FICTION IN BRIEF.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXVI, Issue 11609, 11 August 1892, Page 1

FICTION IN BRIEF.

I A RAINY ROMANCE BY JUSTIN H. McCABTHY, ■ Author Of "Doom: An Atlantic EpUOdt," ; * "Lily Lass," The other voiCe laughed again. "By eve old man, 1 believe you're quite capivated by your fair unknown." The familiar voice went on again : " I : lieve I am. Well, it was an awfully kind hiiif; of a woman to do, to take pity on *i •oor devil in such a fix as I was. She didn't snow, of course, half the fix I was in, for C relieve that tramp through the rain would iave done for me. How grateful the jungle over would have been for half such a chanc* c harrass me. That girl saved my life, just • t much as Crackenthorpe did when he put nis bullet through Mir Ali's head. " It's rather romantic," said the othe? I'oice. " Yes," said the familiar voice, "quilc •cmantic. I should like to know what sh* u like. I look at every woman I meet in :his blessed hotel and wonder— and I think nost of them wonder what the deuce I am 3tarin<; lor." Marie Antoinette felt that her pretty pink :hee!<s were growing pinker as she listened. •lo the mysterious stranger was behind her, speculating about her, and she was specu lating about him. She would have given anyihing to be able to see what he was like, but even if her curiosity had carried her so far as to allow her to turn round and look that would have helped her little, for the stranger sat with his back to her. She couldn't for the life of her help listening to the conversation. It was hardly an indiscretion, as every word was distinctly audible :o anybody at all near, and even if it were •v.i, Marie Antoinette felt that the odd conditions excused her. The two voices talked I tio more about her, but they talked about a lot of other things, and chiefly about India, and much of their talk about India hardly would have been intelligible to Marie Antoine'te if she did not know so much herself about India from her father. It was evident th.it her friend, as she now mentally called the owr.er of the familiar voice, and the unknown iil'[K-arance, wasjustbacltfrom India apparcialy on sick leave. She could gather vaguely that he had been wounded somehow, and was Mill lame from his wound, that he had had jungle fever, and that he was going on the continent fora bit with a friend of his youth, who had come to meet him at Folkestone and travel with him. But they were not going to cross that day, so Marie Antoinette gathered with an involuntary thrill of pleasure which amustd her to experience. 1 he stranger was still too feeble from his fight with jungle fever to risk crossing theChannel on such a drowning day as this was, and had resigned himself to the distractions of a day indoors and the attractions of billiards anil the smoking-room. Presently the two talkers rose up and left the room. Marie' Antoinette had hoped that her table would have finished breakiast first, Ml General Gilmore was a slow, and conscientious cater, to whom the long experience of a soldier's life had taught the importance of a good digestion, and he was not to be nuiricd. So Marie Antoinette got no glimpse of her mysterious friend. She did indeed turn hor head as they left the room, but the d or was at the other end behind her, and all her beautiful short-sighted eyes caught, was a vague confused glimpso of two male figures, one of whom held the door back, •.iliilo the other seemed to limp slowly through. Marie Antoinette turned her head back again, and went on uiili her breakfast. General Gilmore Lo'.ting at his daughter with that soft expressiun which only came into hi.-, face when he did look at her, noticed the pinkness of her cheeks, the brightness ol her eyes. " What is it, Marie Antoinette," he asked.. " You seem amused, Marie Antoinette," General Gilmore always spoke to hia daughter by her full name, and he always mtcied that name very tenderly. He had a kiiiU of reveiential aftection for the name ol Mmie Antoinette. A great grandfather ol his had been guillotined in Paris, in 1793, lor his share in an attempt to rescue the unhappy queen, and. Genera) G.i(more inherited tue trad.iii.onal enthusiasm, and. when his little daughter, his fir^t and only child, waa born to him, he insisted that she should be calli d after his idol. It was a great joy tc Him, one of the few joys that liisstern nature uid hard life permitted tohim, that his child was worthy of her name. Indeed she was uuautilul enough lor that or any other, though, her beauty was not of that Austrian, type, .1) ch set the soiil of £u,rke on fire. It wa.