A Short Story.

Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, 11 September 1912, Page 6

A Short Story.

BY KATHARINE TYNAN. Author of "The Way of a Maid," "Oh! What a Plague is Love," "A Lover's Breast Knot,'" "The Honourable Molly," &c.

(All Rights Reserved.)

THE SPINEL RUBY

Johnny Maxwell was a plain-looking, rather heavily-built young man, but drill had done its best with his carriage, and his clothes were always cut to perfection. His honest eyes redeemed his face from being ugly, and his simple and sincere soul made itself felt so that people liked him at first

sight

His friendship with the AllandaleWarrs of Queen's Gate was a thing of old standing. Mr. Warr was a good fallow, content to stew in the City making money for his fashionable wife and daughters. He had transmitted his good qualities to his son Algernon, who belonged to the same smart regiment as Johnny Maxwell, and had been the means of introducing Johnny to tho family circle.

Lady Muviel Allandfcle-Warr was an exceptionable person as regarded birth, but not at all unexceptionable as regarded manners. She had been a selfish, gay, and careless girl, devoted only to pleasure-seeking, and not particular as to the means by which she attained it. She had been a beautiful girl as she was a beautiful woman, and she had been engaged half-a--dozen times in the course of her first couple of seasons. But somehow the engagements got broken off one after the other, and particular people began to look rather askanoe at Lady Muriel AUandale. She was to be met with at the rowdiest houses, engaged in the most rowdy diversions. Apparently she never rested; but her cheek kept the brilliance of a child's, and there was hot a line of weariness about her blue eyes and vivid lips however late she stayed up at night, whatever excitement she had over her bettingbook and high stakes at the cardtable, despite the cigarettes she smoked and the brandies and sodas she drank.

She was twenty-seven, and even the less particular folk began to fight shy of her, and a very big matrimonial fish had just slipped through the meshes of her net, when she camel upon John Warr and fascinated him. He was comfortably, if not fabulously, rich. He came at a moment when she was in low water in every sense of the word. His homage gratified her, and perhaps his honesty touched even liar. Anyhow, she married him, she did more than tolerate him, for life was something of an Elysium to him still as the husband of that beautiful creature even when his marriage was more than twenty years old.

Her twin daughters, Grace and

Sybil, were as like her as possible, both in looks and disposition. She didn't like her daughters much. They were exactly as she had been at their age, and she was conscious that beside theirs her colour had begun to run and coarsen, her hair to look unnatural in colour. No eyebright or rouge for her lips could make up for the brightness and bloom of youth. They made her feel elderly, and Lady Muriel had no resources left for elderlinesa or old age.

Oddly enough she was devoted to her son, who was as obviously of the respectable middle class as his father before him. No one is unmixedly worthless. Lady Muriel's feeling for her husband and son was shared by her two daughters. All three were fond of the two male representatives of the family, while the attitude of the mother towards the daughters was that of the cat to the kittens who have outgrown her maternal solicitude —not that Lady Muriel had ever had any towards her daughters—and they retaliated with the malicious enjoyment of the kittens who tweak their mother's tail and ears.

Lady Muriel desired nothing so ardently as that her daughters should be married and taken off her hands. The daughters were quite of the same mind, but, as the twig's bent the tree's inclined, and certain indications about the young ladies already made prudent mothers of eligible sons shy of receiving them, made the eligible sons themselves slip away at the last moment free of the noose.

It said much for the decency of their world that n sitter John Warr—he had only acquiesed in his family's doublebarrelled name, and would sign himsolf "John Warr" till he died—nor Algernon knew nothing of the shady regard in which Lady Muriel was held, nor that her unfortunate reputation seemed likely to be shared by the young ladies..

Poor Algernon was, indeed, at the present moment so absorbed in a love affair with the young girl who was companion to 3iis mother's pious old aunts, that a good many suggestive things might have happened without attracting his notice.

His mothers and sisters had beamec

on him when he had brought hxrae Johnny Maxwell. Now, Johnny was a big fish if you like, and could do nothing wrong in the eyes of the old father who adored him, and who hadn't an "h" in his vocabulary.

He had sent Johnny to a public school and into a crack regiment. He made him a big allowance which had a way of accumulating at Johnny's bankers. Johnny was the most generous of creatures, and none of his friends had ever found the end of his purse. Still he, personally, like Ms old father, had simple ascetic tastes.

"Cute fellow, Johnny," said his fel-low-officers, noting his abstinence from the things and persons upon which they spent their money, and occasionally Johnny's. But it waa not cuteness. "Not good enough," Johnny would say cheerfully when he was invited to make a big bet, or present some lady of the ballet with a diamond tiara. It was not really good enough for Johnny; and his generosity was b&yond question, although the golden youth were apt to explain him by "cute fellow, Johnny."

Lady Muriel knew by repute of the Towers, Mr. Maxwell's palatial hous3 in Susses. Algernon had been among the guests there, and had nothing good enough to say of "the old buffer," who was 'unfailingly decent to Johnny's friends—even if he hadn't an "h" in his vocabulary. Little Lord Leo Alsager, one of the golden youth, who still possessed the consummate impudence which had distinguished him as an Eton boy, had declared that he'd fight any man who objected to the pronunciation of Maxwell's pater, adding that only he feared he'd be misunderstood he'd drop his own "h's," to keep such a good follow company.

