LOVE & JEALOUSY.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 12, Issue 27, 5 April 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

LOVE & JEALOUSY.

g sgg iggigg. IN FOUR PARTS. PART IV. Seth Blount does not go anywhere for his holidays; he stays at the Vicarage of St. Dunstable. He has no home ; and the existence of the lonely tutor, it would seem, has not been remembered this midsummer by any one of those few people in the world who call themselves his friends. So ho has no choice—since Doctor Carlyon makes no objection — but to remain at the roomy old Vicarage. If Rosalind herself regards him as a boro, and resents his presence in her father’s house at this holiday-time of the year, she stands too much in fear of the usher now to show that resentment openly. She had so fervently hoped that he would go away with the boys ! Seth Blount has however left Rosalind in peace, and that is something to be thankful for. He has not molested her or threatened her in any way since the night of the breaking-up party; and lately Rosalind has ventured to believe that his heart must be softening towards her, and that his vindictiveness must be dying out, and that, on account of the love he has borne or perhaps may still hear, he will forgive her her heartlessness after all. For he never addresses her, never looks at her—unless it meal times, when he cannot very well avoid doing so ; she might be an article of furniture for all the notice he takes of her. Yes, he is trying to forget her, she tells herself hopefully; and, when he has forgotten her, he will forgive her. And so, since Blount no more talks mysteriously of ‘ biding his time ’ and of ‘ revenge,’ the girl’s old light-hearted-ncss, her old madcap moods, insensibly return ; and the haunting sense of a nameless dread gradually forsakes her as the long summer days go by. Stie is constantly with Norman, boating, walking, driving, being caressed and made much of by the man who thinks her the sweetest and loveliest woman on earth. Miss Melissa’s snarlings fall on unheeding ears. The girl’s life is all sunshine in this first bright flush of love’s young dream. Sometimes they come across the solitary usher, book in hand, and hat pulled over his brows, down amongst the rocks, far out on the sands, or lying quite still, face downward, on the breezy sunburnt cliffs. Sometimes, meeting them on their rambles, ho lifts his hat, oftenor ho does not; but he never speaks. He is brooding on, planning hia revenge. ‘ What a morose unsociable fellow he is I’ says Norman, with a shrug. ‘ Is he always like that ?’ * Nearly always,’ answers Rosalind. ‘ Ho is very strange.’ Lite in August peremptory business culls Norman to Plymouth, and he goes away from St. Dunstable. He will be abiont throe days, Rosalind, not unnaturally, is very loath to let him go, it being the first time he has St. Dunstable since she became his promised wife. However, there is no help for it, and Norman sets out. She feels unutterably lonely when he is gone; and the old cold of indefinable fear steals subtly back to her heart. She is nervous when she hears the usher’s footstep. She starts like a guilty creature when he enters the room. An evil shadow seems to haunt her whithersoever she goes. It is horrible, this shadowy dread, so vague, so intangible, and yet so real to Rosalind. On the second day she looks quite wan, and Mias Melissa says brusquely—- ‘ This warm weather does not agree with you, Rosalind. You want medicine, I shall make you some senna-tea.’ But Rosalind protests, and goes out for long walks on the dills to battle against her depression. The time is lived through somehow, and the evening of the third day arrives. As early as he can on this evening Norman Lingard has promised to return, Rosalind, almost herself again, is wandering along the cliffs, thinking that she may perhaps meet her absent lover on hia way down to seek her at the

"Vicarage. It is near seven o’clock in the evening. How she has missed him 1 How empty and dreary her life has seemed without him ! How intensely thankful she feels now that Norman is coming back io her at last ! ‘ Only throe days,’ she muses, ‘and the time has seemed like three years !’ The clouds are low to-night and the sunset is murky. The tide is high, there is no wind, and the jagged rocks at the cliffs’ base are nearly hidden from sight. A dipping sea gull in the distance shows white on the leaden waste of waters. Suddenly, about twenty yards ahead of the girl, an uncouth looking figure starts up from the sunburnt turf and continues its course along the cliff’s broken edge, without once turning its head in the direction of Rosalind. Recognising Seth Blount, her cheeks blanches. Her first impulse is to retrace her steps and thus avoid all chance of a meeting with this strange solitary man whom she now so thoroughly fears. Yes, she will go quietly back—she fancies he has not caught sight of her white gown even—she will leave him to himself by the lonely leaden sea. Shuddering, she turns her white face to St. Dunstable. The next moment an appalling cry rings out on the hushed evening air. Rosalind’s heart almost ceases to beat; she gazes round with frightened eyes, breathless, with parted lips. The uncouth figure of the usher, which only a minute before showed itself so distinctly against a background of low grey sky, is gone—has disappeared. ‘ Help! help !’ cries the voice of Seth Blount. For the space of ten seconds the Doctor’s daughter hesitates. She stands as if turned to stone, her energies paralysed, there face to face with the greatest temptation she has ever known. She knows that the life of a pitiless enemy—the only enemy she has in the world —is in deadliest peril—that his death is certain if she refuses her aid. What wore simple than to press Her hands upon her ears to deaden the sound of his cries, and thus to rush home to her father’s house as fast as her flying feet can bear her hither ? Who would over know? The body would be disdiscovered in time; death would be ascribed to accident. The usher once removed from her path, Norman Lingard would neverr.suspect her of the faithlessness and intrigue of the coquette. It is a most terrible temptation to Rosalind. ‘ Help—help I* ‘ Heaven forgive me I’ she says then, hesitating no longer, with a passionate gesture of remorse for her own inhumanity and wickedness; and forthwith she flies to the spot whence the cries appear to come. His long lean hands, she sees at once, clutch the weedy tufted soil from which his feet have slipped ; his knees cling frantically to the cliff’s sleep side. The loosened stones rattle noisily down and scare the screeching sea-birds from the yawning abyss beneath him. It is an awful situation ; Rosalind is at her wits’ ehd. ‘ Oh, pray be patient, pray be careful,’ she says, speaking as calmly as she can, ‘ and I will do ray best—l will indeed, Mr. Blount I’ A bright thought has dashed through her eager brain and lends her strength and nerve to act with presence of mind. If she could succeed in saving this man’s life, she argues, surely then he will be ready to cry ‘quits.’ Out of sheer gratitude for the service rendered him, he will be willing to bury the past and its vexation, and henceforward all will be well. ‘Make haste,’ he says faintly—‘ray hold is giving way!’ Happily the place where he has fallen over is on slightly rising ground; so that Rosalind, by flinging herself down at full length upon the grass, is partly enabled, whilst extending her hand to Blount, to hold herself back from a like terrific peril. In an instant Seth Blount has grasped Rosalind’s small wrist with both his long hot bony hands. With a sudden jerk he flings out his lower limbs, and the slender arm of the girl is well-nigh torn from the socket. ‘ Groat Heaven, what are you doing ?' she cries feverishly. ‘ Try to lift yourself gradually, or we shall both be over together 1’ His swarthy features light up with the wildest triumph as he drags her white face more closely to his own. She feels liis breath upon her forehead ; the red. glare of his burning eyes meets the speechless horror of her own. Too late she perceives now that she is the victim of a subtle ruse—that treachery, and not accident, has placed her in this dreadful strait. He laughs the fiendish laugh of a maniac, and she feels that her doom is sealed. ‘Do you mean to kill mo?' she says, her voice scarcely audible above the hushed moaning of the tide. ‘ldol’ he answers. ‘I have wailed and watched for ray opportunitywaited and watched and plotted, and this is my revenge! We will die together, Rosalind, as I once was fool enough to believe that we should live together! Your lover will return to St. Dunstable to-night, and will find you, his promised bride —where? Tlie usher laughs again ; and Rosalind shrieks wildly for aid. ‘You may scream your lungs out, Rosalind, my deceitful lover,' he says brutally: ‘but there is not a soul to hear you. Trust me, my opportunity was a golden one, or 1 should never have ventured to test it. Ah, truly revenge

