CHAPTER XVIII.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, 1 July 1901, Page 773

CHAPTER XVIII.

WOMAM AND WOMAN. The " Whare " was enveloped in the river mist, and Caroline at the door peered out

into the darkness which tho rising moon was silvering, but sho saw nothing oxcopt the shadowy rocks and trees. Tho roar of the river disturbed her this evening. Frosh from the city, with its light and life, tho solitude and silence — broken only by Nature — oppressed and saddened. Had it been Howard's thought to contrast the present with the past? If so, his method had succeeded, for this one day at Matamata, alone, had been filled with passionate comparisons. Tho very hardest day she had ever known with Howard, sho had lived. All days here before his coming sho had been dead. Life at any prico with him had been her prayer. It was doubly her prayer to-night. Why didn't he come ? It was so like him but to half expect her. Perhaps he had expected a message ? Did he not know yet that she had no half measures where he was concerned V That he had partly expected herself was evident. Tho cottago was in readiness, her old attendant in the kitchon, and the larder stocked, the door ajar — and Howard himself gone ! " It is so like him !" sho said between her smiles and tears. So like her fato, too, that her supreme hour should always elude her, always prove a "Will o' the Wisp," a night bird that called and called and was not seen. She had been so sure of this one day in which to grasp her good, and yet Fate said, " To-morrow !" She had choked down her impatient defiance. She was in love with love. Her spending, the passion of her tenderness, she did not count. Rather she counted as tragedy the preceding empty years. The grey, still, lifeless days which had no call, no demand, except just to exist and repress — those were the awful days. Frank had hurried off soon after their arrival in search of Howard. "He is certain to be at the Mill, or thereabouts," he had said, and while she had unpacked, and set the rooms to their old likeness, she had smiled at memory of the eager departing figure. Frank, like herself, had been baffled and

thwarted — their severed lives had been filled again by a mutual love. With the passing of the storm, Cai-oline's expectation was almost pain. Nothing could delay him now. But he had delayed, for with the evening she was still expecting him. She went in from the door, and drew the curtain from the rod so that the light of the blazing fire might stream out to welcome him as it had guided him that first night of his coming ; then she readjusted the flowers on the table, and moving restlessly about the room, pi'epared as for a visitor where she had imagined herself received and welcomed. What matter, so only they were together ? A shadow crossed the lighted space before the window. Caroline, seated by the fire, turned her head quickly. It was a woman's shadow. Her heart contracted with a sudden prescience of evil. She shivered as though the river chill had reached her, and stood up instinctively to receive her blow. With that quick comprehension of spirit which left little for the intelligence to unravel, she understood that she was face to face with a crisis. She heard the woman coming in, opening and shutting doors with the decision of intimacy; then light footsteps came on, a rap upon the sittingroom door, and that was opened also. Geraldino Ward ! So she was here ? She stood just inside the doorway, her tall figure made to appear taller by the long black cloak she wore. She closed the door quietly, then as though dazed by entrance from the darkness into the bright fire-lit room, stood still. She had brought in with her the scent of rain and grass. Caroline did not observe the pallor of the face under the hood. She only saw the menace of its beauty. Geraldine had carried away an impression of Caroline as middle-aged and prim ; that impression did not tally with the slim, girlish, lilac-frocked figure before her, with the sweet softnesses of face. The rush of surprised shame which had overtaken her at this unexpected encounter with her rival had brought a beautiful colour to Caroline's

cheeks. But there was no doubt about the eyes. " You are Mrs. Grey ?" Howard's wife bowed, and in the movement of the fair head was an extraordinary pride and reserve. Prom the first confusion one thought was shaping itself into definiteness — was Geraldine the lady who had rented " The Whare " last summer ? She remembered the sawdust in Howard's shoes. Was it here the two had first met? Geraldiue answered the question, Caroline would not put. " I hope you will forgive the unceremonious manner of my entrance, Mrs. Grey, but it is like coming home. I lived here — as you perhaps know — all last summer. I have walked rather quickly from Pine Mill — and — am a little tired. May I sit down ?"' She seemed to sway, her speech dragged. Caroline noticed now the pallor of her cheeks, and with a quick movement went over to her, and led her to the armchair on the heai'th — that one to which Howard had carried herself on the morning of her brother's disappearance. Her brain, with dual action, registered the insignificant detail, while occupied intently with another question — why had Geraldiue Ward come ? She untied the ribbons that fastened the hood of the black cloak, and noticed as it fell back from the beautiful hair that it was in some disorder ; but the disorder only made the dark head more picturesque, for the escaped tendrils curled about the white forehead and neck. Geraldine's head rested wearily on the back of the chair ; her fringed lids closed over the dark eyes. Caroline moved to the table in that noiseless way of hers, and poured out a glass of wine with a hand that trembled. The table was daintily set for the evening meal ; the firelight picked out the glittering silver and glass with a sort of mockery — was this her festival ? " Drink this," she said in her low musical voice. At sound of the voice, Geraldine opened her eyes, and looked again with some question at the face before her. The soft

