THE CHAINS OF BONDAGE

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 170, 20 July 1910, Page 10

THE CHAINS OF BONDAGE

BY EMILY B. HETHERINGTON,

Author of "His College Cham,' 1 - ""Worthington's. Pledge," "A Repentent Foe."

CHAPTER IV. FATE AIXD THE WOMAN. It was striking eight o'clock as Judith Hardress passed in from the street, and went up the stairs of the dingy "block of small, cheap flats in Battersea, where she and her husband lived , when in Sown. It was the Monday night after Epsom •week—the day on which George Graven, the millionaire, crossing from Australia, ■was due to reach England—this man *rho had been in Judith's thoughts and plans ever since she had, in that squalid lodging house at Epsom, come across •that announcement of his expected arrival. Judith had just returned from parting with her child; to-morrow they would be leaving London again, she and iher husband, for the week's racing— that life she loathed, that also separated her co much from the boy on whom all the love of her starved heart expended itself. It was out of the question, of course, for the child to accomBanv them on xlieir journeys from race Sieeting to race meeting. Little four-vear-old Gilbert remained in London in the care of some relatives of the boy's (father, who lived not a dozen streets away.

Her bus-band had been in a morose, sullen mood all the day, had spoken angrily to her in the child's presence, making little Gilbert cry and cling to her in' fear. If only George Graven would help her when she made her appeal to ihim!

ir ßut Ihe cajrt refuse —ihe can't refuse!" -Judith whispered fervisfahr to ■herself. 'Tm his flesh asd blood—the only living relative he has." George Craven was her mother's brother—a man who had been one of the luckiest pioneers in one of ihe later "gold rushes" in Australia, where he lad settled. Would he refuse to help iher? She remembered George Craven, the hard, unforgiving man., whose harshness had always repelled her even as a child on the rare occasions of his revisiting England; and she knew, 'too, the caise of his fierce quarrel with her father ihat had never been made up.

-'11l never willingly see or have anyIfching to do with you or yours again!"

It was after her father's downfall that &he had heard George Craven utter those passionate words to his brother-in-law, the thief, who had forged bis name, bad robbed him. And George Craven was a man who prided himself on never forgiving an injury. "He shall help me—l am his flesh and blood! He can't refuse my appeal!" Judith said to herself.

She let herself into the flat. The gas •was turned down in the sitting room. Judith had ahlf expected to iind her husband absent—had hoped to find him out. though he would probably return late, quarrelsome with drink. Still, she ■welcomed the brief respite, as she turned ■up the gas that diffused its unshaded, yellow glare about this comfortless room of what was her home.

Her eyes fell upon a copy of an evening pa per lying on the table "stained with the dregs of beer. Judith/ took it up; in it she might find some news of George Craven. The vessel bringing him from Australia had been expected to reach Southampton thai day. She glanced across the headlines of the paragrapihs; and then swiftly her face paled, and a stifled cry broke* from her, a dreadful cry that voiced the depths of a woman's despair. "SUDDEN DEATH OF A f " 'IHIjLIONAIRE." It was thai significant headline that arrested the woman's eyes; and Judith had read enough of the paragraph -to know that, within an hour of landing in England, the man on whose help she had buHt had died suddenly from heart failsire in t-he hotel at Southampton.

George Craven was dead, and the last straw of hope to which her drowning iands had. -clung had failed her! Dead — and his vast fortune would be -willed awiy to anyone hut the daughter of the man who had robbed him. Her memory of the man had made.-h.er sure of that.

She stood staring at the opening lines of the fatal paragraph, incapable of reading further in. that first dazed moment of despair. Bate was against her. The remembrance of the old gipsy hag's words came tack; mockingly to her mind. She ■was hopeless now —hopeless! And with that bitter thought in her mind, her eyes read almost mechanically the rest of the ■brief paragraph; and the new sta-rtled cry- that broke from her now had spanned ■in a note the whole gamut between despair and a sudden wild, almost incredulous joy. "It is understood that Mr. Craven, who was unmarried, died leaving no will, and that his nes± of kin is being sought for. 1.