is sweet! If the life is not dashed from our bodies when we reach the rocks below us, I will clasp you in my arms and upon my heart, dear love, and wo will sink together so. What will your fine lover say, Rosalind, if he finds our dead bodies thus ?’ Faint with agony as she is, this terrible vision called up by the usher’s words fills her with an intense desire for life at any cost. She resists with all the might of her failing strength the fate Seth Blount has prepared for her. She will fight for her life till the very last, she reso|ves, rather than die in the arms of this man. ‘ Why struggle, Rosalind, my love?' he gasps. ‘You must give in at last. It is only a question of—of moments.’ For answer, her shrill and piteous voice rings wildly out again over earth and sea. Is there none to save her? she cries in her great despair. Nearer and nearer he drags her towards him, until his swart face is within an inc*i of her own. Hia horrible long lean hands are slowly creeping upward to her shoulder. A few seconds more, and with desperate clutch they will have closed under her arras ; and then—and then— There is no hope 1 Had her adversary been a bigger and stronger man, the struggle must have ended long ago. She hears the lapping of the deep languid water as it heaves round the sullen rocks. She knows full well the giddy depth from the cliffs’ edge to the cliffs’ base. She tries to pray, but words will not come; her lips are parched ; there is a sound as of rushing water in her ears, and the sea and sky seem melting into one and turning to blood-red mist. Thoughts of Norman and her father, of her friends and of her pleasant home, dimly to her now. Death is upon her, eternity close at hand. How all will sorrow for her tragic end, she thinks—and Norman moat of all! Can it be that she really deserves so hard a fate—to die so young and so beloved ? Surely this terrible punishment is out of all proportion to the offence ? Horror I Her murderer’s dark face is pressed to her own death-pale one; his frenzied laugh of triumph is close to her ear. Then nearer, and still nearer, to her doom—down—down Merciful Heaven! As in a dream, she hears Norman’s voice calling her by name—‘Rosalind, Rosalind!’ As in a dream, she feels his dear arms wound strongly around her, forcibly dragging her back from the very jaws of death. She hears an awful imprecation, a dull terrific thud ; and then sight and sound are over for Rosalind, and she knows no more. ***** Even years afterwards, when all has been long since explained, long confessed, and long since forgotten, Rosalind cannot recall without a shiver of horror the memory of that terrible August night. In the delirium which followed on her rescue the sad confession of her girlish folly was moaned out over and over again. But Norman, because of his great love for her, having loved her and none other all his life, took her to his heart and forgave her everything. 1 1 would have saved the villain if he would have let me,’ he said to Rosalind, when she was well enough to listen to the story of her deliverance; ‘ but he would not. He flung out his arms, cursing me for foiling him, fell backwards, and was dashed to pieces on the rocks beneath. Thank a merciful Providence, my beloved one, that I heard you and reached you in time I Never in your prayers, Rosalind, forget it,’ said Norman very gravely. ‘Never, never!’ murmured contrite Rosalind through the tears that were blinding her eyes. The shattered body of Seth Blount was laid to rest in the churchyard of St. Dunstable; and good old Doctor Carlyon marked the spot with a plain white stone, and on which was inscribed the three words—“l have suffered. ’ And now the worthy Doctor and Miss Melissa themselves lie low in that quiet resting-ground within sound of the sea, and the roomy old Vicarage and its manifold duties have passed into other hands. Doctor Carlyon however lived to see his daughter a good, a happy, and a supremely contented woman, and to caress his noisy grandchildren in the nurseries at Cliff House. The End.