THE HAND ON THE PLOUGH.

Evening Star, Issue 11677, 8 February 1902, Page 2

THE HAND ON THE PLOUGH.

||| •'by Special Arrangement.]

/ By JOHN STRANGE WINTER, Author of 1 Booties’* Baby,’ ‘A Magnificent .. Young Man,* ‘Heart and Sword,’ ‘The ; Colonel's Daughter,* ‘ Every Inch a Soldier,’ * Beautiful Jim,’ * etc., etc.

[Copyright.] CHAPTER XXXI. At last the day of departure had come, cianta Clara no longer belonged to Dick and Cynthia. The purchase-money, an enormous sum, had been duly arranged for, and Cynthia Vincent, bar taxes already stowed in the waggon which wsadd carry them down to Freeman’s Rook, was taking a last farewell of the house winch had been her hue- i band's home for seven years. “ Good-bye, old house,” she cried; “ good--bye, dreary view; good-bye everything and everybody- Mr Progg, you have been very nice to me since I have been here. I wish you were coming Home to England.” At this the manager laughed. “ No, Mrs Vincent, there’s no room for me in England,” he replied. “I don’t believe in that. For my part, I’d rather live in a cottage in England than in the grandest palace that ever was built in San Francisco.’’ “But you haven’t seen San Francisco.” “No, but I have seen Santa Clara and the surrounding neighborhood, and I had a glimpse of Freeman’s Rock as I came through. Now, if you come to England, be sore you come and see me.” “ shank you a thousand times.” “ Meantime I wish yon all the luck in the 1 world, but I wish you weren’t going to have it here-” “ Don't set him against the place, Cynthia,” said Dipk. “ No, no. I could have no influence over Mr Frogg, not in that way. He’s a hard j person that likes a barren land. • And I’m j > going home to dear England—to lovely , a Holhngridge, all green and cool and beau- 1 I tiful. And oh, lam so happy. I feel like | a child going home after the longest term ] that any child ever stayed at a boarding school —an uncomfortable boarding school.” “Have you been so very miserable with J us. Mrs Vincent?” “I haven’t been miserable at all. How could I? But all the same, it’s been an exile, and I'll not pretend anything else. “If yon don’t stop chattering and get in," said Dick Vincent, “there’ll be no going to Old England or anywhere else." “I stand rebuked,” cried Cynthia, gailv. “ Well, good-bye, Mr Frogg, good-bye. Bo mro to come and see us if you ever find yourself in the Old Country again.” The little woman to whom she had given the piano was waiting a little way down the dreary road in order to wish her a last Godspeed. “I shall miss you,'” she said, rather wretchedly, “in spite of the great pleasure that vou have brought into my life.” “ Oh, the piano?” cried Cynthia. “ Think of me when you play it, and keep a corner in your hearts for us. Good luck be with you! Good-bye!” “ There! t” she said to Dick, as they rattled along. “ we’re off at last. We will never go back, Dick.” “No,” echoed Dick, “we’ll never go back. Take care of your am, child; take care of your arm.” Oh. she was so gay as they rattled along. In her heart there was one song of thankfulness which kept rising to her lips in snatches—- “ We’re going home! WeTe going home!” How like and yet how wide apart were the thoughts of the husband and wife as thev jolted along the uneven road. Cynthia was openly and childishly glad at being about to turn back on California; Dick was equally well satisfied to do so, though for a very different reason.. In truth, to him the time they had passed at Santa Clara had seemed interminable; every day he had got out of his bed with a feeling that before he got into it again some accident might have revealed the fact which he was so anxiously concealing from his wife. Once clear of the country and settled at Hollingridge, he knew that he need have no fear of any such accident befalling him. He was not likely,in that quiet, far-off country home ever to meet again with any one of the persons who had been witnesses of that terrible tragedy, the tragedy which still weighed npon his mind with a sense of unmitigated horror. They had got now to aritljm a few hours of what to him meant iaiety. ’ Or, stay; that was not exactly the

