CHAPTER XIX. NO HOPE.

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 43, 29 March 1884, Page 4

CHAPTER XIX. NO HOPE.

Mrs Marchmont opened her languid eyes with mingled astonishment and curiosity as she and her brother sat together over a late breakfast, each in the reserved taciturn mood that had become habitual of late when they were left alone together. For while the colonel was listlessly turning over the letters which the servant had just placed on a silver tray and set down at his elbow, she saw a sudden glare of delight flash into his face as with trembling fingers he seized upon one and tore open its envelope. Mrs Marchmont set down her gilded coffee-cup, and adroitly stretching out her white, jewelled fingers, caught the fluttering fragment that fell from his hands. " A letter from Helena Yerrington," exclaimed she, roused on her own part. " Oh, Charles, do read it to me. Where has she been ? What has she done ? And is she not penitent enough over that foolish flight of hers ?" The colonel seemed entirely unconscious that she had spoken. The paper rustled in his tremulous lingers, his eyes flew from one side of the page to the other with a feverish intentness, and when he had finished it he drew one quick, sharp breath, and looked off away beyond her with an absorbed expression that vexed and irritated her. "Well," she said, presently, in that sharp, rasping voice which betrayed the acrimonious mood which was usually his terror, "how much longer am I to wait for the information I desired ? You are really getting to be unbearable in your lack of courtesy to me. Charles !" Upon this he turned his eyes in an instant to her indignant face, and said, hastily, in a forced, constrained voice, while he passed the letter : "I beg your pardon, Clara. You may read the letter for yourself. You surmise correctly that it is from Helena. Helena, poor, friendless, dispirited : but yet, I fear, self-willed and obstinate still." " In regard to accepting her guardian's love ? Well, it is one advantage that she has written at all," returned Mrs Marchmont, glibly, quite mollified by the meekness of his tone. "But how strange it is, Charles, that this girl has so much power over a man of your years and experience. You have passed coldly those who were twice as fair and fascinating, a score of times at least, in the years gone by. You ignore the pretty blandishments of half a dozen young ladies at the present time who are willing to sacrifice their youth and beauty to a name and fortune as fine as yours. But none will please you, hold you, enslave you, but this one obstinate girl, who scorns as empty dross the best you can offer her. It is quite incomprehensible, but I suppose one may say it is fate, and none can gainsay their fate." "Jfate," repeated the colonel, in a low gloomy voice. ' ' And what is that ? I wish some one could answer me." Mrs Marchmont opened her blue eyes still more widely. She meant to give a careless shrug of the graceful shoulders, but it was rather a shudder as she returned : " I don't care to explore into such di'eary subjects myself. I haven't entirely recovered from the nightmare that horrible Methodist sermon gave me. Are you thinking about it now ? It was such a pity we all staid that day at the picnic to hear it. One can't throw off such gloomy pictures easily." "I remember it all," returned the colonel, musingly, while he turned the delicate china cup round and round in its gilded saucer. 4 'He said fate was an empty word, idly used. That God was the only fate, and His will was the only retribution. That there was nothing happening, but everything being worked out. "Don't revive it all. I pray you," said the fashionable lady, with another little shiver. " The man had just ability enough to make himself disagreeable. I had horrible dreams for a week afterward. And yet that silly Prudent Weston called it a wonderful and comforting discourse." " People's constitutions vary, and — their experience," went on the colonel, slowly, still staring off over the cup, across the daintily appointed tables, beyond the pretty, luxurious room even, and seeming to see something confronting him there that was not comforting at all. Mrs Marchmont watched him with mingled curiosity and resentment. " What wild thoughts are you following, Charles?'' asked she, presently. "I know very well, by your uncanny expression of eye, that you have gone back — to forbidden ground. What is the