OUR SATURDAY STORY.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 305, 21 December 1912, Page 16

OUR SATURDAY STORY.

THE INTERLOPER. ] (By mKCE PALMER.) "TouTl be away Tor three days?" ' "Perhaps four. It's a long jonrney." ' He searched her face covertly as he saddled at the gate, for somehow he had a j' feelmg that she would be relieved wlien lie was gone. There was just enough Insight tn him. to make htm aware tbat he had never really known her: even now, as she stood by Che gate, slowly turning over the letters he was to carry, he could not | read the meaning in her quiet face and I down-turned eyes. He fastened the martin- i gale and dTew the girths tight. "There's no need for mc to hurry back," he said. "Yon wont feel lonely?" "Osi, no; I'm used to being alone." If he liad been perceptive, he would have noticed a fain trace of bitterness In her sofUy-nttered words: but even had he done | so, he would hardly have known the cause. In strict truth, this was the first time he had ever left her for more than a day during the six months since he had brought her there; but that was not what she meant. "Wpli, sood-bye," he said. He klseed her, and ewun-g himself Into the saddle, wtiile she tnrned back towards the empty house. In the kitchen two halfcaste girls were preparing food for the stockmen, but there was a silence about the long, low bungalow, with its wide verandahs, a silence that seemed to come from the miles of thick nrnlga that hemmed U round. She plucked a spray absently from the oleanders, arrd then slowly "walked up tie gravel path, half awed by the empti ness of the day ahead of her. But he rode on, the smoke curling np from his pipe-bowl and his mare tossing her head lightly as If eager for the Journey. There waa a faint doubt on the surface of his mind, but it did not penetrate deep. He could not understand any one finding the life lonely, for he had been bred to it, and all his Interests were centred in that wide expanse of thick mulga and shimmering plain. He was not an imaginative man: tbpre was erven a lack of sensibility in hie sober, sun-tanned face and slow, direct eyes, and he felt that it should be enough for her that tie cattle fed over a hundred hills and that at forty he could buy up any other cattleman on all the little rivers of the West. "If she had married Trenton." he thought, "what more could he have given her?" But even the very sound of the name brought a faint sense of disturbance to his mind, for it recalled some things he did not care to think about. He was annoyed that a man he so despised should have power to irritate aim in rhe most intJmate ways, foT he conld never watch Trenton without being awnre of q-Jalitiee that filled Mm with both envy and distrust. Trenton *was polished and debona4r: his sympathy flowed easily: he had a way with women. And Brayne, riding with hie eyee on his mare'e toeelng head, told himsea , that all these things were of little account, yet got smell wrarfort from his self-persuasion. The scrubby niulga changed to shimmering plains where the bariey-grasß rose etirrnp-hish and looked Hie a field of wheat. His mare ambled through it with jangling blt-cbaine, and the wild lorkeys rose with a •whirr before them and hovered clumsily over their heads. He had covered t-wenty miles now, and the sun had long passed Its zeni*i. The riding .at right angles to him on the fOtier ..edse of £b.e plain sair bim while they were still a mile apart, and •wxrald have turned hie horse if he could have done it imperceptibly. He rode on, however, with "a careless grace, and. reined np his horse an they met. "Off for a journey, Brayne?" he asked eaelij-. In Brayne's eyes there was an instinctive reticence. "Yes," he said bras<raely. "I'm. going to look at some cattle." The covert hostility between the two men c-ouid be detected to tneir faces more easily than in their words. It was not a thing of a day. It had its roots in their very fibre, and yet It had never yet had a chance to leap forth. Trenton stroked the mkne of ■bis horse with his -wilp. "Aii, Hat thousand head on Mindoorie," he said, with apparent unconcern. "You'll be away a week, then?"' "Hardily." "Surely it wil take you three ttays to get there?" "Two at the most." Trenton's smooth face and dark eyes betrayed no more than a casual interest; yet Brayne moved uneasily in his saddle. It was disturbing that he should have to