A Narrow Escape.

Otago Witness, Issue 1191, 26 September 1874, Page 18

A Narrow Escape.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "DENNIS DONNE 1 ' "NO ALTERNATIVE," &C, &C. Chapter XII.

DO AS YOU LIKE,

Frank's feelings, as he loiters about this morning, trying to cheat himself and Kato into the belief that he is not keenly anxious and excessively uncomfortable, are unenviable to the last degree. He knows perfectly well from the manner and the tone which his uncle assumed towards him List night that some definite statement as to his designs or his want of them, will bo extracted from him this morning. Ho also knows perfectly well that he is utterly unprepared with such a statement. He will be compelled to interlard his discourse with " ifs," and it strikes him forcibly that Mr. Mervyn is not the man to listen tolerantly to ai.y exposition of a halting, or dubious, policy. Under these circumstances it is not at all extraordinary that he should feel inclined to charge Kate with being altogether too precipitate, not to say reckless, in the matter. He makes, as the moment for his interview with liis uncle approaches, one futile effort to take counsel with Kate as to the course he shall adopt. "Do exactly as you like," is Kate's answer. " That's exactly what I can't do ; I can't ask Uncle Frank to smile benignly on my engagement with May and my love for you at the same time." " No ! you only ask me to do that. " Play fair, Kate dear ; circumstances set the trap for us, and wefell into it simultaneously. Neither can blame the other ; L only want your advice now as to the best and happiest way for us both to get out of it." " Do as yu like," Kate repeats, hardening and strengthening her heart as she witnesses his weakening resolution. " I wouldn't move a hairs-breadth to' avert the end, even if I felt that it would kill me, and I don't feel that." Then a pang of bitter, tender regret that she may not go on loving this man, and striving to bring o\it what is best in him, assails her, and she goes away from him to endure the agony of the first act of renunciation alone. °A night's repose has toned down the warmth of Mr. Mervyn's feelings considerably. He has forgotten the mislaid magazine and the lukewarm grog, therefore the spirit of the housemaid is at peace. But he has not forgotten that his only daughter and his nephew are absorbing each other in a way that not even their kinship warrants. Accordingly, though he is very cordial in his manner to Frank this morning, Frank feels desperately that the time has come. He is disgusted with himself to find that he is actually relieved when his uncle, far from asking him his intentions, quietly takes it for granted that he has none ; and merely suggests that it is quite time that there should be an end to an intimacy that may be remarked as excessive, and may be detrimental. "Besides, my boy," Mr. Mervyn goos on, "it's time that you went back to this young lady you're going to marry. Your mother tells me that sho is a very lovely and attractive girl, and it's not fair to her to subject her to the temptation of other men's attentions when they are unchecked by your presonco."

Tho old, sailor makes his speech in the frankest and friendliest way — in a way that prevents Frank exhibiting the rage he feels, at his mother having interfered a second time betwoen himself and Kate. Jt goads him nearly to madness to hear tho loveliness and attractiveness of his May held out as reasons why he should return to her, and leave Kate. But his tonguo is tied. He cannot deny his engagement ; he cannot defend his conduct ; ho cannot express a single sentiment about Kate, which would not be an insult to her father under the circumstances. All ho can do is to announce his readiness to go home " if his uncle is tired of him." ° il I'm not tired of you, but we don't want any deserters here, my boy," Mr. Mervyn tells him good-temperedly. "There now ! I -promised your mother that I would speak about it, and I have done it. Sond Kate here : I want her to get me something." "Your father has turned me out," Frank says gloomily to Kate as he meets her, "He wants you now—to tell you the reason why, I suppose, and to hear you say that you think it's all right, and that you're perfectly satisfied that it should be so. Kate ! I don't deserve anything better than this, but I am worthy of something better. If only you get liaW the surface, you might make a good fellow of me ; but if you give me up this way, it will be giving me up to May — it will be giving me up to a careless, purposeless life." She shakes her head in helpless despair, fox- she knows very well now that all the meaning of his plea falls far short of her hopes. Ho wants her to love him still, and not only to love him still, but to show him her love, to try and detain him near her, to strive to detach him from May, to soothe her father's doubts, and stifle his rebukes. All these tilings she fully understands now that he wishes her to do. But she also fully understands that he will remain passive himself, that he will continue to wait on aimlessly for something to occur to facilitate the breaking ttff of his engagement with May, and that she is, in fact, wasting her love on ft man who is consistent in nothing but his inconsistency, and strong in nothing but hi.? Weakness of will. ** Jt retfg with you, Fmnk, fflurtbttf y<A)

