THE HOUSE ON THE BOGS

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 84, 8 April 1922, Page 23

THE HOUSE ON THE BOGS

By KATHERINE TYNAN.

CHAPTER I. THK HOUSE OX THE MALL. Often in Dorec?n'e dreams she saw the cnld, nhiffisiirh waters of the canal, as it flowed past the tall houses with the lino double doors and the fanlights. In the fanlight of Miss Hamilton's houseNu. 7, The Mall, the White Horse of Hanover had showed through the dusty pane*. ]n front of the houses there "ere gardens, enclosed by walls, each with its green paling a-top. There was a green door in each wall, a brass knocker and boll-pull, irresistible to that type of ci-.iidish mind which, like Mrs. 1 mi. bald's, finds the adventure of the runaway-knock most desirable. 1 o Doreen, when she went out during her mother's absence, and, with her doll in her arms, made the promenade of the Mall, those gardens behind the walls were places of a wonderful mystery. Sometimes a rose nodded over the paling, or a long spray of foliage found its way between, and was out in the world. Vagrant scents were blown into the roadway over the high palings, and once, when a gate was open, Doreen caught sight of a -most wonderful thing. To her it seemed like a great candlestick with golden and rosy lamps, and beautiful green curling sprays for ornamentation. She gazed fascinated till the gate was suddenly closed, when she carTied the memory of the wonder home to the toppling house where she and her mother lived. It was a Siberian crabapple tree; but Doreen thought of it as something unearthly beautiful/ as though it grew in the gardens of hc-aven. While Mrs. O'Kelly was out giving music lessons, her little daughter was left in charge at the Misses McCabe, two spinster ladies who kept an eccentric sort of private school. It was patronised chiefly by the children of the shopkeepers in the street behind which hid the high house and garden that had onoe been the country retreat of some 18th century family of distinction. The Misses McCabe had {he floor below that occupied by Mrs. O'Kelly and Doreen.! They had a great opinion of themselves, because their sister was a gouvernante at a European Court, and sent them home all her discarded fineries. Besides, they belonged to a good old family. They were a ridiculous, high-minded, innocent, big-hearted pair, very fond of Doreen, and they would accept no fees for her from her mother, who found it hard enough to make a living for herself and her child, for she had no great accomplishment to bring to her teaching and was miserably paid.

The toppliug old house made the proper atmosphere for a dreamy cblld. It held itseJf aloof from its neighbours in its high-walled garden, which still had a few woodland trees. When Doreen looked up at it from the garden, she thought it had an anxious and worried air. Xo wonder; for the elums pressed on it all round. Its companion house was already given over to slum-dwellers. The trees had been cut down. The garden, which could he seen from the O'Kelly's windows, was a rubbish-heap. Krom every window of the debased, degraded house there were clothes-noles, hung for the greater part of the "week with a miserable washing. There was an incessant noise of squabbling wonrm and crying children. Sometimes there was a drunken row, the sounds of which made Mrs. O'Kelly and the Miases SNjCabe close their windows hastily. It Was terrible to have the degraded iwuse so near.

'"The time will come when we ehall have to leave this place," Miss Katie McCabe would say to Mrs. O'Kelly, "The slum comes too near."

But still the toppling old house in its garden kept its seclusion and ite dignity. "We are like a little garrison in a beleaguered city." Miss Honoria McCabe said one day, meeting Mrs. O'Kelly on the stairs. "The glum heme us in. I hope the lease will not expire before my eister Louise retires on pension, and we join her in the loflge the Empress has promised her."

"I hope not, indeed," Mrs. Kelly replied. '"I have found this a desirable haven. Where would I and my child go to if we were driven out?"

