Serial Story. CAPTAIN ADAIR’S WIFE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXV, Issue II, 14 July 1900, Page 50

Serial Story. CAPTAIN ADAIR’S WIFE.

By

LIEUTENANT JOHN PAYNE.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. The opening chapter, as Is usual, Introduces a number of dramatis personae. We are at Fort Hauchua, in Arizona, where a number of soldiers and officers are gathered interested In the capture of Geronimo, an Apache chief, and a band of Indians devastating the country. We first meet the men, who evidently dislike one Meilish, who is about to be promoted as their sergeant. Hellish Is a man of good family, who has come io grief, but who is, it appears, trying to pull up. We are then introduced to Lieut. Hecker and his friend Ronan, an IrishMexican, the son of a Spanish-Mexican mother, and an old gold prospector from the Emerald Isle. He is a charmingly lazy and graceful man, and seems amusing. CHAPTER ll.—This begins on the train which is taking Colonel Marcy, his daughter Mary, and his niece Nina to the fort. Both girls an* very beautiful, Nina as a semiSpanish type, and Mary as a Northerner nnd an English girl. Captain Adair joins the train, and is -immediately much taken with Nina, who is quite conscious of the effect her power and beauty have had upon him. Chapters ill. and IV. describe the party at the Fort, and the progress of two love affairs. In Chapter V. the first of these, the attachment between Captain Adair and Nina develops into an exchange of vows between the two. The girl is greatly distressed at the thought that the Captain must leave her to take part in a dangerous expedition against the Indians, and at his suggestion she agrees to marry him at once. Chapter VI. reveals some unpleasant facts about Meilish, who it appears has a wife and child whom he has deserted. Chapter VII.. as Nina and the Captain are riding home they are attacked by Indians. Adair, grasping the terrible position, aims his revolver to shoot Nina. But his arm is struck up and he falls to the ground pierced by a bullet. CHAPTER VIII.—On recovering his senses, six weeks later, he finds, to his great distress that Nina has gone home. CHAPTER IX.—Tells us more of Lieut. Hecker’s way of life. CHAPTER X.—Hecker loses heavily at play, but is reimbursed by Mrs Savage, who is evidently much attached to him.

XI. As soon as Adair knew that Nina had gone back to her home he began to hope for a letter from her. Every evening, when it. was time for the orderly who went down to the station for the mail to come in Adair lay with his face towards the road and looked and longed for some word from Nina. He could look across the parade ground and see the ladies in Officers’ Row standing out upon the verandahs, waiting for their own letters from distant homes. The mail had to be taken into the post trader’s post office and distributed, but the coming of the orderly always meant that the letters would he there in a. very few minutes. From the time he saw the dusty blue uniform and the ambling mule disappear up toward the post trader's, until it was so late that there could be no possibility of a letter, Adair's heart would beat thickly and heavily, lie hadn’t many correspondents. A letter had been a rare event for him. Many came in these days, condoling with him over his hurt, and congratulating him upon bis escape, but every one was put down with a heavy heart. Its contents had Wen a bitter disappointment. He had torn up the letter he had begun to Xina, It had seemed brutal to follow her. even with a letter, when she had gone and left him. As the weeks went by and convalescence gradually grew into his normal health, hr ceased hoping to hear from her. She had repented of her hasty art in marrying him, and with a girt's ignorance of such things, had fancied that in ignoring it she could lumnl it. She knew in whom she was trusting. Adair thought. Although the revulsion of that night had taken from her her love for him, it had not taken her eon♦idrnrr in him. or in his lovnltv. She knew that he would never betray her secirt except at her dr«»rr. If she did not want to l»r his wife she was at liberty. In Aduir was the chivalry born of ideals, of loneliness. That in not taking the matter into his own hands

