LIKE AND UNLIKE.*

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8056, 17 September 1887, Page 3 (Supplement)

LIKE AND UNLIKE.*

BY M. E. ADDON, Author of " Lady Auilley's Secret," " WylUrd'a Weird," Ac., &c. CHAPTER XXVI. OPENING Hlm EYES, While Helen was pacing tho cypress walk in the long August afternoon, Valentino was at York, where the summer meeting was in full swing. Interest as well as pleasure had lad him to tho northern city. He was not, as Lis mother had been told, a partner in the St. Austell and Beeching stable, but his Interests were deeply involved in their successes, and ho had mixed himself up in their turf speculations in a manner which might re»ult in a great coup or a great disaster. One of their horses was entered for the Great Ebor, and stood pretty high in the betting ; another ran in a smaller r*ce. and there were three ot the stud entered for selling stakes. Valentino had backed Postcard rather Jieavily for the Great Ebor, and he knew that Beeching and St. Austell had both laid their money pretty freely, and that both believed in the horse. To Beeching, losing or winning was a matter of very littlo consequence ; but like most millionaires he was very intent upon making bis stable pay, and was very savage when the luck went against liirn. St. Austell was by no means ricn, and to him Postcard's success must be a matter of considerable importance. The value of the horse would bo quadrupled it he won this great race, to say nothing of his owner's bets.

Under those circumstances, Mr. Belfield was surprised at not finding St. Austell at King's Cross when he arrived on the platform just in time for the special. It had been arranged a week before that he, Beeching, Bad St. Austell were to travel together by this train, which left London at eight in the morning oil the first day of the races, and Were to occupy a suite of rooms together at the hotel till the meeting was over. Mr. Beeching had charged himself—or had been Charged—with the duty of encaging toe rooms, mid of securing a coupe lor the journey.

Air. Beeching was on the platform, with his valet 111 attendance upon him. he coupe was engaged, anil a picnic basket, containing a Strasbourg pie, a chicken, and a couple of bottles of G. 11. Mumui's extra dry, was in the rack : but there was no St. Austell.

" What does that fellow mean by being behind time? ' asked Valentine, when he ami Beeching ha.i taken their teats, and the doors were being clapped to all along the lino of carriages. " >t." Austell ? He's not coming." ".Not coming. Not coming to see Postcard win the Great Kbor !"

" No. He's chucked up the stable." " Chucked up the stable ?''

" Yes," answered Beeching, coolly. "You see, he owed me a hatful of money one way and another, and the other night he and 1 had a general square-up, whicn resulted in my taking about seven shillings in the pound nil round. He surrendered his interest in Postcard, and tho rest of the stud, and 1 gave him back his I O U's. He is going to India next week." " Why India ?'' " Lungs. Can't stand a European winter. His doctors advise him to try Ceylon or India. He is keen upon a grand eastern t;>ur, and he's oil to Venice next week on his way eastward. He'll potter about in .Northern Italy perhaps, for a month or so, and then puthimself on board a P. &. o."'

"Queer," said Valentine. "He nover told me auything was wrong with his lungs, though he looks rather sickly at the best of times.''

