Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 70, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1899 — The Convict's Daughter. [ARTICLE]

The Convict's Daughter.

BY WILKIE COLLINS.

CHAPTER XV. Linley had one instant left, in which he might have drawn back into the library in time to escape Sydney’s notice. He was of the effort of will. Grief and 'suspense had deprived him of that elastic - readiness of mind which springs at once |iipfa thought to action. For a moment he feesitated. In that moment she looked up With a faint cry of alarm she let the ' Cloak drop from her hands. As helpless as he was, as silent as he was, she stood moted to the spot. “It’s surely better for me,” he quavered, “to hear the miserable news from :you than from a servant.” “What miserable news?” she asked. “My poor little darling!” he gasped. "My only child!” She stepped close up to him; she laid her hand gently and fearlessly on his arm. ""Oh, Mr. Linley, what dreadful mistake is. this? Kitty’s recovery is only a matHe staggered back—with a livid change 4a his face startling to see. If the thought in Linley, at that moment, had shaped 4tse!f into words, he would have said: "And Catherine never told me of it!” Sydney drew back from him. A faint -smile brightened her face for a moment. "Kitty has fallen asleep—such a sweet, sleep! I don’t think I should ‘have left her but for that. The maid is watching at the bedside, and Mrs. Linley is only away for a little while.” “Wait a few minutes,” he pleaded, “it 4s so long since we have seen each other.” His manner became undisguisedly ten--4er; his language changed in the one way -of all others that was most perilous to tier—he appealed to her pity. “Oh, Sydney, It’s so hard to part with you!” “Spare me!” she cried, passionately. “Ton don’t know how I suffer.” * “Oh, I know it—no words can say how T feel for you! Are you sorry for me, Have you thought of me since :She had striven against herself, and --against him, dll her last effort at resistance was exhausted. In reckless despair ohe let the truth escape her at last. "When do I ever think of anything "else! lam a wretch unworthy of all the kindness that has been shown to me. I don’t deserve your interest; I don’t even -deserve your pity. Send me away—be hard on me—be brutal to me. Have some iinercy on a miserable creature whose life ;|s one long, helpless effort to forget you!” .••©er voice, her look maddened him. He -drew her to his bosom, he held her in his arms; she struggled vainly to get away dfeem Idm. “Oh,” she murmured, “how ■cruel you are! Remember, my dear one, remember how weak I am. Oh, Herbert, Tm dying—dying—dying!” Her voice fainter and fainter; her head sank -on his breast. He lifted her face to him -With whispered words of love. He kissed daer again and again. The curtains over the library entrance moved noiselessly when they were parted. The footsteps of Catherine Linley were as she passed through, and entered the room. She stood still for a mounent in silent horror. Not a sound warned them when she advanced. After hesitating for a moment, She raised her hand toward her husband, aa if to tell him of her presence by a touch; drew it back, suddenly recoiling iCtom her own first intention; and touched Sydney instead. Then, and then only, they knew what had happened. Face to face, those three persons—with •every tie that had once united them •napped asunder in an instant—looked at -each other. The man owed a duty to the lost creature whose weakness had appealed to his mercy in vain. The man broke the silence. “Catherine—!” With immeasurable contempt looking brightly out of her steady eyes, his wife stopped him: “Not a word!” He refused to be silent. “It is I,” he y«H; “I only who am to blame.” “Spare yourself the trouble of making ■excuses,” she answered; “they are needless. Herbert Linley, the woman who •was once your wife despises you.” Her eyes turned from him and rested -on Sydney Westerfieid. “I have a last word to say to you. Look ait me, if you can. Listen to me, if you can.” fitydney lifted her head. She looked vacantly at the outraged woman before her, as if she saw a woman in a dream. With the same terrible self-possession which she had preserved from the firststanding between her husband and her governess—Mrs. Linley spoke; “Miss Westerfieid, you have saved my child's life.” She paused—seized the girl . S>y the arm—and put her in the place which she had thus far occupied herself. Deadly pale, she pointed to her husband, and said to Sydney: “Take him!” Slowly she passed out of the room—and p-'ifeft them together. /• CHAPTER XVI. Mrs. Linley’s application for a divorce dIKiA heard in the first division of the liglUtrt of Sessions at Edinburgh, the Lord r president being the judge. The decree was granted in customary form, giving the custody of the child to the mother. Line by line Herbert Linley followed t'tte progress of the law report Word by word he dwelt with morbid attention on p&ji terms of crushing severity in which Lord President had spoken of Sydney |®e»teiAeld and of himself. Sentence by sentence he read the reproof inflicted on jjpjjfc'uuhapnr woman whom he had vowed love and cherish. And then—even then M(iged by bis own self-tormenting sus;’f>idon, he looked for more. On the oppo-

