NOVEL

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 389, 22 October 1903, Page 2

NOVEL

BY £. Reid-Matheson. COPYBIGHT.

CHAPTER XVI.-(Continued.) ' Well ?' she said. It meant: ' Has she been telling you, and are you going to take her part or mine ?' 'Well, Hebe?' His sombre tone deepened the angry colonr on Hebe's eheek. He bent down to hies her, yet h&lfdoubtfally, feeling, fincere soul, that the act waa hardly congruous to what he had to any. Hebe proudly drew back, and her blue eyes glowed. 'Out with it,' she said with a laugh of defiance. *I am grieved to hear,' he began uneasily, * thit you have been vexing my mother; I should have thought you might manage to show her a little more consideration. You see ' 'Go on,' cried Hebe, in a rage of scorn. ' I hardly chink you are in the mood to listen, Hebe.' 'And eo,* she said quietly, but white with passion, ' and so it has come to this; that my husband's mother may inault me before my guests, confident that her Eon will uphold her.' ' PooL !' said Hof ecastle, impatiently. ' When yon talk of my mother insulting yen, Hebe, it is a little too childish.' 'At least it's true—not a day passes bnt I suffer slights at her hands —and at yours too, because you support her. You treat me as though I were a child.' H pecaatle shrugged hia shoulders. 'lf s a little difficult to treat ycu as anything else sometimes,' he said. Hebe stopped wringing her handkerchief into a rope, and looked very straight at her husband. 'So ycu are against me too!' she said, slowly. ' I needn't have expected to get j est ice from a Hopecaetle.' Then, blazing into fury, • I wifih I'd died before I married into such a—a family.' The marvel was that neither laughed at the bathos of Hebe's conclusion, but no tush for tone; Hopecastle, really ctlended, turned on hia heel without a word. All the same he felt a little uncomfortable ; after all ha had never heard the details of this wretched bmiaess. Still, of coarse, his mother could not have been in the wrong; and this lately adopted method of leaving Hebe to 'come .round' was growing into a principle. The dinner hour approached, but H«fee had not appeared; Hcpscsstle sat glaaciug coverfly at the clock, listening for a light footfall. Dinner was aneounctd; her ladyship bad a headache, said the butler, and wonld not come down. The dowager rose- ' I will jut run up and see Hebo, I think,' said her son, as though eff-haad. Her ladyship Bat down again in mute cisapprovaL Hopecastle returned in a minute, ?nd offered her his arm in silence. Hi? face was gloomy. The evening dragged; Lady Eopecattie waa ready to chat over estate matters aa usual, bnt her son e&exed to have forgotten them; he aat behind his ' Times,' speaking rarely. Hi; mother reii-.&d early. She understood his mood and disapproved it; she had never rsconched herself to second place with her son. Meantime Hebe, by way of fementisg her grievances, waa poring over Lingweilenburg relics —letters, and a photo which had never been destroyed; but the evening dragged as fatally in Hebe's m pretty boudoir as in the drawing-room below. She rang early for her maid; when her husband came up she would pretend to be asleep. Eleven o'clock, and no sign of him ; it was his way to drum lightly on the door as he nas&ed by to hi? drea&?ng-ioom. To-night she hardly expected the drumming, though she would have liked to hear it, but she listened for the shutting of the dxeeaing-room doer. c Presently she fell into a doze, but woke

___ 8000, frightened to find herself still alone. -> ij« w . o C3 j i! iig ej w hich she had left burning, seemed to glimmer eerily in the vast room, Hebe, an arrant little toward at nijhtj •at up in bed, her heart thumping m her ear?. Hark. It was only the crack of a straining boird. Again! A mouse behind the wainscot. But whsre was Arthur—and why did he not come to bed? Wh3 it because of what happened at d i aner-time ? Heai i: g she was sot well, he Lad come upstairs bat she had repulsed him. Tfci-, tht>n, was his revenge; ha ksew how nervcus sha was at night Shaking like an ague, U-ba wondeiod what to do. To He listening there psrhapa till daylight—it was impossible; she woald die of flight Why didn't he come? She crept from bed, slipped her white feet into velvet bedroom shoes, opened her door an incb, peered, listened, pzered again. In the long corridor that ran ronnd the house one lamp burned low and threw dim gr.o-• 1 v shadows; tut below in the vast ball it was black as a pit. Hebe caugbt up a candle; if it were awful to go, it wes more awful to stay; perhap3 sometbisg had heppened to Arthur. Sne listened cnee mere, then slipped cat of the room along the corridor, and down tae great st» i rcaae. How hcrrid the statues looked by night! Boom! Shs nearly drooped the candle. It was only the great call clock strike one.

