AT "THE SIGN OF THE "ONE-POUND-ONE."

Evening Star, Issue 11453, 22 January 1901, Page 2

AT "THE SIGN OF THE "ONE-POUND-ONE."

[All Rights Reserved.]

[By Helex Mathers], Author of ' Comin' Through tho Rye,' etc.

\{, stood high' up on the village green, a roM.itrc with latticed window panes, senlin"lied by three magnificent oaks that stood (vise against its lintel, and seemed to guard ii jealously, and in all the years that I know it. [ nevnr saw a single customer go in or out, or any indication of drink about the place, though against its wall was hung a- faded • hoard, ahd upon it in still more faded letters was inscribed:

" The Sign of tho One-Ponnd-onc." Often I had in my mind to invade that queer little hostel and call for a glass of mulberry wine or raspberry vinegar, or some such old-fashioned cordial, but I pictured the aghast face of mine host or hostess at a woman doing such, a thing, in such a place, andionly idled when I camo near it, weaving :'■ strango fancies.about the place, and forbearing to-question-as to who dwelled within. Orte-autumn-day I stood watching the boys . and girls who ■came- pouring out of the village , schoolsrat'the top of the green, and betook ..ihemselvcs-shouting to their play; a flock ; of geeso-waddlcd slowly towards the pool that iilayon tho other side of the- road; the stones '• gleaming white in tie God's Acre were .' divided' but by alow hedge from those bound--1 ing,.happy youngsters. Away to the loft rose the grey old Suffolk church, its-squat ivied tower rearing itself into the blue and dazzling white of the clear October sky, and inevitably I thought of Fritlr's pictures. The wicked town- seemed far away as I turned to gaze over tho peaceful, old-world scene, at the wandering village street in which no two houses Avcro alike, and yet human hearts wore the same here as in other places, and Pain camo hither often, I knew, and sometimes Want, but Sin I never saw in broad daylight, no. nor Sin's fairer, happier sister. Love, for the uncouth gambols of the older lads and lassies on the green of evenings and Sundays could hardly be dignified by the most beautiful name in the whole language of man. But that very afternoon at tho Hall I chanced to intercept a look between a man and a girl that was an illumination to me, for here in this Arcadian spot was going forward the usual tragedy, and it is tho oldest ■•"■• A cruellest one in the world, of a man n.-ohitcly fighting a girl for all she should h<«M most dear in life, since it is all of treasure, that she ever has, or is ever likely to i.Tvc. i;i heart and soul and body. Ijrnorant, innocent, left to find out by Iv.tter experience tho knowledge of good an-.i evil (for roosU mother:-, may Ood forgive thorn, teach their daughters nothing, and with open eyes see them go blindfolded, like lambs to the slaughter, and warn them not), what chance has such a- one against the arts of a man of the world, moreover one fo much older than herself that- she has insensibly slid with him into the intimacy one may afford almost to a beloved relation? And the life of this girl of twenty was starved, hero in this drowsy backwater where Fate had set her in vicarious punishment for a spendthrift father's sins, living in a tiny house with a maddening mother and not one distraction or pleasure natural to her bright, fresh youth. Who could wonder, then, that she stretched out cngerly toward; that mental sympathy which will make the desert bloseom as the True, and for lack of which to sensitive souls the palaco makes the cage? I looked at the pair as they sat--talking together about art. while the drone of my hostess aad brother's neighbor sounded in my ear, and J understood why it was Mr -Stafford came so often now to the country seat he had once hardly deigned to honor, and angrily I realised that it Was not the beautiful soul, and spirit, and strong brain that the man worshipped in the girl (not what pleases the understanding but what pleases the eye is what the voluptary loves), but just her loveliness---because rho was like nothing so much as a deep, soft, full pink rose. Often I had kissed tho girl for the mere pleasure, of the softness of her skin, and indeed that exquisite feast of color which was not damask, nor clear red-and-white, but pure, velvety pink, almost blinded you to the sweetness and sense and spirit of the rest of her young face. "ft began with a chilblain." droned the hostess, "and his mothnr would go on poulticing it, and his leg has had to come off." "And now he will feel that chilblain alv.vys," I said absently, as I got up to go, knowing Molly would walk back with me; ana by tile shade that instantly came over Mr Stafford's features T knew that he had reckoned on a half-hour in the November dusk with her, and hated me accordingly. But I was delighted to see that she was not disappointed. at his remaining behind, when we went out together into the greyness that almost hid the trees, wonderful trees that sat like threat ladies sweeping in great circles the Kwa-rd of the park with their full skirts. She squeezed my hand, and said I was welcome as flowers in May on one of uiy brief vi.yits, that she had not known th.if I was in the village, and indeed I had b:;: :-.|. rived the night before. She told me that >!>e had been hard at work, that soon she was going to town to study from the life in a big school, and she way very keen on ii, and very full of hope, and all the youthful ambition that goes so far towards achieving success.