fingers of the two women touched as the glass changed hands. Caroline withdrew hers rather quickly, and kneeling on the rug in front of the hearth, threw pine cones on the fire hurriedly. The force of the cones in contact with the glowing embers of the burning log scattered a shower or sparks, some of which fell on the skirt of Geraldi lie's oloak. These Caroline carefully picked off. Geraldine sipped her wine, and looked at the kueeling figure ; the fire-light brought the quiet face out into relicf — what hint of strength and tenderness-yes, and tenderness — there was in its reserve. And the voice ! There was surely music in it. She began to dread a little the mission she had undertaken. She had hurried over the darkening downs shaken by the awful realities of the hour. Her resistance was broken ; she was afraid. It had been hideous, but it had raised acoui"age in her to accept the realities, terrible as they were, which symbolised so much to the man who had pleaded to her for salvation, and whom she had mocked to desperation. "Mrs. Grey," she said, bending forward as she sat to the kneeling figure, which in her imagination stood for that fateful resistance which she herself had embodied to Howard, and against which in her revulsion she fought — and not the woman — as a foe, a foe which had yet to be conquered, " are you able to hear painful tidings P" Caroline rose. " Your presence has prepared me for such," she answered. And this time her changing voice was dull and cold. So her first impression was right, Gerald iue thought. She winced under the deliberate thrust. She had wasted the last compassionate moments on a shrew ! She also rose, and there was a proud haughtiness about her that intensified the grace and beauty that had bereaved the wife before. It seemed to hold her at bay now. " I am sorry that I represent — suffering — to you, or to any woman." She threw a cold intensity of meaning into her tone that repudiated any insinuation, the other might

have intended. '* I follow in part your thought — but. lifo, as you know, is full of mistakes — this has been a day of mistakes — and disaster." " Disaster ?" Caroline's tone was sharp, as one calls out when fearing a blow. The women's eyes were intent upon each other. v Disaster," reiterated Goraldine. " 1.1. concerns Howard Grey, yourself, and me." Still Caroline stood unflinchingly, too proud to let the other woman guess at the sick apprehension that turned the blood back from her heart. A heat of anger rose up iv Gerald i ne's heart against this cold statue of a woman who had denied comprehension and sympathy to the man whose loneliness had cankcied his manhood. Without compromise, Geraldine struck mercilessly, as only a woman can do who is antagonistic to another woman. "Howard Grey — had — an accident — this morning. Your brother saved him from drowning " It was the expression of Geraldine's face and voice that told the truth. For a moment it did indeed seem that Caroline had been turned into stone. Then the pupils of her eyes widened with terror, her lips stiffened, her face grew ghastly white, and began to twitch. She swayed from side to side, but she was not losing consciousness, for when Geraldine, with her first pity, made an impulsive movement to support her, Caroline put out her hand in protest. At last a low moan escaped her lips. " No, no, no ! Not that !" Then before Geraldine, whose heart was torn, could frame any thought to meet the • •hango from coldness to pain, Caroline turned upon her fiercely. " And what had you to do with it ?" "Something," replied Geraldine simply, meeting the anger of the grey eyes, " or I should not be here." ihen she added proudly, "If you wish, 1 will tell you everything ; but I warn you, you will hurt. Believe me, if you can bear the distress, you shall have the truth. That was my purpose in coining. But till I came — let there be

no concealment between vs — I had not seen the situation from your standpoint. I find — you — care." " Shall we leave my — caring — out, Miss Ward ? I have been aware of my husband's passion for you since that night of the ball." "We met once before, here at Matamata " " Once ?" "Once!" Geraldine's tone was haughtiness itself. She had been about to give the circumstance, and their second meeting, but she changed her mind. She had some right; the confidence, the revelation of the man to herself was sacred. If the wife had failed to win any part of him, whose fault was that? " Once here at Matamata" she added, with an emphasis that implied other meetings, for at the query in the other woman's tone, her pride had reared like a spirited horse at touch of the spur. Some part of her was protesting against the indignity of her position, insisting it. It was gall to force herself to explain. It cheapened the whole episode to account for it. " On the occasion of our first meeting," she forced herself to add, "Howard Grey " — she would not say " your husband," but claimed the name by which he was honoured — " did not know my name. I knew him as the author of a book which I more than admired " " Ah !" Caroline's exclamation interrupted. Geraldine paused. The two eyed each other. How much on that point did the other know ? Caroline got the truth in a flash. "He undeceived you to-day ?" Geraldine caught her breath ; a flush passed over her face. A flood of recollection swept over her ; she heard his voice again telling her that she was his truth, telling of his limitations, his failures ; making his appeal to her with misplaced confidence.

She 'covered her eyes with her hands to shut out that later sight of him, and trembling in weakness at the memory, sat down, forgetful of any other save herself and him. In the vagueness with which emotion enveloped fact, his despair seemed the only fact. "I put my pride before my love — whatever he urged, I thought of his pitiful surrender ; I thought nothing could bridge his dishonour; no consideration make it understandable — and then I saw, as I thought, his dead face." Caroline stood rigid. She made a supi'eme effort to keep quiet. Her mouth was set, her eyes stern, although she shook like an aspen. Her hands, which hung at her sides, doubled and undoubted with the nervous strain she underwent not to cry out. She was realising the scene. This woman had defrauded her of a coveted opportunity. Her husband, under the glamour of her beauty and genius, had taken his madness for her healing. If there was room in such humiliation for exultation, it was that she had failed him in the crisis of his need. Geraldine removed her hands from her eyes and clasped them round her knees, still but semi-conscious of her listener. Her white forehead was strained, her lips tremulous. " I have idealised that I have betrayed his hope " Then some movement or sound roused her. She turned and met Caroline's eyes. The challenge in them effectually roused her. All her unconsciousness dropped from her. What had she said ? She looked piteously into the quivering face of the wife, and held out her hand involuntarily. " He is ill," she said in explanation and extenuation, " and calls for me. Don't look like that. Don't mean such things ! It is detestable of you to look like that, so cold and hard. You must know that to-day has been ghastly."

[to be continued.]