LADIES' COLUMN.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXIX, Issue 12187, 3 October 1903, Page 3 (Supplement)

LADIES' COLUMN.

THE NEXT TABLE.

(By THEODOSIA GARRISON.)

She wondered why the fact of her deciding to marry the man had made him so suddenly obnoxious. Yesterday, no doubt; his figure had been as rotund, his eyes as small and deeply placed, his head as bald, ami his jewels as obtrusive as tihey showed laow,. when the city lights flashed by their; lam-

som. There was a jewel of his on her own finger. She pressed it rather sharply into her flesh as she listened. , It helped her to keep hex mind on the subject at hand.—a subject which any man might reasonably assume to be of paramount importance to hie fiancee. He was speaking of himself in the commending tone with which one patronises and approves a stranger. She caught, listlessly, at the end of his story:—

" And when I make, up my mind to do a thing I take care not to be disappointed. I spent the last penny I had! in the world; there, and for a mighty joor dinner, too. You wouldn't think it was a place to be "fond of, under the circumstances, eh ? Well, I ain't, but that night, when I put my last dime down for the waiter, I said to myself, ' Roden, you go out of this place broke, but.the next time you come you'll have your pile, and you can buy the whole damned thing, perhaps, -but I kept the thought in the; back of my head, and when the shekels began to roll in, I brought it out again. That's why we're going here to-night. You mustn't kick if it isn't up to Sherry's." \ ', "But you might have come before," she said. "Surely, your—your moneyisn't a thing of to-day." He laughed unctuously, laying his heavy hand on her'own. "No, but you are. I waited- to go the whole figure, and I guess I have. You're" the top mark;, you represent what: the whole thing means—l waited for you." "It's rather far down-town," ( she said. The remark, she felt, was wholly inappropriate, but it was, at least, speech, and it postponed the caress whicli she felt was imminent. j . / "We're here now," he said. "It's well after eight. We'll have the place to ourselves, I'imagine." She waited; while he overpaid the cabby ostentatiously, and they went up the long steps. The restaurant, like many others in the neighbourhood, had been made by converting a one-time private house to its needs. There was nothing in the sight of the stout' and beaming cashier at the high desk in the | narrow hall that struck her as familiar, but ' at the threshold of the dining-room she stopped, with a sudden, choked exclamation. ' That wall-paper with its ridiculous frieze of blue, and titanic roses—the stuffed owl on the mantel—the grotesque oil-painting over the very table to which the solitary .fcaiter was leading recognised i them with a thoroughness -that sent the colour from her cheeks. She laid an impulsive hand on Roden's arm. "Oh, not this place, surely!" she said.' ,