" Mr Stafford is so pood to me," she said ; " he brings me books on art from the (Jhace, and lends me wonderful drawings to copy. I don't know how J could have got through the lons months here without them; sometimes ihe want of someone to speak to was like a physical ache." She'paused, and I knew how very, very sweet and satisfying the companionship of a clever man in such a place and with such soul starvation must have been'to her. "You know his wife?"

" No. She seldom comes to the Chace. I —I don't think h<> is very happy at home," she added, dropping her voice. "You have heard the story?" I said, rather bitterly. "Did he tell you himself? How quickly a man makes capital out of one little fault in a woman (usually of his making originally). It is a peg on •which he openly hangs all his infidelities,' his excesses; and the,world condones his every infnmy if ho can only exploit one error of his wife, as the cause of them!"

I felt the girl shrink a little from my harshness, a.nd T hated the disagreeable task of disillusioning her, but I was playing Owen Stafford for her soul, and it should not be my fault if I did not win. "My dear," I said, "when I see a wreck of a woman I always want to know what hands she has passed through, and how they have used her; to what lengths may not jealousy and her wrongs have driven her? Owen Stafford is a man of taste, a man of fashion. I hear a great deal about him in town. And I do know this: that his wife in far more sinned against than sinning. He does not strike me as a man who could ever bo true to one woman—his fancy would be excited by another, and another—for he is a beauty-lover, and the world is full of beauty." ..She walked silently beside me, and I waited anxiously for ber to speak, fearing

lest the glamor should be over her eyes and the mischief be done, for often Nature sings as loud in the girl's heart as the man's, but in a voice of which she knows not the true meaning, and if she be a, real -woman, and if she surrender herself to that tide of lov-o which in its origin is divine, then is she a, renegade to man's laws, and all the tears and repentance of a lifetime shall not. wash the really guiltless, hapless creature white again.

While her mother took her dogs out for airings, and slept and pottered her life away, was this poor girl being imperiously swept by the experienced man towards those, rapids that must inevitably break her in pieces, while ho, strong swimmer that he Was, would gain the shore no whit the worse for his adventure?

No doubt he thought he loved her. Many a man dignifies by that glorious name what is not even Worthy to be called passion (which is the very flower of life), and insolently offers the trashy baublo as a full equivalent for that priceless treasure which every girl should guard jealously, till, in exchange for it, she receives the life-long devotion that many a true man knows Well how to give.

But when Molly spoke I was shamed, for sometimes beyond all arguments, all experience the inherent Tightness of a girl will shine out triumphantly, and you know that her instinct is absolutely true, and she will shake herself clear of Wrong, ahd loathe it, without an instant's hesitation, and I knew that if ever Owen Stafford's mask of friendship were removed and his true attitude realised towards her his shrift would be short.

