Complete Story. MARY ELWYN’S SECRET.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIV, Issue XXII, 2 June 1900, Page 1014

Complete Story. MARY ELWYN’S SECRET.

ALAN ST. AUBYN

(Author of “A Fellow of Trinity,** <&c)

BART 11. CHAPTER 111. The morning after old Brown’s foolish triumph .Mi- Elwyn came over to the rectory, and asked to see him for a few minutes alone. He had come over to ask for the amount of his first quarter’s stipend which was not due for another month. He was called up to town on business, he explained, and he had not yet received his remittances from abroad. Brown did not receive his tithes in advance, he did not, in fact, receive them for months after they fell due, nevertheless he managed to let Mr Elwyn, who was profuse in his thanks, have the money. “It is very strange for such a rich man to be so hard up for money,” the rector’s wife remarked rather sharply when he told her the object of Mr Elwyn’s visit. "My dear,” Brown said, in a tone of mild reproof, “we are all liable to run out of ready money. Mr Elwyn has had a great many calls upon him lately, in settling in a new house.” “He has not paid them if he has,” said his wife, severely. "He is in debt all over the village already." “He is going up town on business, my dear: probably to receive his remittances,’ Brown suggested mildly. He always put the best construction on 1 kings. Whatever the business was that took the curate up to town, he took a packing ease of considerable dimensions, in addition to his portmanteau, up with him. The Rector had been paying a visit at the further end of the parish, on the road to Beeston Junction, and as he stood tit the door of a cottage, the l-’aw ley carriage, with the big packingcase on top, drove by. .Mr Elwyn returned from town in time for duty the following Sunday—he left the packing case behind. Brown observed -and his “Aniens" were more impressive than ever. The Rector and his wife went to no more dinner parties at the Court; his intercourse with his wealthy curate’s family was restricted henceforth to tennis parties, and occasional afternoon tea. Mrs Elwyn had a. nervous constrained manner; she did not get on at all with the rector’s wife; she never seemed quite at ease amid her new surroundings. “I’m sure her husband is a perfect Blue-beard," Mrs Brown remarked one day when she had been calling at the Court. "I never saw a woman so absolutely frightened of a man in my life. I am certain there is a cupboard with tin ugly secret in it in that bouse, and that poor broken-spirited creature has got the key. By the way, Bob. those blue vases you were talking about are not on the mantelpiece of the drawing-room." •‘1 should think not!" the Rector answered. "Elwyn. if he is a wise man, Ims locked them away. I should be very sorry to have them on my mantelpiece. Those cureless servants of his might break them any day.” Mr Elwyn did not give his servants the opportunity of breaking the beautiful old china belonging to Eawley Court. He had it all locked away, he explained to Brown the next time he called, and was looking round the room as if he missed something; he had put it all away in a place of safety, directly he was aware of its value; even the china in the cabinets he had removed. and stored away with the rest, and some trumpery ornaments of no value were put in its place. The Rector did not care to visit the dismantled room when all his old friends were gone. There was a teapot, in a corner, which Mr Elwvn. he noticed one day he called, had overlooked. A delightful old Worcester teapot, and he greeted it with a little nod of recognition. "Is it of any value?" Mr Elwyn asked, fidlowing the direction of his Brown hesitated a moment; he didn't want it to be put away, out of sight, with the rest. "It is Worcester.” he said. "Old?" “Y e s; decidedly old." The next time he went to the Court the teapot was gone. Mr Elwyn. tts we have before remarked. was not good at visiting, but his daughter imide up for it. Slit-

