THE HOUSE ON THE BOGS

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 103, 3 May 1922, Page 14

THE HOUSE ON THE BOGS

By KATHERJNE TYNAN.

CHAPTER XXI. DOREEX'S DREAM. She drew down the shutter vhich closed the entry to the hidden rooms and stepped out by the wardrobe door. Certainly the dark was coming quickly. The Red Koom was obscure in all its corners. She opened the door and passed out into the corridor, where the cheerful thumping of the dogs' tails at her coming was a most reassuring eound. She remembered that they must require to be fed. Among the stores she had brought home wae a goodly ba c of biscuits for them, a special kind ox biscuit which they were in the habit of receiv.ng with a solemn capering, which had amused her in the big creatures with their sorrowful look. "Ovals," she said, and the dogs followed her, already capering. They were getting over their starvation. The hall was as she had left it, with ' the door standing wide open. The sun had sunk behind the distant hills and the lake showed cold in the pale glitter from the great sky. She found the bag of biscuits first and scattered some for the dogs. Then she set to work to open the cases, doing it a.* quietly and as expedit iouely as possible. It was a comfort to have the dog s lying in the hall, crunching their biscuits. It made it easier for her to work in peace, without listening for a footstep. She thought she could trust the dogs to protect her if need I>e. She had carried up one consignment after another from the cases, and 'had come to the last she need take when she noticed that the doge had disappeared. They had gone out by the open door. It was twilight now—sad twilight, brooding over the lonesome landscape. Suddenly the fear she had been keeping at bay seized upon her. She hurried upstairs with her last trayful, and it was with an intense joyful relief that she bolted the door of the Red Room between herself and the corridor. The dogs would come back. She would presently hear them sniffing against the door. While she stood, her hand upon her heart, which wax beating fast, there was a loud sound in the house, which reverberated through it. the sudden and violent closing of the hall-door. If the dogs had not come back they were shut out! She was deprived of their companionship which had made it so easy for her to go through the house, where the sinister influences lurked behind doors and down dark pa-s-sagcs. For a second or two she was terrified. Who—what—had shut the door? She knew there was someone in the house besides themselves. What had she I)een thinking of? Margot had been ill when she went away. Was it possible that, if the others had left, Margot had stayed? Was it she that crept in the lower regions, and made that strange humming sound to herself? She went cheerfuly enough into the room where Miss Hamilton lay.among the silk eiderdowns, looking alert and bright., "Now we are provisioned for a siege, if needs be," she eaid. "Not that there (m going to be a siege 1 know you arc longing, as T am, for a cup of tea. T shall put on the kettle to boil. Meanwhile I am going to cat. I am ravenous." She set to at a Paysandu ox-tongue. She had no bread, but there were plenty of biscuits, and she made a good meal. By the time her hunger was satisfied or at least blunted, the kettle was'boiling. and she made the tea in one of LadyCowl's precious china tea-pots. "No lack of crockery here," she said glancing round the long range of glassfronted cupboards full of precious china. "Imagine my grandmother's china being useful, positively useful." Miss Hamilton said and laughed. It was good to hear her laugh. 'I am going to boil you an egg in the kettle now that the tea is made," Doreen said. "You've got to be fed up. To-morrow when I make another sortie '7 shall annex a saucepan. It will be ever so much handier." "It was so nice to see you eat, Dorccn," Mis« Hamilton said wistfully. "I used to be really quite a greedy person. Now it is years since I have enjoyed my food." '"You are going to be greedy again." said Doreen. ''1 suppose I'd better begin to fieh for the egg now the kfttle is 'boiling. It will take quite a time to extricate it. Perhaps I had better pour off the water. There is plenty more. It will do for washing up." Tsy the time the meal was finished it was quite dark. Doreen carried away the tray into the 'bathroom, which had a lavatory basin for washing up. They had plenty of candles. Presently they would have an illumination. But for the moment the firelight was pleasant. "Xo»* we are going to talk," said Doreen. "I want to tell you all my Dublin adventures. You must foe prepared to hear a great many exciting things." She pulled the i>lue silk curtains across the high windows, shutting out the glimmering night. iShe -threw a log on the fire, and dropped on to the white fur hearthrug with a little sigh of contentment. She was very tired; she had not known how tired; and it was good to "be simt in. «o safe and comfortable. The thought that she lied to protect someone weaker than herself, was like strong armour to her. She said to herself that if she had not had Peggy Hamilton to protect, the sinister influences of the house would have terrified her out of her wits. Now she was not going to be frightened. She believed in an unseen, but all-powerful Protection: Its Hand was over them. Site was going to sleep and take her ease to-night and trust for the morrow. She laid her cheek ■against the eiderdown and Peggy Hamilton's hand was reached out to smooth her hair. "My blessed Doreen!" she eaid. "What a happy day that was when I caught you walking off demurely from your rnn-awav knock!" "A happy day for mc!" said Doreen, -and remembered many reasons for giving thanks for that day. "Now 2 o on with the story. It is so long since I heard a happy story. You have met that very true and parfait knight, Christopher Lavery " "How did you know?" "I knew it from the first moment 1| saw your face. I have waited to hear all about him." So Doreen, starting at the beginning, told of her meeting with Christopher Lavery in the train, and of how he had stayed by her and helped her. She had been troubled lest Mise Hamilton would take the news about the house on the

