MARY ELWYN'S SECRET.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 131, 4 June 1900, Page 6

MARY ELWYN'S SECRET.

[COPYRIGHT.]

( ALAN ST. AUBYN (Author of "A Fellow of Trinity," &c)

PART 11,

CHAPTER 111.

The morning after old Brown's foolish triumph Mr Elwyn .came over to the.rectory, and asked to see him for a few in'inutes alone.

He had come over to ask for the amount of his first quarter's stipend — which was not due for another month. He was called up to town on business, he explained, and he had not yet received his remittances from abroad.

Brown did not receive his tithes in advance, he did not, in fact, receive them for months after they fell due, nevertheless he managed to let Mr Elwyn, who was profuse in his thanks, have, the money. ''It is very strangle for such : a rich man to be so hard up for money," the rector's wife remarked rather sharply when he told her the object Oil Mr Ehvyn's visit. "My dear," Brown said, in a tone of mild reproof, "we are all liable to run out of ready money. Mr Elwyn has had a great many Calls Upon him lately, in settling in a new house."

"He has not paid them if he has,' said his wife, severely. "He is in debt all over the village already." "He is going- up town on business, my dear; probably to receive his remittances," Brown suggested mildly, He always put the best construction on thing's

Whatever the business was that took the ourqte up to town, he took a packing- case of considerable dimensions, in addition to bis portmanteau, up with him.

The Rector had been paying- a visit at the further end of the parish, on the jtoad to Beestou Junction, and as he stood at the door of a' pottage, the Fawley carriage, with the big- packingcase on top, drove by. • Mr Elwyn returned from town in time for duty the following- Sunday— he left the packing case behind, Brown observed—and his "Amens" were more impressive than ever. The Eector and his wife went to no more dinner parties at the Court; his intei'course with his wealthy curate's family was restricted henceforth to tennis parties, and occasional afternoon tea. Mrs Elwyn had a nervous constrained manner; she did not get on at all with the rector's wife; she never seemed quite at ease amid her new surroundings.

"I'm sure her husband is a perfect Blue-beard," Mrs Brown remarked one day when she had been calling at the Court. "I never saw a woman so absolutely frightened of a man in my life. lam certain there is a cupboard with an ugly secret in it in that house, and that poor broken-spirited creature has got the key. By the way, Bob, .those blue vases you were talking about are not on the mantelpiece of the drawing-i'oom." "I should think not!" the Eector answered. "Elwyn, if he is a wise mau, has locked them away. I should be very sorry to have them on my mantelpiece. Those careless servants of his might break them any day." Mr ElWyn did not give his servants the opportunity of breaking the beautiful old china belonging to Fawley Court. He had it all locked away, he explained to Brown the next time he ■called, and was looking round the room as if he missed something; he had put it all away in a place of safety, directly he was aware of its value; even the china in the cabinets he had removed, and stored away with the rest, and some trumpery ornaments of no value were put in its place. The Rector did not care to visit the dismantled room when all his old friends were gone.

There was a teapot, in a corner,, which Mr Elwyn, he noticed one day he called, had overlooked. A delightful old Worcester teapot, and he greeted it with a little nod of recognition. "Is it of any value?" Mr Elwyn asked, following the direction of his eyes. ' Brown hesitated a moment; he didn't want it to be put away, out of sight, with the rest. "It is Worcester," he said.

"Old?"

»V—e —s; decidedly old." The next time he went to the Court the teapot was gone. Mr Elwyn, as we have before remarked, was not good at visiting, but his daughter made up for it. She was very active in the parish, and did a great deal of work in the schools; and she was an unwearied sick visitor,

The Sector used to call her his lay curate; it seemed to him that Mary Elwyn could never do enough in the parish. It would have been unkind to say that she was.not really fond of the work, that she did it under constraint, actuated by some conscientious motive. The Rector would not have said it for the world, but he had his own opinion; he could not have believed that a mere. sense of duty would have urged a girl to such unremitting labour. But the strange thing about it was that she did not seem to get any encouragement at home.

Her father used to speak of her as "my Quixotic daug-lrter"; and Mrs Elwyn seemed uneasy and distressed when any reference was made to Mary's labours in the parish. "She will make a. capital clergyman's wife," the Sector said to her father one day, when they happened to come across Mary in the village.

