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Place Beyond The Winds

<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> The week of recuperation Doctor Hapgood recommended was one of prolonged torture to Priscilla Glenn. Thinking of it afterward, she realized that it was the Gethsemane of her life—the hour when, forsaken by all, she fought her bitter fight. The drift of the ages confronted her. Her own insignificance, her humbleness, accentuated and betrayed her. Who would listen? How dared she speak! Who would heed her? One, and one only. Margaret Moffatt! From her Priscilla shrank and hid until she could gain courage to go and—by saving her, kill her! Yes, it meant that. The killing of the beautiful All Woman, as Travers had called her. After the telling there would be only the shadow of the splendid creature that God had meant to be so happy, if only the wrong of the world had not come between! There were moments when, worn by struggle and wakeful nights, Priscilla felt incapable of sane thought. Why should she interfere, she asked herself. Professional silence was her only course. And—there was the chance—the chance! Against it stood, pleading, Margaret's radiant love and Huntter's strength and devotion. Who could blame her if she—forgot? But oh! how they would curse her if she spoke! They might not believe; they might ruin her! Then faith laid its commanding touch upon her spirit. It had been given her to know a woman who, for high principles and all the sacred future, was prepared to sacrifice her love if needs must be! They two, Margaret of the high-soul, and she, Priscilla Glenn of the understanding devotion, seemed to stand apart and alone, each, in her way, called upon to testify and act. "It must be done!" moaned Priscilla; "she must know and—decide! But how? how?" John Boswell and Master Farwell were gone to the In-Place. The sanctuary overlooking the river was closed. There was no one, no place, to which Priscilla could go for comfort and advice, and her secret and her duty left her no peace or rest. She had taken a tiny suite in a family hotel. The rooms had the comfort needed for her physical wants, but she tossed on the bed nights and slept brokenly. She ate poorly and grew very thin, very pale. She walked, days, until her body cried out for mercy. She cancelled her engagement, for she was unfitted for service, and intuitively she knew that, for her, a great change was near. When she was weak from weariness and lonely to the verge of exhaustion, she thought of Kenmore—not Travers—with positive yearning. The woman of her, madly defending, or about to defend, woman, excluded even her own love and her own man. It was sex against sex; the world's injustice against all that woman held sacred! If Margaret were to be sacrificed, so was she, for she blindly felt that Travers would not uphold her! How could he when tradition held him captive? How could he when his oath bound him like a slave? Doctor Hapgood had done his part, had spoken his word—to man! But that was not enough. Man had flaunted it, was willing to take—the chance without giving the woman intelligent choice. Oh! it was cruel, it was unjust, and it must be defied. She and Margaret must stand side by side, or life never again would taste sweet and pure! Priscilla had not heard from Travers in ten days, and this added to her sense of desolation. Then, one evening, coming in from a long tramp in the park, snow covered and bedraggled, she faced him in her own little parlour! "My blessed child!" cried he, rushing toward her. "What have you been doing to yourself?" She was in his arms; his hands were taking off her snow-wet coat and hat. He was whispering to her his love and gladness while he placed her in a chair and lighted the tiny gas log in the grate. "It's a wicked shame!" he said laughingly; "but it will have to do. Now then, confess!" "Oh! I have longed so for you! I have been—mad!" Priscilla tried to smile, but collapsed miserably. "I don't believe you have eaten a morsel since——" Travers glared at her ferociously. "Since I—I was in Switzerland." The sob aroused Travers to the girl's condition. "You poor little tyke!" he said. "Now lean back and do as you're told. I'm going to ring for food. Just plain, homely food. I'm as hungry as a bear myself. I came to you from the vessel. I sent mother home in a cab. I had to see you. We'll eat—play; and then, my precious one, we'll talk business." "How I have wanted you! needed you!" Again the pitiful wail. "Now behave, child! When the waiter comes we must be as staid as Darby and Joan. You poor little girl! Heavens! how big your eyes are, and how