RED HORSE HILL SIDNEY M C CALL BELONGS To D4hl RED HORSE HILL RED HORSE HILL BY SIDNEY McCALL Author of " Truth Dexter," " The Breath of the Gods," " The Dragon Painter," etc. Copyright, 1909, BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. All rights reserved Published May, 1909 ELECTBOTYPED AND PRINTED AT THE COLONIAL PRESS: C. H. SIMONDS & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A. To the memory of my beloved 2229166 CONTENTS I. MARRIED LOVERS ....... 1 II. A FORENOON CALL 16 III. THE DEVIL'S QUADRILLE 33 IV. RUTH ARRIVES 47 V. THE FLOWERS THAT WERE NOT GATHERED 59 VI. A MINOR CRISIS 82 VII. AN APPARITION FROM THE PAST ... 95 VIII. MARIS UNDERSTANDS 109 IX. NIGHT UPON RED HORSE HILL . . . 123 X. THE LAUGHING OWL 2 138 XI. THE LONG GREEN VEIL 152 XII. A TRAFFICKER IN SOULS .... 172 XIII. WHAT PITY WAS AKIN To . . . .189 XIV. IN WHICH THE CONGREGATION LISTENS . 209 XV. RUTH INTERCEDES 224 XVI. LISSHY FINDS A WAY 247 XVII. A MORE SUCCESSFUL BARGAIN . . . 264 XVIII. A MESSAGE 285 XIX. THE CONFLICT 306 XX. MARIS RETURNS TO ORBURY . . . .319 XXI. Two CALLERS '334 XXII. ON SUNSHINE HILL 352 RED HORSE HILL CHAPTER ONE MAERIED LOVERS " I AM expected to believe that this is March? " asked the man, affecting incredulity. " And only the first day of it! " she cried, in tri- umph. He took his eyes, with pardonable reluctance, from his wife's laughing, upturned face, and gazed out on the world again, a world soaked up with yellow sunshine, caught under an inverted bowl of blue glaze. " Except for your assurance and the date on the morning paper, I would believe it to be May," he told her. " Oh, there is no real sunshine anywhere in America except here, in my South," she vaunted. One would have thought from her manner that the credit of the perfect morning lay entirely at her door. She leaned her dark head against him, speaking in a lower tone. " These are the days that one remembers, these little, herald days of spring, that run out from under the coop, as it were, while old prisoned winter clucks and frets. They are the dearest ones of all." " If this is a sample of the flock," said he, " I readily believe it." 2 RED HORSE HILL " That's just the trouble," she laughed. " It is only a sample. In a little while the March winds will wake up, and rattle our doors and windows, and blow red dust about the streets, making us forget the darling days that went astray. Yet, even at that, think of Broadway as it is this minute, all those side streets piled with snow and mud. Ugh!" she shuddered. Her husband smiled. " New York is New York. There's only one. I wonder whether I shall ever get used to spending the winters away from it." " I wonder too," she echoed, a little sadly. Then, after an imperceptible hesitation, added, " I feared you never would. That was why I opposed our com- ing here." She stared out again, straight into the sunshine. " It is certain that you opposed it vehemently," he responded, after a brief interval of silence which, for some indefinable reason was not altogether tran- quil. " It was one of the surprises of my life. And now that I have seen you in the South, and realize how homesick you must have been, I wonder even more." She stirred restlessly. " It's that wretched busi- ness of mill management," she said. " You know you hated to come, and I think it was horrid of your partners to force you into coming! " Dwight Alden frowned. " There's no use going over all that again. No one else could come or I should have held out longer." He glanced down at her averted face with something like curiosity. " Perhaps the most surprising shock of the whole business was in finding how set you were against returning to your own part of the country." " I told you it was because I knew you wouldn't like it," she repeated, a little defiantly. Plainly the MARRIED LOVERS 3 topic was one that distressed her. She moved a few inches farther and began to toy nervously with the draperies at the window. The next words came more as if she feared a protracted silence, than from any definite necessity of speaking. " I have given you often the only personal reasons I had; my relatives are dead, the friends of my childhood changed. It is sadder to come back than to remain away when such things have happened." " If you had been born in this State I could under- stand it better, but North Carolina, two hundred miles from here " " The people of the old South are like one big family. Everybody knows everybody." " But why shouldn't they? " he was beginning, logically enough, when her impatient exclamation checked him. For an instant longer he bent on her the puzzled gaze, noting her pallor, the quickness of her breathing, and the nervous fluttering of her hands. He was not satisfied; nothing she had since alleged for her sudden, passionate protest against taking up residence in the South had satisfied him, but now, because she was troubled, and because he dearly loved her, he deliberately drove the un- pleasant subject from his mind. Even before he reached out his arm to draw her close, she had felt the change and welcomed it with a deep drawn sigh of relief. He was a tall man, sparely built, with broad shoul- ders. Beside him she seemed a girl in slenderness and height. He had the peculiar air of " correctness," the quick decision of glance and of motion which characterize the well-born business man of the North. Outwardly, at least, the husband and wife possessed every requisite for comfort and happiness. Both were young and good to look at. Now, after three 4 RED HORSE HILL years of married life, they were more deeply in love than at the beginning. Also the house in which they stood, with its long rooms, rich furniture and elaborate stables, spoke loudly, perhaps a little too loudly, of wealth. And it was just this house, with its brief and tragic history, centering about the sudden death of its owner and builder a few weeks earlier in the year, that was bringing the first small shadow of mistrust between Dwight Alden and Maris, his wife. Mr. Geoffry Brattle, the late owner, had been senior partner of the New York firm of Brattle, King, and Alden. To go a little deeper into antecedents, his father, one Jonathan Brattle of Connecticut, and the millionaire proprietor of several cotton mills, had been among the first of those astute old pioneers to see the advantage of manufacturing the staple, with cheaper labor, in the locality where it grew. His Southern mill, called " The Regina," at first a private affair, had been, on its inheritance by the son Geoffry, incorporated into a stock company in which, of course, the firm of Brattle, King and Alden held the control- ling interest. The running of this mill and the constant increase of its percentages gradually became to Geoffry Brattle, as they had been to his father, the most engrossing factors in his material life. A certain weakness of the throat, deepening toward middle age, gave excellent reason for the changing of his residence from New York, to a milder climate. To this somewhat radical move his wife, inspired by her fears for his health, immediately assented. If the three Misses Brattle, each unmarried, and beyond the age of thirty, ventured to remonstrate, their expostulations bore no fruit. Once in the South, their interest in the building of a palatial new home MARRIED LOVERS 5 blotted out dissatisfaction. " The Regina," as Mr. Brattle had observed, was the oldest and the biggest mill in Sidon; and its President's home, if not the oldest, should at least be the most imposing in the community. The so-called " classic " style had been chosen for its dominant note. The mansion faced to the south, and its four splendid monoliths, chipped from a native quarry, spanned the width of the brick fagade. It stood on the apex of a low, trailing hill, and the unfinished garden was bounded, some thirty yards away, by an openwork iron fence and gateway. Outside the fence, after a dozen level yards at either hand, the red clay road went down to east and west, and the gray, cemented bands of narrow pavement followed the falling curves. With the ardor of a boy had Mr. Geoffry Brattle thrown himself into the pleasant task of furnishing and decorating his new home. The hardwood floors, selected in the North, the wall-papers and hangings imported direct from England, the placing of splendid colonial furniture, much of it already in the possession of the Brattle family, these details, and others, drew him away, for the first time, from active interest in his mill. Complaints were brought in to him only to be waved aside. " My superintendent, McGhee, will attend to it," was his invariable reply. So " Buck " McGhee, the hardest and most successful " mill boss " in the county, attended to things hi his own way, while Mr. Brattle talked for long hours together with his landscape architect, a promising young graduate from the Massachusetts " Tech," and forgot that, in his mill, human life as well as steel machinery, sometimes gets out of repair. And then (for such things are allowed to happen) scarcely had the last picture been hung in place, and 6 BED HORSE HELL the door-mats been laid symmetrically before the two great panels of cut glass, when Mr,, Brattle took a severe cold, probably from walking too long on his unfinished pathways, and, in three days, was dead. The news of this calamity brought, as might have been expected, a manifold consternation to the New York office. For months the earnings of the mill had been falling behind. Something must be done immediately. As a result of the hasty first meeting of shareholders, it was voted that one of their number must take charge at once. The second partner, King, had even more complicated affairs to settle in the North. There was no one to go but the junior partner, Alden. He opposed it vigorously, but his clear judgment had seen, from the first, the inevitability of the move. And as if to dispel his last objection the heart-broken Mrs. Brattle wrote urging upon him and his wife the possession of the splendid home, just completed. " Live in it as long as you will," she had said. " I never want to see the place again." So, less than three weeks ago, the Aldens had come, each under protest to a compelling fate, each filled with vague forebodings that lurked as a mist in the corners of the great house by day, and stirred at nightfall with a keener chill. " Yo' mornin's mail, Sir," said the voice of Archer, the young negro butler, just behind them. Maris gave a little start of alarm, then drew away from her husband, while Alden took the letters, shuffling them hastily, like a deck of cards. " You can go, Archer," he said, " and next time you had better knock before entering." " Yas, Sir," said Archer, meekly. " I did knock on. dem do'-curtains, Sir, but dey wouldn't knock." MARRIED LOVERS 7 He turned away, still grave, but as he went down the room Maris caught the gleam of white teeth reflected in a mirror at the farther end. Alden continued to frown over his letters. " All business ones, and all troublesome, of course," he had begun to murmur, when suddenly his face changed. "Hullo! Here's one from Wellesley. That means Ruth. Wonder what she wants now!" He opened it quickly, and, as he read, his lips formed themselves into a soundless whistle. " What is it? Does she say she is coming to the South? " cried Maris, instantly alert with an uneasy curiosity. Dwight smiled at her over the letter. " You witch. Now how did you guess that? It is the last thing I should have thought of Ruth's doing. But read for yourself." Maris took the missive. She knew that Dwight watched her as she read, and determined to let no word or look of annoyance escape her. In her heart she could have wished that her young sister-in-law, hitherto so chary of her visits, had waited until affairs were a little more settled in the new Southern home. Ruth, though still little more than a girl hi years, was instructor in Sociology at Wellesley. Her life and intellect, she let it be understood, were dedicated to the betterment of her fellow-beings. The steady growth of interest at the North in all such problems of social science, particularly in that of Child Labor, had taken form, at Wellesley, in the organization of a Committee of Inquiry and Inspection. Ruth had been, from the first, an ardent member of this association. When her brother was transferred so suddenly to the South and given charge of one of the oldest and most important mills in that part of 8 RED HORSE HILL the world, it naturally occurred to Ruth that here was a marvellous opportunity for studying condi- tions at first hand. In writing, she did not ask her brother's permission to come, or even hint that she desired his approval; she merely stated that she had applied for and received a two months' leave of ab- sence, and would probably arrive some time during the following week. Almost as an after-thought, she had added: " I trust that this will not inconvenience you and Maris, and that you can find room for me in your big house." " We can certainly find room, if that is what she wants," said Maris, handing the letter back. She tried to laugh naturally, but her voice, in spite of effort, sounded a little rueful. Dwight made no reply to this. After a moment more of silence he turned from the window, saying, " It's a bit cold here, even with the sash down. Let us go over to the fire." She slipped her arm in his and they made their way, thus, across the wide luxurious room until they reached the fire-place where, with a sigh of well-being, he sank into a cushioned seat and stretched his long legs out toward the blaze. Andirons of brass held back the hickory logs. The wood burned slowly, its charred sides marked off into luminous dice of coals. Now and again a small blue flame peered out, glanced hurriedly to right and left, reached up its hands to climb the imprisoning log, gained the glowing parapet and, like an elemental sprite, ran the full length of it, only to vanish, sprite-like, into the cavern of darkness beyond. Maris took her favorite seat on the arm of her husband's chair, leaning against him until her cheek pressed close against his forehead. So, for a long, contented interval they sat in the silence which is MARRIED LOVERS 9 the ultimate gift alike of friendship and of love. When next the wife spoke it was of their present home and their coming life in it. " Do you know, Dwight, this is the very first day that this huge, expensive castle has had to me the least tiny hint of a home. And I have worked hard for it all through the week, hunting up flowers, and less pretentious vases, making Archer find a place where we could get these hickory logs, and a dozen other things that you don't notice now they are here, but which I think you would miss if they were taken away." She looked about the pleasant room, but her husband looked only at her. " There is only one thing in the room I would miss very, very much," Jie told her. " Oh, all this long, tiresome week I have been look- ing forward to this day," she answered, almost with passion, as she returned his caresses. " All the week I have been whispering to myself, ' Sunday is coming. He won't be going to that horrid mill. He's to be mine, all day, all day ! ' A plaintive note came into her voice. " I didn't dream, then, that it would be our last Sunday together for so many weeks." Mr. Alden's sigh answered her own. " I can't help wishing that Ruth had waited a little longer. It would have been more considerate." " But your reason," began Maris with the demure- ness that always hid a spice of mischief, " is only be- cause you are not ready yet to turn her theories loose hi your mill." " Not altogether that," he said. " Her theories can well cut their teeth on the problems of other mills in the vicinity. There are plenty of others." " What is it then? " she whispered. " Why is it that you don't want her to come so soon? " Her cheek was on his again, her arms were wound tightly around his throat. Suddenly he drew her down and 10 RED HORSE HILL covered her face with kisses. " You know the reason well enough, you little rogue. Don't you ever get tired of hearing me say it? " " No, I have never heard it before, say it, say it quick! " " I'm such a fool, then, about this wife of mine, I don't want any one else butting in, not even a sister. I think I'd like to rent a desert island, just for that wife and me, if " He paused, smiling. " Yes yes," she urged him, hungrily. " If we could rely upon certain necessities, open- plumbing, for instance, and a cook." Maris sprang to her feet and faced him with flashing eyes. " That's not love! " she cried. " That's only a heightening of personal comfort into pleasure. Real love would scorn the plumbers, and the cooks, and all the machinery of life. For you, for you," she said in her low, passionate voice, " I'd leave this great house this instant, not knowing or caring whether I should ever eat, or sleep, or be warm again. Because you asked it, I'd follow you on foot; and when I couldn't walk, I'd crawl, and when I wasn't able to crawl, - ' here she stopped and gave an hysterical little laugh at the thought of the image about to be invoked, " when I couldn't crawl, I'd lie down flat and wriggle ! " 11 Fortunately for us both I shall not ask it," he said, a little drily. He never felt at ease before these infrequent outbursts of his wife, even when, as now, they stirred him. He reached out to draw her back, but evading his touch, she threw herself to her knees upon the hearth-rug, caught up the brass poker, and began to make vicious thrusts into the astonished fire. The hiss and crackle of the angry sparks ap- peased her. " There now! " she cried. " The fire has done the MARRIED LOVERS 11 sputtering for me. I'm better." She put the poker back deliberately, folded her hands in her lap, and sat, like a child, staring into the new rush of flame. He leaned over to see her the better; his face, un- guarded, showed his delight in her elfin ways. " What a kid you are