Her Hidden Husband

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 662, 14 May 1929, Page 5

Her Hidden Husband

Serial Story

By

Arthur Applin

Author of The Dangerous Game." The Greater Claim” “The Woman Who Doubted” <£c., &c.

Copyright

He sat dow'n in an arm chair near the dressing table and stared curiusly at the grease paints, bright boxes of powder, cold cream, bottles of perfume. A sheaf of telegrams was pinned on the wall above the mirror and there were many photographs—all apparently of actors and actresses. A large bowl of roses stood on the corner of the table. The room made him feel awkward and ill at ease; it possessed_an atmosphere of femininity to which he was not accustomed, so strong as to be almost aggressive. On a chair near the wall he saw a frock—an absurd thing he could have crushed in one hand—silk stockings, evidently placed there by the dresser for Vera to wear when she left the theatre. These things of the room gave him an idea of her personality. It would be warm and vivid and theatrical. .. . He wished she would come; waiting got on his nerves and made him terribly conscious of the difficulties and perhaps dangers which confronted him. Presently he heard the sound of applause, the rise and fall of curtains from the stage, then voices and laughter in the corridors. Suddenly the door burst open and Vera came into the room. She came like a gust of hot wind; stood holding the door open a moment; said something to her dresser, who was waiting outside, then closed it and looked at King. He got up slowly; he was surprised. She was still young; she made him think of a hothouse flower —pretty rather than beautiful, at the same time flamboyant. He noticed the sensitive nostrils, the large, generous mouth. She was not tall, but had an attractive figure, which the very modern evening dress she wore emphasised. “Jim,” she said, “don’t look at me like that —as if you’d never seen me before. This is just too wonderful:

CHAPTER X

like I dreamed when we were first engaged and you went away! She laughed: “You look wonderful . . . 1 shouldn't have known you!” She came closer to him and with an impulsive gesture held out both her hands; “Say something, Jim —you’re ; making me feel all queer and frightened.” . , He took her hands, and, not knowing what to do, he kissed them. “That’s better!” She was close to hint now. staring at him out of her large, expressive eyes, in ■wnich ne saw many emotions mingled. *./ s ’i really you? ... I shan’t believe it till you take me in your arms again and '''obeying an impulse stronger than hiinseif he took her in his arms. He bent to kiss her forehead she gave him her lips. “Oh your beard! she laughed, it does tickle! How brown and strong VOU are. . . . Now sit down and tell me everything. You have really come ! back for keeps —and you haven t for- ! gotten me? ... I ought to have asked i vou that before, though, oughtn t I. \-ain she laughed; he realised she was as shy and nervous as he, only The was showing it in a different way - “Yet I’ve come back for good. Kin" said. ”1 don’t quite know where ji p yet. I bad rather a bad time,

as you know, just before the ship sailed and since then everything’s happened so quickly and London seems so strange. I haven’t had time yet to find my breath and get my balance.” She had thrown a wrap over her shoulders and was slipping out of her frock. She stopped as he spoke, and turning, stared at him. “Shall I go outside while you

change?” he said, half rising from his i chair. She shook her head; “No, that's all j right. I’m just going to get all this paint off my face. We can't talk while the dresser is messing about, i . . You’ve changed, Jim—-your voice ; is different, somehow.” “Ten years does change a man, and ; a climate like Borneo.” She nodded, stepped out of her

I Crock, threw it across one ol the chairs, and sitting down in front of the dressing-table began to take off | her make-up. “Do you , think I’ve [ changed, Jim?” She spoke breathi lessly now in a husky voice. “Older, ! t suppose, quite grown up? It’s only | nine months ago I made a hit and j became a star. It does make a difference —but I’m not really different | inside, I feel just the same. . . . j how do you feel?” She paused a moment in rubbing some cold cream on to her face and turned to look at him. He pulled his chair closer trying to get rid of the embarrassment he felt. He wasn’t used to women; he only knew one—Pete, and she was as far removed from Vera as the stars from the earth —clothed in mysterywhile Vera seemed to have torn aside the veil of mystery behind which he believed all women were hidden. “1 haven’t had time to feel yet,” he replied clumsily. “But it’s coming home and you know you’re the first friend I’ve met since T landed.”

