EVERY INCH A SOLDIER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9611, 8 September 1894, Page 3 (Supplement)

EVERY INCH A SOLDIER.

BY JOHN STRANGE WINTER, Author of "Booties' Baby," "Beautiful JiM, «' Army Society," Garrison Gossip," " The Soul of the Bishop," etc. All Rights Reserved. CHAPTER XXL—Continued.) jLND John Sylvester remained in Blankhampton in defiance of his father wishes, and acted as though he considered himself at the head of the case for the prosecution. The young man was at that time really living a very terrible life. He naturally became acquainted with a few of the townspeople, chiefly those who loathed the military element in the community, and believed every red coat to cover an unmitigated villain, who, with a good deal of righteous mouthing, condemned Jervis without a hearing, speaking of him freely as "the murderer," and who parsed up their lips, turned up their eyes, and spread out their hands palm uppermost when any suggestion was made that undoubtedly he had thought of her L , o otl name before his own inclinations. To such as these, the young man who was so unmistakably full of sincere grief for the girl's death, who openly proclaimed his passionate and undying love for her, and who showed such real English dogged determination to follow the case up to the bitter end, appeared in the light of a martyr and a hero. They were good, mediocre, narrow-minded people all these, men and women of sound principle—according to their particular religious lights, that is, and leally of very much the same calibre as the early Puritans, who practically made England what she is to-day. To them, the lives of the class above them were steeped in wickedness, and they regarded the Lord Bishop of the Diocese as the most worldly man whom they had ever known. Their common every-day talk was interlarded with cut and dried religious phrases which they really did not mean at all, but which were as much a jargon with them as " ain'b it" and " dontcherknow" is the jargon of a certain set in London to-day. Bub these good people would have been considerably astonished if they could have realised the depth of malignant hatred, which had no kinship with the more noble feeling of justice, which raged in John Sylvester's passionate heart. He worried the police, he was always after the detectives who were on the side of the prosecution, he went day after day and gloated over the great brown walls of the gaol, behind which •Jervis was kept a safe prisoner, and he looked forward with joy to the last dread morning when his life should pay the penality, not for having killed Kacey, for really that side of the question scarcely entered his thought!!, but for having supplanted him in the affection which, mind you, ho had never possessed. Almost daily, too, he might be seen tearing along the road to Ingleby, making pathetic passionate pilgrimages to the grave in the quiet little country churchyard where she was lying. It was about ten days before the time of the assizes that he went tearing along the road towards Ingleby, across the corner of the park by a little footpath and hurriedly up to the lych-gate, when he ran against and almost knocked over a young lady who was just leaving the churchyard.

"Oh, Mr. Sylvester 1" she exclaimed. He looked at her for a moment with eyes wholly wanting in recognition. "Don't you remember me?" she said, seeing that he did nob know her. "My sister and I were ab Danford a long time during the summer. We were staying in the Williamsons' house with the people to whom they let ib. You remember me now ? I used often to come and play tennis with Katey." "Miss Atkinson!" he gasped. " I remember you perfectly. —I —am just going to her grave—l come every day. Of course, you kuew what I felb for her, how I worshipped her, how I feel towards the brute that hounded her to death."

" Oh, don'b say that!" Jill cried, " don't say that! Nothing is proved against him, and really, I don'b think that he did it, believe me I do not." .... John Sylvester, turning, looked ab her. 11 You know the fellow?" he said curtly. " Oh, yes, well," she cried ; " he has been a great deal to lngleby since we have been here, and he was so fond of Katey ! I can never believe that he would harm her." "He killed her," said John Sylvester deliberately. "But you don'b know—you only think— you only surmise. There is no evidence to Drove that." "You will see," he said, with brutal blnntness. " There will be evidence enough to hang him." Jill Atkinson shrank back. " Oh, bub you would not wish thab unies3 you were quite sure ?" " I would, he said furiously. "Besides, lam quite surel know thab be killed her."

" Bub how can you know it?" "How? My whole instinct tells me so 1 I could go through the whole pitiful scene as well as if I had been there and seen ib with my own eyes. My poor Katey ! There was nobody by to help you, no hand to shield you, no roof to shelter you except the one thab you scorned, the hand that you refused, the love that you rejected for the man who did you to your death !"

