LONDON LOVERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13725, 15 April 1908, Page 10

LONDON LOVERS.

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

BY MARGARET BAILLIE-SAUNDERS, AntJior of " Saints iii Society."

COPYRIGHT. CHAPTER XIX. —(Continued.) Y,ua.k often accompanied her sister to the club and yet more talked about it; and if >'aomi had spent hours with old Mrs. Lucaion planning the week-end home of rest out in the country, and going into every detail with such untiring care that when she came away she was glad to talk of other things, her sister made up for her gentle taciturnity by talking night and day about - r. Lucason's wonderful goodness, and the "rest" wall-papers, and the poor funny girls, and the princess' interest. If one did the work, the other blew the trumpet. And Lucason, as he showed his guests about his new country place, showed the delightfully slow wits of a good man with regard to these blandishments of Zilla's. " A nice little woman" who could chatter very sweetly, with black eyes thrown up and rather a pinched mouth, over "sweet poor things" by the hour, must, bo all that was desirable ; especially when it all went so prettily with a French frock. He said to himself that she was " vivacious" and " companionable," and because she talked m a thin, appealing treble and kissed all the children she met, he decided that she was " sweet."

Vivacity is very delightful, especially to rather a slow man, and especially in perspective; its capacity lor getting on his; nerves later on, supposing its gamut, 1:1 my limited, does not strike him then, Zilla's was not even an octave—it was only a five-finger exercise, and capable of just that number of variations, if strummed very hard. But to-dav she was a sort of tacit Queen of the Revels, and managed to act it girlishly enough and certainly without anv glaring bad taste. \nd no wonder she was a little, proud. This rising man of affairs, this fine house, this money, were not tilings to be despised. and when all these things were enumerated ho was very nice himself. Zilla willed him " nice " The design for the staircase ami hall decorations she called magnificent, and reflected that when these were finished, as they would be in a few months time, there would bo no one of her rank with such a possession. She said hers. He had not spoken yet, but did not she understand? She said she fully understood. Ho came up to her now, and taking her arm lightly, twisted her little airy form round to point out a stone terrace he was having carried out, further down in the grounds. She turned with him laughingly, nattered by the touch of his hand, though it was withdrawn at once, and the action, was only part of their seve- j ral years of neighbourly ,intimacy. _ Jhey looked together down the undulations of the vet half-finished garden, its velvety (Teen beauty broken here and there dv upturned sods of newly disturbed earth, looking hard and cruel amongst the verdure, like that in a cemetery. It stretched away and seemed only to" melt into a mellow plain and peaceful wooded landscape, showing wide and glorified in the afternoon sun- . shine. The hawthorn blossoms were in had—those "darling buds of May" of Shakespere's—and every bush and tree and hollow of lush grass was goldygreen with new birth and the enchanted light of the golden sun. For once the vivacious one was silent. For her this was fortunate. Lucason looked over the aniline - picture of hits new homestead, and was solemnly and suddenly made captive by a dream that came to him in the spell of'the sunshine, the ancient dream of his fathers, born in lms blood and part of his least conscious self— the dream of home and family, abiding, prosperous, blessed, and set on some state- ' ly hill overlooking rich and peaceful plains; the pleasant vineyard of his race where a man finds his true' being and his life flowers, and bears. fruit according to Jehovah noblest plan and promise. The thing, with its alluring charm, caught his senses, fired in him some dim train of memory or imagination, born of what for, instinctive tradition, who can tell? To be no longer lonely, no longer fretted and weary over the past; to enter into this calm, mellow inheritance and build his own home and his own joys and to complete the sum of his manhood. At his side the little figure in the French gown fluttered and sighed. Was the proposal coining at last? ...He turned from that far-away contemplation of his sun-bathed garden spaces, and ' his suddenly glowing eyes,inet hers, just as ■a- footstep * struck upon 'her ear, and she moved away from him crossly, saying, '"Oh, honker!" as a bare-headed sen-ant hove in view, carrying a salver. .It contained a letter that had just come, but it was marked "immediate." He ■'■: thought he had better bring it, he said. ■■■'~.: Lucason took it absent-mindedly. The • writing was— —was familiar. Suddenly he tore it open'. It was dated May 24, and had been forwarded from Regent's Park.. ;: It asked him, in a quite formal manner, to come up and see the writer to-morrow, May 26, for a few moments. "I have," it ran", " something that I particularly wish to speak to you about," and it was signed, i; "Winifred Waring." The sun went out, the landscape faded', the vineyard, teeming and plenteous, w£,s no more. The dreams of tribe, of faith, of wife, of home,'vanished like smoke, and out of all the desert of all the world stood ? forth a beatftiful, mocking face with troublous eyes—eyes that burnt you, eyes that tore you, eyes whose created pain was better than ail the fulsome human happiness in all the world. The two things warred a moment as he held that little note in his shaking handthe sane tribal instinct and the mad shout of Love's voice over the storm and the torrent, and Love won; Love that blasts and blesses, that curses and caresses, that shakes the soul to its uttermost foundations so that its tree-tops may blossom to the sky. \-.y Poor little French frock!

