NOVEL

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 392, 12 November 1903, Page 2

NOVEL

CHAPTER XX—(Coatinued.) That greasy ridiculous, parcel weighed upon Hebe's lassitude like an incubus. Is it not always the contemptible (rifles in life which harrass P She carried it for a few etet.B, Btipped irresolute, and looked round. Not a sod in sight; a deorway etcod euggeetfvely round. With guilty haste Hebe deposited her purchase—it might have been an infernal machine—and hurried on. The sausage man would have seen confirmation of his verdict

One more turning brought Hebe to her journey's goal There remained in her no power of thought or will; Bhe seemed to be obeying an impulse cufeide herself. Resistance, retreat,, lid not present themselves aa possibilities. She went up the familiar stone steps in a kind of waking swoon, dead to all sensation but that of nameless dread.

* Tfceae clumsy feet, still in the mire, Go crushing blossoms without end; The so hard, well-meaning hands we thrußt Among the heart-strings of a friend. ' The ill-timed truth wemightbave kept— Who knows how sfcarp it pierced stung? The word we had not sense to eay— Wtoknow j how gri a lly it had lung ? j Our faults no tenderness should ask, Tee chastening stripes must then all; Batfcr oar bluaderc —ob, in shame Before the eyes of heaven we falL * Earth bears no balsam for mis taken; Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool That did his will j but Thou, 0 Lord, Be mercif al to me, a fool!' The room was hushed; in silence rose The King, and sought his gardens cool, And walked apart, and murmured low, ' Be merciful to rse, a fool I*

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

LADY HOPECASTLE,

BY E. Reid-Matheson. r . COPYRIGHT

Bruchf eld, asked Hebe. «Not much,' she said; «I do not often play now.' • A pity !' said her master. ' Ton bad talent; my lord iB then not musical ?' 'No.' 'At least he will take you to the Saalbauthis evening; Fraulein Wietrowetz plays, and Signer Sordello singß; you ehould hear them.' ' Te3—we must go, I think. And now I must say good-bye. It has been a—a happy surprise to find you so much better.' ' . .. : «Ach, yes; and .your visit, Frulein—pardon, 'my lady makes rce better BtiH. You come .to. my 3 ck chamber like a vision of hope and spr eg.' Smiling, be spread his gaunt hands with an awkward ge ture of gallantry; the action became him inexpressibly ill. Hebe went up to Tante Minna. ' Adieu I' she said, holding out her hard. ' Your patient does you credit/ But Tante Minna, ignoring the hand, got up and made another of her bows. *Diegiiadi>ePrau is too amiable!' she said acidly. Brnchfeld held open the door. Oh, that plaid dressing-gown!—those slippers !' ' Adieu, • my lady, we have but one quarrel; it is that you did not bring my lord. Bat next time, nicht wahr ?' Hebe nodded up at him as she went out, and her lips smiled, but if life- had depended on speech just then, she must have died.

Lenchen was larking in the pissage below. • Nun, nicht wahr, he was pleased, der Armer? Anything makes a little change when one is ill.' Blindly down the stone Btepa ran Hebe; down the squalid deserted Marien-gasse, never seeing where she went, with but one const bus aim, one need—.to be alone, to hide her hurt from the worli'a eyes She harried on—there was need to hurry fir she could not trust hersslf—down the quiet sbady Neckar-straese, into the Bhtic -strasee, gay with shops and sunshine and people and the rattle of tr&ffi 5. At the bottom of the Bhein-strasse runs the railway, dividing town from country with an arbitrary iron hand; here, where the Rhein-strasse leaves off being a street it became a wide highway flanked with firs, the pet promenade of the good Langwe lenburger. Habe crossed the level crossing into this road—the ' Tanne' they call it. Today it was almost deserted j in sight only an elderly man cf valetudinarian air, crawling at balf-a-mile.an hour, and two ladies with a plethoric pug upon a string. None of them likely to take.the barest Sissing notice; yet Hebe fled them. n, to be alone—awaj out of sight and sound! Her brain Beamed bursting with the pressure of pent-up emotions. Sae turned out of the Tanne on to the Exeiztren-Platz—a great flat desert of a plain worn in patches of grass by the never-ceasing friction of hofc-nt iled feet at drill. Two or three 1 quads were dril ling now; to the sharp banting commands of aa many Unter-Offlzieren. Hebe had sees them like that scores of timer; they might have been drilling on ever since she left echool. Poor things! She had often felt sorry for them ia the hot weather, when the son beat upon them so pitilessly, for there was no shade the length and breath of the Excerairen Plaiz Skirting the great plain, which already wore a parched air.. Hebe stiusk into a grass-grown track runnißg eastwards through unenclosed woodland. Sse knew the place, it went by the name of «Schiefe Allee» or Crooked Lane; and was the happy hunting ground of Peneion MiUeniu.3 on summer evenings when the governess on daty could be coaxed so far Possibly tho lane had once been a hard road, but now it was grase-grown and scored by deep ruts; and knew no traffic

but an occasional timber-laden waggon. There was something a bit uncanny about the place, each side of the lana bordering pinewoods (where by day it was never more than twilight) a row of the sune trees grew—the same, yet not t&e same; because distorted in youth by man's hand into every conceivable variety of fixed contortion. A freak this cf a former Grand Duke, and hardly a happy one; for there was something pitfu' about theEe red-brown scaly gianta, distorted into angles and snake-like loops and curves, grovelling some of them to the very earth.

