THE CLUTCH OF CIRCUMSTANCE;

Otago Witness, 1 June 1910, Page 70

THE CLUTCH OF CIRCUMSTANCE;

By Ethel Turner.

THE NOVELIST.

OR A CHANGED HORIZON.

[All Rights Rkseeved.] CHAPTER XL—IN THE YELLOW SULKY.

) was at the foot of the first hill when, she overtook him. Indeed, she had tried not to be. so long, but Currant would not budge one step until he had had the spell he considered necessary after the hill. Still, when that was over he put his ears back and loped forward with big, uneven strides, rattling the sulky and its occupant vigorously after him. Mrs Beattie had never suffered from indigestion in her life; Currant and the yellow sulky to that. "Let me give you a lift, Mr Sheldon," she said, pulling up when she caught her prey. " "You are very good/' said Scott, r but I like the walk.' The air is like wine on a day like this." "It is the same air up here," she smiled. "That's so," he said, and showed his teeth pleasantly a moment; "but it is not the same locomotion. A walk like this shakes one up." Mrs Beattie might have pointed out that Currant was peculiarly fitted to perform the same office, but she contented herself with saying, " Oh, very well, if you compel a lady to a solitary drive when she would like a companion." "That is a verv different matter," Scott said, and without more ado climbed in beside her with as gallant an air as he could muster. Deep in his heart he was not displeased; this was a friend of Ines, this woman beside him; it were impossible that she could go very far and not mention the name. Mrs Beattie made no mistake this time. She asked him no questions at all —merely rippled out for him what seemed an endless stream of parochial news. Mrs Patterson's unfortunate temper, Jack Anderson's dog that had been caught in a rabbit-trap, Miss Dwyer's good fortune in getting the Evanses' three girls as music pupils! the Evanses' marvellous output of butter per week, the forthcoming sale of work. Scott waited patiently. Wyama was a place of limitations. If the population was to be passed in review like this they must run up sooner or later against the longed-for name. The Whartons were brought out in array —Mrs Wharton, who had with such generosity just given £SO to the fund; Sholto Wharton, who was such a fine lad and so full of humour. Mr Sheldon had heard, of course, of the wonderful frieze he had painted round his bedroom. Everyone was taken in to see it —so delightfully Australian! For her part, she did the same thing —encouraged by all means in her power the love of Australian things; it was a sentiment one felt was due to one's country. Miss Cade and Miss Elizabeth—such nice lady-like girls: not pretty perhaps, but, then, beauty was nothin..»; it was worth that counted, and the world was beginning to realise the fact. In her young days there seemed to be much irore talk of beauty and running after tftatlty than now. People were growing mere sensible.

"Or more resigned, perhaps," said Scott. " They, think beauty is dying out. For myself, I'm inclined to think so, too. At all events, when I was 17 I used to think every second girl I talked to was pretty. But I don't think so now. Are there any pretty girls in Wyama?" He felt he was approaching his subject with Machiavellian discreetness.

Mrs Beattie shot a disturbed glance at him.

"A few," she said shortly. Then she returned l to her pcean of the Whartona. The acres they owned, the horses, the value of the horses, the prizo cattle—statistics were showered upon his devoted head.

"And the place is entailed, mind you —at Least, I don't know whether I am quite right in saying entailed, am I? Does entailed hold in Australia? At all events, it is the same thing—Mr Douglas inherits the whole estate. Oh ! the sisters and Sholto are well provided for, too ; but all that vast place, all those wonderful horses, go to Mr Douglas, and no one .else."

" Indeed I" said Scott indifferently. Bat he did not feel indifferent. His antagonism to Douglas was of the fiercest order. "Yes, a fortunate woman hi<? wife will be. One of the richest properties in the State Wendover is. It is a marvel to everyone that he has not married before. But" —mysteriously —"-be is going to mend his ways at last." " Indeed !"" said Scott, and wondered if the woman would think him mad if he leapt out of the sulk*y. To calmly sit beside her while she told him of Ines's engagement would be, he felt, beyond his powers of endurance. She whipped Currant up as if she knew, what he was meditating. "The ways of Providence are inscrutable," she said- "Mr Erwin little dreamed -when that stroke of his overtook him at the hotel that it was the most fortunate thing that could have happened." " I trust he realises the fact," said Scott sardonically.

