Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
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[Illustration: "_Joan rose from her self-appointed task. She looked
at Thornton and throbbed with hate--but as she looked her mood again
changed--she felt such pity as she had never known in her life before._"]
THE SHIELD OF SILENCE
BY HARRIET T. COMSTOCK
AUTHOR OF JOYCE OF THE NORTH WOODS, ETC.
FRONTISPIECE BY GEORGE LOUGHRIDGE
GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America
* * * * *
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
* * * * *
TO MY SON
PHILIP S. COMSTOCK
"We will grasp the hands of men and women; and slowly
holding one another's hands we will work our way upwards."
* * * * *
THE SHIELD OF SILENCE
_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 circumstance 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 superstition as well. It was a
huge, greenish-white mass, 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 gratitude 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 Noble, who was winning his way
against great odds in the country surrounding Silver Gap, and offered
her services.
"Come and live here," Father Noble 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.
Breathlessly Thornton carried everything before him. Six weeks after he
met Meredith he married her.
"Why, you do not know the child," Doris had faltered when the hasty
marriage was proposed, "I'm only learning to know her myself. She has
never grown up. She sees life as she used to see it through the gates of
the park in which she played as a little girl. She has been locked away.
It is appalling. I could not believe, unless I knew, that any one could
be like Merry."
Of course Thornton did not understand.
"Let me have the key," he jokingly said, "let me lead Merry out. It will
be the biggest thing of my life."
And Doris knew that unless the key were given he would break the lock,
so Meredith was married in the little American chapel on the hillside
and she looked as if she were walking in a love-filled dream as she went
out of Doris's life.
Thornton took his wife to the Philippines by way of her New York home.
For a week they stayed in it, and it was there that the first sense of
loss touched Meredith. The stirring effect of all that she had recently
gone through was wearing away, and Doris, and all that Doris meant in
the past, haunted the big, quiet house.
"This will never do," thought Thornton, and for the first time he sensed
the power the older sister had over the younger. It was already making
its way into his kingdom, and Thornton never shared what was his own!
Doris remained abroad for a time, readjusting her life as one does who
is maimed. Her devotion to Meredith, she saw now, had been her one
passion--to what could she turn?
The letters that presently came from Meredith, while they set much of
her fear at rest, made her feel more lonely, nor did they seem to set
her free to make permanent plans. She sank into a waiting mood--waiting
for letters!
"I'll play around Europe for awhile," she whimsically decided. "I'll buy
things for that chapel Sister Angela is planning, and polish my manners.
And," here Doris grew grave, "I'll think of David Martin! I wish I could
love Davey enough to marry him as I feel he wants me to--and let him
blot out this ache for Merry." But that was not to be.
And Meredith wrote her letters to her sister and smiled upon her
husband--for after the third month of her marriage that was the best she
could do for either of them. All the ideals of her self-blinded life
were being swept away in the glaring flame of reality.
Thornton was still infatuated and went to great lengths to prove to his
pale, starry-eyed wife her power over him. He was delighted at the
impression she made upon the rather hectic but exclusive circle in which
he moved; but he dreaded, vaguely to be sure, her hearing, in a gross
way, references to his life before she entered it. So quite frankly and
a bit sketchily he confided it to her himself.
"Of course that is ended forever," he said; "you have led me from
darkness to light, you wonderful child! Why, Merry, you simply have made
a new and better man of me--I understand the real value of things now."
But did he?
Merry was looking at him as if she were doubting her senses. Things she
had heard in her girlhood, things that floated about in the dark corners
of her memory, were pressing close. Dreadful things that had been forced
upon her against her will but which she reasoned could never happen to
her, or to any of her own.
"You mean," she faltered gropingly at last, "that another woman has----"
She could not voice the ugly words and Thornton was obliged to be a
little more explicit.
Then he saw his wife retreat--spiritually. He hastened after her as best
he could.
"You see, darling," he was frightened, "out here, where a fellow is cut
off from home ties and all that, the old code does not hold--how could
it? I'm no exception. Why, good Lord! child----" but Meredith was not
listening. He saw that and it angered him.