" Oh, Mr. Sylvester!" cried Jill in quavering accents, "don't say such dreadful things. If it is proved against him he will suffer. Think what his situation is now.'' " H'm ! He has a chance of getting off, now," he blurted out. " Oh, yes, bub everyone should have a chance of getting off, and to think if he is innocent—and doesn't get off— how dreadful! What anguish, what agony he must be enduring ! 1 cannot bear to think about him. I have been in here to lay some flowers on poor Katey's grave._ She used to be so fond of stephanotis. I remember how pleased she was with some stephanotis one day last summer at Danford which I fancy he sent her. She wore it and she kept touching ib and looking at it, and setting it straight; and to-day, when I went through the conservatories, the stephanotis was all in bloom and so lovely that I begged some to bring and lay on her grave. It is all one can do for her now." " You broughtstephanotis flowersto her grave—because he had given pome to her once !" said John Sylvester, looking at her with flaming eyes. "Is that the best you can do for her now, Mies Atkinson ? Oh, I thought better of any woman than that ! Do you think I will let them stay ihere ?—his flowers—on her grave—" " My flowers, Mr. Sylvester," she interrupted. " Yes, her favourite flowers, because —" "My flowers, Mr. Sylvester," she interrupted, " and her favourite ones." " Yob, her favourites, because he used to give them to her! And that is all jour friendship can do I" "I don't think that Mr. Jervis would have said thab to me," she said, standing quite straight and with much dignity confronting him. He almosb snarled ab her in his anger. " What, you too! I wonder what is the charm this fellow has for all women 1 She, the best, truest, pluckiest girl I ever knew in my life, losb her head through fascination of him, chucked up her dearest interests, threw over name, fame, family—everything, for this one man ! You, ft girl in a different station of life, living in a rapid London Bet, accustomed to luxury and visiting, to gaiety of all kinds, you feel exactly the same effect. I cannot understand ib. I suppose you, too, are in love wibh him."

Miss Jill looked at him in unlimited and unutterable contempt—"l am quite sure of one thing, Mr. Sylvester," she said, in a studiously calm voice, " that you are excessively impertinent. I have uttered no word which could lead you to think anything of the kind, and if I had done so, it would be no business of yours. That your cousin preferred Mr. Jervis to you is not surprising. Poor Katey ! Think what her fate would have been if she had married you ! Why, she is better off in ■ her quiet grave there, than with a man who could so far forget his manhood as to utter such words to any woman' an you have just allowed yourself to say to me ! Let me pass, please, I have no longer any acquaintance with you." ' ■ '■ "Stop!" he said - roughly, and barring her way to the gate, "I have wanted to speak to you ever since I knew that you were the last except him who saw her alive aad well. You saw that ciglitwyoa

gave your evidence ab the inquesb— me —tell ma— she looking—" "I will tell you nothing," Jill inter* rupted, impetuously, " You will bell-me nothing ! You defy me! Why, I could kill you as you stand there!" " Yes, you could, bub you won't I You won't lay a finger ,on me, Mr. John Sylvester. . You are too great a coward although I am only a little woman, with nothing with which to protect myself! Bub you are afraid of me, and, as I say, you will nob lay a finger on me 1" Ah, I was only speaking in anger of what I could do. I had no intention of harming you. Why should I ? If you are in love with him, God help you ! You are in a sorry plight!" " You are quite mistaken," she said, in a very indifferent tone, " I am not in a sorry plight at all. I came this afternoon to Katey's grave full of kindly remembrances of her and of pity and commiseration for you. I shall nob come again. I would nob pay thab poor girl such a bad compliment as to continue a practice which gives rise to unseemly wrangling within the very precincts of the church 1 It is desecration, nothing more or less. No matter whab my feelings are, if I be totally indifferent to Mr. Jervis or if for me he is the one man in the whole world, ib is no matter—l would nob change places with you, no— would he!" "He won't have the chance of changing places with anybody,'' 1 said John Sylvester, lounging against the gate, and trying apparently to force the dispute still further. Jill Atkinson, however, did nob conde- ] scend to reply to this. " Leb me pass, if yea please,. Mr. -Sylvester," she said, coldly. But John Sylvester did nob move. On the contrary, he leant still more doggedly against the gate; and in truth the girl thought that he was more or less out of his mind. She had no fancy for remaining longer in that lonely spot with this semi-madman, and she cast about in her mind as to how ! she could escape without doing anything undignified or foolish. Then she remembered the little gate by which they had frequently come across the park to service, and which she had avoided that day on account of the dampness of the grass. She thought it most probable that he did nob know of the existence of such an outlet, and turned sharply on her heel, saving— "No matter, I will not trouble you to be polite enough to let me pass 1" She had just reached the chancel entrance of the church, close to which was the narrow pathway which led to the wicket for which she was making, when John Sylvester passed her hurriedly, and with an exclamation of fury, shot ahead of her in the direction of Katey's grave. Involuntarily the girl stood at the parting of the ways and watched his movements, when she saw him with eager, frenzied hands tear off the beautiful blooms with which she had decked it, and flinging them on the ground, trampled them underfoot. With an exclamation that was between a cry and a gasp, Jill Atkinson took to her heels and fairly ran away.