yet, Maris," he laughed. She shrugged and moved a little farther. In the new attitude her profile was cut, like a cameo, against the sooty background of the wide fireplace. It was a delicate, irregular outline, gaining its greatest charm from the sensitiveness of nostril and the unusual tilt of the short upper lip which seemed always about to tremble into a smile, or to break into eager speech. Sometimes an unspeakable pathos touched it. But this look was far from it now. It was a spirited, defiant little profile thrown upward to his gaze. He watched her steadily, his eyes sparkling. He knew that, before many moments, she must turn to him, must meet his laughing eyes, showing the dark and ever changing beauty of her own. Yet, three years after marriage, he confessed to himself that he knew, less than a perplexed lover, just what fleeting impulse of fancy would make her turn. She was a creature of infinite variety, of subtle tendernesses, of unex- pected rebuffs. Deepest of all in her, lay, as he knew, the passion of her love for him. As for the superficial Maris, she was a wind-blown aspen tree of moods. Suddenly she wheeled to him with a motion not unlike that of the flames she had been watching, clasped his two knees with her hands, rested her chin upon them, set two great, sombre eyes upon his face, and challenged, " What would you do for me, D wight, to prove the greatness of your love for me, if ever a test should come? " " What sort of a test? " manlike, he inquired. She frowned and shook her head impatiently, her 12 RED HORSE HILL gaze falling from his. A look, almost of sullenness, clouded her face for an instant, and vanished into sadness. She sighed, and lifted one hand to push back a long strand of hair. Her next words were a complete surprise. " Ruth never liked me from the first," she said. Alden caught at the new and tangible subject. " Ruth never permits herself to like people until she has diagnosed their souls and ascertained their the- ories of nutrition," he answered lightly. " She never lets her sentiments get ahead of her even with the leash on. But she's a fine girl, for all that! " " She is, I feel she is, though she keeps me at such a distance. And she's too pretty to waste her- self on being a professor in a girls' school. If it was a bo)^s' school, now! She must be terribly intellectual. I can't even remember the name of the thing she's professor of," concluded Maris, mournfully, but whether the sorrow was for herself or Ruth, the lis- tener could only guess. " She's assistant instructor in Sociology," he told her, " and that is only another way of saying that they feel themselves privileged to poke into every- body's business but their own." It was Dwight's turn, now, to frown. " Ruth will have to understand, from the first, that I can't have her making trouble in the Regina Mill, not, at least, until I have mastered conditions there a little better for myself." " What sort of trouble could she make for you? " asked Maris, with a frightened catch in her voice. " Would it be about the children of the mills? " The peculiar tremor of the lip was very noticeable. Alden had seen it come, thus, more than once, when the subject of children had been touched upon. In answering, he kept his eyes averted, for the pain it gave him. MARRIED LOVERS 13 " Chiefly about the children, I presume," he said. " You know what a wave of mawkish sentiment is now sweeping over this land of ours. Of course there are abuses, but " " She must not try to stir up trouble there! " in- terrupted Maris, still more breathlessly. " Oh, I do hope it really isn't that she is coming for. It's too heartrending to talk about. And she'll do no good. All the ladies here in Sidon tell me it's no earthly use to try. Schools have been started, night schools, play- grounds, all those things you hear about, and the children won't go to them. They actually prefer working in the mills. They are proud of earning the money to help their parents. And with children and parents both against you, how can anything be accomplished? Nobody has a right to come between a mother and her child. I shall do my best to persuade Ruth against it." Dwight Alden did not answer. He recognized the parrot-like casuistry of the words, and knew, well enough, from what social class the speaker had de- rived them. Of course the wives and daughters of mill-owners wished no interference with the source of all their luxuries. Child labor was cheap, and mill percentages correspondingly large. But this was no time to enlighten Maris. She had risen to her feet and gone again to a window, where she stood, look- ing out. The squawk of a motor car came from the street. In the tense stillness of the room the breaking of a burnt-out hickoiy log, and the snapping of sparks made an absurd commo- tion. Then, from without, a new and pleasant sound was heard. " Church bells! " cried Alden, springing up. " By George, I had forgotten that I met the old minister yesterday, and promised him that both of us should 14 RED HORSE HILL be in the Brattle pew to-day. You don't mind much, do you? " " Mind! Why, I think it is perfectly lovely for us to go to church. We never used to in New York. You were a darling to have promised! " She came running back to him, her changeable face bright with anticipation. " Let me see, what had I better wear? " She frowned, put up her hand to her cheek, and was in an instant, deep in meditation. " That new red gown from Paris might seem a little startling in the South," she murmured, chiefly to herself. " I reckon, this first Sunday I'd better be plain and dark." Now she lifted eyes to her husband. " Don't you think I'd better be plain and dark, Dwight? " Her voice thrilled with appeal. One would have thought that upon his answer depended her fate. Alden stooped to kiss her. " You couldn't be plain and dark if you tried. Whatever you put on, you'll be the prettiest and best-dressed woman in church." She flushed with pleasure at his words. " Look out or you will make me so vain that there won't be any living with me," she warned him. Then she stood on tiptoe to fling vehement arms about his neck. " Oh, but I do love you to think me pretty, and I love nice clothes, and you give me such beautiful ones! You are too good to me! " Now there came a liquid quiver to her words as if she were in the mystery of a thrush's note " You give me everything, everything that I have been hungry for all my life." He held her closely. " You give me even more, my dear one," he said. A little later, " There, the first bell is ringing. We mustn't be late. It might vex the Reverend Mr. Singleterry." He felt the form of Maris stiffen in his arms. She drew back from him, then clutched at his coat again MARRIED LOVERS 15 as if to steady a sudden trembling. " The Reverend, who what name did you say, Dwight? " " Singleterry. An unusual one, isn't it, but some- how it precisely suits the old chap who bears it. He looks like an English dean hi a story-book. Why do you stare so, Maris, have you ever? Why, Maris! how pale you are growing! " " No, no! " she cried sharply, and wrenched her- self apart that she might turn her face. " Don't look at me so hard. It is nothing, just one of the funny pains I sometimes have! " She tried to smile up at him as she demonstrated the spot by pressing both hands over her heart. " I am all right now. Let me go. As you said, we mustn't be late." She turned and almost ran from the room, pausing at the doorway for a merry farewell wave of the hand, and a smile meant to be reassuring. Alden stared after her with eyes hi which perplexity slowly darkened to mistrust. Why had the name of Singleterry changed her, at a stroke, into an image of pallid terror? Why, when it was so evident, had she attempted to deny previous knowledge of the name? Perhaps she would have said it was only her pallor that she denied. Dwight's nature was one that abhorred evasions, and this was not the first time that Maris' lips had contradicted all that his judg- ment and her own expressive face had proclaimed. The vague sense of impending trouble, drifting al- ways in ghostly strata about the big rooms of the Brattle house, rose now to his heart. With a swift gesture that was vehement without being extravagant, and a muttered anathema against his own womanish fears, he turned back to the fire, reseated himself, took up a recent New York paper as yet unopened, and soon lost himself in more tangible conjectures of the stock-market. CHAPTER TWO A FORENOON CALL SIDON'S week of toil came in with the hoarse scream- ing of mill whistles. Before the first gray paling of the dawn these vocal harpies, escaping from tall chimneys, flew wide and tore the fabric of the night to echoes. The Regina, mindful of her leadership, possessed, still, the tallest smoke stack, and the loudest shriek of steam. In the Regina's village, held like an ar- rested avalanche of unpainted huts upon the eastern slope of Red Horse Hill, the first blast of sound brought an answering