PERSISTENT CONSTIPATION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8030, 7 June 1904, Page 4

PERSISTENT CONSTIPATION.

♦ — is generally aggravated by ; violent purgatives, because they weaken the organs acted upon. The gentle, reliable and pleasant laxative, California Syrup of Figs, has , a totally different result. It is- at onoe a tonic and a curative. It cleanse* ?,he Bluggiab system of every impurity, xl at :he same, time strengthens the ita>i.fui aotion of the liver,, bowels and kidneys, f * gradually but surely overcoming ' ili^?] constipation. It is so mild and a£*-**b:e u» its action and effects that.it is known v\ • Nature's pleasant laxative." Tta arJißai) K'ie of millions oi bottles is due as ocaoJi to personal recommendation as to the wntai ■■>> proval of the medical profession.. \ c^Jfc >.sts everywhere, Is &ri ;uid 2s 3d.

with strident bravado, as the colour flamed into her face. ' ' The Artist stopped suddenly i her band half ready to feed the blaze with a little red-leather diary. /'That's all very well," she admitted, "and, of course, I don't know who your man was or what happened to him— l never heard you refer to him before— but will you swear by all your gods that jou haven't at this present moment a single love-token on you?" From the Actress's face the colour fled libs a tide that would never rise again. Slowly she rose from her seat, and, with a queer, incongruous sort of majesty, stripped the chiffon sleeve from her arm, and, turning the soft, white flesh of her inner arm, displayed come finely tattooed initials — not her own. , "I was a fool once," she said, briefly, "but it was a long time ago. If you care to see the date- " "Pull down your sleeve!" ' cried the Writer. " Good heavens, we didn't mean to quiz you ! Have the rest of the alphabet put on, and then people will think that's the way you learned your letters. That needn't stop this sacrifice." But still the Artist dallied over the little red diary. "You can't help feeling/ she argued, " that perhaps, if you keep on waiting " — her voice grew suddenly very tender — " perhaps things will come out all right, after all, and you'd be glad you trusted and — waited." "Waited?" shouted the Writer, starting bolt upright and staring like a suddenly awakened wild thing; "waited? Heaven help you! I knew a woman once who> waited). She and the man had known each other from childhood, and ■ were all the world to each other, and they were just going to be married when the man was caught in a railroad accident and hurt his head and went crazy, and was put in an asyqlum. And the doctors said there wae one chance, just one chance \n a thousand of his getting well again. But the chance didn't seem, to happen, and the months went by, and "the years — one, two, three, four, five, six, seven years— and still the chance did not happen. And .youth went by, and beauty, aaid chances of travel and culture and other men's love, but~the girl would not leave her little country Jiome from which twice* a month she could journey by train to the asyhim,. and sit a little agonising! while with the lover who never recognised her. Her family pleaded with her, her friends tormented h°r, but she would not give the man up. She