"I am sorry," she said, slowly, without any L-ittemess, or sense of application in my words, "my father " She paused, then added firmly : "He deceived me, and I never forgave him." .That was all—but my spirits rose, and I loved the girl for her fearlessness and honesty. I knew that here was the making of a woman noble beyond even the power of man to mar. And I took the ungloved hand, strong as it needed to be for the work it had to do, and thought of my own bov, and wished that such a girl as* this might be as my own daughter. She stooped her head—she was tall and well grown—and kissed me, for we had always seemed to understand one another, tossed together with similar tastes, at intervals of time in this remote Suffolk village, in which I did not sojourn, but merely passed through. A feeling of depression stole over me as we approached the tiny house in which she lived with her mother, an invertebrate person in the mixing of whose brains some important ingredient had palpably been left out.

" Come and see me to-morrow," I said, as we reached the doorstep, and T saw that she half hesitated, lor within all was dark and uninviting as a tomb— "T can lend you some new books, and would like to see your sketches." " I shall he delighted," she said, adding : •'T won't ask you in to-night, for mother is in town." " You are here alone !" I cried in as much amazement, as if I did not know already what irresponsible, incredible fools mothers on occasion can be. . " Yes," she said, bravely ; then, meeting my look, answered: "I don't like it, I told mother so, but she could not understand it." " But you have some old servant with you?" " Only a little girl who goes home at night." 1 Stamped my foot on the gravel in an apparently unreasoning rage, but ata« ! thero was only too much reason in it. Yet how could I interfere? What could I do to protect her? " My child," I said, "lam an old woman in comparison with you—will you take an old woman's advice?" "Indeed I will," she said eagerly; "I loved you the very first moment I saw you, and I think wo shall always be friends —always." "Then don't allow any man to cross this threshold till your mother comes back. No maai, -mind married or single, old or young." "Xo one shall," she said gravely. "And as to your mother," I Raid, with apparent irrelevance, " I should liko to beat her. Don't come to the Rectory in the morning, hut to tea, and stay and spend the evening." For in the day the house was in the eye of the village street—it was the darkness and night that I feared for her. and she took my hand in one of those grips that only the right sort of woman ever gives, and said: " I will come," and I kissed the smooth pink cheek, velvet soft as the petals of a rose, and left her standing there, fitting her key in the lock. I had gone perhaps three hundred yards, thinking deeply, when I felt caught as in a cyclone, and some imperative instinct seized mc by the shoulders, and turned mc sharp round on the pa,th I had come, and pulled me up outside Molly's door. Tt stood ajar, and all was dark within, but I recognised two voices, and then I knew what had brought mc back! Owen Stafford must Lave followed us at a distance, probably listened to our discourse, and with all the skill of a professional thief had slipped in as she entered, and the very moment my back was turned. "I can't find tho matches," she said, and ' then I heard a match struck, and looked in at tho uncurtained window, close to which Molly was standing, and the light flared suddenly on Owen Stafford's distorted face. ... I heard a stilled sound, knew that he had her in his arms, and instantly I dashed through the open door calling out hex name. I heard a strangled oath, and then Molly rushed at me in tho darkness, trembling violently, and clung to me as if she were mad with fear. We were out of tho doll's passage into the dark night in less than a second, and she never let go of my hand as 1 pulled her up, and across the. green, and neither of us spoke till we were inside the door of the Rectory. "Do vou feel equal to coming into the study - ?" I said, for my people would wonder if she came to the house and they did not see her, and she pulled herself together, and I opened the door, and we went in, and found ourselves in a, warm, lamp-lit room that breathed the very atmosphere of peace and home, yes, and of goodness. For mv brother was walking up and down with a kitten in his arms, listening to Sarah who was reading aloud in that delightful voice which made it a treat only to hear her speak, and Molly's hand twitched in mine. I knew what she was thinKing—what did these kind souls know of man's wickedness? The Rector knew himself, Sarah all men through him, and 1 saw the tears spring to the girl's brave eyes, as the sharp contrast of this scene with the one she hod just gone through, came vividly home to her. "Molly is all alone," I said, "and I have brought her to spend the evening," and as Sarah was intent on {he bookmark that must, be placed before rising to greet us, and my brother was short-sighted, the jtirl's .pallor.

her slight disorder passed unnoticed, and almost immediately I got her away upstairs to remove her hat.

