FICTION

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1746, 23 August 1905, Page 3

FICTION

THE CRIME OF GLORIA DARE. - ♦ By ESTHER MILLER, Author of “What Was Her Sin ?” “Tht Sting of the "Wasp,” “A Prophet of the Real," “Quicksands •of Life,” etc., etc. {All Rights Reserved.) CHAPTER I. THE LOVERS. ‘Hullo, Holderness, what are you doing in'this part of the world?” Two men had met in one of the byways of Bloomsbury—a shabby littie street of lodging-houses. “I'm going in there,” said Holderness, with a nod. “No. 32 ? That’s funny I I know a girl -who lives at No. 32—-Joyce Amber. '■ Clever little girl. She does the fashion plates for my paper.” 1 “I know her, too,” said Holderness. “How are you—quite well? Good-bye.” The journalist passed on his way, and Holderness rang, the. bell of the green door. - •He was a man of thirty, handsome, well-built, with keen blue eyes, and a fair akin bronzed, by exposure in many climes. Some years before he had succeeded to a large fortune, unexpectedly —a circumstance which had enabled him to indulge in his thirst for travel. He had been to almost all the known and unknown v places of the earth, and he had read as widely as he had travelled, and he had seen life and death, love and war. Every legitimate sensation except one had been his, in fact, and v that one he-was seeking now. Hia ring was answered by a respect-able-looking woman in an apron. “Is Miss Amoer in?” “I think so, sir. Will you go up?” He was evidently an old habitue, and he went up alone—to the third floor, where he knocked at the first door, which stood ajar, and looked in. A girl who was kneeling on the hearthrug to tend the fire, jumped to her feet at sight of him. / “Justin! I didn’t expect you this afternoon.” “But I may come in ?” “Of course!” She gave a low laugh which sounded like nervousness, and he put his arm round her waist and kissed her. “I thought you had gone to Scotland on business,” she added. “I managed without. How could I tear myself away from you for two whole days?” “Hear Justin,” she said tenderly. “Have you been busy?” “Very. And lam not finished yet.” “You ought to be; it is five o’clock. Put on your things, and come out with me, and we’ll dine and do a theatre.” “I should love to. but I really can’t this evening, Justin.” He frowned.' “I don’t like your working so hard. It isn’t necessary—now.” , “I don’t work too hard. But I’ve got my housekeeping, you know.” “Your housekeeping! This dolls house?” “There is more to do than you think.” She was very proud of her two rooms, which she had" furnished herself out of her earnings, and she had a right to be. Everything in the sitting-room was good and tasteful, and it was the refinement it displayed as much as the girl’s face, which had first attracted him on that afternoon when he was brought to call by a mutual friend. “It seems to me that the sooner I take charge of you the better,” he said. “There is no earthly reason why we should not be married next month.” “Give me breathing time I” She laughed, again with that nervous note. “We’ve only been engaged a week.” ‘You’li be able to breathe after you are married.” “Justin,” she said, “if you sit on that table it will break down. It is a ‘ genuine antique gate-legged table, warranted to give way at the slightest provocation, and it was certainly not intended to support twelve stone two!” “I will buy you another table.”

“I like that one. I got it at a sale with the hard savings of three months. Do you think any other table—the best in existence—could be so dear to me?’’ “Of course not. I sympathise perfectly. But you are only changing the subject, you know, and I am asking for a date! Do let those flowers alone for a moment, and attend to me." ff ßut I must get something done—if you are bent on taking up my time.” He rose, to, catch her as she passed rather than to save the table, which was quite firm. “Will you be good, and obey your future husband p” “Oh, what a boy you can be, Justin?” she said. “You make mo feel old sometimes, and yet you are over thirty, and lam only twenty-one. I promise to fix the date to-morrow; will that de?"

“I must say yes, I suppose.” She waited for a kiss, and he gave it. ‘How, I must do my flowers, and a dozen other things.” “Can’t you sit down for half an hour to talk to me?”

“No, indeed. I can’t spare even half an hour!”

With a slightly puzzled expression he watched her moving about the room, re-arranging vases, shaking up cushions, dusting books. Every pose and action of her slim figure was graceful; and her brown hair, her small, clear-cut feartures, her splendid dark eyes, made a picture which her lover found as attractive as it was iquant. Pretty she always was, and when she was animated she was beautiful, and when she looked at Justin Holderness as she had looked at him just now, panting softly between parted lips, the fire of her eyes dimmed, few men would not have envied him. Nevertheless he had more than a vague impression that he was really not welcome this afternoon, that she wished to get rid of him. “Am I less than your furniture ?” he asked, suddenly, uttering liis thoughts aloud.

