HER SILENCE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21758, 24 March 1934, Page 13 (Supplement)

HER SILENCE

By MRS. A. M. WILLIAMSON Author of " The Moat House," " Behind Double Doors "

A GRIPPING MYSTERY SERIAL

CHAPTER VH THE DAYS BETWEEN Peter balanced things in his mind for a moment. The girl hadn't lied to him, hadn't deceived him at all. She had confessed that she wasn't Mary Brown, but that she never meant to tell her true name. What did the initials matter? And as for the coronet, why should the remembrance of it give him an odd little shock? He couldn't be sure now, to save bis life, what sort of coronet it bad been. Ho hoped—yes, he hoped, though he hardly knew why, that it was just one of those trumpery ones that you saw on every other dressing bag if you travelled to the Riviera in the Blue train. In France or Italy, if you were the daughter of a count, you were by courtesy a countess. It was enough—must be —that the girl had promised to marry him. She was the loveliest thing in the world. It was going to be a glorious privilege to protect her, but there was no use in repeating to himself the old adage: " Ignorance is bliss." It wasn't bliss. He'd have to find his bliss in spite of it. And then there was that vague memory of having seen her somewhere long ago. He began to say that they might be married in a very few days, with the special licence ho would ask for and get. They— But she cut him short. • "We can't marry from this hotel," Bhe broke in, with a new, quick decision of manner. "Why?" Tyrone wanted to know. " Why not? " " Can't you see? " she answered him with a question. " I came here to die. I wasn't thinking ahead at all. There was no future for me. If there is to be one, I daren't be talked about —gossiped about. What would happen to us if some reporter took a snapshot on the sly, and my picture were put in a London paper? " Ah! A London paper. Had he once seen her picture in a London paper? Yet surely no—he couldn't have forgotten. No, he couldn't. Impossible to forget such beauty. But it was odd bow that impression of having seen this lovely face somewhere, somehow, had haunted him since the moment he came upon her writing in the hotel visitors' book 'the name of " Mary Brown." Thinking deeply, he was silent for a moment, hardly knowing that he was silent.

Mary looked at his puzzled or troubled face, and mistook the emotion on it. " You are sorry I " she exclaimed. " You wish vou hadn't asked me to marrv youP Oh, I don't blame } r ou at all. "iou've begun to realise the trouble that may come. And—and you don't trust me really. How can you? " " But I do," Peter insisted. " Such beauty as yours means truth and goodness. "T believe that. It's one of the beliefs that's born in a man about a woman." The girl's eyes filled with tears. " It's a lovely belief, but I'm afraid it's a sentimental one. I haven't lived many years, but I've lived long enough to have seen lots of beautiful women and lots of hondsome men who were vile at heart." " I'm talking of a particular type of beauty. Your kind of beauty," said Peter. " My dear, yqy have a neavenly face. That's the only word to express it."

" Suppose," the girl faltered, " that the time should come when you would, no longer think it heavenly. What then? ,P

" I can't suppose it," he persisted, firmly. " It's among the impossibilities." The tears that had made lakes of her beautiful eyes overflowed. " You're so wonderful! Even more wonderful than I thought," she whispered. " Doesn't it make you doubt me even when I tell vou that. I can't risk being seen —having my picture seen—being talked about? "

" No, it doesn't," Peter answered. And vet, in his heart, if he were not actually doubting her, already he was asking himself question after question concerning this girl. He had practically promised never to catechize his dear one —simply to be satisfied by the possession of her loveliness, as she had put it, " without any background," and he meant to keep his word. But already he began to realise that he had given himself a hard row to hoe.