:s, : CHAPTER XX. A wet wild morning in May, a morning weeping and mourning, and tossing the new brown bud-cradles on its bursting tress with the sudden mad anguish of a child tired and woe-stricken without knowing why. He got into his motor, well wrapped up, and made for the city, but semi-con-scious that the wind and rain came sweeping in his face-, and lashed white and slanting over the half-verdured meadows. It was what could she want with him'' What could it mean? And went surging in his ears in the :.ong of the spring tempest and the sound of his eager, hurrying car. He went to the city first, and that cooled Lira- a little before the hour named, the afternoon, when he was to call and see her. He tried to rill his mind with all the dusty detail of his office work, neglected now for a day or two, but again and again he asked himself that panting question that involved so muchdid she want to be friends again or did .she only want fresh help? In either rase he was unable to judge her, but ah! if it should be the former. He went into her gloomy house and up her staircase, conscious of bringing with him an air of moist storm and stretches of Hying country, though he had removed his motor gear in the hall and was trying to look as decorous as the solemn house demanded. Winnie Mas in the room when he entered. She stood before him tall and straight and grave, half-turned round from the window out of which she had been looking ->ut on to the vision of the rain-dashed B(juJ'« garder&nnd the soft struggles of a few tart" lilacs to still bring forth Home meagre bloom from smoke-blackened stock md stalk. It struck Lucason as a white face that was turned to him in the greyshadowed, darkened room, and the moment tie entered he was conscious of one thing oddly lacking about the placethere wore no flowers. He had never been able yet to imagine that drawing-room of Lady Sarah's without. flowers, preferably half-faded stephanotis, or stale violets; and even the last ti:,ae he had seen Winnie it had been .'in the cloying aroma of her dead brother's bier-flowers. But in this cold sickly light of the May afternoon there was not a flower to be seen, and the whole place '~ struck darkly a.nd chilly to the undoubtedly 1 nervous man who entered it.

. Winnie came forward and, greeted him conventionally, her voice rather fainter and shakier than of old, in spite of herself. She had last seen him in this room, an angry, disappointed lover, then once again a grimly'self-effacing man; and that was nearly a, vear and a-half ago, but now as he strode'into her dreary apartment he carlied, without knowing it, a sort, of atmosphere of power and strength. That- air of self-confidence, absolutely quiet and without assumption, yet so utterly unassailable that we call " presence." Heaven knows what it was; also that he was entirely unconscious of it. But it struck Winnie {■-trangelv, and with a vague, sense of wrong and indignation, that he should come into her dull home on this wet, weeping day, bringing with him that air of power and settled possession, when she herself was nervous and unhappy. This calm-faced business man did not look in The least like a suppliant any longer, and even as- she realised this fact she noticed with irritation the sudden charm of the crisp '"kink" in his dark hair at that side of his head where the cold afternoon light fell on it, and showed up the warm coppery lights here and there, and the warm brown of health on his dark cheek. She had altogether forgotten that she must face a man whose personal fascination to her lay in nis appearance of hidden fierce vigour of some unnameable sort: she said to herself she wished she had had a fire lighted was quite chilly enough to-day.

She spoke of this and one or two other trivial things lightly and nervously. He did not sit down, so neither did she, but she fidgeted a little amongst her books and with a blind cord, and talked to him hurriedly about his house in the country and his work and his success.

