THE NOVELIST.

Otago Witness, Issue 2732, 25 July 1906, Page 63

THE NOVELIST.

(All Riohts Rxsehyed.]

HOPE, MY WIFE.

By L. G. MOBERLET.

CHAPTER XL ISS SMITH is silly; she hasn't ever seen bluebells growing before. Fancy that, ma ; never seen bluebells growing!" "Miss Smith hasn't had the chance, living always in London ; have you, Miss Smith?" And Mrs Radford turned her eyes blandly towards the side of the table where the new nursery governess sat between Montague ftadford and his 3ister Stella.

The little governess looked very small and , slight between her two big bouncing pupils, and it seemed that she did not hear Mrs Radford's words, for she continued her lunch quietly, without reply- ! ing to her employer's speech, and her I eyes wore a curiously absent look. j "Always lived in London, haven't you, ! Miss Smith?" Mrs Radford remarked 1 again, raising her voice, and fixing her beady black eyes upon the white face of I the governess. "Really, one 'ud think you didn't know your own name, I so often : call you by it and you seem kind of dazed like." The girl started violently, and all in a moment the whiteness of her face was ' d3~ed crimson. , "Hum," eaid Mrs Radford, shooting a suspicious glance at her, "you do seem very unfamiliar with your own name, I must say." She spoke the words tartly, and the governess looked at her with big frightened eyes. , "I — I'm very sorry," she "I'm afraid I was thinking of something else, and did not quite hear what you said." "Pretty manners!" avirs Radford said with a snort. "Well, I was saying you haven't been used to the country much, { having always lived in London ; and Montague, he was talking about your not having seen bluebells growing." 1 "I never have seen them before;" the girl's eyes brightened. "I didn't ever imagine they could be so perfectly beautiful ! I have only seem them, rather limp and dead, in the flower women's baskets. In the woods they 100k — oh ! like a sheet of sky." "Lor! what rubbish!" — Mrs Radford stared at her new governess — "and aIL about a pack o' bluebells too. Why, they're as common as common ! Now, if ever you get a chance to see the hothouses at the Hall, you might talk ; there's flowers there you wouldn't see in many places." . " f "What is the Hall?" The brightness had died out of the girl's eyes again, the nervous look brought into them by Mrs Radford's remark about her name had returned. She glanced almost deprecatingly down Ihe table. "Oh ! you'll have to go that way in your walks with the children," Mrs Radford pursued affably. "Prettowe Hall's its name. Sir John and Lady Dimedale, they live there, and their nephew, he's there a good bit — Mr Arthur Dimsdale. Of course we visit at the Hall." Mrs Radford preened herself a little, much as a hen might do, and her eyes travelled over Miss Smith's face, in the evident hope of seeing some awe and surprise depicted there. But Miss Smith merely looked politely interested and Mrs Radford tossed her head slightly. "Well, of course, being new to these parts you'd hardly know what important people the Dimsdales are," she said snappishly ; "they own pretty well all the land hereabouts, and have done so for generations upon generations. I'm sure Lady Dimsdale is just mv idea of a perfect lady ; most affable she is ; but she makes you feel — that she belongs to the upper ten, which, indeed, she does." "And are there any children at the Hall?" The girl asked the question more to say something than because she was acutely interested in the Dimsdale family. "No — oh, no," Mrs Radford answered, raising her eyes to the ceiling, but bringing them hurriedly to earth again when Stella, her eldest daughter, 9hrieked aloud that Montague was pinching her. ', "I wish to goodness alive you'd see after the children's manners, Miss Smith 1" the ' • good lady exclaimed irascibly. "I've , enough to do % with other things ; without bothering after them morning, noon, and night. Whatever was I saying Ohi about the Dimsdales. Well, no, they have no chil* '

