Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 September 1900 — 'Twixt Life and Death [ARTICLE]

'Twixt Life and Death

BY FRANK BARRETT

CHAPTER XV. Eric looked at his watch. "What time is it?” asked Nessa. “It is past three.” “And no telegram has come yet! Do jrou think there can be any mistake?” “Mrs. Redmond may have forgotten jfthat I said you were going to the riding •chooi.” "You said that a true friend cannot forget.” "Perhaps Mrs. Redmond is not a true friend.” ■ “R no message should come for me, ' what shall I do?” she asked in dismay. “We will wait till the last moment for a telegram. Your friend will know that you cannot wait ut the riding school after a certain hour. Do not think you will be under obligation to us. My father is a man of business. He will consult the best luwyers and see that you get your Inheritance, and you will pay him in money for all you have received, and be quite independent. No one will have any claim on you—not anyone*,” he said, impressively; and then, to make his meaning clear, he continued, dropping his voice, and speaking with some difllculty, “I must say something more, that you may have no can so lo hesitate about going with my father and sister. 1 shall stay in London, and you will not see me for three years.” Ilnd Nessu been a shallow girl or a worldly girl, she would have replied with a more or less graceful compliment,' and have got out of un embarrassing position cheaply; but she felt deeply, and was too sincere, too simple for that. She sat silent, looking in his face with wondering eyes, while the warm blood mantled in her cheek, as site put lier position before herself in plain words to fully comprehend bis meaning. ' c “He loves me,” she said to herself, “more than his father, and sister, and home. lie will banish himself from all he loves that I may nut feel his claim upon my affection.” "Think,” be urged; "it is your life that is at stake.” "Yes; but that‘is not all,” she answered. "Oh, this • question is too grave to answer lightly or hastily. I want to be alone and think it over.” There was a ladies’ reading room at the end of the dining hall, lie rose, and giving his arm, led her there. In less than an hour he returned with a telegram, looking as if he carried his own death warrant-as, indeed, it was for all the dearest hopes of his heart. He gave it to NeSsa without a word, and waited. When she had read it she handed the trembling sheet to him, her bosom swelling with a sigh. Erie read: “Take the nest train to Brighton. You will find me in the waiting room. Can do nothing till you come.” "There is a train at ten minutes past five,” he said, with it forced calm, as he returned the telegram, "and the cub is at the door waiting.” He stepped into the hansom after her. Never had moments fled so swiftly or been so precious to them. Yet all were wasted. They scarcely spoke a word between Holbot n and Victoria. He got her ticket and put her in a compartment. "The time has nearly come to thank you,” she said, forcing a smile, when the collector hail nipped her ticket and closed the door. “Not yet, not yet,” lie murmured, glancing at the clock in quick dread. “We are sure to see each other again,” she said. He shook liis head, but his quivering lips refused to speak. "But, if you are not going home for three years, it is quite possible ” “No. no—l shall never see you again,” he said, in a broken voice, “Oh!” And then, dashing away the tears that bad sprung in her eyes, she said: “But 1 don’t understand—you must tell We cannot part like this.” “1 promised my father —before be would tell me your name, and where 1 might find you—that I would go back with him if you did not.” In this way he represented his promise never to see Nessn again unless she broke forever with Mrs. Redmond. “Stand back, there!” cried the guard, and then he blew his whistle. The time had come for Nessa to thank him. anil for him to say farewell. They could not speak, for the tears that choked them; could not see each other, for the tears that blinded them. But Nessa put out both her hands with a sob, and he kissed them. The train moved on; she saw him standing there desolate and broken-heart-ed. And thus ended Ncssu’s love affair. CHAPTER XVI. At Brighton Nessa found Mrs. Redmond in the waiting room. They entered a cab and were taken to Henson’s Hotel. Nessa was surprised to find that they were to stay at a big hotel; and when the elevator had taken them to their rooms, ■be was still more ustonished to see a sel-ver-mounted dressing ease on the table, a couple of traveling boxes, and a variety of knickuacks and articles of clothing about the room that she bad never seen before. “Is this your room?” she asked. “Yes. Yours is in there. The waiting room is on the other side. Nice, aren’t they? What do you thiuk of my dressing case?” "It’s very pretty, but bow did you get it?” "Paid for it,” replied Mrs. Redmond. "And a nice lot these things have coat; but they wouldn't take us in anywhere without luggage, aud I cpme away from St. John’s Wood with nothing.” This was hardly true, for despite the baste of her departure she had contrived to stow away under her waterproof a great many anpaid-for articles of valne which ahe had since disposed of to a private dealer in such things. "By and by,” aba added, before Nesaa

