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Chatto & WindSsi Piccadilly

ROBERT W WOODRUFF LIBRARY

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TAGK

I. THE BLUE DOMINO I

II. THE LOST EXPLORER - - - 3 1

II. The Lost Explorer

It was a warm, dark night, and nearly all the seats in Hyde Park were occupied. The occupants were mostly lovers, indulging in that calm al fresco spooning which is characteristic of a certain class.

If you study the open-air sweethearts of the Metropolis, you will find they have all very much the same idea of courtship. Go through any of the parks that are open after nightfall, along the Embankment, anywhere where the authorities have placed convenient seats, and you will find young couples everywhere gracefully reclining in each other's arms.

As a rule, the young man sits well back with his arm round his beloved one's waist, and the young woman's head reclines peacefully on his shoulder. The young man at the same time clasps his fair partner's left hand. They rarely say a word to each other. They just sit on in silent beatitude and let the world go by. If the world stops and stares they take not the slightest heed. They are oblivious of everyone but themselves. But the world does not stare. For some reason those lovers of the Park are sacred objects even in the eyes of the rude little boy and the coarse hobble-de-hoy - Even the policeman has a fellow-feeling for them in the corner of his heart, and never dreams of flashing his lantern upon them.

It is quite unusual to hear a sound from these lovers. If they ever talk at all, the conversation takes place before they sit down. From the moment they have assumed the regulation attitude towards each other, ' the beating of their own hearts ' is all the sound they hear.

But to-night, on a seat under a tree in the quietest part of the Park, a man and woman are seated side by side who are conspicuous by the unconventionality of their behaviour. They are sitting bolt upright. They are not clasping each other's hands, and they are actually conversing. It must be granted that they are of a very different stamp to the general company. He is a clean-shaven, well-built man of about five-and-thirty, and she is a lady-like looking woman of about eight-and-twenty. She wears a thick veil, and he is dressed in black, and, although the night is warm, he has on an overcoat, the collar of which is turned up.

Why he has his collar up one guesses as the moon comes from behind a cloud and reveals a glimpse of a clerical white tie.

The moment you have seen that you feel sure that on this particular seat there is no sweethearting going on. A clergyman would not ask the young lady to whom he was engaged to meet him in Hyde Park at ten o'clock at night ; at least, if he did so his conduct would be thought rather extraordinary by his parishioners, and his bishop might have something to say on the subject.

As a matter of fact, the lady in the thick veil is the clergyman's wife — that is to say, he married her six months ago, and he thought he was making her his wife because she was a young widow ; but on the wedding-day, just as they started for their honeymoon, a startling piece of information was communicated to them, and now the Eev. Septimus B. Bates doesn't know if he is a married man or not, and his wife is under the painful impression that it is quite possible that she has committed bigamy.

When Miss Margetson, the romantic daughter of Captain Margetson, of the Australian liner Jupiter, fell in love with a handsome young American who had apartments in her aunt's house at Eotherhithe — the genteel part of Eotherhithe — she was only just twenty. The Captain was away, Aunt Lavinia was not particularly nice to her and hadn't an atom of romance in her entire composition, and the company of Mr. Hubert Burrows was exceedingly agreeable. Though only six -and twenty, Mr. Burrows had knocked about the world a good deal, and had seen strange sights and cities. He had been with ' expeditions ' to out-of-the-way places, he was a skilled botanist, a good sportsman, and a born adventurer. He was a great admirer of Speke, and Grant, and Baker, and Burton, and he had a sneaking fondness for the North Pole.

For the present, time was hanging idly on his hands. He had come to London with letters of introduction to a well-known explorer, and the explorer had started for some unknown spot a week before Mr. Burrows arrived.

He took lodgings in Eotherhithe at Aunt Lavinia 's quite by accident. He had been to call on an old ship's captain he had known in a foreign part, and had seen the neat bill in Aunt

Lavinia's front parlour window. And he had also seen Maud Margetson's face peeping over the top of the front parlour blind. It was a short blind — one of those old-fashioned wire abominations which have disappeared from general use, but which still flourish in the shipping neighbourhoods. You can see plenty of them in the side streets of Southampton, and Portsmouth, and Plymouth, and many of the genteel houses of Kotherhithe still retain them.

The young American made himself very agreeable to the romantic young girl who beat her wings against her Eotherhithe cage and flattened her nose against the Kotherhithe window, and presently she took her little walks abroad with great regularity, and always managed to meet Mr. Burrows very soon after she banged her aunt's front-door to behind her.