frightened! Come in! Yes. This is the order; serve it here." The waiter took the order wrapped in a good-sized bill, and departed on willing feet. "Your hair is about all that's familiar; longing for me couldn't take the shine from that!" Travers kissed it. "I see my next case," he laughed. "To get you in shape will be quite an achievement. We both need—play. We thrive on that." "Yes, my dear, my dear; but I have forgotten how!" "Nonsense! Here's the food. Put the table near the grate"—this to the man—"things smoking hot; that's good. The wine, please. Thanks! Miss Glynn, to your health!" How Travers managed it no one could tell, but his own unfettered joy drove doubt and care from the little room. Priscilla, warmed and comforted, laughed and responded, and the meal was a merry one. But it was over at last, and the grim spectre stalked once more. Travers noticed the haunted look in the eyes following his every movement, and took warning. Something was seriously wrong, that was evident; but he had boundless faith in his love and power to drive the cloud away. After the room was cleared of dishes and the grateful waiter, Travers attacked the shadow at once. He drew a stool to Priscilla's chair and flung his long body beside her. "Now," he said, with wonderful tenderness, "let me begin my life work at once, my darling. You are troubled; I am here to bear it all—for you!" "Oh! Will you bear—half, dear heart?" "Yes, and that is better. We need not waste words, my tired little girl. Out with the worst and then—you and I are going to—my mother!" "Your—mother?" "My mother! God bless her! You know she came near slipping away. She will need and love you more than ever." "Oh! how good it sounds! Mother! Oh, my love, my love! I've had so little and I've wanted so much! Your mother!" "She'll be yours, too, Priscilla. But hurry, child! Just the bare structure; my love will fill in the rest." "Do not look up at me, dear man! So, let me rest my face on your head. Can you hear me—if I whisper?" "Yes." "It's about Margaret—Margaret Moffatt." "The All Woman, the happiest creature, next to what you're going to be, in all God's world?" "No!" "No? Priscilla, what do you mean?" "Do not move. Please do not look up. She is—engaged to—to Clyde Huntter!" "Well?" "I did not know; she never mentioned his name. While we played, names did not matter—his, mine, no one's." An hysterical gasp caused Travers to start. "No, please keep your face turned. I must tell you in my way. I have just taken care of—Mr. Huntter. He is not—fit to marry any woman—he cannot marry—Margaret! Doctor Hapgood told him, but—he—means to marry! She came to see him; she did not see me; she does not know; but she must know!" fiercely; "she must know! That is the one thing above all else that would matter to her; she told me so! She does not live for the—the now; she was made for—for bigger things!" "My God!" Travers was on his feet, and he dragged Priscilla with him. He held her close by her wrists and searched her white, agonized face. Truth and stern purpose were blazoned on it. She had never looked so beautiful, so noble, or so—menacing. "You heard Doctor Hapgood say that?" "I did." "In your presence?" "No." Then she described the little scene graphically. "But Ledyard——" Then he paused. Ledyard's confidence must be sacred to him. "And Huntter—Huntter knows that you know; does he know that you are Margaret's friend?" "Yes." "And—he trusts you?" "He thinks I do not count, but I do—with Margaret." "Priscilla, this is no work for you, poor child!" "It is—hers—and mine, and God's!" determinedly. "Darling, you are overwrought. You must trust me. You know what I think of such things; you can safely leave this to me. Ledyard is Huntter's physician. Why he called Hapgood in, I do not know. I will go to Ledyard. Can you not see—that they would not believe—you?" "Margaret will!" "But her father! You do not understand, my precious. You dear, little, unworldly soul! Margaret Moffatt's marriage means a ninth wonder. Any meddling with that would have to be sifted to the dregs. And when they reached you, my own girl, they would grind you to atoms!" "Not—Margaret!" Priscilla drew herself away from the straining hands. She was quite calm now and terribly earnest. "When all's told, it is Margaret and I—and God!" "No. There are others, and other things. All the world's forces are against you." "No, they are not! They are turning with me. I feel them; I feel them. I am not afraid." Then she took command, while Travers stood amazed. She put her hands on his shoulders and held him so before the bar of her crude, woman-judgment. "Answer me, my beloved! You