A LURKING PHANTOM: A STORY OF LOVE AND MYSTERY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12400, 13 October 1903, Page 3

A LURKING PHANTOM: A STORY OF LOVE AND MYSTERY.

BY JOHN BLOUNDELLE-BTJRTON. Author of "The Hispaniola Plate," "The Year One," " A Vanished Rival," etc.

CHAPTER XVIII. NOT HIS WIFE. Some slight reference has been made earlier to the Chantreys of Dorsetshire, of which family Lady Bottrell's late father had been:. member; and, although the vicar of Winchmore never received from that family the due acknowledgment of his kinsmanship to which he considered himself entitled, a certain amount of intercourse had been kept up. Rhoda Chantrey, as she really was in those days before her marriage with Lambert, was occasionally asked to pay a visit to Chantrey Manor, and ample presents of game and other good things clear to the vicar's heart arrived every Christmas; when the family took a house in town for the season Rhoda went up for a day or so, and Mr. Chantrey also went up on another day and dined in solemn state with the Mr. Chantrey who regarded himself as the head of the family. " Though," as the vicar would sometimes complain peevishly to Rhoda, after one of these unexciting affairs, "what on earth he does to show that he is our head I really don't know. He has never done anything for us except send hares and pheasants sometimes, though he has some port in his cellar which would make an anchorite sing —which he does not send !—and he wouldn't lend me a five-pound note if I asked him to do so. Head of the family indeed! You might think he was a duke at least.." Amongst Mr.. Chautrey'sthe "head-of-the- family" Mr. Chantrey—sons, and they were many, there were, however, one or two who saw fit to admire Rhoda. Ralph, who went into the army, and eventually married the daughter of an official in the Indian Civil Service, told her he loved her, but he did not find his love reciprocated ; George, who went into the navy, suffered a similar defeat; while Augustus* who went to the Bar, did not tell her he loved her, but, in an airy, semi-serious and semijocose manner, told her he would have loved her if he could afford to do so. And girl—like, Rhoda preferred the bright, worldly young barrister, who told her he couldn't afford to love her, to the rather heavy young soldier and the rather colourless "young naval officer, who had each bleated out a cort of calf-like love for her.

With Augustus, much intimacy was maintained owing, principally, to his being in London when Rhoda became ostensibly Lady Bottrell. He was frequently invited to dinner in Park Lane and to other functions as well, and as he was always bright and pleasant, full of gossip and chatter—sometimes even of scandal!— and knew everybody who was anybody about town, even Sir Geoffreyemerged from his husk, and used to call him "my dear fellow," and make him welcome in a patronising kind of way. In his heart, however, he thought he would have preferred more to have been able to make Ralph, the soldier, welcome; the baronet being one of those individuals who did not recognise anything much, or anybody, who ; as outside the small circles in which he moved or had once moved. Then, at this moment, a shocking thing happened; a blow fell upon Sir Geoffrey from which he found great difficulty in recovering 1 . He saw Augustus' name in a magazine as the author of a very bright and witty story in the form of a comedietta; a little later, he read a most eulogistic criticism on a novel by the same individual, and, a little later still, the notice of a play by him which had almost succeeded, but did not quite do so. "I hope Augustus won't get too conceited," Lady Bottrell said, when Sir Geoffrey bad handed the paper to her with a disapproving thumb marking the spot where the notice of the novel appeared, and after she had read it. "Conceited, Rhoda!" he exclaimed in an almost sepulchral tone. " Or too patronising," Maud added, as she read the criticism her mother showed her. She was then fifteen and quite able to form hei opinions on most things in general. "Patronising!" Sir Geoffrey remarked. "What do you both mean, pray? Conceited. Patronising? To whor??" "Authors and actors, and singers, and artists, too, do get conceited sometimes," Lady Bottrell said. "If they are made much of." ' "Especially when they are very young, Maud. said. "Mr. Devereux, who is always at Lady Milbourne's, is conceited, and he is only twenty-six. He, says he has been told that he has made more women cry than any writer since Byron." " I should think your cousin," Sir Geoffrey said, with a stern and condemnatory glance at Lady Bottrell, as though she were responsible for Augustus'divergencies from his proper calling, "will be very likely to make some men cry. His brothers to .wit, Ralph and George." "I don't suppose he cares twopence whether they cry or not," Maud said, without the slightest" fear of her father's opinions or wrath. "They ought to be .proud of being connected with him." Sir Geoffrey said no more, but he left the room with the full conviction that, for the future, it would be best for Augustus to receive fewer invitations to his house. A man whose name could confront him on every hoarding in letters of crimson on a black ground—a man who had two brothers following such honourable callings'as that of a soldier and sailor, a man who, himself, was, what Sir Geoffrey termed, a member of a highly respectable calling, and yet could do this thing—had better be kept at arm's length. But the keeping of him at arm's length entailed a good deal of trouble, though trouble not caused by the graceless Augustus but by Sir Geoffrey's and Lady Bottrell's own friends. For these friends would ask the baronet where that delightful Mr. Chantrey was, and why they never saw him now? They would speak of him as brilliant and clever and popular, while one old dowager with a mundane past, who asked Sir Geoffrey if he was not extremely proud of his popular cousin by marriage, wondered what on earth was the matter with the man, and questioned Lady Bottrell a little later as to whether her husband suffered from any internal disease which produced excruciating spasms. But, all the same, Augustus did not get as many invitations to Sir Geoffrey's as he had once clone, and, gradually, there grew up a coolness between Park Lane and the handsome flat in which that vaurien now dwelt.

