THE MAN OF GRANDE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3509, 14 June 1921, Page 58

THE MAN OF GRANDE.

TAli, Rights Reserved.]

By

lan Grosvenor.

Drenched t-o the skin bv a south-westerly gale and fretted in temper, Rupert Bellamy spared neither whip nor spur in his attempt to gain the distant village with as little •delay as possible. The hunt had been a failure from the i>oint of view of a kill ; he had been thrown. So the day, so lar as the judge was concerned, had been a wasted one. Stern and unbending by nature, Rupert Bellamy’s face had never appeared more forbidding of aspect than at that moment. Reining in his mount outside a wayside inn he dismounted, and, shaking the rain s accumulation from the brim of his hat, he crossed the hostelry’s threshold. “Drenched, Bellamy?” The cheeriness of accent inflecting the question, caused the judge to swing sharply round on his heel. The obviousness of the remark irritated him to an extraordinary degree. It was on the tip of his tongue to give his annoyance expression, when he discovered his questioner to be the young vicar of the struggling parish of which he was so shining a light. The frown vanished from his brows on meeting the cleric’s frank gaze. For persons of so dissimilar a temperament a strange bond of sympathy exi-ted between them. It surprised the village no less than io did the stern old man himself. Himse'J out one step removed from being an atneist, he vet felt the keenest respect for the young fellow who, with the enthusiasm of the recently promoted curate, had some two vears before tnrown himself hcait and soul into the duties of his new.y bestowed living. Till the Latter had arrived in the hamlet, Bellamy reigned its uncrowned king. Johnson’s advent had evolved a species of social 1 evolution. His predecessor had been a tame individual one ready to accept Bellamy's dictum as final in all things. The Reverend Walter Johnson, 15 a" had proved himself of sterner stuff. Going up to the Hall he had it out wnh the stern old judge, briefly sketching the outlines of the latter’s duties to man with a trite terseness of expression, which it at first astounding its hearer, ultimately succeeded in winning his admiration. From that dav onwards, to the covert astonishment of the villagers, Waller .Johnson became the herd of the village, with Bellamy as his henchman. It wag the only case on record m which the judge had given best to any man. The vicar too proved the only one who could apparently afford to regard the hatch, t faced Bellamy without fear. With ah others he maintained that covert fierceness of manner which had made him the dread of every criminal haled before his merciless tribunal for judgement. “Soaked to the hone. Johnson,’’ Bellamy smiled in a wintrv lac.nion. 1 A ou are Lie last man in the wor’d I expected to see in a —cr -public-house. The vicar laughed ere becoming grave. “The call of the cloth takes the clergy Into many strange places, Bellamy, said be quietly. “I have been comforting the last hours of a dying woman. Poor soul, ehe fell at the step from sheer exhaustion. Kh e is dead. For her all the troubles, the miseries of this world are over. But ’’

