Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1898 — DOUBLY WEDDED [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

DOUBLY WEDDED

BY-CHARLOTTE M. BRAEME.

CHAPTER XIX. It was a sweet, dewy evening after the «nltry day. TJie rural homestead, covered with climbing roses, looked as if nothing tat peace could possibly stay within its white walls. The trees leaned protecttogly toward the thatched roof; two doves were cooing and preening their plumage the chimney stack, from which the Mue smoke rose in a steady column, for <he next day would be “baking day,” and they were heating the large brick oven. The rector looked at the house and sighed; he thought of the narrow grave he had gazed into but a few hours since, and he said to himself, “Perhaps it is better to be there, unconscious of sin, misery and suspense, then even here.” Of the Hall, of the squire, madam, Lillian, he had not the heart to think since that awful threat of mischief to those —his dear friends had met his eyefc. He took Colonel Ware through to his study, drew up the blind, then went into Itia escritoire, unlocked it, and silently handed the colonel a letter. The direction was in clumsy printed characters. So was the inclosure, which was a half-sheet of note paper. The colonel frowned fiercely as he read. “To the Rector of Heathside: “gir—l beg to inform you that Captain Drew, the lawful husband of the squire’s daughter of Heathside, did not die, as reported, last year, but is still alive and in a lunatic asylum in Italy. This is from “A WELL WISHER.” “A hoax!” said the colonel vehemently. "A hoax on the face of it!” He turned the paper over and over. There was neither address nor date. “There is ‘E. C’. nu the envelope,” he said —the postal districts had been recently established —“and Jthat is all the clew the rascal who penned this has chosen to give us. There is •either stamp of the maker’s name nor watermark in either paper or envelope,” he went on, holding them in turn to the light- “The wretches knew what they were about. By the way,” he added, returning the papers to the rector, “what became of those old drunkards who behaved so brutally their daughter?” “The father and "mother of that woman?’ interrogated Mr. Rawson. “I took care to let the parish authorises know about them. They had absolutely no clew to the whereabouts of the children —nor as their daughter—unless she gave it them. The wretches wrote to Lillian, begging once or twice,. but 1 insisted on her taking no notice.” “Then they ,have tried another method •f blackmailing,” said the colonel. “This la their work." “Then the first step is to find them,” remarked the rector, with a gleam of hope. “Our first step is to tell Macdonald,” said the colonel, rising, and walking to the window. * “Tell—Willie?” said Mr. Rawson, aghast. “Surely, we can manage it all without half killing the poor fellow with suspense! Think, Geoffrey—consider!” “Our first step is to tell Macdonald,” repeated Geoffrey Ware doggedly, "unless ■<we drop being men of honor and turn 'traitors. You are not looking the situation in the face, man. William Macdonald onust leave Lillian—at once.” f -“.Leave Lillian? Oh, my poor girl—so talicate still —so dependent on him!” “He has a first-rate excuse just now. His affairs require his presence in town; the lawyers cannot do without him.” “But she knows he could go backward and forward,” said the rector. “That wouldn’t satisfy her about the separation.” “Then there must be some other valid excuse.” “His mother was looking ill." said the rector. “But where are you going?”—for bis son-in-law took up his hat, and was moving toward the door. “Unless you are dealing with soldiers, If you want a thing done, do it yourself,” answered the colonel dryly. “Sending a message to the Hall by one of the farm men— or worse still, by one of the maids—would mean n bungle. I shall bring Macdonald back with me in a trap and break the news to him at once, for there is no time to lose. He must accompany me back to town to-night,” he added significantly. “He must not spend one hour at the Hall till all this is cleared up.” “Oh. my poor bairns, my poor bairns!” groaned the rector, wofully, as he heard CJeoffrey’s footsteps grow fainter in the distance. “Will the consequences of that miserable man’s sin never come to nn end? They were—-they arc—heaven help them so happy, so innocently, virtuously happy, nnd here is the serpent again, to ating them mortally perhaps this time!” His grief, as he buried his face in his hands, would have been still sharper, his •elf-reproach that it was he who hnd been instrumental in bringing Lillian and Willie together still more bitter, if he could .have seen them nt that moment.

