| OCR Text |
Show ffKHyOrHr SINNERS f HEAVEN Bv CLIVE ARDEN 5 Copyright br The Bobbs-Merrill Co. 5 PART FOUR Continued. 19 "This was our wedding ring," she whispered. The Involuntary start which the other gave was quickly controlled. Shs met steadily, albeit with some apprehension, ap-prehension, the girl's searching look seeming to probe to her very soul, proving Its faith. "Yes," she encouraged. "You married mar-ried hlru? Tell me everything; will your "You understand?" The seurehlng look never relaxed. "You do under-standr under-standr The appeal In that passionate regard re-gard and question brought quick response. re-sponse. "Dear," she replied, pulling hei down on the couch by the fire, "I understand. You loved each other and acted In accordance with honorable convictions, In extraordinary circumstances. circum-stances. Is that enough? What more can I say?" Barbara drew a breath of Inexpressible Inexpres-sible relief. Holding fast to that sympathetic sym-pathetic hand, she recounted with simple sim-ple fervor the Whole history. Nothing was omitted up lo the present. When mate rein, "how far did this Infatuation Infatu-ation go? What cun you never forget?" for-get?" The girl looked at her, startled, at a momentary loss. Her sensitive face, an enemy to subterfuge, flushed angrily. an-grily. "Ah!" exclaimed her aunt meaningly, meaning-ly, "I thought from the first there was something wrong." "Wh-wbnt do you mean, Aunt Mary? "There wus nothing wrong I" "Then why maintain such mystery? Why are you afraid to talk of the matter to iell the truth?" A rush of loathing, contempt for all the suspicious minds about her, recklessness, which, In impulsive natures, na-tures, has far-reaching elTects, swept the girl away. After all, what did their feelings matter? What their opinions to the man whose memory she had tried in vain to shield from vulgar calumny? Barbara turned and faced the two women, tossing back the hair from her brow. "You shall have the truth!" she cried, with suddenly blazing eyes. "This 'infatuation' you talk about went to the end. He returned my love. We became husbund and wife." can you tell what was right snd what was not out there? What do you all know of real, fundamental life? What experience have you had of love, temptation any problems that you should dare dare to judge? You all carry out your religious observances to the letter but what about the spirit of It alir The two women were staggered by her furious flow of words. ' "I understand," cried Mrs. Stork-ley, Stork-ley, in weak Impotent rage, "that you have disgraced our name I Sin cannot can-not be excused. Whatever the mun wus and thank heaven he Is dead! you should have shown strength. You you are nothing hut a wanton wan-ton !" "Mother!" The girl recoiled, as If she had been struck, , catching at a chair for support. Her mother broke Into a storm of hysterical weeping. "Go!" she cried, between her sobs. "Leave the house! I I refuse to own you ! Go to your friends who condone con-done Immorality who encourage siu. . . . Join Jenny Grant " "Mother I" she cried again, with white lips, "you dou't realize what hydrangeas; pausing for breath, while the Inne dropped to the old Inu In the valley below, the white and gray cottages straggled along on either side the stream gurgling over Its stony bed between rolling coombs In the valley behind, to the harbor which was its goal. . . . Such was the retreat In which Barbara found herself. The chance memory of a friend's rapture hud led her weary footsteps thither to a small gray house near the river, kept by a bright young woman wom-an and her true-hearted husband. Here, unknown and unnoticed, away from the stings of malicious tongues, the Inquisitive world not even seeing see-ing a newspaper she wrestled with the questions and doubts and miseries of her heart. "If the Joy of your own personal love is withdrawn," Margaret Field had suld, one day In London, "the seed Is never lost. You may think It Is for a time; but, later, It shoots up, nourished by experience, growing Into a strong plant which will develop Into a flowering tree of many branches." The truth of that, too, was dimly In her mind as sne watched the stars come out above the harbor in her you are saying " "I do! I do! Go!" Weakly she stamped her foot, then sank Into her chair, burying her face in her handkerchief. hand-kerchief. A wild caricature of a laugh broke from Barbara's lips. She looked at her mother's shaking form, then at her aunt's rigid figure and hostile countenance. "Very well," she said slowly, "I will go." ... As If dazed, she put up her hand to her head, and gave one look round the familiar room. . , . Presently the drawing room door closed, with deliberate quietness, behind be-hind her. Barbara's sudden appearance at tire flut brought Mrs. Field little surprise. She had heard the rumblings of the storm approaching in Darbury, had seen the lowering clouds; but, with her voice ceased, there fell a long silence. From somewhere In the house came a merry laugh; an opening door let out a brief flood of dunce music. . . . Then a piece of coal dropped Into the fender, and Mrs. Field movt-d. "Ah, my darling I" she erled. "It is bitter ... I know ... I know. . . That was the first of many tiHks together during that Christmas Benson, which brought with It such acute memories. mem-ories. ". . . On the afternoon of Boxing day, as the girl snt alone, Hugh suddenly appeured a grave-faced Hugh, with the bewildered "doggy" look still In his eye. She rose to meet him, with some embarrassment. "Mrs. Field's with