THE WHITE ROOK.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 6, 6 May 1893, Page 14

THE WHITE ROOK.

■ (From Harper’s Weekly.)' Chapter IY. Bessie Willoughby was what young ,-womeß of a certain stamp call “too sweet for anything.” She was not made of putty. Far from it. But her first thought was to try to make those about her happy, and this was so obvious and so unaffected as to be a constant sunshine, a perpetual charm. . She was, as we have said, a humble teacher in a public school. But her ■work, exacting as it was, did not end there. Mrs Willoughby was not strong, and the work of their little flat of three rooms, in default of a •servant, fell chiefly on her daughter. She did this, and, in truth, all that fell to her lot, with uniform cheerfulness. You see, she was one who, asking herself always if this or that ' was right, took pleasure iu doing it because it was right. Habit is strong, even in such things. He or she who puts duty after inclination easily gets confirmed in the evil way, which may slip, with fatal facility, into the broad road that leads to destruction.

Like Rosalind, this young person was just as high as her lover’s heart. She had chestnut hail - , the colour of Tom Dale’s ; so here, at least, love’s delight in joining contrasts had no part. But her eyes were hazel against his blue ones. She had a Cupid’s bow of a mouth, but it was not too small. A voice full of melody showed a good ear, and she played and sang with strength and feeling. “ You see, Tom,” she said, “ I might give lessons, but I’d rather be a public servant than a private one.” Dale, who adored her, wanted his idol to be a servant to neither; but his plans in that wise he kept, for the nonce, to himself. This evening he did not ask her to play or sing, which was unusual; but he wanted to talk of one he had been with that day: —Mr Jason Willoughby. So while Mrs Willoughby—mild, low-voiced, Quakerish in dress, and her daughter’s own daughter for gentle judgments mnd kindly actions knitted, and Ressie checked off exercises, Dale told something of his visit, and more of which it suggested. “ The more I see of your uncle,” he said, “ the more I think he has been wickedly slandered.” “ You have heard more of that ?” asked the widow sorrowfully. “ More ? Why, it is in the air. It is everywhere. In Wall street, in public resorts, even in street cars, one hears the same stories.” “ People must be very wicked,” said Bessie, “ to repeat them.”

“ The trouble is,” continued Bale, “ you can’t trace them. Each one you ask has heard it from somebody else. 2STow one thing, now another. He came by his money dishonestly. He has illused women-. He has been unfaithful to his friends. He has outraged the nearest and dearest ties. This is what is said. Try „and fix the saying definitely on any one person, and you fail.” “We have seen very little of my uncle,” observed Bessie thoughtfully. “ But he has been very good to us.” A year before, it had come to Willoughby’s ears that Mrs Willoughby had been ill, and that the mother and daughter were having - a hard struggle. • After that a cheque came to them monthly from Messrs Mote and Beem. It was but for SSO in each case. Bat these grateful women did not think of contrasting it 'with the thousands that by common report were lavished on Imogene Gray. Thomas Dale did not answer this, but presently resumed the current of his own thoughts. “It must be,” he declared, “ that some one full of hate and persistent ingenuity has tried for years to lie away your uncle’s good name.”

“Do you suppose,” inquired the widow, “ that he knows of it ?”

“ I cannot think so. It seems incredible that a man should be so vilely maligned and take no step in selfdefence. But my point is the utter antagonism between the personality of the man —when you get at it, which isn’t easy —and the charges against him.”

“ You believe, then,” said Bessie,” that my uncle is not bad, but goodP” “ Implicitly. A man who talks as he does, having no conceivable motive for deluding a person so obscure and unimportant as myself, cannot be what he has been said to be. If he knows of it, he may be blameworthy • for a man cannot be justified in putting himself on a pinacle and looking down always with speechless contempt upon the judgments of his fellow-men. I mean he owes it to his kindred, to the name he leaves to them, to set things right.” “ Perhaps,” said Mrs Willoughby, slowly, “he yet means to do so.” “Perhaps,” returned Dale. “Now,” he went on, “ I don’t depend on talk alone or on my own fallible discernment. You both know what a fine chess-player Mr Willoughby is. Now I go among the chess clubs occasionally, and it was at the Manhattan that I laeard this anecdote. Your uncle was crossing Madison Square one bitterly cold winter evening when he was suddenly confronted by a man who had seen better days, and was long a player of celebrity. ‘ Wil-

lough by,* he cried, ‘I am freezing, starving; lend me five dollars, and I promise yon, upon my word of honour, that I will never repay you.’ The touch of humour was thoroughly characteristic, of the poor fellow, and so, instantly recognisable by those who had known him and heard of it. Your uncle’s response was instant. He took off the cloak he wore, thrust it upon the suppliant, put a ten-dollar bill in his hand, and strode away in the darkness. This was told to me by that suppliant himself in one of the intervals of sobriety, -which, to the grief of his friends —for he had many estimable qualities-—were long so infrequent.” “ Your moral,” replied Bessie, “is that a man who does this kind of good thing’ is not the man to do the other kind of bad things.” “ Precisely. What he did in this case, not meaning it to be known, it is fair to think he has done in others.; and each of these would furnish an additional exculpatory witness.”

It was clear that Dale’s mind was biassed in favour of the accused man, who, after all, died soon after the conversation—died, as he had lived, without opening his lips. But on this point Dale kept back some of the reasons for such a bias. His integrity was as limpid and unbending as that of his sweetheart, and so, although Willoughby had not imposed a pledge of secrecy concerning some things he had said to Dale, he had distinctly implied that he spoke in confidence. The young man respected this confidence both while Willoughby lived and after his death, but he could not forget what had been impressed upon his mind. The old man, to be plain, had put to him numberless questions about Bessie and her mother, their pursuits, circumstances, and characters. He had gone afterwards to their home on several occasions, once when Dale himself was there. But neither man made allusion to the talk about the Willoughbys that had passed between them. And when Willoughby went to his grave, that talk, for aught that seemed to have flown from it, might just as well have never been held. {To he continued.)