Johnson paired, his race contracting otidiy. “Weil?’’ snapped the judge, “what were you going to nay, when you—dried up?” “I was thinking cf the child. As the woman was de.titute I suppose there is | nothing else for the mite but to pack her j off to the workhouse. Were I a rich man I wou.d adopt her. Two hundred a year is not elastic, and—l already have three of my own. Yes, I am afraid there is nothing for it but the Union.” Bellamy’s brows met in a straight line cf beetling grey. At the moment his face appeared almost forbidding in its ugliness. “I suppose you never thought what Mrs Johnson might have to say on the matter? What would she have said to the introduction of an alien child into her family circle?” “No child can be considered as an alien,” replied the vicar quietly. “My wife would welcome, it if money were elastic. It is one of the restrictions of this life that one should be juot before being generous.” “Gad ! I believe you mean what you sav. Johnson,” muttered Bellamy softly. “When I see you and yours I sometimes regret T am not as you are. It is lonely up at the Hall, man. I am rich in the world’s goods, but you are richer than I am with your two hundred a year. You are happy in your home. I I am very lonely in my —grandeur shall we say?’’ “It is not too late in the day to remedy the defect Bellamy.” “I am .sixty-eight! Look at me, man. Am I the individual anyone could love? Believe me, Johnson. I have allowed the good th’ngs of this world to slip by me for all time —for all time.” “A child does not regard these things, Bellamy.” The vicar spoke impulsively, a sudden light transfiguring his pale, aesthetic face. “A child in the "ivine cf ’ts If" e takes no thought f age. Its ove, too is tile purest, since in it there is no thought of gain. It is the most honest beneath the ’ight of heaven. Man, have you never noticed how a child will lavish love on a defaced doll? In its eyes there is no such thing as its being broken —worn.” “Meaning ?” “f et me answer the question by asking another. What' good have you done in your life?” “Beyond purging the community of scoundrels —none.” said Bellamy. “The chance of your doing one good act at le-’st then has come vour way. Y 7 ou are rich—you are lonely. Will you adopt this child and save her from going to the Union ?” Bellamy started. Accustomed as he was bv nature to surprises of all descriptions, the present one was so unexpected as to rob him momentarily of the power to reply. Before he had indeed time to collect his scattered wits. Johnson had left the hallway to disappear into a side room. A moment later he reappeared bearing in his arms the tiny figure of a child. Silently he aniproa-ched the old. stern-faced judge, routelv turning the small tear-stained face towards his companion. “She has lost all in the world, Bellamy,” said the vicar quietly. “Will you not “give her something of the happiness the world holds in store for those wno have money? Man, you have sentenced hundreds to living hellk in the interest of justice. Give this mite something in return. Will you, who hold the scales, allow the balance to be all on one side ! The judge drew a low, deep breath. For the moment he was hell-tempted to reply angrily to the clergyman s almost impassioned appeal. Instead, he hesitated, a strange, almost wistful look creeping into the depths of the cold grey eyes as they fell on the diminutive form the vicar held so tightly pressed to ms breast. Vaguely a- desire to possess himself of this flotsam on the stream of 1 ite entered his being. Mentally he could hear the patter of her tiny feet along the great silent passages of the Had, the echo of her laughter within its wane, the sound of her prattle whilst nestling &* his knee. Why, he argued, should re close the door on his offered happiness 7 He was lonely. He had the money to care for the child, to give her a first class education, to bring within her reach all that goes to make a child’s life happy. A strange mistiness crept into his eyes, as obsessed bv a dread that he might appear too austere, too plain, to attra t the little maid, he stepped a pace nearer. “I am too old to have children round me. Johnson,” he whispered. “Too old.’ The golden head pillowed against thr vicar’s breast raised itself. A half shy smile steadied the trembling scarlet of the babv lips. Two tinv hands were out stretched impulsively in his direction. “Your answer. Bellamy,” replied John son quietly. “You have received the cab. Are you going to refuse it? Surely not." “Give her to me!” The judge spoke roughlv, after his fashion. “There is io fool like an old one, so the adage goes. I believe I am the greatest of my breed. Give her to me, Johnson: I'll bring a little sun into her life. I don’t know what my housekeeper will say to the importation. 1 don’t know what I should do if Airs Pettigrew left: T should be quite lost without her, Johnson. I am too old for changes ” “Mrs Pettigrew is a woman, Bellamy,’ the vicar ret .lied quietlv. “A woman is a mother at heart. Like von, she wt’.l he glad to have it about the place. A home is nothing without a youngster, Bella mv. She will make you feel ten years younger before the week is out.” Bending his head over the child, the judge appeared to take no notice of the vicar’s remarks. “T wonder how old she is?” he muttered softly. “Between three and four, the mother said.” “Ah !” Bellamy’s eves never wavered from their contemplation of the child's tear-stained loveliness. “I should Ake to have the funeral expenses charged up to me. The child’s mother must not be accorded a pauper’s funeral.” Johnson smiled tranquilly. “A remark which proves you have decided to adopt her. I am glad.” Bellamy shrugged his shoulders, smilin 0 wryly as he did so.