he looked back, he saw nothing bat the life he had wasted. When his thoughts turned to the future, they confronted a prospect empty of all promise to a man still in the prime of life. Wife and child were as completely lost to him as if they had been'dead—and it was the wife’s doing. Had he any right to complain? Not the shadow of a right. As the newspapers said, he had deserved it. The clock roused him, striking the hoar. He rose hurriedly, and advanced toward the window. While he was still there he saw Sydney crossing the street on her way back to him. She came into the room with her complexion heightened by exercise; she kissed him, and said with her pretty smile: “Have yon been lonely without me?” Who would have supposed that the torment of distrust and the dread of desertion were busy at this woman’s heart? He placed a chair for her, and seating himself by her side, asked if she felt tired. Every attention that she could wish for from the man whom she loved was offered with every appearance of sincerity on the surface! She met him halfway, and answered as if her mind was quite at ease. “No, dear, I’m not tired—but I’m glad to get back.” She noticed the newspaper on the table. “Anything interesting to-day?” she asked—and drew the newspaper towards her to look at it. He took it from her suddenly, almost roughly. The heightened color which told of recent exercise, healthily employed, suddenly faded from her face. “Is it all over?” she asked. “And is it put in the newspaper?” “What do you mean?” “I mean the divorce.” He went back again to the window and looked out. It .was the easiest excuse that he could devise for keeping his face turned away from her. She followed him. “I don’t want to read it, Herbert. I only ask you to tell me if you are a free man again.” Quiet as he was, her tone left him no alternative but to treat her brutally or to reply. Still looking out at the street, he said “Yes.” “Free to marry, if you like?” she persisted. He said “Yes” once more—and kept his face steadily turned away from her. She waited awhiie. He neither moved nor spoke. Surviving the slow death little by little of all her other illusions, one last hope had lingered in her heart. It was killed by that cruel look, fixed on the view of the street. “I’ll try to think of a place that we can go to at the sea side.” Having said those words she slowly moved away to tfie door. The street still interested him. She left the room. CHAPTER XVII. When Herbert asked Sydney to what part of England they should go, on leaving London, she mentioned Sandyseal as a place that she had heard of, and felt some curiosity to see. The same day—bent on pleasing her, careless where he lived now, at home or abroad—he engaged rooms at the hotel. The servant showed “Mr. and Mrs. Herbert” into .their sitting room, and begged that they would be so good as to wait a few minutes, while the other rooms were being prepared for them. Moving toward the window to look at the view, Herbert paused to look at some prints hanging on the walls, which were superior as works of art to the customary decorations of a room at a hotel. If he had gone straight to the window he might have seen his divorced wife, his child and his wife’s mother, getting into the carriage which took them to the railway station. Sydney rang the bell. The chambermaid answered it, ready to show the other rooms. She turned round at the door. “Let’s try to make our sitting room look like home,” she suggested. “How dismal, how dreadfully like a thing that doesn’t belong to us, that empty table looks! Put some of your books and my keepsakes on it, while I am away. I’ll bring my work with me when I come back.” He had left his traveler’s bag on a chair when he first came in. Now that he was alone, and under no restraint, he sighed as he unlocked the bag. “Home!” he repeated; “we have no home. Poor girl, poor, unhappy girl! Let me help her to deceive herself.” He opened the bag. The little fragile presents, which she called her “keepsakes,” had been placed by her own hands in the upper part of the bag, so that the books should not weigh on them, and had been carefully protected by wrappings of cotton wool. Taking then* out, one by one, Herbert fonnd a delicate china candlestick broken in two pieces, in spite of care that bad been taken to preserve it Herbert discovered that the fracture could be repaired at the nearest town. In fear of another disaster, if he put it back in the bag, he opened a drawer in the table and laid the two fragments carefully inside, at the further end. In doing >this his hand touched something that bad been already placed in the drawer. He drew it out and found that it was a book. Herbert instantly recognised the gilding on the cover, imitated from a design invented by himself. He remembered the inscription, and yet he read it again: “To dear Catherine from Herbert, on the anniversary of our marriage.” The book dropped from his hand on the table, as if it had been a new discovery, torturing him with a new pain. His wife must have occupied the room —might perhaps have been the person whom he had succeeded as a guest at the

