AFTER MANY YEARS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3415, 29 August 1919, Page 65

AFTER MANY YEARS.

By EanoL Fitzgeiuxd. ■"What a fortunate thing you never had a child, Gertrude 1" -','.. Mrs Cardwyn let her teaspoon drop with a clatter on the delicate Sevres saucer and chipped it. "My dear Muriel, you have an extraordinarily acrobatic mind. Its sudden leaps and bounds startle me. I thought you were talking about the mantelpiece." Lady Muriel Longstaff stretched out a green satin slipper towards the blazing logs. ''The transition is obvious," she said lazily, "from the fifteenth-century chimney piece to the whole house, and thence to Nathaniel's will." "Oh, don't let us talk about that I" Lady Muriel turned a mocking smile on her hostess. "It's no use talking like that to me, dear lady." Gertrude Cardwyn's large brown eye» expressed genuine bewilderment. "What do you mean?" "No pretty little sensational simpers for me. Keep them for the uninitiated. Nathaniel has been dead twenty-two years. You never cared a straw for him, and you were simply mad when he left that will giving barely a hundred a year if you should have a child." "I know all that quite well, but I hate talking about it.*' "Sentimental rubbish! You know you were down on your knees every day after he died, thanking heaven that you were a rich widow, free to do what you pleased "Really, Muriel, you " "Don't interrupt. I Buppose that was why you rushed off to the Continent and hid yourself for over a year. Your exultation was too obvious for England." Mrs Cardwyn got up suddenly from her comfortable chair by the fireplace and walked to the other end of the beautiful drawing room. Her figure was still slender and youthful, and her pale, oval face had an undecided, half-appealing expression that made her appear much younger than she really was. "You are "positively vulgar, Muriel," she remonstrated. Lady Muriel was quite unabashed. "Truth is always vulgar; that is why so many really nice people never speak it. "It isn't truth. It's a grotesque exaggeration." "Stop roaming about there in the darkness like a lost soul, and come back to the fire." Gertrude obeyed. She looked a ehade paler in the firelight as she seated herself. Lady Muriel turned towards her. "Why didn't you marry Frank Alleyn when Nathaniel died? He was a widower then; we were all expecting it. We thought perhaps you had run away to the Continent to get the interval of decency over more quickly." "What on earth are you dragging all this up for now?" Lady Muriel laughed. "I don't know. I suppose it's because his son and the girl he s- going to marry are coming here to-day. But I've often intended to ask you and never got a chance before. Why didn't you marry him?" Gertrude Cardwyn took up the poker and began to worry the blazing logs. "It's such ages ago, I forget. It would have complicated matters so." . ,■ "Complicated matters. How?" The poker was restored to its place somewhat noisily. Mrs Cardwyn's face had become very red with her exertions. "Oh, I don't know. I wonder what the girl will be like?." "Large boots, tweed coat and skirt, hair anj'how—Girton." "Oil, they're not all like that. And Ronald eays she's extremely pretty." _ "My sweet innocent, he's in love with her. "His opinion is worth nothing." "Yes, but he wouldn't have fallen in love with her if she hadn't been pretty." "What are her people?" "She hasn't any. She's an orphan, with no relations apparently." "Rich?" "Oh, no. Barely enough to live on." " 'And Ronald has three hundred a year I How Arcadian! I suppose he expects you to set them up in. housekeeping as you've already done so much for him." "Ronald isn't.that sort," said Mrs Cardwyn angrily. "Don't flare up, it's so exhausting. I only meant that if you pay a boy's school and university expenses he might very well take it for granted that you would make things easy for him when he wanted to marry;" "It was no trouble to me to help the boy, and I felt I owed him something because I had treated his father badly." "You had?" "I don't mean in not marrying him when I was free, but in throwing him over in the beginning for Nathaniel." "For goodness' sake don't side-track into sentiment again, Gertrude. It doesn't in the least take me in. You never had a shadow of remorse in throwing him over." "I'm not pretending I had. I should do the same again if circumstances arose. I would do anything rather than go back again to noverty. But he took it a good deal to heart." Lady Muriel stood up, and, leaning against the high mantelshelf, looked down at her hostess thoughtfully. She was still a handsome woman, and with a little aid from art bore her fifty years jauntily. "I wonder why Nathaniel made a will like that? - ' "Oh, do stop itl He was crazy to have a son, and ho knew I was extravagant,