non, he was doing u wrong and a cruel thing to Nina, he did not see. That complications might come; that it was not child’s play to be cast aside, but a thing that must be met and faced, that c ould not be juggled with, he was not man of the wor.d enough to realise. It seemed to concern only themselves. If Nina desired the marriage to be as though it were not, it should be so. Affair had refused Mrs Acton’s invitation to be her guest; and it was not pressed. '1 here were new people coming into the Fort, changes being made, but to all this Adair was oblivious. He was even blind to the fact that Colonel Marcy did not treat him with the proud and loving friendship that he had once shown. The great ache in his heart covered every minor pain, and made it as nothing. He lived alone with his own hidden story. Often at night, when the watch sang out “Two o’clock and all’s well,’’ he heard the tratnp of Adair’s feet as they paced the verandah, and saw the burning point of his cigar in the darkness. One of the letters which came to Adair he had at first thrown impatiently aside, and then taken up again: and at the third reading he had found comfort in letting his thoughts travel along the line it suggested. An old friend was going to Japan for the winter, and asked him to go with him. He thought a little bitterly of Nina’s plans and how soon theyfhad faded. There was nothing to prevent that wedding journey to the south of France now. The litdiah troubles were over; he was entitled to a long leave. Sometimes his fancy ran to day dreams, and it seemed to him that he must be mistaken. He let himself imagine sometimes that he was going to join .una and they were going off together; and then laughed at himself for his folly. He began dozens of letters to her, endearing, forgiving, tender letters, but he sent none of them. She had left him, and in her own time she would return, or not at all. His San Francisco friend wrote again, urging him to come upon the twentieth of the month and sail for Japan, “Come.” he said, “and see the snows on Fujisan, see ‘the white foam laces broider the breast of the Indian deep.’ Come and see the azaleas on the hillside, and the rice fields taken by pink weed. Come and hear the ‘zum zum’ of. the musmee.” ■Adair was thin and nervous from his long vigils, his waiting without hope, and after the lafet letter he went to Colonel Marcy to make application for a long leave. The colonel’s office was full. There were half a dozen officers standing about, on one pretence or another, and they all threw out a greeting to Adair. They liked him, but he was so distant in these days, he kept so much to himself, that they saw very little of him. He lounged by the window and looked over the “Army and Navy Journal” until the last of the stragglers was gone. Adair had always been so distinctly the colonel’s favourite. companion, and almost confidante. that they were naturally left alone together. Now Adair drew up his ehair to the table where the colonel sat looking over a pile of papers, with a relief that that strong and sturdy presence always gave him. The secret which was always in his mind was uppermost now. He was glad Nina had a relative like this; but he wished that it could l>e otherwist. for a little while, that he might tell the colonel the story and ask his advice. Adair’s heart was sick of loneliness and repression. But the face that was turned to him was not the sympathetic one of the old days. The colonel himself was unconscious of the change that hud come to him since Mary had told him what she had seen on that scrap of paper. Some great scientist Ims said that consciousness is but a

little lamp which illumines one spot of the brain at a time, and that it has nothing whatever to do with the working of that complicated machine: that an idea is introduced, and the owner considers it but a trivial incident, and forgets it, seemingly. It passes out of his consciousness, hut there in the dark it is working on and on. and knitting itself into the very tibre of the brain, until it becomes a part of the beliefs and reasons. Adair felt vaguely chilled, and it was in the most formal tones that he made his application. “You are entitled to a long leave,” the colonel said, “ami of course you will get it. Where do you think of going?” “To Japan.” The colonel looked at him sharply. He would not have conceived it possible, two months ago, that he would ever disbelieve Adair, but he did not believe him now. As for Adair, the coionel’s coolness seemed but a piece with the general change in everything. He went back to his quarters with the certainty of his leave, a little more tired ami unhappy than when he started out. Ten days later, he had said good bye to every one, and was on his way to the Pacific slope. He stopped in Tombstone. He wanted to see the old man who had said the marriage service that had made Nina his wife. There had been no question of secrecy then, but it might be important to ask it now. Tlbjie doqr of the little wooden house was closed, and the curtainless windows looked like blind eyes on ,“r.eh sidle. He knocked and heard the echo of emptiness. There was a head pushed out of the window ot the next, house, and a woman called to attract his attention. “Is it Mr. Bland you want to see?” she asked, with the air of one who has information to distribute. “He’s dead. He died this Thursday coming a week. They sent the remains back Bast. It was real sad,” and she looked him boldly over in an effort to “place him,” as she would have said. Adair went back down the path, white in the sunshine. There were faded zinnias, almost the only flower that grows hardily in Arizona, down each side. It seemed to Adair that a last link had been broken. He felt like a boy who had a grief, and no one in whom he could confide. He wondered why- he could not feel as he had felt before he ever knew Nina. It had only been a short three weeks, but they had made his life anew. He wondered if all the stories he had heard of the perfidy of women were true; if he were but one of thi great army of men who were victims. And then he was ashamed of himself. He blamed himself for taking his girl wife into the horrors of that night—that night when her nerves were already strung to tension pitch. Vv hatever she did. he would not blame her. Let it be hers to say what their lives should be in the future. And then at the thought of going away from her so far, his soul revolted. He could not. he would not do it! He walked the little platform at Benson, where the road ran by which would take him westward to San Francisco and Japan, or eastward to New York and Nina, lie must go to her. He would go to her. After all.