“I’m glad of that. You hadn’t many friends —though, had you, Jim? We were both rather lonely sort of people. . . . That’t what drew us together, I believe. Seems rather funny now to think how desperately we were in love with one another. I’ve had lots of affairs since then —one can’t help it on the stage—but nothing real.” She had come into the room full of expectation. He wondered if she was acting. He felt ashamed of the thought, for it was he who was the actor. He knew he would have to go on acting perhaps all his life. He wanted to blurt out the truth. He believed he cthild trust this girl; like Pete she was real, but in a different way. He wanted to tell her that the past was a sealed book to him; that he didn’t remember in the least; that j

THE SOCIAL GRACES

“A great number of my pupils,’* tlie instructor at a school of dancing informed me, “are school boys and girls, whose parents wish them to become as proficient at dancing as they are at lessons It is no use sending a child out into the world with gopd mental equipment if he is not also equipped to take his place in ordinary society. And society demands that its members shall possess certain accomplishments, of which dancing is undoubtedly one.” The same notion is exploited at the schools, which nowadays have bridge classes in place of “mental arithmetic.’* The card-game is just as fine a mental training as is arithmetic, and it serves tlie excellent social purpose of doing alway with the need painfully to learn the rudiments of bridge in later life. It is found that many a child who will not trouble to exercise his mind and memory in ordinary mathematics will take quite naturally to bridge instruction. And it is quite possible that his powers of deduction and logic benefit greatly by the lessons. * Lessons in swimming tennis and squash-rackets, are likewise insisted on, with a view to turning out pupils who are fully equipped to join in the social amenities of later life. It is common knowledge nowadays that many a business deal is done on the golf course, many a valuable appointment secured through an acquaintance met on the tennis courts. Why not. therefore, fit the children to take full advantage of such opportunities by means of what are to-day regarded as requisite social graces?

AN ORIGINAL GIFT Islands are attractive, romantic things which few .people possess. Mrs. Eben Pike, of Loiffion, has just been presented with an island in the Abaco group of the Bahamas. Mrs. Pike paid a visit to the Bahamas recently, as a rest from doing portraits -in New York and Palm Beach. She had so many sitters to cope with that she doubled and trebled her prices, but commissions still poured in. There is a little island in the Bahamas, a few miles out to sea from Nassau, called Sandy Cay. The father of Miss Mary Moseley, the editor of the “Nassau Guardian,” bought this island in 1870 for the sum of fifteen shillings. He planted it with cocoanut trees, but otherwise did nothing with his island. A year or two ago Miss Moseley refused an offer of £I,OOO for it. Sandy Cay is uninhabited still, except for millions of htrmit-crabs, but the full-grown cocoanut trees have made it a thing of beauty, and it is the favourite of all picnic haunts out there, the bathing from the beach being perfection. There is another island not far from Nassau called Salt Cay. Here the well-known Chicago cartoonist, Mr. George Barr McCutcheon, has built himself a most attractive house. He has his own private lagoon and bathing beach, and is absolute king over the island. she seemed more strange and more remote even than Violet Markham. But fear stopped him, though he hardly knew what it was he feared. Once anyone knew and told the world he would be at the mercy of the world. Yet if- he didn’t tell her, how could he explain to Pete that, believing he was free, he had fallen in love on the

voyage when really he was engaged to he married. The situation was impossible. It made him speechless. If ten years ago he had promised to marry this girl; if she had waited for him and still loved him then he was bound in honour to make her his wife. She asked him to tell her about the accident on the Malaya at Singapore. “You were badly injured, too, wern’t you, Jim? ... I suppose you’re quite all right now?” She gave him a quick glance. . While he 'told her he watched her comb her hair, powder her face and smooth her lips with a lipstick, afterwards washing her hands and covering them with some liquid from a bottle. She did these things naturally and unconsciously, but they made him vividly conscious of the relationship which existed between them. She was" about to throw off her wiap when she stopped and drew it close; “Are we dining together, dear? Perhaps you're engaged —or you’d rather not?” He stood up. “Of course . . . I’d just like to telephone to a friend whom I met on the Malaya." “Sure?” She held out her hand. “You seem different somehow, Jim. Let me look at you. If you’ve changed you won’t be afraid to tell me, will you? The last letter you wrote was so wonderful and then when I heard you were really here —oh, I got all thrilled.” “I haven’t changed,” he said, steadily. “I’m just the. same but you must give me time. I’ve lived too long in the East, never seeing a white man, much less a white woman. I don’t know where I am. I feel like a boy fresh from school!”’ She nodddd sympathetically and pointed to one of the photographs above the dressing table: “Look—-you weren’t much more when we first met, were you? I’ve always kept that picture of you. Do you recognise yourself ?”

