Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1894 — Tradegar’s MistaKe. [ARTICLE]

Tradegar’s MistaKe.

It was at Lady Horsham’s regatta at Dippington that Gordon Melrose met Lady Sciva on his return from Japan after an absence of nearly two years. Lady Sciva was the youthful widow of a sexagenarian peer, and Gordon Melrose well, everybody knows Gordon Melrose. The two were old friends —but friends who had seen very little of one another for years. There was almost a spice of strangeness to season the friendship. Melrose secured a dance and begged that they might sit it out. “The terrace is beautifully cool,” he said, “and this room is so terribly hot—and, truth to tell, I am no great dancer.” And Lady Sciva consented readily enough. And so, when the time came, the pair left the noise and riot of the ballroom for the fragrant silence and darkness of the terrace. “How very dark it is!” said the beautiful widow after awhile —and she peered out at the night and its thousand frets of fire. They were seated at the end of the terrace, which overlooked the bay, where innumerable’ flotilla of yachts lay smoothly at anchor under the midnight ityl * “I love darkness,” replied Melrose. “It is like the enchanter’s wand, which can invest with beauty and mystery even the most commonplace of things. I remember once, in the Tavundra Valley, some engineering person had run an iron bridge Commonplace people call this’a Triumph of something or other. But to me it was a mere modern abomination. clumsily shaped in iron, a nightmare of rivets and girders, destined to end in mere rust—that is, by day, But at night—when the magician waved his wand —the clumsy brick towers stood out like giants on the heights, and they seemed to be swinging huge chains across the abyss for Titans to skip to. It was a wonderful sight. I never shall forget it.” He paused awhile, and then continued : “But there is one dark place on this earth which is not made beautiful by darkness, and that is the corner where they keep the reasons why women do unaccountable things.” She shot a glance at him, but his fgC£ seemed inscrutable in the darkness^T*’ , ‘-‘What do you mean?” Bhe demanded. “I will tell you a story. If you have heard it before, or don't like it, stop me. Once upon a time —it is a fairy tale, only a fairy tale, you understand—there were a man and a girl—in Japan. The girl was the most beautiful thing that the world had ever seen—a fair, delicate flower grown in the very garden of Venus’s own self. And the man was devoted to her; The lover said, “For one touch of her •hand I would give Balkh.l would give Samarkand, Bo sweet she is!” The Bulbul sang be- j tween, “ Rose oi rare sweetneiM. Shirin! Shirin!” “Is that the way you used to talk to the Japanese ladies?” “Not quite that way. In the first place, they would not he worthy. And the man ” “Was lie a beautiful thing, too?’ struck in Lady Sciva with a sarcastic note—“a poetical prince of fairyland,” “No. He was a real man. Not like me, you understand, who am not real, however attractive, but a real man, who did things, and wished to do things—the kind of man I like, though I don’t do things myself—and who fell in love like a raging madman—of six feet two, with a mustache—furiously, unreasonably, wavering between breaking somebody else’shead and blowing out his own brains on the slightest provocation—or none, for choice—quite regardless of the inconvenience to others. Does the story bore you?” “No.” replied Lady Sciva, in a faint voice. “For three months he was the devoted slave of the girl, now madly exulting in the belief that he was loved, and anon thrust down in the blackest gulf of despair, when he thought he was being played with. I know this because the man had one friend, whom he confided in and even consulted —though only with the view of rejecting advice—and this was an aged man, who lives on the slopds of the great mysterious mountain Fuji—-in a flat—and ho mentioned the story to me.” “Continue,” said Lady Sciva, in hushed tones. “This man Tradegar came to m — my aged friend one day, and said, with a ghastly face and eyes that glittered like points of ice, and a voice like the spectre of a dead voice, ‘lt is all over. Bhe has sent me to the right about. Led me on, encouraged me in every way, told me that she loved me in everything but actual words, and now she tells me that she cannot marry me, and is going to marry old Lord- , ’ that is, a • great Daimio, who was potent in wealth and venerable in years. It was a terrible scene. Tradegar was nearly mad. His friend watched him closely, took him home, and remained with him hours till the fit had worn itself out by its own efforts. There was the awful dread of Buicide.” 4 *Ah!” gasped Lady Sciva. “Yes. Tradegar himself suspected at last, and he swore solemnly by all he held sacred that ho would never llkOT » finger on himself. I am tired

of life,’ he said: ‘I have bid adieu to the world, but I promise you that. Still look on me as dead.’ Two days after that he left England, and the next heard of him was a paragraph in the papers telling of the slaughter of a handful of English by the Khandu Khor. “His name was in the list of dead. It seemed, too, that he might have escaped, for his horse was better than the rest and unwounded; but he stayed behind to pick up a wounded comrade, and he was the first to be speared by the savages. If he had lived he would have had the Victoria Cross, but he died—and then I understood. ' ’ “What?” “That Ire meant to he killed. He would not take his own life, but he threw himself in the way of death — and that is all.”

