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"THE LADY FROM ALABAMA”
sty Odessa Strickland Payne and Lamar Strickland Payne, Authors of "Psyche”, "Limit of the Line”, "Mission Girl”, Pte.
UNE CHURCHILL did not find it an
easy task, to thrust Cam Blake sum
marily out of her world. For his was
such a strong and sunny personality, that
she began to miss him in many uncount
ed ways. He was the most brilliant
man of her acquaintance, and, lacking
the delightful spur furnished her by their
mental combats, she began to let the
J
rust gather on the weapons of her intellectual armory.
What was the use of reading the latest works in the
field of scientific endeavor, or books of lighter mo
ment, when nobody she knew cared particularly to
discuss their contents with her?
It was very hard, certainly, to do without his mental
sympathy; but harder still to acknowledge that she
alone was responsible for the changed basis of their
beautiful friendship. And yet, why should she sacri
fice the dreams of a lifetime to sentiment, as it
exists between the sexes; always she had felt a
profound sympathy for the unfortunate, from a child,
the burdens of the poor had been laid upon her. And
she had vowed over her mother’s coffin, that her life
should mean something definite and worth while to
humanity. She could not forsee the irony of the gods,
that her grandfather’s will would give her the per
sonal wealth she needed to carry out her schemes
of helpfulness, and, at the same time, shrivel to
ashes the hopes and desires inalienable from normal
young womanhood.
And she realized, in the depths of her soul, that
the right of choice was being presented to her,
in that complex and maddening way, which made
the days bare of grass and sunshine, and “fretted
out the silken sleeps from the long calm nights.”
That same evening that Professor Cam Blake was
questioning the Delphic oracles, June Churchill, in a
blue nouse gown, was walking restlessly up and
down, in her private sitting room upstairs, with
her hands clasped behind her back, and the flush
and pallor of emotional tides, breaking over the
statuesque charm of her face. She knew that she
could call Cam Blake back to his allegiance to her
with a word, and she believed as unconditionally
that the love which the strong, self-contained young
man had never avowed, would surely come to her as
a natural sequence. And yet, the consciousness
grew upon her, and became every day more settled
that she could not speak that word, but she felt it
to be her duty, instead, to sacrifice both herself
and him to the diviner ideals of the race.
The pain, mental and physical, of the world; the
agonies and miseries of those who lived on the low
plains of social obscurity; the toilers whose wages
were too scant to buy a dress for church, or a flower
for joy. The sufferers, tortured in nerve and brain,
on narrow beds, in humble homes, June Churchill
knew too much about from the stories told her in
intimate confidence to turn away from them now
to build the fair edifice of her own happiness out of
a fortune which might mean salvation to those who
clamored for real sympathy and help at the doors of
her heart and brain.
“What is personal happiness anyway?” the girl
questioned, as she stood looking with white-knit
brows, out into the balm and beauty of the spring
night, “but selfishness, in its last analysis. If it is
a gift to be desired, why does it elude the majority
of the race, like a will-o’-the-wisp? Even those who
snatch their cake, and eat it, regardless of the rights
of others, are more often than not fatally disillu
sioned, as the divorce courts bear grim witness:
Therefore, June Churchill,” the young girl added,
stretching her white arms upward to the shining of
the immemorial stars, “will choose nobler w r ork.
Smoother out, indeed, the flames on our own small
hearthstone, so that we may kindle the fires of Hope,
Joy and Courage, by personal manifestation of the
truth on a thousand hearths.”
Then she dropped down by the window seat and
placing her hands on the frame, she broke into bitter,
helpless tears, while the inexorable stars shone
calmly down on the sacrifice of a human heart, laid
CHAPTER XIV.
The Golden Age for April 21, 1910.
on the world’s vast altar of agony.
That there was no priest, music or color of flowers
to commemorate the event, made it, perhaps, a diviner
offering.
June Churchill had made her choice.
She intended to do her duty, as she saw it, regard
less of the tragic consequences to herself and the
grand young man who loved her. After awhile she
might reach the heights of a calmer self-renuncia
tion, where lies repose.
# * * $ $ $
After the Coeur de Leon had left the suburbs far
behind, and they were rushing joyously on ovei- hill
and dale, to the music of the night warblers and
the tang of the wind, Schiller began to realize the
exaltation of the ride, and the g’ory of the hour.
The moonlight, spangled with waves of silver haze,
the green forest aisles of the spring woods, through
which they swept, and it transformed the open spaces
of the common country road, into a wide, magical
canvass of light and shade, whether it gleamed and
burned on a field of young oats, or an orchard of
blossoming apple trees, or the long, emerald undu
lations of a meadow.
“Oh! what a joy,” Schillei* exclaimed, with shining
eyes, “to be alive!”
“It is some times,” Carrol Hall corrected. “But
I can easily imagine that this beats the Settlement
Home, and Charles Mason, and that grim old office
—a block or two. And, if I dared, or if I knew you
better, I might add a climax, which would interest
you.”
“Risk it,” Schiller commanded, gayly, the wild joy
of the ride throbbing in her blood, with the song
of the tireless motors.
“Well,” he returned, with a smile, “I think that
the Coeur de Leon, if not its master, has more sus
tained powers of entertainment than anything, the
grand orchestra just now enthusing the musical world
to the contrary notwithstanding. Only that isn’t the
climax, Miss Wilkins, but the preamble to it.”