He answered her rather mechanically but with coolness and self-possession, no longer in the tone of the pantingly expectant lover. But nevertheless he was watching her steadily and intently, unable to grapple with all the tumbling emotions the sight of her, and the change in her, had called up. How pale she looked, how much graver, and her eyes—weren't they larger or sterner or something? And, good heavens! wasn't she, could it bo?—wasn't she shabby? He was not much of a judge of women's clothes, but even he thought she was that. He expected to find her in mourning, and this was doubtless lutlfmourning, being grey ; but it was an old dress, revived from the days before her brother's death, a limp old voile that clung to the slight figure in folds too clearly wanting in crispness to be anything but old, even to Lucason. He took an involuntary glance round the room; it was not changed except in so far as a year of London .smoke and grime will change any room. He turned to Winnie, who still stood fidgeting nervously. He saw that he must speak. "I had your letter, and came up irorn the country at once. You said you wanted to tell me something - '" She took his sudden swerve into business as a hint to her to be more business-like, and rallied visibly. *' Oh, certainly—yes, thanks so much. I will not keep you. ' I expect you are busy." "No, not at all," he said, still frankly studying her; all this was very different to what he had expected to find, and he spoke mechanically, still occupied with his own overpowering thoughts and emotions. But Winnie took his silence for another and more obvious feeling embarrassment of indifference confronted by the eld object of a dead passion. .She therefore drew herself further away, and gathering a louder and colder voice to her aid, said: "It is a matter of business. You recollect, Mr. Lucason, that a year and five months ago you lent me a sum of money to pay a debt about which I confided in you?"* She saw him nod; he meant it toe a bow, but he was too eager and nervous to do it well. '" I returned you half of the sum, and hold your receipt." Again lie bowed; he thought he began to see where she was leading. Good heavens; their tales of her were true! She was still a gambler, " That left me," went on Winnie, "with one hundred pounds. Fifty I had, of course, paid out to—to— original person to whom I was in • debt. lam obliged now to tell you that before returning you the hundred that I had already broken considerably into the remaining fifty—for— my own uses. I did it at first without thinking; when I realised it, a lot had been spent." " Great Scott, she wants more!" he was saying to himself. He did not know it, but in his disappointment ho was looking at her coldly and sternly; he was contemplating her as having actually sunk so low that it was awkward and wretchedly uncomfortable to stand here and listen to her broken attempts to reach the subject. He must assist her, then. "I see, I see," he said impatiently. "It does not matter what you did with it. It is past. I was glad" "It does matter what 1 did with it!" flashed Winnie, suddenly loud of voice and stern of eye. "' Yen need not tell me," he said, " I never asked. If you like to drag up an act of old friendship and insult —" "Old friendship!" The very aloofness of the term used in that almost dictatorial voice from this once ardent lover pricked Winnie like the touch of cold steel. " That is enough. I insist on being heard now," she said. "Itis I who am insulted by your demanding silence in such a matter! I tell you fifty pounds went to Harry Leger; sixteen to a milliner who was awaiting payment; another twenty to a furrier; a few odd pounds in small personal expenses; when I returned you the one hundred I had only eight pounds left out ofthe other. ~ You understand?" " Yes, since you will explain. But, Miss Waring, I have my pocket book here with me; we are old friends. If you are in any further difficulty"—he began pulling his leather case out. of a breast pocket. " Stop! how dare you!" cried Winnie, her white face suddenly on fire and aflame. "Put that thing back, at once, please! I see you misunderstand me utterly! Perhaps' this will make you understand?'' She turned and rapidly unlocked a little drawer in a small, worn, old Sheraton writing bureau beside her in the dark corner by ; the window. Her voice trembled with some pent-up passion as she said: " I only told you all that to explain the delay, Now—l return you the rest of the loan with thanks." She reached out with a swift, eager movement and put a small linen bag, heavy with coins, into his hand. Count- it," she was beginning, but she only got to "count,' when, with a furious gesture, he filing the thing on to the floor as though it hud stung his bands. The little bag had been open at the mouth as she passed it to him and now as it dashed on to the floor out flew all the gold coins and went chinking and banging and rolling in all directions, flying even off the carpet and on to the parquet, one sovereign right underneath Lady Sarah's shaky-legged settee that was never offered to stout persons.

Struck dumb, Winnie stood perfectly still till the very last impish disc had finally stopped rattling and clattering: when this flippant coin had curled himself up under a distant cabinet with a clunking chuckle, she looked up at Lueason. He, too was standing perfectly still, but his face was flushed with fury and his eyes were sparkling. They were both much too angry to see how absurd they looked at that moment. "Did I deserve quite that?" he said, turning half away, as if to go. "Do you throw all your friends' gifts in their face's?'' Winnie 'had gone red then white, then flushed again. " I take no gifts, from friends or otherwise she said. "And I pay my although J am a long time doing it." There was no debt to me," lie said, taking up his hat, his voice quivering through its sternness. " You let me help you, long ago. It was a small thing enough. Now you insult me!"

(To be continued on Saturday next.)