The Shield of Silence.

by Harriet T. Comstock.

_Let us agree at once that_--

We are all on the Wheel. The difference lies in our ability to cling or let go. Meredith Thornton and old Becky Adams--let go!

Across the world's heart they fell--the heart of the world may be wide or narrow--and, by the law of attraction, they came to Ridge House and Sister Angela.

Unlike, and separated by every circ.u.mstance that, according to the expected, should have kept them apart--they still had the same problem to confront and the solution had its beginning in that pleasant home for Episcopal Sisters which clings so enchantingly along the north side of what is known as Silver Gap, a cleft in the Southern mountains.

To say the solution of these women's problems had its beginnings in Ridge House is true; but that they were ever solved is another matter and this story deals with that.

Meredith Thornton was young and beautiful. Up to the hour that she let go she had lived as they live who are drugged. She had looked on life with her senses blurred and her actions largely controlled by others.

Old Becky, on the other hand, had gripped life with no uncertain hold; she, according to the vernacular of her hills, "had the call to larn,"

and she learned deeply.

Sister Angela had clung to the Wheel. She had swung well around the circle and she believed she was nearing the end when the strange demand was made upon her.

The demand was made by Meredith Thornton and Becky Adams. Meredith, from her great distance, somewhat prepared Sister Angela by a letter, but Becky, being unable either to read or write, simply took to the trail from her lonely cabin on Thunder Peak and claimed a promise made three years before.

And now, since _The Rock_ played a definite part in what happened, it should have a word here.

In a land where nearly all the solid substance is rock--not stone, mind you--_The Rock_ held a peculiar position. It dominated the landscape and the imagination of Silver Gap, and the superst.i.tion as well. It was a huge, greenish-white ma.s.s, a mile to the east of Thunder Peak, and over its smooth face innumerable waterfalls trickled and shone. With this colour and motion, like a mighty Artist, the wind and light played, forming pictures that needed little fancy to discern.

At times cities would be delicately outlined with towers and roofs rising loftily; then again one might see a deep wood with a road winding far and away, luring home-tied feet to wander. And sometimes--not often, to be sure--the Ship would ride at anchor as on a painted sea.

The Ship boded no good to Silver Gap as any one could tell. It had brought the plague and the flood; it brought bad crops and raids on hidden stills; it waited until its evil cargo had done its worst and then it sailed away in the night, bearing its pitiful load of dead, or its burden of fear and hate. Surely there was good and sufficient reason for dreading the appearance of The Ship, and on a certain autumn morning it appeared and soon after the two women, unknown to each other, came to Ridge House and this story began.

CHAPTER I

"_Wait and thy soul shall speak._"

There is, in the human soul, as in the depths of the ocean, a state of eternal calm. Around it the waves of unrest may surge and roar but there peace reigns. In that sanctuary the tides are born and, in their appointed time, swelling and rising, they carry the poor jetsam and flotsam of life before them.

The tide was rising in the soul of Meredith Thornton; she was awake at last. Awake as people are who have lived with their faculties drugged.

The condition was partly due to the education and training of the woman, and largely to her own ability in the past to close her senses to any conception of life that differed from her desires. She had always been like that. She loved beauty and music; she loved goodness and happiness; she loved them whom she loved so well that she shut all others out.

Consequently, when Life tore her defences away she had no guidance upon which to depend but that which had lain hidden in the secret place of her soul.

As a little child Meredith and her older sister, Doris, lived in New York. Their house had been in the Fletcher family for three generations and stood at the end of a dignified row, opposite a park whose iron gates opened only to those considered worthy of owning a key--the Fletchers had a key!

In the park the little Fletcher girls played--if one could call it play--under the eye of a carefully selected maid whose glance was expected to rest constantly upon them. The anxious father tried to do his double duty conscientiously, for the mother had died at Meredith's birth.

The children often peered through the high fence (it really was more fun than the stupid games directed by their elders) and wondered--at least Doris wondered; Meredith was either amused or shocked; if the latter it was an easy matter to turn aside. This hurt Doris, and to her plea that the thing was there, Meredith returned that she did not believe it, and she did not, either.

