Her Hidden Husband

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 664, 16 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., dc.

Copyright

CHAPTER XIII. She had advised him to tell Vera j the truth. “But o£ course if she really loves you it must make no difference, and you must marry her, Jim. It will make no difference to my feelings for you. Always, always I shall be your friend.’’ He laughed as he remembered her words; poor consolation! When a man loves a woman, and she offers i him friendship, it is like adding fuel jto the flames of his passion, j He felt Vera lean toward him; the taxi was held up by a block in the I | traffic. “What’s amusing ( you, Jim?j ; Tell me the joke.” I “Life,” he said, trying to care- j iessly. “Strange game, isn’t it?" j “I find it thrilling—more than ever !

!now!” “All those people at the restaurantl —eating and drinking, laughing andl loving—do they really know what j I they are after and where they ar« | going?” j “Do you?” ' He started and looked out of the ■ window. The streets blazed with j lights; light shone even from the | house tops; motor-cars and omnibuses 'stretched in two solid lines as far as I i the eye could reach. The pavements: were a moving mass of people; a ■ newsboy shouted football results and. winners; on a news sheet he saw in : large black letters, “Divorce Scandal. ” A church spire gleamed in the light of the full moon. This was the world he had come back to rediscover and to conquer with Pete! “I’m going to join your world,” he said slowly. “Don’t know much about the stage, but I guess it won’t take me long to learn. We might put my savings in the theatre, where you j could run your own show—something I decent.” She put her arm around his shoulders: he tried to respond but he couldn't —his heart and his thoughts were at the restaurant with Pete and Denny . . . They were going on to dance; they would move in one another’s arms beneath lowered lights to the tender music of the waltz. Denny would discover she was free and make love to her. She was made for love . . .

The traffic began to move forward again; as the taxi started it threw Vera closer to him. "Are you sure you still love me, Jim? It’s asking rather a lot to expect you to remain faithful for ten years.” He didn't reply. “That girl, Pete Marchmont, who came over on the Malaya with you—l’m sure if I’d been a man I should have fallen for her. It must be so romantic, too, on board ship. Weren’t you fascinated'?” Here was his chance to tell her, but while he hesitated the taxi drew up outside the stage door of the < • theatre. “Oh, we had a flirtation. 1 but that’s all over now. I told her i all about you this evening.” “Darling,” she said, and put up her face to be kissed. “We must be . ! sure of ourselves, mustn't we. before we take the fatal step. Look at me, ; .Tint —I haven’t really and truly seen you yet.” He bore her gaze calmly, though , j he knew there was no response in his < eyes. He told her he would ring . ! her up in the morning. He wanted : her to go quickly; he wanted to get i back to the club, where he could be ! alone and think —no one knew him j there and no one cared for him; he | could hide. At any moment now he j felt other ghosts from the forgotten past might rise up to meet and claim him. | “Tell me you love me. Jim.” 1 He said it as if repeating a lesson i“I love you, Vera.” She stretched ovt her hand to open the taxi door but stopped. "Why do you call me Vera?” He hesitated, stammered: hadn t be always called her by her Christian smiled as she closed the door. “It doesn’t matter —but 1 was never I Vera to you before —always Vicky, i

even in your letters. Good-night, dear.” He watched her disappear through the stage door, then told the cabman to take him to the Oriental Club. Vera Carvick went through her performance badly that evening in the Ingenue Theatre; forgot her lines; kept the stage waiting. The manager came round and asked her what was wrong, for no matter how she felt she had never allowed her work to suffer before. ‘‘ln love, I expect,” she said lightly. ‘‘That ought to buck you up—unless you’re in love with the wrong man.” “A woman always is, isn’t sheV* Vera retorted. She felt curiously lonely, driving \ back to her flat after the show—reaction probably after the excitement!