“Y'ou said I had tho call—l have accepted it. Do you know her name?’ “Enid Fazling.” “Faz'iing?” Bellamy started, looking sharply over the child’s head at his companion. “Fazling is an uncommon name. I have only heard it once before. it belonged to a man I sentenced to three years’ penal servitude twelve months ago. Ho appealed .and .got- the sentence reduced to eighteen months. It was the first time in all my life I have ever had a sentence of mine diminished.” Tactfully Jolmsc-n turned the conversation into other channels, whilst the judge, ordering a fly to be prepared, drank hot whisky. Ten minutes later Bellamy, giving directions for his horse to be ridden over to the Hall, offered the vicar a lift as far as the vicarage. Dropping him at the gate, tho judge sat back in a corner of tho cab, a sleeping child pillowed against his breast. Such was the manner in which Enid Fazling arrived at the Hail. Entering the house, Judge, Bajlamv pas.ed into the study, then, placing Ins protegee in the comfortable depths of an armchair, rang the bell. Now that the crucial moment had arrived he felt a certain diffidence in meeting his austere faced housekeeper. She had been shrewd enough to make herself indispensable to the man, who, under her rule, had drifted into a position of being merely nominally head of the house. So well had she taught the judge his lesson that now it was with a distinct feeling of discomfort he awaited her advent, Bellamy had not to do so for long. The news cf his arrival at the house, holding a ragged child for burden, had passed througn the Hall like an electric flash. Within three minutes of his advent Mrs Pettigrew was made aware of the fact, and, strangely enough, the news filled her matronly bosom with a thrill of excitement.

“Tour master is human, after all, Robson,” she remarked, suppressing the butler’s barely veiled grin, with a flash of eve which effectually gave the quietus to the man’s covert derision. “I had begun to doubt it. Continually sentencing others to gaol and the gallows must harden the nature of the best. I had believed the judge to be granite. He isn’t. I hope he has decided to take the child for good. We want something of the sort to liven up this grim old barn of a place." “But the child’s ragged, ma’am,” remarked the abashed Robson in self-de-fence, “with never a shoe to her foot or a stocking to her leg. She looks the kid of a tramp, so she does, Mrs Pettigrew. I he more honour, then, for the judge to be seen with her,” rapped back the housekeeper, bridling. “Robson, you ought to be ashamed of yourself to speak as you have. What have clothes to do with a creature, after all. Livery or no livery, you would never be worth your salarv to anvone. If your wife wasn’t the good cook she is,. I wouldn’t keep you a the Hall a single blessed day.” With which final shaft, Airs Pettigrew, rising from her chair, swept past the astonished butler on her way to the study. Pausing for a moment outside the door to adjust the lace of her cap, Mrs Pettigrew made her dignified entry in to the _ room where Bellamy awaited her coming. “You wanted me, sir?” she remarked blandly, enjoying the judge’s evident discomfiture. “I understand you have brought a child into the house, whicn I expect is the reason of your wanting to see me, and—bless me, if that isn’t her, seated on your chair. Covered with mud’ too! ’ ’ It 11 brush off, Airs Pettigrew.” The housekeeper favoured her employer with a look of scorn. “Of course it will brush off, sir ” she retorted shortly. “1 wasn’t thinking of the chair when I spoke. It was of the child henself. Pretty little dear. And what may you be wanting to be done with her A .good meal would do her no harm, if the looks of her are anything to go on.” Kneeling by her side, Airs Pettigrc-w’s nimble fingers were stroking the sleeper’s silken curls away from shadowing the closed lids. Her attitude was so° eminently _ that of the mother that, for the first time in Iris life, the judge looked on his housekeeper with an interest closely verging on" that of the kindly. ‘T—I have adopted her,” he ‘ said quietly, in accents lie strove vainly to make matter-of-fact and final. “T er I —it is manifestly impossible that I can look after a child myself. I have never been married, and—er—children are quite out of mv line, you see ” “You want me to look after her. Is that what you are trying to say. sir?” If you wouldn t mind. "Mrs Pettigrew.” interjected the justice hastily. ‘T shall ]>e only too happy to look after her, sir.” There was a mistiness in the eyes the woman upturned towards Bellamy s. “A child is no trouble; she will liven this old house up, sir. Lord bless mv soul, it would have made you a different man to what you are if you’d married and had half ‘ a dozen of vour own.” Bellamy winced. There was truth m the woman’s statement, which annoyed him. It 'proved the echo of his own thoughts ever since he had felt the cling of those tinv fingers about his own. “I am very glad you do not see fit. to put anv difficulty in the way of my adoption of Enid Fazling,” said he frigidly. “I was afraid you might. I should be obliged if you will make all orders neces ‘•ary for her wardrobe without delay. She has nothing but what she stands up in. Her mother died an hour or so a go in the Stag Inn. I adopted her in order to relieve the rates—let us say. She was about to he sent to the Union, My adoption of the child followed on a suggestion by Mr Johnson.” “Poor mite,” whispered the woman, her eyes brimming with sympathetic tears. “She shan’t feel the lives, if I can help it, and—[ reckon you’ll make her a good guardian, sir. You’ll lose nothing by