that's all. He made it immediately after we were married." "Well, it really was quite decent of him only to live five years. Some old men Wuld have " She broke up as the butler threw open the door and announced : "Mr Ronald Alleyn and Miss Ferrier." A tall, handsome man of about twentyfour hurried across the room and kissed Mrs Cardwyn affectionately. Th _ en , he drew the girl forward and presented her. "This is Beryl, Aunt Gertrude." Mrs Cardwyn's greeting was very friendly. . ' "I am very glad to meet you, my dear. Come nearer to the fire and have some tea. It must have been cold travelling to-day. My friend Lady Muriel Longstaff." . . Lady Muriel had been, taking in, every detail of the girl's appearance in her lazy way. Apparently her scrutiny afforded her 'satisfaction, for she greeted the girl with marked cordiality. While she talked and laughed with Ronald she still kept up her observation of Beryl. Her prophecy as to the tweed coat and'skirt was. fulfilled, but in everything else it was wrong. The girl was unusually pretty., Her fine brown eyes, not unlike Mrs Cardwyn's, were set off bv a perfect complexion, and although tall and beautifully formed,, she yet had all the softness and freshness of a child. Her hands arid feet were small and well shaped, and herabundant brown hair was carefully braided beneath _ her up-to-date travelling hat. The only indication she gave of being learned was a quiet self-possession and a certain aloofness of manner, which might conceivably have arisen from shyness. She was observing Mrs Cardwyn with large, grave eyes, almost as closely as Lady Muriel was observing her. i"I wonder," said Muriel Longstaff to herself shrewdly, "if, knowing her to be such a wealthy woman, the girl is putting on that cold air that she has no wish to curry favour. She looks, rather an independent young person." 'At dinner, Beryl, in white satin disclosing a beautiful rounded throat and gleaming arms, was loveliness itself. She had, too, lost something of her aloofness, and talked and laughed merrily. '"No one would ever suspect her of having cultivated her mind," thought Lady Muriel approvingly. "We' nearly lost the train," Ronald was explaining. "There were no taxis, and the growler we eventually secured was so rusty' for want of : use that it creaked and'rattled and swayed until we expected to find ourselves m the road/ every minute." ■.•'-.

"But the absurd thing ahout it"—Beryl showed all her pretty teeth in a reminiscent smile—"was that the driver had armed himself with a motor-horn, and every time he toot-tooted not only did all the pedestrians scuttle frantically into safety, but he frightened "the horse so that for a minute or two after each blast we went at Quite a dashing pace." "Had you very far to drive?" . Lady Muriel Longstaff put the question with studied innocence. "From near the Tate Gallery to Liverpool street. It took hours." "Why the Tate Gallery?" "Beryl's friends, the Hathaways, live •in St. Matthew's square, between Victoria and the Tate Gallery, explained Ronald. • . 'Canon Hathaway is Vicar of St. Matthews, is he not?" "Yes." "Have you lived with them long?" "Ever since I was quite a little girl. Hasn't'Ronald told you?" Mrs Oardwyn smiled pleasantly? "Be-has-been so much occupied in tailing me all about you, personally, in his letters that he hain't had much time to describe your surroundings." . "Well, her surroundings don't matter a scrap," declared Ronald, busily, peeling an apple and trying to keep the skin whole, '.'because she is jroing to change them almost immediately. The servants had withdrawn, and they could talk freely. "I didn't know you thought of getting .married so soon," said Mrs Cardwyn to Beryl. "The Canon and Mrs Hathaway think it best," .replied the girl quietly. Ronald is not very comfortable in his rooms, and wo should neither of us be any better afit five years hence than we are now." "Tha matter is in a nutshell," commented Ronald, makihg the apple peel simulate a whole apple on his plate. "But have you thought how poor you will bo," queried Lady Muriel, with a grape between hex fingers. Beryl and Ronald laughed lightly. " We have never been anything else," jaid th 6 latter j "it will ba nothing new to MB." Late* on, in the drawing room, when the subject came up again, Beryl said g quickly: "I hate money—more than half le sin and wickedness in the world comes om money." Extract from one of the Canon's sermons?" asked Lady Muriel lazily. Beryl laughed. "I wish you could collar some of the source of wickedness and convert it to better uses, but, alasl half of its sinfulness is that it is so elusive!" Ronald turned a mischievous face at Beryl. " Sounds sententious, I know," she laughed, "but it's true." Mrs Cardwyn was staring into the fire, apparently taking no interest in the conversation. Beryl went towards her to say good-night. The elder woman rose and took the outstretched hand. She half drew the girl towards her as if she would have kissed her, then hesitated. Beryl, with a somewhat hasty "Good-night," freed her hand and left the room. "Why didn't you let Aunt Gertrude kiss you?" asked Ronald as he gave her her candle irf the hall. "Oh, I don't know. She seemed so undecided as to whether she wanted to kiss me or not." . "Well, I know who's riot undecided about it," declared Ronald} "there's no Indecision about me."