activity. Out of the darkness flickered feeble dots of candle-flame, then the red glow of quickly lighted fires, and in a few moments came the greasy, choking smell of frying bacon. By the call of the second whistle, thirty minutes later, the entire population, lacking only a handful of infants and fever-stricken adults, was ready to pour itself, like lava, down the reddening slopes into the valley where the great mill, banded in strata of chill morning mist, glared with its countless windows, uttering grunts of steam, and menacing growls of machinery, like some huge beast awakening. When, finally, the sun had cleared himself a peep- hole in the dawn, he was affronted by black clouds of smoke, soot-laden, and acrid with the gases of soft coal. On the slope of the hill already the village lay bare and untenanted as a forgotten heap of shells. A FORENOON CALL 17 Beyond the forest-mane to the west, aristocratic Sidon found the day more slowly. The sun was in the spring-tinted forest branches when, in the sleepy town, trim house boys or young negro maids came on to broad verandahs to shake the rugs out and to sweep. Windows in dining-rooms and kitchens went up for airing, and wood-smoke rolled deco- rously from ornamented chimney tops. Milk-wagons, vegetable and butcher-carts began their rounds, and newsboys hurled at the closed front doors their twisted wares. By nine o'clock breakfasts had been eaten, and the men of the family had taken their leave for business offices in " the city," or out to the more distant mills. By ten o'clock residential Sidon to the west, and industrial Sidon to the east of Red Horse Hill, had each settled to its week-day stride. Even in a new and mixed community the forenoon of a busy Monday is an unusual hour for a call. The Reverend Mark Singleterry was not ignorant of this fact; to be more definite, he had arranged his visit because of it. He wished to see his new parishioner, Mrs. Dwight Alden of New York, alone, and, as he made his way slowly up the hill, the troubled look on his clean, scholarly old face indicated that his mission was not one accompanied by joyous antici- pation. His rectory and its contiguous church, " St. John's," a new, expensive structure of the sort called, vaguely, " Gothic," were on the fashionable avenue where, farther to the west, stood the Brattle mansion. Between the two locations, along the main street, ran narrow pavements of new cement; but there were lateral thoroughfares of viscid mud which, in spite of carefully chosen footing and more than one stork like leap, had turned the minister's neat black boots to a rusty tan. 18 RED HORSE HILL The sun shone warm this March morning. The old man felt a moisture at the band of his clerical hat, and took it off, baring his white head to whatever stray breeze might deign to come. He gave a sigh, threw his chin up with a little jerk, and passed his long fingers slowly through the shining silver strands upon his brow. The air felt good to him. The re- leased pressure from the close hat band was a distinct relief. This was almost as good as being in a garden. Unconsciously his pace diminished. One long, narrow foot followed the other up the cemented slope, and each step left the earth with more re- luctance. With that backward gesture of the head, Dr. Singleterry had noted, for the first time, the intense color of the morning sky. " Like a blue gentian of the gods," the old man thought, " and those fleecy white clouds about the horizon are its fringes." He smiled, as he always did at the sight or at the thought of flowers, and, with this leverage from a troubled present, had soon passed into reverie. It was no longer the hard, new pavements of a modern city that he trod, but the old sidewalks of a village among North Carolina hills, the little town of Orbury. The only curbings there were the inter- twisted roots of the oaks that lined its one long street, and the clay banks of ditches where ferns and ageratum and the blue wild violets throve un- disturbed. Stately old houses set back in the midst of square, colonial gardens, gleamed to the right and to the left of him. Three houses farther on would be an ivy covered church, a church whose very sil- houette against the sky was eloquent of quiet wor- ship, and here, for nearly two-score years he had ministered, knowing his flock and loving it as only a lonely poet soul can love. A deeper sigh rose to the still air; and the old man A FORENOON CALL 19 wondered, for the thousandth time, how he had ever consented to leave Orbury, or had believed him- self capable of battling with the new problems of the outer world. Perhaps, after all, the personal element had had more to do with it than he was then willing to admit. Certainly the death of his best friend, Daniel Brue, following so closely upon the tragic and unsuccessful quest of his only child, had changed, for him, the face of nature. In a wider sphere of activity he had hoped to drown his lonely grief, as well as to accomplish something of more definite good. In neither hope had he been fortunate. This could not be denied, and here in Sidon things were growing steadily worse for him. As if to climax and to vivify his vague forebodings he had seen yesterday, among his congregation, as one sees through the darkness some phantom of the night, the ashen face and burn- ing eyes of Daniel's child, of Maris Brue. The blue above him had begun to pale. Dr. Single- terry shook his head slowly, and then, with the air of one who dons a hair cloth shirt, replaced the wide felt hat. Now he looked about him. The Brattle house, its square pretence at once marred and em- phasized by the conspicuous porte cochere, stood only a hundred yards away. No need for haste. He would reach it soon enough. Although he had thought of little else all night, he must attempt to realize once again, and this time very clearly, that the mistress of the great mansion, now known as Mrs. Alden, was Maris Brue. If he could only be sure, before he entered, that she had clear right to use her present name; that she had not again, as once before, grasped at forbidden fruit. " Ah, Maris, my little Maris," he almost groaned, " the old Eve was always very strong in you." Though his thought and his words condemned, 20 RED HORSE HILL his kind old eyes had softened. Maris had, from her infancy, been strangely dear to him, and her deliberate severance, after her father's death, of all friendly ties in Orbury, had been one of the keenest sorrows the old minister had ever known. What an untamable fire-fly of a child she had always been! And yet how generous, how quickly touched to goodness! The old man smiled. He could see her now as clearly as he saw that sallow mill-child passing. Often at the click of her father's gate in Orbury she had run down the long box set path to meet him, her little arms upraised, her eyes shining like the glowworms that, by night, couched among the hedge roots. Or, if there were not time to enter, and he merely slackened pace that he might peer over the low brick wall for her, she would be always somewhere in the tangled garden where she alone, since her young mother's death, had been allowed to walk. It was a strange and lonely life, perhaps, for a child, just herself, the widowed father, and old Mammy Chloe, with daily visits from Dr. Single- terry. Some of the neighbors, good women who had known Maris' mother and grandmother, a few of them even her great-grandmother who was an Imboden, protested in the child's behalf, and forced Daniel Brue to send her, part of the time, at least, to school. But to the place of learning Maris went or not, just as she willed; read, as she pleased in her father's old-fashioned, classic library; and spent most of her time in the overgrown coverts of the garden, where she had established a fairy kingdom, and where she reigned, a dainty tyrant, Empress of a realm of fantasies. It became a common saying in the village that A FORENOON CALL 21 Daniel Brue would live to regret the lawless up- bringing of his child. When, at an earlier date than the old dames had reckoned, this prophecy was ful- filled, it is but justice to say that there was no gloat- ing triumph, only a passionate sympathy both with the father, and with the headstrong girl who had brought upon herself the tragedy. The minister closed his eyes and shivered a little at the recollection. For the last few moments he had been walking briskly, driven by his inward agitation. He paused and stared about him as before, and now a look as of boyish embarrassment spread over his face, and a thin flush mounted. He had walked clear past the Brattle gate. The trivial incident troubled him not a little. It was bad luck to pass a gate and retrace one's steps to it. He glanced wistfully ahead. The thought flashed to his mind that he would keep directly on along the avenue, turn, at the next crossing, to the right, and, making his way around the block come out at a street now some yards behind him, to the east, so that he