talk so quietly to this man whom he bated and distrusted In all his being. Even then he could not help noticing two or three trivial things about Trenton: his email, sensitive hands, his loose silk shirt, and the unsteadiness of his eyes. When he rode away they remained In his mind, and he pondered over them as if they alone were the source of his irritation. But the sight oi the man h»d stirred in him something to which he did not care to give a name. "She could never have married him," he thought. "Even it she had never loved mc, she must surely have fonnd him out." And as he left the yellow plain and entered the brigalows, he began to recall the night she had given her future into hU keeping. It was in a garden heavy with the scent of oleanders, and there had been a faint wisp of a moon. He remembered how soft her face had looked, and how few had been her words: he had never quite stirred In her that secret something he had longed to stir, but he told himself that it would come in time. That was a year after Trenton had gone away, and it was rumoured that he did not intend to come back. Brayne had travelled five miles further, when, putting his hand to his saddle-pouch, he fonnd that Hi» strap had loosened and the letters fallen out. "Confound it!" he said, reining np. It was a hard thing to have to turn back, for the sun was dropping low and he had ten miles more to mike before his day's journey was done. A fnpwn puckered his forehead, but the letters were important, and, setting spurs to his mare, he cantered back over the track, his eyes searching the stubble by the side at it. He could see his mares footmarks plainly; yet he reached the edge of the plain without coming across the missing letters. The remains of a fire were smouldering where he and Trenton had met, and be saw that his neighbour had camped there to boil his onart. "Perhaps I dropped them here and he found them," he thought. "But Eurely he would have ridden after mc. . . ." For he saw now that Trenton's track* were tnrned towards his home. Perhaps Trenton had not found the letters till it was too late to overtake him, and the only thing to do was to take them back to the station. Why otherwise should he have turned at right angles from the direction in which he had been going? This was the question in Brayne's mind as he rode back at an easy canter; yet he conld not altoI gether rid himself of the uneasiness that' lay deep in his soul. Never once had she mentioned Trenton's name in the six I months since he had married her. I His mare shied at a copper-colotxred snaky 1 that slipped into the grass, and he ent at it savaeely with his whip, reining np to finish 1 it with a lev wen-placed strokes. As it

! lay with its back broken it struck qdcM. at the thong, and something in the s»btu malice of its eyes seemed fanuli,, t! Brayne. He put spurs to his horse im cantered off again, but bis face had h»«. ened and there was a hardness about v month. "• The two drovers coming along with thdr packhorses trotting In front of them, sta! ped him as he rode. "You didn't happen to drop some letter*?* said one. j "I did," said Brayne. "I was just coa. ins back for them." "We found them five or sis miles back." eaid the drover. "We asked Trenton ibont them, but they didn't belong to hinu"^ There was a queer calmness about Brayne's face, a frozen rigidity in his att . I tnde. "Trenton?" he said. "Yes. He was Just riding over to im you about a horse. We passed him jnot» than an hour ago. Were you starting „• on a Journey?" Brayne looked at the dropping sun,, w Ihe hardly voted that it was near fh e e£ of the horizon. JJI "I was,- he said, "but it's too late no*, I'm going home." The sound of music which had first caught his ears before he entered the garden-et| stopped when he was half-way up the sift. Almost unconsciously he stopped also aaaaz the oleanders, whose thick exotic i«2 seemed to bind the night in a swoon, l> ; the kitchen he could hear the half-cnj, women clattering their dislies, and from tie 1 blacks' camp over the creek came the soaat of babbling voices as they gathered annui their fires. It was the first time anything step'at bewildering had ctrt across tie even tntface of Ws life, and It left Mm ntnnbM except for a few primitive emotion. * Xtt ' at that mompnt he saw with deadly cite. ■ ness -what had been lacking In all tie box regularity of his days; in the opeff spue, of