dren — now." and Jier eyes went upwards again, her voice sank. "Some say there's a mystery in the family, but I can't answer , for that — we haven't been here long enough to know all the ins and ! outs, and Lady Dimsdale isn't one to be too confidential." She plainly meant it to be understood that she shared many of her ladyship's confidences, if not quite all of,, them, and she went on speaking still in the lowered voice of one who knows many secret things — "The nephew, Mr Arthur Dimsj dale, he's the heir, being their nearest ' kith and kin, and a most surprisingly handsome man he is too," she went on irrelevantly. "Not that it would be any good to set your cap at him. They say he isn't a marrying man, and it'll be money he'll look after." The vulgar speech, the suggestive glance, sent the blood flying to the governess's cheeks again ; she drew herself up witn a little proud gesture that gave unconscious emphasis to the graceful turn of her neck, the shapeliness of her head. "I am not likely to set mv cap at anyone," she said, her eyes bright with indignation. "I did not come here to do that sort of thing."' "Hoity toity," Mrs Radford retorted, "you needn't be so set vp — stuck up, I should call it. You'll have to be setting your cap at somebody some day. I don't suppose you want to spend the rest of your life as a governess." The girl's first impetuous impulse was to push back her chair and make a fierce rejoinder : then some recollection seemed to overwhelm her, she clenched her small hands together, and answered quietly : "lam not likely to — to wish, to marry," a remark which only produced a sniff from Mrs Radford. " Well, you'd best be getting on your things now," she said, abruptly changing the subject ; "you and the children will have to go out soon. I've a note to send down to the dairy farm ; and don't get so put out over trifles', Miss Smith." The little governess fled from the dining room to her bedroom at the top of the little house, her cheeks flaming, her eyes still ablaze. ' I hate her, I hate her !" she muttered to herself, when she had turned the key j in the door and was alone, -" and I am afraid when she looks at me with 6us- I •■picious eyes I forget that I am Miss Smith j msw and not Hope Anderson any more." Poor Hope ! She stood forlornly in the middle of the tiny Toom that was 'scarcely | more than, .a -gauret, and looked out of 1 the window across the garden and shrub- I bery with a sick longing for love and tenderness, which had been growing on her daily ever since her first arrival at Pret; towe a month before Hitherto her lot had never fallen amongst people of the Radfords' class. The poor she knew and loved ; she had never failed to be on good, even friendly, terms with, the series of landladies among ' whom her childhood and girlhood had been j spent. . But the blatant, pushing vulgarity of. such a woman as the doctor's wife was something quite outside her ken. -In speech, in manners, in habit of thought the Radford family grated daily upon the girl, who had been continually with a , refined and gentle mother. After her visit to Mrs Bailey, the secretary of the Ladies'- Agency, Hope had thankfully accepted any work that offered, even the exceedingly thankless task of acting as nursery governess to three spoiled jand naughty children. ' Her one desire was to get away i'rothr London, to leave behind her every chance of seeing her hus- , band : no longer to" live in hourly panic 1 of meeting him in the street, and being forced to return to his house. The bare idea of such a consummation threw her into a state of nervous tremors, an 3 she was eager to take up her duties at Prettowe at the very earliest moment that could be arranged by Mr 6 Bailey. During the week or so she spent in London after her first interview with the agentj she scarcely ventured out at all, so haunting was her fear of seeing her husband : and she practically remained from morning till night in the small bedsitting room to which Mrs Bailey had recommended her., 1 It was with the feeling of a Ireed bird or a released prisoner that she finally found herself in the train, being borne swiftly out of London, to Chernham, Prettowe's nearest town and station ; and the Lon-don-bred girl had revelled in the first revelation of the country that came to her during that journey : the fresh grass of the meadows, the pale green of the hedges, and of the tall elms by the road side ; the great sweep of April sky, that hadi seemed so strangely unlike the strip that is visible in London streets. During the drive from Chemham to Prettowe she could scarcely restrain quick exclamations of delight, and the sight of the tall banks starred with pale primroses made her jump up in the station fly and lean her head far cut of the window to catch the faint fragrance of the flowers, and revel in the loveliness of the pale clumps of flowers against the moss on the bank, and look with fascinated eyes at the delicate outlining of the bare birch boughs against the blueness of the sky. In the profound relief of leaving behind her London and all the misery that Lon don had lately held for her, she felt that whatever was before her could be cheerfully and easily faced, and Mrs Bailey - warning her that she might not find her situation as delightful as she hoped 'did not prevent her from seeing everything tnxough spectacles deeply tinted with rose colour. Perhaps it was not altogether surprising that her high hopes should have been bitterly disappointed, seeing that "she found herself established in . a family' in every '■ way uncongenial to her, arid in charge of children who regarded' all lawful autho- ' xity merely as something to be defied. Yet the g^rl remained at her post with a dogged persistence which no one would have given her the credit for possessing. No thought of returning to her husband and hex home ever entered into her head ; 1 she had by no means lo&t her childish, out-

look upon life, and she dimly felt, first, that it would be impossible to return to Miles, and throw herself upon his kindness, when she had run away from him in a fit of petulance ; and secondly, that now was her opportunity for suffering for some of her folly and lack ot aelicontTol in the past.