could again approach the Brattle house from an orthodox direction. But, in an instant, the impulse was dismissed. It was too childish. Be- sides Maris might have been watching and would surely laugh at him. It was one of Dr. Singleterry's deep seated weaknesses, the horror of being laughed at. With a heart several ounces heavier than it had been a moment earlier, he turned about, came to the low iron gate, opened it with a vigorous " click," and walked swiftly up the cemented walk. Archer answered to his ring. " Yassir. M'is Alden's in. She's settin' in the drawin'-room. This way, Sir." At the threshold Dr. Singleterry paused, and looked down ruefully at his muddy boots. He longed to 22 RED HORSE HILL go back and scrape them, but Archer stood by in an attitude of rigid attention, and the visitor forbore. " Shall I take your hat, Sir? " " No," said the minister, and grasped the just mentioned article as if it were a talisman. " I prefer to retain it." Archer looked politely surprised, and turned away. Dr. Singleterry took a few hesitating steps into the room. Blinded by the clear sunlight through which he had come he saw now, as in a blur, the in- distinct grouping of furniture, the gleam of polished floors, and the iridescent light that filtered in through curtains of many-colored tissue. A low, silken rush of women's garments told him that from some in- distinguishable nook his hostess had risen and was hurrying toward him. With both hands he grasped tightly the rim of his hat, holding it upright before his single row of clerical coat buttons. He was not sure he wished to take the hands this rustling lady would hold out to him. She must have understood the gesture, for she paused suddenly, and then said in a conventional voice, " Dr. Singleterry, is it not? " " Yes." " Let us come this way, nearer the fire," said Maris, preceding him down the long room. From the dim beauty of the space his eye secured, in passing, but a single clear detail, a glass bowl of daffodils on a table which, as in a stream, reflected their image in the rich mahogany. The friendly fire beckoned as if in welcome. Mrs. Alden motioned her visitor to a chair, the one, where, on the previous morning, Dwight Alden had lounged at ease. But the old man, with an imperceptible shake of the head, refused it, selecting for himself an up- right chair, on the front edge of which he sat, his A FORENOON CALL 23 back bone rigid, his hat still held vertically against his chest. Maris threw herself into an arm chair opposite, and plunged recklessly into the perilous theme, " You recognized me yesterday! " " Yes, on the instant." " I had hoped, that is," she corrected, " I had believed myself greatly changed." The other looked gravely upon her. " Yours is a face too changeable ever really to change," he said, and the epigram was, in a certain sense, a help to him. " Besides, my memory for faces is as good as my memory for names is bad." She did not answer this, but sat still, gazing into the fire. Her motionless attitude had as little of repose in it as would an arrested flame. Dr. Singleterry waited nervously. He cleared his throat slightly, and then coughed, wondering what next to say. Being a man he had few arts for con- cealing his uneasiness. At length the tension grew too fine. Something must be done. " I fear, Maris, that you underestimated the love and sympathy of your friends at Orbury," he said. " The long waiting for tidings was hard for some of us." " I knew it was," answered Maris, with a hint of sullenness. " Sometimes I had to lie awake at night worrying over it. I could just hear the kind of things you all were saying, especially old Mrs. Weldon;" here her face hardened. " But, most of the time, I didn't care. I was too miserable to care, either for myself or others. You heard, at least, that I had failed? " He nodded sadly. " Yes, at the last news, you had still been unable to trace that evil-doer, Martin, and " 24 RED HORSE HILL She broke in with a gesture showing that she could not bear the forthcoming words. " Yes, I failed. He he and his companions seemed to have van- ished from the face of the earth. There was some rumor of a train-wreck, and his name was published among the injured, but I felt at the time, and my lawyers felt, that he had caused this to be printed merely to trick me. It was not until three years later that he died." Dr. Singleterry gave an eager start. His whole aspect changed. His eyes brightened. " Then he is dead! You were certain of his death before your second marriage! " Maris drew herself upright, and, for an instant, stared incredulously. " You don't mean to say that you have been thinking anything else," she challenged. Then her lips shook. " So that was what your face was saying to me from the pulpit, yesterday." Her eyes began to blaze. The old man shrank back, in consternation. Suddenly Maris, too, began to cower. She crouched down in her cushioned seat, and put both hands up before her face. " Oh, oh," he heard her moan. " It is things like this they think of me at home? " " My dear girl," cried the minister, now all con- trition. " Do not mistake my meaning. At the worst I thought perhaps you might have taken advantage of the laws of man which would quickly have given you release from such a miscreant. But you know that I hold little by such laws, and I would not like to think of my little Maris He broke off, and leaned to pat her shoulder gently. " Don't cry, Maris. I am deeply troubled that I have hurt you, but this doubt has been tormenting me ever since I saw you yesterday, by the side of the strong, noble looking man who is now your husband. A FORENOON CALL 25 I am thankful that you have found happiness, my child." Maris took down her hands and tried to smile at him. " After all, it is my own fault. I should have let my friends in Orbury know when the news of Martin's death first reached me, but much was happening in my life, just then. I should have sent them notice, too, of my marriage to Mr. Alden. But you were away from Orbury, and I did not know your address. With you and my father both gone - Her voice trembled. " Yes, yes, my dear," he said sympathetically, " I can realize now how it all seemed to you. Don't tell me more if it troubles you." " I want to speak, now I have begun," said Maris. " It softens something in me, though I feel an un- reality, as if we were both speaking of a dead woman. It was so long, so long ago ! The degradation, the hideous shame of what I endured in Orbury! Can you wonder that I shrank from going back? " " But the fault was not with you, poor child." " I had brought it on myself, after advice from all who loved me. It broke my father's heart when I married Martin. I was infatuated, I suppose. It seemed to me a generous thing to do, to lift him to our higher level, to bring out all that I thought fine and good in him! You know how he repaid that trust!" For an instant she grew so white that the minister thought she must swoon. " There now, there now," he soothed. " Let us say no more of it." " I cannot stop now," she said, between clenched teeth. " I must go on. You all knew that my mar- ried life with him was as wretched as you had fore- seen. But I was bearing it for the baby's sake. I kept my agony to myself so that I do not think 26 RED HORSE HILL even my father suspected all that Martin put upon me. I would have continued to endure, but my very silence seemed to make Felicia's father hate me. No one, no one on earth knows what I suffered. I wonder now that I could have hidden it. And when he saw he could vent his hate for me no other way, - he left me, for a servant, and took my child ! " She was quivering now from head to foot. The old man found no words, only looked at her with loving, suffering eyes. . " Do you wonder," she burst out again, with in- tense bitterness, " that I was ashamed to show my face again in Orbury? " " No shame can degrade so long as it is nobly borne," said the old man. " Let us think no more of the sinner, Martin. God has removed him from your path. Tell me, instead, of what befell you after you had given up your efforts in the West." His quiet tones soothed and steadied her. In an- swer to his request, she folded her hands in her lap as one who tells an impersonal narrative, and said, evenly: " I stayed on in Kansas City where the lawyers are until I had spent everything, even the little patri- mony that you forwarded to me after my father's death. The lawyers needed it for detectives, and personal expenses, and a lot of other things that I forget." " I have heard that lawyers are insatiable," said the old man, naively. " When the money was gone," she continued, in the same matter-of-fact tone, " of course I had to think how I could earn more." " You should have known that you had, always, a home with me," said the minister. " I did know that, dear Dr. Singleterry," said A FORENOON CALL 27 Maris, and put her hand out to clasp, for an instant, one of his. " But there was no peace like that for me. I