gimply could not risk that one efcance o: the man coming brick to his senses anc finding that the woman he loved had de serted him. Is it just mind that you lov< in a man? Nonsense, for she loved hiir when his mind was gone. Was it just hit body, then? No, for she would have lovec him, dead! " Well, after she had waited nine years— we were talking about waiting, weren't wei — after nine years, her mother died an<i left the girl some small property and the charge of a crippled brother, and the gir] took her share of the money and robbed her crippled brother of his, and engaged tne biggest doctor in the land to come and study her lover's case, and the doctor came and studied a while and then operated, and th« operation was successful, and as the sick man came gradually out of the stupor and blank of those nine years—he fe-Il in love with his trained nurse, and married her! ' " The beast !" cried the Actress-, passionately. " He wasn't a beast, either," retorted the Writer, jumping to her feet. "He couldn't help it. He didn't even remember about the first woman till after his marriage. I say he couldn't help it. It's fate that makes things like that. Of course, it's just a story, a hideous, hateful story, but"— turning glently to the girl by the fire — " don't give fate such a chance at you." With one gasping breath, the Artist snatched all her remaining treasures up in her arms, and fairly hurled the distorted, crackling mass into the fire, and the other two women came down and crouched on the floor beside her, and warmed their hands gloatingly at the blaze. "Oh, these secrets, these secrets!" mused the little Actress, with dramatic mockery. " Goodness," said the Writer, wryfully, "it's going to be awkward at the Judgment Day when • the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed.' I certainly shan't tell everything I know, unless I am pressed." "Oh, I guess you'll be pressed, fast enough," the Actress volunteered, cherfully ; and then added, with sudden whimsical earnestness : " but, let's all promise each other here and now that we'll stop up our ears when any member of this trio gets up to recite." In a flash, the three women clasped sturdy hands on the grotesque promise, and then, with joke and laughter, jumped to their feet, shook off their brooding thoughts, and. gathering up their hats and coats, started down-town with the Writer to get a Welsh rabbit, before she went' on night duty at her editorial desk. For an hour the three friends lingered over their hotel chafing-dish, well used to .playing house and making themselves at home with any sort of utensil from a teaspoon to a gas-range. With chaff and banter aad frank speculation they discussed the future and ignored the past, and when, at last, the time came for good-bye, they parted brusquely with handshakes, as men do. The Writer went uo her work, and the Actress to the theatre to meet some other friend's, but the Artist ran home alone as fast as she could, andihurried up her studio stairs, and unlocked her door as though a life depended on it, amd, scrambling to the fireside, raked but al> the charred letters she could find, and the blistered wreck of a little red diary, and gathered them hastily up in her hands, and put them tenderly back into the tin box, and tookHhem all to bed with her, and cried over them through the night — until Dawn, creeping like a thief across the city roof-tops, had stolen every hope of sleep from the city's toilers. It was' a long time before the three friends met again. The Actress went West immediately to fill a permanent engagement with a stock company ;'the writer was sent on a Bemi-political venture to Cuba; and the Artist, left to her own devices, modelled a statue of a lion or a tiger N or a bear, or something, which set the whole city talking, and was subsequently married, though whether or not to the man of her original choice is a matter of conjecture only. A year' went by with a desultory correspondence, then a second year with just a tardy gift at Christ-