him; " it is altogether beyond my control." go from me or stay with me," she tells "After what your father has said I can't stay here unless you explain things and smooth them over." " That I will not d:>, even for you." " Then I must go and face the fate you force upon me. " "You will do whatever is easiest and pleasantest to you at the moment," she says, sorrowfully, " and you'll love your work, and — altogether you will be very much happier than I shall be, Frank." " I don't know about that ; you'll not have to pass the rest of your days with May," he answers, discontentedly, as she goes away to her father, and he feels quite in the position of the wronged one, and tells himself, "What on earth women want ? they're not satisfied with the knowledge that a fellow loves them, they want to have the fact blazoned abroad ; there's really no pleasing them ; if a fellow tries to do it he only gets into a scrape for his pains." The truth is that the prospect of a return to May is very horrible to him. He realises with painful force that if he once puts the yoke of her presence and the family pressure upon himself again, that he will never be able to shake it off. If his uncle had not been so precipitate, if his mother had not interfered, if Kate herself had only played her part more patiently, he would have spared poor May the misery of making a loveless marriage. As it is, " They've tied my hands between them," he says, safely, as his heirt falls down before the vision he has conjured up of the arid plain life will be to him, with May Constable for his wife. There is something, he feels, desperately undignified in the situation during the whole of the day. Kate absolutely refuses to make a sign of affection for him from the moment he declares himself compelled to go and " face the fate she has forced upon him," and his uncle considerately and cheerily makes his engagement the topic of conversation whenever the exigenoieß of social life compel them to meet. The mere mention of it makes him shiver. How, then, shall he endure the renewal of the daily intercourse with May, which May insists upon, when he is in London, as one of her just prerogatives. As he has observed in a moment of unwise confidence to Kate, " she expects one to go and .sit by her, and she has nothing to say, and even that she doesn't say well." Poor fellow ! his future looms befare him a very flat plain indeed, as he remembers all these things. But he receives no further encouragement from Kate to prove himself a renegade to May. Miss Mervyn does not go on her way rejoicing exactly ; but she goes on her way, while he remains with them, with an air of contentment that is infinitely irritating to him. He cannot make up his mind to be everything to her ; but, on the other hand, he cannot make up his mind to be nothing to her. "Women either draw the line too broadly, or refuse to draw it at all," he tells himself. It must be admitted that there is truth in his statement. She, meanwhile, has a hard part to play. She has conceived it, and all the difficulties it presents, most thoroughly, and is prepared to throw her whole heart and spirit into it, and render it full justice. Frank is unstable as water, and her life's happiness will be wrecked, if she suffers herself to be wafted about wheresoever his whim listeth any longer. " ' To seem,' will soon be transformed into 'to be,' in my case," she tells herself , as she finds the part she has determined to play becoming easier to her every hour. It had been hard at first — torturingly hard — to txirn from him when he tried to wake her pity and her love. But, before this day is o^er, the task of denial has become easier to her ; and even May might have witnessed, without a pang of jealousy, the parting scene. "Give me one kiss, Kate, as you send me away ; at least, as you let me go in this way, I'll never ask you for another," he says. And his face changes, and his tongue falters, for though he dare not be free to win her, Kate is dearer to him than any other woman ever has been or ever will be. " Give me one kiss ; I must have it. I will have it, my darling ! Oh, my darling I" She puts her cheek up to him, and it does not quiver as his lips touch it. Her eyes meet his steadily,- and she marvels at hersplf that it is so. " Can you forget all this?" he mutters. " Can you put away the memory of the way we have loved each other I Can you take up your life from this point, and go on with it as if I had never existed ? " "Yes, to your last question," the girl says, sadly, "I know myself so well, Frank ; I feel that I shall be able to force myself, not to 'forget' but 10 take a powerful and absorbing interest in something, it may be in work of some kind, or, it may even be, another love. I can't toll which it will be, but I know that it will be." " Not in another love," he pleads. He is renouncing her himself, but he cannot bear the idea of a rival and successor. He cannot endure the candour with which Kate makes the statement, and withal he cannot shake off a feeling of half remorse. It is love for himself — love which he has cherished and accepted, and fed with caresses, and which he is now going to leave to starve — which has brought Kate to this hard philosophic state. "Not in another love," he repeats, ardontly, as Kate stands coldly by, like a statue of horself, and makes no reply to Jus request, no response to the hand-cla«p which ho gives her, by way of adding wight ty hid entraaiyj She trembles for

an instant as she feels that if she relaxes in the least now, all her resolves will be broken down, and she will relapse into a state of supine devotion to him again. So, with the iron entering into her soul, she compels herself to say — " Why should you care, Frank ( Why can't you be as indifferent to me as I shall be to you from this hour ? You have loved me less than I have loved you, and still you'd grudge me to anyone else, while I could hear of your marriage to-morrow without wincing. " He winces enough as he listens to her steadily spoken words, for he believes them to be true, and Kate goes on —

" I shall follow your career with interest, I shall read of your successes with pride ; I shall always look upon the period of my intercourse with you as the brightest part of my life ; but," (and she shivers with the earnestness with which she says this) "I'll kill every softer thought of you from this moment, and stifle every indication of such softer thoughts ever having existed."