she was his wife, and he had the right. It seemed a simple thing to do, after he thought of it as a real possibility. He went into the station to buy his ticket. The late Guayinas train came puffing in, and a slender stream of passengers, ranchmen, and miners on their way “baek Hast,” or to “ ’Frisco,” made their way into the stuffy little ticket office. Adair felt a familiar slap on his shoulder, and turned to see Hecker’s big person at his elbow. “Hello, Adair. I hear you are off for Jagian. Queer way of spending your leave. When 1 get a chance t > get out of this God forsaken country. I want to get into civilisation again, instead of into heathendom. I’m going to New York, to walk Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and see the wheels go ’round You’d better change vour mind and come along with me.” AH of Adair’s rosy visions tied. Tlie cold light of day and practicality came with Hecker. “Give me a ticket to San Francisco.” he said to the man at the window. XI I. The long ride ovei- the desert was a terrible journey to Adair. There was despair and misery in his heart, for which there seemed no outlet. The terrible loneliness of his life loomed up in awful contrast to those day dreams which, almost imperceptibly to him. had become an integral part of his very life. Even before he had known Nina, with the naturalness of youth, he had felt himself journeying toward the pot of gold that lay at the end of the rainbow. Now it was past, and bad proven fairy coin,, turning to dead leaves in his hand. The catastrophe of his life, it seemed to him. had come. When he left, the train at Oakland, he was going toward the ferry boat which would take him across the bay. when he felt his hand grasped in a strong clasp. With a sense of comradeship such as it seemed to him he had never known before, he turned to Morrison. Morrison had been a classmate of Adair’s at the Point, but had made no sort of a record except in the drawing class. Coming from a small town in Missouri, much as Adair had come from his native hills, he had known nothing of brush and paint until they had been introduced to him casually in his school course. Then he discovered his talent. He had resigned immediately after his graduation, and taking the two or three thousand dollars his father had allowed him. had gone to Julien’s in Paris, and seen a portrait of his hung in the Salon at the end of his second year.

Morrison was the last, man on earth to be taken for an artist by the people in whose minds there is a conventional portrait of the type. He was almost as big as Hecker, but where Hecker’s was the bigness of a mastiff, Morrison suggested the wolf hound. Long oh head and dark of eye. close clipped as to hair and moustache, abrupt in speech and manner. Morrison was of the size and aspect to command instant respect and attention anywhere. Nature has put into him a passion for colour and form and the poetry of the existing world, a straightforwardness in arriving at his destination, that made him a simple genius.

Adair felt in that first hand clasp the tonic of friendship. “Tt looks very much as though your resolve to throw off the weight of the Indian question didn’t come any too soon,” Morrison said, scanning Adair’s face closely as they sat down on one of the seats that ran along the upper deck of the ferryboat. “That wound of yours must have been more serious than you gave me to understand. How did it all happen? You know I was away

