A CRUEL SECRET.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 10836, 20 August 1898, Page 3 (Supplement)

A CRUEL SECRET.

—.— I ;> ■i'.BY.OHAHLOTTB MAY KINGSLEY, 1 jnthor of " Lord Desmond's Bride," "Eileen, >\ the Rose of Killarney," "My Love Nell," ' I " The King's Daughters," " Two Wild ' -' p ' iv ~;', Girls," "Peerless Kathleen," .; t;l etc., etc. .

P|S CHAPTER XXVIII. H m .-■■ HOW THE TRUTH WAS TOLD. IV' fiAT almost swooned from sheer excess of HOW THE TROTH WAS TOLD, git almost swooned from sheer excess of M happiness as her arms clasped themselves about her twin sister, and for a moment it | seined as though all earth and sky swam j§ around in dizzying circles as she looked down : into Claire's pale drawn face and brimming, "pathetic eyes and pressed kiss after kiss upo°n her quivering lips. {a----; In her joy and excitement she did not I ;, notice the state of her sister's raiment, did ' J ; not find time to remark that her feet were I bare, her clothing worn and frayed, and that , I she had no hat, and, indeed, no other head 9 covering than that furnished by the frilled ~\ t: hood of a patched and shabby old Connemara \ cloak which a charwoman would have been I ashamed to wear. She realised nothing I thought of nothing but that Aunt Jo and all • { the rest had cruelly deceived her, and that | in spite of that lovely grave in far off America I Claire, her beloved Claire, her idolised twin I sister, still lived, and she was holding her in ~- I-, her arms again. \ ' "Oh, Claire— Claire!" she said, with a curious little throb in her voice— throb that : 8 was part of joy at this awakening, and part! t of indignation at tho deception which had I been practised upon her. " Why did they {. deceive me like this— Jo, and grandpa! | Why did they tell me you were dead? Why I did they show me a grave in the churchyard f ' and tell me it was yours, while all the while you were living? Oh, it was cruel of them i wicked and cruel —when they knew how ;. much I loved you and saw how bitterly I moaned your loss! Ah, I know now why ': they never sent for me and let me have a | last look at'your face before the funeral. It j was because you were not really dead, my i darling, and they only meant to deceive me. j But why did they do it, dear ? Why did they I do such a cruel, wicked thing? They told j me you had died of some contagious disease J and had to be buried at once, Claire. Oh, it 1 was wicked, it was infamous! And why did j they do it, Claire, when they knew it was not I true?" j "They—they had to say something, Gay," ; responded Claire faintly. "They bad'to make some excuse to you for— my banishi ment from your life, and perhaps that was ] the easiest and best way, after all. One thinks tenderly of the dead, you know, dear, | and if-" ! A sudden cry from Gay broke in upon the sentence, for now, and only now, had she ; remarked the condition of'her sister's apparel. "Claire!" she struck in, with a little cry of horrified amazement. " Claire, you are in rags, your clothes are torn and patched, and your feet are bare—bare, like a beggar's!" " Yes, I know," responded Claire, huskily; "I am dressed like a beggar because I am a beggar, Gay, and—oh, let me go!" with a sudden outburst of remorse and excitement as she vainly struggled to tear loose from her | sister's clinging arms. "It was wrong of me to come here, and I never bad any right to do it. But, oh, I was so lonely mid liomesick, and— I never meant it should end like this. I only hoped, only intended to get a peep at your sweet face and then steal away again. But when I saw you alonealone— God! the temptation was too great, and, like a coward, I spoke to you. Now let me go— me go—'let me crawl away and die, hating myself for having contaminated you with my presence!" " Claire!" in a sharp, shocked voice. "You contaminate me? You? My heavens! are you mad ?" " No, no! I would to God I were, for mad- • ness brings forgetfulness, and I can only remember—remember! Oh! let me go! For God's sake— mine— your own— mercy and let me go!" "I will not let you go!" cried out Gay, tightening the clasp of her/ loving arms. " You are mad to ask it—mad, to think that I will. You are Claire, my sister, and, now i that I have found you, you shall stay here with me—with mo and Aunt Jo, and with my husband, Claire— lam married, dear, married, and have a dear little baby boy— and you shall stay with us all the rest of your life." "I cannot— will not!" panted Claire, fighting hard to free herself. " Ob, let me go—let me go— me go, Gay, and do not force me to tell you that which will make you loathe and shrink from me."

