The Courage of Love

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 928, 22 March 1930, Page 22

The Courage of Love

COPYRIGHT PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

by

MADAME AIBANESI

Author of " Love's Harvest.” "The Road to Love,” "The Wsy to Win.” etc.. «Ae.

SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING CHAPTERS Chapter I.—Diana Ladbroke, having 1 completed her shopping in Middleston, just misses the bus home. She turns into ' a confectioner’s shop for a cup of tea. i The proprietress, sends a message to Mr. | Hugh Waverley asking him to take Miss : Ladbroke home in his car. This because i Diana lives with her aU*nt, Mrs. Agatha ! Thorp, who is a tartar and treats her | niece very hardly. After a motor ride, Diana’s cousin, Susan Thorp, passes . Hugh Waverley about to re-enter his ; car, then she sees the heavily-laden ; Diana trudging along the road, and draws conclusions. On arriving home she makes mischief for Diana with her mother. So Aunt Agatha meets her. niece with severe upbraiding, and orders her to her room. Diana lashes into temper, giving her aunt some home-truths. Even the thought of Hugh Waverley fails to console her. Chapters 11. and lll.—Susan Thorp and her brother William quarrel at dinner about the absent Diana. When Ellen, the maid, takes something to eat up to Diana’s room the girl tells her confidentially that she does not think she can go on with this kind of life much longer. Several days after Diana meets Hugh Waverley again and they hold long converse. 11 ugh lakes her in his arms and kisses her. When Diana reaches her home she hears the astounding news that Aunt Agatha lias driven into Middleston -; u \ir. I inn':' oir. Later Susan, finding her cousin and failing to extract from her the reason for her mother’s absence, jeers at her on the subject of Hugh Waverley. She fails to disturb Diana, who is quite unaware of the approaching cloud which threatens to overwhelm her. CHAPTER V. (Continued) And Susan Thorp went down the stairs slowly, feeling, she scarcely knew why, that something of a very serious, and it might be of an unpleasant nature, must have come unexpectedly into her mother’s life. For Mrs. Thorp was never one to permit herself to have small indispositions, and was in consequence very harsh with those people who physical health and strength were not equal to her own. The sound of her voice, as she had spoken, had been, cold as usual, and there remained in Miss Thorp’s mind the fact that something was passing which might possibly work out uncomfortably for herself. With a shrug of her shoulders, however, she went out into the garden to sit and wait for Creptons’s wonderful car, which would call for her. By this time, Susan Thorp had arrived at the conclusion that there was only one person in the world about whom she need trouble, and that was herself. She was beginning to get a little restless about her immediate future, and though she had sneered at Hugh Waverley, and spoken roughly and almost insultingly about him to her cousin, the fact was, she could very easily have allowed herself to have fallen in love with this young in an. who was so popular, and was reputed to be so clever. At the Creptons she met all kinds of young men, and so she clung to friendship with this family because she saw in it the one possibility from which she could escape from her mother, and her home. When Ellen informed Mrs. Thorp that supper was ready, her mistress answered her through the closed doorway that she would not he coming: down. “I will have some soup a little later or. Serve supper to Miss Diana, and then tell her to come upstairs to me.’’ Just as in the case of Susan, so Diana felt that something new, and strange, and perhaps unhappy, had come into the monotonous elements of the place she called her home. It was so unlike Mrs. Thorp to shut herself up in her room. Diana did not exchange any conversation with Ellen, hut she ate her supper, feeling depressed and also very anxious and troubled. now and then her thoughts would go back to the man she loved, and to all the wonderful things that he had said to her. Once she had paused, and with a little thrill at her heart she had queried if it were not possible that her aunt must have guessed at something that was passing with her, and that when she went upstairs, as she would do, she would have to go through a very unpleasant interview. "Well,” the girl said to herself. "I shall not allow Aunt Agatha to come between me and what is my happiness. I shall be very frank with her, and I shay qrgue with her that, since she really does not like me (and goodness knows she has done enough to show she doesn’t like me), well, why should she object to my making life for myself? I will tell her that Hugh will he coming here tomorrow, and will openly speak to her. That is his duty, and he will both do all that is right and proper.” Just before going up to her aunt's room, Diana slipped out into the garden. She walked away from the road through the old kitchen garden that stretched at the hack, and which led down to another road less frequented; in fact, it was regarded by Mrs. Thorp as more or less a private road from her house to the village. When she got there Diana stood at the little gateway trying to get up all the cour- ! age and the strength she could to meet anything that her aunt might have to say to her. And as she stood there-, someone spoke her name softly, and she saw her lover standing just beyond the gate. “How wonderful that you could have come here!” Hugh Waverley said, as she went out to meet him, and he took her in his arms. “I just had to walk round and about your home, Diana. I feel somehow as if I cannot let you go out of my arms tonight. It's stupid of me, hut perhaps I am nerI vous. It’s so wonderful to me to feel that all those things about which I have been dreaming, and which- have sweetened my life, are thoughts of you and are really true. You do love me, Diana, don’t you?” “Why do you ask?” the girl queried in a low voice. “You are everything to J me, Hugh. You bring back to me all that I lost when I was a little girl. Y’ou are to me life, the world, and everything that the world holds.” “But you are trembling, my dear,” the young man said. "What is it? Has | anything disagreeable happened?” “Oh, Susan was very nasty before supper. She said rude things about you. and she told me that you were in love with Mimi Dickson. I dismissed j that because you asked me for my j

