Chapter X.

Otago Witness, Issue 1189, 12 September 1874, Page 18

Chapter X.

CONVALESCENT.

Fob a week Captain Bellairs has borne the paroxysms of pain, and the pangs of mingled anxiety and curiosity with equal fortitude. At the end of this week his fortitude gives way, and he uses the privilege of a convalescent, and will touch upon a topic that his nurses are desirous of shunning. "Where is your cousin? Why do I never see he? V he asks of Gertrude, who is sitting near to the head of the sofa on which he is lying with a book in her hand, from which she occasionally reads passages that goad him to madness ; for, selected at random as they appear, they still seem to bear upon Oerfemde'e own case with

ing these days of suffering and intimacy made very manifest to him. "Kate went home two days after your accident ; I forgot to mention it to you ; my brother went with her," Gertrude explains hurriedly. She keeps her eyes bent upon her book, but she is conscious that a flicker of colour has crossed her cheek, and she is also conscious that Captain Bellairs is watching it, and rightly divining the reason why it comes. "You should have told me she was gone ; I have been thinking her very heartless, I should have been more hurt than I should have cared to tell you, if I had found that she was here indifferent about me the whole time," he says with emphasis. "She was too kind (like you in that respect) when the smash came on Barnes Common, for me to bear patiently the idea of that kindness ceasing." In her innermost heart Gertrude is rather inclined to resent being coupled with her cousin Kate in this way. " Mamma has heard from her, I haven't had a line," Gertrude says, " and I hr,ve no doubt but that she inquired for yon. ; I'll ask mamma presently, and perhaps bring you a beautiful little message from Kate by-and-by." " Has Forest been down with her all this time ?" " It is only a week, Captain Bellairs." He laughs uneasily in reply to her reproachful tone. Wlien he thinks of goodlooking, gaiety-inspiring Frank Forest alone in a dull country place with Kate Mervyn, a week seems a very long time. Unluckily for her own peace of mind, Gertrude fathoms the depths of his uneasiness, and a jealous pang robs hor for a few moments of her self-possession. She has kept the conviction that Captain Bellairs feels a stronger interest in Kate than men usually feel in a mere acquaintance at bay. " Yet she is a mere acquaint, ance of a few hours' standing only, they would have mentioned it if they had ever met before," the girl argues erroneously, "and I don't believe in love at first sight ; he's only making particular enquirieabout her, out of idleness." " How does Miss Constable like his being away V he asks, pursuing the part of the conversation that is most intensely interesting -to himself. " She makes a ridiculous fuss about it," Gertrude answers, promptly ; " she can't bear him out of her sight. I believe she would like Frank to go about ticketeds ' engaged,' in legible letters." "Is he likely to be married soon 1" Captain Bellairs asks, a little anxiously. Frank, fettered by matrimonial bonds, will be a pleasant, • innocuous, agreeable fellow again in the eyes of his friend, who thirsts for Mr. Forest's .blood during the present state of affairs. " I think his meeting with our cousin will defer his marriage with May Conßtable indefinitely," Gertrude says, as calmly as jealousy will permit her to say it. " He shall know the truth," she thinks, " I don't care whether it's indiscreet or not."

" You mean that he has become more deeply interested in his cousin than it is well an engaged man should be I"

" I mean that Frank and Kate have fallen in love "with each other — unfortunately for him, for he will sacrifice a good deal if he marries her," Gertrudo says, with a little angry movement of the head. The fear that Captain Bellairs will think that she is speaking with an aim and object, of Kate's " infatuation for Frank," as she longs to call it, checks her for a few moments. But his next remark loosens her tongue, and tips it with gall.

" He will sacrifice a .great deal more if he doesn't marry her, if she would have him," he says,' earnestly.

" She nuist be a more consummate flirt even than I believe her to be, if she would not have him after the way she has tried to get him away from May Constable," she answers, with an amount of honest genuine indignation, that is not called forth by any sympathy with May. It is hard on handsome Gertrude Forest, that the pearl of her warmest affection, which she is quite ready to cast before this man, should be simply overlooked by him, while he is hankering after, and seeking for the bare dead grain of interest which he strives to imagine he may make Kate feel for him.

" Then yoxi think that she really loves your brother," he asks, with a spasmodic movement that hurts his maimed arm horribly. He cannot help thinking of that girl who rode Guinevere from Torquay to Newton Abbott in twenty minutes for his sake ; he cannot help remembering how she was to be entirely his own in those brighter, better, truer days. He cannot help feeling that Frank is a lesser man than himself, as far as real manliness goes— 'although Frank has written " Duplicity," and he (Captain Bellairs) has only suffered from it.