" Nothing can do that, Claire—nothing—" " Oh, you are mad! You only think that because you do not know, and—oil, the agony of it ! My God, the agony of it ! I thought they had told you; I thought you knew, or I would have died before speaking to you." " Thought I knew what, Claire ?"

" I can't speak it— can't tell it. I can't let you hear it from my lips, unless—oh, let me go before you drive me mad I"

"I will not let you go," answered Gay, valiantly. " Say what you will, do what you may, I will not'let you go, Claire. You are my* sister, and I will not release my hold upon you until you have explained your wild words, explained why I find you in rags like a beggar, and why you wish to rush away and leave me like this. My home is here, and yours shall be here also. I have not found you to lose you like this j I have found you to love and keep you by me all the rest of your life, and so—l will not let you go!" "You must— shall!" panted Claire, fiercely. " Will you force me to tell you the truth rather than have you contanimated like this ? If so—let me go— God's sake, let me go! lam not fit to breathe the same air with you. lam not a fit creature for Lady Gabrielle Quivers to even touch, much less embrace' and kiss and call by the name of sister. For you the wine, for me the lees; for yon the ties of honourable wifehood, happy motherhood, and the blessing of the world's respect; for me the finger of scorn, the voice of contempt and the hopeless existence of an outcast. lam a lost creature! lam a fallen woman! Now, will you let me go, Lady Gabrielle Chilvers ?" As she spoke, the arms that clung about her dropped suddenly—a dead weight in the gleam of the sunset she saw her sister stagger back as though she had been stabbed, and lean heavily against the tree behind her to stay herself from falling, saw all the light and life and colour fade slowly but surely out of her face and leave it grey and hard, like a death-mask, and then, terrified by'her own work, she sprung forward and clutched her. "Gay-oh, Gay!" she cried out in a startled voice. "Don't fall—don't faint! You made me tell it. I didn't want to, but you made me do it, dear." "Yes, yes, I know," gasped Gay, faintly; "I forced you to tell it, but—but even SO, I don't believe it— I won't believe it!"

"You must!" said Claire, almost fiercely. "It was because of that that Aunt Jo and grandpa told you I was dead." ," Merciful heaven! It began so long ago »« that 5"

"Yes, it began then—began and ended then. All, my God! you do not, you cannot think that there has been more than just one dark page in my history, Gay ? And even then I was not to blame-even then my sin was an unconscious one, for—oh, I believed myself a wife—a true and lawful wife, Gay, and I never knew that I was not until George Laverock lied and left me-flcd, leaving mo only a brief, cold note, stating that our marriage was only a sham and a mockery, that the man who had married us was not a real clergyman, but only one of his friends dressed up for the occasion, and informing me that the little pledge of our love which was one day to bear him would be a namelessMd dishonoured waif, born out of wedlock. ;! "The coward !" /";,' -"Ah, hush!- I cannot bear to have you ray it, Gay, though in my heart I know that he deserved, and still deserves, the title, for, oh! I loved him so, and God help and pity me; but, coward though he was, 1 shall love him till the day I die. : All, we were so happy,- so happv in bur secret love, and be Was always so good and kind and tender to me that the blow, when it fell, came with a crushing violence i that almost killed me. When his letter was banded to me-I was it home at the time, having, as you must recollect, returned • for a : short .time from boarding-school in: order to fill ' tne post Of bridesmaid to-my friend Nettie Rogerswhen his letter was handed tome and I read its contents I fell down like one dead, ana remembered no more until I awoke to find myself lying on my own little bed and grandpa :and,Aunt' Jo bending over me, with. such ! looks as I had never seen Upon, their faces .before, ;' •

