FLOWER OF THE BOG.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19511, 15 December 1926, Page 20

FLOWER OF THE BOG.

(AN IRISH LOVE STGBY).

. CHAPTER XXII. Entering the large marquee, Stella observed Eily, who was an attendant, standing ,beside a vacant table,, and to that table she steered Dick. Sho had meant to be kind to him on this final day, to reject his proposal kindly, and urge that in the precarious condition of her investments she could not feel justified in binding him to her; but he had frustrated hex attempt to attach herself to Alan, and his exhibition of surliness in front of a crowd of people doubly incensed her. She determined to pay him back by hurting him as much as possible in the present, and a thousandfold more a few hours later. _ ( " Tea for two, Miss Hartigan. sho drawled to Eily who had flushed nervouslv. • " And please be quick. Dick and I are thirsty." Dick also Hushed and looked uncomfort able. His boyish love fpr Eily was dead, but he shrank from the sight of her frightened, meek brown eyes which gave him the sensations of an Iscariot; and he devoutly prayed she would send someone else to wait on them. Eily did not. After a slight delay she set tea and cakes on the table, and Stella got in a premeditated, vicious stab. " You are the slowest waitress I've ever met. Really, one would think you delayed on purpose to annoy us. Her ill-bred insolence stirred Dick to protest. " Miss Hartigan is not our servant, ghe is a lady doing us the favour of waiting upon us.' The startled eyes of " Brown Mouse filled with grateful tears. " Her delay was a studied impertinence," said Stella in a higher key. " I expressly asked her to be quick." " They had to brew fresh tea, and I couldn't come at once," said Eily, dignified in spite of her shocked distress. " The stuff isn't fit to drink," she complained Stella, scornfully rising and waving the' girl aside. " We'll go and get some lemonade *"' _ / Followed by a burning, humiliated Dick she glided out oi the marquee, aware that she had been overheard, and that her vulgar exhibition of shrewishness had horrified the occupants of adjacent tables. The incident over, she wished she had restrained herself for her own sake. It was Dick's fault He had irritated her. Even Eily's meekness was an irritation. Her domineering nature had never been able to resist the temptation to_ smite those whose mild forbearance invited blows. " They may think what they like of me," she snapped in reply to Dick's moan that she had aroused hostile criticism. " If you'd apologise it might smooth over the unpleasantness," he -ventured to suggest, and she flamed back. " I'll do nothing so absurd. The incident wouldn't have occurred if you hadn t aggravated me. I'm the injured party, and you're the person to apologise." Dick was snubbed into dumb subservience. Though he felt a poltroon, he hovered about her, acutely unhappy, awkwardly conscious as evening wore on that the story of the scene in the marquee ■was circulating, and lie and Stella were being frowned uponHis mother's condemning face worried him most. .He had longed to establish Stella in the affections of his refined and fastidious mother, and his chance of that ;was utterly destroyed. Jane took Eily's post, and sent her sister out in charge of Miss Pettigrew. The attack on Eily angered Jane. She told Parratt, and found his sympathy and indignation consoling. " Miss Pettigrew's gracious offer is welltimed," she said, wondering why Parratt retained his grip of her hand. " Dear Aunt Susan is eager t& take Eily with her to London, and keep her for the winter, and mamma has consented. Isn't it a fine thing for Eily?" " The best that could happen to her," replied Edgar. " And perhaps you'll run up to Londo to see your sister ?" "I've been asked for Christmas, but I'm fefraid they can't spare me at home." " One day they'll have