It was to this flat, situated in some mansions close by, and possessing from the front' windows a charming view over the river and Battersea Park, that Augustus Ghantrey now led his cousin, closely veiled, on the night when he had saved her from suicide. For saved her he had, by one of those mercies of Providence which everyone but the fools of this world acknowledges to be of frequent occurrence. Leaving his flat at the very moment when Rhoda Bottrell was about to take that plunge into the river which would end all her worldly troubles, Augustus, who was in hopes that a cab going either to, or coming from, the distant cab rank would soon pass him, crossed the road to the pavement on the riverside. Then, as he did so, and while passing by one of the sets of steps leading down to the water, he saw a darkly-clad figure standing on the bottom one of those steps; he saw the arms uplifted with an action of either despair, determination or supplication—and, a moment later, that figure was dragged back from the liver's edge and was struggling frantically in his arms. As it so struggled, the hat, fell off its head, the hollow eyes glared into his, and he recognised his cousin. "Rhoda!" he exclaimed. "Rhoda. My God!"

" Yes, Rhoda But let me go. Let me go. I sav." " Never. Yon must, have gone mad. Come with me?" Augustus added, sternly. " Whe-e to?" " No "natter. Come, I say. Come at onr*. I shall not leave you. 1 Come." In ouier circumstances, this' handsome nun who. not twenty minutes before, had issued from those mansions dressed for the Amenta,,', migl ' have caused some, astonishment in the minds of the hall-porter and the lift-boy by returning with a woman clad

in rather shabby black; one whose figure still showed, signs of youth and grace, ana whose face was so impenetrably veiled. ; But, in those functionaries' minds, anything that Augustus Chantrey might do was not to be judged in the same way that the actions of ordinary individuals are j u "j> ec !: He was:"a novelist and a dramatist, and all sorts of strange-looking and strangely-dress-ed people, they remembered, were in the habit of coming'to his flat at all hours , of the day and night. -" That was sufficient, while, "if they ever troubled their heads to think about Mr. Chantrey at all, it was only to wonder how he could afford to live in such handsome rooms when, - according to all accounts they had ever heard of such people, he ought to have been frequently engaged in pawning his watch or borrowing silver from anyone who would lend it to him. '' "Now," Augustus said to Lady Bottrelk as he placed her in a deep chair in front ot a fire that his servant had made up before setting out for the evening to witness one of his master's plays- which he had been provided with a ticket: " now, Rhoda, you must confide in me. This is an awful state of affairs," while, .is he spoke, he did so very solemnly. "Positively awful. I have never received such a shock in my life. You must tell me what this means."

