Serial Story. CAPTAIN ADAIR’S WIFE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXV, Issue III, 21 July 1900, Page 98

Serial Story. CAPTAIN ADAIR’S WIFE.

By

LIEUTENANT JOHN PAYNE.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. The opening chapter, as is usual, iutro<lu< es a number of dramatis personae. w e an' at Fort Hauchua, in Arizomf, where a iiuinl»-r of soldiers and officers are gathered interested in the capture of Geron.ino, an Apache chief, and a band of Indians devastating tile country. We first meet the men. who evidently dislike one Mellish, who is about to be promoted as their sergeant. Mellish is a man of good family, who lias come 1., grief, but who is, it appears, trying to pull up. We are then introduced to Lieut. Ileeki r ami his friend Ronan, an IrishMexican. the son of a Spanish- Mexican mother, and an old gold proapei-tor from the Emerald Isle. He is a charmingly lazy ami graceful man, and seems amusing.

CHAPTER ll.—This begins on the train which is taking Colonel Marcy, his daughter Mary, and ills niece Nina to the fort. Both girls’ are very beautiful, Nina as a semiSpanish type, and Mary as a Northerner and an English girl. Captain Adair joins tile train, and is immediately much taken with Nina, who is quite conscious of the effect her power and beauty have had upon hint.

Chapters 111. 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 Mellish. 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 ibe 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. CHAPTERS XI. and Xll.—Adair having received no communication from Nina, gets leave of absence and takes a trip to Japan. On his return, greatly improved in health, he meets Hecker, who. he hears, has lately taken to himself a wife. Hecker asks to introduce the lady to Captain Adair, and to his dismay,’ the latter discovers her to be Nina. ® ® ® XIII. In real life a man who has been brought up with a regard for. the conventionalities, instinctively clings to them when he feels his toothoid leaving him, and mechanically goes through scenes which he must carry off calmly in the face of the world giving no sign of the feeling underneath.

The shock which came to Adair numbed him. In the first second—the first fraction of a second, he seemed to lose consciousness. All his bearings were gone. He nad no landmarks. The imposible thing had happened. Xina, the woman he had married, the woman to whom be v.as preparing to go, had not only deserted him, ignored her marriage, but with a heartlessness which amounted to brutality, with a recklessness which was abandoned, had come back flaunting her new alliance before Ivm.

11- look her hand, and looked into her face, a pure, sweet face, a little sweeter than it had been six mouths age i‘ seemed to him, for there was a’'s|igl:t depression at the corners of ill.' mouth which was not merry, but negatively sad. There was a modishness in her dress and carriage that be b id net seen before, and she looked a little older.

The wide blue velvet collar on her traveling clonk threw up the pearliness of her cheek, nnd the little toque of the same colour which was the finishing touch to her elaborately dressed hair, was more like a crown.

"It's some joke.’’ went through Adair’s mind. “I must have dreamed that 1 married her.” was his second thought, and there came over him that horror of himself, which all men feel when they detect some lesion in the brain—which is themselves.

"Adair is just baek from Japan,” the colonel said, “and we are looking for him to come in presently with a Japanese lady on his saddle croup.” Adair bitterly supposed afterwards that he must have said some words of congratulation to his wife upon her marriage to another man, but he could not remember what. He was only conscious that he was in a topsy turvy world; that Nina, so sweetly pictured in his mind but a moment ago, was a stranger to him; that Heeker, standing there big and smiling, awakened in him the ferocious desire to kill. And then they were all in the ambulance driving away.

“It is too bad there isn’t room for you. here in the ambulance with us. captain.” Airs. Acton smiled out of the ambulance window. She was in a flutter of pleasure. Hecker had always been a favourite of hers, paying her the easy good-natured attention that eame natural to him before all women, old or young. Adair heard his voice politely echoing her lament as though it were some sound from a great distance.

The train to. Guaymas went off and left him standing stupidly on the platform. He walked over to the little adobe livery stable and took the first animal they gave him. a great yellow condemned cavalry horse, who held his head high and was fully capable of the thirty mile ride before him. Adair’s orderly was waiting for him at the Fort station. Rut Adair had forgotten that—had forgotten everything in this unspeakable thing that had happened to him.

