Taken Unawares

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 873, 27 November 1916, Page 3

Taken Unawares

[All Rights Reserved]

CHAPTER Vl.—(Contnuod.) It was the work of a minute to close j the door on Humphrey, and then to slip j out through a back way round the hous and to the front gate giving on to the road. There hurriedly she looked up and down. The stretch of road was emptyempty, except for in the distance a faint shadow which might or might not have been the figure of a man. She strained her eyes towards it, nigh 'd a little, aud stood for a moment listening. The night was changiug. It was turning chilly, and already a faint spray of rain fell upon her old face, and a risiug mist hid the aire, dy waning moon. The igreat heat still seemed to linger upon the dusty country, but a change was •coming —a change in more ways than •one. Sarah turned and abruptly came to a standstill again, for something moved in the bushes beside her. "Miss Terry," she called, softly. "Miss Terry! Oh, do come my dearie, Mr Hindon's here. Oh, Miss Terry, 'I know you're hiding somewheres. Don't play any tricks now, but come out." There was an instant's utter silence, then suddenly a sharp rustling, aud Terry stood bareheaded in the path, her ilack evening dress Zalli.ig in 'sombre lines about her sligl.r figure. Th,c light shining from the house fell faintly upon her yellow hair, leaving her face in darkness and her eyes in shadow. But. something —perhaps in her attitude or in some subtle sympathy that existed in Sarah's heart for the child she had loved for so many years, roused her now, and for all she could not see her face, she seemed to divine that something was amiss. "Miss Terry, my dear, has something happened!" she cried, running anxiously to her. "Tell me what is it?" A laugh answered her. '' Happened, Sarah, my dear?'' Terry's mocking voice echoed, mimicking the old woman's tone. Happened'? Rather! Didn't you say Mr Hindon was here?" "Yes, but " • "No buts." Terry's voice was a trifle shaky, and the hand she put on Sarah's wa3 trembling, but her wits were clear enough. An emergency had arisen, and she was equal to it. • "Sarah, h| supposes I'm in bed, of course, doesu't he. And if he doesn't he must. All respectable young females in Brrmcas-ter are in bed at 11. I'm not a respectable young female, I hope, but he hones 1 am, and I must be to suit him. See Sarah?" Sarah did not.

'' But, Miss Terry, my dear, he 's waiting for you —'' "Oh, don't I know it," said Terry wearily. "I wish I didn't. Waiting, of courso, and we've got to hurry. So come along —and as quietly as you can. I 'vo got to get undressed and dressed «gain inside of five minutes." She caught Sarah's wrist and ■dragged her away —across the tangled garden, over flower beds run to waste, and lawns going to seed, to the back of the house, and there up the housemaid's stairs to her own room. There she commenced recklessly to strip off her black evening gown, dragging it away from her and even tearing it as she did so. Sarah began to remonstrate, and then stopped sharply at the sight of J her face. '' Miss Terry.'' "Well!" "Miss Terry—are you ill?" "111. No!" Terry laughed, but her face was the colour of dead ash, and the golden glory of her hair above it seemed to mock it. "111? Oh, don't be stupid, Sarah, but hurry up and get my old cotton blouse —the clean one —out of that drawer, and the serge skirt. That's the thing for Humphrey Hindon." Sarah obeyed, and in two minutes Terry stood looking childish and beautiful in a plan Cotton blouse and skirt that might have belonged to some poor fisherman's daughter. On the bed lay the mangled finery she had worn earlier. "But, Miss Terry," questioned Sarah. "There is something the matter. I can see it in your face," and Terry turned. "Oh, well," she said breathlessly, "of course, you'll have to know, and I may as well tell you at once. He didn't propose to me after all—Ferdinand Ingram, I mean; and he's going to London to-morrow —early!" "Miss Terry! " "Oh, don't' Miss Terry me. Sarah, you're an old silly. Ami Mimmie was right. She said he was playing with me —and he was. He hasn't-—hasn't proposed —after all.'' "Miss Terry—darliu'—my poor pet

Terry turned on her flashing. "Do you think I care?" she cried. "Bah, Sarah, do you think I care!" She laughed sharply. Her face, white nud quceriy drawn in the light of the candles she had set on the dressingtable, was yet defiant, and impish, and mocking—and beautiful still." "Let. him go," she cried. "I'll be even with him. I haven't been able to think yet—but there's time —oh, yes, I shall think of some way of hurting him. Bat not now. Sarah, say how I lookAnd remember, I've just got up —out of bed and dressed on purpose to see Mr Hindon —you understand? I went to bed at half-past nine o'clock tonight. Now don't be stupid, Sarah, and don't look as though you were going to give me away. You've got to bear me out. I went to bed at 9.30. Am I all right?" All right? She tumbler! her hair about her face, and rubbed her white cheeks to bring colour to them, and then ran with thumping, noisy steps, as though she was in a great hurry to see her guardian, down the thinly carpeted stairs. Humphrey, pacing the room in which Sarah had left him, heard the sound with a thrill at his heart, and when Terry burst in the blood rushed to his throat. "Terry!" he stammered. She was looking up into his grave eyes with the innocence of childhood in her own. "Oh, you are good to come and see us so late at night," she cried. "I'm so glad Sarah came and woke me, and so sorry I went to bed so early. I gave you up at half-past !).'' He was holding her hand, looking