Othello never told Desdemona more entertaining stories of adventure by flood and field than Hubert Burrows told Maud Margetson, and she believed them all.

Some of them were true, but Hubert Burrows was a born son of the land of the startling headline, and he had a fair amount of imagination.

Hubert was not a rich man, but he was young, ardent, and had great schemes for the future. He was going to take Stanley's number down, and read papers to the Koyal Geographical Society which would startle the world and be cabled to its four quarters regardless of expense. He had also a few hundred pounds ready money and no relatives— both excellent qualities in a young man who wants to make his way in the world unimpeded.

Having for the moment nothing particular to discover, he suddenly discovered that he was in love — very much in love — with Miss Margetson ; and she was quite pretty enough to turn the head of any young man with spare time on his hands and no other female acquaintances.

Maud was enthusiastic over her gallant admirer. He was her first lover, and a girl's first lover generally has a greater grip of her feelings than any lover who may come after. She doesn't mentally survey him and weigh him up, and look out for his weak points as she does with her later admirers. She believes all the first lover says — no girl ever does that with the second ; the first has generally taught her a lesson.

They made up their minds, as they were in love and papa wouldn't be home for a long time — he had only just left the Docks when Burrows arrived — that they would be married. It was no good asking Aunt Lavinia's consent, because she never consented to anything. She was one of those sour women who would have put obstacles in the way of an infant who wanted its feeding-bottle. So Hubert arranged it all. He procured the license and two witnesses, and the marriage was to take place at a registry office, and they would go and live in apartments together, as far away from Aunt Lavinia as possible.

Hubert took the apartments, and Maud went with him to look at them. They were in Marquess Road, Canonbury, quite an aristocratic quarter after Eotherhithe, and the furniture was very much more modern than Aunt Lavinia's, which was heavy and solid, and had been in the family for years, having been made in days wdien furniture was intended for use, and not for show, and when a few wineglasses turned upside down on a sideboard, a glass stand of wax flowers on the little table in the front-window, and three vases on the mantelpiece, constituted the entire art of interior decoration.

After the black horsehair chairs of the Eotherhithe parlour, Maud thought that the chintzcovered furniture of the Canonbury first-floor was a dream of aristocratic elegance.

And there was a real oil-painting in the room, a landscape with sheep and cows and trees in the distance, and that was a great relief to the eye after living for years, as Maud had done, with two engravings in faded gilt frames — one of them the Day of Judgment, and the other Lord Nelson sitting for his photograph on the deck of the Victory, with a bullet in his back, dedicated by permission to Somebody, Esquire.

They went back to Eotherhithe, and Maud hated it, and wondered how she could possibly have lived so long behind those hideous wire blinds.

Then Maud set to and quietly packed her boxes, and went out with Hubert and bought a new dress and sundry things she wanted, and one fine day, when all was ready, they stepped out of the house and went to the registry office, and were married with two paupers for witnesses, who had half a crown each, and then they came back and walked into the little parlour arm-in-arm, and Maud said quite demurely, ' Please, Aunt Lavinia, we're married, and we are going to our new home.'

Aunt Lavinia fell back into the easychair, and lifted up her hands and exclaimed, * What !' and so

Maud repeated the information, and Hubert, before the horrified aunt had recovered from her astonishment, had a cab at the door, and all the luggage on it — his and Maud's — and then he came in and held out his hand to Aunt Lavinia to say good-bye, but she wouldn't take it. All she said to Maud was, ' Wait till your father comes home, miss !' Hubert laughed at that, and said, ' Oh, I dare say we shall get on very well, but no one has any authority over Mrs. Burrows now. Good-afternoon.'

And that is how they left Aunt Lavinia and Eotherhithe.

And two months afterwards they were separated. Maud was to have been the heroic wife of an explorer — she was to have accompanied Hubert in his search after new lands, and her portrait was to have been in the illustrated papers, and she was to have been the first white woman in the impenetrable jungles of Central Africa, and the world was to have rung with her name ; but when at last Hubert had the opportunity of joining an expedition which was starting for the Dark Continent, Maud was not quite broken-hearted that the company of ladies was not included in the programme. She was very fond of Hubert, but he was not quite so tender as he used to be, and his mind wandered so far away, and he wanted to be fighting savages and doing dreadfully unromantic things ; and so, when the chance came of going away, she knew that he never would settle down to life in a Canonbury first-floor, and after a few tears she let him go alone.

