, finely modeled hands.
Dr. Redmond partially turned, started to reply,
then thought better of it, and returned to his in
spection of ’Frisco types.
“I was fond of such sights myself,” chimed in
Aunt Lila. “I remember once I saw a goat run
away with a smgall boy in a red jacket.”
Dr. Redmond stood like a stork on one foot. The
fire was in his direction.
“And, Sylvia,” suggested Aunt Lila, “why don’t
you leave your problem to that brother to the
Sphinx at my window? He is the family autocrat.
He can usually solve our problems on the right side
of the line invisible, that is, if we can ever gain
his majestic attention.”
“Yes, I know,” said Sylvia, with a hasty glance
at the square shoulders in the broad window 7 frame,
“but he does not seem anxious to volunteer an
opinion. ’ ’
“He can’t, Sylvia,” said Dr. Redmond, in his
full, rich voice, “unless he knows the case.” He
reversed his rather impolite position, and sat down
on the window sill.
“You can have any chair in the room, sir,” said
Aunt Lila. “Seats free.”
Dr. Redmond smiled upon her.
“Window seats?” he countered. Then more
gravely. “I have heard that the Hills intend to
go abroad. They wish you to go with them, Syl
via?”
“That’s it,” she said.
“It seems to me then, Sylvia, that Mr. Hill and
his wife, just at this juncture, need you more than
they ever will again.”
“Yes, but it seems hard to postpone Rodney’s
plans,” she said, her voice tremulous with his
name. “I do not feel as if I belonged to myself
any more. Sylvia Hill is a new person to me, and
I want to give away the millions, as near right as
possible. ’ ’
Dr. Redmond took up a paper knife and snapped
it idly in his long, surgeon hand.
“The Padre and I,” he suggested, “can carry
out your wishes, Sylvia, for a few months. The
Hills need you now 7 . They have sad hearts even if
they are very rich, and Hill is really a wonder. I
have been looking over his art gallery, and it is
something to marvel over. A thousand pictures
by artists the world never heard of. And yet, what
spontaneous, fresh, youthful work. Nothing aca
demic, not a hint of Italian, Dutch or English in
fluence, but w’ith nature alone as their instructor,
these unknowns have brought down the Sierras, the
geysers of Yellowstone Park, the giant redwoods,
with the sunlight spearing through them, to their
truth-telling canvasses, until I knew that at least
we had something to paint.”
“Lecture by Dr. Redmond on the possibilities of
American art,” murmured" Aunt Lila. “But were
all landscapes, professor?”
“Not at all. I saw a sort of religion in paint.
The American Indian and his romantic traditions.
I recall one picture of a warrior winging an arrow
to the sun. A prayer, an appeal, a reaching out
after the unfathomable mystery of that most mys
terious illumination. I have read somewhere that
Heaven may lie within the sun.”
Sylvia glanced up quickly.
“Do you believe it, Reece?”
“It may be,” he said musically, “but St. John
on Patmos did not see it there, or, if he did, he
left the record blank.”
“Human knowledge is very much of a blank
anyway, Reece,” said Aunt Lila. “Now, I don’t
know a thing about a yacht, but here is Sylvia
about to go around the world on one.”
“If I can ease my conscience a litle,” said Syl
via. U I wish to be true to Rodney, and loyal to
TZfE MISSION GIRL
The Golden Age for November 26, 1906.
By Odessa Strickland Payne,
Author of "Psyche, ” "Esther Terrall's Experiment,” Etc.
his parents. I think that Mr. Hill is like Rodney,
in away, and I w 7 ish to know him intimately. As
Reece says, he is a wonder. ’ ’
“I think that the trip will be of benefit to you,
Sylvia. But, put a definite purpose into your
journey. Visit the best philanthropic institutions.
Doors will open, you know, to Hill that might be
hard for others to get past. If you happen to ad
mire European methods, make your notes accord
ingly. And if the architecture or plans of any
building appeal to you, have the designs copied,
photographed, sketched out, so that you can use
them. Get ready for the life work to which you
are pledged by study, observation, travel.”
“Lecture by Dr. Redmond,” said Aunt Lila, “on
philanthrophy, in general.”
“I would send for Cora Wayne for my private
secretary,” went on the unabashed lecturer. “When
you come back to us from your trip, I hope that
you will have the best thought of the old world
tabulated upon this vital, humane subject. Then
you will be better fitted to handle the millions be
queathed to you.”
“I don’t wish to have a great fortune left to
me,” said Aunt Lila. “The correspondence about
what to do with it would tire me. I hate letters.”
“Then,” said Sylvia, with grave sweetness, “I
won’t send you a single one.”
“I can’t let Bessie Barrows triumph over me,
Sylvia. I won’t stand for it. I keep all my let
ters to show my friends the monograms, and let
’em guess what’s in them.”
“Sylvia will have a Prince or Duke or so in her
wake, after the Hill millions,” said Dr. Redmond,
“And she can send you about what you want,
Aunt Lila.” ‘ . i ■
“I don’t think that I will be troubled by any
thing of that sort, Dr. Redmond,” she said coolly,
“Mr. Hill is rather an awe-inspiring person.”
