THE SHIP CAME BACK

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21377, 29 December 1932, Page 13

THE SHIP CAME BACK

(COPYRIGHT)

BRIGHT AND ENTERTAINING STORY, CLEVERLY PORTRAYED

CHAPTER Xl.—(Continued) "Do you remember me?" Gwendolen dropped on to the grass beside Jean's chair and gathered the outstretched hands into hers. *' Do you really remember me? > I can just remember you—a little girl trotting about this garden, with a doll newly as big as yourself tucked under your arm! 1 am so glari you have come back to the old house, but Miss Deborah and I very nearly had a stand-up fight about which house was to have you, hers or mine." Jean pulled herself up into a sittingposition. ' —• " I think it is wonderful of you both ever to dream of having me," she cried. "I had no claim 011 either of you, any more than I had upon that kind old Mr. Hatfield. But / you have all been so good to mc —so very, very good," her voice shook. i Miss Deborah, had stolen away, leaving the two alone, and Gwendolen spoke very softly: " We all feel we want to do what we can, both for your own sake, and for ' vour father's sake. Everybody loved Mr. Janhurst; and although Miss Deborah* never knew him, she loves his pictures, and she declared that he has left a big 1 bit c-f himself in the house." " I expect he did," Jean smiled. " I can believe that dad would leave something of himself wherever ho went. All the same, that doesn't give me any claim uoon you and Miss Deborah." she repeated" with gentle persistence. " Oh —I don't like talking about claims," Gwen cried impatiently. " Hasn't everv human being got a claim upon every Other human being?" Site leant a little forward, clasping her hands round her knees, and looking out towards the downs, hazy, in the sunlight. " Aren't we .all members of one another? Don't we all belong to one big family, and is not that ground enough for one being as helpful as' A*e can ? " " Lots of people don't see it in that • way," was the sage response, "but I expect Mr. Stephen Hatfield feels about it as you do, because directly he heard " about" me he came out to Stonebridge Park to see me—a complete stranger; and it was just when I was beginning to feel I coufdn't possibly go on! Everything seemed so hopeless until Mr. Hatt field came." Gwendolen had grown very still at the mention of that name, and' when she spoke, her voice was low. " You knew Mr. Hatfield's son, didn't you —Desmond Hatfield ? " Perhaps it was something in the inflection of her that touched an intuitive chord in Jean's mind, and the girl in the long chair looked searchingly at I the other's absorbed face, which was still turned towards the view. " I don't think I can hardly say that I knew Mr. Desmond Hatfield," Jean answered. " I have seen him once, and Charlie, ray husband, often spoke of him. They met "in some club in the city. The only time I saw him, I iiked him. He seemed so reliable, so strong." The faintest colour crept into Gwendoline's face. " He—l mean a great deal hangs upon him doesn't it ? " she asked, not replying directly to Jean's words. " A great deal, a very great deal — y everything," Jean said quickly, clasping her hands with a little impetuous gesture. " He is the only periion who can prove that Charlie was in hi:; rooms that dreadful night when old Mr. Thorpe was killed. And -.old Mr. Hatfield found his ;iridr°ss —oh.'you know about it, of course you know. It was through your secretary that the address was discovered." ! " Yes—through my secretary," Gwen I • spoke in level, almost mechanical tones. ; •" Her fat-he# lias a business out in the r 'African place to which Des—-Mr. HatI field has gone."

Jean noted the slip, and again her eyes glanced keenly at Gwen's face, which, though still deeply absorbed, wore signs of disturbance. " What a wonderful coincidence it was that your secretary should know the address," Jean said, gently. "It might have bepn impossible to find it, and then——" she shuddered.

" We need not worry now," Gwen exclaimed, cheerfully, raising herself from her abstraction. " Directly Mr. Desmond Hatfield gets the cable he will come, and then your husband will be free." " Yes, he will be free," Jean said, and Gwen, now fully roused from her own dreams, noticed the flatness of the girl's voice. " And what will come next, I .wonder ? " " Next.? Your husband will find fresh work, arid you will settle down in your house, and one of the fairy stories will come true—' they lived happily ever after." " Fairy stories don't come true in real life, do they? " Jean said, and her words were a statement of fact rather than a question. " Do you think one always has to pay for one's mistakes?" she added suddenly, jher eyes very big and bright, looking with strange wistfulness at Gwen. "To pay? I suppose very often we do pay for the stupid things we do. They involve their own pavment sometimes, but

" Oh, yes, they involve their own payment," Jean flung out her hands with a gesture which seemed to her companion to savour of desperation, " and now and then the payment seems out of all proportion—quite out of all proportion! " The girl's/ words and manner both struck Gwendolen as so strange that for a moment /she wondered whether trouble could have affected Jean's brain, but a glance at her face dispelled this idea. The eyes that met hers were bright with trouble, there was no trace in them of anything, abnormal. Perhaps some tims you would like to have a talk about it," Gwendolen said quietly. " Things get out of proportion in one's own mind, if one bottles theni Bp too much."