CHAPTER XX. Thin evening Lillian was in the pnrlor •when her husband returned from Mr. Ilaw’s funeral; and, when the colonel arsived post-haste. and was by his reqneat ■bowii nt ouee into the “pnrlor" when* Willie was. thia was what he snw—LllUan. delicate, l»ale, but with a peculiarly youthful and angelic expression on tier cwect face, half crouching, half lying trick on pillows in u large unit-chair, the »ink fat baby sprawling on her lap, a «y of red sunlight falling across her gold en hair- which was nil loose ufoon her white wrapper—upon the firm mottled limits of the infant, whose dress had been «nfaaten<Kl that he might hare what his Mother called “n good kick.” Willie sitting on the sofa, gazing delightedly upon bls loved ones; and Lilith, still in her painting frock which was of all colors of the rainbow mid more besides-kneeling by her mother tickling baby's dimpled cheeks with a feather—a proceeding Which, while it nstonished him, he appeared to take pica an re in. Another mnn might have flinched; but with Geoffrey Ware Justice preceded mercy. He np more turned aside from what be considered to lie his duty now than he would hava done when giving the tford of

command to his men to advance upon the enemy, if their wives or children or mothselves at his knees imploring him to save their soldier relatives from danger and perhaps death. Looking up, Willie read some urgent need for action in the colonel’s set face. At the sight of him be rose almost involuntarily. “You want me,” he said, more as an assertion than in inquiry. “Yes,” answered the colonel, “at once. W’ill you order a chaise? The quicker we go the better.” Willie went out. “Who is ill?” asked Lillian anxiously, all the smiles fading from her face. “Hush, baby!” for the infant screwed up his face and gave a <hy. “No one,” said the colonel abruptly. “The rector wants to consult Willie at once on some important business.” “What is all'this about?” asked Willie anxiously, as they sped along the road—the gray stepped out bravely. “I cannot understand why my uncle could not tell me as w&were coming home to-day.” “He would have told you but for me,” said Geoffrey Ware. “I would not take a step in the affair until you were in it.” They had not quite reached the gate of the fields; but the rector stepped out from the shadow, and one of the men on the farm came forward to stand at the horse’s head. “Take the chaise gently through the field, and wait in the station road,” said Mr. Rawson to the man as the colonel and Willie alighted. Then the three marched silently down th€ eloping field into the house, which looked like some rustic haven of rest bathed in the pink light of sunset. Willie felt dazed rather than anxious; he had come into this Slough of Despond suddenly, he knew hot how. He qxpected nothing; still he had no fear but that this darkness would soon pass—no fear, no real idea of what this all really meant, till he was seated in the rector’s study, the anonymous letter which declared that Lillian’s former husband was still alive, that his wife was not his wife, his son not his lawfully begotten son, in his hand, then—“By heaven, this is a lie!” he cried, and fell back like a dead log, life, thought, sensation, arrested by the cruel shock. They dashed cold water on his face, laid him on the floor flat on his back, poured brandy down his throat as soon ns he could swallow, then assisted him in his struggles to rise. “I repeat that it is a lie,” he gasped, the instant that he was sufficiently recovered to articulate, “a foul, diabolical lie; and, if I had the creature, the scoundrel who invented it, here now, weak as I feel, 1 could twist his throat and crush the life out of him, if I knew I should swing for It!” He looked so wild, with his damp, disheveled hair, his furious eyes, his white, drawn lips, that the rector was frightened; and the colonel thought the man would hardly be fit for action till he had been in the doctor’s hands: "however, seeing how imperative it was that steps to prove the falsity of the anonymous letter should be taken, he rallied himself with an effort nnd discussed the situation with his two friends. Before ten o’clock struck from the old church on the hill, the colonel, Willie Macdonald and the rector were nil three on their way to London, and two letters were dispatched, one from Willie to Lillian — “My Own Wife—l have thought it right to accompany my uncle and Cousin Geoffrey to town to-night, for I can render them material help in some important business. Say nothing of this to anyone; make any simple excuse you like to your parents; I will return ns soon ns possible. Meanwhile I pray heaven to bless nnd keep my darlings. WILLIE." Another, marked private, from the same to Lilith—- " Lilith—l am terribly tried. I rely on you to keep our darling safe nnd well, and your denr mother free from idens of difficulty or.danger to our hnppiness. I trust you, dear Lilith. W. M.” Lillian wns comforted by her husband’s letter. Lilith, stealing in late at night, saw her sweetly asleep, her baby on her nnn. She stood looking at them, her face drawn with pain—she, who had never been rightly informed ns to the death of Captain Drew, had immediately suspected that her father might be still alive. Meanwhile she had written to her close friend, Michael Druce — "I fear some trouble is coining upon us through iny/iate father. 1 feel that you, ns one who known foreign countries, may possibly lie able to give us important help. As a matter of fact, 1 am utterly ignorant of what this threatened trouble .is; but 1 ask you, as a great favor, to go to Mr. Macdonald, and help him if you can; he is most likely in Prince’s Square. “Your unhappy friend, "LILITH.” This was a gradually augmented anxiety, but it wns borne by mnny shoulders. CHAPTER XXL Michael Dr.itce wns working steadfastly in the house in Arbor lame. Now that 1 England, in the person of Lilith, hud beI come denr to him, and now that Englund had taken him by the hand so fur ns to i hang his picture upon the walls of her ' Academical Exhibition, his roaming fit wns arrested, lie wns in his iltudio. This wns anI ciently the dining room where he nnd his , mother hnd entertained Willie Macdonald and Colonel Ware nt breakfast on the morning they cume to see his pictures. It wns transformed. The window had boon heightened; an alcove hnd been built out, with ii stained-glass window, making a species of Eastern recess, with tiled flooring, cushions, fnns pendent from the painted ceiling, nnd the rich stuff curtains hung upon n rod, to bo drawn ns the light in the studio demanded. The skeleton nnd the lay figure hnd a new companion in n full suit of armor. Spears nnd dented shields, savage trophies, nil bends nnd shining bcetlesklns, great rows of Venetian beads, shelves of pottery from all ports of the world, collected during his travels, covered wulls; a frw ancient

