The Man who Paid

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 323, 7 April 1928, Page 18

The Man who Paid

(By

Author of " A Sinner in Israel,’* ” Tainted Lives,” .** The Money Maeter,” Etc., Etc-

Pierre Costello

CHAPTER XXVIII.—THE STRONGER CALL. “I might not fail. The ledge might be enough. Untie yourself!” “No!—no!” “Grace, do as I tell you. It might mean death to you.” ‘‘lf you die, I’ll die, too,” she answered. There was another long silence. She felt light-headed. Nothing seemed to matter. She was hanging in space. There were great red and white balls dancing before her eyes. She did not believe she could stand it much longer—not much Rivett’s voice roused her. It was almost a whisper. “Beloved, untie yourself! I can't bear you to suffer. I—l ” “If you die, Norman, I will die, too,” she said, with a mighty passion of love in her voice, making it thrill through the air. “I don’t want to live without you. I can’t.. I love you, Norman—l won’t live if you die.” Hardly had her voice died away than she heard shouts from below. “Norman!” she cried sharply. “You must keep up—a ‘little while longer. I hear voices. They are coming up * save us!” And she sent her strong, ringing voice shouting against the wind. She was answered. They heard her. They had been seen on the rocks, and a party of men were coming to their rescue. Grace was in a dead faint when they reached her, after removing Rivett to safety, and the rope was almost severed where it had caught on the edge of the rock. They owed their rescue to Joseph, who had accompanied the mules to the place where they were to wait. As the climbers did not come, he grew anxious, and having a general idea of the direction they would take, he went

to meet them. He said afterwards that the good God alone could have been his guide. He happened to scramble a little way up the rocks to be able to observe the route of their descent, and he saw his beloved master hanging, as it were, in space. He rushed to the nearest farm, gathered all the available men, with ropes and blankets, and led the rescue operations, . encouraging the scared field labourers with his pluck and skill. Rivett was covered with cuts and bruises; but . the foot that had given way under hlni was not badly injured. Grace required a great deal more care and attention before she recovered, the strain of the rope pulling on her, with the man’s dead weight on the other end, having caused injuries but for the most prompt and skilful treatment might have lasted all her life. A doctor from Bargavenny came and established himself at the camp. A specialist came from London. It was more than a fortnight before Grace was about again. The first time husband and wife met was an occasion of great embarrassment. That tragic span of time that seemed eternal made every-day conversation impossible. “You saved my life, Grace,’* Rivett said. “No, it was Joseph, it was not I,” she answered. “If Joseph had not come m time—oh, but he did!” she added, and laughed nervously. ~.'9,r ace* was y° u ’"’ho saved my life, he repeated. She stared out of the. window. It S w-as raining: the water poured off the I roof into the gutters. Everything I seemed very fiat and stale and de- i f pressing after the awful excitement I, she had been through. And theD, suddenly, she was in j I Rivett's arms, pressed close to him. j, His lips were on hers. His eyes i j looked into hers with all the strong I passion of his manhood. His voice i was wooing the soul out of her body. I

“Grace—you said you loved me! Have you forgotten? It would have been worth dying—to hear that you said you loved me! You wanted to die with me. Gan it be true?” She never learned subterfuge. She released herself, white, shaken to the very depths of her being. “It is true,” she said. “There is nothing in the world for me but you,” he said. “I love you. You are my very life. Can you keep away from me —Grace, my wife?” He came near again, but she put out her hands blindly to ward him off. “All my hateful ways, my brutality, my cruelty—it was all because I love you, because my life was a torture lived apart from you and yet beside you—a stranger to you, feeling that you feared me and shrank from me.” “Oh, don’t Norman, don’t!” she murmured in a delirium of passion and terror. “What is the good?” “The good!” His voice tore her heart out. “Grace—up there on the mountain—you said ” I know, Norman. But we were facing death together.” “You said you loved me.” "It is true. God help me, it is true!” “And now, does it make no difference? Now that we have looked into each other’s souls?” “Normau,” she said trembling, her §J'S ve ey ? s flxecl °h him, "do you think differently of me, then? Have I changed? Am 1 not the same woman —the woman who ruined Frank Moodv —sent him to his death?” (To be finntini.D^l