use ! The past is past, and nothing helps it." " But what if what we call fate, and that man declares is God, takes up the past and twists it into our present and future ? You have not read the letter carefully. Do you see that Helena is among the Mildmays and the Earles, there. I gave no heed when I heard the names from Stone. Now I see. Well, the preacher's doctrine is enforced again. Everything has its meaning, and work, and end." " What, are they people you knew — in the old days ?" And once again Mrs Marchmont took up the letter Helena had written under compunction of conscience at the remembrance of her guardian's anxiety and suspense concerning her. She read it through carefully. " Well I see nothing to alarm you, even if they are the same people. You never told me the whole affair, though I guessed it out. But bygones are bygones, and you certainly are safe. You have made a new identity. No one knows even of your old name." "But /know, and— fate, or God, knows too," he said, slowly, speaking the words with stiff lips, as though they were forced out against his will. This gay woman of the world gave a little hollow laugh, and rising from the table, shook out the fluttering ribbons and tassels of her becoming morning dress, while she answered to this appeal. " Dear me, Charles, you are quite incomprehensible this morning. I don't believe you are well. I would take an extra glass of brandy to give you spirit. You must not allow the black clouds to envelope you, or you will be quite undone. One must fight off the blues, and if fighting doesn't do, it is discretion to fly. Run down and have a game of billiards with Hal Dermont and his chums, then dine at the club, and take Nellie and Belle Lermont to the opera this evening. That's my prescription. When I feel the horrors approaching, I

rush pell-mell into the gayest scene I can find, and laugh it away. As for Helena, it seems to me your chance improves. Why, she owns that she feels herself friendless »nd alone. See there where she writes : '•If I had one hope to work upon, I could take heart, and be brave." " Write eloquently of the one great hope you long to present. I tell you, man, your chances of winning were never so strong. The wild bird has tried her wings, and found them lacking their boasted strength. Already you see her thoughts turn to you as her only refuge. Open your arms, and she will presently fly into them." She smiled upon him with what she meent to be a very encouraging, as well as an affectionate and charming, smile. She looked a very fair and gracious lady, as she stood there in her tasteful dress, with the dainty Parisian cap drooped caressingly upon wavy crimps that showed no dulness of lustre, nor suspicion of silver, with her slender white hands peeping forth from bracelets of dead gold, set as it were in a ruffle of delicate lace that supplemented the French sleeve of intricate conglomeration of puff, and ruffle, and bow. A fair and gracious presence to light up one's home. A charming mistress for this luxurious scene. And in her way she was a sincere and devotedly attached sister. These thoughts ran vaguely through Colonel Rivers's mind, while he leaned back in his chair in answer to her light caress, and looked at her wistfully. "Clara," he said, huskily, "stop a moment, and try to think soberly and seriously. Is all this false merriment satisfying, and shall we not come to a place where at the best it will be but bitterest mockery ? Is there not such a thing as pausing now, and turning back to find peace and selfrespect, if nothing more ? You are a great deal younger than I, but you are a woman, and all women who are not irretrievably bad are supposed to have truer and wiser intuition of such things. Tell me, supposing that I knew something that would give Helena the heart and hope she asks for, ought I not to show it to her, though it lost me the only chance I have with her ?" There was the wild appeal of his better nature glistening in the eyes turned so imploringly upon her. But alas ! the shallow butterfly of summer had no honey of wisdom, no dew of truth to offer to the famishing soul craving of her a single drop of living sustenance. " I don't understand you at all, Charles," she said, pettishly. " I'm sure I don't set myself up for a Methodist. If nothing else in the world but Helena is going to content you, I should think you were very foolish to let any chance of winning her go by. And as to