The man laughed. "Pretty cheap, eh?' he said. " But you can stand; it lor cmoe We'll make up for it to-morrow night." The waiter pulled the chairs from the table beneath the absurd painting, ano smiled at them benevolently. The girl's fingers tightened on Roden's arm. " Take the next table," ehe insisted. She seated herself with, her back to the one the waiter had •designated before she smiled her explanation at Roden. "That wall-paper would put my eyes out if I stared It it too long. I would rather face the window if you don't mind. I don't want to go. about with blue roses on my nerves for the rest of my life." ' She kept the smile on her lips as Roden consulted the soiled menu and impressed the waiter with the munificence of his order. Roden answered the smile, approvingly. ' " I guess the waiter had the shock of his life just now," he said. " The last time I was here I had liver and bacon, and wasted it down with water. Well"—he threw a glance about at the empty room-r-"it is later than I thought. We've got the place to ourselves at any rate. It's about the first time I've had you alone since—" He nodded significantly at the ring on her finger. " Yes," she sand, " we have to ourselves." But, as she spoke, the consciousness of the two people at the table behind her was so real that she almost wondered why Roden, facing them, seemed blind to their existence. ' . She had seen them the moment she hesitated at the threshold. Had they been always sitting there, she thought, since that May night last year, always looking at each other with the same eyes, with hands that crept always a'little nearer to one another across the cloth? She could hear their voices plainly—the man's low voice, with its fascinating Southern drawl; the girl's happy young laugh, with its wonderful note of tenderness. Had she really laughed like that once ? she wondered. It seemed strange now that any woman could. f "No," the man was saying, I am quite right about your eyes; and,;if I have put them in a story, it is no more than you deserve for daring to have them. Think of all the stories I am going to find there—always!" TV The waiter filled the glass at her elbow. She realised that Roden was addressing her. He lifted his glass, the stones on his stout fingers reflected in its contents. " Here' 3 to luck," he said; " something we both can appreciate, eh? I should say we were both pretty successful people. It isn't every day that a man can make his pile, or a woman marry it. It isn't every woman I'd want to have spend it for me, s ither. The Lord knows it wouldn't be hard bo find plenty to help me, but I'm a bit particular. I wanted a thoroughbred—one that could act as though she was used to it. Why, the first time V set eyes on jrou " "You'll be the prettiest pauper in the world and I'll be the happiest," said the low voice behind her, "and, if you ever jet tired of going up four flights of ? stairs Pll carry you. Oh, sweetheart, to think it will be "our home—ours! —waiting for us at the top of them; and, if I ever have to leave fou for an hour—if I have to—think of my wmmg back to find you there 1 Just you trad me, with the doors closed and the rest >f the world shut out." " the first time I set eyes on you," £oden repeated, " I said to myself, ' There's he one for me—there's the sort of a woman! jo do a man credit, at home or abroad.' i.nd, speaking of that, I suppose you'll want o travel —all women do. We'll take a little ■un across the pond this summer, if you like, ifter we 'get/'our House settled here. I saw 3avidson about the plans to-day. I guess le thought the price would stagger me. Hang the expense!' I said to him. 'A' nan isn't mairricd every day, and I want to: mt my wife in a house-that will make peo»le open their eyes.'", "Yes," she ap.id, vaguely. .She vtaa istening to that other voice, as the girl belind her had listened a year ago. "And every time a storj is sold," it aid, "we'll have a new honeymoon trip—- ■. long, lazy holiday with a lunch in some trang3 little corner down town that we lave discovered ourselves, and a browse n queer streets and shops afterward ; and, f anything is left, which isn't likely, we'll :ome home in a hansom. There'never was .uch a jolly little comrade as you are;; rat, when we get home and talk it over, 'ou'll be something even better than that—ust the sweetest woman, the -" "What's the matter?" asked the man ►pposite. "You're not eating anything. Here, try this. You mustn't get thin and ;o off your looks before the great day. I ■xpect my wife to do me credit." She shrank a- moment from the look m lis eyes before she recognised it. She had een it turned on a great many things beore—on his houses, his horses, his jewels, lever fully on herself. She felt the ramiliation of that glance of possession

tingle through, her nerves, but she answered lightly. The voice at the table behind her fell in with her own.

"And to think it will always be like this," it said; "No matter how time goes by, you will always be you. Why, any change the years might give you would! be only as though you had put on : a new gown to make me love you a little hit better. The real.you could never change, no;, from age, "not from grief, not from anything in the world." . Their hands had met across the table now, she knew. Was there ever a hand in the world that had been soi strong, so infinitely tender, as the one that touched that other girl's at the'table" there? She started as Boden's hand fell* trifle heavily oh. her own..

