COLOR-TAINTED. BY JANET CARROL.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1794, 5 January 1884, Page 5

COLOR-TAINTED. BY JANET CARROL.

. , . " Unjiisfc, thou say'st, Flatly unjust, to bind, with laws the {roe And equal over equals to let reign. * * * * * Shalt tiiou give law to God ? Shalt thou dispute With him the points of hhjity, -nho mado Tneo -n but thou art? " . . .

Mrs. Kklston waited till dinner was quite over, till she saw his slippered feet on the fender, and his head against the easy-chair back, then while daftly twisting his cigarettes standing on the hearth-rug at his side, she made the request that had been on her lips all the evening — made 'it half tremulously and feaiful. She was not afraid of stalwart, stout John Kelston, her husband ; not one look, one word, one action, of all the years of their married life could give cause for such a feeling in her, but she was a childishly di3positioned little woman, full of veneration and timidity, with a large share of sweet benevolence beaming in her gentle blue eyes and calm face. She was just the woman who is born to bless a home, and the lives of husband and children : of these, two little baby faces had been watched by her sleepless blue eyes many nights and days— watched and prayed for till the little pink cheeks were waxy white in the little flower-filled coffins ; and for four year? theie had not been a child's for/v or face at Boolarjery. " Rosio's child 1" — there was dissatisfaction as well as great surprise in his voice — " Caroline,^ you want a child to look after, if you < would feel happier with a child here, get a proper one, for mercy sake don't take a hideous black little devil to your heart while there are plenty of little waifs in the world — stray, homeless little things, of one's own nature and Kin !" He smoked his cigarette with regular, angry puffs for some moments, and she knitted on the hassock at his side, looking into the fire with tears of sensitive pain in her eyes. Presently the knitting went down on the rug, and her hand crept up to his nock and greysprinkled shaggy hair. " John, you've almost overwhelmed me at the outset with your illogical impetuosity. You have not heard a word of the why and wherefore of my desire. You condemn me unheard." He turned his head caressingly — " lam sorry ray dear, I am impetuous." j You remember Kosie, John ; you could not forget her ? Her quick intelligence, her kindness to little Clara in her fever, and her devotion lo me when the deaths came ! " " I remember, Caroline." " You remember her reluctance that her marriage should be while we were in mourning, and how pleased you were that I brightened up and exerted myself in preparing Rosie as a bride and in feasting her people in her honor — and how nice she looked when she was dressed? And her husband, though they called him Bully Lambert, and though his actions at times were rough, perhaps cruel, that day looked a softened, humanly sort of biggood-lopking rake, " 1 liked the marriage, though Rosie was but a black gnl she was good, and I was glad that her children would be by their birth above the degradation of her colour. l< It is just four years since Archie Lambeit, broke his neck down at the stockyaids, aud Rosie left us, for her people, a heart-sore young widow who had been but three months a wife. Nothing would make her stay; she was so loyal, even to the wretched beings who claimed her allegiance after his death. They weic going to the north for a long stay and she felt she would never see me again." " What a long story, Caroline dear ! When will you come to the portion tjuching on your question ? " " Now. Joe came home from the river station to-day, and he says the same tribe, though fewer in number, are camped a few miles from the homestead, that Billy the old cripple was talking to him, and told him that Rosie died a little more than a year ago, and that she had confided her little boy to the care of him (the cripple), and charged him to take the child to me in her name, and in that of dead little Clara and my baby boy who died in her arms. Bhe knew the tribe would soon begin to move southwards, an I that they would make for their old resting-,place by the nvcr, and the desire to live was strong in her to the last, chiefly that she might give me the charge herself." " Well, Caroline, my dear wife, your sweet grateful nature shall guide you to <Jo what is right to the dead in the saving o£ this child, and your sense of refinement and womanly delicacy will teach you in your treatment of it. I love my sweet naturcd little wife all the more for her quick response to the call on her goodness, but I could not see the child of Bully Lambert and Rosie, our black servant, in your arni3, or kissing your face. I coull not look at the face of tins half-caste child lying in Clara's cot. It pleased Heaven to take them from us, Caroline, and we have none, but is not the memory of them sweeter and purer as it is ; the presence of this little tainted creature will dehle the remembrance, at least for me." Mrs. Kelston was crying, and her husband, hurt and angry with himself, laid his hand on h-.rs, and drew her smooth brown-tressed head to hi 3 breast. " John, you distress me so, and I want this child of liosie's. I want something to love, and I know I could love it." " You shall have your way, Caroline ; tomorrow we will drive to the river homestead and to the camp." Is it where they always