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' THE LADY FROM ALABAMA”
By Odessa Strickland Payne and Lamar Strickland Payne, Authors of "Psyche”, "Limit of the Lme”, "Mission Girl”, Pte.
CHAPTER XXX.
HE yellow light of an October sunset
glowed on the white asphalt walks at
Hayden Park and broke against the
sheer, green sweep of the shrubbery
lines, shimmered among the gorgeous
hued flower beds, and transformed the
lake into a shining mirror, translucent as
glass. Tree shadows were lengthening
slowly through the cathedral peace and
T
artistic seclusion of the place, when June Churchill
got off the car, and started mechanically down the
broad central avenue, in the direction of her home.
She was in a distrait mood. And she felt like
an hour spent in the quiet solitude of the Park
might help her to recover her normal frame of mind.
Rose had met Prof. Cam Blake one morning, after
the tacit agreement between the sisters, in regard
to their grandfather’s will, and had told him enough
of the conversation, to let him understand that she
intended to take her sister’s place in June’s phil
anthrop’c work. She had not, of course, mentioned,
even remotely, that it could possibly have any ef
fect upon his future prospects; but she had informed
him that she thought June needed a rest.
Miss Churchill had expected that Prof. Blake
would call, immediately, but already ten days had
slipped away into the great, grim, unalterable Gulf
of Time, and he had made no sign.
At first, June had felt merely provoked, at his den
sity, but his continued and unexplained absence had
begun to prey upon her mind, in away that was
making her very unhappy. She was discovering, to
her own dismay, that she really cared for him, more
than she had been able to realize, in the complex,
multitudinous variety of her duties. She had been
leaning, in spirit, too, although she had not been con
scious of it, on the golden prop of his unalterable
devotion to her.
She recalled now, as she paced through the squares
of sun and shade, a speech that an ante-bellum friend
of her mother’s had once made in her hearing, in re
gard to the young men of the present generation. She
had declared, with a shake of her grey head, byway
of emphasis to her diagnosis, that they were as fickle
as they were brilliant and unreliable: that chivalrous
loyalty belonged to the men of the old school, the
men of the splendid past.
June felt willing to subscribe to this radical view,
and to the truth of the assertion, this October after
noon. Especially after Prof. Cam Blake had so
repeatedly vowed his allegiance to her, and his atti
tude toward the barrier imposed by her grandfather’s
will, it certainly seemed mysterious that, since Rose’s
intimate conversation with him, that he did not see
fit to put in an appearance.
It was exasperating, humiliating, and whether she
was quite willing to acknowledge it to herself, or not,
heartbreaking.
Miss Churchill unbuttoned her blue voile coat,
and ran her finger around the white collar of her
lingerie waist, to see if there was any tension about
her throat. Then she sat down on a rustic bench, by
the shining lake, and pulling off her blue straw
turban, she laid it on the seat, by her side. She had
no ulterior thought of being picturesquely miserable;
but, as she placed her elbow on the rough back of
the bench, and drooped her pale, thoughtful face to the
support of her hand, her unconscious air suggested
its restrained despair, even in its dignified repose.
“Why should I care?” she whispered to her own
heart. “The life I had deliberately chosen, of uni
versal ministry, is infinitely grander, anyway. When
you mean something definite and helpful, to hun
dreds of human beings, why is not that more worth
while, than simply to trim the lamp, and keep it
burning, in one man’s home? My grandfather’s
money will be spent all well enough, through Rose’s
loving sacrifice, and daily ministries. But what
about me, if I should be called upon to let go all
these lines of larger activities? It will be Paganini
and one string, to make music against the world,
with a vengeance.
“I will give Cam untill to-morrow,” she added, with
a sudden veiling of her deep, topaz-blue eyes, “and
if I do not hear from him in that time, I’ll put on my
The Golden Age for August 11, 1910.
invisible nun's garb and keep it on for the balance
of the way.
“I am half tempted,” she finished with an expres
sive gesture of her right hand, “to register it as a
vow ”
“Don’t, Miss Churchill,” a deep, melodious voice
interposed, “you might regret it.”
And Cam Blake, leaning heavily on an ebony cane,
walked slowly around the bench in front of her.
“Did you hear what I said?” she queried. “Did
you catch my interesting ultimatum?”
“No, ”he declared, with a candor not to be doubt
ed, on his chiseled scholarly looking face.
“I heard you say something about a vow,” he con
fessed, “and 1 would not have heard that, but I am
obliged to walk rather slow, since I sprained my
ankle.”
“Oh!”
Then June understood, without more words, his
unexplained silence, and her manner was both charm
ing and gracious, as she pulled her skirt aside and
said simply.
“I had not heard about your accident. I am very
sorry. Won’t you sit down?”
“Thanks,” he said, with a broad smile. “You
recognize the tramp’s blessing, don’t you? Thanks —
awfully. Well, I am sure he didn’t mean it, poor
devil, any more than I do.”
“I came in my motor car,” he continued, adjust
ing a refractory cuff inside the dark grey sleeve
of his coat, “as far as your home, and Rose was good
enough to come down to the steps to see me. She
also informed me, incidentally, that she expected
that you would come back through the Park, and I
count myself happy, to have discovered you so easi
ly.”
