THE CHAINS OF BONDAGE.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 16, 16 July 1910, Page 16

THE CHAINS OF BONDAGE.

BY EMILY 8., HETHERINGTON, Author of "His College Chum," "Wor thington's Pledge," "A Repentent Poe."

CHAPTER I." EC THE DEPTHS. "Oil, to bieak free of this bondage! II I could only cut myself from it, Utterly and forever!" It was the bond-age of tie ring that this woman meant, in the passionate outbreak that ;broke liercely from her; that bondage to which the plain go-Id ring that she had suddenly snatched from off .her finger, as tiougn tie touch of its encircling baud seared the -white flesh, bound her irrevocably. For a moment it seemed as though in her passionate mood she would have flung it away from her out into the rainswept darkness beyond the open window tv which she sat." staring out with her smouldering eyes tragic in their intenaitv of feeling. A strikinz beautiful woman, looking younger than her twenty-five years. With the dark eyes that were almost a= black as the masses of hair that ehadowed them, and the rich colouring of the clear olive skin, fhe might almost have been akin in race and blood to tie Romany iolk in tieir vans out there on the hill on the wide, storm-beaten downs, where tn-morrow's great race would be run. It was the eve of the Derby.

"Oh. if I rould only make an end of it. this life of degradation to which my ■marri-Age has dragged mc down!"' she whispered, this woman with the passionate eves, across -whose'cheek'ran a red, angry Tinirk. which the blow of her husband's clinched hand had left there.

It was not the lirst time he bad struck her. Of late, when the luck had "been bad. or oven when the money had rolted in plentifully from a credulous race-course crowd, to be frittered away as it had been earned, she had coma to expect such treatment, or at least ■the taunts that were as hard to bear sis bl-o-ws. And she had asked herself bitterly again and again how she could have been such a fool as to let him marry her only to drag her down, deeper and deeper, step by step through every year of those five married years she looked iba-ck on, and perhaps in the years before them to sink to lower depths still. Judith 'Hardress clenched her hand fiercely. The inward tumult of passions was reflected in the dark eyes as she stared ont at the storm: the wind and the rain, and the recurring- peals of ±hund«r rolling away in dying echoes over the great downs, all seemed to harmonize with the stress of her own mo oa.

She evinced round the -wretched, barely furnished upper room where she sitting alone, lighted by a solitary candle that wavered and guttered in the draught of the open window —this environment so alien from the dainty refinements of life that she had once known. The very atmosphere of her sordid surroundings seemed tainted with evil: there was evil in the rowdy, noisy voices that reached her from below, of her hxrsband and his associates, drinking and gambling, quarrelling over the cards, occasionally alternated by a woman's loose laugh; evil in the atmosphere of drink and istale tobacco fumes that seemed to pervade the whole of this low lodging house at Epsom, where they were stay-ing during the four days' racing of Derby week. And presently she would hear a stumbling step on the crazy stairs, and the would come to their room, quarrelsome, drunken, quick witih an oath or a Wow if she crossed him—her husband, to whom she had linked hex destiny five years ago.

"Oh. what a fool I was—what a fool!" She had snatched the ring- off her finger Her -hand was raised, as if to fling it far from, her, for the storm to beat upon and the darkness to hide. "But for my child "

But for her child, whom she loved as deeply as she had learned to h-ato the child's father, she would not have ihesitated. Jtist as she could have flung away that ring, so she would have followed it into the darkness, with a laugh to feel herself free at laart; •would ■ have left him, never to return, !but for that one thing. Her child's tiny finders kept the doors of her prison fn.st-barrpd upon her. She could not 3e:ive her child.

With a little bitter laugh at the im-jpot-ent inip'.i-ise, siie slipped the ring back on itc-r finger. Only a miracle free her from the life she loathed —this (moving about from Ta-ee meeting to race meeting-, picking up a disreputable living, the association of her husband's friends. And the day of miracles was past.

Judith Hardress had come to hate the very name of racing. Had she not cause? It was the turf and cards., gambling in one shape or another, that, through no fault oi her own, 'had brought ier to t-Lis. "Eirst my father, and then my husband:" The embittered hardness of her voice as she spoke the words could not disguise its natural sweetness and aharm. In the depths a.s she was, there still clung about this woman the refinement tbat was her inalienable inheritance of ibirth and breeding, even as those years that had left her face hardened had added no coarsening touches to mar its beauty. Judith suddenly rose, as on an impulse, from her attitude of brooding thought by the window. .She held up the candle and gazed intently at her reflection in the dingy glass. It tiireiv back the striking, uncommon face shado-w-ed with the dark hair, the wonderful uyes, the mouth —so hard now that was naturally so tenderly moulded, made for laughter and joy—ail that the glass revealed—and the red mark where Gilbert .Hardress Inui struck her, in his hiLStv. halt-drunken impatience, before he went downstairs to rejoin his friends, the shady aitnp followers of race-meet-ing;, like himsrelf—"' -wrong 'uns" all. There was a world of bitterness in Judith's face as she looked in to the mirror. It might have been a magic mirror revealing Uie future to her, for in it she seemed to see youth and beauty passing, her best years slipping by in this sordid life into a future a.s hopeless. "Was this all her beauty was to Ijrii:g her? l Only that afternoon on the course she I had looked with intense envy at the fasiiionubie women—women living the ( untroubled life of pleasure, who walked I in tlie paddock, or watched the races from the four-in-hands —divided from her | by the width of the social world. Ju-1 dith had felt, as she watched them, that efie liad been robbed. These women,, daintily dressed, wore not more beautiful than she in her cheap, tawdry garb; and the piace they oc-cupied was her rightful place, only she had been made an outcast from "it through the em of aneSwas. ";" ' ''- ' J