But she was too plucky to let those tears fall, though I te# her hurt was very deep. For she had genuinely liked the mad ; he had been to her all that ftai exceptional elder brother who loved her might have been. "Poor Molly—poor little child," I said, my heart burning within me as 1 thought of her mother.

"What shall I do?" went on the girl, "for I can't tell her. She would not listen when I begged her not to leave me in the house alone—she would not list-en even if I told her this. Perhaps he will go away—for he knows that I cannot for Some months ( until my art lessons begin here I must stay." " And I can do little to help you," I said, in deep vexation. "I am rarely here, and even if I lived in tho place how could I protect you? And if 1 spoke to Sarah she simply would not understand—or she would think that you had encouraged him—it is so difficult to make a good woman understand a .bad man; she nearly always blames her own sex. And the Owen Staffofds always reckon safely oh the girl's not telling—if she does, the world's blame is all for her—none for Mm."

" I shall bs meeting him at every turn," said poor Molly, " and how am I to control my v6iee and feature*, pretend to like him as I did before, when he has become ugly and horrible to me?"

"We must go down," I said briskly. " Meanwhile, I shall take you home to-night, and wait to hear you lock the door, and I won't leave this place till I see ydU safe out of the wood—or rather, Owen Stafford beaten off the premises." Molly put her soft cheek to mine, and hugged me, and wo went down together, and more than once I saw her glance wistfully round as if the cultured and sjTDpathetic surroundings brought all too vividly before her the ghastly evening in the little dark house, with only her mother fast asleep for company. And I was glad to see that Sarah warmed to the girl, and made a perceptible stride towards a greater intimacy than had formerly existed between them, for the Rectory woidd be a haven to Molly to come to, and all its influences for her good " What a treat it is to meet a man like your brother," she uaid to me, as at halfpast ten we went out into the darkness for the third time that day together. " His eyes, his voice—one could trust him blindfold." " Yes. Molly, hk will try and see you, and explain his conduct away. ' What will you sav?"

"I shall tell him," said Molly, very deliberately, " that J have been deceived in him, and I never wish to speak to or have anything to do with him again." " And you never loved him—not the least bit?" I cried, for indeed, under all the circumstances, it would have seemed to me strango if she had not. "What 1 liked—nr loved, if you like to call it so," she said bravely, "is dead. How could I love what revolted me"—and the shuddered with a sharp physical memory as she crossed her own threshold, and went straight to the matches. When we had gone all oyer tho tiny place, and seen that it was secure, I kissed and left her, waiting till the chain rattled in the door, and a light appeared in an upper window. I felt easier now about the girl, knowing that her best friend in the matter was herself, but my anger rose against the man, and T cast about in my mind for the best chance of seeing him alone, and thrashing the matter out. At breakfast next morning Sarah asked me if I would execute a small commission for her, and that was to take a shawl she had knitted to old bed-ridden Mother Goodenough, who lived on the village green at the Sign of the One-Pound-Onel Freoccupied as I was with Molly's affairs. T took the shawl and went out with it, walking mechanically towards the green. Suddenly Molly's figure camo in sight, halfway down the slope, and as suddenly disappeared under the giant trees that sentinelled the little hostel, and at the same moment I saw Owen Stafford running quickly in the same, direction, and vanishing at the precise point where Molly had done. For a moment T stood confounded, it looked so like nn assignation ; then s6me instinct told me they hod both gone into the "One-Pound-One," the only house behind those trees, and I hurried swiftly up, and stood looking at the door of the ancient place which had fo often exercised my curiosity. I heard voices within. "One raised in entreaty was Owen Stafford's, and without a moment's hesitation I lifted the latch of the door and walked in, finding myself in a. humble, sanded room that no stretch of wildest imagination Could see fitted with a bar; while the owner of the place, whoever it might be, was absent. Molly was standing with her back to me, Owen's face as I entered -was grave, earnest, yet ashamed, and wore the look of a man pleading strenuously for himself, trying as many an one has done to make previous good conduct plead against one moment of mad folly ; and I knew by her attitude that she was listening, that the livin"eyes upon her were effacing the memory of those others that had so terrified her, and that she was infinitely more in danger of him now than she had been then.