At three o'clock every day, when the school had broken up, the Misses McCabe were in the habit of taking their beautysleep. They anointed their faces with face-cream, put their ringlets into tight twist of paper, and lay down, side by side, with newspapers under their slippers, for an hour; after which "they rose, made their toilettes for the afternoon, and entered upon a period of elegant leisure. What dresses they ehould put on was a source of endless interest to Doreen. When she went out for her walks along the Mall, she used to ponder within herself whether Miss Katie would wear the hair-striped black and white silk, with the fichu of black lace caught by a Tose, or the grey silk with the immensely long fringe; or if Miss Hjnoria would wear the pompadour silk, or the orpandie muslin. For these elderly spinsters dressed in the garments that were fit for the Imperial Court, when their day's work was over. They had nothing "between these cast-off splendours and the ugly linseywoolsey which clad them in working hours. "You are to be a good little girl and walk very quietly along the Mall while we have our siesta," they would say, laying the doll which had come also from France, acro,=s the little girl's outspread arms. It was a doll of the young-baby age, in long clothing; and no doubt the charge of Clarinda sent forth Doreen in a grave mood of responsibility. She loved the Mall. It was an everfresh delight to her to pace along, close to the water under the high trees; to see the sleepy canal boats, with patient horses, go by; to peer into the sun and shadow of the water, under the surface of which prew thp shining emerald fronds of some water-plant. Sometimes she was very much tempted to pick a handful of these treasures, which she could reach easily by kneeling down on the grassy margin, for the canal sloped gently to the middle. But ehe dared not, because of Mrs. O'Brien, the apple-woman, whose stall was by the bridge, and who was the selfconstituted guardian of the children from the dangers of the canal.

Mrs. O'Brien seemed to have eyee in the back of her head, like Antichrist, as he was in the children's talk, and to be omnipreeent, for although ehe was never missed from her seat by the side of the bridge, where she sat behind a great basket of fruit, ehe was always at hand to prevent the adventure of walking across the lock-gates, which had only a single hand-rail, or playing any tricks

with, the water; wherefore the children banned Mrs. O'Brieu and their parents blessed her.

Y\ hat the children did away from the water was no concern of Mrs. O'Brien. Only they must not approach the bridge or the canal. There was no relaxation of this rule, even though a child, properly accredited as a messenger, might have to make a detour to the nuxt bridge, in order to cross the canal.

Mrs. O'Brien had "chased" Doreen from the water one fine autumn afternoon, when adventure stirred in the blood. Tlicre was a liijfli, good wind. and as the child walked along by l!ie garden-walls she could hear the thud and "plop" of the ripe apples as they fell from the boughs. Once or twice she had had a glorioue adventure. She had pulled the bell of one of the green doors, and when a justly irate maid came, she had discovered only a thoroughly respectable little girl with her doll in her arms, sauntering by at a pace which fo-bade suspicion. Doreen had turned such an innocent face when asked if she had seen anyone run away, that it never entered into anyone's mind that she could be the culprit. But one does not always play such tricks with impunity.

She had just reached up and rung the bell at No. 7, when, before she could proceed on her way, the door opened. A laughing face looked out at her, the face of a young woman, splendidly rose and white, framed in masses of brilliant red hair. The eyes were dark blue, and the lips as near to being red as lips ever are.

"You rascal!" said the lady. "No one could ever guess it was you. I lay in wait for you. Now, come into my garden and I shall gobble you up."

Doreen never thought of denying the charge. Indc«d, she got no chance to speak; she was lifted inside the gate in the twinkling of an eye, and it was closed and bolted behind her.

But she hardly thought to be afraid, for the dazzle of the garden filled her with sudden delight. There was the tree with the wonderful apples she remembered; there were other apple trees and plum trees, bearing delicious fruit, growing out of green velvet grass, co unlike the stunted blades that grew in the high walled garden of the old house. There vas a beautiful border of flowers round the oblong beds, a gravel-path ran between, edged with, box, And beyond the boughs, with their fairy burdens, stood the white-walled house, ita door and windows open trt r the garden.

