Captain Adair's Wife.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 185, 6 August 1900, Page 6

Captain Adair's Wife.

(By Lieutenant John Payne.)

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS,

The opening chapter, as is. usual, introduces a number of dramatis personae. \s c are at Fort. Haucliua, in Arizona, where a uutnbcr of soldiers uud officers are gathered Interested in tho capture of Geronlmo, an Apache chief, and a band of Indians devastating the country. We first meet the men, who evidently dislike one Mellish; who is about to be promoted as their sergeant. Mellish is a man of good family, who has pome-Lo grief, but who is, it appears, trying to pull up. We are then introduced to Lieut. Hooker and his friend ltonau, an IrishMexican, the son of a Spanish-Mexican mother, and an old gold prospector from the Emerald Isle. He is a charmingly lay.y and graceful man, and seems amusing.

CHAPTER ll.—This begins on the train which is taking Colonel Marcy, his daughter Mary, and his niece Nina to the fort. Both girls are very beautiful, Nina as a semiSpunish type, uud J.iary us a Northerner and an English girl. Captain Aduii* joins the tniin, and Is immediately much taken with Nina, who is quite conscious of the effect her power and "beauty have had upon him.

Chapters 111. and IV. describe the party at the Fort, and the progress of two love affairs. In Chapter V. the first of these, the attachment between Captain Adair and Nina develops into an exchange of A'bwst'between the two. The girl is greatly distressed at the thought that the Captain must leave her Jo take part in a dangerous expedition against the Indians, and at his suggestion she agrees to marry him at once.

Chapter VI. reveals some unpleasant facts about Mellish, who it appears has a v/ife and child whom he has deserted. Chapter VII., as Nina and the Captain are riding home they are attacked by Indians. Adair, grasping the terrible position, aims his revolver to shoot Nina. But his arm is struck up and he falls to the ground pierced by a bullet. VIII. ■It was soft still noon, •when. Adair opened his eyes again to con* sciousness and light. It was a consciousness almost as dulled as tlie light. The blinds were drawn close, making a dusk in the room, and the first image tipon his eyes was tha cross bars of sunlight which came through the slats and lay in yellow lines across tho clean, bare floor. Adair did not know where he was, and he did not care. His bed, the narrow, low iron one of the soldier, of the hospital, was white and fresh. A little stand beside him held some bottles, a glass and spoon, and a plate with a bunch of grapes. The odour of the grapes was the first thing- that came to Adair. It seemed to him dimly that his surroundings were not strange, that ho had been there a long time; and then, with a sharp contraction of his throat, a feeling- like a stone had suddenly entered into his breast. He remembered. He started up on his •elbow. A soft footed German, big, solid and colourless, came up, and putting his hand under Adair's shoulder, with a gesture that seemed .very familiar, held a glass to his lips and tilted it until the contents had gone down hia throat. Adair felt fatigued, sleepy, and before his thoughts could gather themselves again, he was drifting easily off into unconsciousness. The nexii moi-mug he awoke naturally and found Colonel Marcy sitting beside Mm. He was weak; he was full of an aching- misery, when memory came painfully back to him, as blood flows again into a limb that has been numbed. ' - , i Thoughts formed themselves slowly into sentences. Colonel Maxcy was looking through the Sunday papers of last week; an untidy pile of them, crumpled by their six days' journey in the mail bag, lying' across his broad knees. He did not know that Adair had awakenert until he spoke. Adair tried to say a dozen things, but the horror that came upon him left him but one word.

"Nina?"

It was an imploring question. The colonel turned about with a start.

"Why, bless my soul! Are you awake at last? I have been waitingfor you to come out of that nap. Is it Nina you are talking about? I wish you were half as well. Now don't go to worrying about anything. You arc going to be all right before anybody can say Jack Robinson."

"How was it?"

"Just as simple as anything could be. The boys from, Camp Verde had been following that party of Indians for three days. They came upon them right in the midst of your little affair. The Indians scattered as they always do, biit the boys managed to bring in half a dozen of them. They thought you,were both dead at first. Nina was in a faint for hours —out of her head for a day or two —but I guess she's all right now." The sunshine suddenly became sweet-to Adair. The stone rolled away from his breast, and a tender little smile came about his lips. She was only waiting, of course, for him to get out again, to tell the whole story. He was sorry he was hurt and unable to go down into the Cananeas just now, of course, but it would be wonderfullly sweet not to go. He looked past Colonel Marcy, through the open window, to the distant hills. Life seemed a previous thing. His thoughts made pictures. "They look pretty bright over there for October, don't they?" said the colonel. ■ •

"Octobeir!" Adair looked at him in wonder.

"Why, sure enough, I suppose the time has run along for you, loafing it away in bed. It has been six weeks, my young friend, since that Apache bullet struck you —a devilish'hard time the doctor says he had getting it out, too. Don't get him started on a diagnosis; he'll talk for a week "

The colonel was talking to tide Adair over the shock. Six weeks out of a man's consciousness is not lightly parted with. "We've had time to straighten the Inidan troubles out without you. They are all back on the reservation, studying up deviltry for next year."

The colonel went on explaining to Adair, telling the story of the sum-. mer campaign and its ending, with no idea that his nice elucidation of the Indian question Avas falling on dea.f ears.