tem which he used tq himself—what to him mount peace of mind which was not likely wer tow broken. He could not help thinking, as they rode along, how wonderfully everything h*d worked together to help him to conceal the unpalatable truth. How determined that little woman had been that she would sift the whole affair to the bottom. How suspicious she had been — how determined—how ruthless in her unouenchable deeire to have always absolutely her own way. And her own way had practically killed her. Well, so far as happiness was concerned, Dick knew perfectly well that he would not suffer in that respect bv the death of his wife’s mother. And Cvnthia, dear tender-hearted little girl that she was, had been smitten by a qualm of conscience. She had taken into her dear little head that perhaps she ought, as a duty, to go to Midas Creek as a substitute for her mother. Well, he had nipped that in the bud at once. “I could not convince your mother that it was wiser she did not go near the place where your father d ; ecl,” he said to her. “ Don’t you think, dearest, that if your i mother had been intended to go there she would have been spared to do so?” “ T never thought of that,” was Cynthia's reply; “ and, of course, dear Dick, if you would rather that I didn’t go, I'll never give it another thought again.” " I would much rather you did not go,” he said. ” I never like to think that my greatest friend, whom I trusted and loved all the seven years that we lived together, came by his end in such a horrible way. I like to remember him as we were together in Santa Clara, when he was so easy, so considerate, so kindly to everybody. „ I tell you candidly, Cynthia, that I know exactly what I should hear if we went to Midas Creek, and I shrink from hearing it. He is dead ; his hour had come; nothing that we can do would bring him back to life again, so pray don’t let us do anything. Wc must pass through Midas Creek, because we get on to the cars there —but don’t let us stop. I hate to think of the place ns associated with him.” And she had instantly fallen in with his ideas, declaring that she believed hint to bo perfectly right, and that for her part she hated these wild, out-of-the-way savage places, and never wanted to find herself in any one of them. “It was only an idea, Dirk,” she said, "a foolish idea, but you know I have been through a great deal lately, and I get ideas in my head at times.”

"AVell, don’t get any more ideas on that i subject, dearest,” he said, “it can do no good. You might fret yourself to fiddlestrings feeling that if you had only persuaded your mother to be quiet, or to do other than she did, she might still be with us. That would be all very well if we could look forward as we can look backward. If I had known that your father would get drinking again the moment that my influence was taken away from him, I would never have left him at all; I wouldn’t have come Home.” “Oh, but you couldn’t go through life as his jailer.” “ Well, to all intents and purposes I was his jailer.” For a moment she sat lookinp up at him. “Dick,” she said, “I don’t like to “think about my father. I wish he had lived for mother’s sake. Do yon think that I will ever go the same way that he did?” “Oh, my dear delicious little person.no; certainly not. What a ludicrous idea! Put such a notion out of your dear little head this moment. You musn’t think too much of his having been a drinker; he was nobody’s enemy so much as his own. You must take the circumstances of his life into consideration; bis temptations his careless, gay, easy-going, good-natured bonhoramic." He was a dear good fellow all through, but for this one little weakness—well. I am afraid I must say this one great weakness —but he was a good sort—a good friend.” “ He was a. very bad husband,” said Cynthia, half resentfully. “Well, yes; he was a bad husband.” And then a memory came back to Dick of a steel hand in a velvet glove, and he knew, beyond all certainty of doubt, that had he been the husband of Cynthia’s mother he would probably have acted very much as Cynthia’s father had done. He thought over this conversation as they rode along. “You look qui'e moody. Dick,” said Cynthia, turning her radiant eyes upon him. “Moody? I never felt less moody in my life v ” be declared. “ I was thinking, that was all. You know, child, a man cannot put seven years of his life behind him without a certain feeling of sadness —at least, I can’t.” “ But you are putting them behind you for me.” “I wasn’t regretting you,” he sard.

“ Pray don’t geV Such a thought as that in your mind.” I need not go into all the details of the long and weary drive down to Freeman’s Rock.