"Now, what do you suppose I am going to do with you?" the lady asked in a pretendedly ferocious voice. "Supposing I were to grind your bones between two stones—Kke the giant in the etory-book?" ■ t ■ ~, But Doreen was not afr.»id. She looked up at the lady, rosy and' laug-hihg, and the sun burnished her 'chestnut hair, hanging in heavy masses round her small pale face. "I am not afraid of you," she eaid. "You cheeky* mite!" said the lady, catching Doreen up into her arms. Then she called out in a high, laughing voice. "Stephen, Stephen, just come here and see what I have got!" A young man came out slowly from the green-trellised porch, with a cigarette between his fingers. He was slender and brown, with merry grey eyes. "What have you got, Peggy?" he asked. "I see only a very pretty little girl." "This is the rascal who had been ringing my door-bell, and driving Pierre and 1 Margot into hysterics. I hand her over to Pierre and Margot?" "Don't do that! Set her to pick up the windfalls instead," said the young man. "I shall fetch a basket, and she can take all she can carry." "Would you like that, little girlTT Would it be a proper punkhment!" Miss Hamilton seemed to tower above Doreen. She was taller even than the young man she had called Stephen, though he was tall. Doreen had a thought that it was a very good thing that she was so beautiful, and so gay. If she had been an unfriendly ogress, anything co big would certainly have been alarming. "Please, my name in Doreen," she said. "And may I ask where you live, Doreen V "In No. 2a, Renshaw Street." "Oh, I know. That forgotten house. I peeped into your garden once, and saw a lady walking about in a puce silk gown, with a parasol that had deep fringe to it, and a folding handle." "It would be Miss Katie or Mies Honoria McCabe." "The lady was very stylish, with ringlets, and she wore mittens." "It would be Mies Honoria. Miss Katie's hands are soft and white, and she likee to show them." "I expect you really stepped out of a fairy-tale. Your Miss Honoria was very like the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella."

A bell rang in the house, a little impatiently.

"Ah, the briochee are spoiling. May we have the pleasure of your company to tea, Doreen?"

"1 must go," said Doreen, determinedly. "I alwaye have tea with Miss Katie and Mice Honoria. And afterwards I make the toast for my mother's tea at their fire. She come in at five o'clock, very tired."

"Very well then; you ehall go. But you must come again soon. Meanwhile, Stephen, fetch a basket please. Don't mind Margot if ehe ecowls. Tell her it is for the little girl who rings and runs away."

The gentleman disappeared within the house, and came back in a few moments with a basket, into which he proceeded to pile the fruit that had fallen.

"You must come again for come more," said Miss Hamilton. "I wish you could have had tea with us. But, another time you shall come and ring, and not run away."

She let Doreen out by the green door, and the child ran home with her basket of fruit, as fast as ever she could. ' It was 60 heavy that it wae not easy to carry it as "well as Clarinda, but Doreen did not mind that. It was shared with Miss Katie and Miss Honoria, and with Mr. Dennis on the first floor, and the young journalist and his wife on the ground floor. It was n never-to-be-forgotten day to Doreen, when she had so much to give away. Mrs. O'Kclly and the Misses MeCabe made what Mise Honoria called a festa of the fruit .and cakee, and some candied fruit which had come from the-sister at the Imperial Court. There was a little glass for each of the elders of some precious liqueur from the same source and over the little meal they discussed

Peggy Hamilton while the little pitcher listened with her long ears. It seemed that she w-as an actress, and a successful one; but of late she had not appeared often on the boards. Rumour had it she was to marry Mr. Stephen Verney, who had fallen in love with her from seeing her act. He belonged to a very old and good family, who were not pleased about the marriage. But Miss Hamilton herself belonged to a good family, wa« very rich, and very generous with her money, much of whsch had come to her in a romantic way from someone who had been in love with her mother, and had left her the house on the Mall with all it contained and a comfortable income from investment?. Miss Hamilton had property of her own—an old house in the Midlands, which she did not often visit, and a stretch of bog-land country. "Of course Lady Verney would not like it," said Miss* Katie McCabe. "Miss Hamilton is an odd creature. She is very wild and comes of a wild family. Quite good, of course, but she has had so many admirers and so many eseapadea. 6he must be quite thirty.' We can remember —can we not, Honoria? — old Mrs. Fayle, the mother of the man who left everything to the Hamiltone. She was such a saintly woman—a Quakeress, and always wore the Quaker bonnet and cloak. We were, of course, quite young, mere children, when we used to see Mrs. Fayle. No. 7, The Mall, has had quite a different class of persons frequenting it since it came to Miss Hamilton. Mrs. Hamilton only lived a year after her inheritance. They do cay Miss Katie leant and whispered at Mrs. O'Kelly's ear. "So odd—positively no chaperon—and those dreadful French servants!" Doreen, for all her little pitcher's ears, could hear no more. CHAPTER 11. THE SECOND SIGHT. Doreen sat up in bed, her heart beating. She was no longer the little Doreen who had paced the Mall demurely with Clarinda in her p.rms. That tin« was more than twelve yeare ago. She was now a very charming and highly-accomplished young lady. Over and done with long ago that time of agony when her mother died, when for the time being the waters of desolation had swept over the child, whose heart had been entirely bound up in her mother. She had been inconsolable, dumb and piteous in her grief, horribly frightened of this strange, new experience in which she had no help from the arms that had been so quick to enfold her, the soft breast that had been so warm, the tongue that had spoken such tenderness. There was now only something strange and frozen lying, with folded hands in a terrible silence, in the next room where the candles burned.

