THE HOUSE ON THE BOGS

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 99, 28 April 1922, Page 10

THE HOUSE ON THE BOGS

By KATHERINE TYNAN.

CHAPTER XVIL THE OLD LOVER. A day or two passed, days of glamour for the lovers in which the winter world was rose-coloured and slit through with gold. Kit Lavery had assumed the position of Dorecn's lover in his masterful way. There was no set proposal. He did not flaunt his happy state, but people he knew, and he seemed to know a great many, had begun to come up and congratulate him in the hotel and the streets; and he had introduced Doreen to some who were more than acquaintances. He was jealously careful of her. She had said, delighting him, that she had been in love with him since they had met at Sehwarzfeld, because he had known so well how to take care of her. "It was something new to mc," she said. "Of course the nuns were sweet to mc, but it was in an impersonal way, and one was- so safe at the Abbey; but once out on the world I had begun to realise that I was nobody's affair." A cloud came in her eyes which he did not understand, and he asked no questions. Some day she might be able: to tell him of the sickness he had cured in her, the fear and distrust of men, caused by some who had eeemcd very gallant gentlemen till they revealed themselves as dangerous. One, especially, who had almost made her love him. Oh, such things did not bear thinking of! The cloud had passed and she looked at Kit Lavery with an expression that made him shy and humble. He had given her back her lost innocence, her faith in his kind. God had sent him to her, her champion, her St. George. The glory of her gaze Hooding upon him had startled Kit Lavery. "Darling, you must not look at m c like that," he "said in alarm. "You will be only finding mc out presently for the unworthy fellow I am, and giving mc a bad drop." Some day he should understand; but there were things she could not as yet epeak of to him. He had forbidden her any more visits to the doomed house. Ho had found a trustworthy friend to help him to remove all traces of the old tragedy before the workmen were admitted. They had worked protected by overalls, washing , and removing what was lit to remove, after which the tall young man from Dockrolls was brought into consultation. He decided mournfully that the house was past saving; the whole woodwork was rotten. He had known cases of dry rot, but never one so bad as this. Alas, and it was a beautiful specimen of Early Georgian. He shook his head over the furniture that had once been so solid and now crumbled at a touch. "Better scrap it all,*' he said. "Let the place go. If you do not care for the Bite we can .sell it for you, or we can build you a new houee, as you like. The garden is unique in these parts. We could save the old trees." "Miss Hamilton must be consulted before we decide on anything," said Kit Lavery, who seemed to have abundant leisure from his own business to look after this for Doreen. His absorption in saving what could be saved left Doreen for a day or two at a loose end. She wanted greatly to gossip with Miss Meldon, over Stephen Verney and the woman he had married, j If only she could gpt at the truth. If she could tell Miss Hamilton with certainty that the man had not betrayed her —she felt the poignancy, the crushing tragedy of that betrayal like a personal sufTering, since she had seen the house, the solid house which liad fallen to pieces because of that happening—she was sure the woman would be saved. Peggy Hamilton had a great heart; none knew that better than Doreen. Sorrow, she could have borne, loneliness, without a murmur; it was the blow dealt by a beloved hand that had all but slain her; sparing her life had killed her joy and youth and hope. She went wistfully by the long front of MeldonV Hotel, but she did not dare enter; she feared to reveal to Miss Meldon the treachery of her having gone to the Shelbourne; for. so Miss Meldon would have regarded it, although she was too much of a woman of the world to reveal, except indirectly, her jealousy of the hotel to which the tide of popularity had flowed. Meldon's looked indeed a back number. There were all the great suites of rooms, raTely occupied nowadays, which would have given the house all the space it needed, besides providing the lounge which might rival the Shelbourne. But Miss Meldon and Miss Marianne :ould not make up their minds to do iwav with those suites of splendid memories and modernise the hotel. The closed windows of the suite they had occupied told her nothing as to whether Sir Stephen and Lady Verney were still there. Probably not. She wondered that Stephen Verney had cared to come back to Dublin. She walked on, and presently she found herself in the quiet green enclosure known as Leinster Lawn, once the private garden of Leinster House, where Edward Fitzgerald, for ever beautiful and young, walked with his Pamela before the night camo down upon their youth and joy. It was a mild, fair December day. There were very few people in the Lawn; one or two children with their nurses or without, some elderly, tired-loking people who rested for a while on the green seats in the pale sunshine. Now and again someone went, brisk or sauntering, taking the short cut from Merriou Square to Kildare Street. She sat down on a vacant seat and watched an old man putting a terrier through his tricks. They talked a little before the terrier's owner got up and went away, with a remark that it waa not wise to sit out of doors too long in the delusively mild weather. She sat on reading a book she had bought at a shop in Dawson Street as she passed through it; it was concerned with Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and that fact had perhaps influenced her in turning her steps towards Leinster House and the Lawn. There was half an hour yet before she need return to the Shelbourne for lunch. She had laid down the book on hei knee, and was lookig about her ■with a new interest, when someone passed her walking, his head down. As he was passing he looked up, with a queer nervous gesture. She caught sight of the haggard profile. It was Stephen Verney. He was dressed in grey, but she noticed that thsre was a- black band on his arm. For all the tragedy of his worn face, it seemed to her that he walked less like a man who carries a heavy burden, that in some strange way lie bad shaken off the unnatural weight of age that had fallen