"We can't all be gladiators like yon, Beltield. I don't think St. Austell knew there was anything radically wrong till he went to Sir William Jenner a little while ago and had himself overhauled. But he has been laid up more or less every winter for the last three years, and he has lived pretty fast, as you know. I should think India would be a capital move for him." "Perhaps,' assented Valentine, pondering deeply, with hent brows. "On the Knavesmire all their acquaintances were surprised at St. Austell's absence, and Mr. Beeching nad to give the same explanation to a good many people. Mr. Beliield was irritated by this iteration. " Deuce take the fellow, what a lot of trouble he has jiiven us," he said, angrily. " He onuht to have come to see the horse's perlormance although he had parted with bis interest in him. He has got a good deal of money on the race, anyhow." The great day ana the gieit race came. The Knavesmire was a scene of life and movement, of vivid colour and ceaseless animation, a scene of universal gladness, one •would suppose .taking tne picture as a whole. But in detail there was a good deal of disappointment. It was only the disinterested lookers-on, the frivolous people who go to race meetings to eat and drink and stare about them in the sunshine, the clodhoppers and bumpkins, whoctaud beside the rails ami gaze at the scene as at the figures in a kaleidoscope—it i 3 only for these that there is no bitter in the cup of pleasure, no fly in the ointment. Postcard, after a magnificent lead, which elated all his backers, shut up—in Mr. Belfield's parlance—like a telescope. fie was a powerful horse, and would have pulled splendidly through heavy ground, but the ■weather had been peerless, and the course was hard and dry, so that the lighter hoists had the advantage. Beeching and Bel field ate their lunch in inoodly silence, and drank twice as deeply as they would have done to signalise a triumph. "I'll bo handed if I spend another right in this cursed hole," said Valentine when the day's racing was over. " Oh, you'd better see it out. I've got the rooms for the week, don't you know, and 1 shall have to pay pretty «t lily for them, and I've ordered dinner. You may just as well stay."

"Make it Yorkshire if you grudge your money, and when you come back to town I'll square up," retort'-d Valentine, sulkily. "I'm tired of tiie whole business. Your Bt&ble has never brought me luck. Goodnight." It was only half-past five o'clock ; tho sun was high still, but sloping westward, and carriages and foot people were moving out of the great green valley in vast masses of shifting lights and colours. A pretty scene ; out far from pleasant to the jaundiced eye )f Valentino Belfield.

He got into a cab, drove to the hotel, Dandled his things Into bag and portmanteau, »nd had them carried tb tho adjacent station ■ ust in time for one of the specials which where taking the racing man back to London. He got into a saloon carriage, coiled himself up in a corner, out of the dust and the glare, and presently when the express was flying across the country, past those broad fields where the corn was a till standing, low hills were lights and shadows came and went in the softening atmosphere of evening, lie fell fast asleep, and slept for nearly a couple of hours, sleep. off that extra bottle of champagne winch he had drunk almost unawares in his disappointment and exasperation.

It was dark when be awoke, black ni_>ht outside the carriage windows—and within only tno dim light of the lamp, which was almost obscured by tobacco smoke, There were very few passengers in the spacious carriage, and of thosa few, three were asleep, sprawling in ahnont uurestrained repose upon the morocco cushions, worn out with open air, sun, dust, and drink. Two men sat in the angle of Mr. Belfield's corner, and those two were talking confidentially between the lazy consumption of their cigarettes, talking in those undertones which are sometimes more distinctly lible than the brawl and babble of loud voices.

"I tell you, my dear fellow, everybody knew all about it except the gentleman moat concerned," said one, and whether he didn't know, or whether be was willully blind, is an open question. I don't like the man, and I should be willing to think anything ba.l cf him, but he's a good bred 'un, anyhow, and I suppose we ought to give him the benefit of trie doubt."

"He was never about with her, - ' returned the other man ; "she went everywhere with her sister, and we all know what the sister is."

"A very charming woman,"said his friend, with a langh, "and a very dangerous one. She's about the cleverest woman out, I think, for without compromising herself very seriously she has contrived to make more out of her admirers than any woman in London. She must have bled Beeching to the tune of a email fortune, I fancy." " Ob, Beeching is fair game," said the other msin. "Mobody minds Beeching, That

r • The proprietors of the New Zealand Herald save purchased the sole rifht to publish this story in we North Island ot New Zealand.

kind of pigeon was made to bo plucked ; besides, Beeching is uncommonly careful. Nobody will ever do him any harm. He has tho commercial intellect fully developed, Yon may depend ho keeps a close account of his menus plaisirs, his grass-widows, and such like, and knows to a shilling what they cost him, and will never exceed the limits of strict prudence." Mr. Belfield's attention was fully awakened by thiii time. He had turned himself round in his shadowy corner, and was watching and listening with all his might. He knew one of the men, a member of the Badminton and

the Argus, slightly ; the other not at all. "The worst story against her is the story of the diamonds," said tho man whom he did not know.