They had tried to comfort the child, the kind little old friends who had been so good in her childhood and were now so sorry for her. They had tried to get her out into the open air. Mies Honoria wrung her hands, while Mies Katie whispered that the child should be got away before the funeral, if only there was anywhere she could go, anyone to take her, love her, and warm her out of her strange unchildish , grief.

Then someone had come, someone fair and beautiful, with a face of lovely tenderness, who had enfolded the miserable child in a warm embrace. Even yet Doreen could remember the mingled smell of the seal-skin coat Miss Hamilton was wearing, and the bunch of violets that was in her breast. They came between the distracted child and the strange, terrible smell of the new wood of the coffin, which had a haunting memory for her even now when twelve years had passed. Doreen had been taken away before the funeral. In the white house on the Mall she had had all the care and tenderness possible. She had very vague memories of those days; on« of them wae that Mr. Verney, whom she had learnt to know ac Stephen, came in and out, and called her "poor kid," laying his hand lightly and kindly on her ruffled hair. There had been Sheila, the red setter, who was something tangibly comfortable in those daye, coming and laying her beautiful head, with the deep soft eyes that expressed so much of sympathy, on the child's knees, sighing ac she threw herself down on the floor beside Doreen, as though the world was heavy to her because a child was in sorrow.

She had heard Mice Hamilton cay to Mr. Verney one day, in that strange, distant, misty way in which she heard everything, that Sheila had taken wonderfully to Doreen. "She does not take to many people, said the soaring, golden voice. "She accepts you, Stephen, but ehe cannot endure either Pierre or Margot. I don't believe she would go into the kitchen if she was starving, and, gentle as ehe is, she growls when Pierre comes into the room." "I am not surprised," Stephen Verney replied. "I don't like your French servants, Peg. Thoroughly efficient of course, but not prepossessing. I dislike the woman even more than the man."

"Her mouetache and her ewarthinees merely," Miss Hamilton said. "Most Frenchwomen of her class look like that in middle age. It is the coffee and the gourmandise." "I have met pleasant once even with the characteristics you mention. 1 ehould like to leave you. when I must go, with peortle I trusted." Miss Hamilton had laughed. "You eilly hoy! Do I look m though servants could play tricks on mc?"

"No, you are very self-reliant, very etronp. But I wish you would come with mc. Pep. The time ?s so near when I must go. The thought of parting from yon becomes harder and harder." "I should only hamper you. You have pot to fro back and relieve your chief, poor man; you will he very busy when you have taken hie place. I will come out to you, if the time seems likely to stretch out too long. I could he ready by spring."

"Come with mc. Peg. Oet rid of theee servants T dislike and hate to leave you with them. Shuffle everything off on your solicitors. Come in the clothes you stand Tin in."

Looking back now, Doreen thought that Mb» Hamilton would have yielded. A thousand pities there had not been time. But a day later had come a cable fro m Rawdon, the wife of Stephen's beloved chief, Sir Sppnser Rawdon:—

"My husband has had a heart-stroke, Can yon come?"

Ptephon had sono. Hp had vanished out of the life, the people and events of which were clear to DoreonV memory. The house had been very quiet without him. It would have been a perfect atmosphere to Doreen if it had not been for the two sinister fisures of the French servants in the background.