faith, and I have given it to you. But I am a little anxious, Hugh.” She then told him about her aunt's visit to Middleston, the use of the car, the return to the Thatch House, and the strange episode of Mrs. Thorp having shut herself up in her room, and not coming down to supper. “You may not think this a very serious thing,” Diana said with a little laugh, "but you don’t know Aunt Agatha. All these many years that I have lived with her, except when she met with an accident and fell down some stairs, and had to lie in bed, she has never been an invalid. It’s so unlike her! It’s so strange. I don’t know, but I have an uneasy feeling on me. -Oh, Hugh, do hold me closely! Oh, what shall I do if I lose you?” "Miss Diana! Miss Diana! Are you out there?” "Oh, I must go,” said the girl. “I have to go upstairs to see Aunt Agatha. I just came out of the house for a little while to think about you, and I never imagined I was going to see you tonight, Hugh.” "Good-night, my precious child!"

said Hugh Waverley. He kissed her on the brow, and then on the lips, and very unwillingly he let her go. And he stood and watched her as she ran through the old kitchen garden up to the house. Even though he knew now he would not see her again that night, he could not tear himself away from the place where she lived. But, after a while, he felt it would be better to move lest any passers-by should see him standing looking in the garden of the Thatch House, and perhaps put a strange construction on this. Ellen met Diana at the back entrance. “Oh, dear, the mistress is asking for you. took her up some supper just now, and she said would you be so good as to go up to her room. My! —Miss Diana, I don’t know what is passing with her! She’s all of a tremble, it seems, and she looks pretty awful. I don’t know what can have happened. She don’t want nothing to eat, which is strange, because you know she has a fairly good appetite has the mistress, and she ain’t had no supper.” Diana’s heart was beating wildly, uncomfortably, as she went up the stairs and tapped at her aunt’s door. When she opened it, and went in, a lamp was lit, and her aunt was sitting at the writing desk. The light from the lamp shone full upon Mrs. Thorp’s face, and Diana realised at once how changed she was. “You want me, Aunt Agatha?” she asked. Mrs. Thorp was silent a short spell, •and then she said: “Yes, sit down.’ _ “Diana,” she said, “I have news to give you. For some abtruse purpose of his own, your father did not die when we were informed he did some years ago.” Diana, who had sat down, sprang to her feet, and pressed her hands against her heart. “Oh, Aunt Agatha, is he here? Is he coming to see me? Oh, am I going to see him? Oh, how wonderful!” “Sit down,” Mrs. Thorp said again, in something like her usual harsh tone. Then after another little pause, she said: “No, you will not see your father. Though he did not die when we were informed he did, he is now' dead—he died a year ago. I have a letter for you. It is from your lather, and you will read it when you go to your own room. In that letter you will find instructions, and his wishes. I have only this to tell you, Diana—-after tomorrow your life with me comes to an end. You have, I have no doubt, often longed to break away from me and my care. Well, now you are going to be given this privilege.”,

