HIDDEN CREEK
BY KATHARINE NEWLIN BURT
AUTHOR OF "THE BRANDING IRON" AND "THE RED LADY"
1920
TO MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT WHO BLAZED THE TRAIL
CONTENTS
PART ONE: THE GOOD OLD WORLD
I. SHEILA'S LEGACY
II. SYLVESTER HUDSON COMES FOR HIS PICTURE
III. THE FINEST CITY IN THE WORLD
IV. MOONSHINE
V. INTERCESSION
VI. THE BAWLING-OUT
VII. DISH-WASHING
VIII. ARTISTS
IX. A SINGEING OF WINGS
X. THE BEACON LIGHT
XI. IN THE PUBLIC EYE
XII. HUDSON'S QUEEN
XIII. SYLVESTER CELEBRATES
XIV. THE LIGHT OF DAWN
XV. FLAMES
PART TWO: THE STARS
I. THE HILL
II. ADVENTURE
III. JOURNEY'S END
IV. BEASTS
V. NEIGHBOR NEIGHBOR
VI. A HISTORY AND A LETTER
VII. SANCTUARY
VIII. DESERTION
IX. WORK AND A SONG
X. WINTER
XI. THE PACK
XII. THE GOOD OLD WORLD AGAIN
XIII. LONELINESS
XIV. SHEILA AND THE STARS
HIDDEN CREEK
PART ONE
THE GOOD OLD WORLD
CHAPTER I
SHEILA'S LEGACY
Just before his death, Marcus Arundel, artist and father of Sheila,
bore witness to his faith in God and man. He had been lying apparently
unconscious, his slow, difficult breath drawn at longer and longer
intervals. Sheila was huddled on the floor beside his bed, her hand
pressing his urgently in the pitiful attempt, common to human love, to
hold back the resolute soul from the next step in its adventure. The
nurse, who came in by the day, had left a paper of instructions on the
table. Here a candle burned under a yellow shade, throwing a circle of
warm, unsteady light on the head of the girl, on the two hands, on the
rumpled coverlet, on the dying face. This circle of light seemed to
collect these things, to choose them, as though for the expression of
some meaning. It felt for them as an artist feels for his composition
and gave to them a symbolic value. The two hands were in the center of
the glow--the long, pale, slack one, the small, desperate, clinging
one. The conscious and the unconscious, life and death, humanity and
God--all that is mysterious and tragic seemed to find expression there
in the two hands.
So they had been for six hours, and it would soon be morning. The large,
bare room, however, was still possessed by night, and the city outside
was at its lowest ebb of life, almost soundless. Against the skylight the
winter stars seemed to be pressing; the sky was laid across the panes of
glass like a purple cloth in which sparks burned.
Suddenly and with strength Arundel sat up. Sheila rose with him, drawing
up his hand in hers to her heart.
"Keep looking at the stars, Sheila," he said with thrilling emphasis, and
widened his eyes at the visible host of them. Then he looked down at her;
his eyes shone as though they had caught a reflection from the myriad
lights. "It is a good old world," he said heartily in a warm and human
voice, and he smiled his smile of everyday good-fellowship.
Sheila thanked God for his return, and on the very instant he was gone.
He dropped back, and there were no more difficult breaths.
Sheila, alone there in the garret studio above the city, cried to her
father and shook him, till, in very terror of her own frenzy in the face
of his stillness, she grew calm and laid herself down beside him, put his
dead arm around her, nestled her head against his shoulder. She was
seventeen years old, left alone and penniless in the old world that he
had just pronounced so good. She lay there staring at the stars till they
faded, and the cold, clear eye of day looked down into the room.