SHORT STORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19143, 8 October 1925, Page 7

SHORT STORY.

BY KATHARINE TYNAN.

—h LOVE WXLL FIND THE WAY.

(CopyvishU Be»V y L'Estrange had come an otphan chi/d to Oakhurst. She could remember st ; # the shivering wo with which she s'irjod up before her Aunt Belinda at five vear old. " I don't know why I should be saddled with this child," said the formidable woman with the high cheek-bones, hard grey eyes and firm lips, looking more than the forty-five years of lier age. Betty had turned away and hid her face in her ayah's comfortable arms. "For ah&me, Miss "Belinda!" said someone in the background, as though she scolded a child. M I didn't think a child of that age would understand,'"" said Belinda L'Estange. " The sooner that Indian woman goes away the better. They always spoil the ' children, giving them everything they a?,k. No good with a woman-child like ihat. The boy will have his own whether a nurse spoils him or not." Betty's bad been a monotonous childhood, in why>h the* years had slipped over nnmirke'd by such festivals as come to other chil/iren; but it had not been an unhappy otyj. They went nowhere, except to eh/irch. Bat within Oakhurst Betty had ( al'i she needed. She had books and animals and toys and pretty frocks; and she lr v ad a pony, but she never went out unamended. She was a joyous and a content# d creature, naturally, and she had mad© V erself happier in the circumstances than V jost children would have done. The of her early orphanhood had not overshadowed her life. Susan, her aunt's mr/id, who presented a crabbed, aspect enti Aely belying her good heart,, had come f rom pitying Bqttv to adoring her. Belinda L'Estrange had kept? up an attitude of aloofness, even yet, in her intercourse with her niece, but the small Betty had not been long in discovering that Aunt bark was vporse than her bite, as Susan said of her. Betty had not been sent to school. She had been governessed by a mild, elderly spintter, the daughter of a former vicar of the parish and a very accomplished governess. There was notching amiss with Betty's education when Miss Seymour had done with her. There were other servants in the house besides, Susan, but they were all elderiv or oldr. There was Prentis, the groom, who went riding with Beetty, and Hewitt, the butler, and Mrs. Hewitt, the cook, and. Saunders, the coachman, and Bene2oy>e and Prue. The present owner of King's Chasp had /iot very long inherited. Betty knew vaguely that he was young j but she could not ask questions. King's Cha.'/e and the Warrcnders were taboo at" Oa khurst. Betty at nineteen was charming jto look at. Her round face, with the short, piquant nose, the white, round c'bin, the dimples,, was contradicted by the gravity of the grey eyes under the broad Sorehead and magnificent profusion of golden-fair .hair. Such hair would have made, anyone; beautiful. It was full of light arid liveliness when it was allowed <o go free, which was not often, because, ot; coarse, Betty was a young lady now,, and had put up her hair; but sometimes, especially in hot weather, the piled-wp masses were too heavy for her small head to carry, and she was obliged to wear her hair' in two long, heavy plaits, like Albrecht Durer's "Virgin in the Temple." Betty had not grown to her present charming age without a knowled ga of the j reason for the isolation in w/aich they j lived. She had gathered ift from a word : dropped here and there before Susan became explicit with her. " Don't blame your Anfifc Belinda, dearie," she had said, pleadingly. " She seems hard even with you, but she was the finest, most giving ladj I ever heard tell on before she was deceived by Squire Warrender. Perhaps she kept him at too great a distance; she was never one to show her love, buS) ho was in love with her, head over earSj, and they were engaged to be married. Tliere was a bit of