Lady Sciva had pulled at the laoe of her fan until it was torn in several places, but she seemed not to be aware of this ruin. When Melrose had finished —and It was strange to note how all the levity had vanished from his voice and manner—she turned to him abruptly. “Why did you tell me this horrible thing?” she demanded with fierce intensity. “Do you mean to fix the guilt of his death on ” “On no one. Believe me. The guilt, if there is any, lies with the dead—may he rest in peace now!' For I hold that no one human being has a right to hang his life on the favor of another, and blame the other when the support gives way—by time, or natural change, or ” “How little you know!” she interrupted passionately. “ The support did not give way.” “Indeed!” replied Melrose, with slow deliberation. “The aged man did not tell me all, it would seem.” “He told you all he knew, perhaps, but the girl told me ” “A curious proof of telepathic power,” murmured Melrose, “for the girl, of course, was in Japan.” “Theman was a very singular man,” continued Lady Sciva, “ passionate, capricious, excitable, in some respects almost like a woman, in others almost a perfect man —so the girl said. She was young, you understand, and knew little about men. She fell in love with him at first sight, and from that moment she was entirely swayed by his influence—lived only in the yioughj I have said that he was capricious. --•—. . — ~ “One evening he would danoe half the night with her and the next morning would pass her in the street with an expressionless face and a distant movement of the hat. He would be with her several times in the day for awhile, and then would not be seen for a fortnight, perhaps. He would ask her if she would be at home at such an hour, and when he came would talk to her mother, or sister, or friend—any one rather than her. Oh, the tortures she went through! for she was in love with him, you must remember. “If she had not been so much in love, she might have managed him better, hut she was like the foam on the wave which is tossed and buffeted between the sea and the storm, until at last it is dashed on the rocks. Then the old man—wliat did you call him?”

“The Daimio which means ‘LorDaimio!” echoed Lady Sciva, with quivering lips. “The Daimio was kind to her—always kind; and when Jack—l mean the man—was unkind, she went to the Daimio, because sho could trust him, and she thought that no one could say a word, as he was so old.” “What I cannot understand,” replied Gordon Melrose, with a judicial air, “is, why, if she loved him, didn’t she accept him—the man I mean?” “Why! because lie never asked her!” “Never asked her? But he said she had refused him.” “He never said a word to which she could give either refusal or consent. He had told her again and again, in voice and manner, and above all with his eyes, that he loved her; but never said so, and he never said a word that could be construed into a proposal of marriage. Could she accept him before he had asked her? That would have been rash, wouldn’t it?” and the beautiful lips curved in a wan smile.

“But what happened at that last interview, then?” cried Melrose, whose face betokened bewilderment. “There was no regular interview. He came to her suddenly at a ball. She had not seen anything of him for days before and she was indignant w’ith him. He asked her for that dance. She told him, trying to 3peak coolly, that she was engaged. He said, ‘Are you engaged to the Daimio?’ Now it happened that it was the Daimio’s dance, and so she said ‘Yes.’

“He was then very strange, made some very rude remarks, and finally ordered her to throw Daimio over. She was very angry with him by this time, especially at the way in which he spoke of her dear ojd frigpd, and she told him decidedly, ‘No.’ tie flung away without a word, and she never saw him again. That was* all.” “I begin to see,” said Melrose. “He must have heard or imagined that the girl was going to marry the Daimio. This drove him half mad, and when he found that she could not give him that dance he asked her point blank if she were engaged to the Daimio, meaning to marry him, and she replied, * Yes,’ meaning for the dance. They were at cross-pur-poses all through, and that little mistake killed poor Tradegar.” “And nearly killed the poor girl,” cried Lady Sciva, with passionate intensity. “ When he went off in that sudden and heartless fashion, people said the cruellest possible things about her. Oh, it was a sin and a shame! Because the poor girl had no brother or father to protect her, and a man had treated her badly, and every one seemed to think they might do the same. Oh, the agonies she suffered! And that was why she married—literally to get a protector, one who could really take her part, and hold her head up again to the world.” “It seems to me terrible,” said Melrose. “This happiness of two lives wrecked by one little mistake —tand that mistake due, no doubt, to some envious woman’s tongue.”

At that moment the opening bars of a brilliant waltz came pealing through the tall windows. “Perhaps so,” replied Lady Sciva hastily, and she rose to her feet. “ And now you must take me back to the ballroom quick. I am engaged for the next dance.” Gordon Melrose gazed at her in astonishment. There was a joyous note in her voice which confounded him. Silence he was prepared so the silence of sorrow which is too deeep for words, or the passionate complaint of a deeply injured woman. But not this. “Come, Mr. Melrose. I can’t go back to the ballroom alone!” she cried impatiently, and she moved toward the open windows. Melrose sprang to his feet at onoe and escorted her back to the ballroom. At the window a tall, handsome man claimed her. “I am sorry,” Melrose heard her say as she went off on the stranger’s arm. “I got up the moment the music began, but my partner dawdled and I couldn’t fly in alone.” As they whirled off in the crowd of dancers Melrose caught a momentary glimpse of her face. It was radiant as if transfigured. The man was bending over her, whispering in her ear, and his lips approached her hair. “Who is that dancing with Lady Sciva?” inquired Melrose of another man. “Oh, that’s Jack Harkness, of the Rifles, He’s a lucky dog! When old Lord Sciva died he left his widow all his property absolutely. She must be worth some twenty thousand a year at least, and has a house in Grosvenor place and a fine place in Derbyshire.” “But what has Lord Scive’s will to do with this Mr. Harkness?” “What! Don’t you know? Why, they are to be married at the end of tlai month.”—[London World.