“Don’t be in a hurry to congratulate yourself,” June
answered, “for I have been battling with a host of
dark Etherians all day, and am not sure that I am
entirely out from under their influence yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you ever read the story, which desig
nates the Spirits, which seek to influence us, for weal
or woe, as Etherians? Well, you ought to. Then
you could forgive yourself, for some of the battles
royal, which you are obliged to have sometimes with
the powers and principalities of the air. It is very
helpful, and illuminating on those lines.*
“Is it?” he querried, lightly. “But. I am not dis
posed to bother myself about etherian forces. I
haven’t the leisure. Mortals monopolize too much
of my time. In fact, there is one very charming
creature, who belongs to the earth-sphere, who has
not allowed me to have a moment’s unalloyed peace,
for ten days. Anathemetizing my ankle did not do
any good: for I could not go to her. And I doubted
very seriously whether she would come to me, al
though she enjoys an enviable reputation for be
ing a kind-hearted philanthropist.
“And wouldst thou have me fashion into speech
The love I bear thee, finding words enough,
And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,
Between our faces, to cast light on each?”
“Would you have come, June?” he finished abrupt
ly, with a mischievous gleam in the fathomless
brownness of his dark eyes, as he leaned, handsome
and appealing, toward her, on the rustic bench.
“You quote Mrs. Browning real well,” she mused,
hiding the tender light in her eyes from him. “Pos
sibly I would have come if your mother had been ill
and your servants had left you to your fate. I would
have done so,” she continued, in quite a matter of
fact voice, “and introduced you to one of my
efficiently trained nurses. I keep about fifty em
ployed nearly all the time. They are such a bright,
invincible set of young women that I enjoy them very
thoroughly. I entertained all the fifty last week, ex
cept, of course, those on duty, and introduced Rose
to them. She was quite surprised, and not a little
comforted, to find out that some of them, jolly as
they were, had lived through personal experiences
more tragic than her own.”
“Poor Rose!” the professor said, in a tone of gen
uine feeling. “But should I not say rather rich, rich,
rich Rose? Has she not had life’s most priceless
gift—love? And such a love! So pure, so faithful
and so helpless! I wish that I could have known
Burwood Morris. I might have helped him before It
was too late. But, since Rose is taking such de
cided interest in your work, June, she has improved
wonderfully in her looks, and I suppose you all hope
that it is the open sesame back to life, and happier
things, for her?”
“Yes,” June replied, “she is vitally interested; so
much so that she is forgetting herself, which is
really the best thing that could possibly happen to
her.”
“Why not let her take your place, June, in the
philanthropic world, permanently? I do not think
that it ought to be either hard or difficult to forfeit
your share of your grandfather’s fortune to Rose,
under the circumstances.”
“I thought at first that she would not be able to
stand the strain of the work, but she has such an
invincible sense of humor that I have come to be
lieve that she will do admirably.”
“And that means, June, there is some hope for
me; that you are willing to listen to the story of my
love; that you will marry me; that I, the sorrowful
young professor, who felt doomed to eternal bache
lordom, may at last claim the wife who has long
belonged to me in spirit? Dear heart, say yes, say
yes; for my probation has seemed longer than I
could bear, at times, and cruelly unnecessary, from
my restricted point of view.”
The silence deepened in the gem-like park; the
shadows lengthened to the full, and now and then the
birds called through the dusk, the flower-scented
twilight stillness. A little ripple crossed the bosom
of the quiet lake in ever widening circles. But June
Churchill made no answer to her lover’s impassioned
appeal.
After a long silence, the professor arose, and, lean
ing heavily on his ebony cane with one strong, white
hand, he placed the other gently on the girl’s shoul
der.
She looked up at him .through the silver dusk, her
blue eyes as puzzling as ever. He could not read
the veiled language of her brave, beautiful eyes, so he
said, a little wistfully, sadly, with hesitation in his
usually firm voice:
“This is the last time that I shall ever trouble you,
June. Give me my answer —yes or no.”
But Miss Churchill only slipped her hand under
the strong, white one on her shoulder.
“Nay, let the silence of my womanhood
Commend my woman-love to thy belief.”
“You mean that stanza for yes, June?”
“I—of course, dear doubter.”
“You know,” he mused, for he was wise-hearted,
and thought beyond the petty circle of his class, “I
fancied that some bright spirit in the high heavens
smiled when you said that, my beloved.”
She rose and stood beside him, a little tremulous
from sheer happ’ness, and they gazed over the silent
waters of the lake, where the curtain of the imme
morial dusk had descended. And she did not need
to ask the name of the bright spirit. For they were
thinking of the man who might have had the other
daughter of the proud race of the Churchills if'Fate
had willed otherwise.
“Beloved,” she said; “beloved, always call me that,
will you not? And now I may call you what I have
always longed to call you —Cam.”
“Have you not called me Cam before?” he qu'zzed
her, teasingly.
“Not often enough to make it common,” she re
plied, gravely. “Ah! but how many, many times in
my dreams!”
“And the reality will be dear?”
“As glad, as glorious, as beautiful, as the dream,”
she answered, tears dimming the glory of her happy
eyes.
********** *
SECOND PART.
After Schiller had, metaphorically, burned her
bridges by placing her well-written resignation on
Mr. Moran’s high desk, she suffered from a reverse
moood, that made her feel mentally incapable of
action for a time.
Her little room at the Settlement Home became
suddenly a Mecca, the dearest spot on earth, which
(Continued on Page 14.)
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