He was rather glad to go, although he felt the parting a little, but he, too, had discovered that he had settled down too early.

She went to the steamer and saw him off, and then she went back with the few hundred pounds which he had left her in the bank, and as soon as her father the Captain came home, she went back to Eotherhithe and asked him to forgive her, and as the house was really his as much as Aunt Lavinia's, he told her to make her home there till her husband came back from the expedition.

And when he sailed for Australia again with his vessel, he left strict instructions with his sister that Maud was to be treated with every consideration. Aunt Lavinia shrugged her shoulders, and from that time between aunt and niece there was an armed peace. But Maud, as a married woman, was her own mistress, and never allowed her aunt to forget it.

News of the expedition came to England from time to time, and then all at once it ceased. The little band of explorers had passed beyond the bounds of civilization. After a year a rumour came that they had all been massacred ; but this was speedily contradicted — a native brought news of them to the coast, and a letter from the leader.

Three years after Hubert Burrows had started, the news of his death reached England. He had been cut off from his comrades during a sudden attack by the natives, and though they had eventually been repulsed, Hubert Burrows had been taken away by them a prisoner, and a native later on reported to the chief of the band that the young American had been put to death.

Maud was a widow.

She mourned decently for her lost husband for two years, and then there came to lodge in the house a young curate who was doing temporary duty in the neighbourhood. The Kev. Septimus B. Bates was a gentle, simple-minded young man who craved for sympathy. He found it in the young widow. She took the greatest interest in his parish duties, and she personally attended to his comforts in the house. At the end of six months he proposed to her. The Captain was at home. He thought that an alliance with the Church was not an undesirable one, and there was no fear of the Eev. Septimus wanting to explore any unknown and inhospitable shores — and so it was all settled.

It was quite a respectable wedding this time, and naturally in a church. Aunt Lavinia thawed considerably— to be the aunt of a clergyman was decidedly an improvement in her social rank, and she would be looked up to in the neighbourhood. ' My nephew, the curate of All Saints',' came readily to her lips, and she smiled pleasantly for the first time for twenty years as she sat in the place of honour on the wedding-day.

The Rev. Septimus, who had a little private income left him by his father, had other ideas than Rotherhithe, and he had procured an appointment at the West End. It was only a hundred a year, but the congregation was a good one, and the neighbourhood fairly fashionable.

The home had been furnished, and the newlymarried couple were to return to it after the honeymoon. They were going to Hastings. They had taken their places in the train, when the newspaperboy came along with the early edition of the evening papers. The Rev. Septimus purchased Punch, Fun, and Judy for his wife, and an evening paper for himself, and began to read it more from force of habit than from any disrespect to Mrs. Bates.

They had come early, and there was quite ten minutes before the train started.

Suddenly the Eev. Septimus dropped the paper and looked at Maud with a white face.

' Your first husband was an explorer, was he not, Maud ?' he gasped.

Maud looked up astonished. It was so odd for her second husband to begin talking about her first on her wedding-day

' Yes, dear ; why do you ask ?'

' W — was his Dame Hubert Burrows ?'

'Yes,' stammered Maud, beginning to feel a vague alarm.

'Oh, dear — I — it's very dreadful — it is most awkward — really I '

' What's awkward, dear? I— I don't understand you.'

' Oh, nothing — only he isn't dead!'

The station, the platform, the passengers, everything reeled round the bewildered woman as she tried to collect her senses.

At last she managed to stammer out :

'Not dead!'

1 No, my dear, if I ought to call you so. I think we'll get out. It won't do for us to go away anywhere till — till — this — er — alarming rumour is set at rest.'

He picked up the paper, got out of the carriage and helped Maud out, got their luggage from the van, then stood on the platform and mopped his brow.

' I don't know what to do. I think I ought to see my bishop at once. Oh, dear, take my arm — I suppose you may do that — and let's get out into the street, where people won't stare at us, and we'll think.'

He left the luggage in the cloak-room — and he had a vague idea that that was where he ought to leave Maud — and then they went outside Victoria Station and turned up a quiet street.

' It's in the paper here,' he said ; ' read it.'

Maud took the paper with trembling hands, and read a statement to the effect that news had been received at Zanzibar that a young American explorer, a Mr. Hubert Burrows, who it was supposed had been killed some years ago by the natives, was still alive, and, though a prisoner, had saved his life by curing the chief of the tribe of a violent cold by the application of herbal remedies.