Diana had got up to go across and receive the letter which her aunt held out to her, and she stood now with this letter pressed against her heart, and looked at Mrs. Thorp. “I am leaving you, Aunt Agatha?” she said incredulously.. “Yes, you are leaving me. Your life is all planned out for you by your father, and though of course I suppose he imagined that I never did anything for you, he has shown very little consideration for me or my feelings. I don’t think we gain anything by discussing the matter, Diana. All I have to do is to acquaint you with the fact that the man in whose care your father has left you, temporarily I suppose, expects to see you tomorrow at the County Hotel, Middleston, before noon. You will receive from him much fuller information than I am in a position to give you. Perhaps this letter from your father will explain more fully.” The girl was trembling. “Oh, Aunt Agatha, you cannot let me go away from you! Who is this man? What am I to do? I know you do not love me, but I belong to you. We have been together for so many years, and I have never failed to realise that you have done a great deal for me. This is all so strange! So extraordinary! My father not dead until a year ago?” Diana spoke huskily, almost with fear in her voice. “Oh, I can’t believe it! Oh, Aunt Agatha, you are not going to let me be taken away from you to go to the care of some strange man? Oh, Aunt Agatha, please stand by me.” Agatha Thorp leaned back in the chair in which she was sitting, and she looked at the white-faced and trembling girl. “I have no power, my dear,” she said. “If you are hurt by this, what do you think my feelings are? My dignity is assailed; even, my honour. Of course, your father and I quarrelled about your mother, and he never forgave me. Still he has let me have the charge of you all these years, and now, without considering my wishes, or considering my dignity, or considering everything in what is a very delicate and family matter, 1 am to put you into the hands of a strange man and have nothing more to do with you.” The strong, harsh voice faltered here, and it was broken as Mrs. Thorp added: "I am very sorry for j’ou, my child." With a little cry Diana moved forward, and falling on her knees beside her aunt, she said nothing, but only buried her face in her aunt’s lap, and it seemed to her that Mrs. Thorp’s hands rested gently, almost tenderly, on her bowed head. So

| they sat for a short spell, and then j the older woman spoke, j “Now, my dear, I have had a very disturbing and upsetting afternoon, j and I feel the need of being quite j alone, and having some rest. Go to j your room. You can tell me tomor- | row what is contained in this letter j from your father, but I am afraid you j will be forced to realise, m3' dear 1 Diana, that we can do nothing but I fall in with the wishes contained In | that letter, and which presumably are | the same as those delivered to me this day by a man called Cyril Townley, who it appears has lived intimately in your father’s life for many years, and has known everything about my brother and his doings.” Diana got up, the tears were running down her cheeks, and she was i just turning away when she turned back and she stooped over Agatha Thorp and kissed her aunt on the forehead. j “You have been always good to me,” she said, “and I shall never forget I that.” I And then slowly, almost feeblv, she went out of the room. CHAPTER VI. The car did not come to the Thatch | House the next morning. Mrs. Thorp j gave Diana her orders. “You must catch the bus as it j passes through the village. Then you must go to the County Hotel, and you had better send up your name. I am not coming with you, my dear. You are not afraid to go by yourself?” Diana caught her breath. “No ” she said, “but—but it all seems so strange.” Mrs. Thorp looked at the girl. “Well,” she answered, “unless I am absolutely obliged to do so, I don't want to meet this man again, but I am sending into Mr. Crossman to tell him that he must come to see me this afternoon. . After all,” she added, “the Crossmans were lawyers for your father in the old days, and they know everything about him; in fact, I am surprised he did not write to them. I wish now I had gone to their office yesterday before I came back, but I was so broken up, so shattered, I did not know where I was or what I was doing.” Diana was touched by these words, and by the look on her aunt’s face. . “You must rest now, Aunt Agatha. This strange business has upset you,” the girl said gently. Mrs. Thorp gave a deep sigh. “James hurt me many times in the old days, but never so deeply as now,” She closed her eyes and then she sat forward! “Now, Diana, you must be firm, and above all you must refuse to be separated from me without being given full time to think everything over very carefully. From what I learned yesterday, I understand your father has left a considerable amount of money, which passes to you. I am not thinking of the money,” Mrs. Thorp said proudly, “but I am thinking about my dignity and yours. Until Mr. Crossman has fully Investigated all this man Townley has told me, and all that is written in this letter which you have read to me from your father, I do not think we must allow ourselves to he dictated to. You will be firm, won’t you, Diana?” ’“Yes, Aunt Agatha,” the girl answered, “you can rely on me.” She was pale, and her eyes were tear-stained, and as she was going she turned back and bending over Mrs. Thorp she kissed her; at the same time she put the letter from her father Iu her aunt’s hand. “You must keep that, dear,” she said. Susan, having been very late the night before, was fortunately still in her room, but as she was starting out to walk to the village to get the omnibus, Diana called to her boy cousin. Bill was going on a fishing excursion and he hurried down from his room, half to speak to Diana at the .back of the house. “I have to go to Middieston, Bill,” the girl explained. "It is on some very important business which your mother has asked me to undertake. Look, Bill dear, you will see Mr. Waverley, won’t you, some time? Well, please give’him a message from me. Will you tell him that. I had to go to Middieston, but that Aunt Agatha will be here all this afternoon?” “Righto, Di,” the boy answered cheerily. “I must go by the old Abbey as you know, and I’ll just drop in and give your message, i say, I do like him! He’s a jolly sort of chap. That’s the sort of job I’d like to take on what I’m a hit older, and Mr. Waverley has been advising\me to go in for that kind of work. Jolly good hint! X think I’ll talk to the mater about it! Well now, you had better hurry, my dear,, if you are going’ to catch the bus.” Diana did hurry, and then she had to wait in the village street, for the bus was a little late. But all the way, jogging through the dusty countryside, the girl’s heart was a seething mass of anxiety and trouble. Also, although she had assured her aunt she was not afraid,-she was very nervous; she could Scarcely explain why. If only she could have seen Hugh before leaving for Middieston! If only she could have talked this matter over with him! She knew by now he was very sound and sensible, and practical; although she knew now so well that he could be so sweet, and tender, and full of romance. She found what comfort she could in thinking about him as she was being driven nearer to Middieston, and she wondered vaguely what he would have to say to all the news she had to give him. She was so bewildered, so uprooted as it were, by the events of the last forty-eight hours, that she scarcely felt equal to thinking out a path for herself in a clear and coherent fashion. As a matter of fact she was now eager to put all the burdens that came in her way on to the broad shoulders of the man she loved. The suggestion that she would he rich, that, there would be a great deal of money, did not even touch her; it had uo .significance at all.