The best way, he quickly decided, was not to think of himself at all. He was marrying this Mary Brown, who wasn't Mary Brown, to shield, defend and save her from whatever unknown danger threatened. Impulsively she had cried out that she adored him, but that was mere gratitude, of course. He wouldn't take adrantage of it. He would just look far, far ahead to the day when he might make her love him as ordinary women loved their husbands. The hope was a bright cleam, and he meant never to lose sight of it. But at present he must humour the girl, do precisely as she wished him to do, in case she might actually be right and he wrong. ''Very well," ho said; " then we won't be married from this hotel since you don't wish it. I've thought of something else. You shall go quietly with Nurse Chivers to a good nursing homo where I often send patients. You shall stay there until 1 get the special licence, or even longer if the rest and peace Beem good to you. Not a soul shall see your face except the matron, a nice, kind Scotswoman; Nurse Chivers,' who will be your ' special ' there; a night nurse if you want one, and occasionally some other little nurse later, who might have to drop into your room on an errand. Of course, we could keep them all out, but that would look a bit mysterious, and might make gossip, exactly what we don't want. Do you approve of that idea?" " I think it's perfect," oxclaimed Mary.

" Good. We'll sneak you and Nurse Chivers out of this hotel early to-mor-row morning before any of the guests are about. I'll explain to the manager and his assistant that, as a doctor, I've decided on a nursing home as the best rest cure for my patient. Of course, you attracted attention in the restaurant when you dined, before the opera, because you are so much more beautiful than anyone else in the world, and because you had a cloak on almost worthy of your beauty. But people come and go. you will bo forgotten. And while you're at the home, I'll have the most intensive work going on at my house. By the time we're married, it will be ready for its mistress. Unless you'd like a—well, a sort of platonio honeymoon first in some part of the world whero there'd be no donger of your being recognised." "Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "No honeymoon, please! Not anywhere, I can imagine something like peace if I were living in your house and never, never going outside." " 1 hope you'll take a little exercise in the garden," smiled Peter, more calmly than he felt. " There are plenty of trees. You'll be as safe there as the Sleeping Beauty in her forest castle. And I'll buy you a new motor car for a wedding present; .some sorb of car where you can get the air and be unseen by the eyes of man, as if you were a harem lady." " I can never tell you how I thank and bless you for your patience and your faith in me," said the girl. " It's almost superhuman!" Peter kissed her cool, satin-smooth hand. Never had he longed for .anything so much as to crush her in his arms, and kiss her on the lips 1 But he resisted. Then next morning, at an even earlier hour than, in her mystery, she

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had como to the Palace Hotel, Mary Brown was taken away from it in a big car with grey silk blinds pulled half down. Her luggage was with her; all the pretty things which Peter Tyrone had bought. Nurse Chi vers sat beside her patient to give her support if it were needed. Mary Brown, however, was almost well again now, something very like happiness was making her well. She no longer wanted to die. She was afraid of the future, yet she looked forward to it with eScited interest.

During the drive from Golders Green to the nursing home in Wigmore Street she did not speak at all, save to answer a question or two concerning her comfort from the nurse. Most of the time her eyes were closed, the long, dark brown lashes lying on the pearl-pale cheeks. Hut she knew that Peter -Tyrone sat in front beside the chauffeur of the car which he had hired because it was larger than his. It was nearly as large, Mary thought, as a small curtained room, and she felt safe in it, safe for the first time in more months than she could count. Even if she had been tracked to the hotel in Golders Green, which she hoped and more than half believed she had not been, no one could touch her while Peter Tyrone was there. Now and then she half opened her eyes and gazed at him from under her lashes. His back looked so dependable. His shoulders were so broad! , Long ago she had ceased to believe that thoie were good men in the world. Some v. ere not as bad as others. Guido Oarino, for instance. None were good. But this one—he was different. She was beginning to worship him, and it amused her faintly to realise that he hadn't taken seriously at all her exclamation, "I adore you!" He imagined that she had spoken impulsively, in gratitude. Yes, and so she had, but gratitude and love were mingled. She couldn't say to him in words: " It's heavenly to think of being your wife!" One didn't say like that to a man one had known only a few days, even though he had become a guardiau strong as the rock of Gibraltar. And in any case, the girl who called herself Mary Brown did not speak out her feelings easily, save in moments of wild thankfulness or passion. This* strange life she had led, the life whose secret must remain hidden always, more for Tyrone's sake than her own, had made her reserved, almost unnaturally so. Her one thought had been to conceal her feelings, or not to have any feelings if she could help it. But as she looked at those broad, protecting shoulders, she resolved to prove her love even if she couldn't put it into words. She would try to find out all the sweetest and dearest ways of being a wife, so that she might reward the man for his devotion. There was a fascination in the thought that he had vowed not to make love to her until he was sure she wanted to be made love to. Well, the time should come soon. She wouldn't cheat him, wouldn't deny him. She longed to make him radiantly happy. Never before had Mary Brown been glad that she was beautiful. On the contrary, her beauty had brought her only shame and humiliation. But at last she was glad, for the sake of this dear and so different man. He loved her beauty. Ho loved more than that. He loved her. She would work to ■ be worthy of his love. It seemed to the girl that now they two had thrashed out the one great question, and it need never be raised again. She had painted,in the darkest colours what his life might be, knowing nothing of her past, and she nad asked if he could bear it. He had told her that all he wanted was herself, and that they could begin a new life together as if she. had been miraculously born grown up, like a fairy princess sprung from an enchanted pomegranate seed on the day of their first meeting. Ho was a man whose word could be taken for granted, never doubted, and she did not mean to doubt.

