Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1896 — ALOYAL LOVE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ALOYAL LOVE

BY J. BERWICK HARWOOD.

CHAPTER X. "But, Algernon ” "I will have it bo, or else I shall have to obey the commonest rules of prudence; to think exclusively of my own health and to act accordingly. Of course you can forward my wishes or thwart them, as yon please. I have not lived so long in the world without being keenly alive to the amount —the sickening amount —of heartless selfishness that prevails. 1 have no right, of course, also, to expect to find an exception in your ladyship's case. But ” “Algernon, dear Algernon ” “But I have the right, and shall enforce it, to demand consideration not merely for the wishes, blit for the welfare of an ailing and suffering—perhaps dying —husband. I shall make arrangements for a protracted stay at Davos or at St. Moritz, unless you choose to exert yourself, as duty dictates. My health has brought me to Yorkshire, as, before long it may probably take me to the Upper Engadine or elsewhere. I hear good reports of the Rocky Mountains, and of wonderful cures effected among log-cabins high up in Colorado, but, if I consent to stay here, I must protest against being moped to death.” This last speech, emphatically enunciated from amid the downy pillows and wadded wraps of his gouty chair by the Right Honorable the Earl of Thorsdale, did strike his perturbed countess as being supremely unjust and vexatiously provoking. Lady Thorsdale, however, could not afford to be provoked. Her lord was in very truth a lord to her. He was a masterful invalid, but at any rate he believed in himself, and in the ailments of which he complained so querulously. Lord Thorsdale rode his present hobby very hard. His wife, Constance, had been a daughter of the late Sir Richard Mortmain, and was a sister of the reigning Sir Richard. She had a hard time of it. She was handsome —most of the Mortmains had been handsome —and frivolous, and had still some pretensions to take sank as a professional beauty in London drawing rooms. Nor was she unfit to hold her own, had she but an ordinary husband to deal with. But she was quite incompetent to resist the energetic will of her earl, who carried all before him by dint of a fluent discourse, a resolute selfishness, and the magician’s wand that ready money supplies. Only last June he had hurried his wife off to the Engadine for two months’ residence among the snow-showers, cow-sheds and general discomforts of that enchanting region, leaving little Lord Thirsk and little Lady Flora at home. The year before he had chosen to waft the entire family in his steam yacht, the “Hecla,” first to Iceland, and later to the glacial coast of Greenland itself; and what the countess had endured from midges, the glare of the Arctic summer sun, solitude, and the terror of the Arctic icebergs, and ice floes, even her lady correspondents only partially knew. Now, at the end of June, this impetuous earl had abruptly rushed down to Thorsdr.'.e, declaring that no place was worse than London for his tormenting gout; and, once in Yorkshire, had proclaimed that it was designed to kill him by mental depression and physical isolation, because the big lonely mansion did not swarm with visitors. “But if you will leave London so early, you can’t—indeed you can't—bring Loudon along with you,” pleaded the countess, half crying as she spoke. “I don’t know that!” snapped the earl from among his cushions. "There are people to be had always who are sick of the worry and racket of that precious season which to you seems like a Mecca to the Moslem. In my state of health I must consider myself shamefully neglected ns I am. Either this place must he enlivened—and you used to like that sort of thing—or eioe the sooner I send for Schultz the courier, and pack up for the Engadine, the better.” “Ah, well! I think I can manage it,” •gaid Lady Thorsdale to herself; and then she began to write. Her pen flew fast across the perfumed and coroneted paper. Presently, when the pretty perfumed notes lay strewed in heaps upon the ivory table, the countess conceived a bright idea. She had heard through the tattle of servants—for there was little of fraternal intercourse kept up between herself and the baronet—that Sir Richard Mortmain was at Helston, hard hy, and that he seemed disposed to stay there. Now, Lady Thorsdale was not on very intimate terms with her brother. There had been some unpleasantness in their father’s lifetime about the marriage portion of the countess expectant. Richard’s signature was required for the raising of the necessary sum, and Richard would sign nothing without being handsomely paid for it. And then his dubious repute, and the queer things that were whispered concerning him and his associates, had caused a coldness to exist between the present master of Mortmain and his sister ennobled. Now, however, she bethought her of her brother, of his tact, of his social resources, and of what she had seen him do when he chose to make himself agreeable. So she penned him the sweetest of little sisterly notes, congratulating herself on having him as a neighbor, warmly inviting him to Thorsdale, and entreating him to be charitable enough to do his best to brighten up the old house, and aid to enliven poor dear Algernon in the blues. And she signed herself his “ever affectionate sister, Constance Thorsdale,” and she sent off the letter by a mounted groom. Sir Richard Mortmain, when he read his sister’s charming little epistle, smiled as Mephistopheles or Talleyrand might have done. "Conny wants something!” he remarked, grimly, “so do I. This will help me with the Woodburn Parsonage people better than she dreams-of.” CHAPTER XL “It was a pity, too!” said the rector, genuine sympathy in fats voice. “A pity, Don, my poor fellow! All your work, all your peril for nothing! i never arraign the Fates, but it does seem to me as if, in your case, destiny had been a little overhard with you jet hunters.” “That, dear Mr. Langton,” replied Don, ihcerfully, “is too classical, too pagan a standpoint, as my foster-father, Captain Jedson, would say, from which to regard our late mishap. I, for one, find no fault with fickle fortune because our grand jet mine at Dutchman's Bay has collapsed. Brittle, friable gandstone will break up, and props give way, and a gradual landslip demolish what a sudden landslip first suggested. Anyhow, we have come out of It. if not much enriched, at anv rate with-