The tribe had instantly come to the conclusion that he was a great medicine man and a magician, and had kept him alive, but a prisoner, in order to benefit by his magic healing powers, and he was reported to have been seen recently by a traveller, and to have declared himself quite satisfied with his position, and to have expressed no desire to return to civilization.

Maud read to the end, and then looked up at Septimus.

' If this is true ' she said.

' Well, then, of course, my dear — I — I am not your husband — and you — er — you have committed bigamy I — of course — I — that is, we — we couldn't live together till this — er — mystery is cleared up.'

' But it mayn't be true.'

' But it may — and — W3 mustn't risk it. It's the most dreadful thing. I — er — never was in such an awkward predicament in my life.'

'What's to be done?' sobbed Maud, trying to realize her ghastly position. ' I'm married to a man who's going to live among savages all his life, if this is true.'

' Of course it's very painful,' stammered the unhappy bridegroom ; ' but until we know more I — er — think you'd better go back to your aunt's.'

' Can I have a divorce ?'

' No, I'm afraid not. I don't think it comes within the meaning of the Act. I mean it's only desertion and cruelty, and that sort of thing — you can only have a separation.'

' I've got that.'

' Of course, of course, very thoughtless of me, but you know what I mean. At any rate, you can't be his wife and mine too, and with this statement staring me in the face, I couldn't risk it ; and, of course, you couldn't risk our living together as man and wife. He might come back.'

'But he says he won't.'

' That doesn't matter. I believe you can petition the Court for — er — restitution, and the Court can order him to return.'

' How's the Court to get at him in Central Africa among the savages ?'

' I don't know — send out a commission, I suppose. Oh, Maud — I mean Mrs. Burrows — I really think I had better see the bishop at once — you see, I have gone through the ceremony with you.'

' Yes, and it's so stupid. We are married, and because some black man comes with a story to Zanzibar, you say I've committed bigamy. As my husband, perhaps you ought to go out and see if Hubert is with those people.'

' Good gracious me ! Venture out alone into a land of savages '? Why, Stanley had a small army with him, and it took him a year to get there.'

' It's terrible.'

'It's horrible!'

' Where can I go ?'

' I don't know, really, I think I ought to take you back to Rotherhithe.'

' What would people think? Everybody knows we are married, and nobody knows about my marriage to Hubert Burrows. It would look absurd for me to go home again and put my head out of a window and tell everybody that I think I've committed bigamy, but I'm not quite sure.'

'Yes, and — er — I should be involved in the scandal, and I was so well known there, being the curate. I — think you had better go and live in our new house alone — and I'll go away somewhere abroad. I'll change wTith a chaplain at some foreign place who wants to come home for a time.'

The unhappy couple walked about for an hour, and eventually it was agreed that Maud should go to the Rev. Septimus's house as Mrs. Bates, but that he should be called away that very afternoon to some relative who was dying abroad.

And that was how they arranged it. Maud went to the new home and found it damp and uncomfortable, and the chimneys smoking, and cried herself to sleep in a draughty bedroom, and the Eev. Septimus Bates spent his wedding-night on a very choppy sea between Newhaven and Dieppe.

Six months have elapsed since then, and no further news has come of the husband who is a medicine man and a prisoner among the natives of Central Africa. The Eev. Septimus has failed utterly to find out any means by which the truth can be ascertained. Nothing can be proved. No one saw Hubert Burrows die, but nothing having been heard of him, under such circumstances his death would have been accepted, and his insurance paid had he been insured. But there was a report that he was still alive. He had been seen — a circumstantial story had been told and telegraphed to Europe.

How was the truth to be known, and when ? He and Maud might go on living apart for twenty years, and still there would be a doubt as to whether Hubert Burrows was alive or not. There was legal presumption of death till the meddling native turned up.

Maud Bates, or Burrows, was terribly lonely in the house she was to have entered a happy wife. She didn't care to make friends — there would be awkward explanations. The Rev. Septimus had quietly put himself right with the vicar of the parish he was to have gone to, and had obtained a temporary post abroad, but Maud felt that in her equivocal position she could never visit or receive visitors without making people talk about her husband's prolonged absence.

To-night she had come to Hyde Park in answer to a telegram received from Septimus, in which he announced he was coming to England for a few days. They met at the Marble Arch, and they wandered to a dark part of the Park and sat down where they could converse unobserved.

The situation would be laughable if it were not so exceedingly disagreeable to both of them.

The Rev. Septimus doesn't even know whether he ought to call his wife or Burrows' wife 'my dear ' or not, and as to kissing her, that would be out of the question.

