CHALK.

Otago Witness, Issue 1813, 20 August 1886, Page 32

CHALK.

Br Alice. Author of "Fickle Jack," " Grandmother's Story," &a. [All Rights Rrsehved.] Chapter VII. Chalk's Second Appeal. When Winifred fled from the presence of Lucy she went to her own room, the cruel words stinging her through and through, She had one impulse upon her, to go — go anywhere — from the reach of that cruel tongue ; to go away and earn her bread and suffer the reproach no more of living upon the charity of others, " Certainly," perhaps you will cry, " that was the only course for her to take." But there was another. Winifred sat down and reflected. Was it not all true ? • Had she not been picked up a deserted child ? Had she not been rescued from poverty and degradation and educated and clothed all these years upon Lucy Hunter's money? Yes, it was all. true,' except the accusation that she tried to put Lucy in the shade, so the better to show off her own talents, and that her presence was a contamination to her darling, This was too

cruel. What was there in the whole wide world that she would not do for Mary ? So she sobbed fit to break her heart, and was still sobbing when she made her resolve : to go down stairs and beg Lucy's pardon ; for if she left the house would it not bring disgrace and trouble to the man whose kindness had blessed her whole life ? And who was she to have personal pride and feelings ? " Chalk — the waif " had no right to feel insulted or outraged, and if she went away who would order the dinner and look after the servants ? — who would save Mary from theknowledged of Ids fall I—and1 — and who would, after all, nurse Lucy herself ? Lucy had been considering that question apprehensively for the last half hour, and had just come to the conclusion that her wiser plan was to go and beg Winifred's pardon, when the girl appeared. Her face was pale and her eyes red with weeping. Dignity and humility were blended in her mien. " Madam," she said, in a low, distinct voice, her truthful eyes seeking Lucy's, " I am come to ask your pardon in that I have offended. If I erred in saying what I did the error does not lie in that to which it is, attributed. Far be it from me to seek in the slightest matter to put myself into the place of this house's mistress. I am its humble servant, God knows, in my heart. Try me, madam ; give me any menial service that I would not perform cheerfully for any one beneath this roof. Do not charge me, I pray you, with ingratitude and presumption. You would not if you knew my heart. If for a moment I forget I am only the outcast Chalk, and in my forgetfulness act as a happy daughter of this house, blame it not to my pride and presumption, but, if blame there be, to the generous indulgence I have received for years." She had proceeded thus far quietly, with an occasional quiver of the lip. Her selfpossession deserting her suddenly, she fell upon her knees before the astonished Lucy, and with clasped hands pleaded — " Madam, beat me, starve me, set me any penance you wish, and I will not murmur ; but, oh, unsay those words that I am a contamination to your sweet Mary I Ah lif you knew how I have striven to keep my soul pure so to be able to stand beside her 1 Have pity on me, Mary's mother ; I never knew my own 1 Do j r ou know, in, years gone by, I used to creep to your door at night, and in the darkness ■ pray to God that you might one day grow to love me ! Only unsay those cruel words, that I am a contamination to Mary, and I will serve you all my life." Flattered and mollified, Lucy stooped down and, for the first time, kissed Winifred. "Get up, Winifred," she said, colouring hotly; "I did not mean it; you are a very good girl, but you must make allowances for me ; my nerves are so unstrung. Of course, Ido not want you to go ; to tell the truth, you are the only creature in the house who understands my complaint. .There, dry your eyes and go and make me some tea ; you are the only one I ever knew who could make tea to my liking." Winifred moved away quickly, and a man quietly dropped a curtain before an open window, where he had stood a spectator to the whole scene, and walked out, unseen, into the garden. Winifred had to wait in the kitchen till the kettle boiled. The little housemaid with a pug nose and short flaxen curls adored Miss Winifred, for she used to say to her sweetheart : " She ain't got no more pride "in her than a new-born baby, nor half the airs ; comes and does most of the cooking, and always cleans master's boots with her own pretty hands, and such a polish she do put on 'em, to be sure 1" " Well, Nellie," said Winifred, kindly, "how are you and George getting on ?" George was Nellie's sweetheart. " Very well indeed, thank you, Miss," replied Nellie, well pleased. " He's slow, but he's sure, is George. I could have given him up for them as were smarter, but I knowed the value of his love too well. There | was one young fellow," continued Nellie, "as ' came out from England and worked in my brother's printing-office. I lived with my brother then ; that is how I became acquainted with him. Well, he often used to come and have a chat with me ; and one day, all of a snddint, he put his arm round my waist and kissed .me. I fetched him a sharp slap on his face and said, " What do you mean by yonr impudence ?" " Well, Nellie," he said, " I mean just this. I'm in love with you. That's what I mean. Though what, in Heaven's name, there is to be in love with in you, it's more than I can say, if my life depended on it. You're as ugly as sin," ses he — " uglier ! for I never met sin yet with such a pug as you've got, Nellie ; you're smaller than any Charity I ever set eyes on, and scraggier ; and as for them curls o' your'n they remind me more of shavings off a deal board than anything else I ever saw — but confound you ! I'm in love witli you, and if you'll .marry me say the word, and off we go home to England and let George go to blazes ! I don't mean to say," added Nellie, in an injured tone, as shehanded the teatray to Winifred, " that I'm one as sets up for much palaver, but I wasn't going to be wooed in such language as that, and George said if he'd been behind him he'd have wrung his neck for an insulting young prig." That evening things werequieter than usual in the drawing room. Lucy kept Winifred busy about her person till it was her hour of retiring. Mary was reading to herself near the lamp, and Frank Hunter had been to all appearances dozing behind his pockefhandkerchief. There had been no music, no-read-ing aloud. Winifred was rather pale and timid, fearful, poor girl, of seeming, forward although 'hungrily anxious to please, and as no visitors had called, there was nothing to break the monotony of the hours. Winifred accompanied Lucy to her room, and was returning when she met Mary in the hall. " Going to bed already 1" exclaimed Winifred in surprise. " Unless you would rather me sit up to keep you company," replied Mary lovingly, " I am rather tired to-night, the evening has seemed so long." " Then go to bed, my darling — happy, happy dreams." Winifred stood and watched her

