THE PEBBLE PATH

Evening Star, Issue 19328, 14 August 1926, Page 13

THE PEBBLE PATH

Bx EDITH HOWES,

Author of ‘ The Sim’s Babies,’ ‘ The Cradle Ship,' Maoriland hairy Tales,’ etc., etc, [All Otago Eights Reserved.]

CHAPTER I. Tho exiled Prince was dead, and his daughter, pale and heavy-eyed after months of devoted nursing, sat turning over the contents of a chased and onyxstudded silver casket. A yellow radiance from the winter sue of Home flooded tho large room and flamed in her gold-brown hair and lit her milkwhite skin. Dark lashes fringed eyes of that deep, wide-in'sed blue that in some lights or under- strong emotion become violetTlio brow was wide and thoughtful, the nose straight and finely cut and delicately nostrilled, the mouth'exquisite, tho chin firmly rounded; there, was oven a hint of stubbornness in its lines, pierhaps. Yet she had an air of gentleness that mingled strangely with a royal carriage of the head,' as though she wore an invisible crown, yet found the world a place for tenderness rather than for dignity. Her whole mien was ono of repose, of sustained and easy control. The billowing crinoline of the Dqriod could not quite obscure the grace and symmetry of her body, while its black waves enhanced her fairness. Even under the ravages of recent strain and sorrow she was beautiful. The room in which she sat was her favorite of all the wide and lofty, richly ornamented, and ill-kept rooms of the poverty-stricken palace in which, her father had lived and died. Hero she had gathered together a few of I the. things that pleased her best from j the unused and neglected chambers of the palace, and here she had come for rest and refreshment of mind whenever her father’s long illness and her sickroom duties had allowed her some small respite.

It was a beautiful room, a'perfect setting for its beautiful occupant. The walls were hung with exquisite silk tapestries, the marble floor was strewn hero and there with Eastern ' rugs of soit coloring, the ceiling was painted with birds and Cupids and roses on a background of deep blue, the windows were curtained with blue velvet, and they looked out on a bit of garden and a cypress tree. The furniture was old, but chosen for its slender grace, and its tasselled cushions were marvels of fine needlework.

Books there were in plenty about tho room, sonic in tulip-wood Cases, some on a gilded table beside, the curved and wide-armed chair in which the Prince’s daughter sat. A lamp of lapislay.uli, candlesticks of chased gold and ebony, several vases and bowls of crystal and Venetian glass, one filled with flowers, stood about, all fhnued-upon and sparkling with the brilliance of the sun. A servant entered and announced a visitor. “ Bring him here,” she said, and her voice was low and rich and modulated as though she spoke to music. When ha. came and she rose and curtsied to his deep bow it could be scon that though she was not tall, yet her erect bearing gave the illusion of tallness. “ You are very welcome, Angus,” she said.

Ho kissed her hand. “I was in Scotland,” ho said. “ I hastened to cross tho water and conic to you so soon a.s 1 had your sad nows. Would 1 had been in time!”

lie was young and darkly handsome, plainly Scottish, yet with a lingo of Branco evident in his case of speech and manner. He was slender, supple, upright, a.,d soldierly; be had eloquent dark eyes and a rare smile, and a look that was now all pity for the Prince’s daughter. “It is all over,” she said. “He had weeks of unconsciousness and a pcacclul end. Friends wore kind; the authorities less than kind. There have been many difficulties . . . even now he is not laid whore it, befits a Prince to ho buried. There is still much to do.” For a while, with heavy lids, she spoke of the burial and of her petitions and plans for securing a more dignified and significant resting place. “ Exiled, hut a. Prince.” she said. “He must bo. better honored.”

P.rcseiitiy she left, that subject. A warmth came into her faro, and sho spoke eagerly, more eagerly than was her wont. '“Tell mo of Scotland,” she said.

