A Narrow Escape.

Otago Witness, Issue 1190, 19 September 1874, Page 18

A Narrow Escape.

BY THE AUTHOR OF " DENNIS DONNE," "NO ALTERNATIVE," &C, &C. Chapter XI. "is it the last, prank?" For a moment or two it goes very hard with Mrs. Angeratein inwardly as she comes upon that yoixng pair. Outwardly she is sufficiently composed to restore their self-possession, and they are sadly in need of the restoration. Each feels the situation to be a slightly idiotic one. Each knows that the other has this feeling. Notwithstanding this, they are very firm allies as they turn and face this foe. As for her, poor thing ! she would willingly fly to the uttermost ends of the earth to evade this meeting with them. But there is no help for it. She cannot turn back and retrace her steps, for that would be pleading guilty to some nameless accusation which she feels in the atmosphere that surrounds them. She cannot advance and address them easily, for she knows that they know Harry Bellairs, and through him that they may possibly know her. Above all, she cannot stand still like a fool — naturally she must obey the instincts of a gentlewoman, and make things pleasant in seeming to those about her. " How strange, and how fortunate, that we should meet here," she begins, dashing at the difficulty of being candid and polite at the same time. "I have been ao anxious to hear of your friend, and I had no opportunity of making personal enquiries, as we left town directly after the accident." She says all this in swift unbroken tones, without let or hindrance from her audience : they are too much relieved at her taking the initiative, and giving them time to recover themselves, to check her in her opening address. By the time she has finished it, they are both standing at ease again, and are able to discourse glibly and intelligibly about their overthrow, and Captain Bellairs's sufferings. ' "Bride and bridegroom, I suppose," Mrs. Angerstein thinks, as she looks at the pair before her. "Come to spend the honeymoon in my chosen retreat. Well, if they know nothing about me, I shall find that they are better than solitude, I think." " Are you staying here ? " Mrs. Angerstein and Kate asked of each other simultaneously. " I live here," Kate explains ; "it's been »y home all my life, and it's very lovely , and very dull, and I am very fond of it. If you're here for any length of time I'll teach you the country ; I can teach that well, can't I, Frank I" " I shall be charmed to learn it from you," Mrs. Angerstein says. Then a thought of Harry Bellairs crosses her mind ; there is a possibility of his being here with his friends, and she leaves a road open by which to escape. " Are you here alone ?" she asks, and Kate has to reply as coolly as she can — "My cousin, Mr. Forest, is staying with us, with my father and me. Come home with us now, and be introduced to my father, and the house, and my dog, at once, will you ?" Kate Mervyn wins every man whose path she crosses withont an effort, but it is rarely that women succumb to her sway, unless she makes an effort to fascinate them. She makes the effort now, for though the old love for Captain Bellairs has been rudely handled, though it has weakened and nearly died out under the treatment ; though it has, under the influence of time, got to be so feeble as to admit of a rival feeling reigning in her heart, still the girl remembers the man keenly, and yearns to pierce the mystery which severed her from him. That this pretty faded woman, on whose face the seal of a sad story is stamped is the key to the puzzle, Kate is quite sure. Being sure of this, Miss Mervyn resolves to fascinate the stranger into the habit of familiar intercourse, and from that vantage ground to study out the secret. The intimacy grows vigorously with easy grace. Mrs. Angerstein in lodgings with her children, and without her husband and carriage, finds society essential to her daily well-being. She developes affection for Miss Mervyn, and allows that young lady to perceive very clearly, that the state of affairs between herself and Frank is printed on an open page in legible type to Mrs. Angerstein. She is sympathetic in a soft and touching way, that lures Kate on imperceptibly to make tacit admissions which are matter of regret to her invariably afterwards. But with all this, Mrs. Angerstein guards her own secret sedulously, and Captain Bellairs's name is never mentioned between them, excepting when the daily enquiries as to his progress are made and answered. All the uncertainty, all the humiliation, all the danger of her position, is brought vividly before Kate one evening, when — Frank having left them for an hour's stroll with the dog and his pipe — the two ladies are alone together. They are sitting on the drawing-room window-sill, with the bright moonbeams refining their beauty, and causing everything in the room behind them, and the garden before them, to look fairer and sweeter than the fairest and sweetest things can ever look by day. "After all, you'll be sorry to leave this — no, not sorry to leave it, but sorry you're not in it sometimes, when you ; think of how it is bathed in beauty tonight," Mrß. Angerstein observes presently, and Kate languidly answers unthinkingly, " I shall only leay© it in one