Judith stared at the closing lines of the paragraph as if fascinated. George Craven had died intestate, and in. consequence she, ibis only living relative, was his heiress! At first her mind could ■hardly take in the tremendous fact. "Heiress to all George Craven's fortune!" she cried wildly, almost like a woman demented. "Heiress to millions! I shall he one of the richest women in the-world!"

Then, suddenly, across the -glittering threshold of her dreams, fell, like a sinister shadow, the thought of the man she : lad married.

Her husband! When she stepped into this vast inheritance it -would not 'be alone; he--would enter her good fortune, too. The thought "was horrible. Was this drunken, dissolute husband, -with his low associates, to taint her future as .he had tainted her past? Her husband? What did she owe to him? And a thought came swiftly into her mind.

What if she could slip out of his life, out of Gilbert Hardress' life for ever, ■with her child? Who would recognise I in this great heiress that -woman of the depths, that unhappy creature of another ■world from which this new world opening to her was so far removed? Dared she gamble with Fate—to slip away out of his life, to begin anew, she and her child alone? "Til take the risk!" Judith muttered to herself, suddenly, through set teeth. She would take the risk—make 'her j escape to-night, leave no word or sign, no' clue by which her husband could trace her. Before he came back to-night she must be gone, gone on that road oi no return; and to-morrcrw he would search for them in vain—for her and -her boy.

But there was no time to lose, now that her mind was -made-up. 130 time tc lose! Kvery moment "vvas precious when at any instant ho might Teturn. Judith \ralkod quickly to the door of ihe room, and crossed the narrow entrance hall to the bedroom to make her hurried preparations. The bedroom «Jeor- wag standing $}**' ':.;..:

There was no light burnJng in tie room, but the gleams from the room she had just left falling out across the passage threw their dim light within as she pushed tie door of the bedroom open. And. on the threshold Judith came to a dead stop with a startled cry, flinging up a hand instinctively as if to ward oS the shock of what met her eyes. ' Her husband was there in the TObm! " Gilbert!" No answer from the quiet figure sitting there, staring out of the. shadows; and suddenly fear, like an almost tangible presence, had stolen, like a third figure in the room to the woman's side, whispering to her. Why did her husband not -answeT? She had a box of matches in her hand that she had taken to light the gas. Desperately her fingers fumbled with the box. In this new, shaking, terrible dread Judith was trembling so violently that for a moment she could not take out a match. The rasping sound, as she at last struck it, seemed to fill the sudden, heavy silence. The match flared up for a moment, and then fell from her nerveless shaking fingers, leaving her in the darkness again, but not before the tmy gleam had flickered on the grey face of a dead man. ' Of Gilbert Hardress —murdered! !■

if" C&APTER V. THE DRAMA OF A. NIGBT. "Murdered!" For a moment the overwhelming horror that had leaped out of the darkness, tripping her heart with a fear she had never known before, seemed to turn Judith to a woman of stone. Beyond one wild choking cry torn from* her in the first shock of that revelation, the woman stood stricken to silence, staring with fascinated eyes into the shadows, as though even yet, in spite of the evidence of her senses* her dazed .brain could not credit this appaling fact that had fallen swiftly across •the threshold of the new life opening to her. Her senses reeled. Her husband, the man from whom a few minutes ago she was planning escape, had been lying dead, murdered, even while she read the mews of that -vast 'fortune awaiting her!

Suddenly Judith Hardress became conscious of a hysterical impulse to scream —to fly screaming from this place where deati and silence brooded out into London's lighted streets, to feel life ? seething about, her again; the impulse was almost resist/less. Per.haps a .woman of less strong character, or a -woman whose life had not taught her, as Judith's bitter experience had done, to keep her feelings repressed under an iron control, would have yielded to it. She was shaking from head to foot. She had to set her teet-h to keep ba«k the beginning of that cry that rose in her throat; she knew that if it once passed her lips, the last vestiges of selfcontrol would slip from her. It was only by a supreme effort- of will that she kept a grip on her quivering nerves. There was so much at stake. Even across the shuddering horror of this tragic thing that thought came to her like a sudden, whispering temptation. He -was dead, beyond all human heln. Her one glance <had answered that question. To raise the alarm could be nothing for Gilbert « Hardres3 now — would only wreck all those plans and hopes of a few minutes ago. It might even be suspected that in a moment of passion she had killed him. The terms on which they lived could hardly fail to ibe known to every one in the dwelling.