Grecian marble morsels—hands, feet, mutilated heads—hung here and there, and there were one or two oil paintings. Druce had packed away all his sketches and pictures that were not sold, or exhibited, or hung about the house, in bis former painting room upstairs; the one picture he was working at was on his easel. It was a portrait of Lilith, painted from memory. Memory? It was scarcely that. Was there one grand curve, one peculiar sweep of outline in her lithe figure, one shade of the peculiar brown of her marvelously delicate skin, one flash of her great eyes, one twist or frown of her marked brows, one droop of the expressive lips, that he had not mentally registered? This Druce asked himself when he began to paint Lilith’s portrait, and the answer, honestly given, was “No.” It was a glorious picture, although but the painted ,effigy of a young woman. It grew into life more and more every day. Druce had painted his lady love as an Eastern water carrier. A brown water jar was poised on her head, and she looked straight out of the canvas at the beholder with a glance inquiring, pathetic, fierce —a glance he had had from Lilith many a time, short though the period wafc during which he had known her. The picture seemed more alive than ever that morning when the old butler, with a look half chiding, half inquisitive, brought Michael Lilith’s letter. He waited, seriously watching his young master; but he was scarcely prepared for his excitement. Lilith appealing to him! Lilith presuming he had knowledge of her dead father! —he had heard the story from tne colonel. Lilith in trouble, asking him, Michael, to help her! It seemed so extraordinary, so bewildering, be grew giddy; he hardly knew what to do, whither or when to go, at first. But in a few minutes he calmed down. He went to his mother, told her a friend who was in trouble had sent after him, then dressed as calmly as he could, and went off to Prince’s Square. (To be continued.)