OUR SERIAL. THE WILD ADVENTURE.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 9 April 1927, Page 4

OUR SERIAL. THE WILD ADVENTURE.

(By

FRANKLIN HAYES).

CHAPTER XXX (Continued). “ They have taken him ? ” she said, and looked at Robin Ferrars with dilated eyes. “He is a prisoner,” he said simply. “It was a magnificent stand—half a dozen of them and a woman. They accounted for a good many before, they were taken. It is all in ‘The Times’ to-day. A good many people will rest more securely now that Malatesta is out of action.”

" What will they do with him?” she: asked, and wondered if Robin Ferrars; could not hear the loud beating of her: heart. “ Keep him in some dreadfuli prison. I cannot imagine Malatesta in* prison.” “Oh, thev won't put him in a cage: and carry him up and down Italy for, people to stare at. He will escape that.” " He has always .escaped,” she said. " The locks and bolts are not made! that could hold Malatesta when the call came.” She said it with an uplifted air that made Robin Ferrars look at her curiously. How far had this picturesque brigand, stirred her imagination? he .asked Himself, and -then considered that: Phoebe .was very young, even .for her years. He remembered his sisters as 1 schoolgirls and their absurd little; “pashes,” ,as ;they called them for I actors and such .persons. She had had I a dull life with Tom Carew, although she had not known ,it. How dazzling then must have been .this adventurer, this outlaw!

“He will probably .escape beyond r«a<ih-.of bolts and- liars,” he said. “He J has half a dozen bullet wounds through 8 him. .Even the magnificent physique? which ’ The Times ’ correspondent s talfcs about, .will hardly survive that.”} He got opt of the car and began j to start the engine. He was not look- j ir.g at her and she was grateful for’ that. “ 1 should have brought you over "The Times,’” he said. “I know your dear absurd way of never taking a daily neivsjfcaper. Italy is in grief .about Peptia the dancer. She will dance no more. She was with Malatesta. to the last. It was a surprise tv find .that brilliant butterfly in such a place.. Malatesta is supposed to have been her lover.”

The car was in motion. He sprang to his scat beside her and took the steering-wheel.

" I am sorr - ” be said in dismay, looking .at her face, from which the colour had flown.

CHAPTER XXXI

Not very long afterwards a document reached her by way of Lieutenant Cornelius O’Callaghan, who had received it from Pepita's hand before she died in the hospital at Genoa. Malatesta had not recovered from his wounds and the newspapers had been full of this strange, romantic personage who, though a noble and of very ancient and proud family, had sacrificed everything for what he conceived to be the cause of the wronged and oppressed people. There had been a good deal of writing about the dangers of a heady idealism, and how much evil could be wrought in the world by the honest fanatic. Phoebe had laid aside all those writings to be read through when the reading would hurt her less. Pepita's statement she read through at once, hungrily. She was feeling overwrought and almost angry with those people who were so glib about Malatesta, knowing him not at all. To her he had been perfect, but she knew well that there were darker shades than that in his life and character. He could be cruel and subtle when it served his Cause and his purpose, as little troubled by scruples as his ances : tors of the Middle Ages, ruthless and without remorse afterwards, which is to say that he was one of the born leaders of. men without a chink in his armour. The chink had come with the love of a woman.

The Brotherhood was likely to become disorganised and of little account, which was a matter for congratulation to quiet people who wanted to sleep easily in their beds a> night—yet the experts in foreign affairs were agreed that while Malatesta’s death made the Brotherhood less formidable. it made it also more dangerous—as a rudderless ship is dan