wax very active in the parish, and did a great <l. al of work in the schools; and she was an unwearied sick visitor. The Rector used to call her his lay curate: it seemed to him that Mary Elwyn could never do enough in the parish. It would have been unkind to say that she was not really fond of the work, that she did it under constraint, actuated by some conscientious motive. The Rector would not have said it for the world, but he had his own opinion; he could not have bi lieved that a mere sense of duty would have urged a girl to such unremitting labour. But the strange thing about it was that she did no: seem to get any encouragement at home. Her father used to speak of her as “my Quixotic daughter”; and Mrs Elwyn seemed uneasy and distressed when any reference was made to Mary's labours in the parish. “She will make a capital clergyman's wife,” the Rector said to her father one day, when they happened to come across Mary in the village. The Curate smiled, and looked after his daughter’s retreating figure. “1 don't think Mary will marry a clergyman,” he .said (Significantly. “She will probably go to India.’’ And then he told Brown that a son of one of his county neighbours, who had recently returned from India on leave, had asked his permission to pay his addresses to his daughter. “And you?’’ Brown enquired hastily: he knew the young man well, and could not have wished him a better wile. “I? Oh. I gave him permission to lake his chance. It would be a very good match for Mary —and she would go to India.’’ Brown repeated this conversation to his wife directly lie got home. She smiled and shook her head. “It is not going to work in the usual way,’’ Brown remarked, “1 suppose times have changed since I went courting. I know I asked you first, Jenny, and your father after.” Mrs Brown smiled and sighed, as she recalled those far-off days, and an unaccountable moisture gathered in her kind blue eyes. She had never regretted the promise she made to her father's curate so long ago. Her eyes had not shed many tears since that never-to-be-forgotten day, and old Brown got up hastily from his chair, and kissed away the tear before it had time to fnll. and his wife of forty years blushed like a girl again. “He had asked Mary first, Bob, and she had refused him—and—and she loves him dearly,” Mrs Brown said with a little catch in her voice. She had not refused Brown when he asked her so long ago; she had touched no spring of far-off memory to cause that suspicious catch in her voice. “Why did she refuse him?" he asked bluntly. “() Bob, you are so matter of fact a girl’s a girl ” “And doesn’t know her own mind?" “A’es. Mary Elwyn knows her own mind." his wife said sadly. She was very fond of the girl, and they had been thrown a good deal together lately in their parish work, but he did not know she was Mary Elwyn’s confidante. “Sin is very fond of Kenneth Forbes. She could not help being fond of him. he is a splendid fellow. But she has some reason of her own I am sure an honourable one. for refusing him. I'm afraid it's connected with that dreadful Blue-beard cupboard." “It was scarcely the thing for Forbes to go to her father after the girl refused him.” “Oh yes it was, under the circumstances; I am to blame if any one is." Mrs Brown said hastily. “I knew Mary loved him. and it was an excellent match for her. and I told him to “You, oh Jenny!” The Rector was not at all surprised, after this confession of his wife's, to hear it formally announced that Mary Elwyn was.engaged to marry

Kenneth Forbes, but he could not understand the girl looking so unhappy, when he offered her his congratulations. He was sure that she had accepted her lover unwillingly, that she had been coerced into the engagement, and he told his wife so when he got home. “I am afraid she has,” she admitted rather reluctantly; “but, you see. Bob. it will be the best thing for her; I know she loves him—and it will he a very good match—and she will go to India ” And she will go to India! “That was exactly what her father had said, as if going to India, for a girl, were equivalent to. well, to going to Heaven!” “It wouldn’t be to most girls, Bob, but it would l>e to Mary, poor girl! It would be going away from that uncongenial home —it would be leaving behind her that dreadful Blue-beard cupboard.” The engagement was to be a very short one. Kenneth Forbes’ leave was nearly expired, and preparations for the wedding were hurried on. The trousseau was on a most liberal scale. Its magnificence. far exceeded anything that the Rector's wife had ever seen; she could not help smiling as she compared it with her own humble trousseau that had doue such splendid duty through all these forty years. There was some of it in existence still. In spite of all these grand preparations. the bride-elect went about the village with a white frightened face, looking sadder and sadder as the wed-ding-day approaching. She did notseem to take the slightest interest in her beautiful things, she hated to talk about them. Mis Brown was in the house when the wedding dress came home, and the dressmaker from a neighbouring town came over with it. It required a great deal of persuasion to induce Mary to put on the dreaded garment, and when she had got it on, and was crowned with the wreath and veil, and her mother led her before the glass, to see the effect, instead of blushing, and smiling back at the lovely image re. fleeted in it, as a bride-elect is supposed to do, she turned away from it with a shudder, and broke down in an hysterical tit of weeping. There was nothing to be done but to drag off the wedding finery and put everybody out of the room as quickly as possible. Hysterical people say such ridiculous things: it is never safe to let strangers listen to their ravings. Quickly as Airs Brown had been hurried away, she caught a few incoherent words that the girl poured out in her frenzy. She was imploring Kenneth Forbes to release her from her engagement, and Mrs Brown caught, or thought she caught, some wild words about bringing sorrow and shame upon him. She made up her mind as she hurried home, a little upset and flustered at this unexpected termination of her visit, that she wouldn’t say a word to her husband about what she had overheard: he wouldn’t understand that it was merely the nonsense of an hvs-