believe—what I have told you?" "I do." "You know Doctor Hapgood will do no more?" "He—cannot." "If you go to Doctor Ledyard—and he knows and believes—what will he do?" "He has been Huntter's physician for years. If he has been mistaken, he will go to Huntter." "Go to—Huntter! And what then? Suppose Mr. Huntter—still takes the chance?" "Ledyard will—he will forbid it!" "And what good will that do?" A pitiful bitterness crept into Priscilla's voice; her lips quivered. "It is all Huntter! Huntter! All men! men! and there stands my dear—alone! No one goes to her to let—her choose; no one but me! Don't you see what I mean? Oh! my love, my love! My good, good man, can you leave her there in ignorance, all of you? Through the ages she has not had her say—about the chance, and that is why——" Priscilla paused, choked by rising passion. "Little girl, listen! What do you mean?" Travers was genuinely alarmed and anxious. "I mean"—the white, set face looked like an avenger's, not a passionately loving woman's—"I mean—that because women have never had an opportunity to know and to choose, you and I, and all people like us, stand helpless with our own great heaven-sent love at peril!" "At peril! Oh, my dear girl!" "Yes, at peril. We do not know what to do, where to turn. You see the great injustice clearly as I do; but you—all men have tried to right it by themselves, in their way, while all women, through all the ages, have stood aside and tried to think they were doing God's will when they accepted—your best; your half best! Now, oh! now something—I think it is God calling loud to them—is waking them up. They know—you cannot do this thing alone; it is their duty, too—they must help you, for, oh!"—Priscilla leaned toward him with tear-blinded eyes and pleading hands—"For the sake of the—the little children of the world. Oh! men are fathers, good fathers, but they have forgotten the part mothers must take! We women cannot leave it all to you. It is wicked, wicked for women to try! There is something mightier than our love—we are learning that!" Travers took her in his arms. She was weeping miserably. His heart yearned over her, for he feared she was feeling, as women sometimes did, the awful weight of injustice men had unconsciously, often in deepest love, laid upon them. "Priscilla, you trust me; trust my love?" "Yes." "You believe me when I say that I see this—as you do—but that we only differ as to methods?" "I—I hope I see that and believe it." "Then"—and here Travers did his poor, blind part to lay another straw upon the drift of burden—"leave this—to me. I know better than you do the end of any such mad course as you, in your affection and sense of wrong, might take. Little girl, let me try to show you. Suppose you went to Margaret Moffatt. You know her proud, sensitive nature; her loyalty and absolute frankness. After the shock and torture she would go to her father with the truth—for she would believe you—and announce her unwillingness—I am sure, even though her heart broke, she would do this—to marry Huntter. Then the matter would lie among men; men with the traditional viewpoint; men with much, much at stake. If Huntter has, as you say, taken the chance, in his love for Margaret—and he does love her, poor devil!—he will defend himself and his position." "How?" Priscilla was regaining her calm; she raised her head and faced Travers from the circle of his arms. "He will—send Moffatt to—to—Hapgood." "And he—what will he do?" "What does the priest do when the secrets of the confessional are attacked?" "Yes, yes—but then?" "Then—oh! my precious girl! Can you not see? You will come into focus. You, my love, my wife, but, nevertheless, a woman! a trained nurse! Hapgood would flay you alive, not because he has anything against you, but professional honour and discipline would be at stake. Between such a man as Hapgood and—Priscilla Glynn—oh! can you not see my dear, dear girl?" "Yes, I begin to see. And—I see I dare not trust even you!" The hard note in Priscilla's voice hurt Travers cruelly. "And—you, you and Doctor Ledyard—how would you stand?" she asked faintly. Travers held her at arm's length, and his face turned ashen gray. "Besides being men, we, too, are physicians!" he said. "Brutal as this sounds, it is truth!" The light burned dangerously in Priscilla's eyes. "When you are physicians—you are not men!" she panted, and suddenly, by a sharp stab of memory, Ledyard's words, back in the boyhood days at Kenmore, stung Travers. They were like an echo in his brain. "You—you of all women, cannot say that and mean it, my darling!" he cried, and tried to draw her to him. She resisted. "Our