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"THE LI9IIT OE THE LINE”
By Odessa Strickland Payne and Lamar Strickland Payne
SHIRLEY BRYAN, stenographer for a great
Iron Corporation, is the first action on the scene.
The story begins with a suburban train pulling
out from under the marble corridors of a grand
Terminal Station.
Barry Moore, Miss Bryan’s employer, plays
the role of “The Man of Iron.” He is trying to
build a collossal fortune.
Gregory Ford, a Harvard athlete, a Princeton
theologue, a multi-millionaire, is deeply interested
in the question, propounded by the Book of Job,
“If a man die, shall he live again?” because a
specialist has told him, his days are numbered.
Henry Brown, editor of the Water Oaks Ga
zette, is a discovery '■* Jird’s. He is a lover of
poetry, psychology, economy. He is an environ
ment-fighter of the best type.
CHAPTER XII.
HIRLEY stood by one of the sitting
room windows, one Sunday morning, and
watched the March winds blow through
the orchard at the back of the house.
The branches of the peach trees were
already aflame with blossoms, pink and
semi-crimson, while the plum trees, scat
tered here and there, glimmered like
great white snow balls, in the midst of
S
the colorful sway of the boughs. Back of the or
chard was a green vista of pine wooods, lanced with
the brown up-standing limbs of oak trees, against
the soft gray horizon of a spring sky.
“It looks like, Mater,” the girl said without turn
ing her head, “that the glories of the spring are
booked for an early date, this year. And, I am not
sorry, because the winter has been peculiarly try
ing' to me, in some respects.”
Mrs. Bryan was arranging a large cluster of flow
ers in a crystal bowl on the center table, but she
paused long enough to ask:
“How, little girl?”
“Oh, the cold and the iron,” Shirley answered,
as she turned around, and walked to the mantel,
“have been rather a hard combination to struggle
against.”
“You mean, Barry Moore and the weather?’ her
mother suggested, as she pulled two or three daffo
dils into position.
“Assuredly,” Shirley replied, placing her elbow
on the mantel, while she looked thoughtfully down
at the blaze of the open fire.
“Well, dear, the weather is rapidly improving,”
her mother returned with an arch smile, “and you
haven’t uttered a complaint against the Man of
Iron since the wreck.”
“But, I have worked,” Shirley urged, in a mov
ing voice, while she interlocked the slender beauty
of her hands upon the mantel, “twenty-four nights,
until midnight, since. I think,” as she turned, sud
denly, and began to walk up and down the long
room, “I have about reached . . . the limit of
rhe line of endurance.”
“Then, my dear, why don’t you resign?”
“On what sort of a basis, Mater?” as she paused
and looked with unseeing eyes at the yellow splen
dor of flowers on the table. “Climate and scenery
are not available assets, for the maintenance of a
family. ’ ’
“No, but faith in a God,” her mother answered,
quietly, “who keeps his promises to the widow and
the orphan, is, my dear daughter.”
“The right kind of faith may be,” the young
stenographer replied, as she sank, with a half sigh,
into a chair, “faith of the vital, loving variety.
But, so often, Mater,” the swift emotional voice
continued, “mine seems to belong, simply to the
historical and intellectual class. But admit,” she
added with heightened color, and a deeper note in
her voice, “that it was possible for me to resign. I
surrender thus the task, I set myself to do, forever.”
“And that was?” the question fell Very gently
* on the charmed silence of the room.
“That I would stay there, at any cost,” Shirley
The Golden Age for March 18, 1909.
SYNOPSIS
Gregory Ford and his mother rent one-half
of the old colonial Bryan home, and wealth and
poverty are only across the hall from each other.
Mrs. Ford is a woman, “who has never had a
thrill.’’ Mrs. Bryan is a breeze of sunshine for
Shirley's sake, and she begins to draw young
Ford’s confidence.
Then there is Little Nell, the child of wis
dom. And, on the horizon looms a girl, a
cousin of the Fords, Ethel, by name, who will
play a dramatic part as the story progresses.
There is a wreck of the Suburban train, of
which Mrs. Bryan has a physic vision. Her daugh
ter, Shirley, who is aboard, escapes unhurt, but
she measures up to her part as a heroine, by her
loving sympathy to those less fortunate.
answered, as she arose and swept back, in her ex
citement, to the window, 11 until he was saved —until
that magnificent driving force was turned into the
way of righteousness.”
“Why do you despair now?”
“Because I have prayed so long and vainly, Ma
ter,” the girl answered, keeping her face turned
toward the orchard view, “and, besides, I begin to
recognize that there might be come personal danger
in the experiment. Barry Moore is a very hand
some man, and, when he cares to be, I imagine, mag
netic. I am perfectly willing to be used as an in
strument in his salvation, you understand, but I
shrink from the responsibility of being his friend,
afterwards.”
Mrs. Bryan drew a long sigh of relief, and then,
strolling over to the window, she patted ‘her daugh
ter on the shoulder, gently.
“Don’t build upon the event, with marble, yet,”
she advised. “Wait until the crisis comes before
you meet it. It is a question whether you should
have a personal interest in your employer. Mean
time, why not invite Gregory Ford and his cousin
to go to Sunday school with you?”
Shirley smiled charmingly.
