THE FOOL'S TAX.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13647, 15 January 1908, Page 10

THE FOOL'S TAX.

[PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT]

BY LUCAS CLEEVE, Author of " The Rose Geranium," " The

Fool-killer." Etc.. Etc.

CHAPTER XXII.

It-was Mrs. Morland who pressed the question the most, wielding the secret which, he realised now, was what had tainted his whole life.

" Don't you see that if you expose these women, they will rake up everything about us, and that it is quite on the cards that the whole story will come out?"

Once more his early marriage, his desertion of Grace Volner, came and looked at him with the eyes of the past, and threatened and derided him. But something new had entered his life, something new and real.

" I don't care if it does," he hurst out; and Mis. Morland shrugged her shoulders.

"I suppose it doesn't strike you that you owe something to ine," she said bitterly. No, it didn't seem to Henry Morland that lie owed anything to this woman, who had never loved him, yet he saw that the world would say that lie-did. How strange it is, that' given the long, experience of the world, the wealth of precedent, the world yet nearly always takes the wrong side, and fails "to understand intricacies! By this time justice should be the salient quality of a world given over to surprises and revelations; but it isn't. Its principal attribute is injustice, a blind injustice, which desires to be unjust if it can. Senator Morland knew, a* if he had seen it written, that the world would take his wife's part, as to-day. in Paris, the smart world pitied Henri de Bois Fendu, and sneered at Bertha.

"After all, with a wife like that, a bourgeoise who married him for his title, who had no savoir-faire, what could she expect? A man like De Bois Fendu needs a refined woman, a woman of a certain age, a woman of the world, a companion of his soul."

What no one would believe was, that he had no sou!.

Antoinette was not at all sorry. She had always been jealous of Berthas beauty, and pretended that Bertha had prevented her engagement to the Due de Grenli; but the old marquise was in despair. She had counted on marriage, and the birth of the child, to have an influence on a son whose vices she knew only too well, and in her prim way she had taken a liking to Bertha. With tears in her eyes she implored her not to expose them all to the scandal of a divorce. And it was settled that for the moment, nothing definite should be done. This much to Lucas Gorham's despair. Berth was to go back with her father, taking the child with her, and when she had rested and grown calmer, they would see what they would do. But the fool's tax had not been paid to the uttermost farthing yet. One morning, on opening the American paper which he had sent him every day, Senator Morland saw his own name in a large and prominent heading. His head swain, and for a moment lie felt as if his heart had stopped beating as he read the words over and over again, without their seeming to have any meaning* Could it be possible that they meant him— Senator Morlaud? He read the'heading again and again, before he fully realised the meaning of the words.

"Senator Morland indicted by the Grand Jurv." . , . Yes, that was what had happened in his absence. As -soon as it became known that Senator Morland had paired for a fortnight in order to go to Europe, Frawley had seized his opportunity. The fact ttiat Morland had gone away at this moment would assist his case, and he must act without further delav. Williams had been to see him, and seemed- inclined to be nasty, and intimated, in reply to Frawley s remark that it was- Morland's business, not his, that if any fuss was made, be, Frawley, would be examined. If he did not act quickly, he might be mixed up in the emLioglio. . , It was easily done: a word whispered to a member of the Grand Jury of the Federal Court of Morland's State, and a hint thai Williams and Barrett could tell a good deal if they would. The senator s letter to Barrett, distorted" by a willing crowd of witnesses, and his sudden disappearance, enlarged upon as evidence of hisdesire to get out of the way. These were the salient facts on which they based their attack, and which, for the first time, seemed to explain his mysteriousness, his serious &nd almost taciturn humour; while those who declared that they would never have imagined that Morland was that kind of man, were awed into silence by Senator Miller's account of how he had tried to quash the " United Merchants Insurance Company." "After all, vou never can tell what a man really is,""<said cue, " till you come to have business dealings with him;" and everyone in the Senate remembered suddenly that they never had had dealingswith' him. This showed how dark he kept everything, working under the rose, as it were, with outside people. And the fact that Frawley had got out of the Insurance Company some time before the Bill dime up. seemed to evidence the fact, that if he hud been taker, unawares, he had at least .severed all connection with a shady corporation. Frawley, not being by any means a fool, paid no tax. Now the subject of discussion in the Senate was whether Morland would come back to be served with the papers and face a trial, or whether lie would send in his resignation and remain abroad. The fact that Mrs. Morland had gone to Paris some time ago without saying when she was coming back, and that his daughter had never returned since lier marriage, seemed to emphasise the fact that he would choose the. Utter course.