Once, shielded by the skirts of an outgoing maid, Doris made her escape and, for two thrilling and enlightening hours, revelled in the company of the Great Unknown who were not deemed worthy of keys.

Doris had found them vital, absorbing, and human; they changed the whole current of her life and thought; she was never the same again, neither was anything else.

The nurse was at once dismissed and Mr. Fletcher placed his daughters in the care of Sister Angela, who was then at the head of a fashionable school for girls--St. Mary's, it was called.

Sister Angela believed in keys but had ideas as to their uses and the good sense to keep them out of sight.

Under her wise and loving rule Doris Fletcher never suspected the hold upon her and, while she did not forget the experience she had once had outside the park, she no longer yearned to repeat it, for the present was wholesomely full. As for Meredith, she felt that all danger was removed--for Doris; for herself, what could shatter her joy? It was only running outside gates that brought trouble.

Just after the Fletcher girls graduated from St. Mary's Sister Angela's health failed.

Mr. Fletcher at this time proved his grat.i.tude and affection in a delicate and understanding way. He bought a neglected estate in the South and provided a sufficient sum of money for its restoration and upkeep, and this he put in Sister Angela's care.

"There is need of such work as you can do there," he said; "and it has always been a dream of my life to help those people of the hills.

Sister, make my dream come true."

Angela at once got in touch with Father n.o.ble, who was winning his way against great odds in the country surrounding Silver Gap, and offered her services.

"Come and live here," Father n.o.ble replied. "It is all we can do at present. They do not want us," he had a quaint humour, "but we must change that."

Mr. Fletcher did not live long enough to see his dream do more than help prolong Sister Angela's days, for he died a year later leaving, to his daughters, a large fortune, well invested, and no commands as to its use. This faith touched both girls deeply.

"I want to travel and see all the beautiful things in the world,"

Meredith said when the time for expression came.

"Yes, dear," Doris replied, "and you must learn what life really means."

Naturally at this critical moment both girls turned to Sister Angela, but with the rare insight that had not deserted her, she held them from her, though her heart hungered for them.

"Ridge House is in the making," she wrote. "I am going slow, making no mistakes. I am asking some Sisters who, like me, have fallen by the way, to come here and help me with my scheme, and in the confusion of readjustment, two young girls, who ought to be forming their own plans, would be sadly in the way.

"Go abroad, my dears, take"--here Sister Angela named a woman she could trust to help, not hinder--"and learn to walk alone at last."

Doris accepted the advice and the little party went to Italy.

"Here," she said, "Merry shall have the beauty she craves and she shall learn what life means, as well."

And Meredith's learning began.

They had only been in Italy a month when George Thornton appeared. He was young, handsome, and already so successful in business that older men cast approving eyes upon him. He had chosen, at the outset of his career, to go to the Philippines and accepted an appointment there. He had devoted himself so rigidly to his duties that his health began to show the strain and he was taking his first, well-won, vacation when he met the Fletchers.

Thornton's past had been spent largely with men who, like himself, were making their way among people, and in an environment in which the finer aspects of life were disregarded. He had enjoyed himself, made himself popular, and for the rest he had waited until such a time as his success would make choice possible. When he met Meredith Fletcher he felt the time had come. The girl's exquisite aloofness, her fineness and sweetness, bewitched him. The real meaning of her character did not interest him at all. Here was something that he wanted; the rest would be an easy conquest. Thornton had always got what he wanted and lay siege to Meredith's heart at once.

His approach, while it swept Meredith before it, naturally aroused fear and apprehension in Doris. To Meredith, Thornton was an ideal materialized; to Doris, he was a menace to all that she held sacred. She distrusted him for the very traits that appealed to her sister. But she dared not oppose, for to every inquiry she hurriedly made--and there was need of hurry--she received only favourable reports.

Thornton's own fortune and prospects set aside any fears as to mercenary designs; he had no near relatives, but distant cousins in England were people of refinement and culture and on excellent terms with Thornton.