to spare you. Miss Pettigrew and I return together, and a visit from you would be a bright event to look forward to. You wouldn't rob me of a bit of brightness ?" " Why, Mr. Parratt, I'm sure you have loads of. friends thoro." "Friends 7 Yes—but no—no " "Jane!"' shrieked a reproachful teajnaker. " The kettles are boiling like mad, and you haven't a minute to waste." Phadrig Rhua, chief of the fiddlers threio, tuned up on a dais of mineral-water cases on the lawn, and there was a trooping thither, from all quarters, for it had been arranged that at the blast of Nick's hunting-horn the guests should assemble en masse" for the grand finale to the fete. , n The sun was sinking low to westward in a cloudy sky flecked with crimson. Along the deserted pathways shadows crept and lengthened, and the small sighing winds that usher in the turn of the day or night whispered through the trees and grass. Eily walked alone, content to be alone, far from the dancers. Aunt Susan's news had cheered hei. She was to go to London, the wonder-city she had read of, not dreaming she should ever see it. How sweet and comforting Aunt Susan was! How she talked! She seemed to penetrate to the depths of a girl's pained heart, and touch the pain so gently that her touch healed instead of smarted. It would be good to be with her, to lose oneself awhile in a wider atmosphere, look at great pictures and famous buildings, watch the drama of stage and opera unroll itself before her enchanted eyes. Aunt Susan had said sho should have all this. She hau said, too, that living shut up in oneself cramped the soul so that it shrivelled for lack of room to grow. A wise woman, Aunt Susan! Eily knew her town soul was like that—cramped and cabined, stifled by her personality. " I shall come back different," she murmured soberly. The next instant she halted, poised for flight. Stella and Dick were bandying words in the open space round the end of the path where the shooting gallery was situated. .Their voices, leaped at her, jarring a stillness in which the only audible sound had been the sough of little winds and the fiddles' distant elfin shrilling. " Now you have what I've been saving for you since two o'clock." It was Stella speaking tauntingly. " You were fooling me, you say!" cried Dick hoarsely " Fooling me from first to last? My God! You couldn't unless you were a fiend! I don't believe it." " You may believe it. Your conceit deserved to be taught a lesson." She was wreaking on him the accumulated bitterness of her defeat at Parratt's hands, and the day's bitterness. Compelled to refuse him. why should she spare him? 'You to imagine I loved you!" she flung at. him. " You green boy! I'm sick to exhaustion of yon and the sight of your vacant face. If it hadn't amused me to fool you to the top of your bent, I'd have tossed you to your country ;wench and wished her joy of you." Eily's hands flew to her heart. She ptepped nearer. Dick was staring at Stella, ghastly pale, swaying on his feet. "Take yourself away!" she said contemptuously " I've done with you. Why do yoti stand there gaping ?" He staggered toward her. It may have been that in"his dazed condition he did it involuntarily and without motive. But Stella scented danger, and springing warily to one side, she dealt him a swinging How across the mouth, the stones of her rings drawing blood. . For a second or two he paused, looking at the red smear on the. fingers he had raised to his lips. Close to him was a stack of loaded rifles the sportsmen had left ready for a parting Ei&pt when the dance was finished. A mist swam in front of Eily, a tightness of the throat impeded her breathing. She rushed to him, and gripped bis arm as he snatched at one of the weapons. The rest was unreal, a .confused nightmare of terror in which she and Dick -were wrestling fiercely, the black blood gijpgealed on his the whiteness