CHAPTER XXII. TIME FOR REFLECTION. ' " Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom." SnAKESPEUE. Jill Atkinson did nob speak to anyone of the strange encounter which she had had with John Sylvester, but she paid no more visits to the quiet grave in lngleby churchyard. In truth, she regarded Katey Vincent's cousin ii but little short of a dangerous lunatic maddened to unreasonable fury by jealousy and grief. In a way she was sorry for him, bub whenever he crossed her thoughts she felt devoutly thankful that he had no real say in the matter of judging Jervis. She rather wondered, as the whole affair was in the hands of the police, that he remained on in Blankhampton, where practically he knew no one, and where he could have no chance of getting over the shock and distress of the death of the girl he loved. " Of course," Jill argued in her own thoughts, " Katey could never under any circumstances have consented to marry him !" And she fancied it was a pity that someone did not tell him so, or that lie could not be brought to realise that such was the truth. She understood so well how a girl, who was attracted by and in love with such a man as Philip Jervis, would instinctively shrink from the very suggestion of marriage with an uncouth, mannerless young man like her cousin, John Sylvester. But she did not discuss him with anyone. She pitied his sorrow, and in a sense she respected his ravings. She felt as if he might, after a little time bad gone by, come to a more just sense of the rights and wrongs of poor Katey's death. She was conscious that now he was not actuated so much by a desire for retributive justice as of personal revenge for his own disappointment; and she was right, although she only saw a little beneath the surface, and being a good girl of an upright and honourable mind, she never realised the depth of malignant and passionate hatred which filled his illregulated heart. "Poor Katey!" her thoughts ran. "If he did nob mean to marry her, she is better in her quiet grave than left to the mercy of the world and thab dreadful young man. Sooner or later he would have pestered her into marrying him, and then he would have worried her life out with jealousy and suspicions aboub the other one. Poor Katey !" And still John Sylvester kept on his dark way, still stirring up strife in the hearts of all the Blankhampton people with whom he became acquainted against a man who was lying waiting his trial for the murder of his cousin. By the young ladies of the few families thab he knew he was regarded in the light of a hero, and invested with a halo of romance such as would have astonished even himself. These, too, were accustomed to speak of the military quarter in the garrison as "lost souls" and "doers of evil," yet when any of these little thirdrate Puritan maidens met the smart, welldressed, easy-moving men whom they knew to be officers of ono or other of the regiments then quartered in Blankhampton, as they walked about the quaint old streets of the city, ib must be admitted they glanced at them with interest, and envied not a little their sisters who were in daily intercourse with these men, whom they had been taught to believe were as wild beasts going about seeking whom they might devour. John Sylvester, on the contrary, had no illusions about him. He deliberately and vindictively went for the class whom he believed would chiefly contribute to the jury in the lngleby murder case, and he set himself to become as popular as possible amongst them. His father, who had a great idea of his place in the world, and aspired to the position in Danford of a semi-county magnate, would have been furious if he had known the part his son was playing. Bub in hia few letters home John Sylvester kept his own counsel, and his parents believed that he had remained in the old city for the sole purpose of watching the enquiry into his cousin's death. So the days crept on and on, and with each one the case for the prosecution became more serious, while that for the defence did nob advance its interests by a hair's-breadth. You see, there was a difference between the two. On the one, side there was that tangible, awful, terrible dead thing, bearing the marks of fearful injuries that could nob by any possibility have been self-inflicted; there was the unalterable and damning proof of the dead girl's visit to Jervis's quarters, of his unkind reception of her last effort to win the shelter of his love; there was the fact that her bed had nob been slept in, thab she had disappeared absolutely from human ken until she turned up at the water-gates of lngleby, mere flotsam and jetsam, a horrible thing almosb unrecognisable even by those who had loved her best; in addition, there had also been the fact that Jervis had seemed singularly unlike himself during the few weeks following the eleventh' of November, and there was proof that he had obtained leave for a single night, had journeyed to Danford, and pub up at the principal hotel there, and had spent) the most of his time upon the road leading to Mr. Sylvester's house. Then there was the circumstance that between the hours of two and half-pasb six on the morning of the twelfth of November no one in or about the officers' quarters at Blankhampton Cavalry Barracks could give any evidence concerning his whereabouts. Ib is true that Tinker had found his master asleep at half-past six o'clock in the bed which he had made up for him overnight, bub how long he had been there, and where he might or' might nob have been from two o'clock when' he and his brother officers had separated to go to their respective room&Ddbody: could' say« -On.

