The Man Who Paid

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 309, 21 March 1928, Page 5

The Man Who Paid

* By

Pierre Costello

Author of “ A Sinner in Uriel,* f " Tainted Lives,” *• The Money Master,” Etc.. Etc.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS Chapter 1 to 111.—On a stormy February«fv.en^n& ’ am id the Black Mountains of Wales, a man, drenched to the skin, after more than two hours of steady climbing, finds hospitality in a cottage where an old man lives, with his daughter. John Venetian is a venerable, white-bearded old man, imbued with communistic and humanitarian ideas. These he has consistently taught ter his daughter, Grace, the heroine. The stranger is Norman Rivett. the hero, who has travelled in Africa, and has not been in England for nine years. Norman Rivett makes a quick wooing, and the couple are married exactly a week after her father’s death. Settling her father’s affairs, and being busy with her own nuptials, Grace has at last some breathing time when husband and wife reach Weaveham. Rivett engages a suite in the hotel A few days after, in the evening, Grace dresses for dinner and goes to the reading room. Coming out she encounters a dark-haired man who speaks to her, giving his name as Paul After some preliminary remarks this man informs her that her husband murdered his first wife ten years ago. CHAPTERS IV. to V.—Paul Dacre Grace Rivett details concerning the murder committed by her husband. Rive£t finds out that she knows about his past. Husband and wife are estranged. At the dinner given by the Gardentrees the hostess offers good advice to Grace. After breakfast next morning Norman comes in and says he has administered a good thrashing to Paul Dacre. He insists on her knowing the bare facts concerning the death of his first wife. They agree to be together as strangers. Later her husband tells her he has learnt that she was the woman who led on a certain man, named Frank Moody, and finally threw him over, on account of which treatment he committed suicide, CHAPTERS VI. to Vlll.—Norman and Grace Rivett discuss the Frank Moody affair. Grace does not defend herself. She allows her husband to think they are quits. Seven months later, in Paris, Norman tells Grace that Sulpice Abbey, which he had bought, has been burned to the ground. He is going back to Wales, to start rebuilding the abbey. His wife takes time to consider and then decides to go to Wales with her husband. At the hotel in Weaveham Grace goes ashopping. Returning in a laden taxi-cab she is assisted by the most beautiful young man she has ever seen. He introduces himself as Shean Glyn. He is anxious to meet her husband, as he thinks Norman Rivett might help him to find a job in Africa. The thought that when this young man emigrates she will see no more of him saddens Grace. CHAPTER IX.—Continued A GREAT GULF FIXED - “I like it,’* she said quietly. “I shall be all right. I do not want servants, or any other help.” "Can you cook?” he asked, with a touch of mockery. "Of course, I can.” "You had better go while thej'e’s time.”

“I wish to stay.” Her eyes met his with a steady challenge. He turned away without a word. In a week they were established, after a fashion. They had a cow, a couplo of goats, and some chickens. Joseph, the chaffeur, had knocked up temporary shelter for the beasts which was very necessary, as it poured with rain every day, and the wind was fierce and cold. Th e car was qqite useless, as the track through the valley was transformed into a river. More cheerless conditions could not bo imagined, nd yet Grace never complained. §>he was always evenly cheerful. She trudged miles across the mountains to fetch bread; she made butter, she milked the cow and fed the chickens; she built fires, and kept them stoked with the wood that Joseph cut down. Meat and bacon and tinned provisions came over the mountains on a pack mule. Vegetables they had none. Grace cooked plentiful meals, for he.r husband, and Joseph were as hungry as hunters. She made delicious cakes. She drew water from the well. She lived the life of any colonial settler’s wife. Each day Rivett asked her half derisively: “Can you stand it?” She answered that she was quite content. At the end of the week, he said to her again: “You’d better go, Grace. You look a wreck. This is too much for you.” “I don’t want to go,” she answered. “It’s a little tiring at first, but I’m getting used to it. It will be delightful •when the sun shines.” “It probably won’t,” he said roughly. “Looks like a wet season.” To her surprise, the day the architect and the head of the firm of contractors who were to rebuild the Abbey came, ther© was a procession of pack mules up the valley—the road being still impassable—and they brought on their backs an abundance of delicacies, all ready cooked, and wine and fruit, in fact, all that was required for a sumptuous repast. And attendants came with it to lay it and serve it.. But when the men had gone they reverted to their ordinary life, and it seemed to Grace that Rivett delighted in laying the hardest and roughest tasks on her shoulders. It was quite a new side of his character that he showed her. He was no longer thoughtful and considerate. Sometimes he was not even polite. She saw very little of him. Nearly all day he roamed about the ruins of the house, making rough plans of his own, about which he never consulted her. And often, when she sought her sleeping quarters, he was still tramping the hills among the scudding mists, or under the cold stars.