"I can't," Lady Bottrell gasped, "I can't. I—— oh! Augustus, lam a ruined, disgraced, degraded woman." " Rhoda !" this handsome cousin of hers himself gaspedthis man who knew the world so well. • " Rhoda!" though, a moment later, he added almost in a whisper, " But, even if it is as you say, nothing justifies an attempt on your life. Rhoda t tell me all. All. I am still a lawyer, as" you know. I may do something, if it is not too late. If you have not been" "Augustus!" she exclaimed, interrupting him, and now there stole into her cheeks the first faint tinge of colour that had appeared on them for many a day. " Augustus, don't misunderstand me. lam all that I have said, only—only—not—not— my words may have implied ; what they may have led you to think." ■ " Thank heaven! But, then, what is it?" "loh, my God! I must tell someone, confide in someone or— — shall go mad. I shall kill myself, as I meant to do to-night. Ah! Ah! I cannot bear it. I cannot," and a moment later she burst into tears. Into a torrent of tears, a tempest of weeping which racked her frame and seemed to tear her to pieces. "Poor Rhoda!" Augustus Cha.ntrey said. " Poor Rhoda," and he touched her hand very gently as he spoke, while from his own eyes the tears ran too. "Poor Rhodfi! Yet," he added, "this will do you good. Cry! Cry! Cry your heart out now. Then' you will be more calmmore at ease.'' While still she wept, he rose and went to a great sideboard, or buffet, in black oak, and, opening a little cupboard in the top, took out a decanter of brandy and some glasses, after which he put some < f the spirit in one of the glasses and made her drink a little. "It will do you good," he said, "it will calm you." Then he himself swallowed about a sixth of a. tumbler full, saying that his own nerves were thoroughly upset by the events of the last hour. A little later on, noticing that, in the space of a few moments, her weeping had become less violent and that the tempest of tears had almost spent itself, he said: " You are better now. Can you talk? Can you tell me your trouble confide in me?"

"Not to-night," she murmured, "not tonight. Andandsince lam not dead, as I meant to be, I must go home. I—it is getting late. Yet how can I enter my house dressed like this? I put these clothes on thinking I should never go back again." "How," Augustus asked, " did you leave your house in them? You must have been seen to do so."

" I had them on when I left, but I had a handsome long cloak over them." "Where is it now?"

"I left it at the ladies' waiting-room at Victoria." "And the, ticket!"

"Ah! the ticket," she exclaimed. "Oh! I should have destroyed it, but I forgot. Yet I thought I had done away with eveiy mark of my identity.' If my body had been found," and she shuddered and turned white as sl>e spoke, that would have led to my identification.'* , '*• ,

"Doubtless," Augustus said, while himself to the lips as he heard his cousin speak thus ; as, too, he thought of what she would have been.by now if Providence had not thrown them together at that most crucial moment. " Doubtless. Yet now it will enable you to arrive at home unsuspected. When you are recovered we will go to Victoria and get the cloak and then 1 will take you home." " " I will go new— at once. Oh, Augustus, pity me!" "God"knows I do. But, in return, yon must confide in me. Then, perhaps, I can help you, too." " Nothing can do that. Nothing." " What is it you have done? Come, tell me. lam your cousin. Remember the past. Remember," speaking very slowly, " that — Iloved —once. Tell me." For a moment she stood before him, swaying a little so that he thought she was going to fall, and he put his arm round her to support her ; then, suddenly, she rallied herself, stiffened herself, and put her hands up to his shoulders and gazed into his eyes. "Augustus," she said, and she spoke plainly and distinctly now. "I am not Geoffrey's wife. My poor, innocent Maud is not his lawful child. lam nothing —" "My God! you are mad. I saw you married to him. Was I not at the wedding?" (To ho continued daily.)