OUR SERIAL STORY

Thames Star, Volume LXI, Issue 17052, 5 December 1927, Page 3

OUR SERIAL STORY

By M. C. and R. LEIGHTON

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

JACK HEATHCOTE MAKES A STARTLING DISCOVERY.

"And he believes it—he believes it still!" sbe cried. She stretched out her left hand suddenly, and pressed its open palm hard against the trunk of the giant elm under whose shadow they stood. "Oh, Father in heaven," she panted below her breath, "must this, the worst part of my martyrdom, endure for ever and ever?"

Jack pressed his bloodless face closer to hers in the moonlight. His glance plunged into the haunted depths of her sad, dark-brown eyes. "It was not true, was it?" he asked desperately. "For Heaven's sake tell me that it was not "true!" "True!" A sudden fire leapt into her eyes, to be quenched by the glistening shadow of a sorrowful bitterness. She clutched him with a force that sent a sharp pain shooting through him. "Do you, too, doubt me still? Have I not already told you that I am innocent, that my hands and my soul aie as clean of blood as the hands and the soul of a little child—such a little child as you were when they took me from you? Can you not—you who should have the insight of love—read in my face even here and now that I have done no murder?" "Thank God!" He bowed his head against her breast, and the dry sobs that had been swelling in his throat found way at last, parly choking his utterance. "The blow of it—of hearing the dreadful story—was terrible. I was on the wrong track already, more than anyone knew or suspected—although Market Barton suspects a good deal—and I hoped, I prayed that I might redeem myself by the help of a love that was filling my life with light. But my father shut me from hope. He told me that the evil was in my blood, that it was my accursed heritage He sent me out from his presence the wretehedest creature living. Since then I have gone about like a beaten hound—hopeless, reckless, quivering with degradation, knowing that every soul that met me knew my history, and feeling that the very children pointed at me as one upon whom a curse rested. I have tried to forget the horror if it in drink, but the brandy only seemed to make it blacker and more hideous. Yet I went on drinking. I thought it was no good to try to fight against one's heritage. And all the-while it. was not true —it was not true.

"No," the unhappy woman confronting him answered steadily, yet with a throb of fierce indignation in her voice, "it was not true! I was all a tissue of lies, cowardly lies, from end to end. You have no heritage of evil, my son; you have only a heritage of wrong." The full, steady voice quivered and paused, and then continued: "Think for a moment what my life has been! Nineteen years ago I was a happy woman. I had done no wrong, nor even consciously thought an evil thought; I was happy in my love fro your father and for you and Pauline. Then came the horror of your uncle's death. The crime was committed down there." She pointed through the moon-barred darkness towards that part of the park which was near to the avenue. "And because I chanced to be passing near there at the. moment of its perpetration, suspicion fastened upon me, and grew little by little int oa whole fabric of rotten proofs—so-called proofs—

In the Shadow of Quilt.

based on circumstances which were misinterpreted. Your father"—her voice faltered—"will have told you that I was accused, tried, convicted, and senenced to death. And all the while the real perpetrator of the crime keiit silence. Then I was reprieved. He must have rejoiced then, since it rid his conscience of an additional burden. Or, perhaps, he trembled in his shoes lest some day I might break free and demand justice. I cannot tell "

"Who was he?" demanded Jack, in a voice at which she started, so changed was it.

! "Wait a little," she said, lifting her ! hand. "There is more for me to tell yet. Your father must have told you that my sentence was commuted; that, I instead of death, a death in life—worse, worse a thousandfold—was meted out to me. I was glad, at first, [ did not know what agonies awaited me, what unutterable humiliations were to fill every dragging minute of the long years that lay before me. I only felt that I was saved for those I loved; saved to have my guiltlessness proved in a few months' time at longest; saved for reunion with you and Pauline and—and your father. But the awful days passed, and no freedom came to me. Every day I sank deeper, until I felt that I was down in a seething pit of blackness and criminality and terror. The only thin<j; that kept me from madness was the expectation of letters. But none came. Just one letter would have satisfied me for months; just one to tell me that all was well with you and Pauline, my two babies, but never a line came. Your father had listened to the seeming proofs of my guilt. He was one of those who believe that the law cannot err. And he had closed his heart to me. May God forgive him for it! I have forgiven him these many years past—yes, even from the first hour—■ because, in spite of all that has chanced upon me, for ever from the Heathlove him, and we two are one still in the sight of Heaven." "But—but there were other things," Jack faltered. And he bent his head, feeling a hot flush, dye his throat and cheeks and brow. He realised in this moment that the story of the divorce had stung him with a yet keener anguish, because a yet keener humiliation, even than that of the murder," The figure' at his side bent nearer to him. Her cloak was blown against him by the strengthening wind. "You mean, the divorce." she said.

He bowed his head lower still. And her voice reached him—quiet, but deep and full and strong. "That, too, was based on a lie—a lie built up deliberately and cruelly, in order that" I might forfeit the name of Heathcote, and be tin list forth, with the cloud of unjust disgrace which rested upon me,( for ever from the Heatiicote* family. I will not tell you who it was that designed the cowardly slander. I have given him my word that I will keep silence. Only a little while ago I met him here-—"

"Here?" Jack Heathcote lifted his head. His voice was hard and stern. "Not within these gates," she said hurriedly, "but somewhere in the neighbourhood. He knew me, and threatened to betray me. But the time for that was not ripe then ; and I forced him to silence, promising in my turn not to proclaim the wrong he had done me. I demanded of him, however, hat he should confess that wrong to

him who had been my husband. He lias done so; and at this moment your father knows that I was never false to him, knows that in putting me from him he committed iihconsciously 'as great a sin against the law as against' his own faith and against me. The?; decree was unjust, illegal; it v *was gain-: ed hv conspiracy and perjury." ■■/■" "But why did you let it "be?" The young fellow's voice had almost reproach in it. "Why did you not protest against it? My father.said you.

offered no defence." \ "No defence?" A bitter smile cross-' ed the nurse's stormy face. "No," she answered, "because I was helpless. When the notice came to me that my husband was seeking a divorce, I laughed—laughed even in the midst of my miseries. I could not believe what the written words said. I did not believe. I knew I had done no wrong, and I could as soon have thought that God Himself would fail me as doubt. my husband's love and constancy and faith. I had no parents, no friends to help me; no. one to tell me that the case was resil and grave, and that the issue must be fought out. When, a little while afterwards, news came which showed me that the appeal was real and earnest, I was stunned, crushed, beaten to the earth. It was tod late to plead then. And I was as one groping in the dark. I could not understand what the accusations were that had been made against me. But when news came'that the divorce was granted—ah, then I awoke from the stupor of despair in which I had been numbed. 1 understood then what had been done to me."

('To be continued.l