had to go to work out there in the big world, and gain what I could so that the lawyers could con- tinue searching. As you may know, I had no rest by night or day. As for that," she added, her voice sinking, and her face changing to a deep sadness, " though my present marriage has brought me hap- piness, I have not yet gained peace." " And how did a will-o'-the-wisp like you earn money in the great world? " She turned a sad little fleeting smile to him. " Oh, I know I was naughty about my schooling, but I could always learn when I wanted to. I took up stenography, and did well at it. For a little while I was in the office of my lawyers at Kansas City. Then one was rather rather familiar, and I left them. I think the junior partner never quite forgave me for the rebuff. And then, by a great piece of good fortune, too long to explain now, I finally got a position in New York, in the office of a well-known firm, Brattle, King and Alden." " Alden," repeated the old man thoughtfully, and for some reason Maris went suddenly crimson. " I had been ill once in Kansas City," she hurried on. " I don't know whether you ever heard. It was some form of nervous trouble with a new name. About three years ago, in New York, I broke down in the same way. They thought I could not get well. The firm was most kind to me, insisted upon sending me to an expensive hospital, and all that. While in the hospital," she paused unexpectedly, and the sudden silence had the effect of a gasp, " during my convalescence, Mr. Alden asked me to be his wife. We were married in the hospital chapel." She leaned back, glad that her narrative was done. 28 RED HORSE HILL All at once she had become weary, almost faint, and a breath of the old sickness stole to her through the years. Dr. Singleterry had remained upright, his face thoughtful. " How long before your second marriage had you known of James Martin's death? " Again the red tide swept over Maris' cheeks and throat. " Not very long, I must admit. In fact, it was that news, brought me at the very height of my illness, that made it possible for me to get well." Dr. Singleterry made a vague sound in his throat. A small chill, as of fear, ran through Maris. What did he mean by that grave face? And what was he to ask her next? " Was it merely a rumor of Martin's death, Maris, or did you receive clear proofs? " " Why, written proofs, of course. I would not have risked anything without them. I had written to my lawyers just on the eve of my break-down, saying that I could not send any more money, per- haps for months, and begging them to trust me for awhile, not to give up the search." The old man was silent for a few moments. Then he said, slowly, " I think it would have been better had you given up that firm of lawyers, particularly after what you term the rebuff to one of them." " My instinct was that way, too," answered Maris. " But I reasoned it out like this. They had been hi touch with the wretched affair from the very first, and were at that time on a new and promising clue. If I took the case from them they would be angry, and almost certainly refuse to tell another lawyer what had been done. I had committed myself to them, as the saying is." " Yes, that is a good argument," admitted the other. A FORENOON CALL 29 " Besides," Maris went on, her voice sinking, " I did not want to tell any more people than necessary." Her look of humiliation smote her companion. " Well, well! " he cried, with an attempt at cheer- fulness, " it has turned out well enough, it seems. They have accomplished the search, and sent you proofs. Was your husband, Mr. Alden, quite satisfied with the proofs? " This question Maris did not seem to hear. Her face was growing more distressed. She had begun to twist and to untwist the fingers of both hands, one into the other. Now she sat forward on the very edge of her chair as if, in another instant, she must spring to her feet. When she spoke her voice thrilled with a deeper note. " You seem to forget," she breathed, " that neither Martin's life or his death was what most concerned me. He was not my quest. It was Felicia, my little girl, Felicia." The name broke from her in a stifled sob. She sprang up, and began to pace to and fro, always silently wringing her slender hands. The old man shivered under the intensity of her words. " And have your lawyers never found a clue of her, or of the nurse-girl, Jane? " he managed to ask. She paused in her walk to answer. " Nothing of Jane, we scarcely thought of her. But Felicia, " here she caught herself into silence, and bit her lip hard that she might go on speaking, " In that Potter's Field where the certificates tell me the body of James Martin lies, there is, quite near him, another grave, a little, little grave " Dr. Singleterry let his head fall forward to his hand. He could not bear the look in Maris' upturned face. " Yes, yes," he choked out, at last. " The lawyers want me to believe that she lies 30 RED HORSE HILL there. No actual record of the little grave is to be found, but they think it probable " Suddenly she stopped, wheeled about, and came up to him, her small alert figure shaking from head to foot, her fists clenched, her eyes burning with the passion of her baffled motherhood. " It is the thought of her, my baby, my little baby, that is never absent from me. I cannot believe that she is dead. I know she is not! For I have crept out in the darkness and lain down on the friendly earth, close close, with my cheek against it; and if that little form, that fibre of my living flesh and soul, were hidden under the soil, some- thing would let me know it, something subtler and more wonderful than all the fluids which science now is finding. I have called to my baby under earth's grassy covering, and she does not answer. She is alive, somewhere, somewhere, wandering lost, perhaps. Oh, I am married to a good man who loves me, I have all that I need and more, and more, but I can never see a child, a rich child or a poor one, but I must ask myself, ' Is she, my baby, happy and cared for, like this child; or is she wretched and unhappy, perhaps ill-used? ' If she is still with that woman who helped to steal her, there is no depth so low that she may not be hidden there. I fear the sight of children ! I tremble at the thought of them. Sometimes I think I cannot bear it any longer. One should not bear such horror and stay alive!" Her words were coming in disjointed fragments, each phrase a cry of agony. The old man was voiceless. He too was shaking with her passion. There was a long silence broken only by her strug- gles for composure. After a while she could speak more naturally. A FORENOON CALL 31 " Do you know," she said, " that sometimes it seems to me the chief horror, the most hideous mockery of the whole situation, that I should have named my child 'Felicia!' How did I dare? James Martin was her father. I had begun to know that the future held nothing but misery for us both." " Let us try to think of the blessings that still are yours, my child," said the old man, zealous to com- fort her. " You have a noble husband." " Yes," she broke in almost rudely, " I have that priceless blessing, I do not undervalue it. Some- times the woman part of me is happy, deliriously happy! I love my husband with an almost desperate love, as we cling to a treasure that may be taken from us. But the indivisible part of me, the mother part! there are the vultures tearing always on a self-renewing sore!" The old man roused himself. " Your sorrow is deep, I know," he said. " But you could bear it in a higher way. You speak like a tortured pagan, rather than a child of God." He spoke perhaps more sternly than he knew, holding himself stiffly in his stiff backed chair. The pallor of his face showed the strain through which he had been passing. Maris stared, not comprehending on the instant; then her quick sympathy rushed to his defence. She hurried up to him, kneeling by his side. " Forgive me, dear Dr. Singleterry. I will not rave like that any more. But it is the first time that I have been able to speak freely for seven years. Just think of that, seven long years. It has done me good, al- though I suffered as I told it. Now you must help me put it behind me for another seven years, per- haps for ever. I want you to talk to me of Orbury, 32 RED HORSE HILL to tell me all that you have done since I saw you last." She rose and drew her arm-chair forward, and sat down quietly. She had the outward appearance of completely restored serenity. The visitor made no pretence of hiding his relief. After a long life of service, he had begun to find, at times, a sudden drain of sympathy strangely exhaust- ing. He put his hand, now, to his heart, but his face was clearing, and when he began to speak, Maris closed her eyes that she might feel herself, again, a child in Orbmy., CHAPTER THREE THE DEVIL'S QUADRILLE IT is strange how quickly a room takes on the mood of its human occupants. The very fire on Maris' hearth which, for