wall eadly, but tv her relief it was received quietly. "So much had died there," said Peggy Hamilton; "it was well the house should die too. ] do not very much like those old town-houses, Doreen, those houses the country lias left behind. They often allow a fair face, but they smell of old sins. A very wicked woman lived there once. I am not sure that ehc did not leave something of her influence behind. In the time of my greatest misery and despair I felt ehe was there. Her white face, painted, with a patch near the corner of the mouth, used to look at mc out of the shadows and over the stairhead; perhaps it was hallucination." "Yee," said Doreen; "yes." She remembered tha.t she had thought a white face looked over the galleried staircase that autumn afternoon when •she had gone alone into the house. "ff there was anything jit it, she might have made those servants of mine worse than they were. Perhaps she tried to make mc kill m yee If in my; despair., but 1 would not listen; I fled.j H is the only way sometimes to escape; from evil—HgM. 1 am not sorry for the house, that it must die, though I had happy days there." "Dearest." eaid Doreen, "could you bear it if I were to ta!k lo you of Sir Stephen Yerney." "What of him?" Peggy Hamilton asked fiercely: and the deep, beautiful voice was suddenly harsh. "He is happy with the woman for whom he betrayed mc." ] ""He was never hapiiy. He looks the most miserable man alive. She is dead, she died eoine months aj;o." "You have ecen him? And h« us miserable because of her?" "Peggy—lie never betrayed you. He wae betrayed. He was caught in the inOβt horrible coil. She was supposed to: be dying; you know that? What! You did i>ot know. They were a long way from civilisation when her husband had, life sudden fatal illness. You know that; 8?r Stephen Yerney adorid hie chief. The dying man, knowing that lie loved you and only you. and was looking forward to his marriage, yet put it upon Stephen Veri»y to marry \ik widow. •She is so frail,' , he said, 'my death will kill her. Her dear heart m worn to a thread. It will be a mnrriajje in name! only, and you and your fiancee will have ?o many years together. She is great-hearted. She would tell you to: give ire this immense boon of peace. Inj no other way can you protect her as I would protect her." Her voice had grown dreamy. She was looking into her heart of the' fire. It was as though ehe looked on at that dying bed, and heard the strange trust spoken. It wae the second sight. '•Doreen!" cried Miss Hamilton, plucking her by the shoulder. "How do you know all this? You are sleep-walking, again. Child, how could you know it?" Doreen came to herse.f suddenly. ".Much of it 1 have from his* own lipe," e-he said. 'The rest—perhaps I dreamt H. I am sure it is true." j "From his own lips: You have seen him?" "1 have seen him twice. I wanted to tell you before, but I was afraid. I saw him—and her—last September, before I came here. Miss Meldou at the hotel—you remember her?" ' "Charlotte Meldon. The greatest gossip in Dublin. What had she to say?" "She had Hie whole story—how he had married Lady Raw J on quixotically to give ease to the dying man he loved. She said, what was plain, that the woman only cared for herself. She had wanted Stephen Yerney perhaps; perhaps not. How could she when her husband was dying?" ■She asked the question innocently. "Go on. Doreen?" Miss Hamilton eaid impatiently. "You saw her. Whait wae she like? Was slip beairtiful?" "A little, old, dricd-up peevish woman, full of herself. He carried her lap-dogs. If she had ever cared for him she had long ceased to oare for anything but herself. He looked as though he had set hi e teeth to go through