a" quarrel between tliem about fotrre foolishness of his, and sh«i, maybe, seemed harder than she felt. Anyhow, he flung himself off in a fit of rtnge and married a young lady that heVl never thought about, one that Miss Belinda had showered love and kindness; on. It soured the world for her. Twit's the story >of vour Aunt Belinda. The Warrcnders , have seldom come back, to King's Chase,, in my memory of it. When they did, even after Mrs. Warrender was dead, she shut herself up more closely than ever: to avoid him. There's nane o' them left now but the one young gentleman. They say he'll come back to live here and stir up tl»o (ountry ; but, sure, the same wrs said of his father; and he didn't come only once in a way after he'd married Miss Lucy." ' Sometimes when B<sftv was lonely her thoughts would turn to Harry Wamtao/Jer —so much she knew, that" his name was Harry—and she would wonder if he were coming some day * to stir up the country." It used to- lift her heart in its loneliness, the thought of Harry Warrender coming back to stir up the country." It was golden June now, and the roses ahd honeysuckle hung in showers around Betty's windows. One window overlooked a grassy woodland road, not a public road, but occasionally used by old women going to market, or a drover with sheep, or the doctor with his gi& or someone else taking a short cut to Humridge. A gable end of the house looked on the grassy road, and high in the gabla was the window of Betty's room. Miss L'Estrange had not forbidden that peep upon the world. Perhaps she had forgotten that anyone passed by, as well she might, seeing how few did. There was a small window, which looked into the garden and over its flowers, a deep oriel, where Betty usually sat at her sewing or with a book in her hand. But after she had heard of Harry Warrender's coming she seemed drawn irresistibly to the window that looked into, the world. It was about 3.30 o'clock in the afternoon of a hot June day, on which Batty had been sent to lie down by Miss L'Esti-ange as though she was a small child. " You look like a ghost, cfjild," she 1 said. " It is the hot weather. Go and sleep till tea-time." An amazing thing had happened then. Susan, who was in the room, had suddenly flounced—an incredible thing in one so staid as Susan. "You keep the child too much'"'shut up, too much cut off from her kind, Miss Belinda," she said. " It isn't natural." " What do you mean by interfering with me, Susan Lee ? " said Miss L'Estrange, in a terrible voice. " Would you have her go out into the world as I went, to return broken-hearted ? I swore when she came to me that she should not suffer." " Tut! " said Susan, as though, her temper was up. " There's more in the world than broken hearts. You go against nature." "Go and lie down, Betty,'* Miss L'Estrange said, pointing to the door. "Leave me to deal with this impertinent woman." | Betty fled, but not to sleep. She had I bolted the door of her room, being vaguely frightened by the quarrel For some time the sound of the voices—Susan's raised and a litt'e discordant—reached her I from the oak-panelled parlour below in 1 which the faithful friends quarrelled. At last there was the sound of a banging door, and all was silent. Betty went and looked at herself in the glass. She was p&le beyond the dis- ' turbance the sudden violence had caused her. She took down her hair and let it in two long plaits either side of lier She went and knelt by the window frrorlooking the grassy road and gazed and down. Suddenly she uncovered hear ey&v with a strange feeling that she was v/tu alone. Below htsr in the grassy road, a yonng man was standing. He was watching her with kind, pitiful eyes. For a second they lookr/d into each otter's eyes. Then he, muttered an apology, lifted his hat, tyhd went on. After that there W€>r«v no more headaches nor pallor for Belt#. kept to her i room a good deal was no ob-