“Still .oppressed,” ho ' sighed. “ While (ho Prince lived there was _a gleam of hope; but now that lie is

gone “ Now that he is gone another will lake his place,” she assured him quickly. . Ho stared. “ Another to take his place ? There is none to take his place.” “■I mvself will do that.* “ YonV” He was not sure that ho bad board aright. ■ She began to speak rapidly, with a passion he had never soon in her before. “ Scotland has grown into my heart. 1 have not talked of it; I have hidden it till the time was ripe; hut I am going to my people. My thoughts arc all of them. From my childhood I. have heard their woes narrated till they have become my burden, my secret pain. Scotland! Scotland looks across tho sea for succor, and I must take it to her. lam but a woman, you will sav; yet the royal blood is in my veins, and lam not afraid. 1 will lead my country to freedom.” She was allamo, her words clipped and rushing, her eyes lit to blue fire. The young lord drew a sharp breath of dismay. “Impossible!” he cried. “You cannot know . . . Oh, im-

possible!” She looked him steadily in the face, though her checks grew red as she spoke. “If you are thinking of my birth, banish the thought,” she said. “My mother was of gentle Scottish blood and my father was a king, though without a crown. Necessity prevented their marriage; it was urgent that he should form an alliance with some royal house. But in mo he righted that old wrong; he legitimated me and made mo a duchess and his legal heir, and I carry on the prosecution of his claims.” “ No, it was not your bix - th, though that, too, will count. . , . But the danger! Not you, Charlotte; oh, not you! Heir? If you pursue the crown you are heir to the sorrows of a fated race and a phantom throne. Cream no vain dreams, T implore you.” “ I am resolved,” she said,' very quietly now. He searched her face and his heart fell. “Think of your father’s wasted life,” he urged. “ Year after year spent in seeking alliances, in waiting for aid that never came! Think of him, cheated and forsaken and impoverished in an alien land, drinking to drown his loneliness and the pain of dreams for ever frustrated. X beseech

Sealers returning a century ago from the far storm-ridden south told of a woman's lonely hut on au uninhabited island, of Scottish heather strangely growing beside the hut, aud of a long, laboriouslymade path of small white pebbles loading down to tho sea. Garden and path aro now overgrown and lost, and sheep roam feeding where once was matted scrub; but tho heather still grows there, and legends concerning that solitary dweller still pass from ship to ship. All the legends make her of royal birth; ono connects her with that family whoso fatality stars tho story of Scotland with pathos and romance.

you not to waste your life as liis was wasted.”

“ I must make trial of my plans. I shall not depend entirely on foreign princes, though their aid will be necessary, too. 1 shall go and live among my own people. lam wholly Scottish and the Prince’s child. I will rouse the Highland chiefs and teach them to combine. With the great clans at my back I will demand my rights.”- “ You dream as he dreamed; you talk as ho once talked. But you have no money. How can you sustain an army?” “ The clans will help me. What can stand against a devoted cause, hot with hatred of oppression?” “ The power of the clans is broken,” he said. “The English will put a price on your head, and we shall not be able to defend you. You will bo hunted as your father was_ hunted. Charlotte, giro up your dreams and settle in the quiet ways of womanhood. You know how I lovo you. Conlo with me to Scotland and be queen of m.v heart and lands. Your subjects will he the merest handful, but they will all be loyal, and you will bo throned in safety.” She smiled at him, tenderly hut with no love. “ Our country, my country ami yours, is your rival,” she said. ‘‘Until this ache of pity in my breast is stilled I cannot think of lovo for a man. Help mo to set her free; then come and <ask what you will.” “ Como to a groat queen—l, a poor Scottish lord? If you wore monarch of three countries, how would I dare make offer of my hand?”

At that she mused a while. “ Indeed, I may decide to rule unimpeded by any man’s will reserving all my powers for the service of my country,” -she said, at last. Elizabeth did that.”

“Charlotte, I cannot hear to hear you. You are building hopes that will crash about you and will never ho fulfilled. You have lived a sheltered convent life, and you know nothing of the world. 1 see disaster before you. Give up your claims. Give them up, and lot me care for you.” “I will never give them up,” she said, “ Jcanno d’Arc knew nothing of the world cither, yet she saved her country.” “And last her life.”