But nothing was further from the senator's mind. Whatever the outcome, he would go back, and immediately: and in the innocence of his heart he told himself that he would have no difficulty in clearing himself. Only, under'the circumstances, it. seemed better that Bertha should not return with him. Ho would go back alone, and face it alone, as he had faced all the crises of his life. "Surely you will go with him," Bertha had said 'to'her mother; but Mrs. Morland had an excuse ready at liand, in the fact that at this juncture Bertha needed her presence in Paris, onat some watering-place tliev might elect to go to, till matters were nearer a settlement between the attorneys of the marquis and her own. Now that he had liad the mask wrenched from his personality, as it were, the marquis was showing himself in all his real character. He threatened to keep the child, and insisted on an allowance.

In those days the little count was watched as if he were the heir to a throne, and all the exercise he took was in a carriage, accompanied by his mother, or nurse, or grandmother. The question of the marquis' allowance was on '. which weighed on the senator not a little. Bertha wanted to claim the right to provide for the child, lest he insist, on laving claim to it, and the lawyers, thinking that they had got hold of a good thing tins time, were making their costs as heavy Vis possible. ' Never, perhaps, even when the secret of his life had weighed most heavily in the old days, when he had been afraid of his wife hearing about it, had the senator felt so depressed as he djd the evening he left Paris. Even Bertha's tenderness and sorrow, which had softened ber in no small degree, could not dispel the gloom. If he had been leaving her happy with a man she trusted and loved he would have felt it less he thoughtHe could not dispel the feeling of dread which came over him as the train puffed out of the station,, and he watched Bertha and Lucas Gorham, who had come to see him off, from the window, till he could see them no longer. "Would he ever see them again?" he wondered. If he did, what would lie between the now and then —what with her, what with him?

He had written a full account of the truth of the affair to the papers, and referring to cruel remarks about his absence, announced the day and hour at which he would be at- Washington. The processservers were there to meet him ; so was Mary, and it touched him that she had come.

And the next day he went—although nobody knew what it cost him —to the Senate as usual, and gave notice that three days later he would address the Senate on the subject of the indictment, and leave it to his colleagues to decide whether he was guilty or not. This was not an. ordinary course of procedure in the House, Nbut few paid any attention to it. It would be proved by the Grand Jury Whether he was innocent or not. and till then everyone contented themselves with showing him the cold shoulder.

In these days Lis soul w.i.j given over to bitterness,, and lie rarely vent to the Senate. Once" he had appealed to Frawley. " Frawley, you are not going to let me be tried without a word? You know that a word from you would put it alii right. Haven't we been friends for all these year.:?" " I don't know what you mean. YoU told me that you wanted to make some money, and I put you on to what I thought a good tiling. I was dreadfully busy at the time, and I sent Barrett to you. so that you could find out all abuit it. Of course, I never imagined that you would take his word without going into the matter." Yes, he knew, Henry Morland, that that was what everybody would say: that Frawley had assured him that it was not timber land would not serve him. Frawley would deny it, and if he didn't that would not seem justification enough for the fact that he had taken Barrett's word. That Barrett, should have perjt red himself would astonish nobody; the inspectorships of the L'nited States "are graft-traps, in which a man can hardly be expected to do otherwise than a rat would, under the same circumstances —eat the bait, even if death should come afterwards.

And the fact of his daughter's matrimonial troubles, together with the account of the heavy expenditure and the marquis' list of gambling debt", came just at the wrong time.

"He needed the money." they said to each other, who. if they all did not need money, had most of them at one time or another tried to make some, often by means that, were not more open to inspection than 'hat of the Cherokee timber land, but who delighted to see their friend, their colleague, fall. In those days, nothing but Ma.v -; t°nn»ne-s -Jived him from despair. That ."lid his nervous, feverish desire to live to put things straight- for his children. And there was something else, which, far down in his heart, made him cling to a life which yet held in it no charm, no sweetness, not' the tenderness which, above all men, he needed so much. The desire to at on to the woman he had left, to do something for tin- son he had never seen.

He had been too engrossed of late to think of that, and he had been glad, grateful, that that annoyance, at least, had been spared him. the while the long silence held iu it something ominous.

And those who knew him well, noted that he had grown suddenly old, that his step was slower and more uncertain, and that his head was a little bowed. ]t made Mary's heart ache to see him.

(To be concluded to-morrow.l

ENO'S "FRUIT SALT." A HOUSEHOLD REMEDY FOR PRE VENTING AND CURING BY NATURAL MEANS. All Functional Derangements of the Liver, Temporary Congestion arising from Alcoholic Beverages, Errors in Diet, Biliousness, Sick Headaches, Giddiness, Vomiting, Heartburn, Sourness of the Stomach, Congtipation. Thirst, Skin Eruptions, and Fejora of all kinds.