But that .lightning impression I had of him before he realised my presence faded as his glance met mine and darkened, for I was his enemy, and well he knew. it. Molly, seeing that change in him, turned and colored deeply, and I took her gently by the shoulders and pushed her towards the door. "I came—l came," she faltered, "to bring Mother Goodenough some patchwork pieces," and held out the little bundle to show me. "And I brought her a shawl from my sister-in-law," I said, and shut the door on her, and turned to face Owen Stafford. " "Don't try to rub out the impression you made on her yesterday," I said contemptuously, "for you never will. Why don't you try your arts on someone who can stand up to yon? A girl of twenty, with a criminally neglectful mother—absolutely alone in the house! You call yourself a man?" " She suite me," he said (a man always thinks that a woman was made to his own especial order, till he happens to see one of a newer pattern that pleases him better), " and I love her," he added. " I love her!" he repeated doggedly. "If I were a free man I would make her my wife to-mor-row." "No doubt," I said, "because the best order of woman always attracts the worst order of man. She is dangerously attractive, and her very goodness and truth make the ruin of her all the more keenly desired by men of the world-wide type of Owen Stafford." " You are very clever, very superior," he said, and I could not but admire the way he kept his temper, but the worse a man's morals as regards women the better his manners always are; it is usually the reverse in other orders 6f infamy. " One would say" (he paused, and bowed halfmockingly) "that you speak from experitoc&—thit jbu had been there jburself.""

"Pofceibly," I said indifferently. "If you could flatter yourself that you are an individual, and not a type, • it would be more satisfying to your fa,stidiou& taste. But I Warn ybtt to let Molly alone. You hata your wife, but ydtt have a daughter" —ho Started, and changed color—"how would you likfo to know that a man old enough to bfe her father Was pursuing your child? To be kicked out of his and the world's way as carrion when he has done with her?"

He winced suddenly, and I knew that he loved his daughter, who by special grace of God he wished to see exempted from the lot of girls every -whit as pure as she.

"You.hit hard," he said, and his very lips Were White.

"I mean tc--for Molly," I said. "She has practically no mother.. I can*t protect her. Without shaming her, Without advertising you to th 6 Wh6le neighborhood, who will blame the girl, not you. She has only her own inherent rightness of heart to pro* tect her, and you afe gifted with every art, every seduction that experience, can teach, Go away; leave her! Do one good deed in your life. Make a companion of your daughter, and try and be better to he? poor mother, who loves you Still." He shook his head. " I cant go back to her," he said, and indeed I knew that he- man ever looks willingly on the ruin he has made. "Molly has a heart of gold," I said. " She is what I would have liked my own daughter to be, for I have none of my own." He looked keenly at me, and a different and better expression came into his face. "And so," I said pleadingly, "leave mo my little Molly, and it will be made up to you with your own child ono day. God has a strange Way of visiting the sins of the fathers on the children." He turned aside, and stood looking out of the casement, and in tho pause came a loud knocking from the stick of the old bed-ridden Wdman overhead. I went to foot of the stairs, and cried out: " I am coming, Mrs Gbodenough !" and then I came back and waited. " You have conquered," he said, but he did not turn his head or let irie see his face. "I Will not'try to see Molly again, nor will I come to the Chace while she is in this neighborhood. But femember this : that I love her, and.shall always love her." The door slainmed behind him. I picked up the shawl, and climbed the Ktairs with it to the old woman, who garrulously told me how long years ago she had done a thriving business in the '' One-pound-One." Yet methought the best stroke that had ever been done in that poor place was when Owen Stafford got the victory over himself, and from that day forth became a better man.

And Molly? Thank God there are good men, as there are good girls nowadays, and Molly did not meet the right one too late.

A THRILLING MYSTERY of a LONELY HOUSE. A DARK TRAGEDY AND A HAPPY ENDING.