The Curate smiled, and looked after his daughter's retreating figure. "I don't think Mary will marry a clergyman," he said significantly. "She will probably go to India."

And then he told Brown that a son of one of his county neighbours, who had recently returned from India on leave, had asked his permission to pay his addresses to his daughter. "And you?" Brown enquired hastily: he knew the young man well, and could not have wished him a better

"I? Oh, I gave him permission to take his chance. It would be a very good match for Mary—and she would go to India."

Brown repeated this conversation to his wife directly he got home. She smiled and shook her head. "It is not going to work in the usual way," Brown remarked, "I suppose times have changed since I went courting.

I know I asked you first, Jenny, and your father after." iirs Brown smiled and sighed, as she recalled those far-off days, and an unaccountable moisture gathered in her kind blue eyes.

I She had never regretted the promi ise she1 made to her father's curate so long ag-o. Her eyes had not shed many tears since that never-to-be-forgotten day, and old Brown got up hastily from his chair, and kissed away the tear before it had time to fall, and his wife of forty years 'blushed like a girl again. "He had asked Mary first, Bob, and she had refused him —and —and she loves him dearly," Mrs Brown said with a little catch in her voice. She had not refused Brown when he asked her so long ago; she had touched no spring of far-oif memory to cause that suspicious catch in her voice. "Why did she refuse him?" he asked bluntly. "0 Bob, you are so matter of fact — a girl's a girl " "And doesn't know her own mind?" "Yes, Mary Elwyn knows her own mind," his wife said sadly. She was very fond of the girl, and they had been thrown a good deal together lately in their parish work, but he did not know she was Mary Ehvyn's confidante.

"She is very fond of Kenneth Forbes. She could not help being fond of him,- he is a splendid fellow. But she has some Jeason of her own, I am sure an honourable one, for refusing him. I'm afraid it's connected with ' that dreadful Blue-beard cupboard."

"It was scarcely the thing for Forbes to go to lier father after the girl refused him."

"Oh yes it was, under the circumstances; I am to blame if any one is," Mrs Brown said hastily. "I knew Mary loved him, and it was an excellent match for her, and I told him to go."

"You, oh Jenny!"

The Rector was not at all surprised, after this confession of his wife's, to hear it formally -announced that Mary' Elwyn was engaged to marry Kenneth Forbes, but he could not understand the girl looking so unhappy, when he offered her his congratulations.

He was sure that she had accepted her lover unwillingly, that she had been coerced into »the engagement, and he told his wife so when he got home.

"I am afraid she has," she admitted rather. reluctantly; "but, you see, Bob, it will be the best thing for her; I know she loves him—and it will be a very good mateh —and she will go to India "

And she will go to India!

"That was exactly what her father had said, as if going to India, for a girl, were equivalent to, well, to going to Heaven!"

"It wouldn't be to most girls, Bob, but it would, be to Mary,, poor girl! It woxild be going away from that uncongenial horne —it would be leaving behind her that dreadful Blue-beard cupboard."

The engagement was to be a very short one. Kenneth Forbes' leave was nearly expired, and preparations for the wedding were hurried on. The trousseau was on a most liberal scale. Its magnificence far exceeded anything1 that the Sector's wife had ever seen; she could not help smiling as she compared it with her own humble,, trousseau that had done such splendid duty through all these forty years. There was some of it in existence still.

In spite of all "these grand preparations, the bride-elect went about the village with a white frightened face, looking- sadder and sadder as the wed-ding-day approaching. She did not.seem to take the slightest interest in her beautiful things, she hated to talk about them.

Mrs Brown was in the house when the wedding- dress came home, and the dressmaker from a neighbouring town came over with it. It required a great deal of persuasion to induce Mary to put on the dreaded garment, and when she had got it on, and was crowned with the wreath and veil, and her mother led her before the glass, to see the effect, instead of blushing, and smiling back at the lovely image re* fleeted in it, as a bride-elect is supposed to do, she turned a,way from it with a shudder, and broke down in an hysterical fit of weeping. There was nothing to be done but to drag off the wedding finery and put everybody out of the room as quickly as possible.

