THE INTERIOR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16267, 28 June 1916, Page 9

THE INTERIOR.

BY LINDSAY RUSSELL, Author of "Smouldering Fires," "Straws on the Wind, " " The Years of Forgetting" "Souls in Pawn." "Kathleen Mavourneen." " Sands o' the Desert." " The Eternal Triangle," etc etc. (COPYRIGHT.) SYNOPSIS. , Muriel Cartwright. whose people, though in society, are comparatively poor, determines that she must marry well. Lionel Warde loves her. but his rich uncle, whose heir he was. has married again, and Lionel goes to Australia to weigh the possibilities of Ins making a fortune in the pearling industry. In the meantime Muriel is paid muc attention by Sir Julian Wright, a man who has made a great deal of money, and has received a knighthood. Muriel agrees to marry Sir Julian. The scene shift* ti the island of Nyasha, off the northern coast of' Australia, where Blackham, a noarl trader, and his daughter Talumern are watching the pearling fleet beating out to sea. Meanwhile Lionel Warde has come to Nyasha, where he has been *ound ill by Sandy MacDougal], and by him nursed back to health. Talumeni tries to attract Warde s notice. CHAPTER ni.—(Continued.) Jane flung wide the door a moment later, and the crowd streamed in, laughing and joking, taking up all the available limited space, and filling the air with rough, goodnatured raillery. Jane took it all good-humouredly, handing out the letters with many a teasing comment, and the witticisms for which she was famed. "Faith, it's a letter from the Duke of Blucher, Denis." she laughed, as she handed over a bill from the local bootmaker to a freckled, sandy-haired Irish giant from the backblocks. " Shure, an' I'm thinking that maybe 'tis an invitation for a presentation at court, the County Court, of course, and the royalty of Nyasha present in full force, full of sentiment and beer." The crowd laughed and the giant grinned sheepishly and good-naturedly. One and all they enjoyed the cheery running fire of comment, and Jane's frankness. Jane, in her shabby clean print frocks and her wide cheerful smile, was part and parcel of the life at Nyasha, and her raillery part of the bi-weekly mail day, just as Jane was part of Dunkley's Stores. Even McDougaU, the canny Scot, a sturdy champion, on certain occasions, of Bobby Burns and all his works, and a reciter thereof at every opportunity, smiled at Jane. " Hooch aye, nae letter the day, Mac," she would announce. " But there's a wireless frae the Glasgow Haggis Club. An' they would be liking ye tae call that famous pearl of yours after Bobby Burns —when ye find it." Summer, autumn, winter, or spring, Jane was always cheerful, and always to be found in her place behind old Dunkley's counter, a little pale and thinner perhaps in the intense heat of summer, but always Jane. Silas, or old " Silent Dunkley," as he was familiarly ' known, had several other

daughters and a son or two. They were all away at college somewhere on the other side of the mainland, cultivating a well-bred, steadily-growing hatred of Nyasha Bay and its heathen ways. Only Jane, whom the family had decided long ago was more useful than ornamental, stayed on. The second Mrs. Dunkley, who spent most of her life away from Nyasha, had complained fretfully and on more than one occasion that Jane could ngver be a lady; it would be much better for her therefore to content herself at Nyasha. The second Mrs. Dunkley had a deeply-rooted belief that no one with red hair could be a lady. No one challenged her views on the subject. " Jane had store tastes," she used to say with a little shudder, and then with a sigh, " Jane was very like her mother." For the first Mrs. Dunkley had not been, as the second holder of that name, a delicately nurtured governess on a country station; t' first Mrs. Dunkley had been unladylike „o serve behind the counter, in tha days when Dunkley's Stores was not-spelt in the y'ural, and when the counter itself was composed solely of kerosene boxes. The first Mrs. Dunkley had helped to build up the business, and shouldered the responsibilities manfully, looking forward to a possible future of comfort, and just before that time came she had faded quite suddenly out of life at the end of a trying summer. So Jane and the old man, with the help of a few youths in the grocery and I drapery and ironmongery departments, ran the stores between them, and supplied the sixteen hundred or more inhabitants of Nyasha with the necessaries of life, and such correspondence as filtered through to this half-forgotten island off the western mainland. Jane Dunkley was not pretty like her half-sisters, and knew well that, in the parlance of Brimhaven, she was not in the same street for looks. Tall and slim was Jane, graceful enough in her careless way, tanned and plain of face, save for her grey eyes. She wore her hair brushed straight back from her face, coiled in one soft auburn knot, low on her neck and she limped __ slightly, the result of an accident in her school days. No one with a limp, Jane decided, after a perusal of such fiction as the stores afforded, could ever be a heroine. Jane's mouth was wide and laughing, and her eyes had a habit of crinkling up rather alluringly at the corners. At twenty-two, she had no illusions about herself. She acknowledged to herself quite frankly, that she was the Cinderella of the.family, with the disadvantage that her face was too plain to fit in the story, and her feet too large to fit the glass slipper. She came to these conclusions after many soul-tearing peeps in the broken mirror in her bedroom. They sold piles ot sixpenny novels at Dunkley's stores. The few that Jane, in her spare time, had read, had given her a growing belief that love was a fictitious emotion people wrote about in order to sell books; anyhow, good-cooking was more essential than love in Nyasha, so Jane dismissed the subject altogether. Nyasha was a fairly new find of the pearl-fisheries. Many miles up from' Broome, Nyasha Island flung itself off from Australia, and Nyasha Town perched itself on a tiny headland, a jumble of tents and galvanised iron-roofed houses, native huts, and giant trees and ragged palms. From the window of the post-office et Dunkley's Stores you could see all that