'the other hand there was so little that could be urged in favour of the defence. The prisoner had admitted being very angry with the dead girl when he found her in his _ quartern, and although that was Admittedly a reasonable feeling for him to entertain, yet ib was not one which under the circumstances was likely to improve his case. _ Never for one moment did Jervis admit, either to his lawyer or to anyone else, that he was the leasb little bib apprehensive of the final issue of the trial. He passed his time in Blankhampbon Gaol quietly .and regularly. He received a great many visitors, read a great many novels, smoked a greab many cigarettes, and took his daily exercise very much after the manner of the bears at the Zoo, but he never expressed any impatience or nervousness, never asked what the general attitude towards him was in the minds of the townspeople, or, indeed, spoke of tho case at all, excepting when ib was spoken of by others to him.

Of a truth ho was more depressed and, as he pub ib to himself, cub up over the death of Katey than any of those about him might have believed, or, for the matter of that, than he might have believed himself six months before. Almosb unconsciously she had twined herself about hia heart, until now that she was gone life did nob seem to be worth the living without her. Often and Often her face came between him and the pages of the book thab he was reading, her face as he had seen ib last, crushed with the weight of his reproaches, shadowed by the belief of his unkindncss, filled with the despair of her soul's disappointment; and ab such times he would drop his (ace upon his arms tohide the scalding tears would come at the thought of how different everything would have been if only be had acted differently that fatal night. And yet, he knew that lie had acted for the best, in his liearb he knew that he had taken the straightforward and honourable course. True, he had been vexed with her, bub he had been more vexed for her than with her.

Well, it was no use repining, no use looking back, no use wishing that the past was different, the past was pasb, the past was as ib was, and nothing could alter it now. Katey was gone. In his efforb to save her he had sent her oub to a cruel and treacherous death, and here was he in durance vile, suspected by half the world of having been the one to do thab horrible and cowardly deed. For hie own safety he cared but little and thought less. He had sent for George Winbhrop more from a feeling that, for the sake of his regiment, he ought to make the best defence he could, rather than from any fear of his own life. About thab he was absolutely indifferent. George Winthrop had retained the two greatesb criminal counsel of the day, and yet the days crept on one after another until the time of the assizes drew nearer and nearer, and little or nothing was done by all these clever brains in winning any evidence to make the defence a safe one. He heard from some of his brother officers thab the Atkinson girls were still staying at Ingleby. He wondered in an indifferent kind of way that it should be so, bub it honestly never occurred to him that they were remaining on his account, or thought for a moment that Jill had taken, or was taking, the very smallest interest in himself or in his welfare. Of John Sylvester he said nothing. [To be continued on Wednesday next.]