" I should be obliged to have such a bad opinion of Kate, if I didn't think that she really loved Frank," Gertrude says, meditatively ; " she has gone to such lengths with him, you see," she adds, in a burst of modest impxilsiveness, and Captain Bellairs forthwith proceeds to torture himself by picturing various kinds of " lengths," and forcing himself to gaze upon the false drawings which Gertrude is faintly outlining.

" I can't stand this kind of thing any longer," he says, rising impatiently, and walking up and down the room, in a way that^ gives Gertrude an opportunity of exhibiting a good deal of impressively tender anxiety about his injured arm, " I can't stand this kind of thing any longer, Misb Forest ; you must have seen— those few words that passed between your

must have told you — that ,we had- met, and known each other before V* *'" To tell the truth, Gertrude has but a very vague recollection of those words ; as soon as they had been uttered, before she had been able to attach any meaning to them, she had found herself grovelling in the dust, close to a kicking horse's heels. But as she wan^s to know all that ■is to be known, she is prudent, and refrains from saying that they have passed away from her memory, without even leaving a shadow of themselves. All she says is — '" Kate is very close about some things, very unreserved about others ; she has concealed her knowledge of yo\i, carefully ; and she has shown her liking for Frank, recklessly. I don't pretend to understand her, and I like her very much — you must know that, Captain Bellairs — but I see her faults."

" I daresay you do," he says, " but I don't ; therefore I want to stand well with her, to put myself right with her." " Why V Gertrude asks sharply, and there is a twinge of jealousy, for which intuition teaches her she has good cause, in her heart as she asks it. His answer dashes all her hopes to the ground. But the hopes of a woman who is in love have a habit of getting up again. " Why ! shall I tell you « why,' Miss Forest '? Yes, I think I will ; because I find that I still like her better than I have ever liked any girl before or since I knew her. Meeting with her again seems to have changed my nature, and knocked the frivolity out of me in a measure." " You have cared for her before ther^ and you care for her again now, though 1 tell you she is in love with my brother Frank 1" Gertrude interupts bitingly, and her hopes are held down tightly stiil, as he replies with a degree of genuine earnestness, that is at the sanie time painful and pie ising to her — " Care for her still ! yes, God bless her, I care for her so much that I would do anything to further her happiness in any way ; if Frank can assure it better thau I can, you may quite rely on my not interfering, or disturbing her at all ; but if Frank keeps on his engagement with Miss Constable, I shall try my chance again." There is 1 silence between them for a while after Captain Bellairs has made this avowal.' Gobd breeding and womanly tact are both "urging Gertrude to say something that shall sound pleasantly and sympathetically in the ears of this man who is making her his confidante. But, oh the other side, wounded pride and disappointed love are chaining- her tongue. She positively cannot speak without the accompaniment of tears, and even in her agony she remembers man's manly dislike to being cried at. He meanwhile, though he appears id be absolutely unconscious of there being any disturbing element in the feeling of friendship which Gertrude Forest has' developed for him lately, is perfectly alive to the nature of that feeling, and kindly desiroxis of crushing it out as soon as possible. He has nothing to give in return for it, consequently he does not wish to be flattered into allowing himse 1 f to be enveloped by its folds. " Surely," he tells himself, " perfect frankness on the subject of Kate will be as efficacious a curing system as I can pursue." " I tried to get your cousin to listen to me the other day, before we went out in the tandem ; but she cut me short constantly," he says presently, " however, telling it to you will be the same as telling, it to her ?" he adds,, inquiringly, and Gertrude feels painfully that he is putting her on her honour to repeat something which, if repeated, may incline Kate towards him.

" Perhaps, if the subject is painful, you had better not revive it, she says, making a faint effort to avoid having the office of carrier pigeon thrust upon her. For answer he says, "it must be revived before I can have a chance with her," and then goes on to tell Gertrude the tale of those Torquay days in which he and Kate had met, and known, and loved one another.

" It's been all plain sailing so far," he says, as he brings his story up to the point of that ride into Newton, and Kate's unpremeditated elopement in the train with him, " but the steering is more difficult now, for another person is involved in the interest from this time. If I had only spoken about this person to Kate on our journey up, we should not have parted as we did at Paddington. " Ten years ago, a very good fellow, who had been a messmate of mine for several years in different ships, wrote to me asking me to go to him at his lodgings in Portsmouth, telling me at the same time that he wanted to entrust to me a difficult and disagreeable task which he could not have entrusted to any matt on earth, had there been a possibility of his living a month longer. This Was the first announcement I had of his illness, and I went at once with a vow on my lips and in my heart that, let the task be what it would, I would fulfil it for the sake of one of the best fellows in the world.