Hysterical people say such, ridiculous things; it is never safe to let strangers listen to their ravings. Quickly as Mrs Brown had been hurried away, she caught a few incoherent words that the girl poured out in her frenzy. She was imploring Kenneth Forbes to release her from her engagement, and Mrs Brown caug-ht, or thought she caught, some wild words about bringing- sorrow and shame upon him.

She made up her mind as she hurried home, a little tipset and flustered at this unexpected termination of her visitj that she wouldn't say a word to her husband about what she had overheard; he wouldn't understand that it was merely the nonsense of an hysterical girl; he would attach some serious importance to it. Besides, what could "sorrow" and "shame" have to do with Mary Elwyn? Mrs Brown was uneasy about the girl all day; she had an idea that she was bullied at 'home, bullied and sat upon; but she couldn't understand why she should break down, and utter all that nonsense when she put on her wedding gown. It ought to have been a supreme moment. It is a supreme moment to most girls.

After tea she went up to the Court to enquire after Mary Elwyn. It waa a lovely June evening, and she took the short cut, across the fields and through the shrubbery, instead of going by the road and through the lodge gates as she was accustomed to do when she made a formal,call. She reached the middle of the shrubbery, which at this time of the year was densely wooded; the trees were in full leaf, and there was a thick undergrowth of fern; the place had been neglected and let run wild during the Squire's absence, and nothing had been done to it since Mr Elwyn came. Mrs Brown had to push the boughs aside to pass, and the undergrowth was so thick and tangled with fern ■and brambles tha:fc she missed the path. She was turning back to retrace her steps, when the sound of voices arrested her.

The voices were quite near, within a,,few yards, but. the speakers were hidden from her t>'y a thick spreading hedge of yew; she knew the voices in a moment. It was Mary Elwyn and her lover.

The girl was speaking in an agi» tated voice; she was begging Kenneth to release her from her engagement, to put off the wedding.

I "My darling-," lie was saying, "hovt ■ can you ask such a thing1? Is it posisible, after all, that you do not love me, Mary?"

There was an ache in the manly voice that Mrs Brown could not help catching-, and the girl was weeping. It was dreadfully embai*rassing for the Rector's wife; she did not know whether to make her presence known, or to steal silently away. While she was still hesitating, the voices drew nearer; she could have touched the speaker, if the hedge had not been between. "It is not that, Kenneth," Mary was saying, "Oh, if you only knew! I cannot tell you the reason, now;—you will know the reason some day —why I wish the wedding' put off. Many people put off their weddings at the last moment; it is no unusual thing. I want you to go to my father, and tell him you wish to put it oS — for —for . the present —for a year at least —"

"You want me to go back to India without you?" the young man said reproachfully, "How can you *ask me such a thing, Mary?" "Because I love you, Kenneth; if I did not love you, I would not ask this of you," she said earnestly. "Oh, believe me, this is no whim, no caprice of mine—there is a reason —a good reason —" the g-irl shivered as she spoke, she could not keep her voice steady.

"Can you not tell me the reason— can you not trust me, Mary?" he said hoarsely. "There should be no secrets between us."

"It is not my secret," she said with a moan. "Believe me, it is not my secret, Kenneth; it is not mine to tell. I can only ask you to trust £ie —" She was Avringing her hands and weeping", and her lover was bending .over her. Mrs Brown could not have stirred an inch if she would. She stood rooted to the spot. "If it is not your secret, I will not ask you to tell it," he said gravely. "And —and —of course I will trust you! I am not going to let this secret of some one else's come between us, and spoil our lives. It is because I love you, Mary—love you—and trust you— that I am going to carry you away from this place, and we will leave the secret behind us. I swear to you, whatever it may be, it shall never come between my love and you!"

Mrs Brown could not hear what Alary answered; perhaps she made no further resistance; the footsteps of the lovers retreated in the direction of the house, and she crept back through the tangled path by the way she came. She did not go up to the Court to make enquiries; she had learnt all she came to know; no, not all; she 'had not learnt Mary Elwyn's secret.

It was quite preposterous, she told herself, for the girl to expect her lover to give her up. What man in his senses, who loved a girl, would give her up, because she could not share with him a secret that was not her own to tell?

(To be Continued.)