"The Uttermost Farthing"

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 14 (Supplement)

"The Uttermost Farthing"

SYNOPSIS PREVIOUS CHAPTER. LAURENCE VANDERLTN, an unpaid attache at the American Embassy. in Paris, has for seven years loved with selfless devotion. MARGARET PARGETER, the neglected wife of TOM PARGETER, the well-known sportsman who has established his great racing stable at Chantilly. One day Laurence buys an old country houre, and, when telling Margaret of his purchase, expresses the wish that she were going there with him. "Would you like me to come with you? I will if you like, Laurence," she replies, ht-r hands trembling, her oyes brimming with tears. In Ihr> demirapide in which they leave Paris together one night for a brief holiday together, Laurence and Margaret fall asleep. CHAPTER V. Vanderlyn woke with a, start. He looked round', bewildered for a- moment. Then his brain cleared, and he felt vexed wth himself, a little ashamed of having i slept. Ji; seemed to him thao he had been asleep hours. How odiou.s it would have been if at the first stopping place of the demi-rapMe some stranger had entered the railway carriage; Instead of sleeping, he ought to have remained watching over that still iigure which lay so quietly resting on the other side of the carriage. He stood up. How tirad he felt, how strangely depressed and uneasy! But that, after all, was natural, for his last four nights had been wakeful, his last four days full of anxiety and suspense. He turned and looked out of the window, wondering where they were, how far they had gone; the train wa3 travelling very quickly, he could eee white tree-trunks rushing past him in the moonlight. Then Vanderlyn took out his watch. Surely it must be later than nine o'clock? He moved from the window and held the dial close under the blue silk shade of the lamp. Why, it was only three minutes to nine! Then they hadn't yet passed Dorgival; in fact they wouldn't be there for another twenty minutes, for this train took two hours to do what the quick expresses accomplished in an hour and a-quarter. It was good to know that he had only slept for a little while. The desire for eleep had now left him completely, and he began to feel excited, restless, and intensely, glowingly alive . . .

The curious depression and unease ■which had possessed him a few moments J ago lifted from his eoul; the future was once more full of infinite possibilities.. His darling little Peggy! _ What strange beings women were! With what self-contempt, with, what scorpions would he have lashed himself, had he been the one to evolve this plan of this furtive flight to be followed at the end of a week by a return to the life to which he now looked back with shame ae well as distaste! And yet. she, ■ the , woman he loved, had evolved it, and thought out every detail of the echeme— before telling him of what was in her mind ... , • ■ ;• As to the future? Vanderlyn threw back his head; nay, nay, there, could be no going back to what had been. Even Peggy would see that. She had herself broken down the barrier erected with such care; and soon, very soon she would —she must —«ee that such breaches can never be repaired or treated as if they had not been made. What had happened, what was happening, to-night, ■was in very truth the beginning, for them both, of a new life. So Laurence Vanderlyn ewore to himself, taking many silent vows of chivalrous devotion to the woman who, for love of him, had broken, r.ot on]y with life-long traditions of honour, but also ■with a conscience he had known to be so delicately scrupulous. From where he was standing in the middle of the swaying carriage, something in the way in which his sleeping companion's head was lying suddenly aroueed Vanderlyn's quick, keen attention. Putting out a hand , to steady himeelf against the back of the compartment, he bent down —indifferent to the risk of rousing the etill figure. Then' with a rapid movement, Die straightened himself; his face had gone grey—expressionless. He.pushed back the blue shade off the globe of light, careless of the bright rays which suddenly illumined every corner of the railway carriage. ... • With an instinctive gesture, Vanderlyn covered hie eyee and shut out the blinding light. He pressed his fingers on his eyeballs; every fibre of his body, every qui'verihg nerve was in revolt; for he realised, even then, that there was no room for hope, for doubt—he knew that what he had looked upon in the dim light was death. , . With an awful, pang he new understood why Peggy had made him that strange pathetic offer. How blind been! The English doctor, the man on whom he had poured such careless ecorn, had been right—terribly right. At last he uncovered his ;eyes, and forced himself to gaze upon what lay