way, and if I leave it in that way, nothing that is behind me can ever cost me a pang again." "He's a charming fellow," Mrs. Angerstein responds. " When is it to be dear ?" Even under the paling effect of the moonbeams Kate's face is seen to redden. It is her own fault, .her own stupid, sentimental fault, that she is put into a corner by such a question as this being asked. She has no right to resent the uncomfortable feeling by being anything but suave to her innocent questioner. " When is 'what ' to be ? we were speaking of generalities I thoxight " " I thought we were speaking of your cousin," Mrs. Angerstein interrupts. "I hope we shall be as friendly when you i come to live in London as we are now, Kate ; and I do hope yo\i won't live with his people," she goes on earnestly, "for, from what he has said of his mother, she must be difficult, to say the least of it." Those women only who have allowed men to assume the manner which goes beyond friendship, and is not openly avowed love, will sympathise with poor Kate now. She longs to take refuge in silence, but silence will only lead Mrs. Angerstein on to say more — to say something to Frank, perhaps ! As this horrible possibility arises before her, she ' arms herself to bear," and speaks. "What a delusion you are labouring under : do you think that I am engaged to my cousin ? " " I do think so, most certainly." " I am not — there is nothing of that kind between us ; the intimacy, the fa- j miliarity, will all be easily understood by you, when I tell you that I am a girl without brothers. Naturally, I turn with affection, perhaps with a foolishly open show of it, to my nearest male relative ; is it strange that I should do so 1" " Not at all," Mrs. Angerstein answers dryly. " Nor was my supposition strange or unnatural ; do me the justice of admitting that. lam sorry to find that you have only a sisterly feeling for him, for, as I said, just now, he's a charming fellow — perhaps though the sisterly feeling may deepen into something warmer." ' ' May deepen into something warmer ;" Kate repeats, starting up with the feeling strongly upon her that " it is not worth while" for her to try and delude this woman, who will not be deluded ; "it has deepened into something warmer, and you know it ; but he's engaged !" "And is sorry for it ?" "And is sorry for it," Kate acquiesces. " Then, my dear, he will get out of it, depend upon that," Mrs. Angerstein says in a tone of earnest reassurance. For though she is not an observant woman, her intuitions are good, and these tell her that Frank is too weak to be strong in the right direction in a matter of this sort. "He will make them both suffer," she thinks, "and Kate will suffer after her marriage with him. However, what is the use of arguing with a woman in love 1 Frank Forest is a charming fellow." As she meditates thus, Kate gets impatient. It seems to her she has made her confidence in vain, if Mrs. Angerstein confines herself to the bald statement of her belief in his " getting out of it." She — self-reliant girl as she is, on ordinary occasions — wants her friend to talk over various plans of action now. She longs to describe May, resolving fully to describe May fairly and well. Great justice shall be done to May's mere prettiness, and to her. power of being very pleasant, whenever everything is pleasant to her. But justice shall also be done to her utter inability to sympathise with a single one of Frank's intellectual tastes and higher aspirations. " You say 'he will get out of it,' without having an idea of what the girl he is engaged to is like," she says impatiently, and Mrs. Angerstein answers — " I can guess the type, if he has turned from her to you. She is your opposite, probably ; but Kate ! *is it well to wish thee happy,' with a man who hesitates for a moment in a matter of this sort? I wish, yes, I do wish with all my heart," she goes on in a burat of enthusiastic candour, "that Captain Bellairs and you could have come together, and have cared for one another ; he is such a good fellow, Kate, oh ! he is such'a good fellow !" Tears come into her eyeft, as she speaks. She might almost, under the influence of genuine, generous feeling, be led on to tell her story, and clear off every speck and stain from the character of this man, for a better knowledge of whom Kate is still hungering. But Frank comes back, and the moment for confidence is past, and Mrs. Angerstein, as she goes home this night, says to herself — " Lucky for me that I didn't; I'm glad, so glad I didn't, for events take such strange turns, that she may marry Harry by-and-by, and know me for what I am." Surely her self-abasement is complete enough when she has come to this pass, that she will not further her intimacy with Kate (even for the sake of doing Kate a kindness), for fear Kate may reproach herself by-and-by, for having allowed such intimacy. Her thought in this matter is not for herself. She would brave the possible acorn, she would make the revelation, she would risk the discontinuance of a friendship that is fast becoming strangely fascinating to her. But she can- ! not bear to give Kate cause for conscience pricks in time to come. " Let her go on thinking that I have always been all her friend ought to be," she says to herself. "No one can make her wiser ; and just at present it would be sad to me that she should ever have a pang because of her kindness to me ; if I told her all my story now, she would vibrate between gratitude to me and her worldly oenae of what i»