jection from auoyoQ?. • -She-had been forbidden her rides becaose of the thing that had happened. Young Squire Warrenden had actually called at Oakhurst. He had, not been admitted: but ha hftd left a packet for Miss L'Estrange, a pealed envelope, apparently containing papers, which had been returned, unopened, to him without a word. Susan grumbled a good deal in _ those days, and Miss L'Estrange was grimmer than ever, so that it was perhaps no render that Betty kept to her gable-room when she was within doors, and occupied herself with her music and books &n.d sewing. Often the strains of her piano would come echoing through the house in wild and strange music; when Susan, in her new rebellious mood, would send barbed shafts at her mistress,, whose will she had never questioned before, mattering, as though to herself, that the child would go mad or into a decline from the unnatural life she was leading, till Miss L'Estrange would order her to leave the room, and Susan would obey her with a flounce of her head—very unlike Susan, who had always been such a good servant, and devoted to her mistress. But suddenly there came a change. The distant music no longer wailed and protested. It became by turns joyful and dreamy. Miss L'Estrange knew very little about music, and cared less, and she did not notice the change, Ror associate it with the change in Susan, which was certainly very marked, for she had given up those strange grumblings. Mis* L'Estrange would have said that she was too wise a woman to notice the change. She was glad Susan had come to her senses, that was all. She would aot have admitted that Susan's gloomy prophecies had had power to frighten her, or that she had begun to ask herself uncomfortable questions. One day, when Susan was brushing her hair, she suddenly mentioned a name which had not fallen from her lips for many years. It had in extraordinary effect upon Susan, who dropped ihe hairbrush and picked it up again in confusion. " You saw that young man whtn he came to this house —Mr. Warrender, I mean. Is he like his father!" " He is as like his father as two peas," said Susan, with a strange excitement. "Mot like his mother ?" " His mother had little part in him. •He is dark and slender, like his father. He looks true." " His father looked trne and he was not true," Miss L'Estrange said, with a fieroe scorn. " Maybe he was less to blame than you thought. Miss Lncy was always one for having her own way. Everyone saw it but you, that she'd "always grasp at what she wanted, no matter who got hurt." Was it- possible that the silence of years had fallen down like a wall? Miss L'Estrange's face had altered subtly. The hard fierceness had gone from it. One could see now that she must have been a beautiful girl —-an honest and a gracious one, though she had hidden herself behind that hard mask all those years. " If I could only believe that I was not donbly betrayed!" she said. "Everyone knew that Squire Warrender went to the altar an unwilling; bridegroom." "Everyone? Who is everyone?" Miss L'Estrange asked, in a sharp, sudden cry. " Oh, my dear," said Susan, tenderly, " you should have fought for your own hand. You were always too unsuspecting, too generous-minded. . Perhaps Mis* Lucy did not know the wrong she was doing you. She was a spoilt child all her days, and you had given in to her in too many ways." " She always seemed so soft and pleading.. And I was so strong, and I had aif a woman needed for happiness. She wa:s a poor little wait on the world till she came to me." " Mr. Warrender, being a- man, might have been less able than you to say 'No* to her. It's her sort that gets -what they wsint with men. You should have read his ktter that he wrpte for his son to give you." "What do you know of his letter?" Miss L'Estrange asked, sharply. " If you want to know, miss, I never returned ife, as you directed xne. The dead has a right to be heard. Fve often prayed that tee softening might come to you, and that you'd die in peace with Mr. Adrian Warrender." " And you kept back the letter ? How dared you, Susan Lee T" But though the question sounded fierce, it somehow failed to convey eager. " I've been afraid of late that your softenin' was to come about in a way to break your heart and mine, that the innocent child was to suffer so that you might end your days like a Christian woman." Susan met her mistress' kindling eye with a hard gaze She was prepared for a storm, but none came. " Bring me the letter," said Miss. L'Estrange, with an amazing meekness. Without another word Susan brought, ■the letter and laid it on the little table beside her mistress' chair. Miss L'Estrange took the letter up to her bedroom and read it by the window ia the fading light. The thrush was still now, and the blackbird was shouting his " good-night " to the sleepy woods. The letter had been written many years ago., It was faded and yellow, and as she opened it, a faint ghost of sweetness came from it. There was- a knot of ribbwi in it which she recognised. He had taken it from her long ago. when they were first in love. Everything else bad been sent back to her: he had kept this. "I was always true to you; but you had sent me away in anger, bidding rae not to'return, and I was angry, too, Then Lucy came. I swear I hid never thought of her ; but she loved me and she thought bad only a little while to live. She was wrong, as it proved; but I sure she believed what she said. She has never believed what she said. She has_ never had but the outside man of me. You have won all the time, for I sm yours as I was since the first day we met ; and I have suffered horribly for the loss ofc you, but I have not failed in my duty as ' a husband and father. Try to forgive what there is to forgive. I have written this letter to be given to you after I am dead. In life and death lam only yours, —Adrian Warrender." f The nightingales were singing when her tears wers done. She got up with a new resolve, The world was ended for her, jbut it was not ended for Betty. If Betty could forgive her, there might be happiness yet in Betty's happiness.. The child would be aslesp by this time. She would catch a glimpse of her asleep in the moonlight bfefore she herself slept; for she was going to sleep, eased by her tears. She knocked softly at tha door, and, since there was no answer, she went in. Betty was not in her bed. She was kneeling by the window, and sb; was talking to someone below in / u impas- , sionsd whisper, too absorbed, to have heard the opening and closing *ocr. With a catch of her heart Belinda L'Estrange stood in the shadow and listened. "You must not come again like this," Betty was saying. "I cannot bear to deceive her. I love her, despite the lor.efinesa in which she has kept xne. Tomorrow you must ride up to the door and insist, on seeing, her and asking for me. We must be honest, beloved." "And it. she will not; see me I will come and carry you off. I will draw you down to me b# "your adorable golden hair and ride off with you into Paradise, Give me one kirys now, and I shall go. Is this to be the l'/st time?" "1/ must be the very last time we meet in this way." f?he lent down, and he two arms were Reached out to clasp her lover's neck. ("Miss L'Estrange moved nearer. The young man, who was riding, was standing in the saddle, so that their lips could meet. These was a passionate m 2lf" mar. Then Betty dn;w back from the window and closed it down; there was the soft thud of a horse's hoots upon tbe K Miss L'Estrange h»d s hpP»d quietlv* closing the st> y tb *& S^Sfr^hS^t so, with Ins h*d thrown « moonlight. To-morro vhe will come>ut fr „? Oakhurst to a.sk tor Betty* the ooor Oi To-marrow and he shall be welcomed. AfrW*Pww. the new days begin. iHg