" Ah, you were in India when It happened, and knew all about It, I suppose," replied the other. "It was a rather ugly story, I bo* Hove, but 1 never heard the details.''

" 1 was in Baddeley's regiment when aho came to India with him," said tho other. " She had not been married six months, and was about the loveliest woman I over saw in my life. As handsome as Mrs. Belfield is now, that splendid Irish beauty, which is unsurpas«abio while it lasts, great grey eyes with black lashes, a complexion of lilies and carnations form aud colour alike lovely and luxurianta woman who makes every cad in the streets stop all agape to look at her. She startled lis at our hill station, I can tell you, aud the Baddeley madness raged there all that season like hydrophobia. One of our men, a poor little lieutenant, a nv.ire lad, Lord Brompton's son, took tho disease very badly. What was sport for us was death to him. Ho fell madly in love with his Major's wife, and luiug about her and followed her about in a distracted, despairing way that would have been laughable had it not verged upon the tragic." " Did she encourage him ?" "Of course she did. He was a swell, and he had lot< of money. She nick-uamed him Ba'jy, talked of him as a ' nice boy,' and before long ho was known everywhere as Mrs. Baddeley'a Baby. He didn't seem to mind people laughing at him. Wo went to Calcutta later on, and there were balls and ail sorts of hijeh jinks going on, and Mrs. Baddeley was the belle of place, and everybody, from the Governor General downwards, was avowedly iu love with her. Poor young Stroud hung on to her, aud was savage with every man site ike to. Oue night, at the Governor-General's ball, she came out in a blaze of diamonds. One of us chaffed tho Major about his wife's jewellery ; but he toot; it as easily as possible. She had hired them from Facet, the great Calcutta jeweller, he told u<. • I suppose 1 shall have to pay pretty stillly for the use of them,' ha said, •but if she likes to cut a dash iu borrowed plumes, I can't complain. It'll bo a duced long time, I'm afraid, before she'll be able to show a diamond necklace of her own.' "

The speaker stopped to light a fresh cigarette, sun then went on lazily, dropping out his sentences between pull's of tobacco. " Baddeley is a big, good-natured, selfindulgent ass, but 1 don't know that he's anything more than that. We all laughed at his story of the hired diamonds, and six months afterwards, when young Stroud broke for six aad-tweiity thousand, mcstof it m >ney from Calcutta Jews, wo all knew that Mrs, Baddeley's diamonds counted for somethingnull Mrs. Baddeley's little caprices for some, thing more in the lad's entanglements. We were all very sorry for him. Brompton was said to be a martinent, and the young man went about Calcutta looking as white a3 a ghost for a week or two, while he was trying to make terms with his creditor?. Then one morning ia barracks there was a great scare. Young Stroud had shot himself half-an-hoar after morning parade. He had left two letters on his table, one addressed to bis father, the other to Mrs. Baddeley." " blow did the lady take it?" "1 suppose she was rather sorry. She never snowed herself in Calcutta after the catastrophe. The regimental doctor went to see her every day, and the Major told everyone taat she was laid up with low fever, and that the climate was killing her. She went back to England a month or so after Stroud's death, and she carried the spoils of war with her and has woru them ever since."

"And you think the younger sister is as bad?) said tho other man, thoughtfully. There was no malevolence in eitner oi them. They were only discussing one of the problems of mo.iern society. " I don't know about that. I believe she has more heart than Mrs. Baddeley, and that she is over head and ears in love with tit. Austell. They have been carrying on all the season, and I wonder they haven't bolted before now."

" My dear fellow, nobody bolts nowadays. Elopements are out of fashion. There is nothing further from the thoughts of a modern seducer than a menage. Tho days of postchaises and Italian villas are over. We love and we ride away. St. Austell is a man of the world and a man of the time. Here wo are, old chap. My trap is to meet us here.'"

They took up their sticks, hats, and overcoats, and left the carriage before Valentines brain had recovered from the shock of a sudden revelation.

lie started to his feet as they went cut, called out to the man he knew, followed to the door just as the porter slammed it, and the train moved on. Ha hardly knew what he meant to do—whether he would have called the slanderer to account, caned him, challenged him. He stood by the door of that swiftly-moving carriage, dazed, bewildered, recalling that idle talk he had overheard from tha darkness of the coiner yonder, wondering how much or how little truth there was m it all.

