IN THE HOUSE OF THE EYE.

Evening Star, Issue 12764, 17 March 1906, Page 3

IN THE HOUSE OF THE EYE.

[Pabßsbed by .Special Arangement.]

By W. A. Mackenzie, Author of ‘The Bite of the Leech,’ ‘His Majesty’s Peacock,’ ‘The Drexel Dream,’ Etc., Etc.

[Copyrights] ♦ INTRODUCTORY. In and about London are many “ Groves " —a glance at Kelly will convince you—but aost of them are despairingly innocent of leaf,’* “ umbrageous shade,” and “ feathered songster” (or “tuneinl quire,” if you prefer the other pair of stilts). They are either flaming electric avenues, such as you find bn the Surrey side ; or they are dingy brick warrens, like those of Bast Ham, Waltham stow, or South Tottenham; or they arp the sadly debased original, ail the paint peeled off, all the doors and chimneys given to drink, ail the trees doddering with senile decay, like “The Grove, Remains only, beautiful, peacefully worthy of the name, The Grove, Highgate, N. You shall find here trees of brave greenery; real, uncaged birds to flute you out of bed o' April mornings, to pipe you into bed q’ June nights (this last, if 'you tare to retire earlier than your neighbors of the great world that, smoky and luminous,* •moulders below your back windows); you snail find here ivy and rhododendron, Virginia creeper and hawthorn, honeysuckle and flowering currant; trim, prim beds where, in their season, all the old-fashioned sweet-smelling flowers, with the old-fash-ioned sweet-smelling names, burgeon and bud and blossom—London Pride, Honesty, Wallflower, Sweet William, Candytuft, Lady’s Mantle, aye, and I<avender and the immortal roses of England, white and red. And presently you shall think yourself back m Eden, when, after the patter of the summer shower, the sun splashes the sandy roadway with great spots and misshapen crosses and bizarrest arabesques of light and shadow, and the souls of the flowers come floating down the Grove, laden with all the “eternal scents.” *A very English Eden, no doubt, where, the baker calls with hot rolls at eight to the minute, and the hatless butcher’s boy whistles his way merrily at nine-thirty;' but Eden with modern improvements is not to be despised. Yon shall find. too. that the houses of “The Grove, Highgate, N.match the trees, and the shrubs and the flowers and the birds and the sweet smells. They are all old. The architecture is variable—and various. There are faint Tudor echoes, with red tiles and noble windows and clustering chimneys; formal notes of the solid times of Anne, “ who is dead ” : harmonious and well-balanced compositions which the name of Jones cannot make common, since the unexpected Inigo saves them; and of the later Georgian period, portly, aldermanic symphonies, with ehrayed fanlight and cohrraned portico, subtly proportioned door and graceful iron-work. There is nothing Victorian, nothing Edwardian. Tire youngest house is a century old. Thus, the dominant note, which acre alone confers, is that of peace—peace all-pervading, iramntablc. positive—philosophic, indeed. Jar and wrangle are unknown; a voice raised in anger is never heard ; even the sparrows, in the hot-blood bickering of springtime amourettes, contrive to curse with decency and to fight in gentlemanly fashion, as befits the place where Plato might have lived and walked and talked, and where Coleridge did live and walk and—merciful heaven ! talk.

Into tlris calm world, where the bourdon of bee* drowns the Tiring London hum. chestmrt and lime hurli an evensong in th;> bright morrrine hours, and blackbird and thrnsh moderate to the rrrnod of the nlnee their maddest rnnlndes. thm mn?t florid nderms—stalled, red-<?hod, on the ni<rnt, of Saturday, {he tenth of- June, nineteen brmdred anrl—-anv number von please the gsrmt and- grisly figure of Tragedy.

CHAPTER I. THK JADK-HANDLKD DAGGKB,

At half-past eleven of that memorable night of the 10th of June, Desmond O'Brien, journalist and—need we add ?—lrishman,' descended from a tramcar at Swain's lane, and made his way briskly up the West Hill of Highgate. He had finished his leader for the 'Sunday Standard.' and was now about to spend an hour in blissfnl contemplation of a certain white-curtained window on the first floor of "The House of the Eye The Grove, Highgate, N." (It is astonishing what an amount of solid satisfaction mx-and-twenty. otherwise normal and of "ocd appetite, can tret out of a patch of "lass and wood, exactly lik* its neighbors to right and left; and to what foolish lengths he will go to achieve that satisfaction. If the scene be charmed with moonlight and the planting of a nightingale, six-and-Iwentys satisfaction becomes eestasv generally expressed next day in terms of «T le f^," I !**'" above" and irrmoTtttl lore.