camp — between the big spur and river corner ? " " Yes," so Joe says. Wrapped tightly in the warm buggy-rug, she held him in her arms, shielding his face from the .keen evening wind with her soft, furry muff. When the wide, questioning blacK eyec are covered with their jetty-fringed lids, she points out to her husband the firm but slender shape and limbs and frame of the boy, who, though crossed with aboriginal blood, certainly bore none of its limb-defor-mity. John Kelston smiled at her contented face and glad blue eyes, and assented, seemingly, as she eagerly asserted that little Archie must be both good and handsome, with the looks of his father and disposition of his mother. To please his dearly-loved wife he kept down the repugnance always so ready to rise in him, and stood by her side that night to look at the sleeping, olive-tinted face that rested on Clara's little pillow, but he would not let her kiss it, He put his hands out — " No, Caroline, not yet, dear, wait till I get used to it." " John— Why ? I never before found you prejudiced or fastidious." •'It isn't so much of those feelings as a sense or presentiment that this child will bring you little reward. It is not prejudice that makes me say that gratitude is not in the nature of the black, and he who is called the son of Pharaoh's daughter is proverbially ungratetul;, however, Caroline, he is yours now for good or evil, let us hope for none of the latter." - Archie Lambert, dark, passionate, and reckless, the pride and terror of the whole place, grew from his babyhood of four years $o Ms. boyhood of fourteen, riding, horse- 1 'breaking; hunting, stock-chasing, till every muscle in his body had the hardness of' leather, and the elasticity of gnta.peroha. 1

His homo was the saddle and Boolarjery, and its owner was four-fold the richer for his tastes and pursuits. He would learn at the bidding of the kind voice of the woman who loved him, but books wore distasteful to him. Tutors never got him deeper into the vortex of figures than the rule of three, algebra and geometry were disdained, even the necessary amount of granimai and geography were taken as dose 3 of physic: but a passion-pcented poem or Stirling tale of tragedy would hold him at the window or by the firo, with eager face and soul-lit eyes. Seeing his wondrous business aptitude, Mr. Kelston brought the station book-keeper to post him in the mysteries of the treatment of debit and credit items, but the man was old and testy, Archie was haughty and overbearing, and with his ledgers and books of bills payable and bills receivable piled«under his arm, the indignant instructor came to Mr. Kelston telling him the brat was of little good, " devil-posscs3ed " he said. Mr. Kelston smiled grimly and acquiescently notwithstanding his wife's angry disclaimer. He evidently valued Archie Lambert of little worth beyond his good business instincts and conscientious discharge of duties connected with the department of Boolarjery, management with which he was entrusted, yet when he was found dead in his easy chair a few mornings later Archie was, though not formally, master of the property. The will of his making told that Boolarjery estate was for his wife Caroline to have and to hold, but explanatory clauses and codicils so drew it about that though the money ultimately reached her pocket it first passed through Archie's hands. He would have the selling, buying, and disposing of every acre of land and living beast on the run. Mrs. Kekton remembered her husband's deeply rooted prejudice, and felt glad that he trusted her and her all to the truth and honor of her darling, her reckless, bold, handaome boy Charlie. Nearly eight years had elapsed before any change came to the household at Boolirjery. Every one of them added stature and strength to the physique of its dark-eyed young master, and further developed the power of purpisj and reckless determination that had always shown in him. Gentle little Mrs. Kehton let her weak nature cling restfully under his strength, and while he kept the violence of his angor and irritancy of hi? mannor from her, she was happy, and loved and petted him to her heart's content ; but a sight of one of Archie's often-occurring rage paroxyms gave her an attack of nerrous illness, and she feared his presence for days. Each one of those eight years since her husband's death had increased her love for and dependence on him, as it had strengthened his mind, power, and will over her. He came into the breakfast room with a darkly-revl flush in his olive face, brought there by the hard morning gallop from the outlying station at the river. In accordance with their easy code of etiquette he had paused only to throw down the whip and wash his hands, and now swung his lithe graceful figure, clad in riding pants and closefitting serge coat, into the little room where his chair waited before the fire, holding on its seat the latest copy of the City Spoitiny News, and where the little mothcly figure busied itself with his toa3t, arranging, and re-arrang-ing, drawing the curtains, poking the fire, at last settling behind the tea-pot as he came to the fire and held out a square envelope written on in large feminine characters. "This will decide, I suppose, whether the gentle young lady who is ' too proud to beg, too upright far to steal,' will settle her indignant little self on your motherly lap for the remainder of her days." Archie was sarcastic, but