And in this matter there certainly was not. 11. A day or two later Mrs Cardwyn and. Beryl were lunching alone, Ronald and Lady Muriel having joined a. neighbour's shooting party. "You will be 'married from Canon Hathaway's, I suppose?" Mrs Cardwyn asked. "Yes, of course. They have been like parents to me ever since my nurse died." "Your nurse?" Beryl smiled. "It sounds rather absurd at my age, but, you see, I was left in her charge when my parents died, and she asked Mrs Hathaway when I was about eight to let us live with them, so that I should be properly brought up. The Hathaways are very poor, and were glad of the arrangement. Nurse died there three years ago." "What was her name." "Florence Harrison, and she was the most wonderful person to me. It was o,fter she died that I went to Girton. I felt that I must take up some work to take me off my loss. Though the Hathaare so sweet, nurse always seemed more like a mother —she really belonged to me like no one else ever did." "Quite so." Mrs Cardwyn's tone was cold and lacking in interest. "If you will excuse me I will lie down for a while; lam not feeling very well." She v%s gone before Beryl had got over her surprise. " I wonder what I can have said to offend her," she mused as she settled herself in a comfortable chair in the library and took up the FortnighMy. "She was quite all right when we sat down to lunch. Seems rather a person of moods." Then she put down the magazine suddenly. "Could it be possible that she knew nurse?" She walked to the window and looked out over the leafless trees of the park, stately and beautiful in the gathering dusk. Then she laughed softly. " My mind has a natural turn for melodrama," she.told herself. " Some ancestor or another must' certainly have been a dramatist." ' In the hall, as she was going up to dress for dinner, Beryl ran into a man whom the butler was about to show upstairs. He looked at her for a moment, .as if unable to believe his eyes, then held out his hand. "How do you do, Miss Ferrier? I am very glad to see you here." "Mr Marston!" Beryl was no less astonished than the newcomer. »"Have you come to stay?" He was the manager of the bank m which her small capital was invested. He had complete control over her money affairs, and had known her from a child. " No; I have just come to see Mrs Cardwyn on business." "Nothing worrying, I hope?" said Beryl, as) she walked up the broad staircase beside him. " She has'not been very well since lunch, and she has been unable to leave her room. She won't want to be bothered with much business." " Oh, she 'phoned me to come. She wants some information." He paused on the wide landing at the top of the stairs. . " I will say .'good-bye' here, Miss Beryl. I am returning to London as soon as I have seen Mrs Cardwyn." Beryl's darh eyebrows went up in surprise. "It must be something very important —to come all this way for such a short time." "I don't know'." He smiled in a kindly, non-committal way, and followed the. butler along the corridor. Mrs Cardwyn did not appear at dinner. Lady Muriel was tired, and went early to her room, and after a desultory game of billiards Beryl followed her example. But she did not go to bed. In a deep armchair- in front of the fire she gave herself up to thought. Mr Marston's visit had disturbed her. She had a suspicion that Mrs Cardwyn intended to make her and Ronald an allowance, and the idea of beginning their married life as dependents on a rich woman's pleasure was very distasteful to her. Her pretty brows nearly met across her face as she stared into the fire, seeking illumination as to how she might without offence put a stop to any such well-meant intention on the part of her hostess. The position was a little awkward, and would need careful handling, since she must avoid hurting one who had been such a good friend to her lover. Someone knocked at the door, and, thinking it was the maid, she uttered a mechanical ** Come in!" To her surprise Mrs Cardwyn answered the invitation. She was very pale, but her black silk neglige mav have been partly responsible for that, and there was a suggestion of embarrasment in her manner. "May 1 come in for a moment?" she asked smiling. Beryl iumped up from her chair and hurried towards her. " Do, please. I hope you are feeling better? Come and sit by the fire." She established Mrs Cardivyn in her own chair,' and drew a smaller one up to ihe other side of the hearth. There was an appreciable silence for a moment or two, in which" the logs on the hearth fizzled and cracked cheerfully. " You mentioned your nurse to-day," said Mrs Cardwyn, speaking with a jerk. " Yes," there was suppressed excitement in Beryl's voice. " Was I right in thinking you knew her?" Unadulterated astonishment filled the elder woman's eyes. " She was my maid," she answered. Beryl's interest sprang full-grown into existence. "Really! But that must have been a long time ago? I am twenty-two, you know." "It was before vou were born, of course."