“I meant nothing,” he said. “But, there is a
bare possibility of it.”
“Yes,” she assented, “money is the magnet. I
almost wish I was a nurse at the Padre’s Mis
sion. ’ ’
“It is obvious,” said Dr. Redmond, “but you
can now play the part of the Lady Bountiful, or
the nurses’ benefactor.”
“Mr. Hill will be here in a few moments,” she
said. “Then Aunt Lila and I will take a drive by
Lotta’s fountain and see the flowers.”
Dr. Redmond nodded slightly, and then went out
to send a telegram to Cora Wayne, the girl who
had once affirmed so sadly that her part in the
drama was only to suffer.
Sylvia paced the carpet, her black robes glinting
in the sunlight, the hem of her long skirt stirring
the bristles of a long extinct mountain panther.
“Reece has changed, Aunt Lila,” assurance in
her tone. “What is the matter with him?”
“I do not know, my dear. Since that long con
ference with Rodney, he seems to have an added
stateliness of demeanor, a kind of stern sadness,
that I cannot fathom.”
“But he has always been incomparable, bright,
grand,” mused the young widow. “I do not like
for him to change. For the first time in my life, I
was afraid of him this afternoon.”
“Perhaps,” mused Aunt Lila, “he is urging his
courage to the sticking point to propose to Do
rothy Fane. Men of Reece’s type have a hard
time popping the question. He is so stately. He
might telegraph her, you know.”
Sylvia shrugged her shoulders.
“Dorothy Fane!” she exclaimed.
What more she might have said was cut dra
matically short.
Rodney Hill, Sr., stood in the door, ready to ac
company his guests over the city.
Epilogue.
The year of Sylvia’s absence abroad was accen
tuated, as all years are, by many changes. Dorothy
Fane and Lyman Hale were married in the early
summer, and in the autumn Mrs. ose King died, and
left her only son desolate in the home of his fath
er. Sylvia wrote Aunt Lila long and interesting
letters about her foreign wanderings. She was
evidently devoted to her new father and mother,
but she held herself seriously to the spirit of her
marriage vow as the bride of humanity. She was
collecting all sorts of architectural plans, in line
with the fulfillment of Rodney’s desire; and, be
sides that, she sent checks for large amounts month
ly to a number of institutions, which the Padre had
recommended as worthy. It was an understood
fact that the Merrill Mission was to be generously
endowed by the girl who was once numbered on its
working force. This was to be her first personal
work upon her return home. “I do not want you
to ever have another financial care,” she wrote the
Padre, “and in any emergency cable me —freely.”
“She is hewing to the line,” the Padre said to
Reece one day, as the latter stood in his study door
with shining eyes, a letter from Mrs. Rodney Hill
in his hand. “Her checks come as regularly as
the months roll round. She is making her hus
band’s dream for humanity into a vital reality.
If she lives to build the Rodney Hill Mission on
the other side of town, it will mean a great deal to
our city.”
“Yes. I think myself that Sylvia is making
good,” Reece said, with a vibration of feeling in
his voice. “But I confess that of all her schemes,
the Anti-Suicide Home appeals most powerfully
to me. I have always thought it such a horribly
barbarous thing in our city hospitals to turn a
fellow back into the streets, after rescuing his
physical life, just to face the same old inspiration
less schedule—without friends, hope, or money.
It is worse than heathendom, and it is such a
mockery of the brotherhood which has been en
joined upon us that sometimes I have felt if I
were an orator I would skin this American nation
from head to heel on the subject. What are we
here for, if we can’t give the man that is down and
out by his own confession a chance? Who knows
but that his resistive force has not been ten times
greater than the shielded man who reads the ac
count in his morning paper, with sympathy scant
enough to make the fiend who hovers over his left
shoulder rejoice. ’ ’
Dr. Merrill laid his hand lovingly on the young
man’s arm. “I foresee who will be the executive
head,” he said, with the glow of sympathy in his
eyes, “of the Rodney Hill Mission.”
“Oh, well,” Reece said, with a musical laugh,
as he turned to go away, “that comes as a conse
quence of the law of association. I have been
walking, ‘cheek by jowl,’ for years with one of the
biggest men of this generation.”
Then, before the Padre could reply, he saluted
him gravely and departed.
It was a gray December day in the Padre’s town.
There were feathery flakes of snow in the icy air,
and, from horizon to horizon, the clouds lowered
chill with the coming desolation of cold and dark
ness.
Men were hurrying home from their offices, and
the few women who were out scurried like ghostly
shadows through the streets, trying to avoid the
biting bitterness of the wind.
Dr. Redmond leaped from the red motor car in
front of the Rawson mansion on the Boulevard,
spoke a word to Sanders, and bolted for the house.
He was conscious of a mood which corresponded
with the gloom of the evening.
“Sylvia will never come back to us,” he said.
“She can be the daughter of a much larger man
sion than this,” as a swift vision of Rodney Hill,
(To be Continued.)