rhename "The House of the Eve" need., a word of explanation, and as well now as later Such a title for a pleasant suburban and thoroughly English dwelling-place is snrely httle common. The home was originally called "Heatherdale," because there was no heather within miles, and the nearest, dale was on Hampstead Heath Jefore Owen Scott Mannering bought it, it bad been occupied by one Atteridge, who had made his fortune out of the manufacture and sale of glass eyes. He had brought to perfection th© fabrication of these dreary aids to mutilate nature, and wherever one-eyed folks were. Atteridge and his eyes were known and blessed. He had fitted peasants and princes, and his pride in his art was as unbounded as it was legitimate. When he was grown old and had retired, be amused his enforced leisure and gratified bja artistic pride, by constructing a huge transparent eve -which he fitted into the fanlight over his door. At night he used to place behind it a powerful light, to blazon forth the renown of his "Ego." The folks of the neighborhood soon found the name "The House of the Eye," and it stuck. Mannering was so pleased with the quaintnesx, that when he entered into possession he discarded "Heatherdale," and on his gate-plate and note-paper set the whimsical title. On this particular night the eye was shut; no light shone through it, and having ensconced himself under a convenient chestnut, Desmond O'Brien looked np reverently towards the window of his desire, flnn» away his half-smoked cigar as a profane thing, and gave himself np to the delights and perib of imagination. He saw her little golden head upon the MK--wy pillow ; he saw the long lashes shading the wonder of her cheek; he saw the perfectly curved lins half-open. Ho heard the soft whisper of her breathing; nay, lie heard his name—she was calling to hrm in her dreams—" Desmond!" " Rosalba!" he murmured; and again •with a tempestuous sigh— '* Rosalba 1" Had the fair Lady Moon been doing her faty that night, Desmond had not whistled. I.ut being young and full of whimsies, and having notions abont when she should shine, and when she should not, she had gone to l*>d full early and drawn her curtains, consequently, our sentimental O'Brien (and all O'Briens are sentimental) saw a light spring suddenly into life behind the spotless blind of his beloved's window And, consequently, when a shadow was projected on the blind, a shadow he knew it once for hers no power on earth could oave prevented him from whistling a bar vr two of the " Young May Moon " It was all very wrong. Some may contend that it was vulgar and common. We know that it was wicked—for, just as the blind flew up very softly, the clocks of all the churches on the hill, and below the hill, and round about the hill, began to clash in protest their "twelve great shocks of sound." And as if to damp the kindling fire of romance, with the first boom of bells there began to spatter among the leaves of his shelter the fine musketry of a real June drizzle. Rosalba drew up her blind. She did, indeedThe forward minx! But she was only nineteen, and the pamor of a montbrold passion was uj?oa

her. They bad met at a garden party* and between early strawberries and vanilla ices, had fallen in love with a precipitation only rivalled in a chemical laboratory. Desmond left his shadow, advanced into the roadway, and waved his hat. The blind came down with, a rush, and the light •went out.

For five minutes—perhaps, for six—Desmond kept his eyes firmly shut, as if to preserve as. long as possible the tender vision that had dazzled them, that had struck him blind, that had What was tliat?

The doleful creak of an iron hinge. Now, there were two gates of entrance to tie House of the Eye—one, leading directly to the porch and haU door; the other at the left, by a narrow path, hedged on each side, to the kitchen and -the offices.