"You must pull yourself together and ■think —think what's .best to be done, now—at once!" the woman whispered to herself feverishly, all her strength oi character reasserting itself to face this crisis that fate had flung into the strange angle of her affairs. "Everything depends on your keeping your wit 3 about you now."

Judith drew a deep breath; then nerved herself to go forward into the room and light the gas. She was very whi*:e and shaken —a ceaseless quivering ran over her nerves; but she could trust herself now not to surrender tf> any panic impulse, though the sight of what "the sudden glare of yellow light*revealed, prepared for it though she was, made her face whiten more.

The dead man had fallen bade against the footrail of the bed, still maintaining a stiff, semi-upright position. On the floor lay the "weapon that had stabbed Gilbert'Hardress to the heart. The woman's shuddering eyes recognised it —a Norwegian clasp knife that had belonged to her husband. There of a straggle in the disordered room— a struggle that could not have taken place so long ago, for that "dark stain on the carpet was still wet. Who could have done this deed? Why should any one have done it? The questions beat through the stress of her confused thoughts, finding no answer.

■For a • moment Judith looked at the dead face of the man from whom she had parted last in anger; into the Hist; ■bewildered horror of her face a sudden, softened expression had found its ■way. His treatment of her had killed any respect or affection long ago; but even with, "the .bitter memories of their married life thus tragically ended, this "woman vas not so hardened as not to be moved by a rush of womanly pity now.

Judith suddenly averted her eyes; the tension of her overwrought nerves was ■becoming unendurable. As she -turned, remembering the purpose that had brought her to the room, she crossed quickly to a chest, and from one of the drawers took some small object; then made her way from the room, closing the door after her, feeling that not for worlds could she have nerved herself to open that door again.

Outside in fche passage, sick and diizy ■with a mome.ja.Ty faintness, she had to support herself by -fche frame of the door ■before she could walk iback to the sitting room. She sank into a chair, and tried to force her "tihoughts into control. What -was she to do? Ten minutes ago all her plans had been formed. She had determined to leave her husband, to slip out of this life forever—she and her child—leaving no hint or clue by which he could trace her. This -woman in the depths had recognised how vital it -was to cut herself free of any link with the past five yeaTs, before she came forward to claim George Craven's fortune.

To step back into that position in the ■world of Gociety that -mis hers by rio-ht of birth—that luring ambition dazzled her. And the way back had seemed possible, to George Craven's heiress. Her father's sin would be conveniently forgotten. Why should anyone visit it ■njMrn her?; Th.c hanea gates would. fly.

back now. If she could . only cancel those last five yeare of her life! If she'could only do that! Her marriage with a disreputable racecourse tipster, the degrading, vagabond existence, her husband's •association with the lowest hangers-on of the turf in shady schemes that had once brought him with: in the clutches of the law—if all that "sordid story were to be raked up, despite all her wealth, she would be looked at askance. Doors that would otherwise have opened to her would remain closed; it would taint her future. And, realising that, she hadlaid her desperate plans accordingly—before her -husband'e death had changed evtrrytb/ing. The woman drew a sudden, deep breath as she stared through the open window, where the night wind stirred the folds of the undrawn curtains. Was anything really changed so far as she was concerned? • ;"' . Nothing need' be changed—so long as she did not raise the alarm, to become aprominent figure in the subsequent proceedings, that would be reported at length in every >,paper in England, making it impossible for George Craven's heiress in the future to conceal her identity with the murdered man's wife. Was ehe to do that? "Prom this hour to-night the woman who married Gilbert Hardress is dead!" she •whispered to herself, with a sudden note of resolution. "And for Judith Fairfax a new life begins!" '{To be continued daily. ';T-"

WOLFE'S SCHNAPPS a perfect spirit. Absolutely pure.