From girlhood onward her life had •been tainted and embittered by the faults of othera; she had been forced to drain the bitter cup.of humiliation; she was expiating the sin of her father and her own folly in marrying the man who had dragged her down.

And soon her youth and beauty would pass, and she would have tasted none of the joys of life —the admiration antl homage that was the due of her beauty from men of that other world in Widen she had once moved. Now, if ever, she ought to take her fate into her own hands, and cut herself free—now! Only there was her child. She could, not snatch at a freedom that would leave the child behind.

Judith gave a little shiver as she turned away from the glass. She was a prisoner, and there was no way out that her weary eyes could see.

An intense Testlessness of mood filled her; she paced up and down the bare room. She could hear the sound -of noisy voices below, raised in some wrangle over the cards, among them her husband'? voice. The whole impure atmosphere of the place seemed suddenly insupportable. Hurriedly she pinned on her hat, threw a cloak over her shoulders, and stole quietly down the uncarpeted staircase.

In the narrow hall a man had just entered the house; he glanced up to see the descending figure. As she caught sight of him Judith had instinctively paused, drawing back in the bend of the stairs; then, realising that Vernhsim had seen her, she came slowly down.-

The toll man nt the foot of the stairs took off his hat with a sweeping ilourish — a man of forty., in whose face, coarsened by dissipated habits were yet hints that at one time he had come of a very different class from the majority of Gilbert Hardress" friends. It was a face with an expansive, genial smile, that wa3 a very valuable stock in trade to one of the most unrcrupulous rognes that ever got a questionable living by his wits.

■' Xot a very tempting night to venture out, Mrs. Hardress," Vernham said, with hi-s elaborate air of politeness that .Judith hated. "Still, I believe that between the showers all the fun of the fair is in progress on the Hill. May I offer you myself as an escort? Charmed, I'm sure. And Gilbert won't bj jealous, although he's not in a very Amiable mood to-night."

He seemed to be looking , meaningly at the mark on her cheek; and J=udrth winced, and a hot flush of colour swept into her face. It was an added humiliation to think that her husband's treatment of her was known to his friends. She passed by without a word.

Of all her husband's friends Judith disliked and feared this man most. It was said yernham had been a University man; certainly extremes met in the circle of Hardress* acquaintances, some of them could hardly write their own names. Kut all had this point in common—that they were equally ready to make money, by fair or foul means. Vernham stood staring after her as she passed out into the street, still smiling and imperturbable, before joining the noisy party in the room.

It was a relief to Judith to be out In the open, with the cool wind in her face. Overhead the sky was a mass of hurrying black clouds; while now and then a vivid flash would suddenly light up the broad sweep of downs \vjth a white, ghostly glare, that swallowed up for a moment the far - off gleams of the innumerable fires in the furnaces of the van dwellers twinkling through the darkness—to-night a place of silence, broken only by the whinnying of tethered horses, frightened at the storm, and the howling of dogs, that to-morrow would be a crowded saturnalia of pleasure.

To-morrow s-he -would be there in the crowd, helping her husband —the tipster ■ —to sell his "selections"; and it would be the inducement of her beauty as much as her husband's "patter" that would draw the harvest of coin.

Her memory could carry her 'back to the time when, as a girl, she had come down to see that very race on a smart drag, with her father and a party he had' brought down to Epsom—an officer in a crack regiment, a man of a thousand friends. And her surroundings had been those of unstinted luxury and extravagance, until the tragedy had happened that caused her mother to die brokenhearted —a disgraceful expose, the revelation that her father had been caught cheating—that he had systematically cheated at cards.

He had been cashiered, of coarse; the home was broken up. They had been living, as it came out then, on credit; scarcely anything had been paid for. Then an immediate disappearance of all their friends —the gradual descent of a dishonoured man to worse infamies atilL

And then Judith's memory showed her the picture of heiseli at last leaving the •father, who had long since forfeited, her last gleam of affection or respect, to make a living , for herself on the stage. A poor enongh living it had been; perhaps because she had resolutely refused to listen to those temptations that assail any pretty girl on the stage. Finally, she Had married an actor-—Gilbert Hardress —who had left the stage soon after his marriage, exchanging a profession in which he had been a failure for that of racecourse tipster, w&ieh only needed colossal impudence and pre•tence and a glib tongue.

