Novelest.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2543, 27 October 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

Novelest.

AN OLD SCOKE. BY FREDERICK TALBOT, Author of "Jack Pngh's Legacy,' "Through Fire and Water," &c. CHAPTER lII.—TUE Scork IS Settled. The scene of our story changes from aristocratic Ivensington to the more mixed and doubtful neighbourhood of iVlharu —not episcopal Fulliam, with its lordly avenues and lawns and flower beds—but the district ■which the speculator has made his own, where rows of small, but bright and pleasant-looking cottages look over market gardens that are destined ere long in their turn to be overwhelmed by the rising tide of bricks and mortar.

In one of the neatest of these cottages lived a garderner and his wife, | who had saved a little money in service, and now lived comfortably enough on the proceeds of their joint labour. They let their upper floor to an elderly man and his daughter, whose manner of life excited some cui-iosity among the neighbours, The young woman was out all day long—teaching, it was supposed. But the man was only heard of as an invalid, who kept his room always ; although some of the gossips declared that they had seen him leave the house at night with his daughter, both closely muffled up and an invalid who stops at home all day, and takes his exercise at night, is rather of an abnormal species. However, even if the tenant of the upper floor at No. 20, Mignonette Road, had any particular reason for not showing his face in the neighbourhood, even if such reason involved some disagreement with the admintrators of the law on subjects of public policy ; supposing that he were a coiner of false money, pr a scigjitifio burglar working out

some improved method of picking locks or opening windows ; in any of these cases his neighbours were not likely to round on him, as they expressed it. For in Mignonette Road the only portable articles that a burglar could get hold of were the children ; and a coiner never passes his bad money in his own immediate neighbourhood.

The slight mystery, however, that surrounded the lodger at No. 26 is not a mystery for us. It was here that Georgie and her father had taken refuge, Mrs Bickers, the gardener's wife, having been formerly a servant of Mrs Lamprey's and wellknown to Georgie as a cautious and yet kindhearted woman. Hither the pair had driven from Miss Lamprey's door, and here they had remained ever since. Georgie was separated by no great distance and by only a single link from the scenes and characters of her former life ; but she felt as great a distance from them as if seas and oceans divided them.

Georgio had felt that it was no use doing things by halves. For her father's sake and her own her severance from the past must be complete. That Vincent with his fastidious pride would ever take a convict's daughter to wife seemed to Georgie utterly out of the question. Her own pride had insisted that she should take tho decisive step of severing all ties between them. Had he indeed been different from what she thought him— more of the ardent lover and less of the scrupulous honourable gentleman, he would have sought her out, aye, and found her before this.

For the rest of Georgie's life was too active to be miserable. In the beginning, indeed, she found her want of references a great bar to employment; for she could not avail herself of her character with Miss Lamprey without at once giving a clue to her whereabouts. Happily she had a comfortable little hoard of her own, and was not driven on by immediate necessity. And then for the first few weeks of her residence in Migno-nette-road her father demanded a good deal of her attention. Want of food and exposure had brought him very low, and for a time it seemed as if he would put the dark valley of the shadow between himself and his pursuers. But after a time he rallied and began to take food with appetite and gain strength. It was from seeing him grow better from her nursing and tending that Georgie began to feel a real living interest and n flection in him. Before this she had rather acted from an impelling sense of necessity, feeling rather that it would be shameful to desert him than that there was any compensation in her sacrifice. But with tending him, compassion for him and a long buried affection asserted themselves. Mason himself was very quiet and subdued, very grateful for all that was done for him, but terribly nervous with the fear of recapture always haunting him. Death would be preferable to going back to that horrible life. His first occupation as he began to recover was to file away the rings of the shackles that were still about his ankles- A smith would have struck them off in a few minutes, but they could not venture to employ a smith, and it took Mason clays of filing to get through them. The worst of it was that the dividing walls between the houses being thin the noise of the filing was heard in the next house, and the neighbours hazarded the remark to Mrs Bickers that surely her new lodger was a smith, who worked at home.

There would have been nothing particularly embarrassing in this but unfortunately it happeded that the neighbour who heard the filing was the wife of a poiicenian, who, with her husband, occupied the u iper floor of the adjoining house. In a general way the knowledge that a policeman is at hand gives a feeling of security, but in this case it was just the reverse. It happened, too, that this particular constable was the one who had been on duty in Cornwall-square on the night Georgie lost her watch, and although Georgie did not recognise him, one policeman in uniform being very much like another, yet he recognised Georgie, and wondered not a little at her sudden change in position.