the old people. She said you were alone," he blundered. In explanation. "Bab I've missed you, old thing!" The simple directness touched her. She, too, had been conscious of a gap In the surface of her life, among the old haunts of their childhood, which had added to her wretchedness. Impulsively, Im-pulsively, she gave liliu her other hand. "I have missed you, too, Hughle!" Hugh cleurly hnd something on his mind. "I wanted to say," he blundered on, to tell you 1 was a rotter that day I I've been thinking the deuce of a lot lately, Bnb! And r wanted you Just to know you can count on me any time to back you and Croft up, 1 mean." ... It was clumsily expressed; but she understood what the effort cost him, and the genuine feeling behind it all. Hugh looked at her diffidently, then awuy through the window, speaking quickly and huskily. "And I wanted you to know that If later on, perhaps per-haps you felt you could marry me, after all " be paused, glancing at her, "I shall always be there Just the same." The eyes that met his were swimming swim-ming In sudden tears. "My dear!" she cried. "But It can never be now" "You need not say anything, or bother about It," he said simply. Impulsively she pressed his hands against her cheek ; then he drew himself him-self free. Hugh Intensely disliked VII The silence was awful. A dormant volcano could not have seemed more vibrant with foreboding. The two women sat, bereft of speech, gazing blankly at the girl, who faced them fearlessly from the hearthrug. From Mrs. Stockley's fuce every vestige of color had fled. She looked suddenly old ; her features were haggard. Then Burbara, as she had done twice before, held out htr left hand. "This." she said, breathing fast, "Is my wedding ring. He was my husband." hus-band." The tension broke. Mrs. Stockley gasped, and her sister gave a snort of contemptuons laughter. "'Husband'!" she mocked. "Pray who was the priest? Where was the church? Or had you a native registry reg-istry office?" The sarcasm was to the girl merely as the heat of an extra candle to one already enveloped In flames. She Ignored the speaker, fixing her eyes upon her mother. "Do you understand, mother?" At that moment the sight of her mother's deathly' face struck, like a blow, upon her heart. Her anger subsided sub-sided as quickly as It had arisen; In its pluce a huge pity arose, making It suddenly Imperative that the woman wom-an who had borne her should be saved the suffering of misconstruction. Impulsively she moved forward, stretching out both hands. "Mother?" Mrs. Stockley rose slowly to her feet, Ignoring the hands, still staring at her daughter as If she were some hideous snake seen In a corner of her comfortable room. "You!" she muttered. "You my daughter you dure to face me with those lies?" The hands dropped and clenched at her sides. "They are not lies ! It was Impossible to get married according accord-ing to English Inw. We therefore performed per-formed ttie ceremony for ourselves. We took the same vows It was perfectly per-fectly honorable." Miss Da vies broke in with another harsh laugh. heart the tired peace of one who, giving giv-ing up tilting at windmills he can never conquer, lays his hand upon the plow which needs It If solving the mystery of suffering could never be accomplished ; if her own personal keynote to happiness were lost; then content she must be to hold out the hand of fellowship to those companions. compan-ions. In bitter waters to help find It for the world starving for love. . . . Perhaps who knows? that Is the answer an-swer to the riddle. As darkness fell, she turned down the path over the rocks; crossed the little bridge spanning the river; and made her way to the gray hause, from which cheerful lights beckoned. . . . She fumbled with the handle, turned It ; opened the door ; then stood for a moment blinking confusedly: for something big and dark had loomed up In the small passage, hiding the hanging lamp. . . . A great cry burst suddenly from the girl's Hps. ... In the dark she turned ashy white; swayed; clutched vainly at the door-post; and would have fallen, had she not been caught by arms that held her so strongly that they stopped her breath. . . . Alan stood on the threshold. VIII It was only a small sitting room, with on oil lump and a crackling lire. But all the worlds and all the heavens heav-ens were enclosed within Its walls to the two who clung together In their rupture. Wonderlngly, almost reverently, the girl passed her hands over the arms that clasped her touching the dark hair and bronzed cheek half-feurfully, scarcely believing In their reality, looking upon him with bewildered, darkened eyes almost afraid to trust their own sight. The tall broad-shouldered figure had lost not an inch of its uprightness, nor had the head lost Its old dominant poise. The few extra lines round the smiling lips und glowing glow-ing eyes were swept up Into the radiance radi-ance which seemed to envelop him. Yet, In the dark clothes of civilization, civiliza-tion, he appeared subtly strange to the half-clad, barefooted overlord of savages of other days. "Yes," he said at last, catching her hand lightly wandering over his arm. "It's nil real. Solid flesh no ghost!" He raised her chin In the old pos- Ii'itmI IJtiS ii i "Very Well; I Will Go." rare insight, she forebore to Interfere. Some storms, being Inevitable, are best left to themselves. "Forewarned and forearmed," one's work comes later with salvage and reconstruction. Not a whole regiment of engineers could pull down the wall encircling Mrs. Stockley's