terical girl; he would attach some serious importance to it. Besides, what could “sorrow” and “shame” have to do with Mary Elwyn? Mrs Brown was uneasy about the girl all day; she had an idea that she was bullied at home, bullied and sat upon; but she couldn’t understand why she should break down, and utter all that nonsense when she put on her wedding- gown. It ought to have been a supreme moment. It is a supreme moment to most girls. After tea she went up to the Court to enquire after Mary Elwyn. It was a lovely June evening, and she took the short, cut across the fields and through the shrubbery, instead of going by the road and through the lodge gates as she was accustomed to do when she made a formal call. She reached the middle of the shrubbery, which at this time of the year was densely wooded; the trees were in fuli leaf, and there was a thick undergrowth of fern; the place had been neglected and let run wild during the Squire’s absence, and nothing had been done to it since Mr Elwyn came. Mrs Brown had to push the boughs aside to pass, and the undergrowth was so thick and tangled with fern and brambles thait she missed the path. She was turning back to retrace her steps, when the sound of voices arrested her. The voices were quite near, within a few yards, but the speakers were hidden from her by a thick spreading hedge of yew; she knew the voices in a moment. It was Mary Elwyn and her lover. The girl was speaking in an agitated voice; she was begging Kenneth to release her from her engagement, to put off the wedding. “My darling.” he was saying, “how can you ask such a thing? Is it possible. after all. that you do not love me, Mary?” There was an ache in the manly voice that Mrs Brown could not help catching, and the girl was weeping. It was dreadfully embarrassing for the Rector’s wife; she did not know whether to make her presence known, or to steal silently away. While she was still hesitating, the voices drew nearer; she could have touched the speaker, if the hedge had not been between. “It. is not that. Kenneth,” Mary was saying-, “Oh, if you only knew! 1 cannot tell you the reason now; —you will know the reason someday—why I wish the wedding put off. Many people put off their weddings at the last moment; it is no unusual thing. 1 want you to go to my father, and tell him you wish to put it off—for—for the present—for a yea.- a 1 least—” “You want me to go back to India without you?” the young man said reproachfully, “How can you ask mt such a thing, Mary?” “Because 1 love you, Kenneth; if I did not love you, I would not ask this of you,” she said earnestly. “Oh, believe me, this is no whim, no caprice of mine—there is a reason —a good reason —” the girl shivered as she spoke, she eould not keep her voice steady. “Can you not tell me the reason—can you not trust me, Mary?” he said