" I believe I could talk about anything to you," Jean said, impulsively, her glance resting upon Owen's serene face. " I am not a chatterbox generally. I thmk I have learnt to keep things 4 o myself," there was a pathos in that phrase which Gwen dimly realised, " but—l could talk to you " " Yerv well, then, you shall " Gwcn was beginning, when Miss Deborah, appeared at the garden door, a very flustered and excited Miss Deborah, waving a telegram in her hand. " It's wonderful news," she called out. "nothing to worry about; not the kind that has to be broken gently." By this time she, had crossed the lawn, and stood beside Jean's chair. " It's all right, you needn't turn pink and white by turns. I tell you the news is good." She patted Jean's handy " Mr. Hatfield telegraphs to say they have found the man who killed Air. Thorpe." /CHAPTER XII / A TALK " Found the man ? " Only; these three words came from «ean's lips, but the colour had drained from her fnjfce, and she lay back among her cushions with an air of exhaustion, which made Gwen spring to her feet, and bend over her, saying gently: It is really good news, Jean, If the *eal criminal is found, it sets your husband fret." " Sets my husband free ? " the other echoed. " But'l wish I could understand. How do you know ? " she glanced at Miss Deborah. ' And what will they do about Mr. Desmond Hatfield ? They sent for him," Gwendolen's heart gavj a great leap, a nd then seemed to stand still. There Was a whirling confusion in her brain, her own mind echoed those words Jean had just s'poken. What would they do now about Desmond? Had he already started for England ? Again her heart gave a quick leap—or had they perhaps not yet cabled to him ? What had happened? What would happen? Tho thoughts raced through her brain", whilst through her . confusion of thought she Beard Miss Deborah say:

By L. G. MOBERLY Author of " Threads of Life," " Cleansing Fires," " In Apple Blossom Time," etc., etc.

" It is Mr. Hatfield—old Mr. Hatfield who telegraphed, but ho gives 110 details. He doesn't mention his son. You see, he only slates the bare fact." She handed the pink paper to Gwendolen, and the sprawling black letters that lay upon it seemed to dance before the girl's eyes. Nevertheless their sense reached her. No further cause for anxiety about Charloa Randolph, real criminal has been discovered. Tell Mrs. Randolph.

Not a word about the course he had taken with regard to his own son! Not a word to show whether the cable had been sen:;, or rescinded, or what had happened. Gwendolen's fingers shook as she put the telegram into Jean's outstretched hand.

"We must all congratulate you, my dear," Miss Deborah said, briskly, to her guest. " This is a great load off your mind."

" A great load off my mind," Jean repeated, as though she were incapable of being more than an echo. Gwendolen, rousing herself from her own confasion of thought, wondered why the girl du the long chair seemed more overwhelmed than overjoyed. " Am I interrupting an important conclave ?" a man's voice suddenly broke in upon the three women. " You all look very solemn and absorbed—Oh! I beg your pardon—" Roger Mauson broke off sharply, .as, coming from the shrubbery, he all at once caught sight of Jean. " I am so sorry," he apologised. " I ought to have gone to the front door, and rung the bell, as a gentleman should! But coming tack to Henbury after all these years has demoralised me. I am dropping into my old ways, and going to people's houses by the paths I used to go, as I did at the Manor the other day." He turned to Gwen.

" But you need not apologise," she said, eagerly. " Of course you have been away lately, and don't realise who this is," she indicated Jean, " but I believe you knew her when she was Jean Janhurst, and now she has come to stay with Miss Dorman."

" Jean—Janhurst ?" Roger drew nearer to the chair, arid'looked down into Jean's flushed face with a smile. " You were such a Ktt-le girl when I saw you last," he said, and a tender look came into his eyes, as though he had seen something in Jean's face to awaken his pity. He was a man to whom a woman, or child in any suffering or sorrow, made an instant appeal, and this woman who seemed ta him so little more than a child, whose face, in spite of its flush, bore such evident marks of trouble, appealed to his chivalrous soul.