Though her realisation of it was vague and nebulous, she nevertheless did realise that- she needed discipline and experience; and though she did not even in v her own mind formulate her feelings thus definitely, still the revelation had come to her that life is not all an easy and pk-asant and sheltered road.

She stood looking silently out across the doctor's trim little garden to tha common beyond for fully a quart ci . of an hour, her thoughts going back over tha past year, vith its varying episodes, and the strange changes it had brought to her. Her mother's illness and death ; her own hurried marriage ; her lonely life in Miles. Anderson's great house — all these passed before her mental vision, whilst her bodily eyes stared out ai; tha great elms by the roadside, ov th ■ '•■' h the rooks soared,'* cawing !•>••' blaze of goldoa gorse upor and the lilac bush in the o^i.i. which hung such a wealth of purple- blossom.

Vague yearnings filled her soul, yearnings brought there by the touch of Spring's breath upon her cheek, by tha fragrance of wallflowers and lilies of the valley that stole in through her window, and she stretched out her hands suddenly,' with one of her old impetuous gestures.

"I want," she exclaimed — -"oh ! I don't know what I want, but it seems as rf I had never had a chance, and never should hay« one now."

She hardly knew herseii what she meant by her impulsive words, but her glance turned from the sweet world outside tha window to the bare little room which .\lrs Radford considered quite good enough for just a nursery governess. In reality the room was merely an attic, whose ceiling sloped, whose walls were distempered a harmless blue **•<!„ whose boards were bare save for of carpet by the bedside.

That carpet had seen much better days, and was too threadbare to be of much practical use, and the serge curtains by the window were so full of holes that ths light poured freely through them.

A camp bedstead ran along one wall : two cane chairs and a common painted washstand 'and_jchest of drawers completed the meagre furniture, and Hope's books and photographs were so few in number that they scarcely helped to give the room a less desolate appearance. The girl's brief residence iinder Mile 3 Anderson's roof, had roused within her a - latent love of the beautiful, and the bars desolation of her little room at Prettowe seemed to add a fresh chill to her already chilled heart.

In spit© of the warmth of the Maybreeze that ruffled her dark hair, she shivered and drew back from- the winddw.

"If I might live in a pretty room £ believe I should feel better," she said to herself; "and oh! it frightens nic when Mrs Radford looks at me suspiciously;, and is surprised when I don't answer heir directly. I wish' I- could get used to being called Miss Smith. I wish I could. I suppose I ought not ever to have pretended to be anyone else. But I can't go' back now and start again ; I must go on now, and make op for my mistakes if I can— if I only can." Her meditations were interrupted by a' shai^p call from below.

"Miss Smith — Miss Smith, whatever, aro you doing? Don't you know it's time you were going out, and here are th» children waiting. Come down directly."

Hope turned from the window, hurriedly put on a sailor hat that lay on the drawers, flung a golf cape round her, and with flushed cheeks and hands that trembled in spite of all her efforts to still them, ran hurriedly downstairs, to find Mrs Radford crimson of cheek and with angry face awaiting her in the hall. "Upon mv word. Miss Smith," she began, as Hope appeared~*round the bend of the . stairs, "you seem to think you're a young lady at large ; you forget it's my tim 9 you'i'c wasting whilst youdawdle up there in your bedroom. Please . remember I don't pay you to sit up there enjoying yourself." Hope's naturally quick temper wan roused to boiling point, but she was already learning one of the hardest lessons-^-to be silent under great provocation, an<2 she waited for a moment before answering quietly : "I am very sorry to have been so long* Shall we start directly?"

"I should hope so," Airs Radford retorted. Not being blessed with either a generous temperament or observant eyes, she was quite unable to understand Hope's struggle after self-control or appreciate her soft answer. "The children are wild to go to Dawson's Corner. It's in the park, and you'll see some more of the bluebells there that seem to surprise you so much."