“I am so tired, Dick,” said Cynthia as at last they came to the first straggling huts of the little town. “ I do like civilisation, Dick; this kind of life would not have suited me at all. I think I should have gone mad if I had had to live here.” “ Ah, well, you would have got used to it. Thank heaven you needn’t; and that yon will always be able to afford a carriage and pair and a Pullman car.” “Yes, the cars are all right,butohiDick, I don’t like being off the beaten track." She clutched at his arm nervously as they drew up at the door of the hotel. “There’s nothing to be frightened of,” be said, soothingly. “Don’t let yourself get full of fancies. You are nervous and unstrung; you are tired out. We’ll get some dinner, such as it is, and we’ll be off to bed in good time. Remember, the stage starts very early in the morning.” She was even more nervous as they approached Midas Creek. “ I feel as if I were going to see ghosts," she said, shiveringly, to him. “Nonsense! nonsense! You will sre nothing to upset you. child. It is a shade better than Freeman’s Rock, and it isn’t as if we had to stop there.” “We get straight on to the cars, don’t we?”

“ Ves, yes, child. Wo are just in time. Wo shall have something like twenty minutes to spare. You will get something like a decent dinner on the cars; and mind, wu haven’t had that since we got off them throe months ago.” It was very strange, but the girl was possessed of a curious shrinking feeling that everybody in Midas Creek must recognise her as tho daughter of the man who had a few months before been 'turned into the likeness of a wild beast. Her nervousness was sufficient, naturally enough, to give Dick courage. In soothing her fears be forgot how intensely he had dreaded this momentary touch with the town where Meredith had died. It was with a simultaneous breath of relief that the husband and wife found themselves once more on the' cars which would carry them away from Midas Creek. " Good-bye, good-bye! That is the last we shall see of California,” said Cynthia, waving her hand towards the little town. “Now, Dick, you and I are going to begin to live.”

How she enjoyed the cup of tea which Dick ordered for her immediately! How, after the inconveniences off the make-shift life at Santa. Clara, she revelled in the completeness of the luxury which she found os soon as they were once aboard the cars!

“ I am going to settle down ‘and do nothing ; to rest myself,” she said, when she and Dick had gone back to the saloon. “ It will take me three days to get over the awful jolting of that dreadful journey from Santa Clara down to Midas Creek. Dick, I feel old and haggard.” “Well, you look neither one nor the other,” he replied. “But the more you can rest, the better for yon. Then you will be fit and well, to have a few days with the Sergeantsons’ before we go on board the City of Boston. What are yon going to do now?”

I am going to stay here quietly and read this book. I have got a lovely new book from that black waiter just come up with a trayful of them.” “And I,” said Dick, “if you really don’t mind being left, would like to go into the smoking-car and have a pipe.” “ My dear boy,” she cried, “ pray do! You must be as tired as I am, and as longing for your little luxuries.” “I am longing for a pipe,” he said with a laugh, “so 1 shall leave you. If you want me, send one of these colored gentlemen after me.” Then Dick left his wife, passing through the next car and into the smoking-car, where he took a vacant seat about halfway between the two doors. As he took up his pipe .and his tobacco pouch, a man who was sitting on the other side of the car put down a newspaper and looked across at him. For a moment Dick was puzzled. It was a face he knew—yes, but he could not put a name to it. Where had he seen that man? Somewhere; but where? Then the stranger got up and came* to the chair next to him. “I guess you’ve forgotten me,” he said. “My name is Valentine Clegg.” CHAPTER XXXII. As the words which disclosed his identity left Valentine Clegg’s lips, Dick suddenly felt that he was undone. So, after Ml, chance and luck had failed him. He hed gone right through the very midst of danger, and his luck had served him: now, at the last moment, he felt himself