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

LADY HOPECASTLE,

Hopeeastle'a study was away at the end of a wing. To reach it one had to pass many doors. Explorers in dangerous unknown regions could hardly suffer worse qualms than Hebe on this midnight progress At last the study door I With a sudden access of terror she burst it open as though pursued. Had the room been dark and empty, it would have been touch and go with Hebe's senses. But there, before a dying fire, sat her busband, pipe in mouth, reading. He started up. *Hebe, whatever is the matter ?' She half threw herself, half fell, upon the bear-Bkin hearthrug and broke into violent sobbing. «Hebe, dear, what is it P' He tried to raise her,, but she resisted, and crouching down, Bobbing that it was cruel of him to frighten her so. ' Frighten you, darling ? How have I ? You told me you didn't wish to see me or speak to me, and so I kept away; 1 didn't mean to frighten you dear, really.' Bnt £ha only went on sobbing that it was cruel,

The sight of that little cowering figure meltsd Hopecasile; in a fervour of selfaccusation he called himself a brute, and lifting his wife to his knee soothed her with what art he might, drying her eyes with his handkerchief, and stroking the rumpled gold of her hair. « Come, sweetheart,' he said at last, 'let us put out the light and go upstairs.' She went to sleep that night with his arms about her, and when morning stole through the drawn curtains, he lay watching her, but still, that she might have her sleep out, The coverlid stirred faintly with her breathing, and now and then a sob echoed last night's Btorm, and the sweet pink lips had a faintly dolorous droop.

Hopecastle wondered that he could ever let himself be vaxed with her.

CHAPTER XVII. Alas! that such reconciliations should have so little bearing upon the relations of wife and husband. Yet it could scarcely be otherwise; the passion element of love being a thing apart, and no sort of armour against the jars or frictions of daily intercourse. In marriage there may be passion without friendship, or friendship without passion; the ideal union—a blend of both—is not always attained without tribulation. On the morning following the study. Ecane came a grey fordga letter from Germany. Hopecastle dreaded those letters; they seemed to exhale an atmosphere inimical to peace. Taat distasteful scene upon the river at Weaden recurred to memory with an uneasy stirring as he watched his wife. Hid Lucy told P * He noiioed that Hebe slipped the letter into her pocket without comment; the obhera ehe had received that moraine were left lying before her, and she was drumming with her fingezs on the table, absently. '

What time will yo U ride, dear ?' asked her husband. He felt a sudden need to meet her eyea and hear her speak to him Tneride had been fixed before they came downstairs.

'Bide? Oh-I don't know'-she seemed to come out of a brown study-' I tnanta^ 1 * * ab ° Ut " ding *****' Hia face fell.' Why? And you proposed it, darling.' * '^ id J ? ; ob ' well > Pve changed my mind; besides, isn't it a hunting day ?' «Hang the hunting!' he cried with heatdo you suppose I put that before going out to aea you ? r» v "*s Hebe smiled a little cold smile as she rose from table.

'Thanks very much, but I really don't care about riding. Hopecastle strode out without a word but he did not hunt that day, thouehit was a near meet and hia favourite line of country.

Bnfcin the afternoon he met his wife on the stairs in her habit, obviously i a8 t returned from a ride. Nothing was mentioned on either side, but each rccjgnised a certain widening of the breach. Hopeeastle felt depressed; things had Hot beta well of late between himself and Hebe, outLe aad hoped that last night's scone a crisis, and the ensuing recondition the earnest of a happier understanding. Yet in a few hours tfinS had relapsed ; 3 nd in such matters that meant retrogression Most it always go on like this? If only ho conld underthink it, but possibly he and Hebe would be better parted for a time. That night in all gco d faith, Hopecastle mooted a Utile scheme under the head ot * change of air.' Sae appeared to cjnsider. 'And von would come too, I suppose P' ' Weil, no,' he said, «I fchonght perbaps you would like to have your mo her——' ' 'Tf-u are very considerate'—with the answer cam-the little chill smile he had learned to know and dread—' I daresay mamma would like your scheme verv mucb, but to tell the tiuft, if I am al lowed a voice in the matter, I prefer to remain where I am.' 4 1 only thought, datling, that perhaps a few weeks in the South of France '

* Thanks,' sbe said. 'No j but pray do not allow my pretence here to be any restraint upon your amusements in any way.' ' £ don't understand you/ he said. ' Don't you P I'm afraid i can't be more precise; I only mean—please feel free to follow your inclinations without reference to me.'

