Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1898 — A Dangerous Secret. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A Dangerous Secret.

BY FLORENCE MARYATT.

CHAPTER XX. It is much easier to hide from the world than anyone imagines who has not tried it. We* are too apt to think ourselves of far greater importance than we are, and if we put it to the test we shall generally find that, except to a small and strictly private circle of admiring friends, it is not ,of the slightest consequence what we do, nor where,we go. Delia Moray finds out the truth of this to her advantage. She had a thousand scruples about accepting Mrs. Hephzibah’s offer of the temporary use of her apartments in London, fearing lest she should be immediately recognised, and the news of her discovery be communicated to her son. For the sake of Delia, Mrs. Hephzibah makes short work of settling up accounts with her London employers, and in another week the friends are on their way to Cloverfield. True to her principles of self-help, Mrs. Bond—for the lawyer had Induced the lady to marry him—wished to journey to Hampshire alone, leaving her husband to follow at his own convenience. But the “little old man” outwitted her. He packed up all his belongings at Hampstead with marvelous celerity, and was down at Cloverfield making all things ready for her reception before she knew he had left town. Cloverfield, being still a mere village, has not many resident gentry beside the clergyman and doctor, and one or two solitary old maids and widows; but it is surrounded by gentlemen’s seats, the owners of which, after awhile, commence to call upon Mr. and Mrs. Bond. At Delia’s earnest request she is not asked to be present in the drawing room during these visits of ceremony. She has several reasons for not wishing to make any new acquaintances, foremost among which is the dread of recognition; and though Mrs. Hephzibah will not admit the justice of the fear, she agrees to indulge it. Delia is therefore rather surprised one afternoon, when she has retired to her own room with a novel, to hear the parlor maid at her door with a request from her mistress that she will go down to the drawing room to see a gentleman who has just arrived. “Who is It, Sarah?” cries Delia, her truant thoughts flying at once to the only gentleman (she would have cared to see. “Mr. Le Mesurier, ma’am. I think he’s a parson—At least, he wears a long coat.” “Very gopd! I will be down directly.” When sht enters the room, flushed from the haste with which she has arranged her dress, jhe finds the servant’s surmise is correct. * “Let me/introdace to you my friend, Mrs. Mansers,” says Mrs. Hephzibah; and then she continues to Delia: “I hope I have not disturbed you, my dear, but I thought it only right you should make the acquaintance of our clergyman. Mr. Le Mesurfer tells me that he has just returned from his annual holiday, and that the gentleman we have hitherto heard on Sundays has only been taking his duty during his ibsence.” “I am ve y glad,” says Delia. “Glad ofj what, Mrs. Manners?” asks the nowcopier, with an accent that betrays his Irish nationality. “That I have returned, dr that Mr. Saunders only took my duty?” l, “Of both, perhaps,” she replies, smiling; “anyway, I hope it is not great treason to say that Mr. Saunders has sent mo to sleep every time I tried to listen to him.” “Let us be charitable and lay it on the weather, Mrs. Manners, which has been too hot to keep awake in under any circumstances. Do try and think it was the weather! Else, if you fall asleep again next Sunday, I shall have no loophole by which to flatter myself that my discourse has not had a similar effect upon you to that of Mr. Saunders.” He. is a distinguished looking man, tall and well made, with an intellectual countenance, and wearing a tight cassock that shows off his fine figure to advantage. His blue eyes and dark hair are strongly Irish, so is his winning tongue. In a word, he impresses both his hearers favorably. “I will defer judgment, jthen, until after next Sunday,” replies Delia, laughing; “and especially since, if I am not mistaken, Mr. Le Mesurier, you are a countryman of mine, and should claim every indulgence at my hands.” . The moment the words have left her lips she regrets them, but it is too late. The warm partisanship of the natives of Ireland is well known, and Mr. Le Mesurier embraces the idea of the connection between them. “I guessed as much from your appearance. Pray, Mrs. Manners, allow me to shake hands with you over again in token of our good-fellowship. It is a real delight to meet any one from the ‘ould counthry’ down in these wilds. May I ask if Jt is long since you left it?” Thefi Delia sees still more plainly the trap she has laid for herself, and the complications to which it may lead. But there is no help for it at present. “Very long! I have not seen it since I was a little child.” “Have you been long settled in Cloverfield, and are you a married man?” demands Mrs. Hephzibah, trying to lure him away from a dangerous topic. “I have been settled here ever since my ordination, ten years ago, and I have no wife to share the vicarage,” he answers, with a sudden gravity of manner. “I hope you dre not one of those parsons who consider celibacy a duty.” “Yes, I do, decidedly. A duty to myself,” he answers, lightly. “What would become of my visits to Switzerland, if I had a wife and family to carry about with me?” • He sits with them for half the afternoon on that occasion, talking in the most fluent manner on every topic that is started, discussing the country and the town, literature and music, the Tyrol, the Vatican, the Alhambra and the Louvre; and proving himself not only to be a well-read man, but an excellent linguist and a clever traveler, Who has made good use of his eyes and his wits as he journeyed through the world. The ladies are delighted with his conversation and charm of delivery. The hours pass rapidly in his company, and before he takes his leave Mrs. Hephzibah has made him promise to dine with them on the following day. “He is the very man I want to avoid,” cries Delia when he is gone. “There is something in him—l ennnot tell you what —that seems as if he would draw the whole of my secret from me at his will. Oh, Mrs. Hephzibah! keep me from Mr. Le Mesurier, I implore you.”