" I found him in a wretched place at Portsmouth, in the last stage of an illness that had come upon him suddenly, and that had been known to be incurable from the first. It had run its course very rapidly, and one of its prominent characteristics was profound depression. Nevertheless, though I knew this, I was surprised to see one of the pluckiest and brightest fellows on earth so utterly broken down at the gates of death ! He soon made me acquainted with the cause. " 'You knew that I had been married, and lefjt a iridoweir, Bellaiw,' he m&,

ter j it's about that daughter that I want ' to speak to you.' " I won't tell you all he said about what that daughter had been to him, because it would make you cry to hear it and me to tell it. He made me understand that she had been the rose of his life, the apple of his eye, and he also made me thoroughly understand that he felt he had not, guarded her well. He interested me in his description of her fair sweet beauty, and her loving, tender, clinging disposition, and when he had succeeded in doing that, he told me that his daughter was lost to him, and that the task he wanted to entrust to me was this, that I should find and save her from worse than had already befallen her. "It was the old story, you see. A fellow had been a scoundrel to her, and the girl, unable to face it at home, had trusted the man who had already shown himself untrustworthy, and gone off with him. All this had happened only three or four months before ; and the wretched father, cramped in means, physically incapacitated, and mentally broken to pieces, had been unable to trace her until ]ust before he wrote to me. The quest he wanted me to go upon was this, that I should go to her, and, on any terms, get her to come and see him, and be blessed by him before he died. > " The girl was as happy as a bird when I found her ; it's not the slightest use my striving to cast a halo of remorse and romance about her. She was a light-headed, unobservant creature, and she had no perception of a fact that was perfectly clear to me, and that was, that the fellow was tired of her. Most men do get tired of women who go to the deuce for them," Captain Bellairs observes, parenthetically; " and this man was no exception to the , rule. " She was a good deal touched when I talked to her about her father. She had a timid, trusting, helpless,- kind of nature, and was emotional to the last degree. On the whole, she was , easy to work upon ; and I got her to go away with me, she fully intending to go back again, and t as fully intending that she should j never do ao, if I could possibly influence her. '■' To cut the story short : her father died almost immediately on her return, and poor Oissy was left upon my hands in an unexpected way. The fellow who had got tired of her wrote to her, telling her that his conscience was awakened, and that his relations were breaking their hearts on account of the ' fall he had had for her sake.' His relations were a set of uncles and aunts for whom he scarcely existed. However, the timely and thoughtful mention of them rounded his sentence well, and made his meaning clear to her, He never knew that he I nearly killed that poor girl, and drove her out of her mind for a time. ■ "I was true to her father's trust in her, in one way, but hardly quite that in any other. Heaven knows, I never had another than a brother's thought and care for poor Oissy ; but I hardly quite considered what other people might think. It happened once that I took her to 'a little, quiet watering-place (I had no women people of my own to apply to, Miss Forest), and there were some people there who had not known her father. Among them was a man called Clement Graham. She nearly went mad at the idea of their discovering anything about her, and, in a weak moment, in the midst of all manner of complications, and to stop remarks, I spoke of her as Mrs. Bellairs.' The unlucky speech cat Clement Graham off from a ferretting expedition on that oocasion ; but he bore it in his mind, and used it with very sad effect for me thrae <yeaxa after, when he met me at Paddington station with your cousin; and desired to be kindly remembered to ' my wife.'" As he brings his story to a close a light comes into Gertrude's eyes, and a sense of relief into her heart. It may be that it would be doing Kate' the reverse of a kindness to clear up this mystery which has kept Kate and Captain Bellairs apart heretofore. Gertrude remembers those half' unconscious' words he uttered on Barnes Common that day, and also recalls the pretty winning face of the woman who hadturnedaway from his recognition. " If one rushes recklessly into a state of defiance of that sort of rivalry- oneßelf, one has no right to persuade another into doing it," she says, self-excusingly to herself. Then she asks aloud — " Cissy was the name of your poor, unfortunate young friend 1 How funny !" " How, funny 1" he repeats, questioningly, after her. " Because you called that pretty Mrs. Angerstein, who came to our aid the other day, ' Cissy,' and she didn't respond. I suppose you were dreaming of the poor girl you have been telling me about ?" " I suppose I was," he says. " Common civility must take us to Barnes Cottage as soon as' you can drive out," Gertrude replies ; and he immediately begins to distrust the integrity of the confidante he has chosen. ' {To be conthvued.)