“Ah, well! what is to come must come. I shall go on. The thing is in my blood; it holds my heart. You say 1 am like rny father; but I am like my mother, too, Angus. When lie first [ loved her he drew from her a promise that she would follow him wherever fortune led—to disaster or success. She kept her promise, to her bitter sorrow and undoing, because she must not deny the love and pity in her heart. 1 shall go on.” “ And I—what do yon ask of me?” “ I ask nothing of you, Angus.” “let, how gladly would I give yog all. Charlotte, for two years you have known the arehr of my mind towards you. Have you hot found in all that time some answering gleam of lovo—sonic little gleam that I might by devotion fan into a flame? You arc my world; your smile is my heaven; your remembered voice the siren song that draws mo back to Rome. My thoughts and dreams are all of you; your beau tv holds mo bound. Must 1 cede my soul and have nothing in return?” Ho leant forward in his chair fill he almost toughed her, and his eloquent dark eyes said more than his words.

bhe was moved. Her color came and went, and her eves were veiled. Yet next moment she had regained her steadfastness, “i am resolved,” she said. “My plans come first.” There was a pause. ‘■Then there is nothing for me lint to help von, and protect yon if I can,” he said "at last. “J, would not drag yon into dauger.”

“ My life is yours, to do with as you will.”

“Give it to your country, not to mo. Oh, my friend, can you nnt see. how she needs us? .Do you not hear her call? It rings in my ears for ever. Day and night I have brooded on her sorrows, (ill now the time has come when I am free to rouse her sons ami lend them to her long deliverance. Surely yon aro one of them?”

Her passion and her beauty stirred him, set. him throbbing to tlio music of her dream. What if, after all, sho were flic spark that should ignite his stili-smouhjering land and fire it to a flame? Mo one could hear her unmoved, none refuse, to follow her. What if she were indeed born to be the deliverer from oppression? He knelt and placed his two hands between hors that lay clasped in her lap. “1 am your "man,” he said slowly. “ | swear to servo you to the death, to follow wherever-you may lead in your plans for our country, counting no risk, and looking for no reward. CHAPTER IT. A year later Charlotte, Duchess of Albany, stood lost in dismay over a letter that had come secretly into her hand, hut a few minutes since. It was from Angus in Belgium, and it began; “I go in, terror for your safety. Tho English have knowledge of our plans. George's spies arc everywhere. Someone in your own household must lie in their pay, so intimate is their information. 1 implore you to trust none, and to postpone your voyage to Scotland nutil I finish my task here and return to conduct you safely across the water. Believe mo, you are in danger if yon venture now. The Highlands are loyal, but our enemies have been informed. To sit still is best for a while. When it is safe to do so, an aunt and cousin will journey with me, to bring you lovingly to their homo in Scotland, where they will tend you with all allegiance.” “Mario!” mused tho Bnchesa.

“So! Tot I thought she loved mo too ■well to betray mo. Ah, there was that night when I dreamed that my key was lost.” , , She drew a long fine chain from her bosom, fingering thoughtfully a slender key that hung upon it. She touched a secret spring in tho wall beside her, and a panel slid away, disclosing a small recess in which stood tho chased and onyx-studded silver. casket that had been her father’s. Unlocking the casket, sho wont carefully through its contents, letters and papers relating to her claims and plans. All wore there, hut all were not in that secret order in which she habitually kept them. They had been tampered with. For long minutes she stood in painful thought, then set her chin resolutely as though some bold plan bad occurred to her. She rang, and her jajud answered the smamoM*

“Ah! Marie!” said the young Duchess, with a charming smile, ‘‘l have been thinking of you and your devotion. I have need to entrust someone with this most precious casket, and who should be more worthy of my trust than you? Guard it strictly, for with it you hold my life in your care. There are words written there that" would send me to the block if England’s ruler read them. Yet they must not be destroyed, or I fail in great plans,” The girl’s flickered, and her hands accepted the casket with slow unwillingness, but her mistress pressed it into them, giving her no tune to speak. “You must have the key, too, and she drew the long chain oil her nock and swung it over Marie’s head. “It is a little key, easily hidden in your bosom,” she said. “ Keep it there, Marie, for my sake, and find some safe place for the casket among your own belongings. I know you love mo and will serve mo staunchly in this. Is it not so?” “ I would die for you, Madame,” the girl said huskily. For a moment her downcast eyes were lifted; through their wetness the Duchess saw remorse and adoration shining, and she knew that her hold plan had been successful. She had her father’s gift for - winning the devotion of those about her. Enemy gold would never again move Marie to treachery.

■ But the evil had been done, her plans were known before they were fully matured; henceforth she was marked, could not move unsuspected. Here in Rome she was safe enough, doubtless, bnt as soon as she stirred the spies would bo' on her track. Her friends, too, would be involved. They had been safeguarded so far as she was able, but if Angus and his-rela-tives. came to her suspicion would fasten upon them at once, now-that the plot was known. Somehow she must avert that.

