The Shield of Silence. Harriet T. Comstock

cautious and suspicious watchfulness through the years Mary regarded Doris Fletcher still as "foreign." Foreign to all that was born and bred in the girl's inheritance of mountain aristocracy, but she had been touched by the justice, the unerring kindness of the woman, who, to Mary's wrong ideals, gave and gave and constantly made it impossible for her to make return.

      "Some day," the girl vowed, when her manner was most grim and repelling, "some day I'll do something to pay back!" And then she grew bewildered in the maze of wondering if the "quality" so precious to her understanding might not exist in all places? Might it not be?—but here Mary became lost.

      When she recalled, as less and less she did, the unlawful spying of hers on the west chamber of Ridge House, she set her lips in a firm line. She had gone far enough on her upward way to detest the cringing, deceitful methods of her childhood and she sternly sought to right herself, with her burdening conscience, by putting away forever what possible significance lay in the strange coming of that first and second child to Ridge House.

      "Were they twins? Were—they?" But Mary always was frightened when she got into her mental depths.

      Three or four vital and significant events marked the years intervening between Doris's return to New York and the day when Joan and Nancy entered womanhood.

      The first incident seemed slight in itself but proved the truth of the need for caution when one is on a blind trail. With all her good intentions and high hopes Doris was bewildered as to her steps. She who had been the soul of frankness and cheerful friendliness was now reticent and reserved.

      "It is poor Meredith's business," friend after friend decided. Where little was known, much was suspected. "The Fletchers cannot easily brook that sort of thing."

      Just what that "sort" was depended upon the temperament and character of the person speaking.

      Then among the first to call after Doris's return was Mrs. Tweksbury, an old and valued family friend, a woman who was worth one's while to gain as friend, for she could be a desperate foe. She had formed all her opinions of Meredith Thornton's tragedy upon what she knew and loved concerning the girl, and what she knew nothing whatever about, concerning Thornton.

      To Mrs. Tweksbury he was a black villain who had murdered—there was no other word for it—an innocent young creature who belonged to that class (Mrs. Tweksbury was frank and clear about "class") not supposed to be subject to the coarser dealings of life.

      Mrs. Tweksbury relied absolutely upon what she termed her inherited intuition. This was quite outside feminine intuition. The Tweksbury male intellect had been judicial from the first, and "the constant necessity of knowing men and women," as Mrs. Tweksbury often explained, "had left its mark upon the family."

      "We know! That is all there is to say. We know!"

      So Mrs. Tweksbury "knew" all about everything when she folded Doris in her motherly arms.

      "There is no need of a word, my dear," she said, "and you are dealing with the whole thing superbly. Let me see the children. How fortunate that they are twins and girls! Girls may inherit from the father, but thank God! nature saves them from the developing along his line. And being twins certainly modifies what might otherwise be concentrated."

      Doris felt her heart beat fast. She was not prepared to confide in Mrs. Tweksbury, certainly not at present. She loved the old woman for her good qualities, but she shrank from putting herself at the mercy of Mrs. Tweksbury's "inherited intuitions!"

      So she said nothing, but sent for the children.

      Hidden deep in the old woman's heart were all the denied and suppressed yearnings of a love that had escaped fulfilment—a love that had entered in after her marriage to a man utterly without sympathy with her, but which had been rigidly ignored because of the stern moral fibre that marked her. After the death of all those who had been concerned in her secret romance she had taken upon herself the more or less vicarious guardianship of the son of the man she had loved and foregone.

      The boy lived with his mother's people, and Mrs. Tweksbury only visited him occasionally; but her proud, stern old heart knew only one undying passion now—her passion for children.

      When Nancy and Joan stood before her, she regarded them with almost tragic, and, at the same time, comic expression. The children were frightened at her twitching, wrinkled face and glanced at Doris, who smiled them into calmness.

      In Joan, Mrs. Tweksbury saw resemblance to no one she remembered, so she concluded she must be like the father, physically, whom they must all ignore absolutely. Try as she valiantly did, the old lady felt her quick-beating heart falter before Joan's earnest, searching gaze. It was a relief to turn to Nancy and permit her eyes to dim and soften.

      "My dear, my dear," she said to Doris, "how like dear Merry the baby is! Just so, I recall—"

      Doris's face grew strained and ashy. "Please," she implored, "please, Aunt Emily—don't!"

      "Of course, of course, my child. Very indiscreet of me—but I was taken off my guard." Then—"My dears, will you kiss me?" This to the children keeping their courage up by clinging together.

      "No," Joan replied in a tone entirely free from bad manners but weighted with simple truth; "Joan likes to kiss Auntie Dorrie." The inference stiffened Mrs. Tweksbury and caused Doris a qualm.

      "And you?" The old lady's tone was pathetic in its appeal to Nancy—her "intuition" was at stake.

      Nancy drew nearer. She was fascinated, afraid, but guided by a strange impulse. "Nancy will," she panted, "Nancy will kiss you—two times!"

      Mrs. Tweksbury's breath caught in her throat—she strangled but controlled herself and bent as a queen might to the sweet uplifted face at her knee.

      After that visit Doris would have had a difficult task in stemming a flood that Mrs. Tweksbury directed, having removed the dam. While she fairly grovelled, emotionally, before Nancy, the old lady defended Joan by stern insistence upon traits of nobility unsuspected by others in the child.

      "The wretch of a father," she mentally vowed, "shall not have the child if suggestion can prevent."

      Spiritually she fell in line with Doris, and where Mrs. Tweksbury led it were wiser and easier to follow than to blaze new trails.

      The second event that marked a new epoch was the coming of George Thornton to claim his own.

CHAPTER V

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      "And when it fails, fight as we will, we die."

      George Thornton was a man who believed, or thought he did, in two controlling things in life: Intellect, and the training of intellect, by education and stern attention, to the task at stake.

      He had intellect and he had devoted himself to his task, that of worldly success, but he had never recognized nor admitted the necessity of the spiritual in his development, and so it had failed him—and, in a deep, tragic way, he was dying. Had been dying through the years since his devil took the reins, in a mad hour, and rode him.

      There had been weeks and months after his leaving Meredith when his soul cried aloud to him but was smothered. He would not heed. He let business and coarse, pleasurable excitement gain power over him, and when they lagged he drank his conscience to sleep.

      He knew the danger which lay in the last aid to deaden his pain, so he rarely sought it.

      But something new had entered in—something that, in hours when he was obliged to face facts, frightened him, and after months abroad, months in which he nursed his resentment against Meredith and felt his defeat with her, he decided to do the only decent thing left for him to do—apologize and set her free.

      And then he found her note. The bald, naked statement drove all power to act for the moment from him.