" Of course lie does," said, Mrs Beattie. "What father wouldn't be willing fco undergo a little bodily inconvenience for an opportunity for his daughter to make a match eo brilliant that a girl in a London season might envy her?"

Scott closed his teeth hard one second. "They are actually engaged, then?" he said. Better get the bad moment over instantly. "Well, I -won't say that," said Mrs Beattie unwillingly. "It is not given oiit yet, but I believe it is practically settled. Her father confided in me that it was an inexpreecsible comfort to him to realise that she would be safe when he had gone. He has very little to leave her. And Mrs Wharton has not raised the least objection —indeed, Miss Cade told me she has been prepared to take Mis>3 Erwin to her heart ever since she went up to the cottage and discovered that 6he had a passion for gardening." "And the '.ndy herself?" said Scott's dry lips. " Oh, of course, girls are a little difficult," fiaid Mrs Beattie. She could hardly say that she ached to box Ines's ears for her silly shilly-shallying in the matter. Douglas had proposed, she knew, but when taxed Ines had denied an engagement.

Of course, it wais ail the silly nonsense of a girl who liked to heighten her value by not giving in too soon. At the same time there was that blush to be explained —that sudden, unaccountable wave of colour that had once rushed over the girl's face at Scott's name. There must be no nonsense like this when Providence had worked 60 hard to settle the matter so beautifully for all concerned.

The young mani beside her looked -white, dull, as if the wine of the day had suddenly failed him. "I think I'd like to get out and walk now," he said in a low voice. The voice had a tremble in it—an absolutely unconquerable tremble. The quick, light eyes beside him bent themselves on him, and all his secret was bare to her.

A tear came into the eyes, the hard, curious eyes, of the woman. She was intensely sorry for him; her heart, indeed, actually bled for him for the moment. She had boys herself, and some day they, too, might suffer like this. But still ha must not be allowed to interfere with the direct workings of Providence. " It will mean wonderful happiness for her," she said in a low voice; "she would have had to work for her living. She doesn't look the sort of girl to have to work, does she? You must think of that."

"Yes," said Scott, "of course. But I think I will get out and walk." She gave him a sympathetic rub with her arm. There was nothing she would not have done for him. She was determined that Ines's engagement once settled she would bend all her energies to finding a nice girl for this poor lad with the fixedly-staring grey eyes. "Let me get out," he said again. Then she had a brilliant thought. Why should he not marry Elizabeth or Cade? Well, possibly Elizabeth was a little old for him, but Cade could not be so very many years his senior It would not be so unequal after all. Cade had no looks, and her youth was gone and her temper a little uncertain, but then she had money for ample compensation for such trifling defects. And he was young and goodlooking, and, plainly, a gentleman. Cade would bo fortunate in such a husband.

She felt herself by this actually a coadjutor of Providence, and said in an almost solemn, voice, " Mr Sheldon, I want you to come to afternoon tea with m© to-morrow. Miss Cade Wharton is coming. I want you to kmnv her." " Forgive me !" said Scott. " I must