" I have a sort of dreamlike feeling that I remember you," Jean answered, " or rather, I feel as if you just round some corner in my mind, and that prenently I shall see you plainly!" Roger laughed at her quaint explanation, thxin asked, looking round at them all again :

"You look as if you were conspiring, or holding a very interesting meeting. Has something happened?" Miss Deborah rapidly explained the situation, and Roger, his eyes upon Jean's small, wistful face, was impressed in the same wc.y as Gwen had been. " Somehow," he thought, rapidly, " somehow, the news is not an unmixed pleasure to her. I wonder why ?" Aloud, he said: " Well, we ought all to be thankful that justice has not miscarried; and now your husband —" " He ivill have to find work," Jean interrupted, feverishly, " and work is so hard to find! And we shall go back to Stonebridge Park; to the house there—" " Not for the present." This time it was Miiss Deborah who interposed, and she did so very decidedly. " I am determined tD keep you hero for a time. You have bi>en through a great deal, and you must stay and rest in your father's old house. Besides which, we can't let her go before the fete, can we?" She turned to Gwendolen, speaking lightly. " The fate is a great institution here." " Oh, but I couldn't —I oughtn't to intrude or to let you be so kind," Jean stammered, at which Miss Deborah only patted her shoulder and laughed. " Now leave off talking nonsense," she said in her abrupt kindly fashion " Your husband must come here when—as soon as he can; and you can make plans about the future. But for the pre. sent at least, you must stay on here." Roger clapped his hands, softly, and Gwen noticed again how tender was the glance v.'hich rested upon Jean. " Cerlainly you must be here for the fete," she chimed in gaily. " Dad has often tcld me that your father was the heart arid soul of all the fun in our fetes in the old days. Your husband will, I hope, bo here for it, too." They talked on desultorily for a few minutes, and then Gwendolen and Roger moved away together. "Poor little girl," were Roger's first words, when they had left the cottage and were walking down the high.-hedged lanes; " I am glad the worst has not happened for her; but—what is the husband like, do you suppose?" " Mr. Hatfield —Mr. Stephen Hatfield—called him a while worm," Gwen answereJ, demurely. "He said he had not even a worm's backbone!" " Wasn't Mr. Hatfield's son somehow mixed up with the business?" Roger was looking at Gwen, and saw how the colour ran over her face, though she answered, composedly enough: " Not exactly ' mixed up.' Mr. Randolph was in his rooms at the time when Mr. Thorpe was being murdered in an office miles away. I fancy Mr. Randolph was borrowing money from Desmond Hatfield. Anyhow, it was supposed that Desmond could prove an alibi and his father cabled liim to come home."

"Why did he ever go away?" Roger asked, thoughtfully, his keen glance taking the signs of disturbance Gwen could not wholly hide. " I—don't exactly know," she faltered. " I believe it was all a question of money. He had lost his money, and he found work in Africa, and went out there." "His father is not ;t rich man?"

" No—oh no. Rather the reverse I should imagine, and in any case Desmond —I mean from what 1 know of Desmond Hatfield—he would not be likely to throw himself upon his father for help." " I see," Roger answered, and ho realised dimly that he was seoing a good deal more than his companion realised, " and don't I remember that old Mr. Hatfield discovered his son's address through that lit-r.le secretary of yours?"

" Yes-—he did." There was a certain reluctance in the admission. " The work came through Stella Stedman's father, who has business in Africa."

We'll," Roger tactfully changed the subject, " we must hope for the sake of the poor little soul in the White Cottage, that his man, Randolph, is going to make a better job of things than he seems to have made hitherto. I gather he wants work ?"

" Yes, he wants work, but who is going to find work for a man of his type?" Gwen asked.

" Pity he can't go to Africa, too!" The words "came involuntarily from Roger's lips, and as he saw the girl wince, he was sorry he had. uttered them, while the thought ran through his shrewd mind, " Has this gracious woman sent her own heart to Africa 1"

" However, we need not consider young Randolph until he is actually on the spot," Roger went on, feeling, remorsefully, that he had allowed Gwen's mind to stray back in the very direction from which he had been trying to draw it. " I came up hot-foot to the cottage just now, because I've brought Jem Barton over to see you." (To be .continued daily)