' “Oh, Justin, how can you say such a thing!” “All the same you want me to go,” he said. “It’s horribly mean. Here am I all alone in London ”

“You’ve heaps of friends, and your club, and your hotel. Do you think I like turning you out ?” she said, almost tearfully. “I loathe it! But—but ” “All right, I am going.”' “Kiss me. Justin.” She put her arm round his neck; a,nd he held her close for an instant. “My love, my love.” ‘You’ll come to-morrow?” The girl’s voice was half muffled by his lips. She lingered at the doer as though she could scarcely bear to shut him out. “And yet she wanted me to go,” he repeated to himself on the way downstairs. “Why? She has never played with me like this before.” CHAPTER 11. GLORIA’S RETURN. Directly she was alone, the girl’s manner changed. She turned back to the room with a quivering sigh of relief, because she had been so afraid he would stay, and she did not know what she would have done if he had stayed. The early March afternoon was drawing in. Both ends of the street disappeared in a raw white mist, which made the lamps look small and mean, and the dreariness outside even seomeci to permeate within, and rob the fire of its cheerfulness, the curtains and carpets of their warmth, tc strike a chill to the girl’s very heart.

She drew the armcnair nearer the grate, and crouched in it ,holding her head. Sometimes she rocked her body softly, as though she were in pain, if so, it mas mental, not physical. It had grown with her growth, feeding like a fungus on her youth, poisoning it, devouring it, haunting her dreams, killing the laugh on her lips, even tainting the love story which would have been so perfect otherwise, and dividing her with a barrier of secret fear and sihame from this man who was dearer to her than herself. A moment-was at hand which she had been anticipating for nearly half her life, sometimes with dread, 'sometimes with horror, sometimes with impatience, sometimes with a nostalgia of the soul in which all tkree ingredients mingled with a hunger and a longing which was pity more than love. For ten year®, in fact, she had been waiting for this afternoon which was shroud-

ed fittingly in gloom, and her oppressed spirit cowered even lower than her drooping head. Half-past five. It was quite dark by this time, and she rose and drew the curtains across the window, shutting out the dismal afternoon, and lighted the lamp. She liked her room lighted up, and even on this occasion she could not help noticing bow homely and pleasant it was, how well the polished bureau and chair backs looked against the soft dull blue of walls and carpet, how the old brass flower-pot gleamed, how the roses Justin had given her —roses in winter!—added the. touch of luxury which every woman loves. “Anybody would like it,” she decided. I’m glad it looks nice! And when the tea comes in—with Aunt Annette’s silver teapot ” A feverish impatience beset her. She wandered about, unable to rest. After waiting so long it seemed impossible to wait another moment; every pulse was throbbing, every nerve strained. And yet when the unexpected footsteps came at last, a sort of numbness seized her, and she stood frozen, motionless. Soane one knocked. “Come in.” The door opened, and a woman appeared—a tall woman, slight and willowy, in a dong travelling cloak. She paused on. the threshhoid, and threw up her veil, revealing a white face, and dark eyes almost supernaturally large, and bright, and across the room, and across the wider space of years, she gazed at the girl. “I am Gloria,” she said. CHAPTER 111. THE STORY OF THE PAST. Her voice, low and liquid, broke the spell which held Joyce silent. “Pray take off your, cloak,” she said, constrainedly. ‘You must be tired.” “Aren’t you going to kiss me, Joyce?” “Kiss you ?” The girl’s hand went to her throat as though she were choking. “Would you like me. to—to kiss you ?” “How can I stay otherwise?” asked the woman, passionately. “You wrote me to come. If I had not thought I should be welcome. I would rather have sought the nearest river than the shelter you offered me!” “Oh, Gloria!” “She is my half-sister, my mother’s daughter, I told myself. Whatever she thinks of me she cannot forget her childhood. when we loved each other. She must care for me—she must—she must! All the world may turn its back on me, but she will 1 be true.”^ Joyoe quivered. She was very pale. “H it had been anything else—anything,” she said. “I would overlook that you had been in prison all these years; I would try to forget the disgrace, the—the horror of it all. But that! Oh, Gloria, I can’t ”

“I was wrong to take you at your word!” cried Gloria, bitterly. “I should have known the offer was only made by that charity which bites deeper than acid into the flesh! My mistake is soon remedied. You do not want me; you shrink from me in shame and loathing. I will go!” She turned to the door.