of meeting her old lover again. She j laughed as she undressed, remembering that Jim hadn't seemed very loverlike; he hadn’t seemed like Jim. Before getting into bed she sat in front of the mirror and studied her reflection; without paint or powder, the short hair of her neatly shingled head brushed off her forehead; she still looked attractive. She hadn’t changed, didn’t look any older. Success had added to her charm and fascination, given her something she perhaps lacked before. No, it was not she but Jim who was different. Now that she was alone she could consider him calmly and dispassionately, and she felt a little frightened ! at the thoughts that came to her. | She unlocked her bureau and took out i his letters. They were tied together, with blue ribbon . . . absurdly romantic, she thought, with the first touch of bitterness she had ever known. She read the last letter, dated only j two months previously, very short, for he had always been a man of few 1 words: -Darling Vicky.—This is to give you rather startling news. We have about | finished our job out nere and will be j coming home any time. Terrifßc — won't it be—seeing you and England j

again! It’s some time since you wrote, but that doesn’t make any difference, for I know you will be just j the same. There is just a chance Markham may have to leave me behind to look after the estates if the Englishman he’s engaged as manager doesn’t turn up. But I don’t think this is likely—a great chap, Markham, you’ll love him. Shan’t write again. 1 but hope to take you by surprise, so | be prepared to see me walk in one day and hug the life out of you. So glad you’re making a success! Yours till the crack of doom, Jim.— P.S.—Won’t it be wonderful running about London together again?” That Jim was all right. The man who had sat in her dressing-room and

looked at. her with curious far-away eyes wasn’t Jim. He hadn’t hugged her to death; he’d even forgotten to call her Vicky, and after writing that letter he had got engaged to another girl coming over on the boat! ' Yet Vera didn’t feel jealous. She almost wished she did. but one couldn’t feel jealous of a stranger, and as she lay in her bed vainly trying to sleep, that was how Jim now appeared to her. She remembered what Denny told her about the accident. She could imagine the shock of it and his friend’s death affecting his mind and his memory, but it, was inconceivable that it could completely change his personality. ! She waited impatiently for him to

j telephone her next morning, at the same time hoping he wouldn’t, for now, under the cold, calm influence of daylight, she was certain there was some mystery surrounding Jim King, and she wanted to unravel it before she committed herself further. The only two people who could help her were Denny and Pete Marchmont. She was at the point of getting Denny on the telephone when the bell rang and Jim’s voice come to her over the wire: “Is that Vicky?” “Yes —but you'd better stick to Vera—it comes more natural to you, Jim. I thought you were going to forget to ring me up.” There was a moment’s hesitation, j then she heard him say: “I'm terribly i sorry—l’ve been busy all the morning j and now I’ve got to rush down to i Somerset—Barcombe, where my people used to live, you know. It’s bad j luck, but I shall only be away for 1 a few days.” “That's all right,” she said quietly. “I know you must have an awful lot to attend to. Don’t worry about me. Let me know when you return, won’t ;you, dear?” i She replaced the receiver quickly: , she was relieved. She waited a few . j moments, then got Denny on the tele-

phone, and asked for Pete Marclimont’s address- “Did you have a good time last night?” “Rotten,” Denny replied. “It isn’t much fun taking a girl out to dance who is in love with another man.” I “Poor old thing, but you knew what you were up against,” she replied easily. “You are certain, I suppose, that she really loves him.” Denny’s reply was brief and to the point. He asked her if she had discovered anything more about King. “Yes, you were right about his memory. I think he left it in Borueo! ” “What do you mean” “I don’t, believe the man T was dining with last night is James King at all. I believe King was left behind and this man is impersonating him. But we can’t talk over the phone. Come round to lunch and bring Miss Marchmont with you—but don’t say a word to her. King’s run away to Somerset —that looks as if he’d got the wind up!” CHAPTER XIV. Barcombe was a straggling village about ten miles west of Taunton held in an arm of the river Exe with the moorlands not an hour’s ride away. King arrived in the evening and went boldly to The Raleigh Arms, an oldfashioned posting house which still carried on its ancient traditions.

The host welcomed him and showed him to a pleasant room overlooking the valley. He was a round-faced, cheery fellow of about sixty. “I don’t suppose you remember me?” Jim ventured.