having extended the hand of charity lo this poor wee one.” “Thanks, Mrs Pettigrew.” Bellamy spoke almost snappily. “Will you take the child away? I have some work to do. Some letters to write to catch the post. You are hindering me. Also, I fail to see in what manner I am likeiy to gain by the adoption of a waif. So far as I can see I have let myself in for a considerable expense.” Swinging round on his heel, the judge walked towards his desk, nor did he turn til] the echo of the door closing at his back warned him of the departure of ais housekeeper and her sleeping charge. “Strange,” he muttered softly to himself. “It is strange that Airs Pettigrew should say almost the same thing as Johnson. I fail to see, however, why my rescuing that child from the Union sliouid stand me in good stead. Johnson spoke as a parson. Mrs Pettigrew as a woman and a. mother. They are both hysteric, I suppose, in their peculiar way.” Yet though Bellamy dismissed' the subject from his mind in this fashion, a memory of the child remained with him long after the shadows of creeping night had changed the twilight of the room” lo a palpable darkness. Oddly enough they, too, proved strangely sweet. Once, from the distance, he heard the faint sound of a childish laugn. it thrilled him as little eise had ever done. “Childhood's memory is short,” he muttered softly, switching on the light. Its innocence is its safeguard from the sorrows of this life. Mrs Pettigrew has managed to find some wav to make her forget her mother for the time being. Perhaps in time she will succeed in doing so altogether. One day, perhaps, she ivnl come to look upon me as—her father.’’ Bellamy uttered the words in a low, awed voice. A strange light leaned into being m the depths of his cold, grey eyes. ■ ° ' I must make it my business to see Airs I ettigrew does not win her from me,” he added slowly. “She is mine now Aline—for all time.”

Rulers come and rulers go. Within six months Mrs Pettigrew found she had been dethroned from her position of principal to the one she had years before arrogated to Bellamy. Enid occupied her throne, and never had monarch abdicated a throne more willingly than did the judge’s elderly and austere housekeeper. Nor was this the only revolution the child had effected by her advent to the Hall. Beneath the touch of her sunny presence, Bellamy lost the austere severity of manner which had been his characteristic from the time he had been elevated to tiie Bench. The record sentences for which he had long been famous became fewer and ever further between. On more t-.io.ii one occasion he, too, ha-cl taken extenuating circumstances into consideration, and in so doing had allowed them to mitigate the dispensing of his justice Yet neither he nor yet the officials of the courts in which he sat in judgment, guessed it was the touch of childish fingers, the memory of a sunny-haired mite awaiting his return in his house on tne Devonshire moors, which had made in him so great a change. Such was, however, the case. With the passage of each day the child grew yet dearer to Bellamy. ' TJngrudgmgly she ejave her adopter of her store of lo\e, till in the end she supplied the want of the starved old heart." In the past, a return to the Hall ha.d awakened no sense of interest within his mind. Now he eagerly counted the days sepaiating him from his home-coming. Perhaps, too, never had he been so anxious to re! turn as when, with the conclusion of the Exeter Assizes he sped in the direction of his home as fast as his motor car could convey him. Enid’s birthday was to oe heralded with the next sunrise. He had stayed in the cathedral city but just long enough to purchase a present in eelebra” tion of so solemn an occasion, and had caught the “up” express. It was late when the judge arrived at the Hall. So late, that "most of the household were in bed. Had he but known it. Fate trod hard on the heels of Rupert Bellamy. He, however, being strictly a materialist, ignored it, even as he did the fact that behind a clump of rhododendrons, not half-a-dozen yards from his study window, lurked a man in hiding. Bent almost double, the latter watched the lean, grey-haired figure of the judge, and doing so cursed him viciiouslv from beneath his breath. There was the dust of the road upon his travelstained clothes, the hint of gaol in the close-cropped hair. The light of murder glittered, too, in the depths of those eyes watching the movements of the man within the room before him. The man’s fingers twitched about the butt of the revolver he held concealed .beneath the shadow of his pocket. (if all those things, Bellamy, however, remained supremely ignorant. " Seated at his desk, the judge smilingly addressed the parcel containing the present he had brought from Exeter for the child he had grown to love as his own. Bellamy took up the portrait of the girl he had rescued from pauperism, kissing the inanimate features before replacing it on the desk. Smiling, he looked at it. then, wondering what her expression in the morning would be on seeing his gift jVing by the side of her cot, slowly crossed the "room to tile fhe-p mce. Drawing an arm-chair up in front of the fading ”fire, he seated himself, indulging in dreams of the future till the weariness of old age stealing over him, his head slowlv drooped forward on his breast and he slept. From without, behind the shelter of tho rhododendrons, the watching stare of those glittering eyes grew metallic. Tho crouching figure slowly assumed an upright position in the darkness. Irresolutely it stood, sweeping the lightless front of the mansion before him. ’ It was silent. There was no sign of life from one end to the other of those twin rows of windows, with the solitary exception of the study. There electricity gleamed iridescent from the twin bulbs of the