By ANNIE O. TIBBITS jgggjjggj Author of mzm " The Threadf of Destiny," " Life's Revenge," etc.

down into her now animated face with a queer rapture in his own. "I felt I had to come and try and see you,'' he said. "1 hope you didn't think me a long time?" she'asked demurely, lifting her long lashed eyes to his face, "but I'm such a heavy sleeper, and Sarah couldn't wake me, and then I had to dress." He bent over the hand he still held. "Ah, Terry —just to see me?" he asked in an unsteady voice. "Just to see you," she answered. CHAPTER VII. Terry slept badly that night. It was past, midnight before Humphrey left to] walk the two miles back to the Plough, although Terry, impatient to be rid of him, repeatedly reminded him that the inn would lie shut up if he did not go; they might, in fact, not admit him at all.' "Then I should come back and sleep on the sofa," he said; "and I'm not sure that I shouldn't like even the bare floor here better than the Plough." He looked into her eyes, and Terry 'a heart stood still with fear lest he should really mean to stay with them. "f—I —we's got so little to offer you," she faltered, "the house is so poor.'' "Yes —ves," said Humphrey hastily, '•Call right, child. I'll stick to the E'lough. And I suppose I really must go now. But 1 'll be over early in the morning, and then you and I will go over the house and see about the repairs and alterations. I'm going to let you do just as you like —just everything you like." 1 Terry showed no enthusiasm over this remark. She would have liked to be rid of the whole place. She hated it. If she could only get away, she told herself, she would never come near it again. But the puzzle was how to do it!

She waited with restless impatience J for. him to go, and, though 4ier face was flushed and her eyes glittering, tber,e was in her heart the feeling of failure and impatience that drove the last thought of sleep from her mind. . She shook her two fists at Humphey's retreating figure, and then went slowly upstairs, her candle throwing dancing, mocking shapes about her as she went, casting a huge grotesque figure of herself upon the bare wall, a figure that leapoil up high above her head and then ducked and fell in a sort of contemptuous curtsy as she entered her room. She locked the door and put down her candle on a small table. Sarah had folded and put away her dress arid closed the untidy chest of drawers, and the room was neat and trim and comfortable. But Terry looked about it with distaste, and disgust, and fury. Her face changed suddenly. It took on the impish rage and daring and defiance that was just suggested in the photograph which Humphrey always carried now in his breast-pockec, which he was too blind to see; and at this moment. Terry Tredwick was a passion racked, undisciplined savage.

She tore off her clothes as if they had been plague-stricken rags and flung them about, the room. She stamped her feet, and bit her lips, and clenched her' hands, shook them at something invisible which seemed to enrage her, and then finally she snatched up hor nightdress and flung herself into bed. Sarah's knock a moment later brought no response. Terry, huddled deep under (he clothes, would not hear, and tha old woman crept away sighing wearily for the dead Anthony Tredwick 's child whom even her great love could not guard against evil. Terry's eyes, alight and blazing, stared out over the bedclothes into the ! shadows that lurked about the room. She had not troubled to blow out the candle, and it flickered and wavered, now drawing up into a long, thin flame and now sinking and fluttering, and all the time throwing upon the low ceiling a round circle of shadow into which Terry's eyes stared. "What am I to do? What am I to do?" The question went round and round in her brain. Thoughts tormenting and humiliating danced with the shadows from the candle on the ceiling, and injured vanity and disappointment turned like knives in a wound in her heart. She forgot Humphrey Hindon altogether. He did not count. Ho was only, at present, a "stick in the mud," a cut-and-dried lawyer who would want to regulate her days and tie her down to i ome cold-blooded, stupid scheme of life from which there seemed now no escape. And three, two hours ago even, shy had thought to get away from it all. The humiliation cut deep. She had been so sure of Ferdinand Ingram, so confident, that lie would propose, and, though she had by this gathered that ho had little money, she had hung upon him as her hope of salvation.

And he had failed her He had not asked her to be his wife. He had calmly told her he was leaving for London in the early morning—and had gone Gone She tossed and turned over and over again in her narrow bed. It seemed as if Fate was bent on beating her back, driving her down, keeping her for e - <er within the narrow circle of Brancaster, promising her nothing. And all night she lay tossing, and turning, and defying Fate and Ferdinand Ingram. "I'll find some way out," she said to herself. "I can't be hide-bound by that old stick of a man, and I'll go on the stage if I can. I'll see Mrs Stevenish beforo she leaves in the morning. I don't care what he thinks or says. I'll do as I like." Sho turned over and tried to sleep, but though she scarcely closed her eyes she was up with the lark in the morning, and had her breakfast and was waiting in Mrs Stevenish's room an hour beforo the 10.40 train left for London. "Mrs Stevenish isn't up. I've only just taken her her cup of tea," said the maid. Not up! "But sho'll never catch the 10.40," said Terry. "Sho doesn't want to," replied the girl. "She's made up her mind not to go. Only"—she looked round hurriedly and lowered her voice—-"only no one's to know it. They're all going but her—they'll all leave by the 10.40. And you'd better come back if you want to see her urgent; the house'll be empty in an hour.'' (To be continued.)