before him. ••"• :, •«'.■'• Margaret Pargeter had died in her sleep. She was lying exactly as Vanderlyn had left her, still folded closely in the rug he had placed so tenderly about her. But a terrible change had come over the delicate features, the sightless eyes-were wide-open, the lips had fallen apart; his glance, travelling down, saw that her left hand, the hand where gleamed his mother's wedding ring, was slightly clenched. Again Vanderlyn passed his hand over his eyes. He stared about him with a touch of helpless bewilderment, but he could do nothing, even if there had been anything to do; it was she Avho had insisted that they should be unencumbered by any luggage. He crouched down, and, with an involuntary inward shrinking,, took up the chilly, heavy hand and tried to warm it against his cheek; then he shivered, *is teeth chattered, with a groan of which the sound echoed strangely in his ears he hid his face in the folds of her grey cloth gown . For a few moments the extent of his calamity blotted out everything. And then, as Vanderlyn lay there, there suddenly opened before him a wav of escape from hie intolerable a<*ony and 1 sense of loss, and he welcomed it with' eager relief. He raised his head, and began to think intently. How inexplicable that, he had not thought of this— the only way—at once! It was so simple and so easy; he saw himself flih<r-! .; ing wide open the narrow carriage door and then, with that still figure clasped :;.;, in his arms, stepping out into the rushing darkness. . . . His mind was now working with incredible quickness and clearness How good it was to know that here, in France ,M t,ieve Ile ed be—there would be—no public ! esf-J-rfal! In England or America othe0the

By MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES.

supposed suicide of two such people asI were Margaret Pargeter and himself i could not hope to be concealed; not so 1 in France. [ Here, as Vanderlyn knew well, there was every chance that such a love ■ tragedy as the one of which he and Mrs. ' Pargeter would be supposed to have been hero and heroine, would remain hidden— hidden, that is, from everyone except those closely connected with her and with himself. His own chief, the American Ambassador, would be informed of what had happened, but he was a wise old man, there was no fear of indiscretion in that quarter; but —yes, 'he, Vanderlyn, must face that fact. Tom Pargeter would know the truth. Vanderlyn's hidden abhorrence of the other man—of the man whose friend he had perforce compelled himself to be for so long, rose in a great flood. Tom Pargeter? The selfish, meansouled, dull-witted human being, whose huge fortune, coupled with the masculine virtues of physical courage and straightness in matters for sport, made him not only popular but in a small way a personage! Pargeter, no doubt, would suffer, especially in his self-esteem; on the other hand, he, the husband, would feel that so had his own conduct, his coarse infidelity, his carelesss neglect of his wife, been fully condoned. With a choking feeling of sharp pain. Vanderlyn suddenly remembered that what Tom Pargeter knew now, poor Peggy's son would some day have to know. • For a while, no doubt, the boy would be kept in merciful ignorance of the tragedy, but then, when the lad was growing into manhood, some blundering fool, or more likely some Well-intentioned woman, probably his aunt, Sophy Pargeter, would feel it her duty to smirch for him his.mother's memory. . . .

Nay, that could not, that must never, be! Vanderlyn's head fell forward on his breast; there came back, wrapping him as in a shroud the awful feeling of desolation, of life-long loss—for he now knew, with inexorable knowledge, what the future held for him. It must be his fate to live, not die; he must live in order to safeguard the honour of Margaret Pargeter, the beloved woman who t had trusted him wholly, not only in this, which was to have been their supreme adventure, but during the whole of their long, almost wordless love. It was for her sake that, she dead, he must go on living; for her sake ihe make what now, at this moment, seemed to be a sacrifice almost beyond his power, for reason told him that he must leave her, and as soon as possible, : lying there dead—alone.

With tender, absent fingers he smoothed out the woollen folds to which his face had. been pressed; he slipped from her finger the thin gold ring, and placed it once more where he had always worn it from, the day of his mother's death till an hour ago. Then he stood up, and turned deliberately away. There came the loud wailing whistle which told that the train was nearing a station. He leaned out of the window; the lights of a town were flashing past, and he grimly told himself that there

was no time to lose. Vanderlyn again bent down; the instinctive repugnance of the living for the dead suddenly left him. His darling little Peggy! How could he bear to leave her there—alone ? If he and she had been what they ought to have been— husband and wife—even then, he felt that never would he have left her to the neglect, to the forgetfulnese to which other men leave their beloved dead. There rose before him the memory of one of the most moving of the world's great pictures. Goya's painting of mad yueen Joan bearing about with her the unburied body of Philip. He turned that which had been Margaret Pargeter so that her face would be completely hidden from anyone opening the door and looking into the carriage.