Almost immediately Mi*s Hamilton had begun getting her trousseau. Doreen guessed that it comforted her to prepare for that journey in the spring which was to end in so happy a lovers' meeting. It had been August when Stephen went away and Doreen had teen two years older than at her first meet-

ing with Mies Hamiltofn, a meeting which had made all the difference in the child's life; she was eleven. She was a thoughtful child, but it had hardly occurred to her to wonder what was to become of her when Miss Hamilton married and went to India. After a time it rame to her knowledge, vaguely, that those other beloved friends, Miss Katie and Miss Honoria, were talking about the subject. It was not their way to talk directly about anything that was uncomfortable. They were wondering if Mis.s Hamilton had any plans i'or Doreen's. future. At the time the two old ladies had their own anxieties. There was war. in which the country where their sister Louise had so long lived that it was like her own country, was one of the belligerents. Things were going badly. Doreen listened to their talk when she went to visit them, which she did regularly,, although it made her little heart bleed and her eyes Jill with tears as she climbed the familiar stairs, and passed through the garden which s'lie perceived now to be a damp and mouldy place.

"It is the tactics of th.* Emperor and his generals," they would soy. "They permit themselves to fall back only to inflict a more crushing hlow. Did th.: Emperor not say that everything was ready to the last button on the last man's tunic? You will sec."

They had not to wait very long. The debacle came swiftly and terribly. In the latter days of August, about the time when Stephen Verney sailed, the Kmperor was a prisoner; the Empress had fled to England. For awhile the sisters were in terrible anxiety, till they heaTd that Louise was safe; she was with her beloved Empress.

Gone were all the dreams of a peaceful and happy retirement, somewhere under the golden shadow of the Imperial Court. Almost immediately someone in the background, a landlord unknown to the tenants who transacted their business through a solicitor, decided to sell the house and its garden. The space \va ß required for a new street. The remaining tenants had notice to quit. Dorecn had grieved., unchildishly for these troubles of her loving old friends. She had hardly understood how these troubles involved her own, till they began to say that if they were to be on the world something must be done. They never said that the "something" meant the question of Doreen's future. They did not suppose now that Louise could ever do for them what she had intended. The Empress must have lost all-all; and they heard little from Louise in these days. There came a day when. Doreen, from her own little room which overhung the garden, looked out to see the Misses McCabe admitted by Tierre. She had not heard the bell, nor the man's foot on the gravel-path as he went to open the door. To be sure, Pierre walked flat-footed and eilent with something stealthy in his movements. 6he wondered what had .brought them. They were recluses except from a few old ladies like themselves— Madame Antonio, who gave dancing lessons,—her real name was OToole; two Miss Forbes, Court dressmakers, as they described themselves, who had their business premises in a very unfashionable street—it haTdly seemed as though their clientele could have any business with Courts; and others of their kind. It must have been something urgent to bring the Misses McCabe out at such a time of day, wearing their grey silks and lace mantillas, with their parasols too, though the day was sunless. She waited to be summoned downstairs. Her window was wide open, as was the French window of the room beneath, where she had left Miss Hamilton writing her daily budget to India. The sweet peas were still out in the garden. Their delicate scent and the more insistent fragrance of the phloxes filled the gay little room. She heard the greetings as the two ladies were ushered into the room below. Then a murmur of voices Jn which Miss Hamilton's sounded clearly. "You dear creatures!" she said. f course I thought of that. You don't suppose I was going to leave her on the world as you say. I have a perfectly charming plan. ..." . Then Miss Hamilton came out into the garden and looked up at Doreen's window. "•Are you there, little cat?" she called. She had a score of odd names for (Doreen. "Came downstairs—we are talking about your future." She was like a sweet pea, Doreen decided, looking down at the brilliant rose and white of the beautiful laughing face. Her heart went a little chill at the thought of the future ill which Mis s Hamilton was not to have a. place, ■but, of course, she had known that must come, since Miss Hamilton was making all preparations to go to India in the spring. There had not yet been time to hear from Stephen Verney; but it had been in the newspapers that his chief was dead. He had died soon after La/iy Rawdon had sent the cable. "iPoor Stephen—and poor Lady Rawdon!" Miss Hamilton had said. "He will have his hands full. A delicate helpless woman, accustomed to service and devotion. Between public and private business Stephen will hardly have time to miss mc." The scheme for Doreen's future was that she should go to school, to the famous Abbey of Klosterberg, near Vienna, of which Miss Hamilton's old friend, Madame Thelka, was Abbess. "She shall see how she likes it," said Miss Hamilton, looking very big and bonny by contrast with the little spinsters. "She must go to school sometime and she will love Klosterberg. She will spend her holidays with mc when I come home from India"—she blushed like a rose —"when we come home from India. I have just been thinking of her outfit. I hate to part with her, but the school year begins in Octo-ber. . ." Twelve years had. passed since then. Many strange and sad things had happened. Long, long ago Doreen had been told of the unhappineas that had come to her friend and benefactress. Stephen Verney had married Lady Kawdon within three months of her husband's death, and his perfidy had deeply affected the woman he had betrayed. Her letters and jrifts had ceased long ago. Even Madame Thelka had no word from her. Xo answer came to her letters nor to Doreen's. Dorcen's school fees were paid by Mr. Deane, Miss Hamilton's man of business.

