Hidden Creek

Hidden Creek

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Hidden Creek, by Katharine Newlin
Burt
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Title: Hidden Creek
Author: Katharine Newlin Burt
Release Date: February 7, 2004 [eBook #10978]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN
CREEK***
E-text prepared by Rick Niles, Mary Meehan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

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.

CHAPTER II
SYLVESTER HUDSON COMES FOR HIS PICTURE
Back of his sallow, lantern-jawed face, Sylvester Hudson hid
successfully, though without intention, all that was in him whether of
good or ill. Certainly he did not look his history. He was
stoop-shouldered, pensive-eyed, with long hands on which he was
always turning and twisting a big emerald. He dressed quietly, almost
correctly, but there was always something a little wrong in the color or

pattern of his tie, and he