up in the north country, out of the line of newspapers, when the thing occurred. 1 was a good deal surprised down at the Bohemian Club the other night at hearing Allison, who was putting in some mining machinery down in Tombstone at the time," telling a very romantic tale about your getting that bullet in an attempt at rescuing a beautiful young woman from the Apaches. How was it?” Morrison was an imaginative man, and a close student of faces. The men who worked alongside of him said that he was going to be the most terrible of portrait painters, for he could analyse the lines of the human face to a minute degree, and translate their meaning so that all the world might see. He saw at once that there was more than physical ill at the bottom of Adair’s trouble. He had always been fond of him, he told himself, because Adair’s face was the purest and simplest he had ever seen. Its flawless outlines had fascinated him as a beautiful horizon line would have delighted him. But now when he beheld these lines lost in a tragedy of suffering, saw this nature warped and torn, he felt- that there were depths which, could he sound them, would give him new vistas of human life. “There is very little to tell,”’ Adair said. “As usual, the club story is story’, pure and simple. There is only one line of the genuine narrative: I was coming into the post to take a new command and go down into the Cananeas to keep the pass, from the Apaches. Miss Wentworth, the colonel’s niece, had made a miscalculation and lost her party, and I escorted her over from Tombstone. The Indians attacked us, and we were saved just in the nick of time by the soldiers who were following the Indians. It was very commonplace—hardly worth a paragraph in the paper.” “It strikes me that it was a little past the nick of time, from the way you are carrying that bullet wound.” “It’s nothing. I suppose it's the Arizona climate. What a pretty’ sight San Franeiseo is, lighted on her hill tops.” It was evening, and the chains and tiers of lights that arose beyond the bay made a picture that was dramatic in its ehance arrangement. “It always makes me think of Edinburgh,” Morrison said, turning and letting his eyes follow lovingly the beauty before him. “It prepossesses you in favour of the city to come into it like this. You always keep in your mind the thought of its possibilities, even when you go inland and blast your vision with the sand lots. But this! Wait until you see ‘Old Japan!’” Adair’s spirits began to revive. The long nights on the Pacific, blown softly through the balmy atmosphere. with sky above and water beneath, were like a healing hand. The constant delight of Morrison’s .strong brotherhood, the diversion of his enthusiasms and plans, put new life into him. In Japan they spent three mouths wandering about the country, falling in with people of all nationalities and back again into the companionship with each other, which each had grown to value more and more as days went by. When at last they said good-bye to the volcanoes and rain gods and rocks, the chrysanthemum and the azalea, it was a pair of healthy, strong men who walked the deck of the home going steamer. On board the vessel there was a middle aged passenger who attracted the attention of both the young men by his air of melancholy — almost despair. One night when they were sitting on the deck, a bottle of champagne and a box of cigars between them, Morrison called Adair’s attention to the man, who was leaning over the deck railing. “He is a naval officer, whose dead wife is in her coffin in the hold. Now that is what I call a tragedy of life. I have never seen the woman who was a necessary part of my existence, but when I do, and find that she regards me in the same way, may it please the good (lod to take us together. I never have felt the need of such a finishing. I suppose I should call it. It has always been my idea of the plan of nature, which plans all things well, that marriage is the creation of a new sense. If it is a marriage in the proper use of the term, it opens new horizons. If a man marries a wife whose nature be-