she found it was better to never notice it. "Not for the remainder of her days, for surely it is the business of such indigent and genteel young ladies to deposit their indigence and gentility under the large open purse of a husband." " Wiiere will you find one for her here ? " " Oh, I don't know. When I was last in Sydney they were exceedingly pretty, taking girls. Daisy was young and growing, but promised a rarer kind of beauty than that of her sisters. I liked her better altogether — she was a shy, backward girl, but Bweet in hor manner, and lively, too, when once drawn oat." 11 What is her name?" " Daisy — Daisy Carwen." He took up the paper, and Mrs. Kelston, though biimming over with anticipation and pleasure, said no more, but passed a letter down to him before he rose from the table. "Dear Mrs. Kelston,— l am putting this in mamma's letter to you. I want to toll you myself how glad I am to go to you, and by my presence cheer your loneliness. I think from your correspondence that you are accepting my services as companion, not so much for their value* to you as that you can in this way relieve poor mamma of the burden of one. Isabella will be married in the summer. I am going to you, and can help towards Jessie's education with my salary. George is promised a desk in Brookes and Grogson's, so that I feel altogether that peaceful prospects were never nearer to me and poor worried mamma since papa's death. There will be but Jessie and Maggie al home after the summer. " If you really want me to cheer your loneliness, dear Mrs. Kelston, I am afraid you will be disappointed in me ; lam not of a lively nature, and I have seen too little of the colcur de rose of life to give me pleasant feelings at all times, still I will try to please you — try my very hardest; first, for duty sake, then for the sake of your friendship for mamma — tried friendship, that was as true hi adversity as in prosperity, truer I " We know, though we have never seen him, that you have an adopted son. I hope I shall be as welcome in the office of gloom- dispeller and leisure-cheerer to him as you assure me I ] will be to you. " I am, dear Mrs. Kelston, 11 Yours, "Daisy Carwen." As he passed it back he looked up with an earnest, remorseful gleam in his black eyes." " Poor little girl, I am sorry for those words of mine, and ashamed of the feelings that prompted them." " When will she be here ?" " We could meet her on Monday afternoon at Lingarred with the bays." " We I I shall be a hundred miles from here on Monday." " Oh, Archie, you need not, lam sure. Do come." " No." More entreaties were on her lips, but she desisted as she saw the red creep up to his brow, and the settling of his face as he rose from the table. The color meant shame, and the expression, so usual to him, meant determination. - A feeling of remorse and pain for him silenced her, and took much of the spirit out of her guest preparations, and when the , questions came on Monday evening — " You don't live alone, Mrs. Kelston? I thought your son, Mr. Lambert, lived here," — she could have oried for him. " You will see him later. Archie is often away from home." The girl looked wpnderingly at the proud, sad look that stayed so long in her kind face after that. "Daisy, Archie is home, we will dine earlier ; and don't bother about the quilt pattern this evening. Archie detests work dragging through , the njght hours. Your singing will delight him';' be in your best voice and humor dear."

She smiled at the extravagance of Mrs. Kelston's enthusiasm, and felt full of wonder while waiting the postponed dinner hour. There was no portrait of Mm in the kou^e where she had been three weeks, hearing from every mouth of Master Archie, who seemed to be at once the idol and despot of the place. What would ho be like? Mrs. Kelston had never said se, but she thought by her pride in him, and love of him, that he must be handsome ; she often spoke of his goodness, hi? principles, his pride, hia great strength and courage. "Ho must be a very hero," she said, as she softly closed her bsdroom door when the bell rang. They met on the hearth rug at the chair of their sweet-natured common benefactress. A quick look paseed over her face. Mrs. Kelston could nob tell whether it meant a shock of disappointment, mere surpiise, or embarrassment at meeting one so often talked of. At all events, Daisy endeavoied to please. Sho sang, and played, and when she saw him settling down among newspapers and book 3 at a side table, that seemed by its litter to be for only his use, she went to him with a folio ia her hands — " Mr. Lambert, if you will not sing one of these song 3 for me, or talk to us, I will go to my room and bring out an armful of wools and three square yards of canvas. Mrs. Kelston says such work is your special abomination — do you understand ?" His first glance showed veiled displeasure, but before she had finished speaking hia whole face had changed. Such a thoroughly responsive expression came to his eyes that looked full into her smiling grey one"?. 