About Mrs. Baddeley, his wife's sister ? Well, there might be some foundation for scandal there, perhaps. He had long known that Biie was a coquette, and a clever coquette, who knew how to lead her admirers on, and how to keep them at bay. He knew that Beeching had mini'tered pretty freely to the lady's caprices ; and he had always looked upon St. Austell a3 tiie lady's favoured admirer, and the man for whom she was in some danger of compromising herself. The story of young Stroud's futile passion for his Major's wife, and of costly jewellery givet. at, a time when Lord Brompion'a heir was already deeply in debt, was not altogether new to him. Ho had heard some vajue hints in the past; but men had been shy of alluding to that old story in his presence. He had known that his sister»in*law had been talked about; but no man had ever dared to insinuate that she was anything worse than a clever woman, and perfectly capable of taking care of herself. "I back Mrs. Baddeley and her poodle against Lucretia and her dagger," he had beard a stranger say one night in the club suiokiugfoorn, and it had seemed to his somewhat conical temper that his wife could not be safer than with a thoroughly worldly woman, a woman who knew every knot and ravelled end in the seamy side" of society. I But St. Austell his wife's admirer ! They I two head over ears in love with each other ! I .Never for ono instant had such a possibility dawned upon him ; and yet those two men had talked as if that mutual passion were an established fact, known to all the world, ex- I cept to him, the deluded husband. 1

Helenhis Helen! The wife who had satiated him with sweetness, whoso devotion had cloyed, whose fondness had been almost a burden. That she should play him false, that she should care for any other man on earth. No, he could not believe it. Because two fools in a railway carriage cho3e to tell lies, was ho to think that the woman who had counted the world well lost for love of him had turned trickster and traitress and was carrying on with another man. St, Austell, a notorious rake ; a man who had the reputation of being fatal in his influence over women.

The man had seemed safe enough 80 long as he had thought of him only as Mrs. Baddeley's lov«r, but with his suspicions newly aroused, Valentino Beltield looked back at the history of the last few months, and saw all things in a new light. He remembered how in all Mrs. Baddeley's festivities at Hurlingham, Ranelagh, or Saudown, water parties at Henley orMarlow, Sunday dinuera at Richmond, at Greenwich, St. Austell had always be:-n one of the party. Beechingand St. Austell had always beeu at hand. Whoever else was included, those two were inevitable. He had reckoned them both as Leonora's devotees; they were the pair which she drove in her car of triumph, like Venus' doves, or Juno's peacocks. One possessed her heart, and ruled her life; the other was her purse-bearer. Knowing all this, or believing this, he bad .yet been content that his wife should go everywhere under her sister's wing. The arrangement relieved him of all trouble, and Helen teemed happy. People complimented him upon his wife's beauty, and he accepted their praises as a kind of tribute to himself; pleased to show the world how careless he could afford to be about a wife whom everybody adored, eocure in his unbounded dominion over her, 1

nblo to neglect her if he chose and yet to defy all rivalry.

CHAPTER XXVII. AN UNFINISHED LETTER.