cateTS ow . nad neither ring nor certifiboth nte fM Ge ° r 8 e had »4 kept eaftr V T°" Wllich r will expla „ of St I „S randpa ™ uld belie ™ nothing oi wnat I said, nor would he forgive me far liaving even a secret friendship with a man ii C| liad never heard until that hour. again, either by word or deed, seek to hold ;1 • b) ;. TOii cr decd ' se & to bid any communication with you or with amsum of 200 dollars into my hand and then ordered me out of the house de-»i f« U nn re , Uead t °, me ' aud yo« shall be dead, to all who ever knew you,' he said as he thrust me out, ' Go, Magdalen ! You Wrt.*"* V disgrace y<»« family. Go ! En 5 *»' °!j m ruin and bid «™ kee out of my path for if I ever meet him, St d, ,. who lie really is, tell himlor 1 don t believe your story about his being a stranger m these parts-tell him I'll have Insrascallylifcbehewliobemay!' then he thrust me out, and with his parting curse ringing in my ears I fled like a hunted hare. From that moment a sort of delirium seized .upon me, and made the next three days of my life almost a blank, for I can remember nothing of them, save that they were divided into intervals of walking and running through strange . places, seeping under hedges and bay stacks, and hen coming to my, senses again in a queer little village, which, I was told when I asked, bore the name of Drascott, and was situated close to the boundary line between Maine and New Hampshire. I think I must Have looked and acted very strangely, for I noticed as I passed down'the village street that people stared at me from the cottage doorways, and that what few pedestrians I encountered gave me a wide berth and made hurriedly for the other side of the street as soon as I came within a few yards of them; but it was not until some children who were playing by the roadside sprung up at my approach and fled, shrieking out to each other, 'Look out for the crazy woman !' that I awoke to a sense of my own danger and realisation of what all this staring and dedging had meant. "They thought me mad, those people, and as I was a stranger in the neighbourhood, 1 ran the risk of being arrested as an escaped lunatic—a risk which was fraught with the deadliest peril to me, since I dared no longer acknowledge my identity nor tell from whence I had come; so, in a sort of panic of terror, I ran on until I came at last to the railway station. "A train which had been flagged by the stationmaster because of some defect which hud been discovered in (he rails a half-mile away was standing at the station when I arrived, and, having asked whither it was bound, and been told that it was the express from Augusta to Boston, I took a portion of the money grandpa had given me, purchased a ticket, climbed aboard, and, the work of repairing the defective rail being completed, a few minutes afterward was soon speeding away on my long and aimless journey to Boston. " All through that day and all through that night the train went speeding on, but- when or how it reached its destination I shall never know, for long ere that time came darkness had shut down over my tortured senses, and when I opened my eye's again it was to find myself lying in the whitewashed wards of a charity hospital." " Oil, Claire ! In a charily hospital ?" " Yes, Gay—in a charity hospital. From the nurse who attended me I learned that I had been found unconscious when the train reached London, had been turned over to the charge of the police, and so became a public charge in—in the maternity ward I" " Claire !"

"It is true, dear—true ! Its birth hastened by its wretched mother's sufferings, George Laverock's little son had come into a world it was fated never to look upon, and —and they had buried my baby without letting me see ids little face, that I might bear the image of it in my memory until I join him in the world beyond tho'grave. He had been born dead, they told me—born dead, and buried two days before I recovered consciousness,, and, with child and husband both taken from me, I was alone in the world—alone ! alone ! alone !"

With one quick cry of anguish and sympathy, Gay caught her to her heart and their sons rang out in concert.