with it to the end." "And I have been thinking of her as beautiful and alluring all these years," Miss Hamilton said, "while my "beauty burnt itself out in torture. Doreen, if you could know—fortunately you cannot know. ehMd-what it has* been to mc to think of them together all these years, engrossed in each other, while! grew old before my time-and half mad. I felt lie must have been madly in love to have betrayed mc. Doreen. it has been a wolf gnawing at mv heart. Tell mc more- '* She lifted herself on her pillows eagerly: her eyes besought Doreen. He has all the sorrows of the world in his face. He is an old man already-" Old—he is younger than I am. Why he can be no more than thirty-eight." "He looks as though he had been tortured." Suddenly Miss Hamilton burst into tears. , "Poor Stephen!" she sobbed. "Poor Stephen! And I have been trying , to hate him all these years." She wept so violently, that Doreen was half-frightened: but at last the storm of tears subsided. She lay back on her pillow, white and exhausted. "Don't be frightened, child." she said faintly, and lifted her head to eip at the glass of champagne ■ Doreen had poured for her. "It will do mc good— oh, more good than you can imagine! I have been crying away the iron out of my soul." A little later she asked again why Stephen had not written to her, because, if she had only known, she could have borne it It was such a terrible, terrible cruelty to both of them that he had not written. "He did write." said Doreen. "More, he cabled. He asked your consent. I think he thought you would have withheld it. He hoped it. He never heard from you. I am sure he never heard." "My God!" said Peggy Hamilton, with a groan. "] never heard from him. Xot one word came all thoe« years. And to think how I have suffered!" For a time she lay with her face turned away from Doreen, and neither spoke. The logs crackled in the grate: the turf fell in with a long trail of sparks. There was the ticking Ox a little clock on the mantelpiece—a Sevres clock, which had not gone for years, till Doreen set it, saying the sound was companionable—was all that broke the silence. "Tell mc." said Miss Hami'ton at last. "Do you think. Doreen. T might see him? He could not misunderstand it—he, a weary and broken man, I, a broken -woman, with all these years of suffering between mc I was to »ug»

gest a meeting? Poor Stephen! You will have to fatten mc up, to drees mc, so that I shall not look a scarecrow before I see Stephen. To see mc now would be too bitter a reproach." "You might see him here," said Doreen. "Here? In this neglected house, this dreary, overgrown place!" "It is not as it was. The servants— with. Mrs. Scott behind them—have been cleaning , up. It is a beautiful house if only it got a chance. I should close all that lower floor, Peg. and fill in the moat. Build a new wing for the servants and the kitchen department out into the stable-yard. I am sure there is plenty of room." "Build, child! What folly are you talking*" Peggy Hamilton stared at her. "There is no building for a woman of my age. and my experience," she said I sadly. "The place will be yours when I am dead and gone. You can build —a new nest, Doreen—and wipt out all the remembrance of the days of the house's misery." j "I have a dream of this house." said Doreen—"this house, rebuilt and glow-| ing with life and happiness, and it is not I who am in it. It is you." "Oh, you are mad child! You are mad, with your dreame and fancies;" Miss Hamilton said, with an unsteady lalieli. She closed her eyes as though she were tired or drowsy, and Doreen petting up, lit the candles and went .off to wash and make ready for the night. (To be continued dally.)