He wondered dully at first if his marriage could have been but a fancy of his fevered brain; a thing that he himself had created out of his longings and the shadows of that time. The blow was so great, so impossible. that there must be a mistake somewhere. The surface facts could not be true. They were impossible. He went over and over the situation, trying to grasp it, to grapple with it. to see what he could do. There seemed to be nothing. The thirty miles ended all too soon. It was dark when the tired horse came up the road into the Fort. There was no light in his quarters. His orderly had come back thinking the captain had missed the connection that night, and would not be home. The party that had come with Hecker and his wife had been too busy with their own affairs to think of Adair.

Adair went straight to his own house, dismounted, and, tying the horse, turned in at the gate. The key to his front door was where he had left it. hanging on a nail behind the trellis of his verandah. He opened the door and went into his dark, damp little hall, full of the dreariness and odours of disuse.

He felt in his pocket for his matchbox and lighted a wax fusee. There was oil in his student lamp as he found by shaking it. He went to the drawer of his desk and took out the large pocket case through which the bullet had gone on that night. It had been taken from him when he was undressed after they had brought him in. and given to him upon his recovery, but never opened. He knew what it contained. To satisfy himself he took it up now with trembling fingers and opened it. It was glued about the edges with a dark substance. He walked to the window and threw up the sash to let in the fresh night air. From across the parade giound eame the picture of the colonel's lighted house. They were entertaining the bride and groom. Farther down was Hecker’s new home, illuminated in honour of its coming mistress.

Adair turned from the window, and ph bed up the certificate of his marriage. cut through by the bullet stained with his blood. Then self pitv and the strong man's agony broke out info husky, painful, terrible sobs.

xiv. A num went up to the back part of the coionei s house, full of the bustle ox servants, aud asixeil to see airs llecKer s maid, as he bad something tor her. -Mrs Acton came out through the chattering group of Chinamen, who suddenly hushed their parrot-like talk as she came among them, holding her rustling silk skirts up out of possible contact with the paraphernalia of dinner preparations.

"What do you want, Mellish?” “1 beg your pardon, Mrs Acton, but there was a package left in -be ambulance that has disappeared. 1 should like to ask Mrs Hecker s maid ” "Mrs Hecker has no maid.”

"Surely 1 saw one with her. Or it may have been I think, any way, ma’am, she knows about the package—the lady who was with Mrs Hecker.”

"You mean Mrs Bland, I suppose. She is going to live with Mrs Hecker, but she is not a maid. She is an old friend of Mrs Hecker’s.

Mrs Acton spoke with dignity. Evidently she wished Mrs Bland’s position defined at once. Mellish looked polite, but wooden and indifferent.

“The package was left in such a wav that I feel responsible for it. ma’am, and I should be much obliged if I might see Mrs Bland.” “I’ll send and ask her about it.” Three minutes later the messenger came back to say that Mrs Bland had been lying down, but that sue would be down to see about the package in a very few minutes. She was pale and calm when she came and looked Mellish full in the face. There was a gleam’ of bravado in his eyes as she advanced toward him. “What is it?”

“There was a package Mellish wanted to ask you something about,” Mrs Acton said, going back into the dining room. She had arranged this dinner with Mary, and she felt that upon her devolved the responsibility. Mary was upstairs with her cousin, hearing “everything.” ~ “There was a package—about the size of ” Mellish stepped outside as though he were looking for an article with which to make a comparison. “What are you doing here?” “I am Mrs Hecker’s housekeeper.” "What did you come for?” “Because I have to support myself. 1 am free now to go where I ehoose. I have no ties.” There was a bitter smile on the woman’s face. “Where is — The clack of the Chinaman was coming too close. “I’ll be at the back of Hecker’s house — are you going there to-night?” “Yes.”

“Meet me at the back of the house at eleven o’clock. I must see you.” The woman nodded dumbly. There were tears in her sad eyes as she reached the foot of the stairs again. She stopped for a second and jmt her handkerchief to them.

The hall was brilliant with silk covered lamps and palms and flowers. Mrs Acton, still bustling, came out of the little drawing room. “You are coming down to dinner, aren’t you. Mrs Bland?”

“No. T think if T may I will go over to Lieutenant Hecker’s house now and go to sleep. I am very tired. ”

“Why. certainly. Did you get the package?”

“I think,” Mrs Bland said, “the package—it was one of my own—must have been lost.”

