Summary
Priscilla Glenn, a feral hymn of moss and moonlight, grows like a vine around the boot-heels of a tyrant father who sees only chattel where she sees cathedral groves. Her mother, a silent comrade in sorrow, teaches her that love can be smuggled like contraband between bruises. Into this green purgatory strides Anton Farwell, a schoolmaster with a death-mark on his conscience and Shakespeare in his satchel; he unlocks letters for the girl who once read the world in fern fronds. Summer brings the Travers entourage: a matriarch in widow’s black, her crippled son Dick whose twisted legs cantilever a soul tuned to Bach, and the surgeon-savior Dr. Leydward who promises to unbend the boy like a sapling staked too long. Between Dick’s violin and Priscilla’s whistle blooms a quiet rapture—until Jerry Jo, half-Native outcast with hunger where his heart should be, lures her to a hill-house library and leaves her reputation a smoldering rag. Banished by the patriarch, she flees with Farwell into exile, only to watch him dragged back toward the gallows of his past. Alone in the city’s iron lung, she becomes a nightingale of wards and alleyways, stitching broken bodies while hunting Joan Moss, the ghost who absolves or damns her beloved teacher. Years compress like petals in a book: Dick, now straight-limbed and saint-fired, reunites with her among the plague of bedsores and fever charts; Dr. Leydward’s fiancée Margaret preens for a wedding that Priscilla will detonate with truth. In a tenement fit for Dante, she discovers Joan expiring on a cot, learns that the crippled child is Margaret’s own stolen bastard, and trades the secret for Farwell’s freedom. Back she hikes to the “place beyond the wind,” a clearing where breath turns to crystal and memory to ice; her mother is bones, her father blind stone, the door slammed twice. Yet Dick follows, violin under chin, and plays a sarabande that melts the last glacier around her heart.
Synopsis
Priscilla Glenn is a product of the woods, a wild, impulsive, nature-loving child. Her father is her antithesis, seeing none of the beauties of nature, thinking women only creatures to be browbeaten. Between her mother and herself there existed a strong bond of love and understanding, understanding that they were companions in the same misery and unhappiness. Priscilla had to fight for an education. At last, through the efforts of Anton Farwell, the schoolmaster, Priscilla had the opportunity of beginning her education. For a rest there came to the spot Mrs. Travers and her crippled boy, Dick, and later a specialist, Dr. Leydward, who was to eventually straighten the crooked limbs of the boy. Priscilla and Dick met and a romance between the two was begun. Jerry Jo, a half-breed, coveted the girl, and lured her to a house on the hill where there was a library. Although the girl was as sweet and pure when she returned home the next day her father sent her from his roof. Priscilla went to her only friend, Anton Farwell, and together they started for a new country. For Farwell was hiding from the world. In the long ago he had loved Joan Moss, and for the love of her killed the brother of Dr. Leydward. Before Priscilla and Farwell had gone far he received word that he must choose the alternative of living buried in the woods or in prison. So Priscilla went on to find her way alone in the big city with the mission to look for Joan. Priscilla devoted her life to the care of the sick, and so once more she and Dick Travers met, and worked hand in hand for suffering humanity. It was thus that she knew Dr. Leydward and his daughter, Margaret, who was to wed Clyde Hunter. One day as Priscilla was strolling in the park she saw Jerry Jo, now a nondescript beggar. Towards him she bore no malice, but a strong desire to make life happier. On following Jerry Jo to the tenement room he called home, some of the inmates mistook her for an angel of mercy for a dying woman, who was none other than Joan. From her lips she learned that the crippled child belonged to the affianced of Margaret Leydward, and also secured Farwell's exoneration. She showed Leydward and Margaret the true type of the man the latter was about to marry. Then she wandered back to the "place beyond the wind" to find comfort and peace. She found that her mother had died and her father had been stricken blind and still refused to own her as his own flesh and blood, and a second time sent her from his home. And then, crushed and wounded, she again found solace in her old friend, Anton Farwell, who a short time previous had returned to his home. To Farwell she told of the finding of Joan, but left with him his ideal of her, of her trueness and worth of trust. Priscilla returned once more to her little sanctuary in the woods, where she had erected her own altar to her own God, and where, too, she first met Dick. And there he found her. For realizing his love for her, he had followed her to the "place beyond the wind" and for a second time, with his old violin he started a new spark in the life of tho one woman, the one whom he would cherish and love and protect as long as time went on.
