LONDON LOVERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13707, 25 March 1908, Page 10

LONDON LOVERS.

♦ —— BY MARGARET BAILLIE-SAUNDERS. Author of "Saints in Society."

? ÜBIJSIIED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

COPYBIGHT. CHARTER XVl.—(Continued.) He did not reply, but went out. Over the park trees, black and massed against the dim winter night sky, a few stars were faintly trying to shine, a little baffled byfog and the. smoke of London. He walked some way, then got into a cab and drove down to Vere-street. It was 9.45 but- there was a late telegraph office here. He dismissed the cab and went in, laying bis lighted cigar, fire-end uppermost, against the wire grating in one of the little divisions, as he wrote out a telegram with the spluttering pen fastened to a chain that he found provided. It was very short, and was addressed to the Hon. Ronald Waring. 16. Portgrave Square, curtly informing that gentleman that the "tip about ' lis" fluke. No go. Advise L. to keep clear of it at all hazards." It wasn't interesting, and the busy clerk behind the desk thought, if he thought anything, that this leisured-looking man with his evening clothes gleaming under his smart open coat, and his still lighted cigar awaiting him, was some " sporting swell," as he put it, and rather envied him.

A little later Ronnie got the telegram and gave vent to a low whistle. "That's the first time I've caught old Lueason going off the track !" he said. Making a fool of himself." But Moid went home, along the echoing, narrow pavements of Harley-street, with its double line of lights tapering into a point at Brunswick Place, in a sadly i'ar-from-exalted frame of mind, even weighted down by depression. It was ip-kill work, he said, trying to keep to some of the things one read about —and expected in other people. For he was quite honest enought to admit that what he had expected of Winnie he ought to be capable of doing himself. Otherwise, he said to himself, his strictures upon her were " cheek." He cut back into the park by Park Square, ruminating on the for and against of such a code of ethics as his new profession involved ; yet, if he had but known it he might- have saved his time, for in such a choice he was no longer so much his own master as he had been before in the old days. There was something in him, strange, and powerful, and insistent, that fought against the rest of him when he wanted to do things that of old he would have regarded as perfectly legitimate. It tore him if he disobeyed, yet it also tore him if he obeyed, he said. The birth-struggles of the new man are full of rage and stress in proportion to his capacity. If, as he traversed the dimly-lighted terraces, with their shrub- ■ beries and low stone palings, he felt on this gusty January night, something like a ship that has embarked on a fair voyage only to be dashed and stranded on some hopeless coast, it does not follow that his course" was a wrong one. It is better to be a good rattling shipwreck than a toy tug on tin railway lines. So Leger escaped " Rand Rubbers" and - all its chaotic consequences, unaware of a man having given his venture a thought, much less a bitter, bitter battle. And Lueason went back to his monotonous, self-set existence, growling at it and • at Leger, but nevertheless in some inarticulate fashion supported by a certain sense of strength that-seemed to grow in him, and which sometimes cropped up in him suddenly in the- midst of business and gave him a sort of vague, though half-grim satisfaction. A • -few *! days following this incident Ronnie told him they had bad'news of his brother's health. "He showed signs of . anxiety. .',.-,■■-. -~r*f ~.■ "He's at San Moritz, isn't he?" said Lucason, recollecting the ashen face at that: breakfast table the morning of his baptism. "*.] ,- "Yes, they're all there. We heard he was better, and all was going well. But there's got to be an operation, we've just heard. I don't like the look of it. Of course, we knew it might. have to come off, but he seemed better. But now he's got to have it after all." Now all this time Lady Sarah had not left tier usual course of vigorously campaigning in the cause of her daughter's love affairs, and sad as was the news of her elder son's illness it certainly served as a check to those terrific plans', plans which were beginning to get on even Winnie's nerves. She had said to Winnie one of those days before they heard from San Moritz, "My dear, something ought to be done to give- colour, just a little colour, to the stories abroad about you and that Mr. Lueason. You see it "saves the situation so perfectly." Winnie flushed, and her face lowered. Oh, I can't do anything, mother," she said. Her mother knew she had refused him, but knew nothing of the money transaction and the consequent embarrasment that even she felt at the idea of meeting him in an ordinary social fashion. " Shall we get Ronnie to invite him casually to meet us somewhere publicly?" said her mother. " It would look well, and would do him no harm. I hear the Fanthawes are coming to town, and their crowing and triumphing will be something too terrible., Wo must do something to protect you. Ronnie could, as a young friend, do it quite' easily and naturally, and yet it would look well, you know, and so natural.'.' But Winnie held out. She was not afraid of Joan Fanshawe, she said. She had her own plans as to that- lady. But she would not hear of Lueason being asked to meet her. In spite of this, however, Lady Sarah several times returned to the Attack and had, in fact, already concocted a fearful and wonderful plan which consisted in making Ronnie take Lueason out to one of the well-known restaurants to dinner on i certain night, and of herself and Winnie tnd a perfectly innocuous escort arriving quite by chance, and so forcing a public ippearance together. But this plot, though borne of many sly nods and head-shakings, and secret repeating* of imaginary exclamations and replies in the privacy of Lady Sarah's own room, was doomed to fail. She had just got to the -part where Ronnie would say, Why, mother, you and Winnie here?" and she would say. "My dear boy. to find you here! We bad just come in, Winnie and I, for a little change and quiet. Oh. really, Mr. Lueason, are vou with my son'.' How do you do? Oh," do let us all sit together, since we have met so opportunely, and make a party!" This they would all do, everybody looking marrellously cheerful and astonished, arid herself keeping Ronnie and the innocuous •scort, who was to be cousin Sholto Filkes, of varale.tte fame, occupied in light and airy chatter while Winnie and Lueason talked together and looked as though they were engaged. Cousin Filkes, being a relation, would add to the gathering"? quite in air of a family party, and he could be sasily hoodwinked out of contradicting Lucason by A sympathetic and respectful inquiry into the nature and uses of his various little pillule bottles, judiciously administered, ami an enthusiastic and gushing agreement in the statement that the conn" try was going to the doss. In fact, Ladv Sarah had almost decided to begin herself by remarking that the country was going to the dogs, as a bright opening to the conversation; and -all was going so well, when she received a telegram from Constance saving that Hardwinter was alarmingly ill. They had been at San Vloritz now for nearly two months, and ■hey had already been warned that he svould have to undergo an operation, and Lady Sarah was the" more prepared now to hear that his illness had reached a crisis. But the fact that Constance telegraphed proved it to be serious indeed tor she was essentially one of those healthy people who have never felt the grasp of mortal illness, a.nd who, as a rule, are utterly unsympathetic, even contemptuous . ibout it in others. Hitherto she had made tight of ner husband's poor health, and regarded it as a moral rather than a physical weakness. 1 But now she wrote and" telegraphed in a far different strain: the opecation was to take place immediately