At eleven o’clock, alone in the shadow of the house, the great mountains rising abruptly liehin-l them. Mellish and his wife stood facing each other.

V« here is the boy?” The question had evidently been ready ever since he had parted from her earlier in the evening. My boy? My little boy is dead.” There was a reverent hush in the mothers voice that was not all sorrow. Evidently she felt that all was well with the child.

What happened to him? Vvny didn t you take care of him?” Mrs Bland loosened her arm from the strong and impatient clasp of his hand. “I did take care of him. Was n ° o,le e,Ee to do it. The childs father had disgraced and deserted us. Thank God. the little heart was never seared by a knowledge of the evil thing that had been ' ,onE h‘m. He was all I had, and I selfishly would have kept him; but 1 see now that it is better so.” ", as not 8,1 m J’ fault. Edith.” I tried to think that, too.” The woman’s voice grew wearier. “If V ou had stayed and faced the matter like a man. I might have believed voubut you fled and left another to bear a , burdens. You crushed vour fathers heart—you killed him. ’and my boy and I ” "Did you eome all this wav out here to tell me this?—to throw in my teeth the things that are past and done. If I am so bad. why didn’t you stay away from me? What are you doing here? I didn’t send for you. The mocking, furious devil was in Mellish’s face anti voice. “I click not know you were here I knew nothing about you. Nina Wentworth, who was my* old school -frien i, found me out when mv boy” lit was always “my boy”) “died, ami has been an angel to me. She would keep me with her like a sister, but I will not allow that. In this world she is one of the good. There are not many.”

Mellish laughed his ugly sneering laugh, with the hatred that a’ man such as he has for anything good “Oh. yes, Mrs Hecker is a very good woman. Are you in her confi-

“I think I am. I am enough in her confidence to know that she is the purest and sweetest and lovingest soul on this earth.”

“Doubtless. But she ought to have gone through the formality of get ting a divorce from one husband''before she married another.”

“M ha t do you mean ?” “I mean that she isn’t really any more Heeker’s wife than you are. That she married Adair over* there in Tombstone—ceremony by the Rev. Mr Bland, and as soon as she found that Adair was a softy that she could treat as she liked and hear nothing more about it, and that the man who performed the ceremony was dead, she married Hecker.”

Mrs Bland looked at her husband with scorn. “There are some small vices from which I considerexl you exempt.”

You think it is a lie. I suppose, a malicious lie. I am not that small. Task Mrs Hecker with it. I’d like to know how she denies it. I’d like to do it myself. It would be a study in human nature to see how a ‘good’ woman acts when she is eaught in a little peccadillo such as having two husbands. By Jove! To see the coolness of her manner to Adair was worth coming to Arizona to behold! The stage never saw anything like it. It’s a wonder play writers never think of going to real life for their stories.”

“You ought to know.” “Edith, you never used to be bit ter.”

“Bitter! Bitter! You to ehide me for living bitter. • You. who not only robbed me of every material thing, of my girlhood, my faith in life, in’

everything, but now try to take from me my faith in my one friend. I will believe nothing you say, nothing.” “The mischief of it is, . Mellish said philosophically and with the mere interest of an observer, “that \dair stood it. I didn’t think he was such a coward. To have his wife marry another man.” “Why do you listen to idle gossip. “1 tell you I saw with my own eves tdair marry Nina Wentworth. It was the day the Indians came near killing them both. They were mar ried by my father. “I do not believe you. An hour later Edith Bland leaned from her upper window and saw a .lark, slim figure walking, walking up and down. She recognised Adair “1 wonder,” she said to herself, •what story George Bland has distorted into the tale he tells me. That one is impossible.” XV. There were high festivities in the garrison to greet Hecker and his bride. The Judd girls had new muslins and blue sashes. Their mother thought nothing so simple and sweet as blue sashes and white muslin for young girls. On sweet and dimpled girls the simple white frocks were like the delicate calyx to a sweet flower. The Judd girls with their scrawny red necks and long noses and awkward hands, were not so pretty. But their mother beamed on them and they beamed back, so it didn’t seem to 'matter to any one else. There were dinner parties and tea parties all along the row, and a large dance at the barracks, where Lieutenant Hecker’s men turned themselves loose in the matter of decorations. There were garlands of pepper leaves and fruit, the lace-like leaves, of a delicate green, and the loose scarlet bunches of berries making a beautiful and tropical decoration. The long leaves—striped in yellow, spined, thick and fleshy, but most showy, were hewn from the mescal plant, and nailed in a frieze, overlapping, all about the room. There were lanterns and flags! Flags everywhere. The band was playing again as it had played that night in the summer.