love, the one sacred thing of our very own," he pleaded, "is in peril." He saw it now. "Can you not see? Even if it is woman against woman, what right have you, Priscilla, to cloud and hurt our love?" "It is not—woman against woman—any more." The words came sweetly, almost joyously; something like renunciation tinged them. "It is woman for woman until men will take us by the hands, trustingly, faithfully, and work with us for what belongs equally to us both!" The radiance of the uplifted eyes frightened Travers. So might she look, he thought, had she passed through death and come out victorious. "Now, just for a time," the tense, thrilling voice went on, "she and I—women—must stand alone, and do our best as we see it. It is no good leaving it to—to any man. I see that! And our love, yours and mine! Oh! dear man of my heart, that can never die or be hurt. It is yours, mine! God gave it. God will not take it away. God will not take Margaret's either. She will understand, and, even alone, far, far from her love, she will be true, as I will be. That is what it means to us!" Then she paused and smiled at Travers as across a widening chasm. "I—am going now!" "Going? My beloved—going—where?" "To Margaret." "You—dare not! You shall not! You are—mad!" "No. I am—going, because, as things are, I cannot—trust you, even you! That is our penalty for the world's wrong. Long, long ago some one—oh! it was back in the days when I did not know what life meant—some one told me—never to let any one kill my ideal! No one ever has! It goes on before, leading and beckoning. I must follow. I do not know where he is, he who told me, but I know, as sure as I know that I shall always love you, that he is following his ideal, and living true and sure. Good night." Unable to think or act, Travers saw Priscilla take up her still damp coat and hat. Like a man in a nightmare he saw her turn a deadly white face upon him, and then the door closed and he was alone in her little room! He looked about, dazed and emotionless. He felt her in every touch of the lonely place; her books, her little pictures, herself! Some women are like that: they leave themselves in the presence of them they love—forever! "Kill her ideal!" The words rang in the empty corners of his heart and mind. "Somewhere he is following his ideal, and living true and sure!" Unconsciously, as men do in an hour of stress, Travers turned to action. Presently he found himself setting the tiny room in order as one does after a dear one has departed, or a spirit taken its flight. And while he moved about his reason was slowly readjusting itself, and he felt poignantly his impotency, his inability to use even his love for dominance. Being a just and honest man, he could not deny what Priscilla had said; truth rang in every sentence, chimed in with the minor notes of his life. No thought of following or staying her entered his mind; she had set about her business, woman's business, and, to the man's excited fancy, he seemed to see her pressing forward to the doing of that to which her soul called her. Then it was her beautiful shining hair he remembered, and his passion cried out for its own. "This comes," he fiercely cried, setting his teeth hard, "of our leaving them behind—our women! Through the ages their place has been beside us as we fought every foe of the race. We set them aside in our folly, and now"—he bowed his head upon his folded arms—"and now they are waking up and demanding only what is theirs!" A specimen of the new man was Travers, but inheritance, and Ledyard's teaching, had left their seal upon him. Bowed in Priscilla's little room he tried to see his way, but for a time he reasoned with Ledyard's words ringing in his ears. Had he not gone over this with his friend and partner many a time? "Yes, I know the cursed evil, know its power and danger! Yes, it threatens—the race, but it has its roots in the ages; it must be tackled cautiously. If we take the stand you suggest"—for Travers had put forth his violent, new opposition—"what will happen? The quacks and money-making sharks will get the upper hand. Do you think men would come to us if exposure faced them? It's the devil, my boy; but of the two evils this, God knows, is the least. We must do what we can; work for a scientific and moral redemption, but never play the game like fools."—"But the women," Travers had put in feverishly, "the women!"