“No, no—stay!” cried the girl. “You must not think you are unwelcome. I have looked forward to making you comfortable, and helping you to forget the wretched past. The half of all I have is yours. Whatever I can do to help you, I will do willingly. Now and always you are my sister, and your interests are mine, and your welfare is dear to me; but I cannot promise to love you—oh, can I!—as I used to do.”

The woman’s fierceness had already died. She drew a step nearer, searching the agitated young face. “I think you are a good girl, Joyce. I remember —I remember—■—” her voice melted and grew husky with unshed tears —“what a dear little face you had as a child. And it is just the same. . Yet you are a woman, and I was thirty j years old the other day. . . Thirty! , lam a hundred I Oh, little sister ” j

“Don’t,” gasped Joyce. “I can’t bear 1 it! I don’t want to cry; what is the use? We’re not going to be sentimental, or to talk about the past, only to make the best of what can’t be altered. I ”

she cleared her throat —“I’ve been, preparing for you for months, Gloria. I knew you would want clothes, so I have been getting a few together by degrees. And I bought a new bed the other day—you won’t mind sleeping in my room, will you ? —and —and other little things. We shall be quite The landlady is very kind, and I told her you had come back from abroad, and had been ill, and would want feeding up, and—and that your name was Amber, too.” : Yes, my own name is a brand of infamy!” said Gloria, with a deep, quivering breath, “which has to be hidden like a hideous sear; I am nothing but a shame to. you—a burden on your shoulders, poor child. And yet you are spending your money on me—your few pounds which you have earned yourself! Why are you so generous ? Why did you offer to take me in? You might have left me to the streets! No one would have blamed you.” . _ ‘You are my sister,” said Joyce, brokenly, “and I—l remember, too! Oh, Gloria, I. loved you. Mere child as I was, I would have believed your word against the world’s. But you confessed you killed the man; your own tongue robbed me of my confidence in you. It nearly broke my heart.” The woman’s breast heaved, and heaved ; for large eyes brimmed with tears, her whole face melted to an exquisite tenderness which gave her back, for a moment, the beauty and the youth which she had lost. “How cruel I have been to you! Was I selfish, after all? Joyce, if it were in my own words alone which convinced you of my guilt, let me take them back! I will deceive you no longer. What I meant to do is done and over. It was not I who killed John Middlebrook.” 1 “But you said —why did you say ” “It was not I who killed John Middlebrook,” repeated Gloria, steadily. “I lied to save the man I loved.” “Gloria!” “It is true! You believed me then, believe me now! I thrust myself forward, I accused myself of having shot 'him in a moment of passion. Did you ever hear the story properly? He was my employer, you know, a widower, and I lived alone with him in, Ms.country house as governess to his little girl. And he persecuted me with attentions I did not like, and when I snubbed him he began to talk about missing m&ney from hi® desk to frighten me. Then one day he was found shot with Ms own gun in his own wood. The only person -who had anything to gain by his death was his young cousin and heir.” She paused. Joyce, who had been drinking in every word, waited with an air of breathless attention. “Oh, God, like a hideous dream it comes back to me!” continued Gloria. “We loved each other, he and I, but he had no money, and we could not tMnk

of marrying yet awhile. He cried one evening, I remember —he was only a boy, Joyce, no older than myself, and .1 took his head on my shoulder to comfort him. and begged him to have courage and patience for my sake. But he looked round, I suppose, and the sight of all that would be his, but for the one life between, drove him mad. The men went out shooting together and alone, and only one came hack. There was blood on his sleeve when he met me, there was the terror of guilt in his eyes.' He stammered something about thinking it best to go at once. And I sent him ' away—and stayed.” “How could you!” sobbed Joyce. “The charge would have been murder in his case, you see. I could plead manslaughter, and a jury is never so hard on a woman. I said my employer threatened to accuse me of theft out of spite, to rob me of my lover, whose name X withheld. My statement was believed, and on account of my youth and the provocation I had received, my sentence, you see, was light!” She stretched out her hands “Now you know the truth, will you kiss me?” “Gloria!” Joyce sprang forward; they embraced with tears “My sister!’-’ murmured Gloria. “I am so relieved, so happy. I think it must be the grandest thing a woman ever did for love. Gloria, what courage you must have had! How you must have loved him !”