Prom the first Johnny was persona grata in the Allandale-Warr household. Lady Muriel could be fascinating when she liked, and she lent herself to the subjugation of Johnny with an eye to being his mother-in-law. If one of the girls was taken off her hands the other would doubtless soon follow. They were so selfishly, so wickedly extravagant. The number of garments they demanded and insisted on having appalled Lady Muriel. Worse, even at their tender age they had begun to keep their bsttingbooks, to play at high games—in fact, to emulate their mother in frittering away money. As first she was very careful with Johnny. Those honest-eyed, simpls people have a way of seeing, just as the short-sighted will sometimes discover a deficiency passed over by the person of normal sight. But as time passed and Johnny became more I'ami de la maison she was less careful. One© when she was hard pressed for a debt of honour and did not dare to take it to her husband, she wept the mattsr into Johnny's ears. Johnny's ready purse-strings were opened, and having dipped once she came again and again. Sometimes, in the solitude of his own thoughts, Johnny shook hia head solemnly over these transactions. He was far too shrewd to believe that John Warr was not generous with his wife. But he made allowances—it was wonderful ' what allowances Johnny, could make. For a man who had always run straight, who had even been discovered on his knees saying his prayers, there was never anyone so tolerant as Johnny, according to his! brother-officers. j "You know he wouldn't like it," ho

said once to Lady Muriel, flushing hotly and averting her eyes. And again: "If you will back the gees, you'd better try to back a winner"; but by this time Lady Muriel was hardened, and with Johnny's gold in her packet, smote Johnny on her cheek with her fan, telling him to be a good little boy and mind his own business,

Incredible as it may seem, it was thes* transactions which first put into Johnny's mind the thought that h« might marry on© of Lady Muriel's daughters. Perhaps Johnny had the gift of bringing out in others the greatest amount of good they ware capable of. He thought he taw plenty of capacity for good in Grace and Sybil. Their feeling for their father and Algy—could anything be more delightful now? And old Wan- and Algy were as straight as they make them. Even Lady Muriel's case was of spoilt goodness to Johnny's mind. By-and-bye he would marry one of these pretty, saucy witches, and would burn the little betting-book, forbid brandies and sodas, and limit the cigarettes. He had no very definite idea which it shcmld be. He was no more attracted by Sybil than by Grace. The two were charming, shameless, greedy children, who gobbled up gloves and bouquets, and more costly things as they did chocolates, and were like the. daughters of the horse-leech in their exactions.

Neither of the young persons was the least bit in the world in love with Johnny. In fact, each had oddly enough set whatever affections she possessed on the most hopeless of detrimentals. But Johnny, knowing nothing o f this, had a vague, benevolent intention of rescuing one or other of the young ladies from following the footsteps of her mother. The intention made it easier to give Lady Muriel all she asked. After all, he was almost one of the family. About this time Johnny began to be positively pinched for money, and astounded some of his brother officers by placing a limit to his loans.

Into this halcyon state of things there came Miss Hildred Maynard, Tindesired, unwelcome.

Johnny discovered Lady Muriel in a disturbed frame of mind one afternoon when he called at Queens' Gate. She was very much at home with Johnny by this time, and she flung him a black-bordered letter which had lain on the mantelshelf by which sho was standing tapping an impatient foot.

"Am I to read?" asked Johnny. "I gave it to you for that purpose."

Johnny read over the letter

"My dear John, —Now that my time in the world is growing short, for my doctor tells me my heart may give oub at any moment, I write to ask you if will take into your house and under

your wife's motherly care my little Hildred when 1 am gone. She has never been separated from me, and she will feel our parting terribly. I look to you and yours to lighten her suffering as far as may be. She will not be a burden to you, as she inherits three hundred pounds a year, which ought to be more than abundant jjpr her needs. I have tried to keep her. unspotted- from the world. Sho is gentle and loving and truly religious. For old times' sake I ask you to accept this charge.—Your affectionate cousin, Clarissa Maynard."

"She was found dead at tho desk with the letter sealed and addressed under her hand," said Lady Muriel, gloomily.

"Poor little thing!" said Johnny. "When is she coming to you?"

"She has come; she is here. You know what Grace and Sybil are, how little likely they are to take her off my hands'!'

The whole family was frank with Johnny by this time. If he contemplated marrying one of the yotinjj; ladies it was not that he was. ignorant of their mother's opinion regarding them. "Am I a person," asked Lady Muriel, with an air of desperation, "to take charge of a child who has been brought up in that way?" For an instant the natural man in Johnny grinned. Then he rebuked himself sternly. "I am sure you will do your best," he said. "Don't trouble to be polito and hypocritical, Johnny," said Lady Muriel. "Of course I have to keep her. I dare not say no to John- Ho welcomed her with effusion. He had passages with tins cousin of his before he met me. The child lias eyes as big saucers. She is plain-looking and distressingly badly dressed. The doctor's wife, it seems, bought her her black things in the. country town, and the doctor deposited her on our doorstep. She looks as if she'd stepped out of an orphan asylum." "You will soon change all that," said Johnny, "with your taste in dress." "•I don't propose to make another daughter of Miss Maynard," said Lady Muriel, freezingly. "Those two selfisfi girls would insist on coming out together. They will have the very latest modes. They're so extravagant that they'll make a dowdy of their mother." Johnny glanced carelessly at the hand-painted, peach-coloured crepe-de-chine which Lady Muriel was wearing, and smiled imperceptibly "Of course, she'll b e in mourning; but even if she wasn't, a girl with three hundred ayear can't expect to go where we go. I must make John understand that." (Completion next week.)