Doreen was twenty-one before fhe was told that Miss Hamilton Had settled upon her two hundred pounds a year. She had been going on at Klosterberg —part learning, part teaching—and she had been happy. She had many friends among the relatives of the nuns and her schoolfellows. All her vacations had been spent in the luxurious and splendid homes of the Austrian aristocracy, for Klosterberg received mainly the daughters of the aristocracy. She loved the Abbey and the nuns —especially Madame Thelka, but she was rather frightened of the.aristocratic life.. Some surreptitious love-making on the part of gentlemen who recognised -~*

was not exactly of thp rank of the various comtesses and princesses, had alarmed her; had given her an unreasonable fear of t'ne re^t.

These things she kept to herself, till in a certain mood of revolt and disgust, she bad sobbed out the tale to Madame Thelka.

"Ah:" said the nun. '"'Poor lamb! There are wolves disguised sometimes as gallent gentlemen. But I would not have you think that there are not gallant gentlemen as well. Thai would be a big mistake, my child. Since you will not stay wii h us 1 advise you to A'"> hon;o to your own country. You must refuse the friends who want you td become of their households. Not that many of the households will not be truly Christian: but there are risks.' .

She had refrained from savin? ta Doreen what was in her mind, that she was too beautiful to go nnpr iter-ted and in a somewhat anomalous position intt trie glittering soeietv amid which he> school friends could walk unharmed, protected by their positions and Tank.

So Doreen was free to go. .So mucl did she feel leaving the Abbey and th« nuns and the school friends, who were so hurt because she would not cast in her lot with them, that she almost wished she might have had a vacation, PO that Rlir could have stayed. And yet—no. Her own country called her with a curious insistence. Tt been calling her since she had left her childhood behind.

More than that —something, someone elsp. called. It—she —had called at intervals during the year? since Uoreen liad been at the Abbey. The voice was Miss Hamilton'?, ami the ctv was

despairing. It was as; one of the dreams that return again and aguin, so that one accept* them in the end as memories rather than dreams.

But this, Doreen's very last, night at the Abbey the call came through her dreams so insistently and as from one in deadly peri! that she awoke, her heart leaping in her side, in the darkness. She had never forgotten her benefactress, never ceased to love and pity her. It was a long time now since her dreams had been so troubled. Surely cry did not come for nothing. The curtains were drawn closely round her bed, but she could hear the breathing of the sleeping children in their cots along the dormitory. For her seniority and good conduct she had been placed in charge of the younger girls' dormitory. Her bed was in a little recess. Through a half-moon of window, below which stood an altar of the Madonna, with a little lamp perpetually 'burning, the daylight was coming greyly. It was September. Soon the nun would be by her bedside with the little stoup of holy water and the "(Laudate Jesu!" which was the morning call of the Convent. At the foot of her bed her trunk stood, labelled and ready.

'Her heart, in the grey dawn, leaped to the adventure of going home, to the call of the woman she loved, who had suffered so much. She felt like a knighterrant going out into the world to do 'battle. Just one sigh, one tender thought to the stately house she was leaving and the white-robed w°men w ho had been so tender to her childhood, and she was ready to be gone. <To be continued eJnlTy.)