"THE WEB"

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8546, 1 October 1907, Page 2

"THE WEB"

CHAPTER I. J On all sides pandemonium raged. ( The promenade was crowded. For two ] hours John Strangways had gazed in a sort of delirium on a medley of ; gorgeous costumes and flushed faces , set in the bizarre framing of the Imoerial Music Hall. There was a, , stage somewhere-he knew that, but nobody on the prumenade thought of the performers who extracted thunders of applause now and again from the house. The promenade itself was a stage providing an entertainment far more ■■ interesting and enthralling than the costly show on the boards. It was equally artificial, equally unreal. The gentleman in evening dress who strolled into an imaginary restaurant from the wings, and instead of soberly and decently eating his dinner began to juggle with the champagne bottles and the table silver, was not half so unactual as the men who hung over the bar or lolled, laughing and shouting on the promenade. And to-night of all nights this part of the Imperial seemed to be possessed with a spirit vi madness and unreality. It was 'Varsity night. That day Oxford an'i Cambridge had fought out their annual struggle on the Thames, and the partisans of both Universities were celebrating the event after the manner of generations of undergraduates. A party of friends at dinner— more wine than was wholesome, perhaps—a cohort of hansoms to the ImDeriaJ— and there more wine until fifty per cent, were fighting mad and the remaining fifty per cent, were maudlin. Fired with youthful'excitement and champagne the mad section ran amuk. Many a struggling' mass of humanity .staggered down the grand staircase into the hall, and there separated itself into its component parts—a tall, .powerful young undergraduate in dishevelled evening-clothes and two .perspiring, good-natured commissionaires, who knew well enough that a handsome tip awaited them from the .boy who but a moment before had bae/i flying at their throats. The maudlin section were lured out into hansoms, murmuring incoherently. To John Strangways the scene was familiar enough. For three years past he had seen the same thing, and now in his fourth year he had wit-

nessed for two mortal hours a repetition of the annual mad carouse. His ears were singing with raucous yells oi '"Varsity!" ''Ox—ford!" "Cam— bridge!" His brain was dizzy with the wine he had drunk to keep himself up to the pitch of enthusiasm demanded • by his party of friends. He had been enjoying himself after the manner of the opiumeater in a sort of drugged delirium. He was possessed with a.perfect vacuity of thought. Neither the past, present nor future -.oncerned him. He Was plunged into a mental fourth' dimension, where the ordinary interests of existence had no place, and , was standing by a little side bar that I 'obstructed the promenade, when the crowd by the balustrade suddenly opened, allowing him a clear view of one of the boxes. He gazed dreamily at first at the occupants, and then ''/ his vision cleared; his eyes became fixed, rivetted in wonder on one face in the box. It was the face of a girl about twenty. She was sitting withan elderly lady and gentleman looking abstractedly at the stage, and by a ,tri:k of chance her featurse were framed in the distance against the jnirple' curtain that was draped at .the .further side of the box. Against .this background her pale and beautifully moulded face, crowned with a mass of blue-black hair, stood out like a portrait in a picture. Strang ways gazed and gazed, in wonder, .ani as his eyes feasted on her beauty, the realities of life came back to him. His brain cleared. Memories of every day flocked thickly into his mind. The realization of the night's folly brought him to himself with a suddenness that was almost a shock. He put down his glass, untouched, on the bar, with his eyes still fixed on the figure in the box. "Buck up, Strangways!" said the voice of young Lord Kildwick at his elbow. "What the deuc?. are you moon-gazing about?" Standing by his side, and holding on to the edge of the bar, the boy fol lowed the direction of Strangways' eyes, and, as he caught sight of the group in the box, he gave vent to an exclamation of surprise-

"By Jove, it's my uncle and aunt, and Violet Awfully nice girl. Used to be very fond of her one time. If I wasn't so beastly jolly I'd go xound and sec her. Deuced good fun, old Uncle Ripley. Wonder what he's doing here. Gay old dog—depravity of age, and all that sort of thing. Let's have a drink." Strangways stretched himself as if waking from a dream. "Awfully sorry, Kiklwick, to bust up the show, but I must get on. The governor.'3 corning up to-night, and I've got to meet him at my chamuers."