the last half hour had crackled, choked and sent up small acrid gusts of sooty flame, now drew itself together into a compact mass of cheerful embers. Instead of the flickering light and shade, to intensify the vary- ing expressions of suffering and excitement on both faces, a steady crimson glow threw upon them serenity and a sort of fictitious youthfulness. The first words came from Maris and were spoken dreamily. " I can just see yonder, over the church- yard wall, the pointed red gables of your rectory." She sighed, half in regret, half hi the luxury of a pleasant recollection, and the old man unconsciously repeated the reflective sound. " Those were our golden days, my child. And do you," he went on, " by any chance remember that long row of French artichokes that used to grow against my side of the wall? " " Indeed I do, as if I walked along them now. The leaves were of silver tapestry." He laughed a low laugh of pleasure. " And when the sun's meridian heat wilted their splendor, I used to think of them as silver lace upon an altar-cloth. And then the row of savory herbs, my thyme and 34 RED HORSE HILL lavender, with coriander and the old fashioned bitter- sweet. I've never yet seen gilly-flowers that would have dared measure their height with mine. The mignonette, too, became quite famous in the village, so that when one walked along the streets bearing a spray of special beauty the passer by would think, if indeed he did not speak openly the thought, ' Some one has been to Dr. Singleterry's garden.' ' He sat brooding, the trouble all vanished from his face. Upon it shone the soft radiance of tender remi- niscence. Maris leaned forward in her chair to watch him. Affection was in her eyes, and yet a little wonder, too. Was this what it meant to be old, that present stress could slip from the shoulders like a velvet pall, and one sit dreaming in the midst of it, dreaming of a vanished garden? He came back with a little start. " The rectory they have given me here in Sidon is a much more expensive building, an abomination of pretence ! But not a garden, front or back. No spot to dig or to think in but a wee mouldy patch of earth the size of this hearth rug, under my study window. But already I have planted pinks in it and they are grow- ing. You remember that I had pinks under my study windows at Orbury, too? " Maris smiled and nodded. He went on eagerly. " No such inspiration for a sermon, Maris, as that which swings in the censer of a small clove pink. I can almost smell them now! " " I do smell them," asserted Maris recklessly, and sniffed the air. " Oh, what years and years it has been since I have seen them growing, tumbling always over the brick edges of the bed, and trying to run away." " Well, well," chuckled the old man in delight, " before long you shall see a whole procession, carry- THE DEVIL'S QUADRILLE 35 ing the banners of their heavenly faith. My buds are swelling fast." " I am going to have some flowers after a while in this bare garden," said Maris, glancing out toward the unfinished space. " Until now I have been busy every minute trying to make the enormous, cold house feel like a home to live in." The minister looked at her with his gentle smile. " I know well the difficulty of the task. It has been mine for nearly a year." As he spoke, the old troubled look came back to him. " Alas, my dear, if it was a mistake for me to give up Orbury, it was nothing less than a calamity when I allowed myself to be per- suaded to accept the call to Sidon. All that I had hoped to accomplish here was made impossible for me even before I had arrived." " Why, what was it that you had hoped to do in Sidon? " she asked quickly. He was surprised by the new alertness of her tone, and faced about more directly as he answered, " Why, mission work among the mill people, of course. There is crying need of it." Her look of shrinking almost trenched upon aver- sion. " Oh, you wanted to take up that question," she breathed. " And you have not done so, not at all?" " I have not," said the old man somewhat curtly. " On arrival it was intimated to me, to be more accurate, it was laid before me as an ultimatum, that I was not to touch, in my sermons, upon prob- lems of capital and labor, nor concern myself, too deeply, with the conditions of mill villages. I re- gret to say that your husband's predecessor, Mr. Brattle, was one who expressed his views most strongly." Was it imagination, or had the tension of Maris' 36 RED HORSE HILL face relaxed, and did she strive to hide a look of deep relief? Always intuitive, she felt the dawning of this doubt in him, and, speaking quickly, said, " Perhaps they believed that you couldn't understand about such things all at once. That is the way my husband thinks of it. He says that no one ought to give opin- ions without having lived here for a long time, and having had a chance to see both sides of the case." " I am surprised at such words from you, Maris," said Dr. Singleterry. " There are no ' sides ' as you call it to want, and misery and sin. I have refrained, heretofore, from preaching on forbidden topics, just for the reasons that your husband urges; as for the other embargo, no smooth, smiling mill-owner, no, and no church-full of mill-owners, can keep me from visiting God's poor! I go among the villagers as I choose," his voice now rang with energy and in- dignation. " A few of them make an attempt at cleanliness and decency, but with others, and the Regina village among these latter, if ever there was a hideous ulcer sore in the side of humanity, it is just such a spot as that! I know what I am talking of " Maris interrupted by a low cry, and flung an im- ploring hand out toward him. " Don't tell me. I cannot bear it. You will begin to speak next of the little children. That is what I cannot endure ! Noth- ing can help them - It was the minister's time to interrupt. " Noth- ing can be done to help so long as personal cow- ardice keeps sympathy away from them, and can- not bear to hear even the true story of their wrongs! " " It is not with me as with other women," moaned Maris. " You know it is not. In every wretched THE DEVIL'S QUADRILLE 37 mill-child I see Felicia, the suffering of those chil- dren is her suffering." " For her sake you should spend your life trying to lighten theirs." Maris kept for an instant longer her cowering attitude; then she sat upright, a challenge on her lips, " You call me cowardly. I have a reason, a terrible reason for my cowardice. You have no reason, and yet you have admitted that you do not preach against their wrongs." The old man's eyes took fire. " I said," he cor- rected, " that heretofore I have been dumb, not from a servile fear of the wealthy evil doers of my con- gregation, but that I might be certain of my facts. Do you dream I have been inactive all these months? No, I have studied, investigated, thought, and prayed. The time is near for me to speak. Keep silence! I?" His eyes had darkened and then filled, again, with light. He raised his hand to push back, im- patiently, the white locks on his forehead. The wide felt hat, for once forgotten, lay on the floor. His face was stern, yet transfigured and illuminated with an inner glory. So, Maris thought, might have looked the angel at the gate of Paradise. " Some day I shall speak, and when I do, my congregation will listen." Suddenly he stood up, made a wide, dra- matic gesture, and repeated, " And when I do, my congregation, it will listen! " Maris felt faint. A chill, prophetic wind blew on her lids. It was not her place to argue or oppose. She, too, got to her feet, grasping the edge of the mantel for support. The old man leaned toward her, his stern look melting into a smile. " Don't be so frightened, child. It is all to come about just as God wills; even, in his 38 RED HORSE HILL good time, to tidings of the small, lost lamb, Felicia. And while I think of it, there is just one more point I wish to ask, concerning her. May I speak it? " Maris could only bow in assent. The old man drew her fingers from the mantel shelf, and held them closely as he questioned, " Does your good husband, Mr. Alden, feel with you, that the little one still lives? " The small hand within his own slowly turned to ice. The white, frozen look grew on her face and spread even to her staring eyes. She did not try to speak. " Maris ! " he cried in fear. " Don't look so strangely. What have I done? Was it wrong to ask you? " " No, not wrong," her stiffened lips got out. " What is it, then? " " My husband does not know of Felicia." It was a soulless automaton that spoke the words. A sort of slow horror grew in the eyes that watched her. " Your former marriage, what does he know of that? " " Nothing." " You worked in his office and, later, married him under your maiden name of Maris Brue? " " Yes, Maris Brue." The minister's fine face grew sharp. An expression of contempt dawned on his lips as he said, coldly, " I begin to understand why you wished no intercourse with