horizon; of that Mrs. Field was certain. In time, when the shock, and above oil the talk, hnd subsided, a few bricks might, with Infinite tact, be drawn away, allowing allow-ing an occasional glimpse of wide uplands up-lands beyond. . . . But that would not be yet. ... In the meantime It was the girl's quivering soul which needed Infinite delicacy in handling; which wavered, struggled, sank gradually gradu-ally lower Into the dark wilderness of morbidity, from which those who get lost therein take long to discover a way out; and, when they do, find the burrs and thorns still sticking to them, never to be quite shaken off. Margaret Field had been through all this herself, years ago. No words, hA knew, ron Id heln. She watched sesslve way, and looked -rting Into the thin face and dark-ringed eyes, which told their own tnle of suffering endured; en-dured; then he pressed her head to his breast and held her cloge again in silence, as If defying any fate to separate sep-arate them now. . . . "But," she stammered faintly at Inst, "how Is it why I don't understand under-stand r "Why I'm not sleeping with my fathers, fa-thers, as you all surmised T Well-that Well-that Is your fault." "Mine?" He nodded. "When Babooma was about to send me to my gods, you conveniently sent him, Instead, to the shades of Valhalla that lust bullet, you know!" Her eyes opened wide, and she caught her breath. (TO BE CONTINUED.) scenes. Having said what he wanted, he turned the subject. "Mrs. Field told me to have tea with you. She said there were loads of muflinsl Let's sit on the hearth-rug and toast them, as we used to do." So they sat together on the floor toasting mutflns, the barrier breaking down between them. Thus Mrs. Field found them on her return ; and a certain cer-tain look of relief crossed her face. . It was one of those days when everything ev-erything goes wrong. The village "help" did not come; and Martha therefore considered herself too much overworked to complete any one Job. Lunch was late, the soup tepid, the potatoes were hard, cofTee was luke-wsrm. luke-wsrm. The clogging of the well-oiled wheels of this small groove naturally resulted in "nerves" on the part of Mrs. Stockley. These, working up gradually, found relief In an explosion, explo-sion, when Barbara announced an afternoon's af-ternoon's golf with Hugh. Surely there must be work of some sort for her to do In this tragedy of an un-"help"-ed household? This led to a heated argument, which took a sudden deflection down an unexpected channel. chan-nel. "Of course, If you have renewed your engagement with Hugh " "I have not mother. I never can." "And why can you never marry Hugh?" her mother asked testily, "la It still because of that ridiculous Infatuation? In-fatuation? Barbara, I Insist upon your forgetting such nonsense." "You don't understand, mother. 1 can never forget." "No," agreed Mrs. Stockley with some heat ; "I do not understand ; and I think It Is time I did!" She turned to her sister, as usual, for support, which was speedily forthcoming. forth-coming. "Barbsra," began that worldly woman, wom-an, her curiosity at last given legttl- "Dld he actually succeed in stuffing you with all that, to clonk -your Immorality?" Im-morality?" "Aunt Mary! How dare you ?" "Oh ! it's always the samel Haven't I dealt with hundreds of cases In niy work wh'.ch have been 'perfectly honorable'? Fools! Dupes! You weak women believe anything!" "You y-you " Barbara choked. In her furious Indlgnntion. "Immorality !" Mrs. Stockley caught at the word. "Immorality? In one of our family? My own daughter ?" "You got off -lightly," broke In her Bister, watching the girl narrowly, through her lorgnette. "Without paying pay-ing the price! Most girls are not so fortunate. But I suppose you took good care to prevent " "Yes!" cried her mother almost hysterically, hys-terically, "suppose there had been children?" chil-dren?" "There would have been," she replied re-plied with unnatural calm, her eyes burning In an ashen face. "That Is why I was so III at Singapore." For a moment both women were again bereft of speech, Barbara turned to the fire and stood gazing Into Its depths, "Ha !" gasped her aunt, at last. "1 always thought there was something suspicious In that Illness." Then the girl flashed round, contempt con-tempt ringing In her voice. "Yes. Aunt Mary, you would! People Peo-ple like you would find something suspicious In an archangel. Oh !" she cried passionately, "I know all the disgusting, vulgur gossip concerning Alan and myself I I knew It before I reached England. Now, I suppose, you will all purr In your self-righteousness, thinking how wise you were " "B-Barbara 1" spluttered ber dum-founded dum-founded aunt. "Oh, yes, you will I But" turning blazing eyes upon Miss Davles' furious furi-ous face "you are all wrong I How the girl closely, but made no attempt to force her. Putting back the clock of her own days, she entered the black pit with her, understanding her darkness. Barbara went away. She gave no address. "I want to feel cut off from everything and everybody who knows me for a time," she Bald, when her friend expostulated. , A remote Cornish village, trailing Its whitewashed cottages down a precipitous pre-cipitous narrow lane bordered by little lit-tle cobbled ditches wherein ducks waddled and talked together winding round a corner between fragrant gardens gar-dens that merged Into gray walls of houses and banks which, In summer, oezed ferns from every crevice, burst forth into Area of purple-red fuchsias and bulged out Into great clumps of |