It would be glorious to marry him. She wouldn't tell him so, but she would gradually teach him to realise the glory through her love. It was going to be a love that would make up for everything. All these things she thought and told herself with her eyes half-closed on the way to the nursing home. And when thoy reached the house Poter carried her up tho steps in his arms, Nurse Chi vers following. Doctor Tyrone was greatly valued at the nursing home. It was popular and generally full, but when he had telephoned the matron last night, saying he wanted the best room in the house for a patient convalescing from nervous prostration, she had given a less good room to a countess arriving for an operation. A wheeled chair waa waiting to be slid into the lift, but Tyrone preferred to hold Miss Brown in his arms as if Bhe had been a child till the first floor was reached and he could lay tho slim figure in its chinchilla cloak on a cushioned sofa in No. 10. It was a pretty room, as rooms in nursing homes go, where walls, floors and corners must all be arranged for the keeping away of germs. It had its own private bath. There were bright chintz curtains at the windows and furniture covers to match, always cleaned after the deparutro of each patient. Peter Tyrone had made the place a bower of bloom. There were roses, lilies of the valley and tall, scentless arum orchids and blue Japanese irises, all in the gilded pots and bowls which meant the most expensive shops of Bond Street. There were grapes, white and purple; rosy apricot's and strawberries months out of season. Mary Brown might have been a queen! Because of her shrinking from curious eyes, she was visited only by her own special nurse and by the matron, a middle-aged Scotswoman of extreme discretion. "Miss Brown has to be kept very quiet," was the story told to the staff, lest questions should be asked about the unusual privacy which must be preserved in this case.

The girl remained at the nursing home for ten days, resting, not evon wishing to go out for a drive. Peter urged her to do nothing against her inclination, but he believed that when she began to load a more normal life as the mistress of his house, her dread of being seen would gradually become less and less.

No doubt she had gone through some very trying experience, perhaps evon as terrible a one as she imagined it to be, but in his opinion her inordinate fear was an obsession. It would slowly pass. He would devote his life and soul to making it pass.

Meanwhile, intensive work was berng done on his house at Golders Green, as he had promised. Men worked night and day. Peter engaged an expensive interior-decorator, not daring to trust his own taste, as he would have done if he were not bringing homo a bride; but he bought comparatively little furniture and few ornaments to carry out the suggested scheme, so that Mary might have the pleasure of choosing things herself for her now homo later on.

By the day before the wedding it seemed to him that she had become more like a human girl, less like a lovely, strange visitor from another world. She listened with absorption to details he told her about the house and about the servants he had engaged. In the latter she seemed particularly interested. The indoor ones "were three — a house-parlourmaid, a -cook-house-keeper and a butler; All had worked together for a while in a fine old Georgian mansion at Hampstead Heath, and would be there still if Sir John Meadows hadn't sold his home on tho death of his wife and gone to live on the Riviera. (To be continued daily)