as she went, all in white, with white roses clustering in her belt. " My pure beautiful Eosebud " she murmured, turning away. The drawing room was deserted when she returned to it; her guardian's handkerchief thrown over the back of his chair, She folded it up lovingly ; then sat down on her own low chair. Her beautiful face grew clouded, her large eyes dim with tears, lower and lower drooped her head until it rested between her hands, and large tears silently chased each other down her cheeks. " « More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of ' the poet says," she murmured. " What would you pray for ?" asked Frank Hunter, laying his hand upon her shoulder. " You here, guardian ? I thought you had gone out," exclaimed Winifred, smarting, and hastily dashing away her tears. "No child, I stayed at home to-night. Don't try to hide your tears — tell me their source." He looked at her kindly and sadly ; she turned away her head, answering lightly : " ■ Men must work and women must weep,' you know the song says, guardian." " I know it does ; never mind what the the song says — tell me why you wept. What were you desiring when you quoted Tennyson 1 " "Your happiness, dear Guardian." " ' Wherefore let thy voice rise like a fountain for me night and day ' — more Tennyson for you, Winifred. I need prayers, child." " I know you do." " How do you know? " " I have waited at the gate for you every night for months." " Good God 1 I did not dream it, then." " You did not." His hands trembled, he began to walk excitedly to and fro, passing every now and then his white hand through his hair, just beginning to show a silver thread here and there. It was beautiful hair, like Mary's — soft and golden. Winifred, after watching him silently for a time, bowed her head again upon her hands. " Child," he said, with infinite tenderness, standing before her, "do not weep for me ; I am not worthy such pure tears. What am I but a weak, idle, selfish man ? Be angry, be contemptuous — but don't cry." Winifred leaned her arms across the table, and, bending forward, looked up into his face and said' in a low constrained voice : "Not cry 1 not ciy when I see you daily going down the broad deep road to ruin ; you to whom I owe all I ever knew of happiness ? Oh 1 " she exclaimed in suppli- • cation, "if I were really and truly your own daughter I could plead with you and say, ' Father, before you go one step further along this dangerous road halt and turn back.' I should put my arms round your dear neck and say, 'For my mother's and my sweet sister's sake halt and turn back.' I* should say to you — not in presumption, but in pitying love—' Father, don't waste another moment of precious life, but now in the pride of your manhood, gather up the broken threads of energy and skill, of opportunity and purpose, and weave with your kind hands something like design into your remaining years, so that departing, you may leave behind you ' Footprints on the sands of time,' that others seeing may take heart again." " Who could take heart from the prints of my feet ?" "It is from mistakes and sorrows and disappointments the wise learn — experience teaches." " Child, it has taught me one thing. To trust to the love of: a child and the gratitude and self-denial of one heart at least. Be what you are to-night always, and I will be just what you will. I will not break the only heart that loves me unselfishly by my confounded folly. Go to your bed at night, girl. I will henceforward go to mine like a man, not a beast. Didn't I see and hear you this afternoon oh your knees and in tears, suing humbly for pardon? Good God, for what ? For being better than any of us ; for keeping home and affection for us for years past ; for being daughter, sister, friend, companion, councillor, nurse, drudge. God's gift in the house. No one asked anything of me before." He laughed half sadly, half amused, and drawing Winifred gently to him, added with his old sweet smile, "No one expects anything of me now, except the ragged little girl I picked up and kept, because she appealed to me. Oh, little Chalk, little Chalk ! Your second appeal shall not be in vain. I swear it by this kiss," and he gravely imprinted a kiss on her forehead. Did she trust him ? Yes, with her whole soul. No more anxious waiting through the hours of the night, longing yet dreading to hear his unsteady footstep. Never did it enter her heart to doubt him,' and watch to see if he kept his word. He never yet had broken his promise to her, even in the smallest thing. He was not a man to make pretensions to anything he was not. "Be what you are to-night, and I will be anything you wish." He, then, was satisfied with her, and did not consider her a contamination in the house. Was this not worth living, striving, suffering for, to hear her beloved guardian call her God's gift in the house ? She was not that, she said to herself humbly, but she must have pleased him for him to say so much. Suppose she had gone away in pride, he would not have made that precious promise. Why, she wondered, had no one ever thought it worth their while, long years ago to expect anything of him ? Am Imy brother's keeper? we ask in resentment. We do not know, We cannot answer for certain that we are not. Is it any of our business if our friends and neighbours make fools of themselves, if they weep and despair, and do desperate things ? Well, perhaps it is. If it is a fact that an act of kindness and a word of love has saved before now a living soul, then be very sure it is. We are responsible for one another, and dependent upon one another. It is horribly cruel to shake off the clinging hand. All are not able to stand alone. If any living soul saith to you, 'my life is in your hands,' stand still and consider. God will one day ask you, " Where is thy brother ?" We pick up the poor dead body out of the river, or come across it with a horrible gash in its neqk, and we are sorry, anfl the jury bring, in a verdtat