To this parting thrust Hope made no) rejoinder, but, collecting her small,* turbulent flock, passed out of the house into the sunshine of the May afternoon. Through the leaves of the trees that! Ifiet across the lane the sun threw flicker' ing shadows upon the roadway ; a cuckoo was calling from' a copse across tho meadows; 'larks sprang soaring heavenwards from the gorse clump on the common the very intoxication of summer filled the air ; the hawthorns in the hedges were • already white with blossom, and the chestnuts by the park gates showed spikes of waxen flowers. y

Hope forgot all the weariness, all thm unpleasantness of her present life in tho intense Beright she experienced in the summer "sights and sounds about her. Even the children's loud voices no longer fretted her as they sometimes did : the joy of youth, of hope, of a possible future happiness ran tirough her veins. fc>na

.could, have sung aloud for shteer gladness of heart. The old "woman at the lodge, as she opened the gate for the party, glanced at ihe girl with kind, motherly eyes. "Good morning, miss," she said; "this weather he rare and fine — good growing weather, I calls it." Hope smiled. '1 am sure it must be, Mrs Dobson," rfhe answered brightly; "I feel about ten years younger to-day." "That 'ud be makin' you about as big as little miss there, I'm thinking," the old woman replied quickly, pointing to eight-year-old Stella. "It ain't tim© for you to be feeling old, miss, not yet," and the shrewd black eyes scanned Hope's face thoughtfully. "You seem to look better lince you've been here, miss," she added kindly. "I don't see how one could help feeling better in this lovely place, and with such ( heavenly air blowing round one. I was never in the country before, and I do love it." Mrs Dobeon smiled as the little governess and her three charges passed on along the drive, and a few" yards fartlier up turned aside into a by-path across t&e -3>ar]t "Funny thing," she said to her husband, . ?irho at that moment entered the lodge from .the back ..garden, "-but there's something- About that .Miss Smith as makes "* me thjnk of somebody lire seen, and I can't r tor the life of. me remember who It is/ The way she turns hex head and looks straight in> your face calls somebody to mj mind. Don't it to yours?" Doßson shook his head. He possessed none of his wife's shrewdness, and seldom saw anything that was not placed immediately before his eyes and fully labelled. "Don't recollect ever seem' nobody like the young lady before," he answered Shearily. "Nice .spoken she is, too, and quite the lady." ./ "There you're right for once, Joe," his wife replied ; "anybody could see with half an eye as Miss Smith must 'a come down in the world. It ain't for the likes ©' her .to be minding young varmints like them Radfords, who ought to be dusting her shoes for her." And Mrs Dobson emitted a sniff which ""conveyed all the scorn she felt 'for thte doctor^ family, who were indeed anything but popular amongst the poorer members of the community. Hope meanwhile, unconscious *tef the complimentary remarks being made upon her -by the lodge-keeper and hie-^*rife, went gaily -along the little path EEat led from the main drive of the park across the >rrass to the tiny dell known to the villagers us Dawfion^s Corner. Tlse children, always more pleasant and amenable when no longer in -their mother's presence, ran to .and fro hunting -for treasures amongst the flowers by the wayside, and chattering loudly, and usually all together, to their jjoyerness, until they reached the lovely little dell which was their destination. . As 'she turned the corner of the narrow j»th .tMat led to it, a path bordered by an undergrowth, of bramble, briar, and honeysuckle in, riotous confusion, Hope filtered an exclamation of delight. "Oh!" she said, "I never dreamt of anything like this!" Many years ago, Sir James had planted the dell -thickly with every variety of , r narcissns and daffodil Bulb, and the result, now that they Ead multiplied exceedingly, was a loveliness that, after her first quick exclamation, held Hope silent and breathless with pleasure. -Jto&nd the sides of the dell grew some jane beeches, th© pure green of their young leaves outlined clearly against the deep blue of the sky. But the dell itself was tt sheet of white and gold, grace/al daffodils and fragrant narcissii blending in a sea of, whiteness, touched here and there by yellow, swept' softly by the breeze that fttirred amongst the flowers, and set them S S? ip sta * elv > graceful heads. - Ihe • children, intent only on picking as Jfiany flowers as would fill the baskets they carried, and being very normal children, with no aesthetic tastes and not the faintesf appreciation of the artistic, thought only of what they could-pick, and not at all -of what they could admire. ' But Hope sat down on the top of the i»nk,. and gazed into the dell as though *he could never gaze enough, a smile on her face, a soft flush on her cheeks, a lovely light in her eyes. She had pulled off her hat,, and her ruffled hair fell softly, framing her face, with its own natural waves and curls, which in obedience to Miles she had plastered back into such rigid smoothness. The wind lifted the dusky waves and blew them in little soft tendrils about her forehead. The colour in her face, the light in her fcyes, and the dusky masses of her hair transformed her into actual prettiness, and th© rapt absorption of her expression gave her an added charm. - She was conscious of nothing but the loveliness of the scene before her, the very remembrance of her work and her miseries was temporarily wiped from her mind, when a little rustling in the bushes by the pathway made her start and turn, to find nereelf looking up at a man who stood just above her on tbe bank. A smile lit his handsome debonajr face, ias eyes were Ml of an admiration, which lie scarcely attempted -to hide, as he looked down at the girl, framed in a frame of pale green leaves, with the background of white fend golden flowers. -Hope's flush deepened, she snatched at her _hat, and tried hurriedly to smoothe Bier .ruffled locks, and sprang hurriedly to her feet. The stranger lifted hus hat, and his smile was very reassuring. "Please- don't let me disturb you," he §aid, his eyes still fastened on her face, this time with something of bewilderment in his expression. "I thought I saw the Radfprd children working havoca in the dell, and was going down to help them in their work of destruction. I did not mean •|o startle you." 'The children are there," Hope an: Vwered, nodding in the direction of the fielli "I'm their governess, you know,."