your talk about self- respect, I am sure it is everybody's duty to keep a good reputation, and you have done that. You have no need to go digging back into the past. Charles Rivers's life and good name concern you, and no one else. There, do have a glass of wine, and go off somewhere to shake off these blues. You have quite spoiled my morning." She laid her fair hand again upon his shoulder with about the same playful grace that she used in tapping with her fan her partner's shoulder in the german, when he ventured into badinage, and then glided away. The servant came to remove the breakfast, and Col. Rivers gathered up his papers and letters and went off into the library. He threw himself into the chair with a heavy sigh. Two visions swept away from him the picture of his sister's smiling face, and made her words worse than emptiness and vanity. One was Helena Yerrington's earnest, truthful face, and the other the solemn, warning, accusing eyes of the "strange fanatic," as, at the time, he himself had called the Methodist preacher. The sighs became heavy groans. Col. Rivers was presently pacing to and fro, with the haggard despairing look of a man who confroj. terrible ghosts from a bitter past. The .- -• ilding tears poured down his pallid cheek.*, he wrung his hands wildly. Now and then he lifted up a shuddering, awed, but imploring look toward the glimpse of far-away sky that the heavily curtained window afforded. Presently, quite worn out with the violence of his emotion, he sank down in the chair, and dropped his head on the table on his outstretched arms in the attitude of a grieved boy. More than an hour he remained thus, and then he slowly lilted up his head, revealing a face very pale and sorrowful, but calm, almost stern, with some settled purpose. He drew toward him the writing tray and several sheets of paper, and bagan writing steadily, only pausing now and then to draw a weary hand across his forehead, as if thus to brush away some cobweb that obscured his memory. Twice he was obliged to consult some book of reference, evidently for a date. But at length he dropped his pen, and gathering up the sheets of writing-paper with hasty hands, as though he dared not trust himself to glance at them, he folded them together, tied them with a tape, and dropped a protecting seal of wax upon the knot. This done, the hardest task of all seemed before him, for with tremulous, reluctant hands, while casting wild, frightened glances toward the doors he had locked securely at his entrance, he unbuttoned his satin waistcoat, slipped his hand into his breast, and drew forth a thin, narrow bit of oiled silk, which, when unfolded revealed but a jagged halt-sheet of paper, looking more likely to be torn from some diary than to have come from any orderly writing desk, and covered with evidently hurried handwriting in pencil They were very simple lines, and few of them likely to call forth the look of mingled horror, loathing, and dread that was on the colonel's face as he forced himself to read them over. " Helena Beloved : You will not see me tonight. Against my will and beyond my power to resist, I am borne tar away from you. But I shall not be harmed, and I shall hold you to the sweet promise ef the pansies when I am permitted to return, which I am solemnly assured shall be in a brief time. lam forbidden to write to any one, and I send this surreptitiously. But you shall have proof of my safety, and my precious claim upon your thought, by receiving on this day each month till I return a bunch of pansies. I dare not write more. " Ever yours, Conway Seable." And this was the hidden secret that had made Colonel Rivers writhe at every allusion to the fateful pansies. And this was why Helena Yerrington's sorrowful cry for one ray of hope had struck home 3uch a quivering pang of agony. He could give it to her. Ah, he knew full well what a glad world of hope that letter would open to her trustful, tender heart. The wretched sophistry with which he had beguiled himself when the missive was first received no longer satisfied him. He said then it was cruel and unkind to allow the girl to place any dependence on this romantic, unsatisfactory assurance. If the man was living, and no villain, all these detectives would unearth him from his hiding-place. And if he only meant a further deception to keep his hold upon a fond girl's sentimental imagination, this wise movement of her guardian would baffle him.