CHAPTER XXIX. IF ANY CALM, A CALM DESPAIR. For one whole minute—a minute so fraught with anguish that it seemed almost .endless —they clung together thus and spoke not a single word, then quite suddenly: " Oh, Claire !" said Gay, with a little throb of pain in her voice and a great wrench of agony at her mother-breast. "Oh, Claim ' how did you live through it '! What should I do, I wonder, if my baby were taken from me ? But to be taken ere ever I had looked upon his darling little face— it would kill me, I think ! My heart would break and I should die the moment I lost him." " Oh, hush ! hush I" said Claire, huskily. "I thought so at the time, but—but I have grown wiser since. Hearts c'o not break so easily, my sister. It. would be better if they did, but they don't. Tney only wring and ache, only writhe and sLrivel like a glove that is thrown upon the fire, and which, even as a shrivelled and shrunken cinder keeps its own shape 'till. Oh, if my heart could only have oroken thenbroken and killed me, as I prayed iVd that it might, how much that is bitterer than death I might have been saved. But it didn't—it wouldn't—for my retribution was to live, and, though I reached out my hands eagerly for Death to clasp them, he passed me by, and, with nothing to hope for, nothing to desire upon earth, I steadily grew stronger, until at length I was discharged from the hospital as being quite well again. " When I began to realise that my prayers were in vain and that death was not to be granted to me for the mere asking, I resigned myself to my unwelcome fate as best I could, and during the long days of my convalescence I lay there staring at the white-washed walls, and from wondering, at first, what I was to do with my life, took at length to laying plans for the future, and laying them with such desperate earnestness that, on the very day of my discharge from the hospital, I went to the Boston office of the Cunard Line, and, taking a third of what still remained of the money grandpa had given me, I secured passage upon the Catalonia, and two days later set sail for England." " For England?" repeated Gay. ,; How odd that you should think of coming here, and at a time when you had no one belonging to you upon this side of the ocean. Why did you take such a strange step as that, Claire ? ' Was it because you were eager to put as great a distance as your means would allow between you and the land where you had suffered so much'/" "No," said Claire, with a sharp, dissenting gesture. "It was because the man who wionged me was an Englishman, and, having deserted me so cruelly, I hoped that in England I should again find a clue to him. I came to seek George Laverock, Gay, but came to seek him in vain, for I have never found a trace of him in all the time I have been here." '•'/ It was the third time she had mentioned the man's name, but it was the first time that Gay had taken any positive heed of it.. "Laverock?" she repeated, wrinkling up her brows, "Laverock, Laverock ! Where have I heard that name before 1 It seems

very familiar.",,.." i ..•.; '■•"■■ " No doubt," said Claire, with a sigh, for you are mingling with grand folk nowadays, Gay, and there is a Lord Laverock who—" "• "Is Mr. Cyril Chepstow's uncle!,:. Of course," interjected Lady Gay, "I knew I had heard the name . somewhere, but—oh, Claire, Claire, it can't possibly be that man, "No, Gay. i' When I landed I thought perhaps it might be, but one sight of the man put that hope to death." .- " You saw him, then ?" ■ r "Yes, I did more;' I called upon him. Close inquiry convinced me that, there■; was only one family in the kingdom bearing the odd name of. Laverock, and they .were the Laverocks of Moat' Laverock, in, Hertfordshire. .; I.went"there and saw the only living representative.of the race. He was an old man, Gay, and if I had hoped that the man who'had wronged me might possibly be' a son 1 of his that hope was also put ..to death at once. - :• For Lord Laverock not only bore not the slightest resemblance to my loved and \