£ .1 cidi^ht to look a\ the delicate beauty of hei .ace. inieiy oval ur)der its grown of dark hair, that kind of hair which is^erhaps the loveliest of all, because it has. been fair in child.liood.and has deepened, with the passing days, to w arm soft brownness, which hair that Marls oft at once by being dark never attains to. General Gilmore was fond of his wife, but he adored his daughtei. Mrs. Gilmore adoied bo;h her daughter and her husband equally. Women are more comprehensive than men. ".Not exactly amused, papa, only interested." . " And what interested you, Tony ?" This was Mrs. Gilmore's question. She never could be got to call her daughter by her full name, and never could understand why it sluuld irritate her husband to hear the name of tlie /air queen reduced to the facile unconventionality of a pet name. " The people behind us were talking about India, mamma, and I was thinking how interested papa would be in anybody who could talk about India." The General did look interested. " Talki ing about India were they, I wonder who. they were. Men s'npg my time no doubt, They were young rnen I think. I noticed t.iem as tlity came in." . -9 • ' W hat were they like, papa ? " ThisiwUh all demuieness from Marie Antoinette. " fteally I didn't notice that, Marie Antoinette. I just gpt a general impression that they were young. Nothing to do, with my India." And the General to whom my India meant the India of Lacknao, and Delhi, and Khanpur, returned to his news* paper. Some littlft time later Marie Antoinette was sitting all by herself in the drawingroom of the hotel. The drawing-room was portentously dismal as hotel drawing-rooms are won't lo be. Marie Antoinette had a book, but it did not interest her, and it lay on her lap while she gazed out, half-laughing, halfpeevish at the persistent downpour. Mrs Gilmore, who got headaches easily, had found the dreary day tell upon her nerves, and had retired to her bpdroon: lo lie down. General Gilmore had retreated in good order to the smoking-room, there to smoke some of the longest and strongest Trichinopolies that hadeverbeen smoked out ofa Dak Bungalow. So Marie Antoinette was all alone and slightly bored as she gazed out upon the sheeting rain, and the writhing sea, and the troubled wisps of angry foam, and found herself solemnly repeating the mystic incantation childhood : 11 Hain, rain, go away, Come again on April day." She had repeated this incantation for perhaps the hundred-and-fiftieth timein a quite monotonous way, until the words had got to lose all human meaning to her ears, as words will do il they are too often repeated, and was making up her mind lo return to the very ledious hero and heroine of her book when the door at the far end of the room suddenly opened. The solemn drawingroom was so still and dismal that the openng of a door seemed like an event, and Marie involuntarily glanced up as the sound ancd the stillness. Then General Gilmore iv.-ilkcd into the room, followed by a good.ooking young man, whose face was bronzed

from habit, and pale asiffromrecentillness who followed in the General's wake, walkini with a sligh limp. Marie Antoinette turned slightly round ii her chair to greet her father, who advancer towards her with the same erect carriagi and resolute bearing with which at Brauba pang he had faced the mutinous Sepoys anc compelled them to disarm under the guns ohis Highlanders. General Gilmore alwa>! looked stern, even when he smiled, whict was not often, but on this occasion he was not stern in the least, but laying himself out to be especially agreeable. 11 Marie Antoinette," he said, ■• let me introduce to you Captain Carson, the son ol an old friend of mine, Carson, of Carson's Horse, whom you have often heard me talli about." Indeed she had. She knew exactly how Carson, of Carson's Horse, had held his own at Brambapang, how he had stood by her father's side on that wild day when tho mutineers were check-mated by a bravet stroke than they had dared to strike. But it was. no knowledge of the Brambapang business which made her regard young Captain Carson as an old friend, which made her eyes dance brightly, and her cheeks glow more daintily pink as she held out her hand It was something which she divined before even she heard youngCarson speak, and there was a whimsical uuder-note of laughing sincerity in her voice as. she said: "I am very glad to meet you Captain Carson," which made the young man's pallor suddenly change to a warm red under his tan. Then their eyes met and brightened with the amused consciousness of a secret shared between them. Was there ever such rain since the world began ? _ Mrs. Gilmore thought not, plaintively. General Gilmore thought not angrily, as he made his Trichinoplies blaze. Bin' oddly enough the weather did not seem to affect the spirits of Marie Antoinette in the least, and as for young Carson he appeared posively to delight in.it. As it had wins I on the night when he stood on the soaking station, and Marie Antoinette lud taken compassion on his forlorn condition, as it rained on the day when General Gilmore, anxious for the entertainment of his prettydaughter, had brought the son of his old friend out of the smoking-room to the drear drawing-room, so it rained the next day and the next. To go out was impossible, except to creatures under the clutch of a commanding destiny, or to natures that were well-nigh amphibious. Marie Antoinette hated wet as cordially as the daintiest cat could, and as nothing compelled her to go out, she regained indoors, and did