could ask where she got the money to make her purchases, “you must pick the name out of your linen to-night before the chambermaids get a chance of prying into it. What are you gong to cull yourself? Tve given my name as Mrs. Gaston Laseelles.” Nessa looked at her friend in uneasy silence. It hud seemed to he natural and justifiable that Mrs. Redmond, in leaving her husband, should discard the name he had given her and resume her maiden name; but this second change, and the change proposed for herself, frightened her. "Must we go under false names?” “To be sure we must, unless you want tin- police to be down on us, as tliov certainly would if they found our names in the visitors’ list. And where's the harm?'" “I don't know; only it seems as if we were doing something wrong.” “Oh, fudge!” exclaimed Mrs. Redmond, impatiently. “Lots of people change their names for no reason at all. The swells do it; so do actors and authors. If any justification is needed, necessity should be an excuse. We don't want to do it; it’s forced upon us by that villain Nichols, who swindled tvs, and that other villain, my husband, who wants_to_get hold of you. Have we ever done anything .wrong—either of us?” "We thought we could pay, to be sure,” said Nessa, reflectively, "ami we meant to pay, and we should, if that man had kept his promise. No; Ido not think we have done anything willfully dishonest.” "Now, what name will you take-?” “Any that you think will do,” said Nessa, with a sigh of resignation. "What do you say to Gladys do Vere?” "Do you thiuk it sounds .quite like me?” Nessa asked, in a tone of doubt, for tiie name reminded her painfully of certain cheap novelettes the girls used to smuggle into school and devour in secret. “Perhaps not; I thought of it for myself. Viola is pretty and uncommon.” Nessa assented timidly. It was a very pretty name, she said. —Very well. then. Viola it shall _be. Viola D’ something; it must be a I)' with an apostrophe; D’Anvers; that will do; Viola D’Anvers. Now come down and let us get some dinner. In the dining room Nessa felt the hot blood mount to the roots of her hair when her friend, with the loud tone and peculiar pronunciation affected by persons who wish to lie thought better bred and better educated than they are,.said, “We will sit heah, Viola,” and told the waiter to see if there were any “lettahs for Miss I)’Anvers.” It seemed to her that the gentlemen looking at her from the adjacent table must see that she hud not a name like that. In the drawing room, after dinner, Mrs. Redmond seated herself carelessly before the open piano and showed off her musical attainments in a piece of such painful brilliancy that the elderly gentlemen, after withdrawing to the remotest corners of the room, dropped out one after the other to seek repose in the smoking room or elsewhere.

The next clay, however, they were forced to give up their pleasant rooms by the sea. The reason for the sudden tlight was that Benjamin Levy came down to Brighton, and meeting Nes.sa alone told her that the police had tracked them to this place, and that their only chance of safety was to leave. At 10:ir» Mrs. Redmond stepped out of the train at London Bridge and there met Nessa, who had arrived by the preceding train. Their dress in that part of the town was conspicuously lady-like; they had not a vestige of luggage, and very little money; of necessity, therefore, they hud to seek refuge for the night in a place where no questions are asked. Close by the station they found a nondescript house of entertainment, something between a coffee-shop and tavern, where a slatternly woman leal them up two flights of uncarpeted and dirty stairs, and showing them into n double bedded room, set down the candle with a yawn, and asked Mrs. Redmond for half a crown, as it was the custom of the house for lodgers to pay over night. Nessa had never been in such n room before, and looked round in shuddering disgust at the yellow linen of the beds, the greasy slips of carpet on the dark floor, the frowsy stuffed chairs, the chipped toilet service, and the walls that seemed to have imbibed yellow fog of many years from the river. The atmosphere was redolent of all the ranchl smells of Tooley street, with a whiff of fried bacon and herring from below superudded. Mrs. Redmond seemed to take those discomforts as a matter of course, and even showed herself acquainted with damaged, door-fast-enings by tilting a chair and wedging the buck of it under the knob of the handle. Her indifference surprised Nessa. However, this experience prepared Nessa for what was to come, and she had loss hesitation in agreeing that the lodgings they found the next morning in Spita) square would do when she thought of the horrible room iu which she had passed that miserable, sleepless night. The square was quiet; the house looked respectable. There was a silk warehouse on the ground floor; their three rooms were neatly furnished; the linen was fairly white and clean. The housekeeper who let the rooms under took to come in for an hour every morning to light the fire and to do the rough work; for the rest of the day the ladies had to wait Upon themselves. On Monday evening Mrs. Redmond declared herself so delighted with Nessa’s performance ns n housewife that she should henceforth leave all the domestic arrangements to her. This gave Nessa plenty to do. But that did not displease her at all. She was glad of the occupation, not only as a mental distraction, but as a means of lessening her obligation to Mrs. Redmond. Mrs. Redmond herself did nothing except read penny papers, and yawn at the window. She bought her things ready made, and when the last shilling