[ Mr. Belfield sat broking during the rest of the journey to King's Cross, and his thoughts grew darker with the darkening night. Yes, ' St. Austell had haunted his wife's footsteps all through the season that was past. Me had heard of them riding in the Row ; it was St. Austell who had chosen Helen's horse at Tattersal's and who had been officiously obliging in attending the sale and getting the animal . for a price that seemed almost ridiculously at variance with its quality. He could recall the whole transaction : how in St. Austell's presence one evening, after a little dinner in Mrs. Baddeley'a rooms, Helen had entreated him to buy her a horse, urging that it was odious to ride hired animals, smelling of tho livery stables, and suggestive of a riding master in butcher boots; how ho had declared he couldn't afford to bay ; and how St. Austell had told him that it would be a more economical arrangement than hiring, and had suggested that a good horse might be got for a very little money now that the hunting was all over. " What do you call a little money ?" Valentino had asked, annoyed at his wile's persistence and at St. Austell's interference. "Well, 1 suppose you might pick up a good Paris hack for ninety or a hundred.'' " Nearly twice as much as 1 should like to give," answered Valentine, curtly. "How much would you give if there ware an opportunity ? lam at Tatteraall'u nearly every day, and I would be on the look out if I kuew what you wanted." " 1 dou't want anything. There are plenty of horses in Devonshire that my wife and I cau ride when we're there." "But Devonshire isn't the Park, Val," pleaded Helen. "I want a horse for the Park, awfully," whereupon Mr. Bellield shrugged his shoulders, and said ho would give fifty or sixty guineas for a hack, rather than be botheied ; and with this ungracious permission his wile was fain to be content. Three days after this conversation, Valentine fouud Lord St. Austell's groom waiting in front of Wilkio Mansions With a thoroughbred bay horse, which he was gently leading up and down the road. "His lordship's compliments, and this is the horse ha has bought for you, sir," said the man. " Ravioli, grandson to Macaroni." Valentine looked the animal over critically.

" Is he sound ?'* he asked. " Yes, sir. His lordship's vet. looked at him before the sale." 41 Well, lie is very handsome; and if his manners areas goo l as his looks, his lordship has made a good purchase." Valeutine met St. Austell at his club next day, aud gave him a cheque for fifty-seven

guineas, at which sum tne horse had been

knocked down to him at Tatters all's. At such a price, the animal, if sound, was an unquestionable bargain. Valentine had riduen him around the Row, and had found his paces admirable, although he was obviously overweighted by anything above twelve stone. Fur a light weight like Helen the horae was perfection. "The yard must have been asleep when you bought him," said Valentine. "Oh, 1 knew how to bide my time and watch my opportunity,''answeredSt. Austell, lightly. "i am very glad you're satisfied with my choice."

" More than satisfied, my dear fellow." So the matter had ended. Mr. Beldeld, full of his own schemes, pleasures, and excitements, had thought no more of the horse, except to remember that he had made a sacrifice to his wife in buying him, and that she ought to be very grateful. To-night, looking back at tho past in the new light of awakened doubts, he shrewdly suspected that St. Austell had fooled him, and that, under the pr«t<>nco of getting a bargain at Tattersall'a, he had presented the woman he admired with a horse that bad cost three times as much as her husband was willing to p»y. And she had known the secret of the transaction, no doubt, and they had laughed together at tho husband's meanness, and at the ease with which he had been hoodwinked. Valentine Belfielil almost choked with rase at the Idea of his own blindness.

"To think that I should be deceived by any woman—above all by my wife—the wife I won as easily as a pair of gloves—and, by heaven, I thought she was as muah my own as my gloves or my hat—as faithful to me as my favourite dog.'' Yet remembering how easily she had been won, how quickly she hail wavered in her fidelity to Adrian, ho could scarcely wonder that she had faltered in her truth to him. St. Austell was fascinating, a man of eminently seductive manners, deeply read in that modern literature which women appreciate, distincty a man to please women—while be, Valentine, was a sportsman, caring very little for woman's society, aud mating no sacrifice to ploase them, despising them rather as a lower order of beings whose nature it was to be suppliants aud adorers of the master spirit, man. He had never thought of his wife's love for him as a measurable quantity, which ho might exhaust. "She Has been a fool, and she has boon a coquette," he said to himself, a3 the train steamed parsed the shabby streets and gaslit windows of northern Loudon, "but I don't believe she has been anything worse. It will be my business to drive her with a tighter rein in future. You have been allowed to go too free, my pet. It must bo curb instead of snaffl-a hencetorward."