"The children will probably introduce you to me ac coon as they catch sight of me," the stranger said, smiling again, "so I think I will be beforehand with them and introduce myself. My name is Arthur Dimsdale."

"Then you live at the Hall," Hope answered quickly. " Mxs Radford has told me how beautiful it is."

"I hope you^ will see it for yourself some day," he "rejoined courteously ; "it is a beautiful old house, and my uncle and aunt are very proud and fond of it." "I don't suppose," Hope was beginning, when she broke off suddenly. To tell Mr Dimsdale that it was unlikely she would ever see the Hall was, she felt, tantamount to asking for an invitation there, so she hastily changed the end of her sentence to — "I don't suppose anyone could help being fond of a beautiful old home." '"Aly uncle and aunt cling to it passionately, and I am fond of the old place myself." During this speech his eyes had still been fixed on her face, their expression chiefly one of bewilderment, as though he was searching his memory for some lost recollection.

•Eh© girl stood before him, her hat swinging from her hanfl, tbe sunlight touching ihe cloudy masses of her hair and showing golden threads amongst its darkness, the colour coming and going softly in her face, her eyes meeting his Jolly, their changing lignts bringing to bis mind a mountain stream he had once seen.

i- I wonder," he said thoughtfully, after that prolonged, puzzled gaze, "whether I have ever met you before? Your face is somehow oddly familiar to me, and yet 1 can't recall why." Hope started, and Dimsdale was quick to notice that a irightened look crept into her eyes. That frightened look was brought by the thought thst perhaps at one of those parties in London to which Miles had taken her this man might have been one of the guests. Supposing he recognised her? Supposing ne told her husband of her whereabouts? Supposing — then she realised that her own terrors were rather visionary and absurd, and she recovered herself by an effort, saying quietly : "I do not think we can ever have met; I am sure I have never seen you before," and her eyes ran over nis handsome debonair face, with a quick thought that if she had ever seen it before she would not have forgotten it. ' "Perhaps I am mistaken," her companion answered, "though I don't often- j forget a face, and yours is ridiculously familiar to me. But I mustn't disturb you any more — and here come the Vandals," he added hastily as the children's shrill voices made themselves heard. "I think I will make my escape." With a smile and a lift of his hat he departed, but the puzzled expression still remained in his eyes. "Where on earth can I have seen that .girl before?" so ran his reflections. "I know that cloud of dark hair with the thread of gold in it as well as I know anything. And her eyes, those curious green eyes with"" the dark depths and the bright lights in them? Where on earth have I seen them? The very turn of her head seems familiar to me — a very well put on head it is too," be added, smiling at the recollection of that quick turn of Hope's dark head, when she had first turned her startled face towards him. "Where on earth " His meditation began again, when all at once he stopped dead in the middle of the "drive^ an extraordinary look of illumination flashing over his face. "By Jove !" he exclaimed aloud, "finpossible ! Y«t the Kkeness is complete — perfect. But — oh! rubbish — of course it is merely a coincidence. It could not possibly be anything but a coincidence." (To be continued.)