of " Temporary Insanity," and we cover it up in the earth and hide it, and forget it ; but one day some one will be brought into account for that. Oh, it is an awe-inspiring thing this influence we have upon one another — a touch, a smile, a word, and the soul of another is moved, and we, who knit the life of another to our life, can never break away and go free ; the thread is woven for good or evil to all eternity. And yet the worldlaughs on. It hangs by the neck the man who takes his brother's life, and feasts and honours the murderer of a soul, because it does not know. But' God knows, and he is biding his time. You who have gained an influence over another, either to stir the surface or move the deepcurrrentof the stream — take care, for the circles will speed and spread, and you know not where they will end. The world laughs on, or assumes a grave air when it has a man to judge. But a man can never take his life to the world to judge ; he must judge it from his inner self, his close surrounding circumstances. It is too late to consider what the world will say when he has tied the strings of other hearts to his life. He dare not snap them if he be a man. Because ambition or public opinion forbid him so to do, they may bleed and bleed until there be no more life left in the soul. At first no one noticed the change in Frank Hunter, except Winifred, and she noticed every shade of it. — noticed that his eyes were no more dull, nor his hand shaky when he took his seat at the breakfast table. He was more talkative, too, and instead of silently sitting by while others discoursed, took a share in the conversation. Not in his old half-smiling, half-cynical manner, but with at times an earnestness that was almost startling. He began to tell them tales ; beautiful tales they were, of heroic self-sacri-fice, and the might and power of woman's love — its influence upon the heart' of man, upon his life, his destiny. " Educate a man," he said one evening, round a pleasant tea table ; " educate a man, or leave the world to educate him, to the belief that all that is expected of him is to get the best he can out of his life, and ten chances to one he will go on pleasure-loving and selfish to the grave ; but if he be a man at heart, let a good woman, or even a child, believe in him, and expect great things of him, and at least he becomes the best that is in him to be. .Not every bush can grow roses, you know !" he added, with a strange, sweet smile at the attentive, happy Winifred. " Better be a perfect flower after its kind • than an imperfect rose," replied Winifred, smiling. " What strange people you are," broke in Lucy, toying languidly with her cake ; " for my part I don't believe in all these heroics. If I were to trouble my head about anything half so puzzling I should be dead in a month. It is all sham ; people are invariably selfish, at least I have found them so. Then all this incomprehensible nonsense about love — you and I"— turning to Frank, " have done very well indeed without any tragic element in our lives. We have been very happy. We never had but one serious difference in our lives." She glanced at Winifred. "I am sure no marriage could have possibly been better arranged. My nervous temperament and your i bright disposition have blended so well together, and what was the foundation of our union?" Frank winced and turned pale. "I had money, and you were handsome," went on Lucy, totally unconscious of the agony of shame and remorse she was inflicting, " and I think I have been a patient, good wife to you, Frank, for you know you always have been eccentric and self-willed, otherwise you have been both gentle and kind," she added, graciously. Frank bent down with a sudden movement, and kissed her, then rising hastily, left the room. " When you are married, girls," continued the self-satisfied lady, leaning back in her chair, and assuming a matronly air of dignity, " always let your husbands do what they please, and don't bother yourselves about them or their doings ; if you do, good-bye to peace and comfort. Let them go their own way, and take care of yourselves. I made a rule of this, and you see how well it has acted. My husband to-day, as you have heard, holds the name of woman in reverence, and believes implicitly in her inflnence for good, and yet I had a great deal of trouble with Frank in our early-mar-ried days. ' For God's sake, Lucy,' he would say, ' put down that book, and let us try to read each other and learn the Jesson of wedded hearts, or life will be an ignorant, unenlightened thing,' but I had to teach him. I was not to be held so cheap that I could fall in with every passing whim of his. • Never make yourselves cheap to a man, girls." No girls, don't. Make yourselves dear. Make every word precious; precious, because fraught with rich meaning of noble love, selfsacrifice, and knowledge of good things ; so that looking over their own lives, or the lives of others, they may say "So muoh for the influence of a good, true woman. God bless her 1" (To be cpntiniied.)