"It makes me sadder than anything ever made me in my life before," he says, though he feels how utterly futile it is of him to say anything, since he can do nothing : and Kate smiles a weary, cynical smile, as she answers — "Sadness and you will never keep company together for long, Frank. Honestly, I am happy in feeling sure of this, that you will find balm in overy direction for every transient annoyance." " I shall never find balm for the wound your words inflict," he interrupts ; "they'll sting and make me ache till the day of my death."

Perhaps he suffers more on account of all this during the course of his journey back to town, than he ever has before, or ever will again. As soon as he is away from the numbing influence of the change which has come over Kate, he understands that she has been playing a part, and he realizes with sorrow how stricken the girl must have been before she could descend to such depths of duplicity for the sake of deceiving him. As soon as he is away from her, too, he realizes how greatly she has added to the charm existence has for him, and how inefficiently May will supply the vacuum Kate has made in his life.

The reception he meets with from his family is not one calculated to make him feel better satisfied with things as they are. His mother and sister Marian are going out to dinner, and Mrs. Forest feels justly aggrieved that a man who comes home, without giving a note of warning of his approach, should expect anything better than a chop . "At any other time Frank would go to his club without a word," Gertrude grumbles; "it is too much that he should stay at home and be dismal to-night." The wrong is felt to be a specially grevious one by poor Gertrude, for she had anticipated a quiet evening with Captain Bellairs, who, tamed by suffering, has come to the pass of being able to listen to Gertrude's rendering of Elaine's infaturtion for Lancelot and Guinevere's indignation about the same, whenever they get an hour or two alone. " You really ought to go and see May," Gertrude urges. "If she finds you have been here all this evening, she will be so disagreeable to us. Really, Frank, it is a little hard that we should have to keep the peace with the whole Constable family for you, and make love to May for you while you're away." "You'd rather make love to someone else for yourself, wouldn't you I" Frank laughs. " Well, dear, don t mind me ; read away at him if you like, not but what a quiet smoke and chat with me would do him a great deal more good." "I don't ask you what has happened down at Dunster to send you home in such a hurry," Gertrude retorts, " but if you are still engaged to May, you ought to go there to-night." In reply to this Frank whistles, and Gertrude has the agonising conviction thrust upon her, that Frank is not only going to stay in and fetter her to-night, but that Kate is still free to attract Captain Bellairs.

Frank suffers for his obstinacy in remaining at home, however. The trio are not at all at ease from the first, and when the names of Mrs. Angerstein and Kate come to be mentioned, and it is understood that these two ladies are together at Dunster, and are already intimate, additional embarrassment sets in.

"You seemed to know that pretty woman when yo\i recovered consciousness that day," Frank says, unsuspiciously, " but I suppose you were dazed or dreaming, for we spoke of you many times, and she would have said so if she had known you." " A fellow is apt to ramble when he has had such a blow on the head as 1 had that day," Captain Bellairs replies, and he repents him of that confidence he has made to Gertrude, who is evidently employing herself in putting two and two together. Poor Cissy's secret is too sad a one for any one to tell it but herself, and his unguarded exclamation may have given the clue to poor Cissy being well reputed Mrs. Angerstein. " But if she will only confide in Kate, Kate is just the girl to stick to her for ever," he tells himself, and then he goes on to ask leading questions concerning the extent of the intimacy which exists between these two women in whom he is so deeply interested. "Mrs. Angerstein, from what you tell me of her, must be a decided acquisition to the society of a small country place. Does Miss Mervyn see much of her V'

" They're together morning, noon, and night," Frank replies. " Kate is just the girl to hurl herself into a thing of the sort, without introductions qv common dij&crotiojy (jtertrude

puts in, elevating her head. "Mrs. Angerstein may not be at all a proper person to know, for all she knows to the contrary. I hope Kate won't insist upon our being bosom friends with her, before we know a little more about her." ' ' Your prudent sentiments do you much honour," Captain Bellairs says, and Gertrude feels that she has made a false movo, though she cannot tell in which direction. (To be continued.)