Yet, even as he was doing this, Vanderlyn kept a sharp watch and ward over his own nerves. His had now become the mental attitude.of a man who desires to save the living woman whom he loves some great physical danger. Blessing his own foresight in providing the large rug which he had folded about her so tenderly an hour ago, he pulled up a fold of it till it covered, and completely concealed her head. Should a traveller now enter the carriage he would see nothing but a woman apparently plunged into deep slumber. Again Vanderlyn glanced, with far more scrutinising eyes than he had done when first entering the train, through the two glazed apertures which commanded a view of the next carriage; it was, as he knew well, empty. He turned once more the silk . shade over the lamp, jammed his hat down over his eyes, set his lips together, and, averting his eye from what he was leaving, opened the railway carriage door .'.

CHAPTER VI. The train was slowing down; a few hundred yards ahead lay the. station, Vanderlyn, stepped to one side of the footboard, and waited till the door through which he had just passed swung to; then' he turned the handle securing it firmly. With soft, swift staps, he walked past the window of the now darkened carriage and slipped into the next empty, brightly-lighted compartment. There came over him a strong temptation to look through the little apertures giving into the darkened carriage he had just left, but it was a temptation which he resisted. Instead he leant out of the window as does a traveller. who is nearing his destination. Soon there floated up to him the shouting of "Dorgival! Cinq minutes d'arret!" and when the train at last stopped there arose the joyous chatter which attends every arrival in a French station. Vanderlyn waited for a few moments; then he stepped down from the carriage, and began walking quietly down theplatform. With intense relief he remembered that the guard of the train whom he had fed so well, and who must have noticed him with Peggy, had been left behind in Paris. Having passed the end compartment and guard's van he stood for awhile staring down - at the permanent way, counting the rails- which gleamed in the nalt darkness. He measured .with his eyes the distance which separated the plat- ™ °, n which he was standing from r r thenexttrainbackt o^ permanent way, and sto ? d f J fj^

in the deep shadow cast by the rear of the train he had just left; then, cautiously advancing, he looked both up and down the line, and made his way to the other side. ■ The platform on which he now, found himself was desterted, for the whole life of the station was still centred round the train which had just arrived; but as he started across the rails Vanderlyn became possessed with a feeling of acute, almost intolerable, suspense. He longed with a. feverish longing to see the demi-rapide glide out into the darkness. He told himself that he had been •a fool to suppose that anyone could enter the darkened carriage where the dead woman lay without at once discovering the truth —and he began asking himself what he would do were the awful discovery made, and were the fact that he had been her, travelling companion suddenly revealed or suspected.

But Laurence Vanderlyn was not subjected to so dread, an ordeal; at last there floated to where he was standing the welcome cry of "En voiture! En voiture, s'il vous plait!" The dark serpentine mass on which the lonely man's eyes were fixed shivered as though it were a sentient being waking to life, and slowly the train began to move. Vanderlyn started walking up the platform, and for a while he kejt in step with the slowly gliding carriages; then they swept by more quickly, a swift procession of gleaming lights. As at last the red disc melted into the night, he gave a muffled groan of anguish, for mingling with his sense of intense relief, came that of eternal, irreparable loss. Ironic fortune was kind to Vanderlyn that night; his return ticket, from faraway Orange, though only issued in Paris some two hours before, was allowed to pass unchallenged; and a couple of francs bestowed on a communicative employee drew the welcome news that a southern express bound for Paris was about to stop at Dorvigal. It was only eleven o'clock when Vanderlyn found himself once more in the Gare de Lyon. He walked quickly out of the great station, which was henceforth to hold for him such intimately tender and poignant memories; and then, instead of taking a cab he made his way on foot down to the lonely Seine-side quays. There, leaning over and staring down into the swift black waters of the river, he planned out his drab immediate

future. In one sense the way was-clear before him —he must, of course, go on exactly as before; show himself, that is, in his usual haunts; take the moderate part he had hitherto taken in what he felt to be the dreary round of socalled pleasures with which Paris was now seething. That must be his task—his easy and yet intolerable task—during the next week or ten days, until the disappearance of Margaret Pargeter became first sus peeted, and then discovered. But before that was likely to happen many long days would certainly go by, f or —as is gp often the case when a man and woman have become, in secret, everything to one another—Laurance Vanderlyn and Mrs. Pargeter had gradually detached themselves from all those whom they had once called their friends, and even Peggy had had no intimate who would miss a daily, or even a weekly,