Soon, however, Georgie got an engagement at a cheap and not very high-class girls' school, where the proprietor was glad to secure a superior governess at a low figure. And then, after stopping in the house for three months, Mason, who had now had a good crop of hair and beard, announced his intention of going out to look for work. Not in any of the occupations for which his education would have fitted him, for all these involved enquiry into his antecedents, but he had been employed as a stone-cutter at the convict prison, and he would try to get something to do in a stone-yard. "You will be recognised," said Georgie. But Mason shook his head, and pointed to his official portrait, a rough woodcut 011 a billhead circulated by the police, offering a reward of fifty pounds for his apprehension. Certainly the portrait was not a very flattering one, and represented an ill-looking fellow of dangerous aspect, while in his present condition he looked steady and respectable enough to be taken for a vestryman or churchwarden. Still Georgie dissuaded

him ; she could earn enough to keep them both ; let him wait till time had lulled the watchfulness of the police; and then Mason said he would no longer let all the burden fall upon her. Besides he must get some money someway or another, for he had his work cut out to punish the real culprit who had caused all his sufferings, and he could do nothing in that way without money.

Georgie drew a long breath when she heard this. She had never be- ! fore spoken to her father on the subject of his presumed crime ; she had scarcely permitted herself to hope that he was an innocent man. But the very thought of the possibility of removing the stain from their name gave her renewed life and hope. And then George Mason told his story, to which Georgie listened with breathless interest. " I don't know whether you remember much about our pleasant country home, Georgie, or your poor mother, who worshipped you, and spoilt you utterly. But she was a frail, delicate flower, although with a spirit that was wonderful in such a delicate frame, and I think I trace some of her spirit in you. We were not badly off either, for I had inherited a comfortable little property. If I could only have been satisfied ! But satisfied I was not, and I had a friend, Harry Deluce, who played the part of Mephistopheles, and tempted me to my ruin. He was an old college chum, and used to laugh at my cautious, hum-drum ways. ' With not half nor a third of your capital,' he said, 'I am building up for myself a handsome fortune.' And certainly he lived in a way that implied a plentiful supply of money. Ho was married, and had a boy and girl, and his wife, a handsome, charming woman, dressed and lived at a rate that put us quiet country people in the shade. My wife disliked and mistrusted Mrs Deluce, and there seemed a mutual repulsion between the two women, and for that reason they never visited us, nor we them, although I was still as friendly as ever with Harry. In the autumn, Deluce generally caine down to our neighbourhood for hunting, and in the particular year I am coming to he had hired a small hunting-box about half-a-dozen miles from us. At this time Harry and I were engaged in heavy speculations. I had made some lucky hits by his advice, and, once having started in this way, I think I was more eager and enterprising than Deluce. We had bought heavily for a rise in Pacitic shares, for Deluce had a secret understanding with some great speculators in America, who were making a corner out there for these securities, and by degrees I had piled up in these shares almost everything I had in the world. My neighbour, Captain Packenham, who was the head man in the county bank, had kept me supplied with money, and by degrees I had pledged with him all my deeds and securities, and the house I lived in, and the crops on the land, and even the very furniture in the house was mortgaged to him. But he was always my very good friend, and he was Deluce's friend too, and especially the friend of Mrs Deluce, for he was a handsome, dashing kind of fellow; and he often met the Deluces in the hunting field, and dined with them afterwards; and indeed there was already a little talk in the county about them.

" Well, it was one day about Christmas time, the last accounts of Pacifics had been hopeful I had dined the night before with Deluce and had met Captain Packenham, who was most friendly with us both, for he knew what was going on, and prophesied our success. But next morning came a telegram from Deluce begging me to meet him in town with at least three hundred pounds. There was a crisis which this amount with what he had available, would tide over. I drove over at once to Packenham's bank and showed our friend the letter, I did not doubt but that he would advance the money, for he had security enough fairly realised to cover all his advances. But Packenham meant plunder. He must have heard news from the Stock Exchange, for he refused to advance me oue halfpenny. " What's more," he said insultingly to me, before the clerks. "If you don't redeem your securities within twenty-four hours, I will put my demands in force against you." At that my passion rose. I swore that if he did such a dastardly thing I would shoot him. "Very well," said Packenham, -with a sneer "Then I shan't give you even the twenty-four hours." "So much the worse for you," I replied. And then began a miserable expedition to all my friends up and down the country to try to raise the money that was to save us. But I met with nothing but polite refusals. Then when I reached home Georgie you met use at the gate with such a face of terror. " Oh, there were wicked men in the house and they had hurt poor mamma," and I ran in. That fiend had put men in possession of everything, and your poor mother, who had the spirit of a lioness, had tried to keep them out. In the excitement she had broken a bloodvessel, and she died in my arms a few hours afterwards."

Poor Mason shook with emotion as he recounted this part of his story, and Georgie laid her cheek wet with tears upon his arms. " That is the last I remember of the old life. Everything else is a whirl of confusion," she whispered.