deserted by Dame Fortune. He could not expect to avoid a meeting between Cynthia and ibis nun, this man who knew him for what be was—the ope who had taken her father’s life. In the flurry of the moment he quite forgot that Valentin® Clegg had from first to last sympathised with’ him before everything. He forgot everything except that his wife was on hoard the train, and that ho must make one last effort to keep the truth from her. He felt now, with a wild gush of poignant regret, that he had taken the wrong course with her. He felt that it would have been wiser and the better plan to have openly, from the first moment, disclosed the truth that it was a shot from his revolver which had ended Roger .Meredith’s fife. It would have been easy enough to prove, had proof been necessary, that he had had little or no choice in the matter; but now nothing could take away, if the facts ever came to Cynthia’s knowledge, the one damning mistake of his having deceived her. She would have forgotten the accident; she would never forgive the concealment. He hud meant it kindly enough at the first. Ha had not liked to say tu the little widow, with her eyes full of tears, that his hnd. been the hand to bvin r Iter husband’s, ignoble career to an end. He bad done it to spare ber feelings entirely. He recalled bitterly, as Valentine Clegg talked on and he aimlessly gave answers at random, how little she. that soft-eyed, velvet-gloved woman, had ever considered his wishes, his iikes, b : s desires. He might have spared himself the trouble now—now everything was on the verge of disclosure. The whole fabric of his happiness might, during the next hour, fall about his tars like a pack of cards. He quickly determined that he would leave the cars at the next stopping-place, though he could not imagine what excuse ho .should make to Cynthia herself for doing so, more especially ns their lireirate was expressed right through to New York. Still, lie could not run the risk of her meeting with Valentine Clegg. i

"1 see,” said Mr Clegg, “that the very sight of me has knocked yon over. You needn’t let it do that, my dear fellow. I never sympathised with anybody morejn my life than I did with you. What happened was absolutely unavoidable; and for the matter of that, Meredith was such an out-and-out blackguard that you really did a service to the entire world by ridding it of him. I told you so at the time.”

" Yes. 1 know you had a bad opinion of Meredith.”

“ I bad that same,” said the stranger in an emphatic tone. “ I knew Meredith inside out. I had known him for years and years and years. He was a wrong ’un; a bad bat. The world’s no poorer for his demise."

“ No.” said Dick, “ you are wrong there. There was good in him, and plenty of it. It was only that besetting curse of drink that made him what he sometimes was.”

Valentine Clegg looked up at Dick in genuine amazement. “Say,” said he, “you are not qualifying for a finger-post, are yon ?”

Dick shook his head. “No, far from it —very far from it. I never had any qualification for preaching to others; I have less than ever now.”

“Oh, my dear chap, you take a wrong view of it altogether. 1 tell you you didn’t know the fellow. You’d think no more about it, if you knew him as I did, than a butcher thinks when he fells an ox, or a policeman when he kills a mad dog.” “As a matter of fact,” said Dick, "I did know him; I’d known him intimately for years. Believe me, there was a lot of good in poor old Meredith. I have never quite got over it; I shall never be quite the same man again.” “ Well, I think you take a wrong view of it,” said Valentine Clegg. “Of course, since you say there was good in the chap, I won’t dispute it; lam glad to hear it, but I didn’t know it—that’s all. I don’t think you will find many men ready to endorse yonr opinion. But still that’s neither here nor (here. The thing was done, it was an accident—-at least, it takes about the same rank as an accident—and I don’t like to see you, a fine young fellow like yon, brooding over what ‘could not possibly be helped. Put it out of your mind, my dear fellow; leave it behind yon ; don’t think about it again. After all, what’s done can never be undone in this world—not where it has to do with a six-shooter.”

“ You are very kind,” said Dick. “I can never sufficiently express to you how entirely grateful I was for the advice you gave jne when we met befoi*-. I have wished more than once that I hnd stayed and faced it out; but perhaps you were right, and it was the easiest way out of the difficulty.” . “I am sure of it,” said Valentine Clegg, “ perfectly certain of it; and the jury showed their appreciation of my idea by the verdict they brought in. Wei], I saw that meeting ine knocked you over, but don’t let me disturb you. lam getting rff the cars in a couple of hours from now; I only go as far as Mexville.”

The stranger then skilfully turned the subject away from that of Roger Meredith’s death, and talked on in the most friendly way oA quite different matters. ' An 4 as they taJced. Dick kept turning over in his mind hoW f he could avoid a meeting with Cynthia, or Low he could convey to him that Cynthia was in total ignorance of that particular episode in her husband’s life. At list when they were summoned to dinner.’ |~i nd: Valentine Clegg rose, as if it were the inost natural thing that they should dine together, he had no choice but to inform him that he was not travelling alone. “ By the way,” he said, “ I have got my wife with me-’ “So? Been married long?” “ No, only a few months well, almost less than a few months,”

“Really? I hope you will present m to Madame.”