“Can’t say as ’ow I do, zir, though the name do seem a bit familiar. About ’ow long would it be since you were in these parts?” Jim was standing in the window, looking over the rolling meadow lands, listening to the distant murmur of the stream, watching the clouds still red with the glow of sunset sitting tightly on the hills. “It must be more than fifteen years. We used to live at Barton House. I really came back to have a look at the old place.” “Oh yes, to be sure, zir—Barton House! Mr. Merivale 'as that now, though I do hear it’s for sale again. Things have changed considerable in these parts. But there —it’s nothing but change nowadays; nothing and no one seems to keep still for a minute. The world’s like a toad on hot bricks.” After lie had dined Jim went into the bar and sat on-an oak settle near the great chimney place, listening to the conversation of the worthies who congregated here every evening to drink, gossip and smoke. He noticed one very old man sitting on the other side of the fireplace almost bent double with age. He had a short, thick beard like the stubble in a corn field, shaggy eyebrows falling over piercing grey eyes. He drank from a pewter pot and smoked a long churchwarden. He had wished King a pleasant evening when he came in, and after a while the landlord introduced him. “Mr. Thomas Amery. He’ll remember your father, zir. He’s about the oldest inhabitant in Barcombe, ain’t you, Tom?” “I am the oldest. Ninety-two come Michaelmas!” Amery growled, eyeing Jim suspiciously. “Born and bred here, and here I hopes to die when my time comes —which won’t be yet awhile, no not for a good many years. What might be your father’s name, zir. and where did he live?” Jim told him. and even as he spoke he felt like a fraud. He had come here secretly to get information. His father’s name and Barcombe meant nothing to him; he had simply found them written in the deed which had made him an articled pupil to the firm ; of solicitors in London. Amery wagged his head as he took a pinch of snuff and stabbed Jim with his eyes. “So you be young Mr. King. Well I never—can’t say I remember you, not with that beard, but I remember I caught ’e throwing stones in one of my orchards one day and I gave ’e a good wallopin’. Yes, and your mother wanted to take me before the magistrate, hut yer father —he was one of the old school, he was —he said it wouldn’t do yer no harm, and I was to give 'e another if I caught ’e again. And it don’t seem 1o have done yer no harm neither, if T may make so bold. Ah, them was good days!” He continued to wag his head while he stared at the stone pavement. Jim looked round at the other occupants | of the bar, but none of them seemed | to be paying much attention to him. It ] gave him a queer sensation hearing these intimate details of his childhood. ; Probably his father had come into I this very room after a day’s fishing,

sat in the very chair where he was j sitting, and drunk brown ale. He was discovering himself at last; yet it didn’t seem in the least real. This queer old farmer who had once i whipped him —though he might not re- | member he ought to have felt some ; instinct about him; and the post-house too, and the railway station when he j alighted. He began to ask Amery questions, though the old man was willing enough to talk, he wouldn t : answer them, but rambled on with his , thoughts. , \ “Sexton Hogg. who buried thy father, was only put away two years back. S’pose you remembered him. zir i —a sour-grained old devil, but there j lie had a rare ’andful in his wife. You | ain’t married yet—no. I can see that, i but I s’pose you'll have to come to it: I we all do. Ye might do worse than ’ ' buj* Barton House back again, zir. j i he lowered his voice—“ye’d get it i cheap, too, if ye knowed how to go j

about it! There’s Mr. Pike standing ! over there; he’s the estate agent hereabouts.” Raising his stick, he waved 1 it in the air: “Hi. Pike, here I’ve found i a gentleman who may take Barton ; House off your hands. Give ye a ! thousand pounds for it, I shouldn’t | wonder.” Mr. Pike, a tall, grey-faced man with ! horn-rimmed glasses and untidy hair, | advanced nervously and was intro- ; duced. “You mustn’t take too much ! notice of old Mr. Amery,” he laughed. ! “He will have his little joke. Of | course, if you are looking for a nice place down here I can mend Barton House. The price we’re j asking for it is three thousand pounds j —and it’s worth it.” Amery snorted derisively. “Why, it | belonged to Mr. King’s father here, 1 and his father before him. Ye ought ! to be givin’ it to him instead of ask--1 ing three thousand pound for it. It i might have been worth that amount

in his day, but I warrant it ain’t now. If old Mr. King heard 3*oll talk he would turn in his grave outside, and j his poor wife alongside of him, too.” Mr. Pike was loquacious and willing to talk, even when he wasn’t sure of his ground. Of course, he had heard jof the Kings. It would be a line thing if he bought back the old family estate. Before leaving, Jim promised to meet j him in the morning and have a look at the place. He was getting on, he thought; he had least established his identit>’ here. Pike didn't mean to lose the chance of doing a deal for his firm; he was waiting for Jim soon after breakfast with a car. and the>* drove Through the pleasant country lanes bathed in summer sunshine to the fringe of the moorlands where Barton House stood on an eminence backed by fir trees overlooking the river. ITO be continued daily)