comes so much a part of his own that he can see and enjoy with her senses, he is doubled. Imagine Adair, if you can, a man being born blind, and then having the wonder of sight given him. Could anything he more terrible than to take it away again? It seems to me — they tell me I am an idealist, and so I may be —that there is no affliction like the death of a husband or wife.” ‘‘Yes. there is,” Adair said, in a tone that brought Morrison’s face toward him. Adair had wanted to tell Morrison the whole story from the beginning. He had felt that he must tell him. At first his morbid sense of loyalty to Nina had prevented. Then a healthier tone had come to him from his contact with Morrison, and with the great, living, breathing, commonplace world, and from his involuntary contrasting of the weaknesses which were so essential a part of the oriental nature with the truthfulness and bravery that make the Anglo-Saxon. He had seen that he was making some sort of a mistake. He wanted the advice, the counsel, of this strong man who was his friend, and the hour was propitious to ask it. When the story was finished. Morrison leaned over and took ns hand. “Adair,” he said, “there is only one thing in this world for you to do. Go to your wife as fast as you can go. Letters will mean nothin"-. She must be a sweet woman, lost in some woman’s logic that neither o f us ean understand. Go to her. ami tell her that from your heart you regret the delay. Get to the bottom of the trouble, and take it away. Sh• loves you. Sue must love you. i’he-e has been nothing to alienate her love. She has been waiting for you. Go!” “I will. Thank Heaven for your advice. Morrison. It was exactly what I needed. My leave will be over, but I shall go to Colonel Marcy and tell him the story, as I ought to have told it to him in the first place, and ask for another leave to go East after my wife. I can hardly see. looking at it in the light of my understanding of the situation, how I could have lost sight of the inevitable. I suppose it was lost in the loose hold that my illness gave me upon everything. That is the only explanation that I can give to you or myself.” After this, Adair began to look at life as does the man who feels within himself the power- to conquer. New fibres had been implanted in his soul with those new experiences, and the life he had led for two months had strengthened all that was within him. Taking as it were new blood from Morrison, the currents had deepened and widened until he was sufficient unto himself. His hand felt sure and steady, and instead of moping in despair, he exulted “as a strong man about to run a race.” It was crisp February when he reached Arizona again. The winds of spring had begun to send the white, swirling dust columns careering over the mesa, and the Spanish bayonet and yucca bore lofty spears hung with fragrant white bells. He telegraphed his orderly to bring his horse to the station, only a few hours before his arrival. He was so impatient. He had planned out exactly how he was to come into the Fort, change his dress, go over to see the colonel, tell his story, and then, sure of the hand clasp of his gallant old friend, he would turn about and go to Nina. It was all so plain that he was ashamed to think that another man had been obliged to tell him what to do. He looked out with pleasure upon the familiar sights that had seemed so ugly to him when he went away. The fantastic shapes of the yucca, throwing out its white bloom from grotesque limbs, looked like old friends. The station at Benson is the meeting place of the trains from East and West, and ilie Guaymas train was wailing there for its little dole of passengers. Adair looked keenly about for any of the Fort people. There was nearly always somebody coming or going, and he had the zest of the home comer for a comrade’s face.

He remembered with self pity his encounter here with Hecker." He did not blame that florid and gay young man for his own wrong turning when he had stood here before. He was man enough now, strong

enough to realise that it had all come out of his own weakness and indecision. He even felt a sort of liking for Hecker. Few people could resist that laughing geniality, so frankly departed from all that was straight laced. As he walked the wooden platform, that the sun was beginning to make sticky with its own gummy juices, he felt the pride and joy of life, of young manhood. There were wrecks of men loafing about the grimy saloon opposite the waiting room; men who had come out to the West with high hopes, but who had gone down under the nervous strain and the lack of the fixed standard that public opinion supplies in older communities. and which constitutes the consciences of most men. Coming out of one of these saloons, presently. Adair saw the uniform of a United States soldier. He looked again and saw that it was Mellish. The man saw Adair at once, and his face lighted up with a smile that made Adair want to strike him. He came over toward his officer, saluting, and said: “It is a pleasure to have you back again, captain.” “I am very glad to get back again, Mellish. What are you doing over here?” “I am over with the ambulance, sir. The colonel and Miss Mary and Mrs Acton drove over to meet the Eastern train.” “Where are they? Are they expecting friends?” Adair felt the warmth of a coming meeting with what he felt were his own people. He thought of Mrs Acton's kindness to him in asking him over to stay at her house during his convalescence. and his brusque declension seemed to call for an immediate" apology. He felt like apologising for many of the erratic ways of that poor. >ll young man whom he had left behind in Japan. “Lieutenant Hecker is married, sir. and is coming home with his bride. T thought maybe you had heard about it. They haven’t been talking about anything else at the Fort for the last

month. He’s to have the house that Captain Lawler had. Captain Lawler is going to take the rose eottage. The colonel got him to make the change. Miss Mary and Mrs Acton have been getting it ready for them for a month. It’s beautiful." It went through Adair’s mind that Mellish was particularly garrulous, and he wondered if he had not been indulging in mescal to an extent that might endanger his driving. There was a rakish recklessness in the set of Mellish's broad hat, and altogether an air of triumph and bravado about him, that made Adair dislike the man more than ever. It seemed a new state of affairs for Mrs Acton and Miss Marcy to be taking so active an interest in Hecker. But then women were always interested in a bride, especially women like Mary Marcy and Mrs Acton. Adair’s mouth took on an expression of satisfied sweetness. They would have one to make much of before long, who would be entirely after their own hearts. "Here they come now." Mellish said, still with his air of repressed excitement. Mrs Acton and Mary came up the slips of the platform, lifting their skirts daintily from contact with the sticky wood. They looked pleasant and wholesome to Adair. He was beginning to feel toward Mary as he would to a young cousin: beginning to feel as though he hail people of his own. He went forward and met them with his hand outstretched, and some of the pleasure he felt in his face. Mary’s delicate cheeks flushed < rim son at lhe sight of him. and she turned to Mrs Acton with an expression that was almost appealing. Mrs Acton did not see it. She was ail smiles and maternal happiness. “How delightful to see you.” Captain Adair, just now! We came over to meet our young people and drive them home in the ambulance, through this lovely spring weather. You can go with us.” Marv gave her arm a little jerk and rushed in nt once. “How do yon do. Captain Adair? Why. yon do not look nt nil like the