" You knew my parents, then?" Mrs Cardwyn nodded. " Did Harrison ever speak of me to 3'ou?" she asked. " No, never." " Are you sure?" " Certain. I never heard vour name until Ronald spoke of you to me." Again the spluttering of the logs filled the stillness for a long minute. i Then the girl said timidly: " Please tell me what you know about my parents. I know nothing of them myself,' except that their name was not Ferrier." "Did Harrison tell you nothing?" "She said that my mother would have been reduced to beggary if she had acknowledged me. She told me that the day she died. I think she meant to say more, but she was too weak, poor dear." "Your mother's name was Cardwyn." " What! A relation of yours?" . Beryl leaned across towards her hostess, her eyes alight with eagerness/' "I am vour mother," said Mrs Cardwyn slowly. ■ Across the heavy silence the elvish voices of the spitting, crackling wood fire seemed to mock the two women. The room was whirling round with Beryl, but she was incapable of uttering a sound. After what seemed an eternity Mrs Cardwyn went on: " You were bom several months after the death of vour father. He made a most unjust will, leaving me' entirely dependent on the guardians of my child, if I should have one. No one ever knew of your existence except Harrison. It was your mention of her to-day that revealed you to me. Then I sent for Mr Marston, who, of course, knew her, and possibly suspects who you are, and he confirmed my suspicions." Still Beryl did not speak. She was staring with round, incredulous eyes at the hard face of the woman who had claimed to be her mother. / "Well," queried Mrs Cardwyn, "have you nothing to sav?" Still Beryl stared, wide-eyed, silent. " You understand that this place is yours, to do what vou like with. You can turn me . out to-morrow. I am entirely dependent on your charity." " Stop!" cried the girl wildly, suddenly •springing to her feet. " I don't want your money! I hate it! If it hadn't been for money I might have had a home and an upbringing like other girls and not bave been perpetually ashamed by the mystery surrounding my birth and relations. a "You—what?" Gertrude Cardwyn slowlv. rose and confronted her daughter, bewilderment in her face. The girl clenched her hands together in an effort to keep calm. " Why did you tell me this?" she asked. Mrs Cardwyn passed her hand over her brow wearily. " I don't know. I suppose I ought to say more. I threw over the man I loved to marry your father, because I hadn't the courage to face a life of poverty. I sacrificed you that I might keep my wealth and marry him when I was free, and then I had not the courage to go oh with it. And all these years I have never been able to summon up courage, to find you and acknowledge my sin. Fate has forced my hand now, when it is too late." "How do you mean, too late?" Beryl heard herself ask the question as if a third person had spoken. " Too late to be of any use to you. You don't want me now you have Ronald." A flood of rioting thoughts, hopes, fears, dreams rushed through the girl's mind. She longed to utter something of the torrent of feeling that welled up in her heart, but the cold, hard, matter-of-fact manner of the other froze the words on her lips. All the warm young blood in her cried out for some semblance of motherhood, some spark of divine fire in the woman before her. " Didn't you ever want me, mother?" she said at last. Mrs Cardwyn started as if she had been awakened out of a trance. " I tried to pretend to myself that Ronald was my chiLd," she said slowly. Beryl, gazing at her with parted lips, ; her soul in her eyes, waited for more, but nothing came. Then she suddenly sank in her chair and burst into passionate weeping, i The sight of her poignant distress seemed to hurt Mrs Cardwyn. "Don't—oh, don't cry like that!" she besought miserably. / " Beryl dashed the tears angrily aside and lifted her head. " Why did you tell me?" she cried fiercely. "Did you want to torture me? Is it possible that you have no feeling, no understanding? If you knew how I have hungered and longed for you; how I have pictured what you would be like, how I have dreamed of your arms enfolding me —my mother's arms." Her voice broke. " And you come to offer me—money!" She covered her face with her hands, and her white shoulders shook "with convulsive sobbing. Arid then, quite suddenly, some amazing'change seemed to come over Mrs Cardwyn. She sank to her knees beside the sobbing girl and encircled her with her arms. " Forgive me—oh ! forgive me, my dear—my child! The words were like a long wail, the tears coursing down her pale cheeks. " I threw away the best gift of God—and kept nothing but the huskj of life. Let me be your mother, indeed, ev.*n now, and give me a little corner in that warm heart of yours." The two pairs of brown eyes, so curiously alike, met in a long look. Then the girl's young arms were flung passionately about Mrs Cardwyn's neck, the young head was pillowed on her breast/ For the first time Gertrude held her child in her arms. Impelled by some new and strange emotion, she bent her head slowly until lier cheek- lay against the soft young face at her breast. " Mother—oh, mother 1" There was a world of ecstatio contentment in the words, and the tears that mingled on their cheeks were tears of joy.