The Shield of Silence Part 2

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 h.e.l.lish 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, d.a.m.n 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d!"

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 G.o.d? 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.

CHAPTER II

"_Minds that sway the future like a tide._"

Sister Angela read her letter sitting before the fire in the living room at Ridge House.

She read it over and over and then, as was common with her, she clasped the cross that hung from her girdle--and opened her soul. She called it prayer. Meredith became personally near her--the written words had materialized her. With the clairvoyance that had been part of her equipment in dealing with people and events of the past, Angela began slowly to understand.

So actually was she possessed by reality that her face grew grim and deadly pale. She was a woman of experience in the worldly sense, but she was unyielding in her spiritual interpretation of moral codes. She felt the full weight of the tragedy that had overwhelmed a girl of Meredith Thornton's type. She had no inclination, nor was there time now, to consider Thornton's side of this terrible condition. She must act for Meredith and Meredith's child.

Folding the letter, she dropped it into her pocket and sent for Sister Janice, the housekeeper.

Angela gave silent thanks for Janice's temperament.

Janice was so cheerful as often to depress others; so grateful that she gloried in self-abnegation and had no curiosity outside a given command.

"The house must be got ready for visitors," Angela informed Janice. "Two former pupils--and one of them is ill." When she said this Angela paused. How did she know Meredith was ill?

"Shall I open the west wing?" asked Janice, alert as to her duties.

"Open everything. Have the place at its best; but I would like the younger sister, Mrs. Thornton, to have the chamber on the south, the guest chamber."

When Janice had departed, Sister Constance appeared.

In her early days Constance had been a famous nurse and for years afterward the head of a school for nurses. Her eyes brightened now as she listened to her superior. She had long chafed under the strain of inaction. She listened and nodded.

"Everything shall be done as you wish, Sister," she said at last, and Angela knew that it would be.

Lastly, old Jed was called from his outside duties and stood, battered hat in hand, to receive his commands. Jed was old and black and his wool was white as snow; his strong, perfect teeth glittered with gold fillings. How the old man had fallen to this vanity no one knew, but sooner or later all the money he made was converted into fillings.

"They do say," he once explained to Sister Angela, "that 'tain't all gold as glitters, but dis year yaller in my mouth, ma'am, is right sure gold an' it's like layin' up treasure in heaven, for no moth nor rust ain't ever going to distroy anythin' in my mouth. No, ma'am! No corruption, nuther."

Jed, listening to Sister Angela, now, was beaming and shining.