lost George, but he was a. confirmed' old bachelor, and a rabid woman-hater to boot, and, after a few biusque words to me, ordered me out of the house, and commanded bis servants to set the dogs upon me if I ever came there again. ■' -. ~' ' . / ~. : .'• • "So I went back to London, and, as my money began to dwindle, to poverty and want, and as the months sped by I began to feel the task was hopeless, and that I should never' again meet the man who had made me such a cruel reward for my love and tiustinhim." "I won't weary you, Gay, by telling you How, when and where I met that man and learned to love him. I'll only tell you, dear, what he told namely, that his name was George Laverock, that he was 'touring through America for pleasure, and that he was tne only son of a very rich and highborn gentleman, who had forbidden him to marry during his—Mr. Laverock's—lifetime. But George told me that his father was very old; very-feeble, and that the end of his life could not be far distant. So he persuaded me to marry him in secret, and prevailed upon me never to breathe a word of our union to any living soul. "I promised all that he asked of me, and, stealing out of the house one night, drove with him to a town ever and ever so far away from Tiverton Corners—a town whose very name I did not know, and of which in my excitement and the darkness of the night I noticed nothing which might serve me to identify the place again— there in a little cottage we were married by a bent old clergyman—or, at least, I thought him such until that cruel letter came—and our union was witnessed bv a couple of people who looked like farm labourers, and both of whom signed the certificate and the register after the ceremony had been performed." "But what names did they sign, Claire? That ought to have helped you to prove the marriage, for you know that in America it is the deed, not the name under which it is performed, that constitutes the marriage contract, and if you can only remember the names of those witnesses "I can't," interjected Claire, dolefully. " Everything had been prearranged, and the minister was waiting for us when we arrived. If George addressed the clergyman by name, I do not remember to have heard it, and the names of the two witnesses were never mentioned at all." " But you signed them to the certificate and to the register, you say?" " Yes,, but in each case it was after I had signed, and, as for the certificate, George took charge of thatand of my wedding ring also, once we were outside— I was afraid to keep cither, lest Aunt Jo, in her poking about through my effects, should discover one or the other, and so make matters awkward. George had them both, Gay, and when he disappeared he look them with him." " The coward! The scoundrel!" " Hush! Don't say it, dear, for I loved and trusted him so much that a word against him hurts me even yet. I can't believe—l won't believe—that he deserted me willingly, for, oh. lie was so kind and tender, Gay, and In!, hist wind to me was given with a caress. I'll only believe that his cruel, mercenary, nard-ne.ii'led father found out our secret and dragged him t'rum me, and that, if grandpa had only let me stay at the farm a little longer, my George might in time have come back to me."

"Do you think it, after that cowardly letter, telling you that your marriage to him was a mockery? Oh, my heart! what a wonderful thing is woman's faith! Oh, Claire! Claire! and to think that we two should meet again like this." " But meet only to part. Gay, for I will not drag the shadow of my life over the bright sunlight of yours. Dear, I told you that I only came to look at you, and now I will go again. I never knew, I never dreamed that you were here—in England—until I read the other day in a newspaper I found at Waterloo Station, where I was selling matches, the maiden name and the history of that happy and thrice-blessed Lady Chilvcrs, in whoso honour some great lady auchess, I think was giving so many entertainments, and when I did know— I was so weak and foolish that I had to come here and try to steal a peep at you, even though it meant a two-days' walk. And now that the aim and end of that long tramp has been accomplished—KOod bye, Gay, good-bye, and God for ever bless yon!" " Su stop! slop! You must not— shall not go like this!" cried out Gay, suddenly. " Claire, if you leave me now I shall never forgive you. You must not, you shall not go back to that dreadful London and to the horrors of want which your very appearance tells mo you are experiencing there." " That you live 1 dare not now admit to Hugh—my husband—for your dreadful story has made a coward of me. and for his sake I cannot, dare not brave tho county's sneers nor my darling's anguish, should he know that even so much as the shadow of a disgrace rests upon the family of the woman lie lias made his wife. But I can and I will look after you, Claire. I shall hate you—yes, hate you if you refuse to let me do it. lam rich now—rich, Claire—and, though I may notf as I hoped when first we met, ask you to share my home and stand before the world, as dear to me as you are and ever will be in secret, I love you—oh, I love you as well as ever, my darling, darling sister!" " Gay, this is madness."

"No, it isn't, Claire—it is only love, I won't see you want for anything while I am rolling in riches, and so—ami so— Wait a moment. Hide there behind those bushes while I run back to the house and get some money and some clothing for you, you dear old love." But. Gay!" " If you are not here when I return I shall hate you, Claire Bolton— you, remember that!" Then, not waiting for any reply, away she darted like a hare. " Don't tell Aunt Jo— fur God's sake, don't!" called out Claire after her as she sped away; then, as Gay quavered back a faint "All right," she crept off into the shadow of the grove and, with a burst of tears, slunk down out of sight behind « clump of laurels and gathered her rags about her.

(To bo continued.)