■walk the rest of the way. Good-bye! Thank you for the lift." He pulled the reins for himself, and Currant turned his head as if to inquire who was taking liberties with him. But the young man had leapt out without waiting for the horse to do more than slacken, and Mrs Beattie regretfully watched him stride on in front of her at a great pace for a few hundred yards and then swing off along a branching road down which it were useless to follow him. CHAPTER XII—AN EVENING AT DAVID'S. " Tba face of her, the eyes of her, The lips, the little chin, the stir. Of shadows round .her mouth." —Time's Revenges. Ines's constant ministrations had clothed the naked dividing wall between the two cottage gardens with the loveliest garment of green, splashed here and there with the blue of creeping jenny, the grey blue of stone crop, mesembryanthemum's radiant upturned faces, and climbing geraniums' many colours. The plants crept over to Scott's desolate side; laid tentative little fingers on the bareness there, then with a rush spread joyously along in their tender task of beauty. Scott loved every blossom that crossed to his side. He had a feeling that Ines had sent them across, though he would have been amazed to know that indeed she had so done. No one knew how often her trowel filled up little crannies on the wall-top with rich soil and stuck quick-growing plants in them and gave them just the necessary turn and twist that should induce them to creep—not on her own side. She had thought that she must go hungry for primroses in Australia, since she might not go and dig them up out of the woods for herself. But Mrs Wharton had 6ent her along a great basketful of the thick-leaved little plants, and she had set them with keenest pleasure in deep pockets of earth along the wall-top, and now there they were, clumps of the tender, yellow things smiling shyly—clumps of their braver, cousins, polyanthuses, with their velvet faces of brown and crimson; there they were for the lonely man next door to enjoy the touch of England as well as~ herself. She was a little sick of England in those days of wearing anxiety while the bright sun of Australia smiled so persistently all the time. And the more peculiarly English flowers curiously ministered to the sickness. Her patch of lilies of the valley, her little corner of real enowdrops, hot snowflakes ; the ineffable ceanliness and joy of the tulips near the verandah, the little bush of lad's love, the tangle of London Pride, the lavender plant, the first crocuses—they gave and took from her the aeutest sense of nostalgia. And so it must be with Scott, she reasoned, that poor lonely fellow who had but just torn up his roots from English soil, and was trying to set himself again in new land with not so much as one friendly hand to help to pat down the raw and roughened soil around him. She continually presented him with plants. Her father's embargo she refused to treat seriously, and if ever she saw Scott working in his little wheat patches when she was gardening she would make some merry communication or other. Erwin himself might be lying on the front verandah all the time while the communication took place. "Mr Sheldon!" she would call insistently. Mr Sheldon, cap in hand, would cross to the wall. " Take this creeping rose and put it in this instant at the foot of that post—no, that one; it will get a better aspect. Your verandah is a simple disgrace to you." And be would obey and worship the Jrose as at grew to beauty. "Mr Sheldon, are you there?'' " I believe I am, Miss Erwin." " Didn't I see you merely walking up &nd down?" " I was thinking, I believe.' " You mustn't think when you are out Of doors and the sun shines. Take your spade and dig a nice little bed over there. Needn't be very big. I'm going to give you some of my cactus dahlias. Only mind, you must feed them well, or they won't work for you." What could Sheldon do when Erwin lay there quite unprotesting—even smiling at his daughter's bullying ways. " Mr Sheldon!" "Miss Erwin!" "I do get so tired of your horrid wheat patches. _ Next time you go to Murwumba I am going to climb over the wall and set poppy seeds all up and down the rows. Won't it look lovely when the sweet little things peep up everywhere?" Perhaps Sheldon would " forget his place,"—would answer her girlish nonsense boyishly. "If you do I'll-come over and sow wheat ini your pansy bed. I've, got a new bag of it." "Have you really? Didn't the last go right? Don't tell me any rust is coming on that last lot." " Ye 6, unluckily. But I think I know .where I went wrong; I overdid the sulphate." Erwin hardly troubled about the embargo now. The little girl was safe. When he slipped out of life Douglas would be there to take his place. He had the highest respect for Douglas. There was no one he had ever met to whom he felt he would more willingly give his little girl. But the good fellow bored him a little. When he wanted company he asked for no one better than Sheldon. And what harm could Sheldon* do her? It was a big sea, this sea of life. Ships that pass in the night must speak to each other in passing. Even were Sheldon the black pirate barque that he said he was, it could not hurt a little white-sailed boat to call out to him "All's well!" from Jdme to time, more especially when there

was a man-o'-war hovering near anxious to take up the boat with little white sails.