But to repeat this to himself now gave no satisfaction. There was the yearning, striving cry in Helena's letter for the ray of hope which he had shut away from her, and there was the remorseless, accusing voice wakened in his own conscience to confront him in refutation. He folded the paper presently and put it in an envelope, sealing it carefully, and writing Helena's name upon it. This was placed with the packet; of writing, and the whole again inclosed and labelled, "Helena Yerrington. To be given at once in case of my decease. " He sat a few moments staring down gloomily at the packet, then rose, and carrying it to the great safe which was built into one end of the apartment, he deposited it in the private drawer there, drawing one long, shuddering breath, as if he had plunged himself into an icy bath. How long he would have remained there, or how soon he might have recovered his accustomed cheerfulness and sang froid, cannot be told, for an interruption came. The servant brought in a large box and set it upon the table, not without certain nervous glances toward his master. ' ' It has justj ust been left, sir. It is different from the others, and has your name on it. So I thought it must be right to bring it in." The colonel waved an impatient hand, and the boy vanished. The former had not really taken in the meaning of the information given. He rose listlessly and glanced at the clerkly writing on the top : "To be left before one o'clock. Funeral at two. " His face blanched, but with steady hand he tore open the white wrapper and opened the box. A lovely funeral offering lay there. A peculiar emblem, too. A broken sword, and a harp with rent strings, exquisitely wrought of rare flowers. Not a single pansy amid all the delicate patals. "It is not meant for Helena. It is sent to me," muttered the colonel, with stiff, dry lips. It is but another omen of what is coming. I have known it. I have felt it. ' Uncanny whispers ai-e echoing all around mo. The Lord forgive me ! The Lord be merciful to me !" And then once more his head dropped low. Another hasty knock, and then the servant entered, with a deprecating look and gesture. "If you please, sir, it's a mistake. The florist's man has just come running down to get the box. The flowers are for Lieutenant Wistar'p funeral. The clerk was to send a letter te you, and misunderstood." "Do them up again, and take them to him," Avas his brief command. "And here is your letter, please." The letter was but a simple statement that a certain order for a bunch of pansies had arrived that day, but that, according to the order of Col. Rivers, the flowers would be withheld. "It does not matter ; the omen can mean the same," murmured the colonel. "The meaning in both cases can be the same. If the pansies do not come here I know they are there, and that they repeat their errand faithfully, if Helena could know it. Shall I send her word ?" To and fro across the long room for an hour longer paced the colonel, now with quivering lips and convulsed features, now stern and haughty in a forced composure, that would not, however, endure. He met his sister at the late dinner to which a few guests wero added, with a face ho rigid and strange that his sister whispered : " For Heaven's sake, Charles, don't look so much like a ghost. Be more lively, I beg of you, or what will the people think ?" During the evening he announced his intention of taking passage for Liverpool in the steamer which sailed the next day. Mrs Marchmont behaved as if she knew all about it, and not until young Dermont, the last loiterer, had wished him hon voyage, and said good-night, Jid she turn to exclaim : '• Charles Rivers, will you tell me what you are about ?" " I am going to bring Helena home —if I may," he said, calmly. "If you may! Of course you may. She will be thankful enough to see you I imagine. But will you go among those people? — though what danger can there be ?" ■'I shall go; the result is beyond my telling. Let it be what it may, I shall go," was returned, in the same dry, mechanical tone. She searched over his face, with an uneasy look on her own. "Are you quite well, Charles? I never saw you so pale before." " Perfectly well, thank you. lam rather tired, for I have been putting my papers in the safe to rights. I shall say good- by to you to-night, because I shall take the morn- J ing train to get there in season to make sure of my state-room. I should have preferred the line from this port, but the other insures a week earlier arrival." " Is there no help of mine needed ?" " Oh, no, thank you for the offer, dear. You have been kind and fond of me. Clara, I wish—" And here he broke off with a stifled sigh. "There isn't any use in talking. You'll say I'm horridly Methodisty, I suppose, so I'll spare >ou. Good-night andgood-by." And with a long kiss upon her forehead, a lingering pressure of the hand, he parted from her. Mrs Marchmont cried a tear or two, shivered drearily, and went upstairs to resign herself into the maid's hands for the removal of a somewhat elaborate dinner costume. "I don't like the colonel's look," she said plaintively. "I'm sure all this moping after Helena has told upon his health. However, the voyage ought to do him good. And if he brings the perverse creature home with him I hope he will come back into sensible behaviour." She was too discreet to injure her beauty sleep by breaking up the delicious morning nap, and so the brother went his way in the morning's gray, without any further adieu. Into the morning's gray, and out also into the mists that enshroud futurity. For the steamer that sailed forth so proudly and so securely was swallowed up somewhere— somehow — one of those dreary cases over which hangs the shroud of impenetrable mystery. But she never made the destined port, and Colonel Rivers went not to Helena nor came again to Clara Marchmont.