upon him untimely, for she judged that he could be no more than 40 years of age. Hβ was gone like a flash. Perhaps, if she had had time to think, she would have been shy of stopping him; this weary man, so unlike the happy lover she remembered. But as she saw him slipping from her she sprang up and hastened after him, touching hin> on the arm before he had time to pass through the exit gate. "Sir Stephen Verney!" she said. "Forgive my stopping you." She flushed and stammered, and he lifted his hat with a grave courtesy. "Can I do anything for you?" he asked, in surprise. "You don't Temember me—=-of course, you couldn't! I was only eight years old when you saw ma last. Do you remember Doreen O'Kelly!" "Doreen. The child at—No. 7, the Mall. Can you really be Doreen? Little Doreen, grown upl" lie tried to speak conventionally, but his haggard face had flushed, a deep, painful flush, lie looked indeed a man scourged by the Furies. She remembered that it had been her thought of him when she had seen him carrying his wife's lapdog. "Yes, I am Doreen. I saw you m the autumn at Meldon's Hotel. I was staying there. Miss Meldon told mc who you were." "Ah! I thought you could not remember mc over all those years." "Xot 60 long—a dozen or bo years. But I did not remember you. I am bo glad we have met again." She looked at him wistfully. She was quito determined not to let him go, and he seemed as though he would go. "So am I, very glad. It is probably your last chance, or mine, I should say. I am leaving Dublin to-night. I think they will re-employ roe in India. I am going to interview someone at the India Office." "And—Lady Verney ? Only her longing to get at something that "she might convey back to Peggy Hamilton nerved her to the question. "Lady Verney died in October. She had always been more or less of an invalid. She had no strength to resist influenza when she caught it. It was a very brief illness." Hβ spoke in a. dull, sententious way, as though the phrases had been used before. They sounded lifeless. "I am sorry," said Doreen lamely. It did not "seem as though there was much more to cay. "I am glad we have met even so late, he said. "You should have spoken to mc at the hotel. The years that have withered mc have only brought you to beautiful bloom." He held out his hand for farewell. How was she going to keep him, to .wring from him something that she might bring back to Moat. She said to herself that the man looked like a martyr. If he had betrayed a woman wjio adored him and had been lavishly generous to him, he had not got much good out of it. But he looked a younger man than he had looked in September. His marriage could have been only a titter bondage to him. She wondered vaguely how long the infatuation had laeted. how long the woman ehe had seen in her decline had 'been able to push out Peggy Hamilton's laughing and gracious beauty from her husband's heart. Her lips opened without speaking. He lifted his hat and was turning away. Oh she must keep him. she must! She must not let him slip into the void, beyond recall. But for once she was unready; ehe did not know how to begin. As though he divined her thought he turned to her again. "Tell mc before you go." Have you any news of Miss Hamilton?" She found 'her tongue. A warm flush came to her cheek, tears to her eyes. The quick impulse, which was to stand her in good stead during all her days, urged her on. •'I am so glad you asked," she said. "How could I go back to her, to tell her I had seen you, if you had not asked?"' 'Then you are with her?" His 'hungry evee flxeJ themselves on Doreen out of" their hollow recesses. Why, the hair was grey about his tem'r'-es! His lips had a look of patient endurance. He stooped. She said to herself that Peggy Hamilton had had a great tribute paid to her, the greatest if it was his loss of her that had so aged him. The Lawn had emptied of all except one or two poor devils for whom presumably the luncheon hour had no special meaning. "Come, and I will tell you about her," she eaid, and laid a hand on his arm. "I am with her at Moat. I have 'been with her for the last three months.' , "She is well, I trust." They had returned to the seat Doreen had left. As he eat down he crossed his hands on the knob of the stick he carried. They showed like the hands of one in ill-health, pale, fleshlees, the veins showing through the skin. "She is betteT than when I came. Have 3 r ou not heard?" "Heard what?" he asked, in sharp eagerness. "She had a bad breakdown after — after the marriage was ibroken off. She has lived in solitude ever since with those French servants —you remember— seeing no one, barely leaving the house. I have altered that eince I came." "But why —why ?" he aeked helplessly. "Did she care —so much? Why I put my fate in her hands. Xo man was ever caught in such a strait. She never answered my letter, nor sent the cable I begged and implored of her to send." Doreen had become strangely qiliet. She felt as though she was on the edge of some tremendous discovery. Somewhere in the distance she heard a chime tell the half-hour. She sent a halfpitying, half-humoroue thought to Kit, who would have arrived at the Shelbourne by this time; he would be standing in the bay of the lounge looking eagerly to right and left for her. Darling Kit? , - He would just have to wait. This was momentous, fraught with big possibilities. "You wrote to her? She never had your letter. She heard of your marriage through a newspaper, when everything was ready, the wedding dress ■home, the table for the feast spread, the gueets bidden. You can imagine what it meant to her, so proud, so highspirited, so loving and generous." He looked at her with eves of torture. "My God!" he said. "My God!" She had to comfort him. She leant forward and laid a hand over him impul sively. "It was not your faelt," ehe said. "JTou have suffered. She would forgive.

The thing that all but killed her was what she thought to be your treachery." "I knew that something terrible had happened when I saw the house,", he said miserably. "It wa6 my wife's fancy to come to Ireland, it was torture to mc. I slipped away from her one day to see the house. She kept mc always b.v her side." He smiled a wry smile. "I knew as soon as I looked at it that calamity had befallen. -Now. Doreen O'Kelly, what am I to do?" "Let mc tell her as much as you have told mc. and give an address that will find you." "You don't think I should write?" "Write if you will. If you will let mc have your letter at the Shelbourne tonight, I will deliver it to her tomorrow when I return to Moat." "I will write. You can tell her that — I -have not got much out of life without, her." He stood up with a short, unsteady laugh, that was more sorrowful than tears. "It was brave and good of you to tell mc," he said, 'as for an address I will stay on here till I hear from you. I am at the Hibernian." "Thank you," she said, "and good-bye." From her own golden spring of youth she wondered if it was yet possible for these two, so wrecked "and robbed of their prime, to construct for themselves an autumn of happiness. (To tie continued daily.)