Her Hidden Husband

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 674, 28 May 1929, Page 5

Her Hidden Husband

Serial Story -

By Arthur Applin

CHAPTER XXlll.—Continued 1 Now the man disappeared in a fold j of the ground. She marked the place \ where he would reappear, not three hundred yards distant. She laughed • when she saw his head come over the crest of the ground: she turned. ' reeled a few steps toward the inn and 1 dropped on to the fallen tree where 1 Markham had sat sharpening his knffe ; that morning. She heard the pebbles ■ disturbed beneath his teet as he ! crossed Ihe bridge. Now he was ] standing behind her. He didn’t ; speak: he was torturing her with , silence. She thought she was going to shriek, but instead she heard her- , self say: . “What have you done? Have you killed him?” There was no reply, but something ‘ fell into her lap. a small black heavy ' object. She stared at it fascinated: it was the automatic pistol she had given Bosworth that morning. She moistened her dry lips. “U's still loaded," Markham said, “but you haven’t the courage to use it.” Against her will she was forced to look at him. The shock she received brought a curious reaction: she was looking at a stranger, she had never really seen her husband before. She was blind when she married him, blind when he returned from Borneo; shock had opened her ej'es. A long time she stared at him as a shipwrecked sailor looks from his sinking craft at the harbour of some sunlit | island he will never reach. : “I hope you killed him.” she said. Markham shook his head: “Nov•and he didn’t even try to carry out your instructions, Violet. He’s safe in a shepherd’s hut on the other side of that hill. He asked for a thrashing and got it ... If you're ready we'll j start.” She shivered but she got up. She had no will of her own now; reason and desire had left her. “Where are you going?” “We're going back to London. We can pick up a fast train from Nice, the nearest point. Your—your husband will follow when he has recovered.” “I have no husband.” Nothing further was said until the Bugatti was feeling its way through the cols, valleys, and gorges of Ihe lavender-scented mountains that led through the Alpes Maritimes to the Mediterranean. “If you are prepared to tell me everything that happened between you and 'Bosworth—the whole truth and nothing but the truth—from the moment you heard of my death and met the Malaya at Plymouth, I will make things as easy as possible for you. Violet,” Markham said. “Bosworth must take his chance.” Adways. though she pretended to despise him a little in the early days of their married life together, always she had feared him. Now he seemed terrible; like the mountain peaks around them, aloof, unapproachable, fearful, because calm and enduring. “Why—why should you spare me anything?” „ “You're a woman. Women ltateut been given a fair chance of learning how to plav the game of life yet . . . perhaps that’s why. But the reason reallv doesn’t matter.” She shrank into her corner, foldiit., her arms across her breast; they pressed the pearls of her necklace into her body. She turned her ejes toward his face trying to read his thoughts, but they were beyond her. He was thinking that when one loses one treads more carefully as one walks across the earth so as not to crush the flower beneath one's feet, or even the worm that lies beneath the flower. . . • Pete rushed into Veras dressing room lust before the curtain went up tor the evening performance and thrust a telegram into her hands: Arriving Victoria, Friday afternoon. Will come straight to you. All well-Yours Vera slowly folded up the slip of paper and gave it hack to her. Yours! | ■ pete*" 'dropped on her knees and buried her face in N era s lap. Oh. i mv dear —my dear . I ' That’s all right!” Vera said cheerI fullv laving one hand on Pete s head while with the other she applied a Tuck Of number five to her face. He is yours, and you U only have to wait a

Author of “The Dangerous Game/* “The Greater Claim, ~ "The Woman Who Doubted >" <£c., cCc.

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little longer before the law gives you a licence to become husband and wife and start the difficult and fascinating business of matrimony.’*

“I was thinking o£ you—o£ you and— Jim,” Pete whispered. “You’ve done nothing else since youi lover went away! Now sit over there in that chair and just be happy and gloat on the good luck that is coming to you. I don’t pretend I don’t envy you, but I’m happy, too. I told you—even an hour after Alfred had walked into my room as Jim —that, 1 knew, at any rate, that lit. wasn’t the man who had left me to go hack to Borneo —he wasn’t the man I loved. That's why, later on, I tested him and then I was certain something was wrong. It was all so mysterious; I couldn't even warn you because you see there was so much he did know about himself and seemed to remember. You see, he was so sure that lie was James King—he might even have convinced his own father.” “You’re wonderful!” Pete said. Vera finished darkening her eyebrows, then shook her head: “I’m quite human—and I’m quite happy now that I understand. How poor Jim must have smiled from the other side! . . . I dreamt about him last night; something more than a dream. He came to me and told me that everything was O.K. and I was to enjoy' the little bit of money he had saved in my own way. It was funny, because in the dream I found my'self in his old house near Taunton. We were standing beneath the porch outside the front door and he picked up a bunch of flowers land as he gave them to me I—woke up. ... As soon as you and Alfred I have got over your meeting, when he I arrives, y'ou’ll trot him along, won't [you? I must shake hands and give him —a sisterly kiss!” But after Pete had gone she took Jim’s photograph from its place by the mirror and held it tightly pressed agaijrst her breast. She had shed her tears when Pete first told her that it. was King who had been killed on the Malaya and how Markham had come to take his place. But there was peace tinged with the gracious joy of gratitude in the knowledge that her lover had not changed. Neither would her love for him change; it would remain buried in her heart alway-s. Perhaps the gods who ruled the destiny of mankind were wise, for Jim, the hunter, the explorer, the worker, would never have settled down and been happy' in the civilised world of men in a great city. She could picture him still a great explorer in the Infinite. . . . announced when he reached Pete’s boarding-house. He ran past the astonished maidservant, upstairs, and knocked at her door. He heard her say come in; he entered quietly and closed the door behind him. She was standing by’ the mirror, combing ! her hair. She didn’t look round, thinking it was the maid. “Well, Mary, what is it?” “Your lover!” he said, and then he laughed boisterously like a schoolboy. It was the first time he had laughed with heart and soul since he had rediscovered himself. Pete ran to his outstretched arms. | and for a little while time and place I ceased to exist. I Late that night, after dinner in his : sitting-room at the Hotel Mirabeau, where he was staying. Markham told I her everything that had happened. He : told her, too, what he intended to do, | but only if she approved. “I’m afraid I handled Boswort! pretty roughly', and anyway his future 1 doesn’t concern me; but Violet was my wife —if I can get her out of this mess without the world knowing the truth l would like to do so. She has ; paid now for her— —” he hesitated seeking for a word—“her folly. I cat realise how she was tempted. Whei 1 ' I establish my identity—and there won’t be much difficulty’ about that—if the story she tells is accepted by the ; ; courts. I shall, when our marriage i: . dissolved, make her a suitable allow ance. For the rest . . . will yoe : marry me, Pete, when the signal A 1