THE SHOW GIRL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 13949, 4 January 1909, Page 3

THE SHOW GIRL.

BY MAX PEMBERTON, Author of " The Iron Pirate." " Bed Morn." " A Puritan's Wife." " The Hundred Daya." Etc

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

CHAPTER (Continued). So much is plain from the beginning, but. the event which carried my beloved wife to such a nlace,' which sealed her lips while she resided there, and brings me to her as a very suppliant, is dwelt upon almost with reluctance, stands, it may be, almost as a shadow beyond. I seem to know, and yet I do not know. You, Paddy, with your powers of swift perception, will not fail to understand me. You will read already in this book of an amazing destiny. I say that they left me in this splendid hall, and that for many minutes I had no companion there. The house itself spokeboth of occupation and of ceremony. I perceived footmen about the table in the dining-room, whose door opened to the* right of the great fireplace where the logs blazed brightly. The landing above echoed the voices of maids, and upon that, another voico which caused my heart to leap as though one had spoken to me from the grave. When a chime of bells echoed musically in the heights of the dome, I understood that they were ringing the dressing-bell, and remembered with some consternation that 1 had come to the chateau "as 1 was."

If anything disturbed my senerity, it was the absence of the marquis. He knew of my arrival, and should, I thought, have welcomed me the sooner. But the minutes passed, and still he did not come; and one by one the old phantoms sWarmed up to torment me. If she were not here, after all! If a. trick had been played on me! Inconceivable, and yet how real to a man who had suffered so much.

It was odd, Paddy, but all memory of the tragic days we have lived through passed utterly from my recollection in that house. No longer did I caw what the world had said of Miini or what it would say to-morrow. That awful night, when I stood upon the threshold of my little house to gape upon a dead man's body and to know that my wife had left me; that had been wiped" out of my calendar as though a hand of mercy reviewed the page. The house in which"l stood, the great names I had heard, Minn's presence at the chateau— ..ith what woeful reiteration did I not repeat the harassing questions to which I had no answer. She knew that I was here, and yet she did not come to mo! How my heart sank at that! What an abasement of love and faith— how swift a repentance! She comes at last hear the patter of feet on the stairs above— gentle that it might be the south wind brushing tho cheeks of a rose. What a moment to live as I turn about to spy a sweet apparition on the stairs, to watch a girlish figure descend them one by one, to say that she is my Mimi, and yet to remain lihuotst unbelieving. Stand so far with me, Paddy, but then shall you turn your eyes away. There are things said and done between two who love which are holy in their sanctity and God-given in their "secrecy. Were it otherwise I could no more tell you what befell us in that instant of greeting than I could speak the dreams which the lightest hours of sleen have given me. Was it not enough that I caught her in my arms and that kisses forbade her to speak at all? Are there not, hours of living so precious that they would remain heaven though it were hell afterwards to all eternity? And such an hour was that at the Chateau of Bougival Mi mi ran down the great staircase to my embrace, and my lips sealed her sweet confession. You will remember that she wore a trim black dress when she was with us at Hampstead, made cleverly as the French make all these 'tilings ; but a little overmuch in the fashion of the nunneries. I recollect that we chaffed her about it, and that the Chevalier would have gone out to get a Franciscan robe to match it; while old .Georges Oleander was all for singing the office, especially that part of it which counsels the giving of alms to the needy. This dress and tho pretty picture it enshrined have stood during all these weary days for my imago of Mimi as I should find her at last and take her again to my house. But it was not to be. The Chateau of Bougival'has dealt too, well by its prisoner. No little girl of the atelier and the mountain descended that proud staircase to my embrace. In her place I found a stately figure of Paris; a Mimi robed , in 6ilk and chiffon, with a gift of jewels about her white neck and a 'sparkle of diamonds upon her arms. Oh, and the grace and shyness of her. as though she were half afraid, but wholly suro of her reception.' And hero is the wonder. She spoke not at all of the things I had expected to hear from her lips. She told me nothing of tho night of crime and flight; nothing of the days intervening; no story of her coining to this house — happy in my arms she laughed at my perplexities and asked me if I would have her otherwise. And, "addy, I knew not what to say to her. She is changed as it were in a twinkling. My quick perception could not put the fact aside. She has come into her inheritance— is Mimi of the Butte no longer and never will be again. Let me try to toll you of the talk which passed between us as we stood together in the hall and cared less than nothing though all Franco had been listening. It will r. it be to write down the sighs and sounds- of a lovers' mootingyou, Paddy, of all men, care nothing for those since you met the widow at Ostend ; but I would wish to tell you how cleverly this mere child kept, even from me, the things she had been charged to hold sacred, and how even my persistency could not shake her. And first, of our meeting in the house at all. "The marquis sent for me, Mimi," said I j "I looked to find him here." '' And you found me, Monsieur Henry—" " Monsieur Henry! Am I that to you, Mimi? Is it the Mimi of the Lapin Agil again? Let me look into your eyeslet me eec why you are changed. ' "I am not changed," ehe rejoined very sweetly, " but I am very happy, mon mari. ' " How long have you been in this house, Mimi?" She tried to think. An impaired memory is among the first fruits of all that has befallen her. " Ah, mes enfants, how long have I been here? There would be nights and days— long nights and days. Then madame came and I was happy. She will tell you. Harry —she can remember how long I have been here.' "Did the marquis bring you, then? Did he discover you at the villa?" She shuddered; a spasm of pain crossed her face. I regretted that I had spoken of such a place at all. " Bedotte went down to the river," she said presently, her mind gathering t,!io threads one by one, " I was alone and afraid. Alors, the woman Marie is there and I think of her. Ah, met; enfants! She comes to my bedroom and begins to tell mo the tiling I heard long ago, when I was a little child and ran away to the woods, I think she was ivre, mon mari—and I laughed at her. Then I saw that sho was no longer the Madame Marie who bad frightened me. She prayed and mumbled and wept. Oh, it was droll, for she seemed to think I was a baby again and would have sung me to the sleep. But I crept away, and then she told me to go. It was mechante to hear that. ' Go,' she said, and she tumbled to the door and held it wide open—and the black bouse was there and the men to kill me. I was afraid to go, and I told her so, and then she wept again and sat by the fire rocking herself as a baby. I was frightened, all'reusement, but I went to the top of the stairs and then a little way down them. Monsieur Bedotte had not returned, t-o I opened Lie door. And then I ran away from them— how I ran! The woman called to me from tho window, but still I ran, until I heard her scream, and then I could run no more. A long while afterwards I came to the river and the boat; and when I asked the boatman to take me to Paris he laughed. I should have been afraid of him also, mon mari, if there had not been someone else m the ship, a great big monsieur, big as Monsieur Paddy, and as kind. He asked me why I wished to go to Paris, and I told him. He said he would take me there, but that I must rest first. Then he bronght me I to this houso and monsieur the marquis