same man who went away. 1 never saw such a change in any one in mj life You are twice as large—and brown! I’apu! Here is Captain Adair home again. Come and look at him.”

The colonel came briskly across the platform and grasped Adair’s hand with almost the old cordiality. It was a gay, bright day. they wenon a joyous errand, and the light in Adair's face was not a thing to ignore. "Where have you been? We have managed to get along without yon. but it was only because there wasn’i any fighting going on. There has been a campaign of love instead of war. Here’s Hecker coming in with, a wife. Where are you going to " The colonel stopped. He had forgotten for an instant the story which Mary had told him of that letter. “Before very long.” Adair said gayly. “I’m coming in this very evening to talk to you about it.” A look of indescribable relief came over the faces of Mary and the colonel. The colonel rejoiced that everything was going to be explained, and he was going to get his best friend among the young men of his regiment back again. Mary was full of joy to think that any further complication in regard to Nina was removed. Mrs. Acton was in the usual flutter of a woman of her sort at any news of an engagement. . “Tell us about her, Captain Adair. Is she a Japanese? Does she wear a kimono and her hair in a bow knot? Did you meet her on the steamer? They say there is no place like a steamer for the susceptible young man. But then I never thought you were a susceptible young man. 1 don’t think it’s much of a compliment to all the pretty girls we have in the army- for you to go off to Japan to fall in love.” “Oh, it's an old story,” Adair said, happily. “It began long ago.” The colonel was beaming upon him. All this sounded so natural, so above board, so different from the ugly thoughts he had harboured of Adair. There was a scream from the engine, and the train from the East eame around the curve and drew up before the platform. People crowded before Adair. He drew back a little. He was not particularly intimate with Hecker, and he did not care particularly about his wife. He wondered what sort of a woman would care enough for him to marry him; and then his common sense told him that probably the very nicest sort of a young girl would care for Hecker; would probably care for him long after she found him out. Mellish was crowded close up against the train. As the passengers came out he watched for Lieutenant Hecker, and then he turned his eyes towards Adair. Adair had walked towards the ambulance, and had allowed himself to be hidden by the crowd. As Mellish looked back towards the train he saw a face that made him white to his lips. Following Hecker’s wife was a worn, sad-faced woman, who was evidently a subordinate of some sort. She was carrying part of the wraps, and there was none of the festal and alert air which belongs to the friends of a bride. She saw Mellish as he saw her, and. with a paleness which matched his own. stopped still and looked at him. Neither of them spoke a word, and then she walked on behind Mrs. Hecker. who was moving slowly almost in the joint embrace of Mrs. Acton. Mary and the colonel. “The journey was lovely,” she was saving. “Not a thing to mar it. 1 mil so glad to see you all. Is there anybody else over?” “Adair is here, somewhere. Where is he?” the. colonel replied. “Oh. yes, I remember him.” Mrs. Hecker said. “So good of him to come over.” “Is Adair here?" Hecker said. He was in such a transport of pride and delight that it would have seemed that nothing could add to it; but at the mention of Adair's name there was a higher note of exultation. Hecker looked nt his wife’s trim figure in her travelling gown, her air of complete elegance, and wanted to call the whole world in to witness.

“Where is Adair? Ah. there he is! Adair, come here and meet my wife.” He pulled him from behind the corner of one of the little building* and Adair turned his face to see Nina. Nina—ids wife- holding out her hand to him, and smiling. (To be Continued.)