She was hearing words spoken long ago--oh! years and years ago it
seemed. Words that had lured her from Doris, from safety, from all the
dangerous peace that had been hers.
"Sweetheart," that voice had said, "there is one right woman for every
man, but few there be who find her. When one does--then there is no time
to be lost. Life is all too short at the best for them. Come, my
beloved, come!"
And she had heeded and, forsaking all else, had trusted him.
According to his lights Thornton had sincerely meant those words when he
spoke them. He was under the spell, still, as he looked at the small
frozen thing before him now.
If he could win her from her absurd, and almost unbelievable, position;
if he could, through her love and his, gain her absolutely; make her
_his_--what a conquest!
"My precious one, I am yours to do with what you will!" he was saying
with all the fervour of his being; but Meredith looked at him from a
great distance.
"You were never mine!" was what she said. Then asked:
"Is that--that woman here? Will I ever--meet her?"
Thornton was growing furiously angry.
"Certainly not!" he replied to her last question, incensed at the
implied lack of delicacy on his part. Then he added, "Don't be a fool,
Merry!"
"No, I won't," she whispered, grimly. "I won't be a fool, whatever else
I am. Do you want me to leave you at once, or stay on?"
Thornton stared at her blankly.
"Good God!" he muttered; "what do you mean, stay on?"
"I mean that if I stay it will be because I don't want to hurt you more
than I must--and because things don't matter much, either way. I have my
own money--but, well, I'll stay on if it will help you in your
business."
Then light dawned.
"You will stay on!" Thornton snapped the words out. "You are my wife,
and you will stay on!"
"Very well. I will stay," Meredith turned and walked away.
Thornton looked after her and his face softened. Something in him was
touched by the spirit under the cold, crude exterior of the girl. It was
worth while--he would try to win her!
And that was the best hour in Thornton's life.
Could he have held to it all might have gone well, but Thornton's
successes had been due to dash and daring--the slow, patient method was
not his, and against his wife's stern indifference he recoiled after a
short time--she bored him; she no longer seemed worth while; not worth
the struggle nor the holding to absurd and rigid demands. Still, by her
smiling acquiescence, Meredith made things possible that otherwise might
not have been so, and she was a charming hostess when occasion demanded.
During the second bleak year of their marriage Meredith accompanied
Thornton to England--he was often obliged to go there on prolonged
business--but she never repeated the experiment.
While it was comparatively easy to play her difficult rôle in her home,
it was unbearable among her husband's people, who complicated matters by
assuming that she must, of necessity, be honoured and uplifted by the
alliance she had made.
After the return from England Thornton abandoned his puritanical life
and returned to the easy ways of his bachelor days.
Meredith knew perfectly well what was going on, but she had her own
income and lived her own detached and barren life, so she clung to what
seemed to her the last shred of duty she owed to her marriage ties--she
served in her husband's home as hostess, and by her mere presence she
avoided betraying him to the scorn of those who could not know all, and
so might not judge justly.
Then the crisis came that shocked Meredith into consciousness and forced
her to act, for the first time in her life, independently.
Thornton was about to go, again, to England. The day before he sailed he
came into his wife's sitting room, where she lay upon a couch, suffering
from a severe headache.
She never mentioned her pain or loneliness, and to Thornton's careless
glance she appeared as she always did--pale, cold, and self-centred.
"Well, I sail at noon to-morrow!" he said, seating himself astride a
chair, folding his arms and settling his chin on them.
"Yes? Is there anything particular that you want me to look after in
your absence?"
Meredith barely raised her eyes. Her pain was intense, but Thornton saw
only indifference and an unconscious insolence in the words, tone, and
languid glance.
Never before in his life had he been balked and defied and resented as
he was by the pretty creature before him. The devil rose in him--and
generally Thornton rode his devil with courage and control, but
suddenly it reared, and he was thrown!
