CHAPTER II.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LV, Issue 13991, 24 August 1909, Page 1

CHAPTER 11.

[COPYRIGHT.]

A TROUBLOUS NIGHT.

Will Carwardine, the newly-elected member for Oirandport, after listening to the "nothing much" which Owt-n Lipbconibc had said to him, took a hast.s farewell of his friends, excusing hiniM'lf from accompanying them to the headquarters whence his campaign had been conducted. no and celebrate the triumph, mates," lie said. "There's nothing more to do to-night but shout, and 1 must get home. My little one is sick, you know, and the wife's been alone with her all day. I'm a bit anxious." They recognised his claim, and with words of encouragement and sympathy lot him go without protest. Running down the steps of the town/ hall, he dodged the mayor's carriage, and strode off across the square into a network of mean streets that would take him to his house. This was situated not far •from tho water-side, within a stone's throw of tho entrance gates of the Lipscombe yards. On giving up his work there to become the paid secretary of the Amalgamated Riveters, he had had neither the money nor the inclination to change his abode. He was a man of high aims and something of an idealist, this sturdy young fellow who had ousted the wealthy shipbuilder from the representation of his native town. The love of swaying vast multitudes to his own way of thinking — the love of power, to be quit© candid — possessed him in every fibre of his being to the exclusion of other interests with more intimate, if less lofty, claims. Not by any means that he was without his human side. He was not heartless so much as absorbed in what he intended to be his life's work. It had only needed Owen Lipscombe's rebuke, more implied than spoken, to send him hot-foot homewards from the scene of his triumph. "Mr. Owen's a good sort, and he was right to raise his* eyebrows when I couldn't tell him how Jenny was." he murmured as he raced through the slums of Grandport. '"Tisn't that I didn't care, God knows. But I ought to have sent messengers, seeing that I couldn't ga myself." At; last he turtyjfc into a broader road, and so' a little farther on came to a row of tiny terrace houses facing the estuary of the river. There was a street Lamp opposite the centre of the row, and it showed him the figure of a woman at the door of one of the houses, straining her eyes up the road towards him. As he arrived within her vision she ran out to meet him and threw herself on his breast in an agony of weeping. "Oh, Will, Will!" she moaned "my. baby, my little Jenny, is dead! Even at that moment, staggering under the shock of his loss, Carwardine winced. Her use of the word "my" seemed like a reproach, all the more severe because so obviously unconscious. He put his strong arms round her and drew her into the house, trying to soothe and ask questions in the same breath. Then, when he got her into the cramped little sitting room, he gave up the hopeless task, and for a time the bereaved couple sat on the cheap horse-hair sofa together, mingling their tears.

-After a while they grew calmer,, and. bit "by bit Carwardine learned frojjt his wife the details of the domestic tragedy that had crowned his public triumph. The little two-year-old girl > had been seized with convulsions at four o'clock in the afternoon, and, though the doctor , had been sent for ana had done what he could, the end had come three hours later.

"She looks 6O. sweet, Will," sobbed the distraught mother. "Wouldn't you like to go up and see her?" Treading softly up the narrow staircase, they entered the chamber of death, and stood one on each side of the waxen figure on the bed. Carwardine stopped and kissed the dead child's brow, and as he rose two tears coursed down his cheeks. The sight of them seemed to act on his wife like some evil spell. She broke into peal after peal of horrid laughter. "It's so funny — so funny!" she shrieked. "The doctor wrestled for my darling's life like a hero. No one could have done more. And yet, the moment the breath was out of that /dear body he looked across at me and says : 'It's all over, and it's God's will, Mrs. Carwardine. I haven't recorded my vote for your husband yet and I shall have to hurry up.' This cursed election ! It's put first by everyone — in front of everything. If you'd been back at Lipscombe's, working for a Wage, I don't believe this would have happened — not like this, anyhow. I could have sent for you then, and you'd have been with me in my grief. "Come away, dear," pleaded the man. "No one is sorrier than me for the way this lias fallen out. Sick and sorry as you about the thing itself, I am, and in that you'll believe me. But there's the future to face. Let's go downstairs." '

Tho hysterical outbreak seemed to have relieved Bessie Carwardine for the moment, and she quietly followed her husband down into the sitting room. The window was open, for it was a hot night in May. Through it could be scon the lights of vessels anchored in the tidal river, and, as they entered the room, tho clock at Lipscombe's shipbuilding yard bayed out the hour or half after midnight. There was no air stirring outside, and from afar off— from the more populous quarter of the town where the excitement of the election had not died down — came the hum of distant voices. Round about this comparatively lonely waterside terrace ail was quiet, except that the sound of someone runninuH-of someone who must mst have passed the house — Was growing rapidly fainter as the footsteps receded. A cloth cap was lying on tho table, and Carwardine vaguely wondered how it came there ; for it was not his, and ho was nearly sure that it had not been there when he and his wife went upstairs. It was no time, however, to speculate about such an apparently unimportant trifle, and in an absentminded way he took up the cap and tossed it into a corner. The action was not entirely obicctles, for he wanted a clear space on the spindly little table on which to spread his elbows with his head in Ins hands — a characteristic attitude of his when thinking deeply.

i Jessie was far too absorbed in her iof to have observed tho incident of the cap, which in the turmoil of succeeding days laj whore her husband bad thrown it,' all unheeded.