Hopecastle flung out of his wife's room muttering impatient words; he was deeply hurt and pnzzled. Hebe stood where he left her; hot tears welled in her eyes, but did not fall; anger burnt them away. Oh, yea, a nice arrangement! She understood! It was clear as daylight that he wanted her out jf the way. She thought of a certain sentence in Lucy's letter; she had been thinking; of it aV day. It oould only mean lone thing Though she had often laughed when he tcld her he had never cared for another woman, and though she told him she did not believe a word of it, it had pleased bar mightily to hear him say it. Besides, she had not really found it hard to believe. What hypocrites men were 1 Evidently he was just the same as other men, and evidently all bnt herself knew of it.

!* Sbe hardly knew or&what grade of wrong-doing to accuse hun; but she was in no mood to give benefit of doubts. To think how he had hoodwinked her; and laughed no doubt in his sleeve at her inaooent incredulity. Her face burned with auger, and—but she would never have admitted that it was jealousy. A curious thing was that it never, occurred te her to doubt Lucy's good faith; but only her husband's, whom she had never known other than straight and honourable. So their misunderstanding grew, as a wall rises brick by brick and row by row and blots out a fair view. Each thought himself the one aggrieved. Hopecastle went about with a dark brow, and shoulders nearer to ears than those cared to see who bad much to do with him. And, for Hebe, she hardened her heart and went her own way, there were times when of sheet heart-hunger she was ready to wipe out the old scores, whatever they might be, and begin over

again. For she was very much alone in these days; her mother was nothing to her, her father was in no state to be worried with her troubles, i? indeed he could understand them, for the poor old vicar's hold on this world's affairs was slackening vitheach passing day. Guy was nearly always away now, and Judith and Hubert die not count. She aaw Lidp Sophie Schuyler rather often, but the latest sense of honour kept Hebe from discussing such intimate concerns with a comparative stranger; besides, with all that lady's good nature, Hebe suspected her of being something of a quiz, And so Hebe was driven back upon her distant confidante to the old days; and from across the German Ocean, Lucy, little witch, drew out her friend's secrets with as much ease as one may wind the silk from the cocoon.

CHAPTER XVIII. Breakfast was in course at Boughton Towers. Spring had come, and with it the Hon. Mrs. Stuart Markham with her husband, —Home-Secretary in the late Conservative Cabinet. Lord Hopecastle had just distributed the letters; be noticed among bis wife's one of the foreign envelopes which he had come to imagine of ill-omen. For with each it seemed to him that Hebe grew a little colder, more secretive, and wrapped in memories and concerns in which he had no share. He watched his wife furtively, under cever of his own correspondence and the general preoccupation, She opened the grey letter with a casual air; but on reading turned suddenly white, and her hand went to her head. She stole a nervous glance round and crashed the letter into her pocket. In an instant Hopscastle was deep in his letters; but he sat on thorns, and when, after breakfast his wife slipped quietly from the room, he constrained himself but a few uneasy moments before following her. She was standing in the window embrasure of her private room ; at his entrance she started •Do you want meP' she said quickly. She was very pale. 'I was afraid you had bad bad news, darling.' ' Bad news ?' She pretended surprise.. ' Do tell me, dear.' Hopscastle scarcely knew what he expected. As for that scene in the ruined church at Wenden, he had come to believe that Heb3 must have heard of it, and doubtless a version little enough favourable to himself. For, having regard to the shadow which had come between them, that stupid faux pas was the only thing of which, in honesty, he could accuse himself. Better, he began to think, that it should all come out; he was sick of fighting shadows. If only Hebe would accuse him! Of broaching such a stale old folly himself he was not capable. He went up to his wife. ' Darling, do tell me. I know something distresses you.' 'No, no—it's——nothing you would uEderstand.' He kept his patience. ' Mayn't I try P' She hesitated; her pretty lip had a pitiful droop. She looked like a child wanting sympathy, but not sure of it. Then suddenly, with a gush of tears, she faltered: 'He's dangerously ill—perhaps dying.' ' Your father, darling P Is he not so wellP' She shock her head. 'My master.' ' Your-rrmaster ?' he said with some impatience, ' your mush master P' She nodded, sobbing, ill in a moment revulsion seized Hopeeiatle. ' Bsally,' he said with some impatience, I am very sorry, but it hardly seems to me to warrant such exaggerated distress.' * I daresay not—l shouldn't expect y—you to understand. ' I coafees I do find it difficult to understand such a tragic display of grief about a music teacher.

His Blighting tone lashed her to fury. * You 1 How can you know what he was to me?' (To be continued.)