: "I shouldn't call you .the best company !in the world to-night, "~ he said. •"" It's a I little early, in the day for, us to bore each other, I should ihink. I thought' that , most girls spent their lives- trying- to be entertaining. I never had any of them dull around ime, at any rate." He laughed jocosely, with an attempt to veil his annoyance. " Lord, as far as talk is concerned, I might as well have taken your aunt out. The old lady's a corker—when the conversation gets down to dollars and cents, at any rate. Well, she's a friend of mine, all right. Here's to her!" He lifted his wine-glass. He had taken too much already, the girl thought. The blur of it was, in his voice. .There seemed a reckless set to his coarse'features. It seemed as though her shame af the situation haoVgradually" revealed the man as lie* was, primeval, -brutal, an unclean braggart, a thing from which' gentlemen would guard Her sudden sense of helplessness frightened her. - "And to take care of you always," said ■ the voice behind her,, "that is the most exquisite privilege of all—to have strength enough to shelter you from the big things and-little things. It maddens me now, sometimes, to think what you are bearing for me; but, Weetheart, I shall spend my life in- making it up to you. Don't let them frighten you; and When they say 'Poverty!' to you, say 'Love!' t'o yourself. And in a little while " ".You'll lose that ring if you keep poking it up and down your finger like that," said Roden. " And a stone of that sort" —he pointed to it with the cigar in his thick fingers—"ain't to be picked up every day. ' I shouldn't be any too pleased if you lost,it, nor you, either, I guess. Lord, | I've known women to .give their souls for less than that." .

He blew a ring of smoke in the air, and laughed, coarsely. "After all, you're all alike, you women. Give a woman trinkets enough, and she'll be true to you, I've always said. It's the only kind of a rope you can hold 'em with. About right, too. Why, I remember now " f

. " And as for doubting you," the voice behind her said, "it -would ber as impossible for me to doubt my own existence. No matter what happened, if ,'every .proof in the world were brought to me, I should know you were true. You couldn't be anything else. • You might be forced doingf a thing, I might hear that I was never even to look at yon again, but I should know it was none 'of your doing. And whatever happens, dearest, you must remember that I am always thinking that—always." > j The man opposite was scowling unpleasantly.' "Be a bit careful of that ring, can't youV" he said. " There, you'ye got it off altogether, now!" "If it's ten years or twenty years," said the other voice, "no matter where or how far I might be, a word from you would bring me. I think, if'you needed ine/'l could come back from, the'dead.' Promise\ me that you will always remember that. But, aa if you needed to promise! And, besides, I want you to tell me something els© now—that always, and always " The girl .brought her eyes back to Bpden with a start.

"Yes," she said, with >the realisation that he had spoken, "you Were saying—— " "I was saying that it's about time we got out of this," he repeated. "What's th* tired of saying a thing' three times before tired of saying a thing three time before you hear it. Here, you," he turned to the waiter, " get my coat. Put on your ring, and come on."

Thera was the snap of authority in his voice, the curl of it 'on this thick lips. The girl hesitated a, .-moment. The stone of the ring she held in her open palm stared at her like * red, unwink- j ing eye—hard, cold, bloodless—and precious. She looked at it lingeringly. There wa» a strange fasciaation in its depths. "Well, come on," Roden;snarled. " Sweetheart!" said the low roice hehind her; "sweetheart 1" The girl lifted her 'face, a face illumined, one that the man at her' side had heTer before seen. She wore the look of one who, after helpless grasping in the dark, had come suddenly into the light, and knew the open path before her. ' He resented, without comprehending, the expression with which, she regarded him, the look which swept him from head to foot, and judged and condemned and derided, i "You had better take thia," she said, ■la^ly. She handed the ring to Boden.: The look of amazed consternation' on his face, as he mechanically closed his fingers about the bauble, deepened at her smile. "What do you mean?" he demanded. "Eh!" " I will tell you as we go up town, she said.

The untidy waiter held the portieres at the narrow door obsequiously aside. He wondered why the pretty young woman, who had' apparently angered, her stout escort to the verge of . apoplexy, should stop at the threshold to look back at an empty table. He could not know, being mere man and unimaginative, the wonderful promise of her eyes; still less that the tawdry room she left was a holy spot, wherein Love had called from his high plaees, and heard the answer of hi* faithful. ■■ :