“Little Nell stands higher in the favor of the
Fords than I do. Send her, Mater,” she continued,
diplomatically, “while I run upstairs and put on
my hat.”
The young girl climbed the stairway slowly, and,
at the first landing, paused long enough to give an
interested glance at the childish symbols on the
broad window seat. A large doll dressed in crim
son tulle, with a broken arm stretched stiffly out on
a battered Second Reader, lay in a conspicuous pose,
in the clear, revealing light. Shirley stooped down
and picked up her little sister’s treasure, smoothing
down the flimsy folds of the startling dress, with a
caressing hand.
“We begin,” she murmured dreamily, “by set
ting our affections on things like this, a wooden un
responsive toy. And when the swift flight of the
years brings us the knowledge that our dolls are
stuffed with sawdust, we resent it with the bitter
unreasonableness of youth. But isn’t it,” she went
on, musingly, as she sat down on the window seat,
with the doll trailing from one hand, “a part of
the scheme of things, for us to outgrow our idols,
one by one, to make them and break them, and find
them clay?”
“Don’t be too certain, Miss Shirley, in your con
clusions,” said a rich, vibrant voice above her, and
Gregory Ford, looking fresh and handsome, came
down the steps from the second story, and leaned
against the window facing, in front of her.
“I hope, Mr. Ford, that you didn’t hear,” Shir
ley said, with a gay little laugh, “all of my solilo
quy, of which the doll,” swinging it gently into her
lap, “was the inspiration?”
“I might as well ’fess up,” he explained, with a
mischievous smile; “I was leaning on the balus
trade, in the upper hall, and I couldn’t well avoid it.
It was very interesting,” he went on, with a mag
netic thrill in his voice, “but I did not like your
ultimatum. Why shouldn’t we have some of the
things that interest us, all the way?”
“I am sure I do not know,” Shirley replied, in a
whimsical voice, “perhaps we outgrow them, un
consciously. The upward trend, progress, you know,
has to be paid for like everything else.”
“But I am a Bourbon,” Ford murmured, with
darkening eyes, “and some things I intend to keep
all the way.”
Shirley rose and laid the doll down on the win
dow seat, with a tentative sigh. Then she straight
ened herself, and looked directly into the blue of his
eyes.
“How?” she asked quietly.
“By selecting dolls,” he said, in a humorous tone,
“who have enduring qualities, sweetn.ess, originality,
and hardihood of spirit.”
“Rather a hard combination,” she commented.
“But, in the interim, the Mater desires me to ask
you and Miss Ford to go to Sunday school this
bright morning.” v
“Gela depends,” he replied, “on whether I escort
Miss Bryan, or not.”
Miss Bryan ascended to the second landing, and
turning, leaned over the balustrade.
“Miss Ford and Little Nell would both file ob
jections to such an arrangement,” she suggested.
“Leave it to me,” with an impressive gesture.
“I am used to people objecting. I’ll go make Man
son brush his hair. Water Oaks expects him to look
real sniptious. ”
» * «
“My income is SIOO,OOO a year,” Ford announced
to his cousin, Miss Eethel Ford, as he turned a copy
of Gerome’s gladitorial masterpiece to the blue
shadows of the Sabbath twilight.
Miss Ford suppressed a yawn.
“Do you know, Monsieur Gregg, I wish your Sun
day school jaunt with Miss Shirley had made a more
vital impression upon you. Please hide your private
secretary’s last letter, which you read without ask
ing my pardon, behind that atrocious picture.”
“Don’t you care for me to prosper, Ethel?”
“No; if you arc going to bore mo with the fig
ures.”
“I didn’t know business tired you. What did you
do this morning?”
“I? I picked plum blossoms. Do you believe in
blue shadows?”
“Certainly,” as he backed up Gerome with Web
ster. “Here is a very faint one, on this immortal
canvas, loaned by the Nymph of the Southern Twi
light.” He examined the picture through a strong
reading glass, magnifying the faint, artistic shadow.
“I believe that I called it atrocious, cousin,”
Miss Ford reminded him.
“Our tastes differ,” laying the reading glass a
top of Webster’s Dictionary. “I said immortal.
However, why do you like the vestal virgins in the
box to the left of Caesar?”
“Why, you don’t think that 1 like a part of my
dislikes, do you? Their thumbs are down! Paint
me a picture of Mercy! I can’t approve of even
pictured cruelty. Horrid, blood-thirsty, gore-loving,
sanguinary, vestal virgins. Ugh!”
Ford grinned at the string of adjectives, and her
displeased shrug.
“I suppose your sympathies are with the gladi
ator, who is down; this white-limbed Mars, with the '
face of a gallant poet?”
“Most assuredly. I could choke those six, fat
vestal virgins. But Webster’s Unabridged a-top of
the thing.”
“Gerome must have had artistic power,” he ob
served, “if he can arouse such vindictive emotions
in you.”
“Oh, I don’t deny his power; but I can’t fancy
his subject. I like his bronze work better.”
“His statuette of Frederick the Great, for ex
ample ? ’ ’
“I despise Frederick the Great. His economy
was horrible. I don’t like for you to admire Fred
erick the Great, either.”
Ford sat up with real interest in his eyes.
“Cyclones come about this time in the afternoon,
you know,” he suggested, calmly. “I was speak
ing of Gerome’s work in bronze, my dear girl.”
(Continued on Page 7.)