The Spartan simplicity of her former life stood her in good stead. She slept peacefully in her camp bed in the portion of the old barn boarded off for her use. She rose with the lark. •Her vigorous young muscles soon responded to the demands made upon them. All th© hard work of this eccentric life came easily to her. She would have been happy but for her mental unrest. She loved the free air of the hills, th© wild vistas of bare mountain tops, the soft spring of the turf under her feet, the glory of the autumn sky, when now and then the clouds lifted, and the sun shone. At the end of the week, Rivett went away for three days, and left her alone with Joseph. It was as if he wanted to try her to the utmost, almost as if lie sought some weakness in her, as if li© would have rejoiced, with a certain cruelty, if she had come to him and said she longed for the comforts of civilisation and must go. Joseph was a taciturn man of about fifty, short and stocky, with rough greyish hair, and a close-clipped red beard. Grace could not discover his feelings about her. Sometimes she thought he spied on her. He seemed always to be watching her. Even when Rivett was away he never attempted to relieve her of her more arduous tasks. Ho accepted the fact that sh© cooked for him with perfect equanimity. Once he told her, with an accusing look in his weatherdimmed grey eyes, that she had put too much salt into the soup. It was a fantastic existence, and to almost any other woman in the world it have been intolerable. When Rivett came back, he had several men with him, and he told her that they were going to start erecting -a camp for the workmen to live in about half a mile below the ruins. There were to be several huts, and a common kitchen, and a man and his wife would look after the men. As soon as the huts were ready, the workmen would come into residence and start on the demolishment of what was left of the Abbey prior to the rebuilding. The architect was hurrying on with his plans. Once more he asked her: “Before the winter sets in, don’t you want to go? These men will be rough customers—sopie of them. You will be more or less of a prisoner. We may be snowed up for weeks. It has happened, I’m told.” But she shook he.r head. “I like it here, .thank you. I wish to stay.” Then followed a fortnight of beautiful weather. The first week of November was one of the loveliest that Grace had ever known —a real St. Martin’s summer, warm and placid, with pale, serene skies and wonderful clear nights, illumined by a large golden moon. As soon as the workmen were established in their huts, Rivett removed his oWn quarters to a wooden hut that he had built adjoining the old barn, but with a separate entrance. He gave up the entire barn to Grace and had windows put into it and caused it to be made thoroughly weather-proof for the winter. He also had some rough furniture brought up, and they installed a common dining-room in one end of it, and built an open fireplace, where they burned wood. Gtrace superintended the installation of r a small kitchen and larder next the din-ing-room, and Rivett, on her advice, sent for an American oil stove to do the cooking on, and enough oil to last :hem for several months.

His own quarters she thought very inadequate. “You’ll be frightfully cold in the winter,” she said, standing in the bare hut that was roughly divided into two rooms. “You’ve no stove and no carpets, and the windows don’t fit.” ‘"lt’s no matter,” he replied. “I don't want comforts.” “But you’ve made me comfortable.” “That’s a different thing. You’re a woman. I’m used to roughing it.” She could not understand the change in him. While they were travelling abroad, he had always been kind, courteous, laying himself out to crowd her days with every enjoyment it was possible to give her. Now he was gloomy, laconic, almost savage in his behaviour. He did not tell her about the plans for the rebuilding of the house. She had to drag all the information out of him. Her high spirit would not allow her to be there just as a physical drudge. She was determined to share the work that was the reason and cause of their curious life. At first he answered her impatiently. But she persisted, and he took her over the whole of the ruins, explaining everything. The day following he hardly spoke to her, but the day after that he bade her mount a mule, and they rode across the mountains to inspect a large tract of wood that he had bought, where already lumber-men were felling the great trees that were to provide the timber fo.r the house that was to rise on the ruins of the old Abbey,

The romance of it caught her—this habitation that was to grow up out of the very neighbourhood itself —local stone, local wood, local labour, a house that was to be truly built with hands. And, as she looked at him, as he rode back ahead of her, grim and stern, she wondered why he was raising it, prepared to live for nothing else, in this self-exile from the world. All the winter would be only* given up to preparation. No real work could be done until the spring. And then it would be a process infinitely slow and laborious, seeing that all material had to be transported miles across the mountains. What was he doing it for? He and she were i%an and wife; but would they ever live in it together and enjoy it as man and -wife sho.uld enjoy their home*? Could the barrier between them ever be broken down? Was it not growing higher and more impassable every day? She felt often as if he hated her. Certainly, the stronger feeling was on his side. For herself, she was unchanged. There was only what there had always been—the horrified shrinking from a man who had taken life, the deep instinctive feeling that it would be a kind of sacrilege to join her life with him. But this feeling did violence to her emotions. The man himself was still the man she loved. To live by his side and yet apart from him meant a constant battle between her desires and what she believed to be her duty. On his part, all his tender feelings seemed to have vanished with the discovery that she had been, as he thought, the cause of the ruin and death of his friend. She saw dislike in his eyes; she heard scorn in his voice. He seemed to delight in giving her humiliating tasks; he seemed almost to glory in denying her the companionship that was her due. As she was thinking these sad and disturbing thoughts her mule stumbled, and she was almost thrown off. In a second Rivett was by her side, dis-

mounted. his arm steadying her, his j face white, his eyes filled with some- j thing like anguish.

“Look where you’re going.” he said in a tense voice. “These beasts get I so careless. You might have fallen down .the precipice.” He looked down the sheer mountain side, and she felt his arm tremble. She was trembling a little herself. It was so unexpected, as if he had some feeling left for her, after all. But he was so gruff and unapproach- j able for the rest of the day that she 1 was thrown back on the miserable I reflection that he only valued her pres- | ence for the opporunity that it gave him of exercising his power over her. Two days later, again it almost seemed to her as if he must still care, at least for her well-being. He was 1 going to Weaveham on business and leaving her behind, as before. "You are not afraid?” he asked her. “Oh. no,” she said. "Why should : I be?” He gave her a long look. "It is lonely,” he retorted. "But you will be quite safe. Joseph shall sleep in my quarters. He would die before j harm came to you.” His voice thrilled her with a strange j emotion. For a moment she felt that she must still be dear to him, and she was passionately, almost insanely glad. Then with flushed cheeks, she J looked at him and saw his eyes cold and hostile, and she was bowed to the earth with shame. (To be Continued.)