She pondered the matter all day and into the night, reaching at last a clear decision. “Do not come to Rome,” she wrote to Angus in the morning. “When your present task is finished, cross the water to your home, and in three months I will meet you at the house, of XBZ. 1 have a safe and secret plan.” She despatched the letter by the trusty messenger who had brought Angus’s letter to her, then called her maid. ‘‘Mario,” she said, “I will be in the mode. I must have a new gown and hat, and high-heeled satin shoes, 'and a wig.” ’ “But, Madame, a wig! Madame has always said—” “ True, Marie, Madame has always said she preferred her own clean hair. But Madame has changed her mind, and has a whim to try a wig. Come! Mourning is over, and why snould we not ho gay? I will go to the play, and I will ride again in the mornings and von shall ride with mo.”

“Mon diou! .But Madame knows 1 cannot ride.”

“ Madame had forgotten. But you shall have lessons. CelTano shall teach you, and you shall bo my companion.”

A costumioro and a wig-maker were I called in, and for days mistress and i maid were absorbed in affairs of the j toilet. The Duchess emerged in the ' mode, indeed —figured sack over satin | under-dress, niched sleeves edged with 'falling lace, high-heeled satin shoes I peeping under the wide hooped skirt, fan in hand, gauze kerchief at neck, 'velvet hat tilted high on white curls 1 of a powdered wig, patches on her face. | She gazed ruefully at herself in her mirror, she who loved to ho simple and natural in her ways. “Bnt it is not for long,” she promised her reflection, nodding compassionately to it in the glass. “It is but part of the plan.” Every day for three weeks she went out riding, walking, visiting, or attending the play. She talked much to Marie, making a confidant and friend j of her, relating anecdotes of her own I childhood and early youth and conventual upbringing, discussing everything with her except the new plan. At last, when the time seemed ripe, that, too, was broached. “Mario,” said the Duchess one evening, “ you said a few weeks since that you would die for me.” “ Madame knows it is true.” “ I don’t want you to die for mo. child, but I have groat need of your help. H is necessary that I leave Romo for a time, but there are spies at watch everywhere, and I dare not go a.s the Hue boss of Albany. My plan is that 1 go as Marie Vaillanl. and that yon should tnko my place hero.” “But, Madame!” The girl's eyes were wide will; fright. “There will be no danger for you. Homo is safe. Wo are almost of the same height and build, and the. wig and powder and rny gowns and cloaks and hats will transform yon to such a likeness of myself that no one, I am assured, will delect the difference. Tli,at, is why 1 made the change in dross. Entiling would have reconciled me fo a wig but iis usefulness as a disguise for you after people had become accustomed to seeing mo in .d. Yon can ride now, and I have to/d yon all I can remember of ray life,^ in case of question or difficulty. Ton are an excellent mimic; for years it has been remarked how closely yon have modelled your voice and manner of speaking upon mine,. In fact, Marie, you will make a passable Duchess of Albany, and I propose lo lake coach for Naples to-morrow, leaving you in charge here.” Expostulations wore wasted, jh* Duchess, having planned every detail, met each objection with firmness. (Suggestion of danger to herself she scouted. “ I have studied you for weeks, - and I shall make a perfect Marie,” she said gaily. “ Come, this is an adventure. Never bo, afraid of it, girl.” 'ln the end she had her way. Exchange of clothing was effected (hero and then, and Mario gained mucii n.nlidcnco from powder and patches ;ud frills and laces that she grew more than resigned to the plan, and even ueg-m to simper and put on fine-lady furs. Her mistress’s sharp “ T hat is not mv way,’ brought her to her reuses, rna she settled down .to practical consideration of the' plan and its details. They talked long, arranging ereiything. Next day Mane Vndlant took her sent in the coach for Naples. Her dark brown hair was smoothly handed over her ears, her dress and deportment and infrequent words were all those of a quiet and well-trained lady’s maid “ on the way to visit an aunt in Naples,” as she informed an ;.p<d fellow-passenger, in reply to bis garrulous questions. How should he pierce her disguise or know that a duchess, daughter of a prince, sat wrapped in her sombre modest cloak beside him? (To he continued.)