They had discussed the situation again and again, and he thinks now that the proper thing would be for him to apply to have the marriage annulled on the ground that the first husband was alive, and leave it to the Court to decide how far the story affected the legality of the marriage. That would settle the question as far as the law was concerned.

The Eev. Septimus took off his hat to let the night breeze cool his brow. The more he thought the matter out, the more his head began to go round.

They separated at the Marble Arch about eleven o'clock. Maud went back home, and the Eev- Septimus went to a hotel. The next morning he went to his lawyers and laid the whole case before them.

The lawyers said he ought to apply to have the marriage set aside. It would be a most sensational case, and would raise an interesting point of law.

And at last the unfortunate clergyman, who didn't know if his wife was his wife or somebody else's, decided that that was the only course open to him, and he gave his lawyers instructions to commence the necessary proceedings.

Two days afterwards, and before anything had been done beyond preparing the necessary documents to put in evidence, Captain Margetson returned from Australia, and the day after his arrival at Rotherhithe came over to see his daughter.

He knew the whole story, as his daughter had wept it all out on his fatherly bosom the day after the wedding.

He brought a gentleman with him — a thin, bronzed man of about five-and-thirtv, who looked as though he had just recovered from a fever.

' Mr. Johnson,' said the Captain, as soon as they had been shown into the sitting-room, ' this is my daughter who was Mrs. Hubert Burrows.'

The pale, sickly-looking man bowed.

' Madam,' he said, ' it was quite by accident that I found out that Hubert Burrows was the son-in-law of the Captain here. I came over in your father's ship from Sydney I was talking about Central Africa and my having been with the famous expedition, and then he told me about you. I understand you are troubled in your mind about your husband's fate. You've married again, and you've heard since that your first husband is alive out there.'

' Yes,' said Maud, ' that is quite true, unfortunately.'

' Well, I think I can tell you something about it.

I saw him captured, and our fellows made a desperate effort to save him, but the blacks were too many for us. We had to beat a retreat. I was the doctor to that expedition, and now I'll tell you something that will ease your mind. Burrows, your husband, was sick at the time, and I'd discovered what was the matter with him, but I didn't tell him. I'd made an examination of him, and I will stake my professional reputation that the story brought to the coast by the traveller is a lie, if he ever brought it. But he didn't. That story comes from America. It's a pure fiction to fill up an odd corner with a bit of sensational news. It's just done to start a discussion again about the fate of lost explorers, just as they used periodically to revive the question years ago as to whether the Franklin expedition was alive at the North Pole or not.

' The tribe that took your husband would have slaughtered him if he had been able to raise the dead to life, because in the struggle he fired at their chief and killed him, and if they didn't slaughter him there and then he wasn't alive when you married again.'

' How can you be sure of that ?' exclaimed Maud anxiously.

' I'll tell you. When I examined him he had the seeds of a fatal malady — more than the seeds : it had got hold of him. If he lived three months after he was captured, then he performed a feat which has hitherto been unknown to medical science.'

' Then, you are sure he died long ago.'

' Absolutely- I'd hand a certificate to any coroner's jury in the world.'

Captain Margetson had kept silence during the doctor's narrative.

' Well,' he said, ' that's straight enough, isn't it ? It was a lucky chance I met the doctor on board my ship. Where's your husband?'

' Septimus ? He — he's at the Charing Cross Hotel, I believe.'

' Oh, he's not abroad, then ?'

' No, he's in town ; he's come to see his lawyers — he was going to have the case brought before the law courts to decide.'

' Well, we'll decide it without them. Come along, doctor, we'll go and see my reverend son-in-law.'

The Captain and the doctor found the Eev. Septimus at the hotel, and they told him the story to which his wife had just listened.

When it was told, Septimus gave a great sigh of relief. He had dreaded being handed down to posterity and printed in all the law books as an interesting case.

There was no doubt now that Maud was his wife. The doctor's story was conclusive.

An hour afterwards the Eev. Septimus B. Bates drove up to his own house in a hansom cab and entered it for the first time since his marriage.

' Maud, my darling, I think I may kiss you now,' he said, as he folded her in his arms.

' We are married now, then, you think,' she said, looking up at him smilingly ; ' and you don't think I've committed bigamy ?'

' No, no, that's all settled for ever. And now about the future — I suppose I can send for my things to the hotel ?'

' Oh dear, I never thought of that. Won't it seem odd, my suddenly having a husband that nobody has ever seen ?'