At this latter gate, at the moment Desmond heard the creak, appeared a figure —dim, vague, white. Having a nodding acquaintance with Deductive Logic—he was 8.A.. Trim, Coll., Dub.—Desmond, in spate of his amorous ecstasy or because of it, associated the creak with the figure, and immediately drew his conclusion : that is to say, he drew near to the vague white figure, found thai it was Bosalba, and, to make sure that it was she and not her ghost, promptly kissed her on the forehead, on the eyes., on the chin, and—oh! the villain—on the mouth, an atrocious afbtack which the young lady seemed to take_ with extraordinary and quite reprehensible equanimity. " What on earth are you doing here at this hour?" she demanded, with a fine assumption of puzzled curiosity, and as if her own presence needed no explanation. , " Oh, Rosie, dear " The soft Irish brogue made the words a prayer aaid a lyric. ' You're not to call me ' Rosie,' 6ir. My name is Rosalba Mannering " "And a lovelier " "Don't interrupt! And if yon don't care to say ' Miss Mannering ——" " Indeed, and I won't." "Then you are to say 'Rosalba.'" " I'll say it—Rosalba !" " Then what a-re you doing here at this preposterous hour, young man.?*' (He was by seven years her senior.) "You'll laugh if I tell you." " T won't. I don't want to rouse dad." " The ogre's asleep, then ?" " Dad's not an ogre, Mister Desmond O'Brien. Yes. the poor tired dear's fast asleep, I expect. He sent away his three chums earlier than usual to-night. He went to his work room after they left, but I don't think he stayed there long. Oh, Desmond, what would he say if he knew I was here now. and" (she lowered her voice to a whisper) "in your arms?" "If he were the ideal father, he would say ' God bless you both! Take her, my son, and may you both be happy!' But being the ordinary sort of British parent he'd sav. very likely " "Why don't *-ou go on? What are you (stopping for?" " Your little ears were made to be kissed—not shocked." The which was done. " Desmond!" " Dar-lin'!" With the "g" suppressed, and the liquid consonants l)ecominglv treated, this word, so banal on English lips, becomes, in an Irisih mouth, almost sacramental. "You were watching my window?" "How did you know?" "I saw you when you came." " When I came, did you ? And you never made a sign, never said a word, never—you heart cf stone! Where were you ?" " In my sitting room." " Reading ?" '" No—wotcliing and wondering if you'd come again to-night." " \ou never 6aw me last night?" " Didn't I ?" " Dar-lin*!"

And so ou. From all of which it would appear that for several nights past Master Desmond had been making what bis friend Paddy Joy would call "" the usual Bort of ass of himself." And rejoicing in his folly, too.

"And yon never gave a sign all these nights ! What made you to-night ?" " Well, I was feeling lonely somehow, and it looked selfish, so horribly selfish, to be ud there with—with " " I thought you were alone?" " So I was.' " But you said ' with.'" "Well, and if I did—monster?" " ' With' whom, what, which.?" " Gness!" " Can't! The demofl of jealousy is gnawing at my heart." " What nonsense ! How can any demon of any sort whatsoever gnaw at it when I have it safe?" " Dar-r-lin'!"

(Evader : " This is getting tiresome. " Author : " Quite agree with you. But if you were Desmond ?") "If I bell yon ' what,' ' with' you won't be shocked ?"

"Rosalba, I am a journalist." " And you'll reallv let me fly when I tell you? It' 6 horribly late, and this is most compromising." 'Tell, me, then, and I'll let you go—perhaps."

" Well, then, it seemed so selfish to stop np there a/11 alone with—with—with " " Bother that * with'!" " With two or three kisses I knew yon wanted!" "Little White Rose!"

And then, as if they were the mouthpieces of outraged propriety, the several bells of half a league thundered the halfhour after midnight. "You must' go now. And, oh! poor fellow, you'll have to walk !"

"Well, well; Gray's Inn is not the North Pole. Besides, there's something you're going to give me to keep me company on that dreary march through Kentish Town."

" I know what you want," cried Rosalba, and ©he pinched his arm to let him see that she was sure, sore, sure, she knew what he wanted—the wicked • little coquette! "Your cigaT-case is empty, and you want a. big smoke. I'll get you one in a twinkling."

. And jhe was off down the patch like a dart—"like a star." said Desmond, as he noted the white trail of her gown against the black of the hedge. He would have shouted " No, no, no'!" but slie had disappeared before he had found his breath. Passion or no passion, Dfsmond fumbled for his cigar case. Tobacco is a <n>ddesg that will have reverence. The truth is always the truth.: it was empty. In that lie saw but another proof of Rosalba's perfection.

' How could she have divined it? What a practical little soul it is! The only kind of woman that makes a good wife! I didn't know, but she guessed it, she guessed it! Ah!" And 60 on, for five minutes.

For five? For ten, for fifteen! To the lover the passage of time is a mere nothing: foolish imaginings and fond fancies set diamond points on the minutes, and in the tender blaze lie is hypnotised to forgetfulness. . As a matter of fact, Desmond was already deep in the troublous waters of 'I Me" and "Thee," "Stars above," and " Immortal Love " when, with disconcerting independence, the several bells of half a league thundered one of the Sunday morning.

Whereat Desmond regarded the moon That hysterical lady, having had a twinge of conscience, had got out of bed, again, and was now busy "showing off" the charms that had, once on a time, made captive young Endymion. But if she thought to find another Endymion in Desmond O'Brien, the poor lady* was vastly mistaken ; there was always Rosalba. . And if Desmond looked up at her, it was merely to remark confidentially that the little girl was gone a dence of a time.

