BLUEBEARD UP-TODATE

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 72, 18 December 1928, Page 17 (Supplement)

BLUEBEARD UP-TO-DATE

By

“C.”

It was not until Bluebeard had departed on the first of those periodical business journeys that, as he had warned her before the wedding, would necessitate his absence from home, that his wife began to meditate upon what manner of man she had married. Their life together had been so deliriously -happy that she had had no time for thought. But now he was away she realised that his way was not that of other husbands. The clumsy attempts of the lady next door to find out over the garden fence where he had gone and at which Labour Exchange he drew the dole when at home, were enough to remind her that, on the contrary, .it afforded good grounds for curiosity.

She knew, of course, that he did not draw the dole because they always went to the theatre on Thursday evening, and he was too tired to stand in another queue on Friday. She knew, too, that he had gone to America on business, but of the nature of the business she was as ignorant as any other wife whose husband believes that a woman's place is the home. 'There had always been something mysterious about Bluebeard. That in part accounted for his fascination. His strange objection to picture palaces, for instance, had in their courting days marked him out from every other lover she had ever walked out with, and, incidentally, had greatly increased her knowledge of the merely spoken drama. Even in those halcyon days of love’s young dream he had never talked of his ambitions and his progress in the great world of business. Never mentioned how the manager singled him out from among his fellows to fetch such important documents as the three o’clock winners, or how one of the Rothschilds had whispered to him favourably of Domesday Deferreds. Of course, in their modem bijou residence there was no room which he could keep permanently locked up and forbid her to enter, and even if there had been, it is doubtful if the local sanitary authorities (notoriously fus sy) would have allowed him to keep there any corporal relics of former wives (if any). But his study almost amounted to a secret chamber. He always seemed to resent her presence in it, and she remembered how annoyed he had been on the day she tidied it for him as a little surprise. Almost unconsciously, as she recalled that scene, she had moved toward the stuhy door. Now, with Bluebeard away for some weeks, was indeed the golden opportunity to tidy it again.

No sign of any secret rewarded her toil until she came to the drawer of the table. It was locked I It almost looked as though Bluebeard wanted to keep its contents private. All wolud have been well if only she had been shingled. A mere bob would have saved her, but she had not even that. She still had hairpins handy,

And then, with the opening of the dr vwer, the full horror of her fate was revealed to her. Neatly filed away were, not the bodies, but the photographs of his former brides. She recognised them as brides Ify the orange blossom and the simper, and she knew they were his by the white gardenia and the air of submission with which,