—"Spare me, boy! The women have clutched the heart of me—always. The women and the—the babies. I've used them to flay many men into remorse and better living. I am thinking of them, as God hears me, when I take the course I do!" And so Travers suffered and groaned in the small, deserted room. Above and beyond Ledyard's reasoning stood two desolate figures. They seemed to represent all women: his Priscilla and Margaret Moffatt! One, the crude child of nature with her gleam undimmed, leading her forth unhampered, though love and suffering blocked her way; the other, the daughter of ages of refinement and culture, who had heard the call of the future in her big woman-heart and could leave all else for the sake of the crown she might never wear, but which, with God's help, she would never defile. On, on, they two went before Travers's aching eyes. The way before them was shining, or was it the light of Priscilla's hair? They were leaving him, all men, in the dark! It was to seek the light, or——And then Travers got up and left the room with bowed head, like one turning his back upon the dead. He went to Ledyard at once, and found that cheerful gentleman awaiting him. "At last!" he cried. "Helen telephoned at seven. She thought you were on your way here. Did you get lost?" "Yes." "What's the matter, Dick? You look as if you had seen a ghost." "I have. An army of them." "Are you—ill?" "No." "Sit down, boy. Here, take a swallow of wine. You're used up. Now then!" "Doctor Ledyard, you were wrong—about Huntter! You remember what you told me, before Margaret Moffatt announced her engagement?" "Yes." Ledyard poured himself a glass of wine and walked to his chair across the room. "You were wrong; he is not what you think." "What do you mean? I haven't seen Huntter for—for a year or more. I took care, sacred care, though, to—to trace him from the time he first came to me, more than ten years ago. No straighter, more honourable man breathes than he. He was one of the victims of ignorance and crooked reasoning, but, thank God! he was spared the worst." "He was—not." "Dick, in God's name, what do you mean?" "Hapgood was called in. Huntter has not been in Bermuda; he has been right here in New York, under Hapgood's care." "And Hapgood—told you?" A purplish flush dyed Ledyard's face. "No." "Who, then? No sidetracking, Dick. Who?" "The—the nurse." "She-devil! Fell in love with her patient? I've struck that kind——" "Stop!" Both men were on their feet and glaring at each other. "You are speaking of my future—wife!" Ledyard loosened his collar and—laughed! "You're mad!" he said faintly, "or a damned fool!" "I'm neither. I am engaged to marry Priscilla Glynn; have been since the summer. I meant to tell you and mother to-night. I went to her from the vessel. Priscilla Glynn took care of Huntter without knowing of his connection in the Moffatt affair. Above all else in the world"—Travers's voice shook—"she adores Margaret Moffatt, knows her intimately, and wishes, blindly, to serve her as she understands her. There are such women, you know, and they are becoming more numerous. She has gone to—tell Margaret Moffatt." "Gone?" Ledyard reeled back a step. "And you permitted that?" "I had no choice. You do not know—my—my—well, Miss Glynn." "Not know her? The young fiend! Not know her? I remember her well. I might have known that no good could come from her. But—we can crush her, the young idiot! I do not envy you your fiancée, Dick." The telephone rang sharply and Ledyard took up the receiver with trembling hand. "It's your mother," he said; "you had better speak for yourself." "So you are there, Dick?" "Yes, mother." "There was a message just now. Such a peculiar one. I thought you had better have it at once. It was only this: 'She knows' and a 'good-bye.'" "Thanks, mother. I understand." Ledyard watched the unflinching face and noted the even voice. He was so near he had caught Helen's words. "And that is all, mother?" "All, dear." "I'll be home soon. Good night." Then he looked up at Ledyard, and the older man's face softened. "You'll find this sort of thing is a devil of a jigsaw. It cuts in all directions," he said, laying his hand on Travers's shoulder. "Yes, doesn't it? But, Doctor Ledyard, I want to tell you something. She's right—that girl of mine, and Margaret Moffatt, too—and you know it as well as I do! If I can, I'm going to have my love and my woman; but even if I go empty hearted to my grave I shall know—they are right! Besides being women, and our loves, they are human beings, and they are beginning to find it out. The way may lead through hell, but it ends in——" "What?" Ledyard breathed; his eyes fixed on the stern young face. "In understanding. It leads to the responsibility all women must take. Good night, old friend." <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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