“Oh,” he thought, bitterly, “it I could I only feel as coldly toward Catherine aa she feels toward me!” His resolution had resisted much; but this final trial of his self-control was more than he could sustain. He dropped into a chair—his pride of manhood recoiled from the contemptible weakness of crying—he tried to re member that she had divorced him and taken his child from him. In vain! In vain! He burst into tears. When Sydney reached her room she asked the chambermaid if the postofflee was near the hotel. The woman smiled. “Everything is near na, ma’am, in this little place. We can send to the postoffice for yon.” Sydney wrote her initials. “Ask, if yon please, for a letter addressed in that way.” She handed the memorandum to the chamber maid. “Corresponding with her lover under her husband’s nose!” That was how the chamber maid explained it below stairs, when the porter remarked that initials looked mysterious. Sydney had written to the head of • convent near the place, and the mother superior had replied. Sydney trembled as she opened the letter. It began kindly. “I believe you, my child, and I am anxious to help you. But I cannot correspond with an unknown person. If you decide to reveal yourself, it is only right to add that I have shown your letter to the Reverend Father, who, in temporal as in spiritual things, is our counselor and guide. To him I must refer you, in the first instance. His wisdom will decide the serious question of receiving you into our Holy Church, and will discover, in due time, if you have a true vocation to a religions life. With the Father’s sanction, you may be sure of my affectionate desire to serve you.” Sydney put the letter back in the envelope, feeling grateful toward the mother superior, but determined by the conditions imposed on her to make no further advances toward the Benedictine community. Even if her motive in waiting to the convent had remained unchanged, the allusions to the priest would still have decided her on taking this step. The bare idea of opening her inmost heart, and telling her saddest secrets to a man, and that man a stranger, was too repellent to be entertained for a moment. In a few lines of reply, gratefully and respectfully written, she thanked the mother superior, and withdrew from the correspondence. The letter having been closed, and posted in the hotel box, she returned to the sitting room, free from the one doubt that had troubled her; eager to show Herbert how truly she believed in him, how hopefully she looked to the future. 7 With a happy smile on her lips she opened the door. She was on the point of asking him playfully if he had felt surprised at her long absence, when the sight that met her eyes turned her cold with terror in an instant. His arms were stretched out on the table; his head was laid on them; despair confessed itself in his attitude; grief spoke in the deep sobbing breaths that shook him. Love and compassion restored Sydney’s courage; she advanced to raise him in her arms—and stopped once more. The book on the table caught her eye. He was still unconscious of her presence; she ventured to open it. She read the inscription —looked at him—looked back at the writing—and knew the truth at last. The rigor of the torture that she suffered paralyzed all outward expression of pain. Quietly she pat the book back on the table. Quietly she touched him, and called him by name. He started and looked up; he made an attempt to speak to her in his customary tones. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he said. She pointed to the book, without the slightest change in her face or her manner. “I have read the inscription to your wife,” she answered; “I have seen you while you thought you were alone; the mercy which has so long kept the truth from me is mercy wasted now. Your bonds are broken, Herbert. You are a free man.” He affected not to have understood her. She let him try to persuade her of it, and made no reply. He declared, honestly declared, that what she had said distressed him. She listened in submissive silence. He took her hand and kissed it. She let him kiss it and let him drop it at her side. She frightened him; he began to fear for her reason. There was silence —long, horrid, hopeless silence. She had left the door of the room open. One of the servants of the hotel appeared outside in the passage. He spoke to some person behind him. “Perhaps the book has been left in here,” he suggested. A gentle voice answered: “I hope the lady and gentleman will excuse me if I ask leave to look for my book.” She stepped into the room to make her apologies. (To be continued.)