He let things drift comfortably along, and even on the nights when Scott came in—and they were most nights now, —and Ines most contumaciously refused to go to bed, alleging important sewing and the need of the big lamp, he lay back trustfully in his big chair, and even occasionally enjoyed the battle of words that sometimes waged between the two. But for the most part Ines sat and stitched in silence—stitched dreams and plans and terrors into a filmy mass of frills. Now and again Scott, glancing across at her, would find her hands idle, her eyes staring out before her at the -unblinded window. Subtly conscious that her face was not visible to her father, qtute unconscious that Scott was there, so she would sit, the straight lines of her figure a little drooped, her mouth corners quite straight, her eyes filled with the woe of the universe. It startled Scott, this mood of hers. What could be her grief? What was it those wide, mournful eyes were looking at? One evening the conversation brought out in so many words the truth of the fact he dreaded. Erwdn was talking art. Leaning back among his pile of soft pillows and talking, a little languidly, but with a good deal of enjoyment, he had phrased happily two or three times, and that always him pleasure. He had reduced to actual words a nebulous theory of art that had forced Scott to see the error of his ideas on one particular point, and it was by no means easy to force such a thing, for as a thinker Scott was, as he knew well, far ahead of himself. Scott retaliated for having been proven wrong by flinging a- bur„_ug brand into the conversation. " There's more humbug about art than there is about anything else in the world," he said. 'You have just declared that these sales we were talking 0f—£60,030 for an original Rembrandt, £BO,OOO for a Botticelli, and so on —show that the love of art is deepening in us at a nation." "And I maintain it," said Erwin ; "at all events it illustrates it better than if the cable said it was for racehorses these big sums had changed hands." "Not a bit of it!" said Scott; "not a bit more than when the papers announce that a rare stamp has changed hands for a preposterous number of thousands. It's no more love of art that crowds those artsales than it is love of the moon. It's just the philatelist's thirst for an original, a first issue. I'm not objecting to the thirst, mind you—let a man have his hobbies. All I protest against is that it should be done under the cloak of a love of art. Not one man in ten thousand can tell the difference between a clever copy and an original. The experts may know—it's their business; but you and I—well, I at all events—get precisely as much artistic gratification out of. the copy that is a clever forgery as out of the genuine canvas." "If it is only a question of sincere artistic gratification," said Ines, "I know it was never those worth-their-weight-in-rubies pictures we used to see in Italy that gave me this feeling. I could admire them reverently—now and again I could understand them. If I had been rich I should like to have bought one and presented it to my native town,. But I didn't want to bring them home and hang them up because they woke exalted moods in me or appealed passionately to my sense of beauty. The pictures that did that were as a rule modest little affairs with a twenty or fifty-guinea ticket on them." " That's because you were an ignorant little puss." said Erwin. "Perhaps." said Ines. "Anyhow,. I never sighed that I hadn't twenty thousands for a Rubens, but sometimes I've felt a sense of hunger for months because I hadn't twenty guineas for a bit of canvas that spoke straight to me." And now Scott put in some fighting for his hostess. "You ought not to have had to sigh," he said; "you ought to have been able to go to the nearest stationer and order a fine reproduction of it in colour." "For a couple of pounds, I suppose?" said Erwin. "Well, yes, ' said iScoEl, r 'if you couldn't get it for thirty shillings or a pound. The ideal price for a picture is half a guinea, of course." "Go on," said Erwin; "this is interesting. The only plaint I've ever had to make against this world is that it never appreciated me enough to pay more than fifty guineas for a canvas of mine. I didn't know before that the. buyer had paid just fifty-one pounds nineteen and sixpence too much for it." " He did," said Scott—"that is, if he had only wanted it for its charm and beauty, and had not minded someone else buying it for the sake of possessing the original. There ought to be no difference between reproductions of books and pictures." " What insensate nonsense!" said Erwin. " Oh, I know what you'll say," Scott said, "but it isn't so. You'll tell me it is the intimate work of the artist's hands that counts—just the amount of his own ego he was able to spread on the canvas for you. That no reproduction can hope to reproduce this. I tell you it isn't." " You're not seriously in earnest, Sheldon? You're just foisting a freakish fancy on me, as our friend Sholto would say." "I am not," said Scott. "Take the giants of literature. They pour their work out palpitatingly on paper —young Sholto's jargon is contagious, isn't it? — but they don't say, Behold this masterpiece—bear it carefully to the National Gallery or Westminster Abbey and charge the nation sixty thousand pounds for it. This MS. is instinct with life, just as •it flowed from my hand. No, they chuck it to the printer, and he reels off ten