“I do not like,” Schiller answered, with a glance
at the handsome face, defined above the gray-flan
nel clad shoulders, by her side, “metaphysical
hedges.”
“And I do not like,” he returned, as he slowed the
Coeur de Leon to a pace less swift, “to be disbe
lieved. I made a simple statement to you, just now,
about a girl, which you proceeded to turn down.
Now, listen! How much do you want, Miss Lowell,
to have that library and gymnasium for the Settle
ment Home?”
“Badly enough to be gracious about it,” Schiller
replied, with scintillating eyes, “And, as an evidence,
I’ll promise to try my best to believe the next state
ment you make about young ladies.”
“Thank you,” he said, “but, I am so much in
earnest about desiring the friendship of this girl, I
have met but twice, that if she will ask me, as a
personal favor, to give the money to buy the library
and gymnasium for the Settlement Home, I’ll do it.
But not a cent will I contribute otherwise. Will
she? That is the climax, Miss Wilkins?”
Schiller caught her breath over the largeness
of the possibilities involved in the picturesque situa
tion. Miss Lowell had had her heart set on the
proper equipment of the Home, she was aware;
and the library and gymnasium as indispensable
helps in her work, she had heard discussed over and
over, in the Inner Circle of the Home.
“Why don’t you ask the girl herself, Mr. Hall?”
Schiller interrogated, after a moment.
“You know,” he said, touching her ungloved hand
lightly with his own, “that I have already asked her.
But, listen! No time for consideration or counsel
with others, will be allowed. It is now —or never!
If the compliment of being willing to pay out thous
ands of dollars to a philanthropic institution, as a
proof of honest intention is a strain, I can withdraw
it.”
“Don’t,” Schiller importuned. “Mr. Hall, will you
please be so kind as to give to the Settlement Home,
a library and a gymnasium, at your earliest conven
ience?”
Carrol Hall let the Coeur de Leon cover fully four
miles, before he answered gravely:
“I will, Miss Wilkins, with pleasure.”
And then Mr. Hall, perhaps to celebrate his vic
tory, shoved his gas and spark controls wide open,
and the big, red car leaped ahead, like a crimson de
mon, at the rate of seventy miles an hour.
There was a scream of protest, from the back seat,
but Schiller felt really in too exalted a mood to
care. She had scored a victory for the denizens of
her world, the mill world, and she did not fully
realize the hazard of the swift run.
Suddenly the mechanism which thansfers the power
from the crankshaft, under the cylinders, to the
driving shaft that runs to the rear axle, snapped
and Schiller was thrown violently upward and for
ward, to land upon the moonlit roadbed.
Carrol Hall saw the sky whirl red for a moment,
and then, with remarkable Courage, grabbed the
emergency brake, and jammed it fast, bringing the
red racer to a standstill, with its blunt nose against
a high embankment.
Miss Loweh turned in the back seat and looked at
the white, girlish figure stretched, motionless and
still, in the glare of the moonlight, behind them
on the hard, asphalt road.
“Killed!” she shrieked.
“Schiller is killed, Mr. Hall! Killed! I know it.
You and I can never forgive ourselves for this wild
night’s ride.”
But as he leaped from the broken car, Carrol
Hall set his under jaw doggedly and made no an
swer.
* * * * * * *
And it came to pass that Rose Churchill awoke,
and, waking saw Burwood Morris standing on the
creek bank, weeping most bitterly. She had not
heard the wild prayer that had gone up from his
lips, wrung white with agony, but she saw Geth
semane written in the great black eyes, that stared
so questioningly, through the last solemn lights
of the day. Here was one who had fought, against
desperate odds, who had sinned and suffered and
been forgiven, who would, in the nature of things,
sin and suffer, and —please God —be forgiven. “I
came not,” said the Master, “to call the righteous
unto repentance, but—sinners!”
What should she say to him.
It startled her, confused her sense of the fitness
of things, to lie there, and witness, all unknown to
him, his grief. It is a profoundly tragic thing, for
a strong man to weep, an agonized, tense, heart
stirring moment to witness his sorrow. She had
never crossed the gilded barriers of Convention, she
had moved like a golden moth, through the World of
which he knew comparatively little, with its palaces
and its pictures, its books and its music, its gleaip
of white statuary, and the sparkle of diamonds and
amethysts; and also through those tempered friend
ships, where primal agony and deep feeling were
never allowed to ripple the surface. And she realized
in this tragic moment, how cold were the hearts of
that so-called upper world.
Lying there outstretched on the green, whole
some grass, listening to the senescent plashing of
the waters, Society seemed very far away, and, very
narrow, and life very near, and broad, and deep
with unspoken agony.
Oh! how she pitied him!
That wild made sweet tug at her heart-strings,
to aid him in some blind, impulsive, born-of-the-mo
ment way, to stand comrade with him, in the heat
and flame of the firing line, to stop the hideous
swing of the pendulum of drink and poverty and
with its naked, hissing, cruel crescent of her per
sonal penury, set every nerve at tension, caused
her soul to start from its luxurious lethargy, its lotus
dreams, and begin the first tremulous bar of its
Magnificat of Pity.
God be good to her! She knew now, as if it had
been seared into her flesh with a branding iron,
what her conception of “The Pit and the Pendulum”
meant.
(Continued on Page 14.)
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