Alosg the 'Schiefe Alice/ almost at a rnn,Htbe pursued solitude; until turning, Bhe b&w that the ' Exceizi«n Piatz' and the roofa and spires beyond were carcelled by a bend ia lane. She stopped, listening intently. The Uater-Offizieren were cut of hearing, and the occasional far-eff shunting of ■ trains or the faint ehriok. of an engine but accentuated the lonelineae. A light wind soughed in the tree-tops; {here was a of bird?, fnd tie raor.otonoDjjß cuckoo, insultingly cheerful, J §ome, two hundred yardafl green lane curved itself JB jwaoßg the trfeea, Piaes kehjjHj

either side, and above, a narrowing strip of cloud-ridden blue sky. At another time Hebe would have been frightened to b9 alone in this .wild spot; for at eighteen one has hardly left Bed Eidinghood'a wolf and kindred nursery bugbears so far behind. Bat to-day neither wol7es nor robbers existed for Habe, she crept iato the dusk wood, and throwing herself down upon the brown I fine-needle carpet of countless seasons, J sobbed out her heart to the great Mother of ua all—sobbed and head pillowed upon arm, until for very

exhaustion she Btopped, suddenly as children do, and sat up. . I A great bewilderment 'was upon hor '• life seemed all at once topsy-turvey as in a bad dream where noth'Bg happens but the impossible. Could Bhe be dreaming r Would sbe presently wake in her own bsautiful bedroom at Boughton, to find the morning sun filtering in through the curtains, glinting oa the .pillow beside hera?

She drew a long sobbing breath, rose, | and clasped her hands, above her head. The sun was winking down at her through rifts in the dark crests of the pines, and under his beams the trees gave out a spice-like savour. From the far Bide of a rugged stem close by a squirrel peered down at her. with an air half waggish, half annoyed! and protested against the intrusion with fretful cooing. Jt was no dream—she was really here, in this wood. And the reason of it, oh misery! was no dream either. She Bank down again upon the pine-needles, and rocked herself to and fro, head between hands, trying to sort cu!; tbe chaos of her mind.

There was some torrible mistake. Wfcy had Lucy written those letters ? What had she meant ? Those allusions to Bruchfeld's failing health; his wan face and ho'low cough; the heart hunger in his eyes; those hints of a wasting passion, and early grave; the pervading gentle reproach between the lines— what did it all mean? Could ife—Hebe caught her breath hard—could it be a hoax ? Never! Lucy could never be so nicked, so heart ess, and if even she were capable of the incredible perfidy, what could be her motive P The thing was not possible; yet, what of facts P Hebe b&w herself again, standing awestruck on the threshold of that sick room, trembling at the near presence of death, and the meeting of eyes. But entering, she had seen—how the hot blood camo to her cheek at the remembrance—she had seen her hero rise to meet her, calmly pleased, matter-of-fact; her hero in a dingy old plaid dressing-gown and unspeakable tasselled smoking-cap; and, though sallow and unwholesome from a just-pa&t attack of jaundice, distinctly not contemplating an early grave on her account, or anyone's. Every sordid detail of that scene was burnt into Hebe's mind;, the mean chamber, with drab and bluejwallpaperin a diamond pattern, the unmistakable Bick-room atmosphere, the gruel basin and pewter spoon, the absence of any one thing that the eye might rest on with pleasure or oven resignation. And that terrible fat*vindictv»e-lo6king old woman Bruchfeld called Tantcheh, whose society and cooking he found so all-sufficing 1 It was all too dreadful. Live long as she might, she could never again know torture like the torture of that interview, the shock of what she saw; Bruchfeld's calm friendliness, his delight in her rank, and almost unctuous insistence upon her title, the dread lest her surging emotions should break bounds, What a dupe she had been! No, let her face facts, what a vain credulous fool! - Had not vanity been the. mainspring of the whole epieode P What sort of figure would she cut, returning home from this wild goose chase P Home P What was she thinking of ? That past terrible quarter of an hour, that lightning descent from-, the sublime to the ridiculous, had left her for the time crushed, stupefied, blind to the real issuea at stake. Honse! Now for the first time she grasped what this folly of hers meant. She was sot too joung to know tbat when married womeA run off to avowod lovers, they forfeit all that sort of thing. Ah, but this was different! Hor lover —no, BrucMeld—was'dying; that is she had thought so, or sho would never— —. It came upon her now with dumbfounderment that for the contigency of his recovery she had made no sort of mental provision. ' Dying! A likely story!' the world would say, grudging to abate one iota of the scandal.

A peeress—divorced in the first year of marriage, and still in her teers H< w piquant! Ah, well, let the world think what it liked; it conld not matter. There was only one thing now which mattered. If only Arthur would believe in her innocence! Yes, even if he would not take her back. It was not for that, but Bhe could not be*r he should think her ' wicked; it would break her heart for him to believe she nad been baes enough to marry him, loving another man better. But how could he help it ? Had she not told him with her own lipß ? The look in his eyes as she flung the words at him came bHck to her memory. She did not mean what she Baid, she never meant it; sba must have been mad just then. Arthur! Arthur! She stretched out her arms in passionate yearning; her eyes gushed out hot tears wrung from her inmost being. She had not always been good to Arthur, but he had spoiled her. She could see it now. Even then she had sometimes wondered at the way he bore with her whims and humours, and felt touched and made resolutions which were kept—until next time.

Yes, she had been spoiled; and now she had thrown away her life's happiness for a dream a fancy born of her perverse vanity, and fostered by those hateful grey letters.

Bruchfeld! Again she saw him—as nnheroic figure, in the dressing-gown and tawdry tasselled cap. She shuddered, tingling with ehame, and hid her eyes. The moment in which we realise that our ideal has beceme repulsive is a bitter one, Minute by minute the day slipped awoy, and still Hebe eat in the wood, nurdcg her misery to the maddening monotony of the cuckoo's call, the creating of pinestems, and the swish of their bre<zastirred top 3. (To be continued).