| ont serious accident to life and limb.” "And that, Mr. Don, is chiefly due to your courage and your unselfish readiness to face any risk and undertake any labor for your comrades’ sake,” interrupted Mrs. Langton warmly. “Yes, Mr. Don, we beard of what you did, and trembled for you, I am sure, before you had got clear of that dreadful underground place, with the two poor fellows who were trapped there when the roof gave way,” exclaimed Violet Mowbray, with a sort of shy enthusiasm that brought tears to her eyes, and caused the mantling blood to rise to her soft cheek. “And we were all so glad to hear that no harm came of it” “Harm seldom comes, Miss Mowbray, 1 believe, from inerely doing one’s duty, ’ answered Don, gravely. He was always serious, and almost bashful in manner, when he spoke to Violet, although his heart throbbed wildly as his ear drank in the welcome words of praise that fell from her lips. “At any rate,” he added, “there is an end of jet hunting for the moment; so, Mr. I>angton, I have ventured up here, with my books, to crave a lesson if you can kindly spare me the time for one, and are at leisure.” “Of leisure, Don, my boy, I have only too much,” replied the clergyman, genially; “and it is a pleasure to me to resume my old task of tuition with a pupil whom not even hero worship can spoil. So, if you like, we will adjourn to my study.” It is strange by what invisible links our fortunes are bound to those of one another. At first sight it might have appeared as if no proceedings on the part of Sir Richard Mortmain, of Mortmain Park, could conceivably influence the future weal or woe of so comparatively humble a person as Obadiah’s adopted son and the rector’s favorite pupil. So, at all events, it would have seemed to the baronet himself, as, on his black horse, but unattend<ki by a groom, he rode slowly along, deep in thought, while, amid the well-stored book shelves at Woodburn Parsonage, Don and Mr. Langton were busy with thfe lore of a bygone day. Sir Richard, it has been mentioned, was absorbed in thought, as, with slackened reins and downcast eyes, he rode on, so that when a carriage, coming along at a brisk pace, between the high banks that lined the road, suddenly overtook him, he did not hear or heed the sound of wheels, and was only apprised of their approach when his horse violently started and swerved, in a manner that would have unseated many a careless rider. Sir Richard, however, was too practiced a horseman to be easily discomposed, so that he merely gathered up his loosened reins, and, recognizing the occupants of the barouche, took off his hat with a smile of amiable insinperity. “So glad!” he said, riding close up to the open earringe. the liveried driver of which had now pulled up his horses at a word from his noble mistress. The equipage, indeed, was that of the Countess of Thorsdale, and beside her ladyship lounged, wrapped in plaids and shawls, the listless form of the earl himself. "I did not hear your wheels, Constance, until you overtook me,” explained the baronet; “our Yorkshire roads are solitary hereabouts. Well, Thorsdale, .this flue day has tempted you out early, I see.” “The more fool I!” peevishly retorted Sir Richard’s noble brother-in-law. “This treacherous climate is worse, absolutely worse, than that of the Riviera itself, with its dust and its marrow-piercing mistral. 1 feel there is rain coming on—humidity in the atmosphere—and it racks my gout and unstrings my nerves. I have told Sharpe, my secretary, to write for details as to two places, one in the Carpathians, the other in the Rocky Mountains, of which I have heard good accounts.”