In spite of the wild night, the street of caravans and booths on the .Hill was ■busily astir, with the naphtha flares hissing in the wind, lighting up the animated scene; in the hammocks, blackeyed Romany girls, with the business of the day done, were shrieking with laughter; and the dark-faced men, in velveteens, with red scarves round their necks, struck a picturesque note amid the colour and movement of the scene that, for a little while, took Judith out of her brooding thoughts.

As ehe was of the tents, a skinny claw caught at her skirt. It •belonged to an old gipsy hag. "Let mc tell the pretty lady's fortune?," she mumbled wheedingly. "As if I didn't know my fortune too well!" Judith said, glancing down at the yellow face, scored with numberless lines and wrinkles that made her look as if centuries had passed over her head, speaking as if half to herself: '"Or, as if it were worth parting with silver to hear of unchanging ill luck to come!" And she would have passed on, but the brown, skinny claw still held her skirt. •'Let old Hagar read your hand, dearie. The luck's always changing. How are you to know what messenger may not knock at to-morrow's gate, and with •what tidings?" Judith shrugged her shoulders half impatiently. Buit on an impulse ahs dropped &£ilssE sain into .the .old Juyj>

hand; and und:er the tent the gipsy woman bent her beady eyes over the outstretched pakn. For an instant there -was silence.

"I see footsteps coming into your life," the mumbling voice said. "Much land have they travelled, and tiiexe's wide •waters to cross; but I see them coming nearer, nearer! And then suddenly the footsteps stop dead. Ay, before they reach you they stop deadT" The old woman paused for a second. Judith laughed. It -was the familiar old jaTgon.

"Ay, they stop dead. But there'e something those feet aTe ■bringing —something coming to you through stress and etonn, as fierce as the beating of to-night's storm. Fortune, glittering fortune, that's the world's lure—that makes its owners courted, envied, fearedl Fortune your hands -will gTaep at and close on! But you must fight to keep and hold, it—ay, at the cost of sacrifice and bitter-, falling tears! And iv the end "

The old hag paused, looking up into Judith's face. For a moment an eager light had flashed there; for a moment this woman in the depths, listening to the -words that promised fulfilment o£ her hopelese dreams, had half-forgotten that it was only the jargon of a trade that -would fare ill if aught but good news were prophesied.

A sudden peal of thunder startled her, causing Judith to snatch her hand a-way, drawing her thoughts back from dreams to realities.

"Well, and the end?" Judith' asked, with a epice of mockery.

"All, you've broken the spell, and I can't see what lies at the end of the strange road you hare to travel "

"Unless I cross your hand -with silver again?" broke in Judith ironically. "Well, I'm not going to do that. I shall be content enough, if the fortune you promise comes my "way. Let the end take care of iteelf!"

The echo of her mocking, incredulous laugh seemed to linger behind her in the tent after she had gone, and the old gipsy's beady eyes had watched her thoughtfully out of sight.

He rain was coming on again, emptying the Hammocks suddenly, driving the revellers into shelter. Judith set her face homeward again, driven back once more to the man ehe hated by the storm. She let herself into the house/ and went q'u-ietly to her room.

It was not long before she heard on the stairs the footsteps ehe dreaded— the half-drunken, lurching step; then the door opened, noisily, and Gilbert Hardress entered, the rather handsome, animal face flushed, and his gait unsteady. Before the door opened Judith had snatched up a newspaper lying on the table —made a pretence of being engrossed, in it as her husband entered. He spoke to her, but she did not look

"Sulking still, my girl?" Hardress said thickly, regarding her with a scowL

"Well, I'm nat going to have ajiy sulking here; and well have that window closed Why, what is it?"

A little stifled, involuntary cry had broken from her. A name she knew had leaped out from the printed columns as her eyes glanced mechanically over the paper. Judith eat staring at the paragraph, trying to repress her emotion.

Then, as ehe did not answer, her husband snatched the paper roughly from her, and glanced at that portion where her eyes had seemed to rest. He saw nothing there to account, for his wife' 3 unmistakable start. There -was an announcement that Mr. George Craven, the millionaire, was on his way to England from Australia; but it could hardly have been that' piece of news that "had startled Judith. Ojhen, his brain clouded by the fumes of the drink, his interest in the matter suddenly evaporated. He flung himself on the bed drowsily, and fumbled with the laces of his shoes. Before he had got them off he had fallen asleep.

Judith stole quickly across to the bed, picked up the paper that had fallen from the sleeper's 'hand, and read again the paragraph that had startled her: "Among the passengers of the Orina, which is expected to reach Southampton on Monday next, is Mr. George Craven, the Australian money king—said to be one of the richest men in the country of his adoption. . . ."

With a sudden gleam in her eyes, Judifeh looked across at the figure of the man lying in drunken sleep.

"Patience for a little time," }he whispered, through the sound of the 'beating rain, "and I see a way out for my child and myself—a way out of my bondage!" (To foe continued on Monday.)