electrolier. Its glare hinted at wakefulness, hut the man, who but the day before had left gaol on the completion of his sentence, knew the judge slept. “Luck,” he muttered beneath his breath. “1 did not expect the job to be so easy a one. For two pins I'd kill him while lie is asleep. If 1 did, however, I should lose m_v revenge. From the dock i swore I'd got even with him when 1 came out. He must wake. He must stay awake just sufficiently long to know that John Fazling kept liis word.’* Like a shadow the mail crept through the gloom. Noiselessly he opened tho French windows by the skilful insertion of a thin-bladed knife beneath its fastener. A moment later he stood inside the room, his eyes riveted on the features of a child meeting his from the interior of a silver frame. A strange contsriction made itself manifest in his throat. lo his eyes there could be no doubt a? to the indentity of the child before him. It was his own ! Hesitating, Fazling stared at the man asleep in the chair. From him he again allowed his eyes to stray to the portrait and re-read the inscription written across tlie corner. It breathed of the love of an old man, one who had journeyed far along life's weary highway, to find' happiness at its end A mistiness blurred the ex-convict’s eyes, as he noiselessly raised the parcel he had seen the judge address so short a while before. Like the inscription on the photograph it breathed of a love verging on idolatry. Fazling’s thin lips set in a thin, straight line. “No,” he muttered hoarsely. “I can’t do it. All the time I have been in gaol I have been thinking of this moment. Planning what I should do when I met Bellamy face to face. I was going to make him live in seconds tho agony I endured for months, and now—well, it s got to be just nothing. God, how different has been this meeting from the one I expected it to be.” ihe grey face, seamed from its contact with the quarries’ brutalising touch, grew yet paler as, turning on his heel, Fazling stole noiselessly towards the window. Soundlessly he made his exit. For a moment his face remained clearly visioned against the glass, then vanished in the darkness as though it had been the creation of a dream, disappeared as Bellamy, rousing himself from his slumbers, shivered beneath the contact of that recent draught. “Cold,” he muttered, rising abruptly to his feet. “The fire has gone down too far to give anv heat. I think I must have dozed off. Ah, well, it's more than time to go to bed. Two o’clock! Gad, I must have slept a good half hour!” Picking up the parcel he had brought from Exeter lie switched off the light, then, passing out of the room, slowly mounted the stairs towards the first floor. His thoughts were with the child he loved. He had no knowledge how he bad passed through the valley of death. In his ignorance of what had passed whilst lie slept, he little realised how tho vicar’s words uttered six months before in the hall way of the Stag Inn had been verified as a prophecy. That was a knowledge onlv shared bv Heaven and the man who, passing out of his life for ever, tramped sullenly through the rain in the direction of the Southampton Docks. In a new world he hoped to regain, not only his self-respect, but a forgetfulness of the past.