A Wife for a Day; Or, THE FINGER OF FATE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 44, 21 February 1905, Page 6

A Wife for a Day; Or, THE FINGER OF FATE.

CHAPTER XIV. jIIK FINGER OF FATE. The muttered words came strangely to Esther Allan"s ears, uttered in the low. monotonous tones of a sleeper speaking in a dream, so law that, they •were only faintly audible in the stillness. "The man who met ns in California— tho gentleman -who gave up his room to us at the inn—that he should be coming into my life again after more than twenty years !"

The slowly moving figure was coming nearer to Ksther Allan, so silently, except for the tinkling of the bunch of keys hanging at her waist, that she might have been a spirit, not a living being, as she advanced through the chequered moonlight on the door.

Mrs Carturet was'walking straight toward the portrait of husband's brother Gordon. The faco in the painting ■was in shadow; only the black-lettered name beneath stood boldly out.

The moonlight fell on the sleepwalker's face, making it ghastly. Esther Al3an's eyes were bent on it, held riveted hv a shuddering fascination. The moving, unconscious figure seemed to lend an added note of mystery and dreadITbe staring eyes, the whispering lips, the deathlike pallor that the cold, wan Jight accentuated—all these rocrg-ed into that mysterious, overmastering awe that surrounds a sleepwalker like an atmosphere. Sleep is so like death that •nc who moves and speaks uneonsoionsly Sn a dr*am might seem a dead person galvanised into a mocking semblanre of life.

Esther M.ood motionless, seeming .scarcely to breathe, hor eyes following Mrs Cartaret. Every nervtv in her body felt straitwd to the. breaking point. She ■would have liked to fly, but this awful fascination had bound chains about her feet.

The sleeping woman paused in front mi GoTtlon Cartaxet's portrait.

"Gordon," came the low, monotonous tones, "I loved you once, and you taught mc "to hate you. How pitiless you were to stab whose love was all yours with those cruel contemptuous words! Can you wonder that- yo\i changed ray love into hate? Xo, not that. My love was too deep for my bitterness to kill. They lived, side by side in mc, hate and love —so strange a thing is a woman's heart! I loved you even while I planned my revenge,. GotHon."

■Low-spoken as the words were, to 'Esther Allan's excited brain they seemed to fill the recesses of darkness with n murmur of ceaseless whisperings, as though sounds oould not die b?re, but that the frozen air imprisoned them before they could escape, into silence. The face , on the painted canvas looked down. as if listening to this woman of strange memories, whom it had known before a disappointed Jove had embittered and irarped her whole natnre.

"I said to myself, Gordon, oh. so long ago, when you flung my love away: 'My revenge shall be to mc what your love might have been—something to hug in my lonely heart and live for!' Fool, fool not to know tliat revenge only strikes Itaek at one's self."

The voice was raised now. The words ■were a wild cry, torn from the deeps of a woman's agony and remorse.

"So iong ago, and never to have known a moment's peace since Uren! Never to know when 1 rose in the morning wbctner by night the truth might not have come out, to strike mo down!"

A deep, sobbing moan broke from the sleeping woman's lips, and the words came faster, quivering with their intensity of emotion:

"Though so many years -went by, with no breath of suspicion stirred, that- a.t last my fears were lulled to sleep; they never left me—they only slept- The mention of a name would waken them. Oh, God, to have been haunted thus! And to-day to hear that the man who encountered us in California remembers that meeting in the past —remembers mc after more than twenty years! Gordon, this is all my revenge has brought mc!" JFor a moment she stood gazJDg up at the painted, seemingly listening face a-s though waiting for an answer.

Those who knew the frigid, impaseire mistress of Edgemere Towers wonld hardly have recognised her could they have seen her now, with the strangely limited look that the fears which had followed her into her dreams had stamped on her face.

She moved slowly away from the portrait. For a second she paused in the shadow east by the intervening wn.ll between two of the long windows. It wae ]ike a symbol of the shadow that always fell npon her blackly when she had crossed tfb* threshold of Towers. c

"Does this man suspect anything? ■What can he prove?"' she. whispered feverishly to herself. It was the. last thought that had been in her mind before she Ml into her troubled sleep; it was the dominant thought that coloured oilier dreams.

Then, na if impelled by some new inspiration, the sleeping woman moved across the hall. The long, slanting gleam of moonlight, broken by the shadows of th-e branches of trees without, showed a massive old bureau of timedarkened oak; fantastic scrollwork of brass decorated each keyhole; in Ihe quivering moonlight the gleaming arabesques leaped out almost like living writhing things against the dark background.

Still muttering to herself. Mrs Cartaret walked slowly to the bureau and searched among the. keys at her waist. She picked out a key without hesitation, unlocked the flap, which, when down, formed a writing tabk and disclosed a nest of several tiny drawers.

By EMMA G. WELDON, Author of "Love and Diplomacy," "Genevieve's Triumph," "A Strange Bridal," "Friends and Rivals,*' "Cupid' 9 Dilemma," etc., etc.

A moment's hesitation, and Esther Allan, summoning her courage, nerved herself to steal across the hall after the sleeping woman. An all-mastering eagerness to discover what Mrs. Cartaret was looking for iv the trareau plucked the heart out of the nameless, shrinking dread that had swept over her at the sight of the sleepwalker.

What if she were on the brink of the discovery that she had come to Edgemerc Towers "to seek?

She crept on tiptoe to Mrs. Cartaret's elbow. Her eyes fell on something lying outstretched on the flnp of the bureau.

It was a map of California which Mrs. Cartaret's hurried fingers had unfolded.