I Lady Sarah, her whole heart yearning out ! to her sick son in a foreign land, and even to Constance herself, whom she now suddenly regarded no longer as a bogey, but as a .poor, broken-hearted daughter, made immediate preparations to go to them at once by the night boat. It is pathetically characteristic of her that one ot these days she drove down to the city, and asked for Ronnie, and begged his advice, as the head of the family in England, what to do, and what night-boat to take, and asked if lie had any messages. The rather vacantly bland deputy-head of the family came away with her and saw to her preparations with great good humour and some few muddles, but failed to find any messages of a sentimental and appropriate turn rising easily to his lips. His brother and sister-in-law had always sincerely disapproved of him, and though of late he had worked out a reason why they should not, they still mistrusted him too much to In- cordial. Ho said he hoped (he old hoy would pull along all right. He couldn't get out anything more suit-able than that. Lady Sarah thought him almost wickedly cold." She had a glorious capacity herself for producing the correct and picturesque emotion at the light moment, and always expected other people to do so too —she always cried at weddings exactly at the part where they say. "Those whom* God hath joined together let no man put asunder,"' because it decided the matter st) finally; she could cry at the funerals of the merest acquaintances, even enemies, and utter resumes of their lives in which they appear* d in the most glowing colours, whatever she had really thought about them when they were alive. And at the moment she was sincere.

Ronnie saw her off at Charing Cross, and did everything he. could for her comfort lie even offered to go with her as far as Folkestone, but- she "would not hear of it. He was really abashed and troubled about his brother, but even when he left her weeping he could say absolutely nothing about it to his mother. It is so much harder to say sentimental things to sentimental people than it is to say them to practical one.--! Most of us have experienced the difficult v.

He came back about nine o'clock, to find Winnie going off with some friend:-, who had rushed round to fetch her, to a hastily got-up supper party. On* of the friends, an ultra-lively married woman, was constituted chaperon. Ronnie, who could not utter flowery messages to his sick brother, felt distinctly impatient with hi-; sister, and drew her aside as the giddy party he found flung itself into cloak.- and wraps preparatory to Marling. IT" .-aid: " I say. you know, Winnie, he's pretty bad. Can't you get out of this?" " No." said Winnie, "they've driven over from Kensington to fetch me.* And there are some people I want to meet, for a very special reason of my own. It really is a good reason, Ronnie! Is he so ill? I can't do him any good by staying at home." "No; only it's—it's bad form." "Oh, rubbish!" said Winnie. "Who's to know? He won't, and he wouldn't care if he did. Besides, my going here really is important." She went off with her troop of chattering companions, and gave tie- matter no further thought. The next day they had rather better news, and the day following no news at all in the morning. " This they argued was good, and the load of presentiment weighing on Ronnie's mind was lifted. Winnie was due at a bull that night. "I shall go," she said. " Evidently he's better, and it will make no difference." "You won't get me there," said Ronnie; "we might hear further news at any moment."