Adair heard it over in his quarters. He had lived through the week since the end of his world had come, because he had been obliged to do it. liis first impulse had been to send in his resignation at once, ana taen h.» common sense came to his rescue. He was a soldier, pure and simpie. There was no other protession which had so great a hoid upon his heart, in which he couid ever hope to nt without those rubs which come to a man in the wrong place. There was but one thing for him to do. Find some man who wanted a transfer and leave the old regiment so that he and Hecker would never see each other again. Hecker, Adair could not blame, except with that impulse of the savage which makes any man hate him who possesses what he feels is his very own. And even as he made plans for leaving, writing letters to men in positions not so desirable as his own, his eyes longed and his heart hungered for Nina, for only a sight of her face.

He perpetually put out the question “Why?” Why had she done this thing? How could she >.o it and look and seem the woman she did? He looked at other women, he thought of them sweet and noble in their appearance, and he wondered if too, carried secrets about with them. The healthy spirit which he had brought from Japan still guided him, but it had lost its glorious vigour.

Adair knew Hecker, he knew the numberless affairs in which he was continually entangled. Hecker was the last man on earth into whose care he would *have intrusted his sister, and it was the very heart of his heart, his wife, whom he was compelled to see at this man's mercy. Sometimes he wondered how much a man could bear.

To-night as the music came, rising and falling, from the room where he knew they were dancing, he felt that the strain was becoming too great. Something must snap. He must go away, and at onee.

“If I could only despise her as she deserves,” he said to himself.

A skulking shadow enme around his verandah. A nr>n stopped and looked at him—walking, walking, pacing back and forth with that tire-

lees tread that all the men had grown to know. The man stepped up half way upon the verandah. Adair stopped and looked at him for a moment, giving a slight return for his salute. “What is it, Mellish?” “I’d like to have a little talk with you, captain, if you can spare the time.”

“Well, out with it.” “If you’ve no objection, sir, I’d like to come inside. It isn’t anything that I’d like to talk about where there was any chance of being overheard.” Adair opened his front door and led the way into his plainly furnished little sitting room. There was nothing there, except some tables and chairs, some views of West Point and Japan, and over the mantelpiece a beautiful portrait of a mother and child by Morrison. Adair sat down in one of the big oak chairs and motioned Mellish to another. When the men came to him upon private business he always treated them as one honest man treats another anywhere.

Mellish sat down, but in a tentative fashion, half rising as he finished his first, sentence.

“I don’t often get troubled by my conscience, captain, but there's something going on here, that it looks like my duty to say something about, unless I have some explanation of it. I’d like to have some explanation merely to satisfy my own conscience.” “What is it?” “I was over in Tombstone last summer one day. It was the day you and Miss Wentworth were attacked by the Indians. I went into Mr Bland’s for a moment, and I saw ” Mellish hesitated, and dropped his eyes under the steady gaze of Adair’s. “What did you see?” “1 saw,” the man went on desperately. “Miss Wentworth being married to, I couldn’t exactly see who——” “Mrs Hecker would probably tell you that she married Lieutenant Hecker.” “Not that time. Lieutenant Hecker I saw ten minutes before, coming from the mill with Mrs Savage.” “Mrs Heeker probably knows her own affairs.” “I was thinkin'g of speaking to her about it ” Adair stood up. furious. “Let me hear of your going near. Mrs Hecker, and I’ll kill you. You blackmailing scoundrel.” His passion had got the better of him. “What do you want?” “I’d like to borrow a hundred dollars to night, sir. and I thought if Flynn happened to be drunk anyways soon, I might stand a chance.” Adair fairly' flung him the notes, from a drawer in his desk. “Now go. And don't you ever darken my door again.” ‘My poor girl,” he said tenderly, have you put yourself in the power of a brute like this. Then must I stay and save you.” Over in the barracks they were having gay times—the hours running aw'ay on musical feet. Honan was leaning his head against the wall of the house, the light catching the outline of his smooth dark hair, running down his dark clothing and making high lights on his pointed patent leather shoes. There was an air of supreme content in his whole attitude. Mary Marcy, blooming and sweet looking as a white rose, sat beside him. Even Mrs Savage was too clever to walk near to that love story.