came to epcak to me. Ho promised that lie would write to you—and now you have come—ah, mes enfants, you have come and I am happy." She spoke slowly, Paddy, and with less than a Frenchwoman's volubility. Perceive that she had-told me nothing of the house itself, of its master or its mistress. The dramatic story of her flight from the villa may have been her apology. Cannot you depict the scenethe rogue's house standing apart in the meadow by the riverone blackguard summoned to Asnieres by a trick and arrested there—another betraying tho gang; a third leaving the old witch in charge and going, perchance, to a. cabaret to drink? He returns and finds the captive fled; in a savage outburst he strikes the old woman dead and leaves her body in the house. V e arrive when all this has happened, but our knowledge of human nature ie not deep enough to read the. riddle right. We do not say that even this hag may have known an instant's humanity, tnough it were the humanity of the bottle. She moans ;.nd babbles and weeps— motherhood of the dead past stirs again in her veins, warmed by absinthe or bad brandyand she bids tho child to go. Thus in a frenzy she invites the death which must await her. The man returns and attacks her brutally. He knows that the game is up, while we are but guessing at the nature of his pastime. This much was plain to mc; but the sequel to the story I found as perplexing as ever. Nor had I any further opportunity at that moment to question the little girl who shrank in my embrace as though afraid of her own narration. For that, matter ihe marquis himself appeared now, anil hastened to excuse himself. He was a fine figure of a man in his dinner dress, and so natural in his grand manner that none but a clown would have mocked it. Almost his first words informed me that he had sent a motor to St. Germain for my baggage and commanded me to sleep at the- Chateau. (To be continued daily.)