He shook his hiad; he wasn’t even sure which photograph she indicated. “While you are ’phoning your friend—you can ring up from the stage doorkeeper’s office—l’ll get into my dress. I’ve a new frock which only arrived last night; I’ll wear it in your honour, Jim. Let’s go somewhere where we can talk. I shall have to be back at eight o'clock.” King went out and rang up Pete. The relief he felt in being alone for a moment made him realise the strain he had just undergone. Pete’s voice over the wire shook him. Already he was beginning to live two lives; against his will he was deceiving two women. But he could tell Pete—he would have to tell her. And at that thought he felt the world crumbling beneath his feet. “I’ll explain to-morrow. I’ll call for you about eleven o’clock—l must see you, darling.” She answered him cheerfully; said she quite understood, then told him that Mr. Denny had asked her to dance with him that evening—would he mind now if she accepted? King didn’t reply at once. Why should he mind? He had no right to

object; but lie did intensely. Fate seemed to be driving remorselessly a wedge into his life, dividing it. The only person in the world that mattered to him was Pete; the only thing he cared for, her love. If he lost her he lost everything. He would indeed then be utterly undone; the future as black as the past. “Rather not!” he said. “See you to-morrow at eleven then!” He replaced the receiver on the telephone quickly and going out walked up and down the pavement waiting for Vera. Instead of sending for her dresser when he had left the room she took his photograph from the wall and looked at it closely. Across it was written in writing already faded. “Always your Jim.” She was trying to trace a resemblance between the original of the photograph and the man who had just left her. . . . Ten years wasn’t such a very long time—and men didn't change as quickly as women. She remembered that Jim had a slightly crooked nose, got in a fight at school —she had always loved his crooked nose. His eyes had been large and queer, like a dog’s, steady | and faithful. She put the photograph back and ■ glanced at the empty arm chair. He had looked at her so strangely, almost as if he didn't remember her. She shivered, and, calling to her dresser, put on her new frock, a pair of new silk stockings and shoes to ; match. As they drove to the restaurant — she had chosen the Ivy—Jim suddenly put his arm round Vera and held her close to him. She gave a glad cry, half astonishment, half pleasure. It j was the first sign of emotion he had

shown. She rested her head against his shoulder looking up at him. Though he had changed almost beyond recognition yet he was still thrilling. “I want you to tell me something,” he said. “I’ve knocked about a bit since last we met and I know I am different. And you—you’re a great actress, rich and famous. I haven’t made a fortune or anything like it — the other man did that.” “Bad luck, dear —but you never iared much for money, did you? It was really adventure you were after.” “I want to know,” he continued quickly, “whether you—you still feel , just the same about me?" She didn’t reply. He misinter- j preted her silence and it urged him to ■ make sure. He had to know before i he met Pete again. “Tell me, do you still love me as you used to? . . . Do you still want to marry?” “That’s a queer question, Jim. I might say, do you still want to marry me ?” King took Vera's hand and held it tightly in his. Here was the opportunity to tell her that he loved someone else—if only he could tell her the whole truth it would make things easier for both of them, and she would at least understand. But he hesitated for he was sure by the tone of her voice, by the way she looked at him, by her quick response that she still cared and wanted his love. She had waited for him all these years! He tried to speak but words refused !to come, and then the taxi stopped outside the restaurant. ; “Darling, I’m so happy!” she whis--1 pered.

A commissionaire opened the taxi door and they got out. King paid the driver and followed her into the restaurant. She had misinterpreted him; believed that when he had taken her hand and held it tightly that he answered her question in the affirmative; that he still loved and wanted to marry her. . . . He was caught in a trap set by fate. They sat at a table in a quiet corner of the room; the lights were shaded, the surroundings almost romantic —just the sort of place he would have chosen to bring Pete. He ordered dinner with the help of the maitre d’hotel, for the long menu was like reading Greek to him. “i feel an awful barbarian, but it won’t take me long to get civilised,” he sa d apologetically. “I suppose I shall have to get this beard shaved off and go to a fashionable tailor or people will be wondering where you have picked me up.” Though she shook her head she looked at him across the table as if she were puzzled. “I think 1 like ; you best as you are. I wouldn’t have I you different. AH the tailor-made, effeminate men one meets nowadays I bore me. . . . But tell me about your life in Borneo —you found what you ' wanted —adventure?”

He nodded: “Yes, I suppose I got that all right,” and smiled grimly. He was finding it now, but in a way he didn’t want. "As I told you. adventure didn't bring me much money. I’m a comparatively poor man. I shall have to try mv luck over this side.” XTo be continued daily j