hoarsely. “There should be no secrets between us.” “It is not my secret,” she said with a moan. “Believe me, it is not my secret, Kennelh; it is not mine to tell. I can only ask you to trust me—” She was wringing her hands and weeping, and her lover was bending over her. Mrs Brown could not have stirred an inch if she would. She stood rooted to the spot. “If it is not your secret, 1 will not ask you to tell it,” he said gravely. "An<l —and—of course I will trust you! I am not going to let this secret of some one else's come between us. and spoil our lives. It is because I love you, Mary—love you —and trust you—that I ain going to carry you away from this place, and we will leave,the secret behind us. I swear to you, whatever it may be, it shall never come between my love and you!" Mrs Brown could not hear what Mary answered; perhaps she made no further resistance; the footsteps of the lovers retreated in the direction of the house, and she crept back through the tangled path by the way she came. She did not go up to the Court to make enquiries; she had learnt all she came to know; no, not all; she had not learnt Mary Elwyn’s secret. It was quite preposterous, she told herself, for the girl to expect her lover to give her up. What man in his senses, who loved a girl, would give her up, because she could not share with him a secret that was not her own to tell? CHAPTER IV. Mary Elwyn was not well enough to take her place in the Sunday School the following morning, which happened to be Sunday, and she did not come to church during the day. Her banns were called for the third time that day, and the wedding was to take place early in the week. — When Mr Elwyn came back that night from taking the Sunday evening J duty at Rose-Ash, he found his house-1 hold thrown into confusion. *

Mary had run away. It was all over the village the next morning. She had left her home while the family were at church in the morning, and had not since returned. She had been seen hurrying along the road in the direction of Beeston Junction, and the stationmaster there remembered a lady answering her description, taking a"ticket by' the afternoon mail for a station some thirty' miles distant. ami there all traces of her ceased. Mrs Brown went over to the Court at once, directly she heard the news, to see Mrs Elwyn, but she only saw her maid, who said her mistress was too ill to see anyone; and consequently she came home very hot and angry. “I believe that Blue-beard cupboard is at the bottom of it!” she said to her husband with quite unusual warmth. "The ]>oor girl has not run away from her lover; she has run away from some cruel family secret that she could bear no longer.” Mr Elwyn bore his daughter’s disappearance more calmly than any one would have supposed. “Mary was always self-willed.” he explained, “and she was averse to the marriage from the first. There was a previous attachment. which we hoped she had got over. She has been very unhappy since her engagement to poor Forbes, fretting, I’m afraid, for her old lover, and she has gone away to escape marrying a man she does not love.” This was all the explanation that was ever given of Mary' Elwyn’s sud-i den disappearance, and there were no efforts made to follow her. She had found an asylum, it was stated, with a distant relative of her mother’s. It was not the place of the bridegroom elect to follow his recalcitrant bride when this story of the former lover got about, so Forbes packed up his things and went to India a week earlier than he had intended. ■ But before he went he came to say to Mrs. Brown, who had his friend all through the

“Don’t you believe, that cruel story about an old lover," she said to him at parting. "Mary has a cause for unhappiness that we know nothing about. She is the best and truest girl in the world. She has gone away because she loves you.” It was not many weeks after Mary Elwyn’s disappearance that business called the Rector up to town, and on the way, at Beeston Junction, he met his Curate, who was going up by the same train. Mr. Elwyn had his son with him, a lad of fourteen, a ml betwet n them they were carrying across the rails a big black portmanteau. There were plenty of porters about the station, and one of them came np to him and offered to carry the bag; but he sent the man off with a bundle of wraps, which were no weight at all. The bag was evidently heavy: the hid, who he’ll one of the handles, tottered beneath the weight, ami stopped in the middle of the line to rest. Brown hurried across the rails to offer his assistance, and as he came np to him unexpectedly in the permanent way, Mr Elwyn started back in affright as if he had seen a ghost and dropped the bag on the line. “I never saw a man so panic-stricken in my life," Brown told his wife when repealing the incident to her later on. “Let me help you,” said Brown goodnaturedly. There was no time for further greetings, for the train was in sight, and everyone was shouting to them from the platform to look out. “Xo,no. thank you,” Mr Elwyn said, hurriedly. “We can manage it very well. Come along, Arthur.” Brown pushed the boy aside—there was not a minute to lose—and took hold of the handle of the bag'. But he was not at all prepared for its weight. He fairly staggered under it, and when he reached the platform and the train rushed by the perspiration stood out in great beads on his forehead. “Whatever eould that bag contain?” Brown asked himself that question all