"Oh. you needn't come. We are all going in'a party. 1 really have a reason for going. It will not do anybody the least" bit of good for me to- stav at home, and just now I must put- a good face upon things. ' I'm determined to do it." Ronnie said nothing on the subject. If I hear he's any worse I shall take the boat over to-night myself, he said. "I can't stand this waiting." So Winnie went off to her ball. She danced into the small hours, and came home at last and slept heavily, the dreamless sleep of the unjust, which appears to be quite as good as that of the just. Next ; morning, When the sun -was high, she rose yawning and crocs. A telegram. arrived as she came down. It was short and simple and terrible. Lord Hardwinter was dead. He had passed away in the night while she was dancing. Ronnie had waited in vain for news, and had at, last gone to the city without it, hoping to receive a message there. But in the utter shock to their grief his people had omitted to remember where he would be at the time, and had not sent, except to Portgrave Square. Lueason, coming in from a meeting during the forenoon, had found an early edition of one of the papers placed on his desk fas' usual, and glancing over it had read the announcement of Lord Hardwinter's death. He sent for Ronnie immediately, lealising with horror that he could know nothing of it. He took him into his inner room and broke the news to him as well as he was ablein the old. terrible formula that people ever adopt for want of a better—''He is ill; is dangerously ill; is dying; is—dead." Not, of course, in so many words, but on that most ancient principle. He took his friend's hand a moment and wrung it, and then came out of the room and cloned the door, leaving him alone with his first shock. It was not until he got outside into the outer office, and had shut the door softly on the sight of the bewildered face And bent yellow head that he realised suddenly that Ronnie was Lord Hardwinter. It now for the first time occurred to him there were no sons, .and Ronnie was the heir. There is something solemn and mysterious in that moment of realising the descent of one man's name on'to another, the strange sudden re-baptism as it were of one we have known by one appellation by the death of a father or--brother—the fateful menace", like the tolling of a bell, of those old words, The king is deadlive the king.'" The dead has" gone, violently and without warning ; his place, his lands, his power, his very name have as suddenly become another's for a little brief time. To-day for me—to-morrow for thee." As Lucason grafiped it, he also grasped another and poignant factthis change would part him from his last link with Winnie. This hoy he bad trained would leave the-dull office to take up the duties 'of his estate and position, would go at once and for good. He and his sister would pass then, finally, into their own world which- was not his world, and his immediate hold over their lives would be lost. Of Winnie he 'had learnt slowly during the last two month's of silence that this was already true, but now this candid blundering boy was going too, he felt a sudden pang'of such real regret that for the moment it shaded his regret for his other friend lying dead. He did not know, till this moment, how completely he had taken these people to his heait, apart from all his shattered dreams of Winnie. And he glanced out over a view of blocked buildings and roofs, duncolotiT ami grey, allowing of about, four inches of sky at the top. and whistled dully to himself, with hi- hands in his pockets. He I; ,d neve;: fell so iinpieturesque in his life before It seemed almost criminal.

'he reign of "February Fill-dvke" was mighty over the land when I ho' body of the dead Hardwinter way brought to its last resting-place in the church he had worked for. The..- had been two weeks of snow in the lonely Sussex downs, and now .1 kind of semi-thaw, with occasional '«'»• had set in. breaking up the pure white sheet into dingy patches interspersed by pools and bogs of black and brackish water in the valleys; on the hilltops the snow still lay in comparative whiteness against a low grey sky. and the bare and desolate tiees raised black amis to it like protecting giants in a lonely land. The roads wen; sliitihlv and hard to pass, and .the air was raw and biting. To the party of mourners thrown together for the time into the walls of Hardwinter Abbey, the prevailing wetness and desolation seemed a part of their own inood. In the mind of poor stricken LadySarah the weather was thus nncheering in a, perfectly .Valine compliment to her (lead sou. It. gave her some sort of vague comfort to think thai Nature was doing the proper thing. Ronnie, bewildered by his new duties, and shinned by the unaccustomed solemnities of life, had insisted on Lucason coinI ins down with him and staying on after

his people arrived, and Constance, when the matter was put to her, had very decidedly seconded the invitation, on the strength of his having been her husbands friend, and strangely enough, one of the last people whose names he had mentioned.

