The Purple Heights

by Marie Conway Oemler

The red-haired lady who called herself Mrs. Riley—Riley had been her mother's name—had been, up to this time, an altogether satisfying guest, simple, friendly, with a sound and healthy appetite, and well deserving that praiseful "nice, common sort of a woman" bestowed upon her. Now, mysteriously, she changed. She wasn't less friendly, but her appetite was capricious and she would fall into reveries, sudden fits of gravity, sitting beside the window, staring somberly out at the waters. She would snatch up her hat and go out, get as far as the gate, and return to the house. Mrs. Thatcher heard her pacing up and down her room, when she should have been sound asleep. She would laugh, and then sigh upon the heels of it, break into fitful singing, and fall into sudden silence in the midst of her song.

"She's gettin' religion," the widow reflected. "The Spirit's workin' on her. 'T ain't nothin' I can do except pray for her." And the simple soul got on her knees and besought Heaven that the stranger under her roof might "escape whatever trouble 't is that's threatenin' her, O Lord, an' save her soul alive!"

Although the widow didn't know it, her guest had come to the dividing of the ways. She had come to this quiet place to find peace, to rest, to escape from the world for a breathing-space. And in this quiet place that which had missed her in the great outside world had come to her, the most tremendous of all powers had seized upon her. The situation was not without a sly and ironical humor.

She wondered what Marcia would say if she should write to her: "I have fallen in love at sight, hopelessly, irremediably, head over ears, with, a strange man who passed me on the shore. He wears gray tweeds. His name, I am told, is Johnston. That's all I know about him, except that I seem to have known him since the beginning of all things. He is as familiar to my heart as my blood is, and all he had to do to make me love him was to look at me. Yes! I love him as I could never love anybody but him. He's the one man."

She could fancy Marcia's astonishment, her shocked "Oh, but Anne, there's Berkeley Hayden!"

And indeed, there was Berkeley Hayden!

When Anne had determined to have her marriage to Peter Champneys annulled, Marcia had upheld her, though Jason hadn't liked it at all. If he hadn't exactly opposed her course, he had tried to dissuade her from it. But she had persisted, and as the case was simple and quite clear her freedom was a foregone conclusion, though there were, of course, the usual formalities, the usual wearisome delays.

She had closed the Champneys house, and gone to Marcia, who wanted her. Jason, too, had insisted that she should make her home with them for the time being. And then had come the war, and she and Marcia found themselves swept into the whirlpool of work it involved. But not even the tremendous news that filled all the newspapers had kept the Champneys romance from being featured. Her case received very much more notice than pleased her. She was weary of her own photographs, sick of the interest she aroused.

Hayden kept discreetly in the background. He behaved beautifully. But he knew that Anne was going to marry him. Jason and Marcia knew it. Anne herself knew it. Now that the war was on, a good many of his plans would have to be postponed, but when Anne had secured her freedom, and things had righted themselves, they two would take up life as he wished to live it. All the women of his family had occupied prominent social positions: his wife should surpass them all. She should be the acknowledged leader, the most brilliant figure of her day. Nothing less than this would satisfy him.

For all his esthetic tastes, Hayden was an immensely able and capable man of business. He had not the warmth of heart that at times obscured Jason Vandervelde's judgment, nor the touch of unworldliness that marked the behavior of the Champneys men. His intellect had a cold, clear brilliancy, diamond-bright, diamond-hard; to this he added tact, and the power of organizing and directing and of getting results. In certain crises such men are invaluable.