Ills soul a dim caricature of himself ■ m • walking, hard and bare in its ontOas, precise and orderly in its movement!; bee 1 of sympathy or any form of its unimaginative eyes seemed to deny tint ' life was anything hut a matter of praetiaj ■ arrangements and cold realities. He wiae* ' a little as he stood among tie oloudm almost se if he were before a bar of Jn4f. 1 ment. ' Ami it was ac though in a drain ttat 1 he heard tfte voices that floated aeroat i» 1 the twilight. ". . .. He doesn't understand. *He» ■ could he? You loved mc before he cimL* "Don't:" "It is true. Ton know it is true. H« iaj ! never any right to you—he -with'Ms eM • eyes and proud ways.' . Like sometJitng/banght in a freezing iJtb; ' Brayne remained transfixed, and i£ tb ■ almost as if the nutty smell of tie oietntei ! had overpowered hie senses. It recaHel at i memory of a slow voice, and it irai fle ' same voice that vibrated in his eaa no*;— : "Coward: You would not dan to look • him In the eyes." ■ '«;» ' Even then he did not move, for fas flmta '- would not obey him. He seemed to ieas& t in a dream on til tie gnte clicked and the* was the sound of galloping hoofs nets; ot into the dark. It brought Mm BJct to - reality, and then lie found his hands rlne- • Ing over the handle of ais- -whip till tie > nails cut deep into tie flesh and. bis bn!n ' remembering nothing but the look tilt isd ' filled the eyes of the tiring, he had. fliyd ' to pieces in the grass two boms !>efore. ' His wife started np as lie entered, tat tie understendlng in Die face brought he n>l > revelation. . She was standing;, neir tit > door, and. her fingers strayed to the Iμ 1 at her throat as if to loosen it; tiere n i fhat in her eyes which showed tiitaer . thing had b«en croebed in"fcjr,which imi i not easily henL "Tou've come back," si&wtj, 1 putting her bands on has shouiders. He could nardly Trust Mmeeif" tff'spefc s There wse that in Ms eyes T»3iScli Hani It was a different wmn who' had come hick, 3 The. complacency bad passed from Ills fan and there -was a new sympathy is Ms voice i that stirred her as nothing haff done before.. f "I'm sorry," he said. inadeqasteTT,- SYob f have been lonely. . . . I know better ■, how to make up for riat now." : r a But -when see was asleep he went out f quietly to the yards where fels stddld lwrM was still standing. There was s sloir »n«w • in his blood that had never before b«n 1 stirred in all his complacent d»TS..oiJ it gathered fire as every moment paced. It was hanSy touched , -with jealowßi/fW *f> t was no cause for that, but in wM« country it wes an accepted tMoffillt if * man broke faith he had to pay ti* peilty. g_ He put spurs to his lioree aal" etatend , t off, Ms eyes fixed on the d»rt Sf*«sa«* j t at him. j. The mam sleeping on the edge ettkeihta with his heavy rag wrapped rooni-lSi 45i not stir at the sound of approeckin, >wh- ' e Brayne tide np his iorse al nt.W a beside the silent flrure, a terrible «««*■•■ c In au hie movements. It stni iwntei *c 1_ hours tail dawn, and tfiie sfivery nlifct *4 '* rest and quiet dreaane. • "There Is no need to distort : l*«"«i" »' he thought. j> Tiie s>kj- above was a purple eerve j*W ie .with faint stars, and not a ie»£«ttri*l i» the molga at the edge at tbe plate. Hft *•■ ie as sail as the sleeper's face; tt.-"«B"* c, seemed to share the dark mjatett'it Ui dreama. Brayne's eyes were fixee *«W i- afread of him, but not as if t*ej i*k * ie the silent figure. He carried in Sli «&* U a sense of strange fatality. le T-wo hours passed, and still tie *etf a did not stir. Tfce sty towar* S« «■* w began to fill -eiOi pale ligSrt, and tbe ti*T {j sounds of awakening life came frees sit d around. Once or twice Brayne thoo|tt i» detected a movement of the blanket, let tit d sleeper's face was placid. 3_ A carieir cried in the tbnber, snd * mounrfni note echoed out over tfee pMfc In tl>e high vault above hovered a ft** <* galais, and the arriving light dtaiiy »lww«» r, ifte colour of their crknson breeets. Sβ* thins- in their shrill note awakened BuyJt from his lethargy. He leant orefC rcneftily tooched tae sleeper on the *»*!* "Trenton:" ~ - There -was no sten of iearice on' tteHß d face. Brayne raised the comer ot *» 's blanket and then sprang bnefc sharply «* is an exclamation. As he stood transfixed tf t, copper coHs slowly mrwound thenße!"' d from the deed man's throat and slid tP& ie off into the grass.