thousand or ten million copies of it, and if it wants it all the world can go buy. Can you conceive of one copy of 'Vanity Fair,' and that the property of some haughty nobleman who condescends to allow his housekeeper to display it to the vulgar herd on Thursdays, 2 to 5, if the family happens to be away?" " Don't make my blood run cold," said Ines. " I simply can't conceive such a thing.'' " Of course you can't," Scott said. " Instead, what do you do? You take half a. crown from your pocket and go out and purchase the giant bound in cloth. You bring him home, and everyone of his tricks he must do for you—you only,—while you sit at ease in your own armchair. Why should I have to know that though I can get a few of Whistler's pictures in reproduction, by far the greater number of them are shut up in English private' houses, and the owners would no more dream of giving or selling the copyright of them than they would dream of letting there be duplicates made of their clothes or their jewels." " But, you Goth," said Erwin, " aren't you going to allow anything for the instinct of exclusiveness ? Savages haven't it, but men of culture have. I'm not going to buy a picture a duplicate of which I'll meet in every house in the village." " You don't object to your books being duplicated. You buy your copies of Nietzsche and Maeterlinck and Bernard Shaw " —he ran his eye over the adjacent book table—" and don't in the least object if you walk into the next house and find it also in possession of the trio. Indeed, you aro actually pleased; it creates a bond between you at once." "But," said Ines, "pictures are more obstrusive : pictures stare one in the face all the time. When you tire of a book you can give it a push to the back of the bookcase. But unless we follow the Japanese and build us a go-down we've got to confront our pictures for shorter or longer periods—generally longer! It is surprising how long a picture will hang on a wall after a whole household has outgrown it. I certainly„should get a sensation of disgust if I met my selection of pictures in every third house in the village." "You wouldn't_be in the least danger of doing so, Miss Erwin," said Scott, " with tens of thousands of good pictures in the world and tens of thousands of varying taste : the kaleidoscope wouldn't often turn up the same pattern." "Although it be a little out of fashion there is much sense and valour in thie Welshman?" quoted Ines whimsically. "Eh, daddie?" But then there came the sudden electricity into the conversation. " Ines," said her father, " when you are mistress of Wendover, for the love of Heaven don't take that sort of notion with you. It is my dearest pleasure to lie and think of you as a patron of the fine arts, going to the spring exhibitions and gladdening the poor devils of painters' hearts by buying all the pictures ycu have hanging space for. You Avon't insist on 10-shilling pictures, my cirl?" " No, daddie," said Ines gravely : "I shall always offer the more dignified halfguinea."

" But you'll buy pictures, my girl—originals, plenty of them?" he persisted. " To the devil with all reproductions." "I'll buy orignals, daddie,' said the girl, " whenever I can't get reproductions just as good at a guinea." There was a fine colour in her cheeks, and for one second her eyes, lifting themselves, met Scott's. The mam's were full of renunciation. The thing he had known so well, so long, was known still better to him, that was all. The girl's eyes were baffling: not proud, or confused, or 6hy—simply wistful. Scott • could not read them at all.

"I'll get the coffee," she said, and slipped away. . A Scott moved closer to his host, and spoke in a slightly thicker voice than usual.

"Did you ever tell her —Miss Erwin—that I had disgraced my name?" Erwin looked much disturbed at such a sudden cloud on the bright evening. "Er—er—you told me that I had better," he said uncomfortably. "And you did?" "Yes; just a few words." "Can you remember what you said?" "Er—l'm not quite sure, Sheldon."

"Try and remember, if you don't mind." "Oh, just what you told me. That you had done something disgraceful in the past, and that you were trying to live it down." Scott swallowed hard.

"I don't think I quite said that," he said. "I told you I was a disgraced man."

"Isn't it the same?" said Erwin a little timidly. " No," said Scott; "thank God, it isn't. If you don't mind, I should like to tell you a little more of my life. I'm beginning to see there is no reason I should not."

"Yes, yes," said Erwin, "whenever you like, bit dear fellow. To-morrow night, eh? To-night?" " No, not to-night; you are tired," said Scott, compunctiously, for, indeed, the invalid looked curiously fragile. "Well, perhaps lam tired. To-morrow night, then. Is that Mrs Shore I hear? I should like her to see me to bed at once."

He had his coffee in his bedroom, and Ines and Scott drank theirs alone. Neither spoke one word all the time. When Ines put down her cup, she saw that Scott had gone a little white. "Will you walk down as far as the gate with me, Miss Erwin?" he said; "you will think it strange of me to ask you, but there is something I should like to tell you." And now Ines's colour flamed up to the very roots of her hair. Her hand trembled, her heart thudded so loudly thought he must hear..

T "Will you cctii ?" he said again, for she did not move. "Yes; I will come," she. said, her voice low. (To be continued.)