He had busine33 in London which must needs be done before ho could look after his wife. Postcard's defeat meant losses which amounted almost to financial ruin. Money would have to be raised, aud at a sacrifice. He could not bring himself to appeal to his motherforhelp in a turf difficulty ; firstly, because she had been very generous to him already ; and, secondly, because there were other difficulties, other debts imminent, for which he would be obliged to ask her assistance "

Under these circumstances ho went to a Jew money-lender, and involved himself deeply in order to raise money against settling day. From the money-lender's office he went to Tuttersall's, where he was well-known as Lord St. Austell. He saw one of the chief clerks, a man with whom he nad been on familiar terms ever since he had been a frequenter of the famous auction yard. "There was a horae sold here last April,' he said, "a thoroughbred grey, grandson of Macaroni. I want very much to know at what figure that horse was knocked down. I've got a bet upon it." " What's your bet, Mr. Belfield, if it's not an impertinent question ?" asked the man. easily.

"If it was, I shouldn't mind it from you. Jones," answered Valentino. "I've laid two to ono that Ravioli fetched over two hundred.

" I think you're pretty safe, sir. I remember the horse. He was one of Captain Poppingay'n lot, aud they were all good 'una, I'll turn up the catalogue in a minuto. April 7th, 10th, 14th; yes; here they are, hunters, Park hacks, team of coach horses."

Ho ran his fingar down the pages of a catalogue, his practised eye following the figures with amazing rapidity. The prices realised by the horses were written in the margin beside the lot numbers, and the names of the purchasers on the other side of the page.

"Ravioli, five years old, thoroughbred, lia3 been hunted wit'i the Pyfcchley, carries a lady," he read. "Your money's safe, Mr, Beltield. Two hundred and seventy guineas. Lord »St. Austell bought him."

" That's your ticket," answered Valentine, lightly; "I thought X was pretty safe. Good-night. A thousand thanks." He had just time to catch an afternoon train for the West of England, a train which left Waterloo late in the afternoon, and which was due at Chadlord Road Station a little before midnight. It was a alow train, and one by which he would only have travelled in an emergency. He had telegraphed no announcement of his coming, either to his mother or his wife. It was a part of his plan to take Helen by surprise, and he was willing to hazard the difficulty of getting into a nouse in which all the servants might have gone to bed before he could arrive. The chances were that Adrian would be in the library, where it was his usual habit to Bit reading long after, midnight. Chadford Road Station was nearly five miles from the Abbey, and Mr. Beltield was in no humour for a long walk. The Station Hotel, a decent inn, which could provide a one-horse fly upon occasions, and which called itself a posting house, was open, so he went in, ordered a brandy and soda, and a trap to take him to the Abbey. The ostler and the flyman were lazy and slow, and Mr. Beltield had to wait a quarter of an hour while the fly was being got ready. He stood in the bar drinking his brandy and soda, and talking to the landlady, a large and blooming matron of the Devonshire

dumpling order of beauty, whom he had known from his childhood.

"I never thought to have the pleasure of waiting upon you to-night, Mr. Belfield," she said. "But 1 always wait up for this train, and send the girls to bed. And yet I'm always first up of a morning. I've been expecting you down at the Abbey, for I saw Mrs. Belfield driving with her ladyship the other day, as pretty as ever, but looking rather pale and out of sorts, 1 thought." " Yes, she is not over well. She is down here for her health."

"To be sure, air. The London season does take a deal out of a lady," replied the innkeeper's wife, shaking her head, and with an air of knowing town dissipations by heart. " There's been one of your friends stopping at Chadford for the last few days, Mr. Baltield ; but he hasn't brought any horses this time, and not even so much aa a body servant. He came into the place as quiet as any commercial." "Indeed! Who's that ?"

"Lord St. Austell. My master saw him yesterday evening sauntering by the river, just outside the Lamb gardens, and he heard afterwards that his lordship had been stopping at the Lamb for the last three days, which considering that there's no sport exoept salmon fishing at this time of the year, and that the cooking at tho Lamb is about as bad as it can be, puzzled me and my husband as to what attraction a goutleman like Lord St. Anatoli could find here."

"Ob, there is always sport for a true sportsman," answered Valentine, lightly. " Well, as you say, sir, it may be the salmon, and that would account for his not bringing any horses." All, there's the fly; good-night, Mrs. Crump," and Valentino jumped into the lumbering old landau, and was jolted along the road to Chadford. ITo bo coutinuoil.]