A narrow bar of moonlight, tinged by the red sections of glass in the window, where the family's arms were emblazoned, threw its sinister stain of colour on the time-yel'owed map, ami on the fnce of the woman who scanned it fevoriahlv.

Her forefinger fell on the name of ;i city. It was San i'rancisco. Slowly tho linger traced a route on the map, as though the dreamer were mentally following the wandering line of an old journey, pausing every now and again at tho name of some town or junction, as if these indicated the places she had stopped at.

Finally from Los Angeles it went away from the line of railway, across country —Esther Allan was watching eagerly— the white finger traced a course, went still further, then the strange Finger of Fate stopped.

Where it paused no name was marked on the map, as though the place in fch<? sleeping woman's thoughts might be too insignificant for mention. But the whispering , Zips muttered: •'Prescott.' ,

The pointing finger stationary. Had Preseott been the end of that jonrney in the ojtlen time ?

"Preseott!" Esther Allan repeated to herself, ' ; I shall remember."

The finger had stopped dead, but t.h; train of thought continued in the slesper's mind:

"Evrn if the tnau who met us at the inn suspected anything, what could he prove after all these years?" Mrs. Cartaret asked in a hoarse whisper. "Th«* man and womau who kept the inn were old people; they must have died lon«» since. The minister of the. place, the doctor—they were elderly men twenty years and more ago; they must he dead now, or past remembering' anything with certainty. There is nothing to fear. Mtuiy footsteps have trampled over the track in these long years—have surely obliterated it! Nothing to fear; the secret is safe!" Her voice died away, but the waiting echoes in the gallery seized the last word —seemed to repeat it in every corner of the vast hall with a mocking intonation. "And I have kept nothing that could afford a. cluo. Stay! That lpt.tfr from the woman—l should have destroyed that long ago."

She took up the bunch of keys and fum bled feverishly among them.

"I must destroy that letter! Even hit! den away here, it is not safe to keep it.'"

Mrs. Cartaret had selected a key, and, watching with intense eagerness. Esther Allan noticed the quaint scroll pattern of the handle. To which of those many tiny drawers, each with a lode, did that key blong? She rested the brass candlestick, which was heavily weighted at the base, silently on a corner of the open flap of the escritoire as she leaned forward to obtain a closer view.

"The letter must be. destroyed—the only shred of proof!" the whispering lips muttered.

Mrs. Cartaret steed with her evrs wanning the double line of drawers

though in momentary uncertainty; thou she lifted her hand, abont to put the key into the lock oi one of the drawers.

Kstlier Allan's eyes —all the eyes of ail the portraits in the shadowy gallery— seemed tr> be waiting intently to se" which drawer out of the many that curiously shaped key would fit.

Mrs. Cartaret paused. The habit of rigid, watchful secrecy that had grown upon her in the long years of guarding the secret at which the dreaming brain and lips had hinted as she stood before Gordon Cartaret's portrait seemed to be a faculty that did not desert her, even in her sleep.

She turned quickly round, as though to make sure that she. was noT, 6bserved. and startled Esther by the -unexpected suddenness of the movement. The sir' started back, sweeping the heavy candlestick on to the floor.

It fell with a crash that rang and rang again through the echoing stillness. The bunch of keys dropped to her side from the startled sleep-walker's hand, andj with a wild cry, Mrs. Cartaret awoke.

The sudden discharge of a gnn close by her could not have come with a

greater shock to Esther Allan than this awfn! cry ringing, through the slumbering house, and the sight of the terrified, bewildered look in tfce awakened sleeper's face as .she starrd round wildly.

•"Hush!" cried the girl to the hysterical woman, laying , an insistent hand on her arm. "Hush! There i 3 nothing to fear. You have been dreaming, and you walked in your sleep, that is all. There is nothing to fear.'" Bat, despite her-own words of assurance, the girl was fighting with her ,own unreasoning fears, with the mad impulse that vibrated along every shaken nerve to scream, too, and fly. "You arc quite safe. Let mc take yon back to your room."'

The low, hurried voice was not without its soothing effect on Mrs. Cartaret. Her cry dwindled into n moan. She stood shaking all over. She was incapable of speaking or walking. She clutched Esther Allan's arm for support.

Away in the other wing could be heard the fnint sound of opening doors. The cry must have aroused some of the other inmates of the house. .

"Come, let mc take you to your room. Can you walk now?" asked Esther.

But Mis. Cartaret seemed scarcely to hear. As she slowly recovered her selfcontrol by a resolute exercise of her will, her eyes had wandered to the open bureau., to the map of California lying there.

A aew fit of trembling seized her. Tie shaking fingers tightened in a grip on Esther's arm; fear was in her eyes.

"Have—have I been speaking in my sleep? What did I say?" she cried, searching Esthers face with wild eyes. "What have you: heard?" The other met the challenge of her eyes unshrinkingly. , "You have been mattering to yonnelf all .toe time that I followed you," sbe said riiwV,

"Ton followed mc? Then you heard mc leave my room, and suspected I was walking in my sleep? But -what did I say? ,, the white-faced woman feverishly demanded. "Wild, meaningless nonsense, of course. But did j'ou hear anything —anything intelligible?"

'•'You muttered without intermission, and much of what you were saying I could not hear. You awoke before you had said anything intelligible," ans-vver-ed Esther Allan.

Her eyes had wandered to the bunch of keys hanging by Mrs. Cartaret's side. The moonligdt glittered on them.

Esther's eyes had singled out one kej with a curiously designed bundle.

Though Mrs. Cartaret ?. wild ravings had been unintelligible, perhaps that key held the clue to their'meaning.

(To be continuea daily.)