mas time, then a third year -with absolute silence — except, at the very end, for a telegram that went whizzing one day from the hustling office of a big Western theatre to the tranquil home in a New England village where tbe Artist and her clerical husband were rearing a dangerous little family of half-breeds — Bohemian and Puritan. And the telegram said, with astonishing .assurance: — : "Meet roe Waldorf, New York, Saturday. Bring money. Writer in trouble. Imperative. " Actbess." The Artist and her husband looked long at each other across the mystery of that yellow message. Then the Artist got up, and began, to scurry, about to pack a suit-case. "£ve got to go, dear," she eaid; "of course I've got to go. My friend, the Writer, is in trouble. Mother 5 !! come over and take care of the children, and you— please make me out a cheque for two hundred dollars. I guess that will do. I always told you you'd have to pay for marrying a Bohemian. Will you miss me? I hope so, but I've got to go." • And twelve hours later she was wringing hands with the Actress in a waiting-room of the big Waldorf Hotel, exclaiming, with her first long breath : <% What's the matter with the ' Writer?" "Oh, come to breakfast first," entreated the Actress, "there's plenty of time to talk;" and led the way nonchalantly into the sumptuous diningroom, whither the Artist followed with, novel: timidity, and the two women seated themselves in the lonesomest corner they could, find. " You're a very motherly-looking person for a Bohemian," the Actress said, at last, smiling dazzlingly into her friend's tranquil eyes. '.'Two youngsters, is it? Well, that does seem funny." Then, toying a second, with her bread, she remarked, casually, ''There's a rather sensational divorce case going to be tried in New York to-morrow. ' . • la there?" said the Artist, with.languid interest. . " Yes," the Actress continued, with atrifle more vigour, " and our old playmate, the Writer, is named as co-respondent." The Artist gave a little gasp of dismay, and clutched at her dress as though her heart had cramped within her. "Yes," persisted the Actress, with drawling intensity, " and the plaintiff is a woman. — who — used to be a— trained nurse, and her husband was a— former patient in an insane , asyluni " • Coldly, quizzically, almost insolently, she watched the effect of her words. For a second, they seemed to fall meaningless and flat, and then, all of a sudden, the Artist's face kindled and flamed with comprehension. Her flesh palpably winced, bub her spirit looked out undaunted from her startled eyesT " What can we do?" she stammered. " We , must do something." . " Yea, we certainly must do something!," the Actress acknowledged, w but that something will be precious little. I am afraid that our old playmate can't put up the slightest ghost of a defence — legally. The facts have been suppressed so far, but I understand from a journalist I know that . the newspapers will fairly reek with the affair to-morrow. It seems that the husband is a rather clever fellow, .though in wretched health, and the wife has recently acquired large wealth and social ambitions, and it also seems that there has been trouble for a long time — perhaps for four years." She watched her words &o- stabblngly home. ■■' "The man has been trying for a long time to get a divonoe, but his wife would not free him, just for spite, I believe — she 'has never claimed to love him. And now things have smashed. The Writer's fate Ties overtaken her, and she has got to stand u<p and turn A her life inside out for the public to sneer at. Oh, my heaven*, what a price to pay !" "But what do you propose to do?" choked out the Artist, over h«r coffee. " I'm willing to help with anything you suggest."' "What do I propose to do? Well, take you over- to my boarding-house, and keep you shut uip there with me till the case ia over, and 'then we'll go to her with all the money we've acraiped together, and 1 we'll pack her ;bnmk and help her go away somewhere — with her man-, if she wants hiim." • " With her man?" pasped the Artist, with a little quiver oihorxor. " "Yes, ; with the man," said the Actress, stridently. "It's none of our business whom she -goes with. If you'd waited ten* years for a crazy man, don't you think you'd be willing to stake yorur original claim against anj mere laundry-tiheck tyipe of marriage certificate?" . But the ' Artist did .not answer. Her 'eyes were far away, and gradually into them stole p. look of tenderness and yearning that quits displaced their former tenants of wonder and pain. " I declare," exclaimed the Actress, " I do believe you are homesick for your husband and your children." . , "t am," said the Artist, briefly. "And soi presumably, is the Writers" drawled the Actress, over the top of her oofSee-oup. A week later, tihe Actress and tin© Artist stood knocking at a 'bedroom <h>or in an inconspiouous New Yoik 1 l boarding-housev The Artist was much the 'braver and calmer of the two, but. because the Actress's- own eyes were smarting with unshed -tears, she turned on her married friend, and' snapped out: " If you cry, IT! scratch your eyes out ! ' " Oh, knock again," «aid the Artkt, £ oodnaturedly, "knock again; she's Sffrely there." But there was no answer. Then the Artist took her two little grey-gloved flats, and beat an old familiar tattoo signal on the door.. In a second, then© was a creaking step across the floor, the sound of a turning key, and the door was opened cautiously oa the Writer^ bagg&rd eyes . -, , •. ' "Is it really you?" sh« asked, blankly, dragging them into tbe room, and looking , tihe door quickly 'behind ihexa. "Ye* it's really us,, you great goose," said tbe'sattcy Actoesa ; "and did you think that yon could keep us out? Where are you' going ? You seem to hay« your ftag packed and your hat on."

"1 dooa't know just -what I shall do," responded the Writer, her white face Vstripped and ravished of every tr.n«e of human emotion. " But I've got to go somewhere, and' I'm going to Washington to night." "I'm we just caught you," the Actress cried, gaily, frcm her peroh on the tabls. "We- thought you nu^hit 'be strapped, bo' we brought you round what we had. I think it's about seven h-un-ired or so. It will give you a start, anyway. Why don't you go abroad? We've 'been here a week waiting for vc-u.'" " A w-e-e-k V gasped the Writer, in an icy sort of dismay. " I didn't see you in the court-room." "Naturally not," laughed the Actress, "because we weren't tJhere. We were over at my 'boarding-house, mak'ng pyjamas, or some suoh frivolity, for the Artist's Irasband." A gleam 7 of forlorn hope flickered and died in the Writer's eyes. " But the newspai>erai" she stammered, " ttoae shnrrible newspaipefs?" Then the Artist threw 'herself down' at the Writer's feet, and clutched h«T round fa*r knees lite an easrer child. "But we didn't read the newspapers," ghe laughed out. through her tears. ' r We didn't even see one."