the way up to London. There were few things of that bulk that eould weigh so heavily—only metal indeed. Was Elwyn returning the wedding presents? He had not come back by the end of the week, and on the Saturday evening, quite late, a letter was sent to the Rectory from his wife asking Brown to fill her husband’s place the next day, as he was unexpectedly detained in town. A few days later, while .Mr Elwyn still delayed his return, news reached the Rectory that Sir (tiles Fawley and his. family were coming home. They hail gone abroad for several years, and they were coming back quite unexpectedly. The curate would have to look out for another house, and another cure, for. if the truth must lie told, a growing dislike and suspicion of him had been in Brown’s mind for some time past. He eould not reconcile those tine "Aniens" and the stirring sermons with a general reluctance on the part of Mr Elwyn to pay' his debts, which had been made painfully' evident since the abandoned wedding. But a few days later more startling news reached the Rectory: the bailiffs were at the Court. The news spread like wildfire through the village, and every little tradesman in the place crowded up to the great house with his bill. -Mr Elwyn had not returned, and his wife was confined to her room. The poor woman was too terrified and overwhelmed with this calamity to see any one. She wrote a very piteous note to Brown, begging him to let her have a few pounds, as her husband had left her without any money in the house. He had only paid Elwyn his quarterly stipend a few days before he went away, but he sent the poor woman n five-pound note, and begged her to communicate with her husband immediately. Xo doubt she did so, for the next thing he heard was that she and the children had gone away. The bailiffs had stopped the luggage, but they had

let the weeping woman and her children go. The luggage left behind was all that really belonged to Mr Elwyn. The furniture—and the plate—and the china, the beautiful old china—belonged to the Squire. Brown telegraphed at once to Sir Giles’ lawyer in town to come down without delay. He came down by the next train. Brown never eould be persuaded to tell the sequel of the miserable story. It is best told briefly. v When Sir Giles’ lawyer went through the house, the plate safe—the lock of which had been forced—was found empty! And all the beautiful old china was gone! Brown’s wretched egotistical story had aroused the miserable man’s greed: his wife had read aright the revelation of the cupidity it had awakened in his glittering eyes. The humiliation of poor Brown during that terrible time was dreadful! His wife declared that he went grey in a week. No wonder! It was he who had brought Mr Elwyn into BeestonRoyul. It was he who gave his old friend, Sir Giles, confidence to let his family place, with its priceless heirlooms, to his wealthy curate —and it was he who had helped him to carry them away! The bag that Brown had assisted to carry, at the risk of his life, and with the sweat of his brow, contained his old friend’s family plate! There was very little left for the bailiffs to distrain upon. The poor girl’s trousseau —a collection of M.A. hoods of different Universities—and some volumes of printed sermons by eminent divines. Brown looked through these by accident, and recognised many of the affecting discourses that had been preached from his pulpit. A warrant was issued for Elwyn s apprehension, but he had already left the country a week before the miserable denouement. Let the curtain fall. The actors have all, like Macbeth’s witches, suddenly disappeared. “The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, And they are of them.—Whither are they vanish'd?” But they were not all bubbles. Months after. Mrs Brown heard by accident that Mary Elwyn was employed as a nurse in a London hospital. Of course she found her out without delay—and of course she wrote to the lover that she had run away from in that unreasonable —she always insists upon calling it, that honourable —way, and told him her story, and the story of that Blue-beard cupboard, of which the unhappy girl had the key. The days of Quixotism are not quite over. Kenneth Eorbes came home from India on leave the following year; and this time he took a wife baek with him. “You were quite right.” he wrote to Mrs Brown on the eve of the wedding, “if Mary loved me she had no alternative but to run away.” THE END.