not find her imprisonment at all dreary. Tor it must be admitted that young Carson was a very interesting companion in a rain bcleagured sea-side hotel. She soon knew all about him, for he became astonishingly commiini;ative, under the influence of Marie Antoinette's dark eyes, and his story was quite interesting enough to be worth the telling. There was no one else for him to tell it to now, except to Marie Antoinette and her family, for his companion, ihe Honourable I'om Trimbull, Lord Bulcole's cousin, had lost patience with the rain and his friend's dilatoriness, and had run across to France, declaring that he would wait for Carson, at Paris, where he could have a good time, instead of being bored by the eternal rain, and the absorbing devotion which Carson displayed towards Miss Gihnore. As Trimbull afterwards said to his cousin, Lord Bulcote, it was perfectly astonishing the way in which Lai Carson doubled up at the sight of old Gilmore's daughter. Trimbull had an aggressive way of putting things when he was annoyed because he was so very fond of Carson— but the matter was accurate enough if the manner was not exactly elegant. Lai Carson was completely conquered by the beauty of Marie Antoiu ette. He was not the first. H° was not the last. That delicately oval face so exquisitely coloured, whieh looked a dainty disdain that was not in Marie Antoinette's heait at all, that gracious presence which would have moved so charmingly through the Garden of Trianon and the Avenues of Versailles had been raved about a good deal before ever Lai Carson saw it ; was raved about much more long after Lai Carson had carried it away as an abiding memory in his heart. To make those great dark eyes glow with interest, to make those softly tinted cheeks wear a warmer hue with pleasure, young Carson exhausted all his memories could recall of Indian life and experiences. He had experienced a good deal in the North West provinces, and he had an art of telling his tale vividly so that he gave Marie Antoinette a more lively picture of Indian life in the north than the more matterof fact accounts of her father had ever given to her. As for himself he was back in Europe for a short timeupon sick leave. He had been wounded, pretty badly wounded in the left leg in a little scuffle— it could scarcely be called a war —with a fierce frontier race, the Lushias. and before his wound was well he was gripped by the jungle fever, and between the two things he had had a pretty bad time o( it. He was better now if he was not well ; if he still limped from his wound, that he was confident wonld wear off in lime, and as> long as he wascaveful he might dodge the jungle fever successfully. In the meantime he seemed remarkably contented where he was, boxed up in that solemn hotel, with the dreary drawing-room for his play ground, and the endless dripping rain outside for his accompaniment, Yes, it was very pleasant, very pleasant while it lasted. But it did not last for ever. Even rain comes to an end sometimes, and on the third day after the day on which Carson had been formally introduced to Marie Antoinette the rain ceased, the clouds lifted, the sun shone, Folkestone put on its holiday air, and prepared to welcome the merry morning. Only Carson did not seem to be over-pleased with the change of the weather. The sunlight that brightened everybody|else seemed to lower hisspirits woefully. Marie Antoinette, all radiant at the change, saw him in the morning, and saw how grave his face was, and asked him what was the matter. He forced a little laugh. " Will you take me for a little walk, Miss Gilmore," he asked. "Just a little walk and I will tell you," Marie Antoinette's kind heart was full of sorrow at once. Something had happened to her invalid, as she called young Carson to herself. Perhaps bad news had come by the morning's post, perhaps he felt hints of jungle fever. Anyhow she was quite willing to go for a walk. She did not entertain any very profound reverence for the ordinary conventionalities ; there could be no harm in taking a walk with an invalided young soldier from India whose father had been such a close friend of her father. So they went for their walk. Ah, that walk. Carson will remember it to the end of his days. Through the thick tangle and rank growth of Indian forests, across the blistering level of Indian plains, the memory will come to him of those English streets and the pavement still shining with the late long rain, and then th« walk along the windy downs, and the dis-tance-curve of the chalky cliffs ahead, bending like an elephant's tusk, and the sea as blue as the sapphire in a Kajah's ring, and the sea as still now as the waters of some Lotus-girdled tank, and the sky above such a delicious wonder of milky blue and snowy clouds as one only gets in England, perhaps, and as one never gets in India. Ah, he will remember all these, and the way in whicli the audacious wind blew into Marie Antoinitte's face, and brought a warmer red there, and fluttered tho little fringe of dark can oa heJ forohead. [2'o be Continued.]