Kildwick and the four other young men protested <. ..nhatically. "Why, it'soru., just ten o'clock," said Charlie Dalrymple of Caius, looking at his watch. With difficulty, Strangways tore himself away, got his coat and cane from the cloak-room, and left the promenade. As he reachtd the top 01: the staircase a commissionaire touched his hat and bade him goodnight. Strangways asked him the time and hearing that it was only just ten, slipped half-a-crown into his hand, and passed out into Leicester Square. Getting into a hansom, he was about to tell the driver to take him to his chambers, when an almost uncontrollable de-iire to get away from all association with his everyday self took possession of his mind. He

By ! PAUL URQUHART. [Published By Special Arrangement.] [A.ll Rights Reserved.]

paused so long in deciding his destination that the cabby, looking down at him through the half-open trapdoor, coughed discreetly to attract his attention. "Drive to Westminster Bridge," Strangways ordered, hardly knowing why he gave such a'direction. All he was conscious of was a desire to get away to some spot where he could think.

As he lay back in the hansom, Trafalgar Square and Parliament Street passed dreamily before his eyes like a scroll of pictures, merged one with another in a visual mist. But he saw little of the people and buildings. His vision was fixed upon an elusive something far away in the distance. As if seared upon his sight, the face of the girl he had seen in the box at the Imperial, floated, outlined against every object at which he gazed. He saw it in the lamplight; he saw it against the lined stonework, of the Houses of Parliament; he saw it in the dark, silent, splashing waters of the Thames when, having dismissed his cab, he leant over the parapet of the Embankment. It seemed to beckon him to a new consciousness of himself; to raise him to a higher level than that of the mere sensual existence he had been living for so long, i As if his mind worked under the influence of some axterior association,, he began to look back on his history of the la9t few years. He had gone up to Cambridge a healthyyoung schoolboy, full of energy and "spirits. His father had given him his blessing in his simple, old-fashioned way—had told him to cherish the Bible, not to be ashamed of being a Methodist, to say his prayers, every night, and to take as much open-air exercise as his studies would permit. Of all this advice, only the last item had Strangways followed, and that only in the letter. For never having devoted any time worth mentioning to study, he had plenty of opportunities for exercising his young, strong, six-foot body. Had this but been the extent of his falling away from the paternal ideal, matters would not have been so bad. But unfortunately, he had fallen into more or less bad company, and altogether behaved in such a way as to cause the old millionaire-worsted manufacturer, his father, a great deal of grief and pain. He thought his son was on the path of perdition and

wrote to him lettors on the subject, until the young man, driven desperate by these paternal admonitions gave himself up wholly to a life of pleasure, though in his heart of hearts ne despised the life. He loved his father in his way. He was certainly proud of him; proud of his essentially Yorkshire characteristics—his plain sturdy talk, his pose of brusqueness which veiled a sensitive and tender nature, his strength of decision, even of his'habit of making hard-and-fast distinctions between right and wrong, of making out the heart and nature of man into c'ear-cut shades of black and white.

But the younger John belonged to a more liberal age and generation. He was prepared to forgive his brother seventy times seven. The difference in the attitude of father and son raised a barrier between them which had grown month by month and year by year/ until the estrangement was almost complete. All these, things Strangways thought of as he gazed into the gloomy, mysterious river. His mind went back to the days uf his early childhood. His mother had died short-

ly after he was born. He thought of her as a child thinks of an angel or a fairy, as some wonderiul.structure of light and beauty belonging only to the land of dreams.

As a fact, John Strangways the elder loved his son in his own rough way. He had also loved his girl wife. Immediately after her death he had gone to America on business, leaving the child to the care of a maternal aunt. For three years he had stayed away, and the people in the neighbourhood would say, "Old Strangways wag fair broken'-oop with Missis' death, and weren't bound to coom back till he'd gotten hissen rate like." Then he had suddenly come back, sterner, greyer and sadder. Of what he had been doing in the States he never spoke to any living man; only,* it ,was noticed he often wrestled in prayer. On his own son the result had been inevitable. As soon as emancipation came in the shape of University life and an allowance of a thousand a year, Strangways had "gone the pace." His father had stormed, threatened, and finally had sent him a letter that morning to say he was coming up to town and would see him at his flat, a proceeding which the millionaire's son rightly translated to mean *,hat he was either to bejid to his father's will and continue to receive his allowance, or to go his own gait, and be cut off with the proverbial shilling. (To ba continued.)