"Do you know," he said--and he looked handsome and powerful in his white
clothes; he was splendidly correct in every detail--"there are times
when I think you forget that you are my wife."
"I try to." Like all quiet people Meredith could shatter one's poise at
times by her daring. She looked so small and defiant as she lay
there--so secure!
"Suppose I commanded you to come with me to-morrow? Made my rightful
demand after this hellish year--what would you do?"
Thornton's chin projected; his mouth smiled, not pleasantly, and his
eyes held Meredith's with a light that frightened her. She sat up.
"Of course I should refuse to go with you," she replied, "and I do not
acknowledge any rights of yours except those that I give you. You
apparently overlook the fact that--I make no claims."
"Claims?" Thornton laughed, and the sound had a dangerous note that
startled Meredith. "Claims? Good Lord! That's quaintly delicious. You
don't know men, my dear. It would be a deed of charity to--inform you.
Claims, indeed! You drove me, when you might have held me, and you talk
claims."
"I did not want to hold you--after I knew that you had never really been
mine." Meredith's words were shaken by an emotion beyond Thornton's
comprehension; they further aroused the brute in him.
"This comes of locks and bars!" he sneered, recalling Doris's
expression, "but, damn it all, unless you were more fool than most girls
you might have saved yourself."
To this Meredith made no reply, but she crouched on the couch and
gathered her knees in her arms as if clinging to the only support at her
disposal.
"See here!" Thornton bent forward and his eyes blazed. "I'm going to
give you a last chance. You'll come with me to-morrow and have done with
this infernal rot or I'll take the woman with me who has made life
possible, in the past, for you and me. What do you say?"
Horror and repulsion grew in Meredith's eyes. She went deadly white and
stretched her hands wide as if shielding herself from something
defiling.
"Go!" she gasped. "Go with her! By so doing I will not have to explain;
I will be free to return--to Doris."
"So!" And now Thornton got up and paced the floor; "having foresworn
every duty you owe me, having driven me to what you choose to call
wrong, you pack your nice, clean little soul in your bag and go back to
pose as--as--what in God's name will you pose as? You!"
Meredith shrank back. She was conscious now of her danger.
"Well, then!" Thornton came close and laughed down upon the shrinking
form--her terror further roused the brute in him; all that was decent
and fine in him--and both were there--fell into darkness; "you'll pay,
by heaven! before you go. You'll--"
"Leave me alone!" Meredith sprang to her feet. "How dare you?"
And again Thornton laughed.
"Dare? You--you little idiot! You'll come with me to-morrow--by God!"
* * * * *
But Meredith did not go with Thornton on the morrow, and if the other
took her place she did not seek to know.
The weeks and months dragged on and she was thankful for time to think
and plot. It took so much time for one who had never acted before. And
then--she knew the worst!
Thornton might return at any time and soon--her child would be born!
First terror, then a growing calmness, possessed Meredith. She forgot
Thornton in her planning, forgot her own misery and sense of wrong. She
did not hate her child as she might have--she learned in the end to
consider it as the one opportunity left to her of saving whatever was
good in her and Thornton. She clung to that good, she was just, at last,
to Thornton as well as herself. Both he and she were victims of
ignorance--the little coming child must be saved from that ignorance;
the father's and--yes, her own, for Meredith was convinced that she
would not live through her ordeal.
Thornton must not have the child--he was unfit for that sacred duty of
giving it the chance that had been denied the parents. The new life must
have its roots in cleaner and purer soil. Doris must save it. Doris!
Then Meredith wrote three notes. One was to Sister Angela:
You remember how, as a little girl, you let me come to you and tell
you things that I could not tell even to God? I am coming now,
Sister--will be there soon after this reaches you; and then--I will
tell you!
I want my child to be born with you and Doris near me. I have
written to Doris.
And whether I live or die, my husband must not have my child. You
must help me.
The second letter was longer, for it contained explanations and reasons.
These were stated baldly, briefly, but for that very quality they rang
luridly dramatic.
The third note was left on Thornton's desk and simply informed him that
she was going to Doris and would never return.