She hank into a low cane chair by tlit* empty grate, and btarod wijh unseeing c\<>s 'through the open window at tho lights on tho river. A beautiful woman, little* mote than a girl, was the wife of the new member for Grandport. Dospite tho shabby black dress, which humble folk always seem able to produce at a moment's notice, she would Imvo commanded attention anywhere, m> alluring was her gracious personality. Tall and grandly formed, with a icttural elegance just now accentuated In an unconscious pose of sorrow that made of her a very Niobo, no one would have suspected that Will Carwardine tiad wooed and won her from behind the counter of a small draper's shop. Her grey eyes were clear and stead- i t.-i.st at normal times, and her pure complexion was tinged with the hue of \outh and health. The regular features jwt<» niarked with a singular refinement, and the halo of ruddy-gold hair completed a picture of glqrious womanhood rare in any class. Will raised his head presently, hih \ oice breaking the silence sharply. He v> .is so used of lute to addressing vast .uidieiKos that he wound a little diffiMilt.v m modulating it in the narrow i < iitjnes of bis parlour. 'I .suppose wo can manage the funeral by Thursday P" was what he t»aid. Hessio looked up at him blankly. ihe knew none bettor, that for all the ■ ulhdont half-note of deprecation in his tone, he would have his way. 'The day after to-morrow !" she almi.!,t w ailed. "This is only Tuesday, \\ ill. Wave you forgotten Mich small things in your groat triumph? Mayn't I keep tho dear little dead thing no lomier than two days — only just to love and look at, Will, so that I can remember her— you, too, if you care to — in tho blank, empty years that are to come?" "I shan't need to look at her to remember her^" answered Carwardiue,

clearing his throat huskily. Then ho paused, and went on, "If this hadn't nave happened 1 should have started for London to-morrow morning, and taken my *>ea£ '" t' I**1 ** House the same night. Even ii the funeral is fixed for* Thursday, 1 shan't be able to bo at Westminster before Friday." The woman's eyes, softly reminiscent with a great tenderness only a minute lwfore, glinted hardly. The firm, white column of her throat swelled in a difficulty of utterance. "Westminster!" sho repeated scornfully. "What .do I care for Westminster, with my baby l>ing dead upstairs. And you would shovel it under ground within three days of the breach being out of its body in order to go to Wof-t-nnnster! Hell is where you'll go to, Will ' Carwardine, for an unnaturil father. What's Westminster, anyway h" Carwardine sighed a little wearily. "Westminster is whore Parliament sit->, dearie — where I've got to go willy nilh now that the good folk of Granduo, t have elected tne. The party would 1.0 sorely disappointed if I wasn't there lo represent them at the earliest moment. There's an important division, too, on Friday, when my vote may inakc all the difference." "Division?" said Bessie not understanding 4 '"« jargon. "There's going to be sad division, over this betwixt you and me, I reckon, seeing that you put the party before what most good meji hold dear. It's been the party this and the part}- that for the last four weokt-, till I'm sick of the very namo of it — aye, and of you." Then did Will Car>vardino stung l.y reproaches that conscience told him were wholly merited make a remai k that was to cost lrnn dear. The mer--making of it showed that however shrewd he might be in politics.. however competent to jead masses of men, he had not mastered the first principles of leading that far more complex mechanism, a woman's heart. "Come, my >dear one, you're bein;4 too hard on hie," lie Xaid kindiy. "You'll feel less bitter when your trouble isn't quite' so fresh. And in your new life in London there will be plenty of distractions to help time, the healer, do his work." His wife lodked at him, the angry scorn in her eyes giving way slowly to the dawn of a pertain sly intelligence- - an expression Ijhat had never been soon on that fair young countenance before. Her husband was not looking at her or he might have* peen startled — and warned' It was as though she had obtained from his own WQvds, a hint upon which she had formeq a momentous resolve. How she wojild have answered him can never be (known, for at that instant a patter lof flying feet was heard ■ outside, xeasink suddenly as the lamplight shone/on K)wen Lipscomba's ashey •face framed ill the open window. ".Carwardine? Ah, I thought you lived here," he gasped. "My fattier has been shot; in his private room at the yard. Yon know the neighbourhood. For God's sake, where is the nearest doctor.r" (To be continued.) '