11 Would you carry out this threat?" " Indeed I would." " But I never sing." " When you're asked, you mean." Mr 3. Kelston laughed merrily from her corner ; it was so delicious to see the two — her slender hands holding the heavy folio against her white dress, her shapely brown tressed head lrjld back, and grey eyes smiling and flashing as the repartee grew spirited, his new expression of amusement that so completely changed his dark, oval face, throwing from it its look of premature age and care. Archie sang, and Mrs. Kelston carao from her corner to look at the facs of this darkskinned, dark-tempered darling of hers ; she nestled in the sofa corner by the piano, folded her plump little hands on her knees, and watohed them ; Archie's music-inspired faco and eyes, that fitted so with hia impassioned rich voice, blending together in its depths bass power and tenor sweetness, and Daisy's gentle face and obedient fingers. Archie was her idol, but he was too far from her tenderness. This girl filled up the wanting place ; sho oould pet and kiss her, not loving Archie less. How glad she was that ;Daisy pleased him ; Nothing of the thoughts that would have come to keener and more worldly women disturbed her ; she was content that there should be such harmony ; and even later, when she noticed that Archie spent more than'twothirds of his time at home, singing in the long evenin-gs with Daisy, riding with her in the short breezy afternoons, always improvising amusement for her ; she was satisfied that Daisy should be with him fh"3t, and provided he had a gentle word and kind flash of his great tender black eyes for her, his " little mother," as he sometimes called her. " It Avas natural," she thought, " that youth should seak companionship with youth." The short winter days of Daisy's first coming had grown to long summer ones, and Daisy had been written for. Isabelle's wedding was waiting for her. A trip to the river homestead, and couple of days' fishing there, were proposed, as a last summer treat before her return to the city. It would be late in the autumn before she could come back to Boolarjery, for Jessie, her youngest sister, was now staying at the school as a boarder, and Maggie had, early in the summer, obtained a post in the country as governess, hi three months Jessie would be homo to look after mamma, then she would come quickly and gladly back to them. Among the vine-screened verandahs Bfrs. Kelston read, knitted, or woikod brightlycolored wools, waiting for the coolnets of evening, after sundown, to go down to the riverbank, where Daisy alternately read a book on the bench under the willows, and tried the long, slender rod that projected far over the stiil water. She seldom added to the finny collection in the laige basket, but Archie came every now and cgain with his spoils, and gave her a prep at the qucoily-mixed lot — great brown, shiny backs, silvery fins, wriggling crayfhh, and pale shrimps. And there, when the trees around were sun-kissed among the top branches, but dark among the lower ones, and when the water' looked cool and grey at their feet, the sen of Bully Lambert, the half-caste, of Mrs. Kelaton's adoption, told this gently-reared Daisy Carwen, of refined manners and high social training, of his love for her. They stood together by the wooden seat preparing to return home when, after having tied the fishing rods together, she took up her hat. He laid his hands over hers, and clasped them tfightfy. " Daisy, I would rather die than say it if you were not so good and sweet, but let me say it ; you will never see me after to-morrow, an-i— " "What?" Her voice was low, and trembled over the word. "Don't be afraid of me, my saint-faced Daisy. I will say it here, and good-bye in the sime bieath. I can be Archie the halfcaste to you for ever after this, but let me be a man in your estimation and thoughts while I tell you that I love you. I love you, Daisy, I love you." His rich voice lingered over the words, and the tenderly wild eyes looked down to her bepraised face, but before she could speak, almoat before he had finished speaking, he loosed her hands, almost flinging them away in his abruptness. She walked bsside him up the bank to the ! home. He held the gate open for her. There she looked into his face, and that look ! frightened away the effort she was making to speak. It was so sternly, frowningly set, and so coldly indifferent to her. The long points o£ the rod protruded so far forward as to make it a little difficult for him to close the gate. (To be continued.)

Siugulai* Tendency to Bleeding. It was a month ago, on the authority of an Auburn doctor, that a boy ten years of age, living at Poland Corner, suffered a slight abrasion of the knee. The wound was not serious, but the flow of blood that ensued continued all day, and the next and the next, for three weeks in greater or less amounts, and was stopped only after the most determined means were taken. Three days ago the boy cut his finger. The wound operated precisely in the same way. In spite of three physicians in attendance the wound bled profußely. The boy became weakened and delirious under the loss^of blood. The bleeding stopped Friday, after the boy's condition became critical. Neighbors stoutly assert that the boy " has no veins, and that only arterial blood courses throughout his body." Such a case is, of course, held to be improbable. The strangest part p£;srate affair" is that the entire family of boys .halve Seen and are affected in the same way.- A number of .years ago, one of the boys in the family lost hiß lite through an impossibility of stopping the flow of blood from a slight wound. The explanation of an informant was that a morbid fear of death by bleeding kept in action the blood to suoh an extent that its stoppage' became -well-nigh impossible. — Lttoiston Me., Journal.