was gone hinted that Nessa’s muddling extravagance would ruin them. As credit was not to be got in Spitalfields, and food was an absolute necessity, Mrs. Redmond took a ’bus to Old Ford on Suturda.v morning, pawned some trinkets there, and returned jubilant with two pounds ten. She was always at her best when she had money to spend, and before she had drawn off her gloves, she said: “We’ll go to a show to-night.” Nessa was human—that is to say, non over wise—and after being cooped op is doors for the best part of a week, and en during a great many little miseries in si lence, the idea of a long evening in a theater set the blood dancing in ber veins. tu the .erehing they went to Arcadia, where the International Hippodrome had just opened their season—Mrs. Redmond taking a hansom from Norton Folgate, after buying a new pair of gloves for the occasion. In the entrance lobby Mrs. Redmond recognized a gentleman In evening dress as an old friend. "Jimmus!” she said, laying her hand on his arm familiarly. "Hallo, Totty!” he returned, recognizing her, and shaking her hand warmly. "Shouldn’t have known you in that wig.” Mrs. Redmond had changed her hair dyetofhe chestnut tint then just coming into fashion. "What do yon do here?” "(.'oine to see the horses. My friend, Miss Doncaster- Mr. James Fergus,” she said, introducing Nessa, to whom she had given this new name. Mr. Fergus raised his hat to Nessa and replaced it with the regulation tilt, and shook hands with a lengthened look of admiration. “What are you doing here, Jimmus?” asked Mrs. Redmond. "Bossing the show for Duprez.” "Delighted to hear it. Any opening for an Old chum?” "Well,” said Mr. Fergus with deliberation. casting another adm iri n g gl a nee on Nessa, who clearly occupied his thoughts more than the “old chum”—“might find something. Are you in the line, Miss Dancaster?” "Of course,” boldly answered Mrs. Redmond. Before the evening was over Mr. Fergus engaged them, more on account of Nessa’s beauty than because he eared about Mrs. Redmond’s return to the profession she had been in before she married Mr. Redmond.

CHAPTER XVII. It seemed to Nessa that Monday night, when she was to make her first appearance in the ring, Would never come; it was almost too much to expect; but it came, all the same; and at half-past seven Nessa found herself, with seven Other ladies in blue, waiting in dressing room No. ti for their cull. They were all very noisy and full of fun except Nessn, and she was quiet because she did not know the ladies yet awhile, though they had shown themselves very friendly, and she could not quite understand what they were all talking about — partly, perhaps, because her thoughts., were in a tumult of expectation. At last a bell tinkled, and a boy called out—- " All down, ladles, for parade.” It was strange to Nessa to see how uneoncerned they were, and how they dawdled about after this summons that stirred her very heart within her. But the overture had only just begun; it came up the stairs in gusts as the door below was swung open. She took one last glance at herself as she passed the glass, to be sure that her wig was all right, and went down with the rest. It was bewildering to look down the stairs, into the court .below crowded with horses and riders, all glitter and movement, as they took their places in the procession forming along the main opening. She was lifted in the saddle, and led to the outside place in the front file, passing Mrs. Redmond, who, to her disgust, had been stuck in the middle of the tile behind. (To be continued.)