“I shall be delighted to. There’s just one thing-—” "I suppose she knows nothing?” interposed Mr Clegg. “Not a word,” said Dick, “not a word. I wouldn’t have her know it for anything.” “ That’s natural enough presupposing that she's an Englishwoman. Ouc of our women, you know, wculdnVmiud.”

"I don’t kumr. rfhc is an English woman,” ,saicl Diet,. “My dear sir. Ml be us mum as a cherubim carve:! in marble on a tombstone.”

HSIhC ..-! i);rk in to the diirng-cnr. wherewynthia, be mg luaithily hungry, bud already taken ber place at il.e tabic assigned' to their.. He fell, -as lie wa’k.'d between the rows u! little tables, that it was a cine of new nr never. I ouch and go.

He 'knew tint hesitation would be iata!. so putting (hj ■ b si r-tcc po'-cmd- upon bis nervousness, he walked avcidit up to Cynthia. “Dearest,” he said, "I have mil an old friend of mine—Mr Valentine Clegg. Wc have been having a great time together. 1 hope voir haven’t been lonely.” "Dear. Dick, I have been a-ieep,” she replied. “1 feel ten thousand times better for it. Mr Clegg, I am most pleased to meet any old friend of my husband’s. How do vou do?”

Valentino Clegg took Cynthia's hand, “Mrs Martin, ma’am,” said he, “1 am most pleased to make your acquaintance.” “My name isn’t Martin.” said Cynthia. “ it’s Vincent. My husband’s name is Vincent.”

For a moment Valentine Clegg’s jaw dropped, and Did; felt a ringing in his ears that was almost insupportable. The sharpness of the American, however, saved the situation.

“Did I say ‘Martin?’ God bless my soul! What tricks one’s tongue serves one ! Of course your name is Vincent. But I am getting old, my dear lady—that’s the truth. I remember when I was a boy my father used to call ‘ Tom-Dick-Harry-John-Jack!’ He seldom got to the right name until we supplied it ourselves.” “Ah, yes. And travelling does tire you, doesn’t it? I’m worn out,” said Cynthia. “Well, are you going to join us at this table ?”

“If you will allow me, ma’m, I shall be extremely flattered and honored.” “ Oh, don’t say that. We shall be very glad of your company—shan’t we, Dick?” “Oh, very glad,” said Dick.

A grim thought crossed his mind of an old saying that had long obtained in (he Vincent family. It was to the effect that he might very comfortably put any gladness he felt in his eye and be none the worse for it.

Cynthia was still very gay at the prospect of going home, and exerted herself to the utmost to be pleasant and charming to this friend of her husband’s. She talked gaily and naturally of her joy in seeing the last of California, and the intense happiness she felt at going home to her own country. “It’s not because we’re insular,” she said, “ I am not at all an insular person, but I do like comfort. The hideous discomfort of life out in new countries is too much for me. It’s like getting up too early in the morning, before the world is aired. I like my world aired for me by people having lived in it for a few hundreds of years.”

Thus she rattled on, and Valentine Clegg, always, though he was a plain man himself, attracted by a pretty women, fell in with her humor, and talked bis hardest. Nor was Dick himself the least silent of the three. In truth he was so afraid that sire would ih some way give him away that he, too, talked nineteen to the dozen, and theirs was the merriest table in the whole car. At last, when the meal had nearly come to a conclusion, Cynthia happened to drop her handkerchief. It was‘a fi!my little square of finest silk muslin, profusely embroidered in black, with an elaborate monogram in one corner. It happened that Valentino Clegg was the first to perceive the loss, and be stooped and picked it up with a gallant air, which showed that Cynthia had impressed him very favorably. Cynthia took the handkerchief with a smile and a