“Yes, I loved him.” “To give up ten years, the best of your life; to face the degradation of rt all. X couldn’t have done it for any one. Weren’t you sorry when it was too late I” . . „ . _ . Cf l would do it again,” saad Gloria, tensely, “and again—ana again I” “Then you love him still?” The elder woman shivered. “Yes, and no,” she said. “It is difficult to explain. I would go back for another ten years to wipe him clean. But J don’t want to see him; I wouldn’t marry him to-day if he came pleading to my feet. You know what the horror is—that feeling you had for me. I couldn’t let him touch me, never again; blit he was the one man in the world till then. It was only half of myself which bore the punishment for hlim; the other half died when I saw that look in his eyes and: the bloodstain on his sleeve.”

' “Poor Gloria. Aren’t you cold, aren’t you tired ? Oome to the fire; let me take off your cloak.. The sam» old v, cloak!” ‘Yes, the same old cloak; fancy your remembering it!” The girl’s trembling fingers fumbled with the hooks, could scarcely manage them. She smiled with tears running down her cheeks. Not a doubt of her sister’s story entered her mind. That a woman should make such a sacrifice for love seemed nothing incredible to / the girl, who was herself in love. On the contrary, it was as though light had been let into a dark place, a chamber of mystery unlocked. “And! your gloves; take off your gloves, Gloria, and make yourself at norne.”

“Don’t look at my hands beside yours, cried Gloria. “Yours are so white, so pretty, and mine! Oh, those years, -Joyce, tnose years which ended this afternoon! My youth, my good looks, everything; I had is gone.” “You will always he beautiful,” said the young girl, passionately. “You couldn’t be anything else with features like yours,” “I used to look like you,” said Gloria,

putting her arm round Joyce. “Yes, just like you. And I saw myself in a glass this afternoon. It was in the train, and I was almost afraid to look. What a woman is a woman is to the last! That I should care for such things now.” “Of course you care, you must! You are still young; there should he many happy years before you ” “Oh, my dear!” ‘You must try and forget the past, to begin again without a memory. We’ll never call you Gloria Dare, and nobody will know who you are except just ourselves. , ' And I’ll spoil you, Gloria. . . . I don’t know why I’m crying! It must be because I am so much happier than I thought it possible an hour ago!” ' “I wondered many times how often you thought of me. But I could not write, dear; I was obliged to wait till I you.” “Of course, I understand. I am not reproaching you, Gloria. If you knew how much reason I bad! to be relieved. lam engaged, you know. I—l’ve got the best and finest lover in the world.” Gloria squeezed her sister’s hand. “I am so glad, for your sake. And is he good—really good, that is the chief thing of all?” ‘Tie’s splendid, Gloria.” The girl’s eyes glowed. “It seems cruel to boast of him to you, who have been so unfortunate in love, but I can’t pretend I think little of him, can I? He has been to me. I am a little nobody, without any people apparently, working for my bread and cheese, and he is a rich man of good family; hut he never tried to take the least advantage... And it was preying on my mind that I should have to tell him before the marriage about you, and I —l put it off, and put it off.” “Poor child!” “I thought be loved me well enough even to forgive my being the half-sister of Gloria Dare. But it seemed so hard that I, who was bringing him nothing else should bring him a disgraceful connection. He is so honourable himself; he has such a horror of anything evil. Oh, I was miserable and ashamed, Gloria. But now I shall tell him bravely. Trig mind is big. What people think will not trouble him an atom if he knows you are innocent. He will be as proud of you as I am; he will join me in helping to comfort you. You have only to see him to recognise what a dear, kind fellow he is.” “Blow you believe in him,” murmured the woman hollowly. “Bow you remind me of myself when I was young! The mere tone of your voice—your eyes as you speak of him. Your lover is a hero to yon; you would stake your life on his honour! Oh, I know, I know! I would have done the same for Justin, then.” “For Justin?” repeated Joyce. Her voice and face expressed wonder, nothing more: and she looked up inquiringly. The coincidence was strange. “Yes, Justin,” said Gloria. “I thought it a beautiful name—Justin Holderness.” (To be Continued.)