Orbury." Then, as she did not answer, he changed suddenly, flung her small hand away from him, and cried aloud, in bitterness, " O Maris, Maris, will you forever wreck the best in you, - poor blind, unthinking, reckless child! Can you not see that for the sake of prudence, if for no higher THE DEVIL'S QUADRILLE 39 reason, you should have told Mr. Alden everything, everything! " '' I can see, at least, how it appears to you," the automaton assured him. " But of course you can have no idea of the steps that led up to it; or the peculiar situation I was in just at the moment. When I first went to New York I had decided not to use James Martin's name. I still think it was best. As to Mr. Alden's love, " Here her voice became, again, that of a suffering human creature, so that she had to pause and steady it. " It came upon me as a great, a wonderful surprise." The listener's face did not relax its sternness. " You mean me to believe, knowing you as well as I do, that you were unconscious of this man's interest until he spoke? " Maris flushed under the taunt. " Not exactly that. I had been conscious of his kindly interest, but until he spoke I had not believed that he would ask me to be his wife." The minister pondered these words thoughtfully; upon which Maris, as if to change the course of his reflections, went on more lightly. " There was another man at the time, too; a young doctor, house-physician at the hospital where I was ill. I knew from the first moment that he had begun to care for me; and when the news of Martin's death came, I was so weary with the struggle of it all, so sick in mind and body, and so relieved that I was free, I had almost decided to marry the boy doctor when he should ask me. You see," she supplemented, after a moment of uncomfortable silence, " all my shallow- ness is spread out before you." " Then, in the hospital, Mr. Alden addressed you? " Maris' lips twitched at the old-fashioned phrase. She drooped her lids to hide the shining of her eyes, 40 RED HORSE HILL and answered, " Yes, and, just at such a time, it was as if the Sun god stooped to pick up a trampled weed. I had admired him more than any man I had ever met. Because I had thought Martin still alive, I had tried to fight back more personal thoughts. But when he said he loved me," here she turned away, drawing a long, tremulous breath, " I knew well how it had been with me all along. The future opened before me like a new paradise. I could not, oh, I could not risk losing so very much by speaking of a past in which I had, after all, done no wrong." The minister shook his head. " You did actual and definite wrong at that moment by deceiving a man who loved and trusted you. A falsehood of this kind bears a winged seed. Your day of reckoning must come, Maris." Her face, so tenderly bright an instant earlier, clouded now with . a sullen frown. " I suppose it will," she said. " But until it does come I shall go on as I am going." He sighed, baffled by her dull obstinacy. " You say that you love your husband, and he cares ten- derly for you? " " What of it? " asked the woman. " Is his love, then, not strong enough to bear the test of your disclosures? " " He might possibly have overlooked it before our marriage, though he is a proud man, and narrow in certain lines. I do not think he would ever for- give me now. He hates treachery above all things. He ought not to forgive me." ''' Yet you go on living, knowing each day to be a separate treachery." ' Yes, and hoarding each day separately, as a miser hoards a golden coin. Sometimes, at night, when he is sleeping I lie still and whisper to myself, THE DEVIL'S QUADRILLE 41 ' I have had one more day of love. Nothing nothing can take from me what I have already had!' ; "Unhappy and self-deluded woman!" he cried. " You have no right even to one golden day. Each is a stolen coin, and each will claim its punishment." " Let it come," she said. " I shall not hasten it, you may be sure." " Maris, my poor child, my poor, wilful child, for your own soul's sake, go to your husband now, this hour, making a full confession. Let me go with you, or speak to him in your behalf." "No, no, don't you dare!" she cried out as if hi terror. Then more soberly, " You must not go to him. You have done your duty in advising me, but cowardice, or madness, perhaps both, - make me deaf to your words. No, Dr. Singleterry, I must, as the Scotch say, dree my own weird. I'll hold to this one happiness until fate comes and takes it from me. Oh, I know that retribution is on the way. Sometimes I am a Daphne in her imprisoning tree, and I feel the stiff bark spreading upward over my heart and lips." " Well, let me leave you," said the minister, " I can do no more for your rebellious spirit. Think over what I have said, and perhaps, with God's grace, you may be softened." He stooped for his fallen hat, and without further attempt at farewell, turned and walked toward the door, Maris following him. " Do you feel," she began timidly, " that I am such a wicked woman you don't want me to come to your church any more? " He turned back to her with a smile so full of sadness, yet of pity, that her eyes filled. " Poor little Maris," he said. " You are not so wicked, as only very blind and foolish. Come to me freely. I shall always count it a privilege to be sought by you, and will advise 42 RED HORSE HILL you to the very best of my experience. God be with you, my poor child." She grasped the hand held out to her. " Oh, I am glad that you are here. I feel safer, somehow. Perhaps with you to help me " The last words died on her lips. He saw her eyes stare past him toward the street, distend, and then shrink as if from a terrible vision. They stood directly within the entrance door. Her hands fell from his and she cowered back, pointing, and asking, in a hoarse undertone, " Those children, Oh, can they be really children? They are stopping." He glanced over his shoulder. " Why, that's only a handful of the mill children," he said. " Have you seen none before? They have stopped to admire the house." " Let them look," she panted. " But I cannot stop to see them. Those are not children, they are little ghosts of children already dead. I did not know that in the world there were such children. I must go." She vanished into the shadow of the hall, and he heard the sound of frantic feet running up the stairway. Then a chamber door was shut with such violence that the house reverberated. Afterward a great silence came. The little girls, fifteen or more in number, had stopped to gaze in, open-mouthed, at the lady who was acting so strangely. As she vanished, all the faded eyes were fixed on Dr. Singleterry, now moving slowly down the cemented path toward them. At first it seemed that they would scatter, like a group of frightened animals, but, reassured by the gentle- ness of his face and manner, they stood still, watching his approach. All were small and thin. The head of one girl rose a few inches above the rest, and it could be seen THE DEVIL'S QUADRILLE 43 that she was the dominant spirit of the little flock. All were attired in scanty garments (the waist and skirt being sewed together) of faded blue denim, or un- bleached cotton stuff, and many were barefoot in the chill March wind. Those wearing shoes had on, apparently, mismated pairs from cast-off wardrobes of their elders, and stockings so full of holes that they seemed covered with pale yellow polka-dots. In spite of apparent fragility the children all had a cer- tain air of alertness, a vivacity and jerkiness as of marionettes. Their eyes were never still. The glances ran ceaselessly from point to point of the house, then to the advancing Dr. Singleterry, then back to the house again. The mouths of all were discolored with snuff, and many had snuff-sticks of blue-gum wood between their teeth. The minister tried to smile at them as he would at other children. He was casting about in his mind for something to say when the tallest girl, lifting a hand on which two fingers were missing, pointed toward the house as best she could, and demanded, " Say, Mister! Is dat de house of de Reginy mill boss? " " Yes, that is now the home of Mr. Alden of New York. It was built by Mr. Brattle, who died. Do you think it a handsome house? " Minnie paused. It was not well to encourage these oppressors, these aristocrats, with too much praise. " Hit'll do all right, I reckon," she said, with impu- dent assurance. This reply threw her companions into fits of merriment, or rather, into the travesty of mirth. They turned away their faces, half shielding them with scrawny hands, giggled, shrugged shoulders high, and exchanged glances of delight at Minnie's wit and daring. The minister's embarrassment gave fuel to their enjoyment. 44 RED HORSE HILL The only one who did not laugh was a very little girl whose hair was dark, even under its covering of cotton lint, and whose large, solemn eyes had never left the marble portico and cut glass doorways of the house. " I think it's er es-