word of thank*, laying it on the corner of the' table between thejn- It happened thus that the comer which bore the inonogram lay uppermost, and presently Mr Clegg ohanced to notice it. “ How curious 5” he said, .speaking with involuntary surprise, “that I should make the mistake of calling you Mrs Martin, and vou have a handkerchief which is marked r C. M.’— Cynthia Martin.” “.Well, it is funny,” said Cynthia; “it looks rather fishy, to tell the truth, but our name is Vincent. Now you are wondering what the stands for. It stands-for Cynthia Meredith—which was my maiden, name,” “ Cynthia Meredith!” repeated Mr Clegg. “ Was your name Meredith;” , At this point of the conversation Dick gave himself up for lost. He never looked at Cynthia nor Valentine Clegg; he went on arranging bits of cheese and butter on a biscuit with an intensity which such an ; occupation did not warrant. I “ Yes, my name was Meredith,” said she. j Valentine Clegg looked at Dick, then back;| at Cynthia. “ And were you by any chance i the daughter of Roger Meredith?” j "Yes, I was Roger Meredith’s only , child.’ i “ The man who was killed at Midas ■ Creek?” j

"Yes,” speaking sadlv. “the same.” “ But how came he to have u daughter like YOU?”

" I don’t know. I was his daughter, .h'i he had been out hove fifteen years. I hadn’t se.-u him since I was three rears old.”

"I see. Mrs Vincent,” glancing at his watch, " I shall bo getting off the cars in a. few minutes now, but I must te!i you something before 1 say good-bye to you. I was there when Meredith was killed.” “ You?” Hoc looked at him with all her sou! in her grey eyes. Dick’s eyes were riveted on her face.

” I don’t want to say a word against your father, even though you hadn’t seen him for fifteen years,” said Valentine Clegg, " hut you know he had a failing; it is a failing a good many men have out in the wilder parts of the world.” ”1 know,” said Cynthia, “I know.”

“Well, it was very sad—-when a good man goes wrong, it is always very sad —but I was there, Mrs Vincent, and I saw the whole thing from beginning to end. I knew Meredith years before. It was a pity he came by his end like that, hut practically the whole affair was an accident. The other fellow had no choice 5 it was one life or the other. If ever you hear-to the contrary, you have my word for it that the whale thing was as much an accident as if Meredith had dropped a lighted match into a boi of dynamite. There —the cars are slowing down, so I will bid you good-bye. I am glud to have met yon, very glad; more so than you’ll ever know'. We shall probably never meet again, but whatever you hear in the time to come, remember that you had my word for it that your fathers death was neither more nor less than an accident. So good-bye! God bless you both!” He took her hand, holding it fast in his own for a minute or so, then ha turned round to Dick. Good-bye, old fellow,” be said. “You know where to write to if 1 can ever do anything to servo you. Goodbye! God bless you! I am glad to have seen you, and seen you together.” “I’ll come and see you off the cars,” said Dick'.

When he returned the oars were once more in motion. Cynthia was sitting precisely where, be had left her. “Dick,” she said, in a tone of conviction rnd with a deadly earnestness that completely startled him, “I am not sentimental. I don’t look at things as my mother did, but that was the man who shot my father.”

“No, no,” cried Dick. “Dick, I am certain of it; I am convinced of it.”

“You are wrong, my child you are wrong; I assure you you are wrong.” “No, Dick, lam not wrong. That was the man who shot my father.” “Well, if he did,” said Dick, suddenly feeling a deadly sickness creeping over him, “ the whole affair was, as he put it himself, practically an accident.”

“ Yes, yes, I know that j I am not saying anything about that; but Dick, I have sat at meat with him I have laughed an 1 joked with him—and aiter all, one’s father is one’s father.”

For a moment Dick Vincent did not speak. “Dearest,” ha said, as his face was pale and his voice shook in spite of himself, “I knew your father much better than either his wife or you. Believe me, if he could speak to you now he would tell you to put such an idea out of your head altogether. There are times in one’s life—in everyone’s life—when the most grave and important acts must be decided on the spur of the moment. The man who shot your father in self-defence is, I feel certain, carrying with him a burden which will only

foil from him with the graye. ■ Nobody blamed him.” , “ He might have spoken it,” said Cynthia “ No, he woe advised at the time that the easiest way would be to keep silence. When once a man has put his hand to the plough, there can be po turning back!” [The Em] ‘

AN ABSORBING NEW SERIAL i WILL COMMENCE IN OUR COLUMNS On , SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15.