The funeral was to be on a large scale, with the full ceremonial that the dead mail would have loved, and a special train was to run from town to enable friends to attend. The day of it fell grey and bitterly cold, with a wet wind soughing over the moist and sodden fields and flat snow patches, but there was no rain. The ceremonial was like a wan dream of the festival, long years after, to Lucason, who watched it from a quiet corner; the church was crowded—by neighbours, by tenantry, and by people from town. There were representatives of various great personages, one of Royalty, and these wore the usual immovable waxen faces necessary to the performance of their functions. The Royal representative had on a black overcoat with some astiachan on the collar, and looked as enjoyably uncomfortable as deputies of other men's sorrow, especially great men's, are pretty well obliged to look. There seems no other course for them. This one had not known Haiti winter personally, and would have thoroughly disliked him if he had— but he knew it was a sod occasion, and lie knew whom lie represented, and he hoped he wouldn't sneeze jest when they were leading him into his pew of stale--incense had the unfortunate effect of snuff upon him as a ruleand lie must remember to walk slowly enough, as last lime, lie recollected, some flippant relations told him he trotted. He succeeded, in spite of these anxieties, in looking very stately and full of import sitting right in the front -with the light from the mellow candles round the bier falling on to his serious face. The coffin was placed on a catafalque, and surrounded by six immense candles of tawny yellow wax, set in great wooden candle-sticks. When the church was full and the service began, one of the officiating clergy went slowly round incensing it. The choir sang continually, exquisite, sobbing dirge-like things of ancient Latin origin, music that most marvellously held the heart and the senses in its masterly sway till the sense of time was lost, utterly defeated, done away with, and for the moment at least those who felt its spell lost the clear realisation of the present and became merged with the past and the awful, undying future. Lueason was reminded of that golden afternoon in the .autumn when Hardwinter had stood in the sun-mellowed cuancel and held up hi:; th'n hand to him, and said, "God help you, sir." He could hear the thin tones even now, and he recollected the sudden impression of death he had got as the words —almost, it, seemed now, a prophetic impression. Hardwinter lay dead now; he had gone to the beyond from whence there is no returning; he had reached the land where his heart had wandered long ago. Lucason could not feel the sadness of this death as he would have done that of a fuller-blooded and stronger man. Hardwinter had always loved the unseen, now lie had gone to it. lint the effect that his death left on his friend, now he had had time to think about it quietly, was the reality and solidity that it had already given to that unseen. Somewhere, where Hardwinter was now, had become a placea vague place, but still a reality. People who have never lost anyone very dear to them by sudden death, or who have only lost the old, do not trouble themselves much about the life beyond—they leave it to priests and the future. It is only when we stand face to face with the sudden departure from life of one whose spirit was keen and brave and strong that we are forced into some ; sort of speculation as to where they are and what they do. Because we cannot conceive them hut as doing. The hushed body may lie stark and still, eyes closed and hands folded, but something forces itself upon our belief that the self, the ego, the spirit, the essence lives and moves and works. All the poundings of conflicting theologies for ages will not touch that instinctive but sure conviction, which makes us cry out to the dead in the first agony of loss, calling upon them.by name; till churches tell us we must pray for them instead, and other churches say we must not even do that. To Lucason, now, the other world was a settled and decided place 'because his friend had gone there; Hardwinter proved it for him. What, he had thought of, if he thought of it at all, as a nebulous, black, desolate outer darkness, slowly took shape and life with moving forms, principally the form of his friend. He had no doubt of it now whatever. That kind, unselfish, keen spirit that he he had found so inspiring, with all its siring of faults, was deathless, his love told him : it was living somewhere, though it had left them all here without saying "Good-bye." Through his hold on it and his love of it he slowly beheld something of the completed meaning of the faith he had so lightly embraced, and now the priest's voice saying,, "I am the Resurrection and the Life'' had a totally new sound and meaning to him. Hardwinter dead preached to him as 110 amount of his lectures when living could have hoped to do. Robbed of the mortal prejudices and vanities and bigotries, how strong is the pure spirit to leave behind it its message! Lueason brooded from his dark corner, as the solemn dirge proceeded on the synop-. sis, the essence of his friend's life; he forgot then the narrow outlook of his little doctrine-fenced beliefs, or, anyrate _ separated their dross from the gold of his patient charity and self-denial and single-heartedness, "in the death of his friend he saw the true meaning of life. (To be continued on Saturday next.)