letter. Indeed it- was just possible, so Vanderlyn, resting his arms on the stone parapet, now told himself, that the first part of his ordeal might last as long as a fortnight, that is, till Tom Pargeter came back from England. There was, of course, yet another possibility; it was conceivable that everything would not fall out as they, or rather Peggy, had imagined. Pargeter, for instance, might return sooner; and, if he did so, he would certairJy require

his wife's immediate presence-in Paris, for the millionaire "was one of those men who hate to be alone even in their spare moments. Also more than his wife's company, Pargeter valued her presence as part of what the French so excellently style the decor of his life; she was his thing, for wjiich he had paid a good price; some of his friends, the sycophants with which he loved to be surrounded, would have said that he paid for her very dearly. It was very unlikely, however, that Tom Pargeter would return to Paris before he was expected to do so. For many years past lie had spent the first fortnight of each May at Newmarket; and, as is the curious custom of his kind, he seldom varied the order of his rather monotonous pleasures. But stay—Vanderlyn suddenly remembered Madame de Lera, that is the one human being who had been in Peggy's confidence. She was a real and terrible point of danger—or rather she might at any moment become so It was with her at the de Lera villa in the little village of Marly-le-Koi, that Mrs. Pargeter was, even now, Rupposed to be staying. This being so, he, Vanderlyn, must make it his business to see Madame de Lera at the first possible moment. Together they would have to concoct some kind of possible story—he shuddered with repugnance at the thought. Long before, Peggy's confidence in the trip, the American diplomatist had been well aware that Adelc de Lera disapproved of his close friendship with Mrs.. Pargeter; and she had never lent herself to any of those innocent complicities with which even good women are often so ready to help those of their friends who are most foolish—whom perhaps

they know to be more tempted—than themselves. The one thing of-.paramount."import-ance, so Vanderlyn suddenly reminded himself, was that no one—not even Madame de Lera—should ever know that he and Margaret Pargeter had left Paris that night, together. How could this fact be best concealed, and concealed for ever? To the unspoken question came swift answer. It flashed on the ; ?nan lingering on the solitary river-sir'/e quay, that even now, to-night, it was not too late for him to establish the, most effectual of alibis. By taking a fiacre and bribing the man. to drive quickly he could be back in his rooms in the Rue de Eivoli, dressed, and at his club, before midnight. Fool that he was to have wasted even a quarter of an liouri ■ • 1 Vanderlyn struck sharply across the dimly-lighted thoroughfare; he started walking down one of the narrow streets which connect the river quays with commercial Paris. A few moments later, having picked up a cab, he was driving rapidly westward, down the broad, still seething Boulevard du Temple, and, as he suddenly became aware with a sharp pang at his heart, past the entrance to the quiet'mediaeval square, where only four days ago, he and Peggy walking side by side, had held the conversation which was to prove , pregnant of so much short-lived joy, nnd of such long-lived pain. Like so many modern Americans, to whom every, material manifestation of wealth has become distasteful, Laurance Vanderlyn had chosen to pitch his Paris tent on the top floor of one of those eighteenth century houses which, if lacking such conveniences as electric light and lifts, can command in their place the stately charm and spaciousness of which the modern Parisian architect seems to fcnve lost the secret. His appartement

consisted of a few large, airy, low-pitched rooms, of which the stone balconies overlooked the Tuileries gardens, while from a corner window of his sitting-room Vanderlyn could obtain what was in very truth a bird's-eye view of the vast Place de la Concorde. ' ■ Very soon after his arrival in Paris the diplomatist had .the good fortune to come across a couple of .French servants, a. husband and wife, who exactly suited his simple and yet fastidious requirements. They.were honest, thrifty, clean, and their only fault —that of chattering to one another like magpies—was to Vanderlyn an agreeable proof that they led a life quite independent of his own. Never had he been more glad to know that this was so than to-night, for they greeted his return home with the easy indifference and real pleasure, very unlike the surface respect and ill-concealed resentment with which a master's unexpected appearance would have been received by a couple of more cosmopolitan servitors. With nerves strung up to their highest tension, forcing himself only to think of the present, Vanderlyn put on his evening clothes. It was still wanting some minutes to midnight when he left the Rue de Rivoli for the Boulevard de la Madeleine. A few minutes later he was at the door of the club where he was sure of finding, even at this time of night, plenty of friends and acquaintances who would be able to testify, in the very unlikely event of its being desirable, that they should do so, to the fact that he had been there that evening. (To bo Continued Saturday next.)