



Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.











  MANY KINGDOMS

  BY

  ELIZABETH JORDAN

  AUTHOR OF
  "May Iverson--Her Book"
  "Tales of the Cloister"
  "Tales of Destiny"
  Etc. Etc.



 ... _"The state of man,
  Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
  The nature of an insurrection."_

  --SHAKESPEARE.



  MCMVIII




  CONTENTS

  CHAP.

  I.    VARICK'S LADY O' DREAMS
  II.   THE EXORCISM OF LILY BELL
  III.  HER LAST DAY
  IV.   THE SIMPLE LIFE OF GENEVIEVE MAUD
  V.    HIS BOY
  VI.   THE COMMUNITY'S SUNBEAM
  VII.  IN MEMORY OF HANNAH'S LAUGH
  VIII. THE QUEST OF AUNT NANCY
  IX.   THE HENRY SMITHS' HONEYMOON
  X.    THE CASE OF KATRINA
  XI.   BART HARRINGTON, GENIUS




I

VARICK'S LADY O' DREAMS


Varick laid down the book with which he had beguiled an hour of the
night, turned off the electric light in the shaded globe that hung
above his head, pulled the sheets a little nearer his chin, reversed
his pillow that he might rest his cheek more gratefully on the cooler
linen, stretched, yawned, and composed himself to slumber with an
absolutely untroubled conscience.

He was an eminently practical and almost rudely healthy young man, with
an unreflecting belief in the existence of things he had seen, and
considerable doubt concerning those which he had not seen. In his heart
he regarded sentiment as the expression of a flabby nature in a feeble
body. Once or twice he had casually redressing-case, with its array of
silver toilet articles, the solid front of his chiffonnier, the carved
arms of his favorite lounging-chair, even the etchings and prints on
the walls. Suddenly, as he looked at these familiar objects, a light
haze fell over them, giving him for an instant the impression that a
gauze curtain had been dropped between them and his eyes. They slowly
melted away, and in their place he saw the streets of a tiny village in
some foreign country which he did not know. A moment later, in what
seemed at the time a perfectly natural transition from his bed in an
Adirondack club-house, he was walking up the streets of the little
town, in correct tourist attire, looking in vain for a familiar
landmark, and with a strange sinking of the heart. How he got there, or
why he was there, was equally incomprehensible to him. It was high noon
of a warm summer day, and the red roofs of the old buildings seemed to
glow in the heat. Before him, at the end of the street down which he
was walking, was a public square where marketing was going on in the
open. It was crowded with men and women in picturesque peasant costumes
he did not recognize, though he had travelled a great deal. As he drew
nearer he heard them speaking, but discovered that their tongue was as
unknown to him as their garb. He knew French, German, and Italian well;
he had, in addition, a smattering of Spanish, and was familiar with the
accents of Slavic tongues. But this babel that met his ears was
something new. Taken in connection with the rest of the experience, the
discovery sent a cold chill down the spinal column of Mr. Lawrence
Varick. For the first time in his debonair life he was afraid, and
admitted it inwardly, with a sudden whitening of the lips.

"It's so infernally queer," he told himself, uneasily. "If I could
remember how I got here, or if I knew anything about the place--"

"Have you classified them?" asked a voice at his elbow. It was
feminine, contralto, and exquisitely modulated. The words were English,
but spoken with a slight foreign accent. With a leap of the heart
Varick turned and looked at the speaker.

She was young, he saw at once--twenty-two, twenty-three, possibly
twenty-four. He inclined to the last theory as he observed her perfect
poise and self-possession. She was exquisitely dressed; he realized
that despite the dimness of masculine perception on such points, and,
much more clearly, saw that she was beautiful. She was small, and the
eyes she raised to his were large and