CHAPTER XXI. On the following day the parson is decidedly the moat vexed of the three at Delia’s .absence, although be is too polite to show it except by his nnxious and somewhat wandering air. The little dinner is skillfully ehoseh and served, and his host and hostess are cordiality itself; still -Mr. Le Mesurier’s eyes keep roving each time the door is opened, and his ears are strained to catch the least sound from without. At last he ventures to hint at the subject that is disturbing him. “May I ask after the health of your charming friend, Mrs. Bond? I trust she is well.” “She is quite well, Mr. Le Mesurier; that is, she is the same as usual, but her health does not permit her to take late dinners.” \ "Then I trout the pleasure is only dt-

ferred, and that we shall see her in the evening.” Mrs. Hephzibah does not reply. She believes that Delia has no intention of-ap-pearing at all. Her visitor continues: “I cannot explain to you what delight it was to me to meet a country woman in her. Her features remind me strongly of the Fergusson family. Was that her maiden name?” “No! nor do I think there is any connection between them.” Delia is afraid to meet the stranger again. She sits at her open window and listens to the balads that, after the little party has come in from the garden, Mr. Le Mesurier trolls out in his rich baritone voice, accompanying himself on the cottage piano the while. Delia is very fond of music. She is not a great proficient, but she is a great lover of the art, and sings her own little songs with a verve that has more power to charm than the finest execution in the world. She longs to be down in the drawing room, taking her share in the entertainment now, for au enthusiast has as much pleasure in performing herself as in listening to the performance of others; but false shame restrains her, and she keeps upstairs until she hears the final good-nights exchanged and watches Mr. Le Mesnrier’s tall figure walk down the gravel drive and turn with a parting look at the cottage, in the direction of his own house. But the next day Mr. Le Mesurier is not backward in availing himself of the general invitation which Mrs. Hephzibah stops her pony chaise in order to extend to him. Delia is seated by her side, and Mr. Le Mesurier glances to see if she seconds the offer of her friend. But she is looking away from him over the surrounding country the while, and does not perceive the action. He accepts the invitation with alacrity, and takes advantage of it on the very next day, and several days following that; but though he enjoys many interesting conversations with Mrs. Bond, he finds it more ditficult to get hold of her companion, who always manages to slip away just before or after he makes his appearance. One day, however, Delia is fairly caught. The Bonds have gone out driving together, and she is superintending the stripping of some fruit trees for them, and cannot with honor leave the field of action; when Mr. Le Mesurier, with the familiarity which is becoming habitual to him, walks through the open French windows of the cottage drawing room and out upon the lawn. “How glad I am that I have found you at last, and that you cannot run away from me,” he commences, as he perceives her occupation. “You have been so pertinacious in avoiding my society lately that I bad really begun to think that I had offended you.” “Oh, no!” replies Delia, with the old feeling of discomfort she cannot tell why, at the first glance of his searching eyes; “how could you possibly have done that? But you must not forget that I am only Mrs. Bond’s housekeeper, nnd have a hundred little domestic duties to perform that prevent my constant attendance in the drawing room.” “I suppose, if you tell me so, Mrs. Manners, I am bound to believe it; but I protest against the ‘only.’ A woman of your talents and education may accept such a position from choice, but need never do so fr-jm necessity.” “Aayway,” says Delin, with the tears in he? eyes, “Mrs. Bond has been my best and dearest friend through life, and I wotyd rather be her housekeeper than the intimate companion of the greatest lady in the l*;nd.” now we approach a different phase of tjie subject, and I can well believe in the sincerity and justice of your choice. And she repays your affection in full measure.” “I know she does.” “Only, with myself, she would be better plegsed to see you try and live down the troubles of the past, than nurse them in solitude and silence.” “Has she been speaking to you about me; then?” demands his companion quickly. “Certainly not!” “How do you know, then, that I have had trouble?” says Delia, with anxious eyes. “My dear Mrs. Manners! How do I know that more than half the world has trouble? A physical doctor can tell by the loot of his patient whether he suffers or no! Shall a mental doctor be less skillful? Believe me, 1 have not been a close student of human nature for twenty years without learning something of the human heart. And since it is my privilege and my province to help to heal such as are wounded, I have no hesitation in offering my services whenever they may be required.” “You cannot help me, Mr. Le Mesurier.” “Is your hurt beyond all assistance, then?” “Yes.” They have sauntered away together under the lime and acacia trees during the latter part of the conversation. “Oh, Mr. Le Mesurier!” she exclaims, “you are a good man! and you, I believe, know what trouble is. I will tell you all. I will see if you can help me —if you can advise me what'to do!” And thereupon she leads him into the drawing room, and confides the story, which we all know, to his sympathetic ears. Mr. Le Mesurier listens in silence. The tale is all* the sadder, because the Woman before him has brought the misfortune on her own head, yet he does not seem to think the case so hopeless as she does. “Surely, surely,” he says, as she looks up into his face for comfort, “this separation cannot last forever. Your son himself will see the injustice of it, and seek you out again. Do you suppose that the love of twenty-one years can be forgotten in a moment? You wrong yourself und him by such a supposition! He may find consolation at first in the society of his bride, but as years pass on, and troubles come upon him, his heart and memory will turn back to his mother, and he will not be satisfied until he has met her again.”

He saunters out upon the lawn again, where Delia, having dried her eyes, feels bound after awhile to join him. “Mrs. Manners, I have a favor to ask of you,” he commences, as soon as the opportunity offers. “What is it, Mr. Le Mesurier?” “Will you help me in my parish work? I have often longed for a woman to cooperate with me and take some of the more delicate cases off my hands, but no one would undertake the duty; and, indeed, I must say it is not to everyone that I would confide it.” “Do you mean to visit the poor for you?’ “I do! Not only to visit, but to sympathize and pray with them.” “If Mrs. Bond can spare me, I shall be very glad to help you, Mr. Le Mesurier. Poor souls! It would give me pleasure to comfort them, and I feel that I could speak more freely with them, perhnps. than with the rich.” “That is what everyone says who has once tried it. It is one of those cases in which it is truly more blessed to give than to receive. 4ad m for dear, good Mr*.

•km for anything that is likely to do yon good. Come! I like to see that smile. It la the thought of my poor that has called it there. ItTs heaven’s first pledge of the reward which charity never falls to bestow on those who practice it” (To be von tinned.)