right ; she'd pity and condemn me, and I won't be either pitied or condemned by the only woman in the world for whose love I care, while I am with hei\ By-and-by, if she should hear of the curse I have been to him, and the blessing he has been to me, from Harry Bellairs, she shall be able to say to him, ' I never knew that Cissy was so bad, or I would not have had anything to do with her ;' and I wonder if he will be pleased with her for saying it ?" The cousins take two or three turnß round the lawn this evening after Mrs. Angerstein's departure, before either can think of anything that needs actually to be said. Frank at last feels that his soul will be lighter when he has disburdened it of a certain vague weight that is oppressing it ; hers may be heavier for the speech, but we can't have everything in this world. "I don't quite like that woman, Kate ; I think she is trying to ferret out something about us, don't you ?" "I think that she thinks we are a brace of fools," Kate answers, and Frank chimes in impatiently, "That's the worst of it; you women never will befriend yourselves, nor let us befriend you ; you go and make a display of something, before there's anything to display, and so precipitate matters, and bring them to smash as a rule, and all because of the impatience of your spirits, and the poverty of your reasoning powers. Why, why on earth make a parade of the feeling that we entertain for each other, in order that Mrs. Angerstein may vivisect it'!" " What have I done that you have not done ?" she asks. " Have I been more imprudent, more demonstrative, more regardless of the claims of others ? No, Frank, I have been none of these things ; but I have been more truthful, and I have loved you better than you have loved me ; let us have clone with it. Let us make an end of it, let us live it down." " Oh ! don't say that," he says, quickly. " Don't say what 1 We can make an end of it, we can live it down, we can crush it out of our hearts, if we do it at once, now, quickly." " You may be able to do so," he says, "but I couldn't cast away all feeling for a kitten for which I had cared, in such a hurry." " Your present task is easier, I am only a woman." " That's too much like a line in one of my own pieces for me to be touched by it," he says, looking down at her, and speaking with a sort of mirthful sadness that is infinitely perplexing to her, " but I'm cut lip about you, Kate, my pet ; you're taking it all so much more to heart than I thought you would." Has she been the sport and pastime of an idle man again ? Her eyes ask the question which her lips refuse to utter as they stand there in the stillness, with the moon casting its rays down upon them. " I don't mean that," he says, answering some subtle meaning in her glance which she had hardly intended to convey to him, " but you can't stand the uncertainty, even for my sake." " You tell me that there is uncertainty about it still ? Oh ! Frank ! you should have respected both Miss Constable and myself more than to play such a shallow part ; I won't let you degrade yourself so any longer," she continues impetuously ; "you shall not be in 'uncertainty' any more, as far as I am concerned ; we'll be friends, cousins, nothing more from this moment, Frank," and as she speaks she lifts her anguished face to his, offering him her lips as a sister might. He has every intention of breaking with May, and he has not the slightest intention of parting with Kate. Nevertheless, now when she speaks in this way, and looks in this way, the man is as miserable as if, indeed, he were assisting at the last obsequies of the love that exists between hiß cousin and himself. " One last kiss, at any rate," he says brokenly, and like a woman, she draws her head back, looks him tenderly in the face, and asks, " Is it the last, Frank? can you say it shall be the last ?" " I'll never give you up," he whispers, " you're part of my life, Kate, the knowledge I have of you has changed my nature ; but you mustn't try and force me to make a show of my feelings." " I would despise myself if I could do it," she interrupts ; "if I am so little to you that you can conceal them for convenience sake, we had better make an end of this indeed." " It's just the same with May," he says, complainingly, never considering how this comparing her with May chafes the spirit of the girl he is addressing ; " she always complains that I don't devote myself to her enough when we're out together ; she would have me cut other people and sit by herall the time, though, she has nothing to say for herself when I am there." The vein of humour which runs through his account of what his proprietress would I have him do, Btrikes a corresponding vein in Kate's nature, and she laughs lightly and heartily, and all the agony is eliminated from the situation. With the agony, their resolution to make this " their parting hour, a madness of farewells," takes wings also, and when they go in after a time, they are more firmly attached to each other than they have ever been. It happens unfortunately that by reason of their having lingered so long in the garden Mr. Mervyn has suffered from the breach of certain observances which habit has made second nature. The laws even of second nature cannot be roughly violated without unpleasant consequences ensuing. This night they have been roughly violated indeed. The water wherewith Mr, Meryyn'a gltiM of grog was made

had not boiled. The window had been left open too long, and he had caught _ a slight cold. The housemaid had mislaid a magazine he was interested in, and his daughter was not by to find it. Small wonder that he should suddenly disapprove of these "midnight rambles " as he called them in his discomfort and anger, or that he should tell Frank surlily, when that offender did disappear, that he "must have a word with him to-morrow." (To bt contmued.)