Mary's face twitched. Did she not know?

"But hit!"--she whispered--"don't you love hit strong enough, Aunt Becky, to let hit alone, where hit's happy, not knowing?"

There was something majestic about Mary as she kept her eyes upon the old woman while she pleaded with her.

The past came creeping up on the two women by the ashy hearth--it gave Becky strength; it blinded Mary. In the old woman's memory a picture flashed--the picture that once had hung on the wall of Ridge House!

She folded her bony arms over her bosom and panted:

"Yes--I love hit--well enough!" The last hold was loosening. Then:

"It's powerful lonesome--and the cold and hunger bite cruel hard----"

"Aunt Becky, listen to me!" The woman turned her eyes to the speaker, but her thoughts were far, far away.

"I'll come to you, Gawd hearing me; I'll ward off the cold and hunger.

I'll come day after day--if you'll leave hit--where it can't ever know."

Suddenly Becky's face grew sharp and cunning; all that was tender and human in her faded--self-preservation rose supreme.

"I'll leave hit, Mary Allen," she cackled, "but if yo' tell that hit ain't in the grave 'long o' Zalie all the devils o' h.e.l.l will watch out for yo' soul!"

Mary was not listening. She rose and mechanically moved about the disordered room. Like a sleep walker she set the rickety furniture in place; she began to gather sc.r.a.ps of food together--hunting, hunting in corners and cupboards. She made some black coffee--rank and evil-smelling it was--and finally she set the strange meal before the old woman.

Becky eyed the repast as one might who fancied that she dreamed.

Cautiously she touched the food with her lean fingers, then she clutched it and ate ravenously, desperately fearing that it might disappear.

Mary looked on in divine pity, swaying to and fro, never speaking nor going near.

She was thinking; thinking on ahead. She would make the cabin clean and whole; she would wash and clothe the poor creature now eating like a hungry wolf; she would feed her. Becky should become--hers!

Then Mary's mouth relaxed. She was appropriating, adjusting. Something of her very own at last! Something that would wait for her, watch for her, depend upon her. Something to work for and live for; something upon whom she might pour forth the hidden riches that had all but perished in her soul.

It was midnight when Mary groped her way from the cabin. Becky was asleep on the miserable bed in the corner; she was breathing softly and evenly like a baby.

Outside, the moonlight lay full upon the open s.p.a.ces and on the little grave under the pine clump. Mary stood, before entering the woods, and raised her head.

"I'm paying--I'm paying back what--I owe," she murmured, and all the wretched company of her early childhood seemed to hold out imploring hands to her. Her father, her mother, the line of miserable brothers and sisters who never had their chance!

Sister Angela came, too, her cross gleaming, her eyes kind and just.

Doris Fletcher and her blessed giving; giving of the marvellous chance at last! And lastly, Nancy, with her beautiful face, Nancy who must not be cheated, Nancy who--trusted her! Nancy who _might_ be--but no! Mary ran on. She would not know! She must not!

And so it was that the last of the Allans redeemed the debt and silently found peace for her proud heart.

She was released! She had proven herself, though no one must ever know.

It was the not knowing that would mark her highest success.

On the morrow Mary went to Ridge House quite her usual reserved self.

Nancy met her with the brightest of smiles.

"Doctor Martin has gone away, Mary," she explained, "and now I will be terribly busy, but next winter--oh! next winter, Mary, Joan will be with us in the dear old house. A letter came to-day--she is going to take lessons from a very great teacher. Do you remember how Joan could sing, Mary? I shall play for her again and be so happy. It's wonderful how happy one can be, Mary, when one isn't afraid and just goes singing ahead. I cannot sing like Joan, but I can scare away fears!"

Mary regarded the girl with a hungry craving in her eyes over which the lids were drawn to a slit. There was a fierce intentness in the gaze: the look of the runner who has almost reached the goal but hears his pursuers close.

CHAPTER XVI

"_And they planted their feet on the 'Sun Road'._"

If the spring has a direct and concentrated effect upon a young man's fancy, it must have equal effect upon a young woman's, else the man's would perish and come to look upon the spring as the lean part of the year. Joan had meant all she said when, in the strength and virtue of her youth, she had drawn herself away from Kenneth Raymond and proudly remarked:

"Certainly not! And I am not afraid."

Both statements were sincere and should have brought her peace and satisfaction. They did neither.

Raymond had, apparently, taken her at her word, and sought other places in which to appease his hunger, and Joan turned to Patricia, for Sylvia was called out of town.

That dream of a frieze that had long smouldered in Sylvia's soul had broken bounds and a rich man, erecting a summer home on the Ma.s.sachusetts coast, having seen some of Sylvia's work, had invited her down to "talk over" the frieze idea.

"And he'll let me do it!" Sylvia had confided breathlessly to Joan as she packed her suitcase. "I can always tell when a thing is going to come true. Now if I had shown him sketches he might not have taken me--but when I can _talk_ my pictures all along the walls of his big, sunny room it will be another matter.

"Blue background"--Sylvia was forgetting Joan as she rambled on, punching and jamming her clothing into the case--"and a bit of a story running through the frieze--a kind of sea-nymph search for the Holy Grail--stretching from the door back _to_ the door. Can't you see it, Joan?"

Joan could not. She was seeing something else. Something daily becoming visualized. A seeking, yearning desire issuing from her soul and trying to find--what?

"You'll have Pat here?" suddenly asked Sylvia. "I'd rather have someone besides Pat, but the others are either away or worse than Pat. You're good for Pat if she isn't for you. You sort of stiffen her up--she told me so. Pat needs whalebone. When her purse gets flat her morals dwindle; mine always get scared stiff. I'll write twice a week, Joan, my lamb, Sunday and Wednesday. I'll be back before long."

And off Sylvia went with her heavy bag and her light heart, and Joan called Patricia up on the telephone.

"All right," Patricia responded, "but if I get homesick for these rooms, I must be free to come."

"Of course," Joan agreed.

Patricia was in a dangerous mood and Joan was vividly alive to impressions.

Patricia was writing verses as a bird carols--just letting them pour out. She was selling them, too, and running out to New Jersey to talk over with Mr. Burke the publication of a book.

"I cannot see," Patricia had said to Sylvia, "why one should feel it necessary to stick to hot, smelly offices when a library, looking out over acres of country, is at one's disposal."

"Is Mrs. Burke there?"

Sylvia had a terrible way of stepping on toes when she was making her point.

"Certainly!" Patricia flung back--it happened that the lady was there for a brief time--"though," Patricia went on, "she doesn't sit on the arm of my chair while styles of paper are considered. You're low-minded, Syl."