gerous. She knew more about Malatesta than any of them, she said to herself, be cause Malatesta had loved her. She shut herself away from her friends these days when the crocusses were pushing up their heads in the gar* den beds under her window and the thrush was singing the first rapturous song of the year. Firm, her Irish terrier. a dog with an almost eerie sadness about him at times, as though he had inherited a sense of past wrong, would come to her and lay his nose on her knee and sigh heartbreaking sighs There had been an odd friendship between Pepita the dancer and the young Irish sailor at the last. Day after day he came in from his ship and climbed up through the town to the long white hospital on its heights, bringing flowers or whatever offering he might, to Pepita. He had sat by her bed day after day, sometimes, when she was very bad, in silence, sometimes talking. Little by little, on her better days, she had got him to write what she wanted to be said to Phoebe. It was very frank. When Cornelius O’Callaghan sent it to Phoebe it was with abject apologies for his share in it “I could not refuse a dying woman,” he wrote, “but when you have read what I wrote out for her, please think that I have forgotten it all. They were brave people, these two: and the few men who stood by Malatesta while our engineers tunnelled the mountain. They were without food at the last, though they had .fuel.; and the water sras all but gone. They had been melting the hard-frozen snow. They made their last stand in the little churchyard behind the high walls which our men and the Alpini soon scaled. There were not a dozen of them at the end. but they fought like tigers, or brave men. Wc tried to save Pepita, but she wouldn’t lie saved.” There was a personal message put in a postscript. “Perhaps when I am in England you

will let me come to see you. If anything could add to my honour and reverence for you it would be that you had been loved by such a man and with such love. It is only your due. ’ I When she had read this, Phoebe sat i with her hands in her lap, looking be-1 fore her aimlessly, as she had acquired j 3 habit of doing since she had had so , many things to think about. She was ; ceasing to be a child, she said to herself, wondering why these men should care about her. She had been so narrow and poor and afraid with Mala-, testa. If she had been worthy of the love of a man hke Malatesta she must have loved him. And yet—she was an English lady. Tradition would have been too strong for her if she had married Malatesta. She would have hated her position as the wife of a revolu tionary leader. Better to have failed Malatesta before marriage than after. And the children. She could never have been the mother of children of the Revolution, without religion, without established laws and all the safeguards. It would have killed her. So her thoughts went on white she stared before her in the twilit room with the thrush singing outside her window and the last light fading off the sky. She loved her own home, and the peace and quietness and the honour and affection in which she was held, and her position as only- second to Lady Mary since Miss Lowe had been so bad with rheumatism. She musj do her grieving now for Malatesta, but never think that things could have been otherwise. Her feet were planted in the English earth. Never again did she want any violent emotion. By the last light of the waning day she read Pepita’s messages. Malatesta and Pepita will soon be forgotten. Malatesta is dead and Pepita will soon follow. The Signora is not to grieve. Malatesta was not for her, nor she for Malatesta. The Signora belongs to the cold Northern races. She does not know how to love. If she had loved Malatesta, Pepita must have killed her. As it is, Pepita

has only pity. Listen, then. Sign and hear what Pepita did for J[ testa; not many Spanish women tq j have done it. The night that Sip [left the camp when she stepped out: the dark night running by chink of light that came from lamp by which Malatesta sat ! worked—Pepita saw that and uni ! stood. Pepita waited a little J Malatesta came out into the jl ness of the corridor and took he] his arms and kissed her lips as he] 1 never kissed them for Pepita. It 1 not for Pepita, but for the Sipio] but the Signora was not thinking] Malatesta’s kisses but only of h] at home in England, that ] country where the sun never sh] The people of London, neverthe] went wild for Pepita's dini-ing; ] are not cold, but they are carl Never had Malatesta kissed me] though he had kissed me. but hel lieved to the end that it was the I nora. I. Pepita. deceived him. I those last days he turned to mel comfort. It. was like a man thatl he must have known that I loved I They do not know, or care, peril when they put a knife into a wonfl heart and turn it about. He was! thinking of me but of the Signora.l " That last day before they bl through we could hear the mines si ing all the mountains—he said to ml ” ‘ This will be the second time I Malatesta was defeated. The first I it was by the coldness of a wofl Yet she loved me at the end, Fill else why did she kiss me with pal that night in the darkness? Atl last I caught her and held her.| never lover! her so much as when ■ her go.' fl ” I let him believe that. Signorß Pepita, who knew how to love. BB you had been there 1 would ■ killed you. though Malatesta killerfl after. He died happier believing■ you loved him. !a (To be Continued.) |