was to be seen, the thin black skeleton of the Brimhaven jetty stretching out from the headland, a parent schooner or two rocking lazily in the blue water, the dark shining bodies of the natives who, chanting a native song of melancholy sweetness, loaded the steamers or bent over the shell baskets on the quay, their loin cloths thrusting a gay note of" colour into the landscape. A few traders in white suite and widebrimmed hats gathered together, or made their way across the red-loamed earth down to the headland and the black thinbodied pier, and the white sweeping curve of the Ninety-Mile Beach. Jane stood at the door when the crowd had gone, and looked out for a moment. The main road of the township ran by the stores. Near the store a group of redgums stood, the leaves scarce swaying in the windless day. To the right was the stretch of the desert that' ran for miles almost to the mountains, the one thing about Nyasha, folk said, that was barren and ugly, but which Jane Dunkley found beautiful. A Javanese went past in the dusty yellow road, chanting some queer melody as he went. Its monotonous, reedy sweetness lingered in the still air after him. Jane hummed it softly: Tehani . . . Tehani Artini . . . Ichani. A waggon came slowly and creakingly into sight, the wooden yokes bowing the heads of the bullocks low. They swung creakingly along, heads bent apathetically to the dust, dumb, uncomplaining. The long whips of the driver circled above them unheeded, just occasionally flicking their heavy flanks. McDougall, the bullocky, walked beside the waggon, the dust curling about him, a picturesque figure in his blue dungaree shirt and moleskin trousers, with a leather band tight at the knees. Under the big rush hat, bordered with green tape, a wet cabbage leaf rested on his head, as protection from the sun. He paused for a moment to speak with Jane Dunkley and then took the road that led out to Nyasha, and across the desert towards the stem of the pear-shaped island. For weeks he would be away from Nyasha. Along the white-sanded narrow path, bordering the road where the dust of the waggons still lingered, came a slim young figure. " Talumeni," said Jane, and her wide mouth smiled and her red-brown head nodded a greeting. Talumeni, sirKhng, went lightly by, bareheaded as usual and with the "scarlet hibiscus flower nodding in her black hair, her bangles tinkling musically as she made her way down towards the black line of the pier, where her father's schooner swung at anchor. Jane looked after her a little wistfully. With a sigh she turned and went indoors and began to sweep and tidy up the postoffice. Nearly all the letter shelves were empty, but at the end a square of white showed in the dusty pigeon-hole. Down the road the young Englishman who had pitched his tent in the shade of the gum trees was walking slowly. He gazed about him, noting how the paint had blistered and shrivelled in Dunkley's Stores, with the heat of the passing summer. The tall trees that bordered each side of the straggling street drooped listlessly in the heat. He came very slowly up to the door of the post office, hesitating for a moment on the threshold. He had come so often in vain. IT© be continued on Saturday next.)