The countess made haste to express her wifely hopes that her ailing lord might yet be reconciled to Yorkshire and England, and to paint a rose-colored picture of the forthcoming gayeties at Thorsdale Park. “You. Richard, have hitherto been a sad truant,” she said, playfully shaking her gloved forefinger at her brother. “We have been here a week in our exile, and have seen you but once at Thorsdale. I must insist now that you come home with us, and stay to luncheon.” “I’m sure it would be a charity on your part,” chimed in his lordship, more graciously than usual. “So you see, my dear Richard, that you have fallen into our hands, and that we will tuke no denial,” said the countess, with her prettiest manner and with her falsest smile. “Awfully kind of both of you; hut, unfortunately, i have an appointment with a friend,” rejoined Sir Richard, almost dryly. “Before long, depend upon it, I shall look you up at Thorsdale, and so often thut you will vote me a bore. But to-day my time is not my own.” There was a brief leave-taking, and the carriage rolled off. “You are always talking nonsense, my dear, and always making mountains out of mole hills!’ growled the earl, as he shifted uneasily among his downy cushions. Meanwhile, Sir Richard, turning his head to ascertain by ocular evidence that the barouche, with its liveried servants and high-stepping grays, was out of sight, wheeled his own horse, rode back for a short distance, and then struck into a cart-tracc that branched off from the macadamized road, and led into the wild and lonely moorland. "Let me see,” he murmured, pulling out of the breast pocket of his coat a scratch map, roughly penciled, such as hunting men often carry. “Yes, this must be the way and presently some shepherc, will be at hand to direct me.”

The friend with whom, as the veracious baronet had informed his titled sister, he had an appointment, certainly did live in a dreary and inaccessible part of the country, and it was not for a considerable time that Sir Richard could congratulate himself on drawing near to his destination. “Robinson Crusoe's house, you mean, measter? Yes, yes—red-headed jet hunter chap—we calls him Robinson!” bawled a lad from behind a loose stone wall, as he leaned upon his spade. “You call him Robinson, my boy, because he lives all aloneV” suggested the baronet, reining in his horse. “Yes; and a main queer customer he is, from foreign parts,” replied the boy. “Anyhow, yon he lives, down in the hollow there. You’re sure to hear the barking of his dogs once they nose ye!” For a moment the baronet lingered. The stony hill sides looked singularly barren and grim; th > hollow between precipitous banks, toward which the lad bad pointed with a grimy finger;, anything but a cheerful resort. Nor was what he knew and what he heard respecting the recluse for whom he was inquiring of a remarkably rAflsunrim? nature. But the boy. UHiIHIU.V*

gltlTC as become* a rustle, had returnee to hk digging among the potato beds, and was whistling shrilly as he delved, bo that Sir Richard was ashamed to question him further. He therefore rode on. The bridle track which led down into the darkling hollow was a steep one, while here and there n bank pf yellow flowered broom, or some great stone that bad slipped down from the hill side, seemed to bar the path. Abov*, the hawks wheeled, soaring, and now ssd again there was a rustling amid the tall bracken fern, as if a startled bare bad brushed by, but of human habitation there was for gome time no sign. A wilder or more desolate spot than that secluded hollow could not readily be found, and Sir Richard, as he carefully descended the steep and rugged path, began to doubt whether his latest informant had not willfully deceived him, when at last the deep, hoarse barking of a dog reached his ears. Almost instantly the warning note was taken up by another canine voice, and yet another, as though Cerberus, with his triple head and savage bay, were aroused to guard the shadowy frontiers of\ Pluto's sable realm. Guided partly by the fierce barking of the dogs, Sir Richard pressed on, and came in sight of a mean hovel, compared with which the wigwam of a Pawnee or the kraal of a Zulu are types of symmetrical architecture. Chained to the walls of the hut, and sheltered either by a fragment of shattered w<jpdwork or by some mat or morsel of frowsy Utrpauiin propped by a rickety pole, were no less than four lean, fierce dogs, all barking furiously in chorus, and striving to get free, as if to tear the intruder on their domain. A wreath or two of blue wood smoke rising above the low chimney seemed to give token that the proprietor of this delectable villa residence was to be found at home. For a while Sir Richard hesitated, but then, rallying his courage, he rode nearer to the hut, and, dismounting, passed his horse’s bridle over the blackened stamp of a sturdy old willow tree that stood hard by. As he approached the door, the two dogs that were tethered nearest sprang savagely toward him, straining their chains and half choking themselves in the effort to reach him with their glistening fangs. With the butt-end of his riding whip he knocked at the door. . (To he continued.)