There was a clack of talk all up and down the verandah. The Judd girls walked by, their sharp elbows rubbing the coats of young ranchmen, just as they had last year. They talked in high voices, telling stories of the bear that their little brother encountered in the woods and took for a black dog. They all told the same story. It was the onlyone they knew. But Ronan and Mary were not even disturbed by the insistence of its echo. They had lost the world in contemplating themselves. They had seen much of each other in these months and had grown confidential. “Do you think Nina seems very happy?” Mary asked after a long silence. “I haven’t noticed. Hecker does. I never saw him so well. Hecker usually is happy enough, but he really seems to lie hnppy for some other reason than because he has

enjoyed his dinner. I think he is extraordinarily fond of your cousin.’ It was at this instant that a couple came slowly down the verandah, and walkiug off to one side out of the light, arranged themselves comfortably in the corner. The lady was large and leaning conspicuously upon her escort's arm. It did not require a second glanee to show that it was Hecker and Mrs Savage. Mrs Savage had dressed herself that evening, with the blood higo in her cheeks, and her ban. s burning. She had never loved tier loud ami florid husband, and she had never been what, is called a Susceptible woman, but so far as she had a heart to move, Hecker had moved it. She had dreamed of the gaiety of life with a man like that, who made the hours pass rapidly for her. It was not the things that Hecker said, it was his living, breathing presence that she found fascinating.

It had been the most bitter of blows to her when she had heard .-if his marriage. She was standing by her dressing bureau brushing her hair when the news first came to her. Her husband had gone in to the breakfast table, which was in the next room, and was opening the morning mail

“Hello!” he said, “Here's a wedding card. By Jove! It’s Hecker, and that pretty little Miss Wentworth who came over here one day.” It seemed to Mrs Savage that there

was something wrong with the muscles of her arm. They seemed to give way suddenly. She took the hairpins out of her mouth and laid them very carefully now n and went into the other room and took the stiff white fiaper out of her husband’s hand. There it was: “Mr Nichol s Wentworth announces the marriage of his niece, Nina Alice, to Harold Westville Hecker, etc.” Then she went back and continued brushing- her hair, and all the time she was laughing a little at her own face in the mirror before her. It was not a very pleasant laugh. It was a laugh that told too much of a knowledge of the world to make the possessor a very happy woman. She was whispering something to that smiling image with the mocking eyes which looked at her from the glass. “1 gave him the money to marry her on. I! I! I gave him the money!” Her foolishness, her trust in his loyalty seemed so silly a thing. And yet here she was to-night, as ready for a flirtation with him as she had ever been.

Ronan’s face was imperturbable. It took more than another of Hecker’s flirtations, or rather the renewal of an old flirtation, to cause him the flicker of an eyelash. Mary looked at them with the wide open eyes of a girl who did not realise that she was seeing anything.

“I wonder where Nina is. T suppose her old admirers have completely

cut Mr Hecker out. I think myself though that Mrs Savage is pretty good fun. She has asked me to come over and make her a visit and 1 believe I will go.*’ •‘When?” “She has asked me for next week.** “Do come then.” Mr Ronan said impressively. “My poor old mine is going to lie sold the week after. Not that anybody will buy it. but I am going to give myself the satisfaction of putting it on the market. I want you to visit it and look upon the grave of all my hopes. Will you?” “Indeed I will. I have always wanted to visit that mine. 1 feel sure I would bring you luck.” Nina walked by with Mr Bradish, her pretty face lighted up. As she saw her husband, she dropped Mr Bradish’s arm and going over to Hecker gave him a little slap on the shoulder with her fan. There was a least bit of embarrassment in his face as he sprang to his feet. “ I gave you a lot of things to take care of.” she said. "My cloak and Powers, and no end of things. Rennet up your account. “They are in the ball-room.” “Never mind. never mind; M. Bradish and 1 will get them.”

But Hecker had gone. Mrs Savage’s facH was burning. “You ought to be very glad to have a husband who could take such good care of your things—but then, he’s bad an enormous lot of practice.”

“H:»< he? That’s nice. 1 don’t believe 1 should have liked to have taken him entirely untrained.” Mrs Hecker said sweetly.

(To be continued.)