Was she playing him tricks? Perhaps she did not mean to come back at all? .

Or, perhaps, the ogre had caught her? No, she was teasing him; she was, in all likelihood, hiding iound the corner. The little minx!

At the very moment he was becoming disquieted, Rosalba appeared. She came down the path very slowly, swaying strangely from side to side; stopping every three or four steps, she cast a glance behind her, as if afraid of seeing something; Desmond advanced a few steps, readv with chaffing reproaches. But sbe made a little rush, and flung herself,sobbing, into his arms.

• • "What's the matter, whatta the matter? Have you seen a ghost? " j " Oh, Desmond! " and again more sobs. j "You're frightened—what has happened? ! Why have you been so long? " ! "Happened! Something dreadful has , happened—dad' " "He caught you?" And Desmond j laughed, although "he saw before him. a very unpleasant quarter of an hour with , Rosalba's father. "Desmond—he's dead!"

" Dead! Nonsense, little girl! You've had a fright of some sort, that's evident; but you mustn't let your nerves get iho better of yon like this." "Listen* to me." ,She clutched him by the shoulders. "Dad's dead. I have seen him. Come with me—come."

She led him down the, path. Amazed, confused, he held her back for a second and gazed into her face. She was pallid as if all the Wood had been driven from her cheeks ; her lips and nostrils were qruVering with fear; and her eyes, of that deep dark blue which goes so rarely with golden hair and a rose-pink , complexion, were lack lustre and almost black with horror—they seemed turned to stone in her head.

She dragged him on, and willy-nilly he followed.

Her hand, that he thought the prettiest in the world —it was small and finely moulded and deliriously dimpled, and with little transparent njiils like bits of rose leaves—her "hand closed on his wrist with a man's grip. with, more than a man's grip, with a clutch of steel. Her fingers left marks. I, Arbuthnot, present chronicler, saw them.

Desmond's swift passage through the tiny courtyard paved with red brick, and into the house by the servant's entrance, was the strangest sixty seconds of his life. The impression of that minute was burned into his memorv as nothing had ever been; and even now, when all is over, and well over, he will tell you that he wakes up in the middle of the night, feeling Rosalba's fingers in a coil round his wrist like so many tense snakes, and believing that he is being hurried on, like a condemned soul in some whirling maelstrom of the Inferno, towards a fate dark and menacing, and thrice terrible because unknown.

In that- dreadful minute no word was spoken. Rosalba was dumb with" terror. And Desmond was stunned—as who would not be in his strange situation—with this extraordinary ending to his sentimental visit. He had come for a solacing hour of contemplation and dreaming; what was he going to see, what was' there to be done ?

He felt below his feet, successively the bricks of the paved courtyard, the cork netting of the passage . from the back door to the front part of the house, ami tho thick, noiseless carpet that there replaced the cork

A heavy curtain of tapestry brushed his face as it was held buck by Rosalba's impetuous hand ; and Desmond found himself m the workroom of Owen Scott Majmeriiig. artist and carver of wood.

The moonlight streamed through a window of stained glass—a window fashioned by Mannering after (he model of Keats: " A casement high and triple-arch'd there

was All garlanded with carven imageries Of fruit and flowers, and bunches of knot-

grass, And diamonded with panes of quaint de-

vice, Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd

wings; And in the midst, 'mong thousand • heraldries, And twilight saints, ajid dim emblazon-

inga, A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings."

By the filtered, colored moonlight, Desmorid siw that ho was in no ordinary room. In the centre stood a long, broad table, covered with pieces of rich woods, rose, maple, .walnut, pear, Honduras mahogany, all in process of being shaped and moulded to fantastic forms by the master's fancy and the master's chisels, and all heaped in wild disorder, where the master's eyo only conld discern order and arrangement. The walls were plain whito, absolutely unadorned. There was one chair and a couch. This last stood in the embrasure of the window —and on it now lay all that was left of Owen. Scott Mairaering. He was a man of forty-five or fifty. Greying hair clustered above a brow low and broad, in the style of the Greeks; n pointed beard and slightly upturned moustache of brown framed a face none could call anything but noble; the dark, hazel eyes were already glazed. He lay on his back on the couch, one arm trailing on the floor, a great dark splash on the white of his dress shirt—th-? blood that had oozed from his heart, where still remained the weapon which had stricken him —a dagger with a curved handle of sea-greon jado. (To be continued.)