" I went out," continued Mason, from the room where my wife lay dead, and out of the house I could no longer call my own. Even as I wont out of the house an insolent fellow said to me : " You mustn't carry anything out of the house, master, for I'm in possession of everything here." And I believe he would have felt my pockets. ' I have only got this,' I said, showing him a revolver, and the man looked in my face and stepped back a little scared. Out of doors the redness of blood was in my eyes, my heart beating thickly, and one desire dominating all my confused thoughts, to be revenged on the wretch who had done this. I went to his house—he had ridden out. I tracked him by the hoofmarks on the turf across the heath, and found that his horse's head was pointed in the direction of Deluce's house. And now you will judge the diabolic coolness of tho man, that in dealing out ruin to me he had taken notice from the letter I showed him that Deluce would be in London that day. I did not notice this at the time. I was too much engrossed with my thirst to reach him. On my way I passed the little station nearest to Deluce's house. And here I satisfied myself that I was on the right track. Yes, Captain Packenham had passed there a couple of houre ago, and had waited till the down train had come in, hoping to see Mr Deluce, said the stationmaster, with an ambiguous smile and a slight stress on the word hoping, which I remembered afterwards. Another mile farther on and I met Deluce. I don't think this surprised me. I was too full of my fixed idea. I would have avoided him but he saw me and came up and took me by the lmnd. He had alighted at a station further on, he said, and walked across the moors to clear his head. Things were looking bad in the city. Why had I failed him, he asked. All this I passed by and told liini that I was an avenger of blood and meant to kill Packenham. Deluce tried to calm me; he thought I had gone mad. I believe that he saw the revolver sticking out of my pocket, and that he dexterously withdrew it so that I might not harm anyone. But we had not gone much further when we saw a sight that made ns both start forward. I only saw Packenham ; he was only standing with his back to us, by the entrance to a little copse, with his horse's bridle over his arm ; and he was taking leave of some woman, who clung to his arm, and did not refuse the kisses he gave her. Next moment he was in the saddle, and the woman had darted away along a footpath.

" Great heavens !" cried Deluce ; " it is my wife !" There were too bridle tracks out of the wood through which Packeuham had ridden. Both Deluce and I knew the country well, and instinctively we separated, and ran in different directions round the spinney. I thought I heard his horse's hoofs. I felt for my revolver —it was gone. But I snatched a stake from the hedge. ' I can kill him with this,' I said to myself. And then I heart a shot, and saw a riderless horse galloping over the heath far away. I ran towards the spot whence the shot came. There lay my enemy stretched 011 the ground—the blood welling from a wound in the temple. At the sight everything within nie seemed to change. The red glare in my eyes was gone ; the confused whirl about my brain. Everything stood out clear and cold. 'If I stay here,' I said to myself. ' I shall have to bear witness against my friend. I have nothing left to live for; ah, I didn't think of you, Georgie, at the moment. I will die,' and so I took up the smoking revolver that the manslayer had thrown down, and in another moment I should have been out of all my troubles. But I was suddenly pinioned from behind, by a gamekeeper, who had heard the shot and, suspecting poachers had crept stealthily up.

" Well," said Mason after a short pause of gloomy thought, " I was thrown into prison, but some days after I was permitted to attend ray wife's funeral guarded by and chained to two constables. You were not there, Georgie, friends had taken you away from the dreadful scene, and, kindly it seems, kept you from all knowledge of your father's fate. And for that I thank them. But when my trial came on I confided the real state of the case to my lawyer. He did not believe me, neither did the counsel who was to defend me. But they made some efforts to get at the truth of the matter in order to call Deluce as a witness. But the general testimony of his household was that Deluce had left for London the morning before the murder, and had not comeback since. A few days after his wife and children had joined him in London, the country house had been given up, and the servants paid and dismissed. And then all my own property was in the hands of the bank, who sold every stock and stick, and made me out a debtor afterwards. My defence was paid for by a subscription among the neighbours, and so you may judge that there were no means of making extensive enquiries. The day of trial came, and all that my counsel could do was to raise doubts as to whether there had not been an altercation and some provocation given before the shot was fired. Thejudgs summed up dead against

me—he reviewed the chain of evidence, my threats, my pursuit of I the murdered man, my presence on the scene of the murder with the weapon in my hand that had done the deed. Short of the evidence of auyone who had actually seen the shot fired and the man fall, there was not a single link wanting. And the time that had elapsed betweeu the threat and its execution, was a complete bar to any pretext for reducing the crime to manslaughter. But the jury were farmers and neighbours ; they had felt compassion for my unhappy case. Packenham was known to them as a hard, cruel man. The judge, perhaps, had ruffled them a little by assuring them that they had no choice in the matter. Anyhow they returned a verdict of manslaughter, and my life was saved ; but the judge imposed the severest sentence in his power ; penal servitude for life.'' (To be continued).