( copym get.)

BY MADGE BARLOW.

of snow on hers while they struggled for possession of the rifle. Backwards and forwards, earth and sky reeling, a thunder of drums in her ears, but in her weak body the strength of ten. A little longer—hold 011 a little longer—it is for Dick. The other woman seemed powerless to move a limb. A sharp report and a scream from Stella alarmed the ragamuffin paddling about in quest of treasure-trove. He poked a tousled bead between the bushes and fled, his cries waking the echoes as ho rau. " Murdher!" he gasped, prancing into the middle of the dancers, excited ;md breathless. " Murdher over beyant! He's kilt a girrul. He's shot her dead. Folly me, yeez! " He* evaded Nick's attempt to capture him, and skimmed before them, relishing the prominence his prowl had thrust upon him. They swarmed to the place at his naked heels, and the spectacle which met their gaze appalled them. Dick crouched on the ground, shuddering, almost demented. A rifle lay a hand s cast from him, and in a dark pool that stained her pink dress gruesoinely knelt Stella, supporting Eily's head, and with her handkerchief wiping the dew of death from the girl's brow and lips. She glanced round, and made a silencing gesture. " Let any members of the Hartigan family who are here come to her other side," she said in hushed tones. Eily was going a far journey, immeasurably farther than the London of her dreams—out into the boundless night that has neither moon nor stars. Past speech, past memory, she was going fast and very 1 piteouslv, in a vague wonder, her eyes on Stella's face, trying through their gathering film to ask what it all meant. CHAPTER XXIII. The Hartigans carried their dead home, and the shadow of blighting tragedy fell upon Ivillyduff. It was whispered that but for Miss Marquis' intervention Dick Cluny-Mahon would have been arrested on the strength of the ragamuffin's statement to the police. Stella had declared it false, and said that evidence would prove him guiltless of intentionally causing Eily's death. After the sad procession had left the grounds, where a short time previously all had been mirth and gaiety, Stella tottered to the house, none of those who lingered speaking to or looking at her. Dick's parents took him away when they had gone through the trial of hearing the police question him, hearing his incoherent and babbling answers which caused him to be regarded with a suspicion that Stella's declaration could not allay. Two of the old constabulary, patrolling the road, had been prompt to notice and investigate the commotion the excited urchin raised among the dancers on the lawn. Rid of the last loiterer, Mrs. Bellamy | wept unmtrainedly ver the sorry ending of the day. Henry had accompanied the body home, and Alan and Parratt and several others. Hardening her heart against Stella, Mrs. Bellamy did not go upstairs to see how her guest fared. Miss Marquis, she said to herself, had behaved atrociously, as no one with a spark of womanly feeling would have behaved to gentle Eily. For whatever had occurred between the three, Miss Marquis was to blame. " She has been our evil genius," the little lady sobbed in a paroxysm of grief. " I wish I had never met her." But even in the most callous nature there is some chord which can be set aquiver. It was too much for Stella's fortitude that the girl she had wronged arid insulted should die in her arms, gazing so piteously into her face till the final breath was drawn. Shti could not find • relief in tears, but she would have given worlds to bring Eily back and reunite her to her lover. She knew that if she had conquered her vicious temper on this fateful day Eily wo»ld be alive and well, and time would have restored Dick to her. ' , It was she who had killed Eily, she thought, shivering with dreadful cold, putting her hands to her ashen face to shut out the haunting look of the dying eyes. They would* hold an inquest, she supposed, a public inquest, according to the custom of the .country, and they would summon her to give evidence. She intended to tell the truth and clear Dick as far as it was possible to clear him. After all, he had not. harmed her; he had only loved her too well. A maid brought in. a supper tray and asked whether she required anything else that night—a sign the Bellamys' did not desire lier company downstairs. Stella sent the tray away and said she was going to bed at once. She switched the lights on, and kept them burning through the night, afraid of the darkness. In the tap-room of the Cluny Arms, taking a leading part in discussing the tragic happening, Nally echoed general opinion when he said that Miss Marquis and Cluny-Mahon were in it together up to the neck, and both should be arrested. " 'Tis quare how things turn out," he sighed, shaking his head. "If ye'd wanted me to tell ye how the affair would" ind, I'd have said a week ago there'd be a corpse at Grange, and a Cluny-Mahon ripe for the hangman.'' " Wind!" scoffed the listener. " Idle wind, that ould talk." " Annyways, I wouldn't have marked Miss Eily down as the one to suffer," rejoined Nally. " Eyah! The poor innocent!" At the inquest Dick cut an unheroic figure. He was still a victim of nervous collapse, hands twitching, features twitching, speech confused and thick. "It was an accident," was all he could utter distinctly, "an accident." And as he mumbled, and shook, and passed a handkerchief over his uncontrollable livid face, compassion went to his black-robed mother, sitting behind him with Doctor O'Dea, a picture of woe. They questioned him to no purpose, and called Miss Marquis. Pale and rigidly calm, her piain brown costume and tightfitting brown toque with floating veil lent her an air of quiet elegance. " Looking only at the coroner and his jury, Stella answered every query in an audible voice. At the suggestion of the foreman of the jury she was allowed to recount in her own way the scene at the shooting gallery and the incidents which led up to the fatality. It was an ordeal she did not shirk, the one act of reparation she made, for Dick's sake and Eily's. She told of his proposal and her rejection of his suit, neither excusing herself nor trying to tone down the language she had used. Her repetition of the taunts which had goaded Dick to frenzy raised a loud murmuring, which was instantly quelled. The incredulous stare of many eyes bit into her like corrosive acid. But when she said she had struck him on the mouth, fearing-he was about to attack her, a booing arose at the back of the court, and was not silenced until the coroner threatened to have the place cleared. He scanned her sharply. " You are the daughter of a dean ?" Stella's head drooped. He took it for assent. " Was your conduct that of a lady of breeding?" " Perhaps not," she replied, " but in passionate moments breeding; superior to mine is often no more than skin deep." (To be continued daily.)