"Everything is safe again now. I consider them all penned up for the winter. I sent for Mary to come back, and I'm expecting her this evening. I'll send her over to see you. I doubt if we'll ever get Nina ba'clc."

What a rush back to earth Adair's consciousness tookl

"Where, are they?" he asked weakly. "I sent 'em over to the Albuquerque Springs as soon as Nina was able to travel. Mrs Acton took 'em. Nina went ofli back East from there."

She had gone. She had evidentlytold her uncle nothing of her marriage, and she had not cared to see him again. Hi ere was bitterness in Adair's soul, but it was not against hei. The spoiling that Avomen folk givo their own had never been given to Adair, and the thought that Nina had a duty to perform in telling her story, and staying to take care of him through his own ilhiessi, did not enter his mind. He did not miss what he had never had. He hacl dreamed dreams, but, like most faucies, they, had not been imprinted firmly enough for their fading away to leave him desolate. The colonel left him, never knowing—how few people ever know the heights and depths that follow their wordsi—the waves of joy and desolation that his talk had brought to Adair.

In the long days of convalescence Adair went over and over his strange marriage, and it almos.S seemed like a fevered fancy. It was one of the real things that are so unreal. It was his honest natural impulse to tell Colonel Marcy the whole story;i but his loyalty to Nina made him know that they must tell it together.

There was one horrible picture that tormented him night and day-—her hands thrown, out in the face of his pointed revolver, her cry of- anguish: "Would you kill me?"

Surely she knew why.

As soon as he was able to be propped up by pillows, Adair called for his writing materials and began q letter to his wife. He had hardly written the first line when there was a knock, a rustle, a closing- of lace parasols, and the froufrou of women's dresses. The big, noiseless German nurse opened the 'door to let in Mary Marcy and Mrs Acton.

Mrs Acton was entirely happy in having somebody to purr over. She had no children, and Nina and Mary had been giving her almost as much plcaisure as though'they had been her own. More, perhaps, for her own daughters would never have had the inheritance of beauty and spirit to keep Mrs Acton's heart full of exultation as these two had done.

Now that she had come back to the fort and found Adair invjust the state of illness when "mothering" was permissible, she had come to ask him to go to her own house. "We have been trying to come to see you for days," Mary said, "but papa said you were not well enough; and here I come in and find you writing letters. "Not letters —but a letter!"

"A very important one it must be." "It is." Adair looked at her with meaning. He hoped Nina had told her, any way. He had always heard that girls told each other everything. .But Mary made no sign. "Did you have a pleasant time at the Springs?" he went on; "Indeed we did. We found ever so many people there we knew, or at least that Nina knew. She finally went off home with some New Yorkers, who had been seeing the Yellowstone, and came down to New Mexico because she was there.' Nina is very much liked." i

"Is she—quite well again?" Adair asked hesitatingly. The blood came up into his thin cheeks, and tingled along the backs of his hands. . "Yes. quite," Mary said briskly. She arose and went, to the window and looked out,. "She 'was so. sorry not to see you again before she went away." ■ • There was a slightly embarrassed note in Mary's voice, out Adair was not quick enough to detect it. "She had a terrible fright, that awful night." "But she recovered at once? "No—o. It was hours before she became entirely conscious," Mrs Acton broke in. "Now do not worry Mr Adair with, going over that story again. He is coming over to stay with me, and we can talk about all those things. Tell him aboivtthat pretty Miss Wells who Is coming to visit you next month"; and Mrs Acton went off into the fields of gossip. , ' .' , "Dear me!" Mary said as she went away. "Let me gather up your papers; the breeze has scattered them all over." . , That night as • Adair lay, his lips drawn into a line, looking at the letter he had finally written to Nina, and wondering if he had put into it the heart break he felt, the longing, Mary was 'giving her father his afterdinner coffee. / " What did you tell •him?" the colonel asked. "What could I do? I said she had sent flier regards to Mm, and was sorry not to see him. again. I couldn't tell ■him. And papa—l feel dreadfully at having seen it, but I am afraid —it isn't so bad for Adair as we thought. I am afraid I stumbled upon a great secret to-day. When I went in Captain Adair had begun, a letter. It was lying on a magazine on the bed. The wind blew it off, and I picked it up. Pa.pa —the beginning was—" My dear wife.'" ' \

The colonel dropped Ms cup, and the warm, black stream ran all over his fresh duck uniform. He sopped at it with (his napkin, but liis eyes, incredulous, were on Mary's face.

"Nonsense! Nonsense 1 What are you saying? Adair has no wife. What in the mischief would a man like Adair be doing with a wife thait he had not introduced to the regiment? You were mistaken in twhat you saw."

"May be I was," said Mary, obstinately, "but I saw what I saw. There it was as plain as print—' My dear wife ' in Captain Adair's own writing; and when I went in he said he was writing an. important letter."

"I know better," said the colonel, crossly and loudly. " Very well, I suppose you do, papal, but I know what I saw. I don't care if Captain Adair has twenty wives. It's of no consequence to me; only I'm glad that that little affair with Nina is ail ciit off." :;■' "I meant to tell .him the whole story," the colonel said, "but if you were right, I shall do nothing of the sort. But I don't believe it, I want you to understand that." "No, my old dear," Mary said to herself, "you don't believe it, but you are going to act' as though you did. And I know it's true." (To be continued.)