She left the omnibus before it reached the Market Square, and stealing for a moment into the calm, exquisite stillness of the cathedral, she knelt down and said a little prayer; and then made her way toward the main street and the County Hotel. She was in good time, but she felt ,rather sick with the nervousness Which oppressed her as she passed through the entrance of the hotel and went to the inquiry office. When she asked for Mr. Townley she was told that he was expecting her, and that he had left instructions that she was to be so kind as to wait for him downstairs. It was the first time Diana had been inside the County Hotel, and if her heart had not been so weighted with apprehension, and a sense of trouble, she would have found some amuse-

Choice quality in perfect condition. Buy your meat at an A.M.C, branch. Kept so by automatic electric refrigerating machines, even in the hottest weather.—l.

ment watching the people, chiefly of the tourist type, come and go, while she had to sit and wait for Mr. Townley. After a little while some luggage was brought into the hall, and just behind it was the figure of a man. Though she did not know him, Diana felt that this bulky, rather pompous individual, was the man she had come to meet. When he approached her, taking off his soft hat, and greeting her with great deference, she got up from the couch on which she had been sitting. “Oh, we are not going! upstairs, my dear. As a matter of fact I am driving you just a little way out of the town. There is a great deal that we have to discuss, and I shall have to pick up a number of very important papers which you will have to see. The car is waiting.” He took her by the arm. But Diana stood rather firmly. “My aunt did not tell me that you were going to drive me away from Middleston. I understood that I was to have an interview with you here at the County Hotel.” Townley answered this with a laugh and in d breezy kind of way he said: “Well, I did not tell your aunt everything, my dear. She is very difficult to deal with, as vou know well.” As Diana, with a frown, still stood looking at him, he went on: "I hope you are not going to suppose I should ask you to do anything to which either you or Mrs. Thorp can object. The fact is I don't particularly want to discuss very important business in a place like this where your aunt is so well known, and there are always rather curious people hanging about here, Come, you must look upon me not only as a friend, but as a great friend of your father. We were devoted to one another,” he talked on swiftly. “I don’t know that there was anyone for whom I had so much respect, and admiration, and affection as I had for James Ladbroke. And just because he has spoken so much about you, and has told me how demand precious you were to him—well, T feel that you must let me serve you, and do everything I can do for you, just as your father wished me to do.”

There was something persuasive about him and so. still dazed, and not at all easy in her mind, Diana let herself be led out of the hotel and put into a very large motor that was waiting. They were silent as they drove through the village streets, but when they came out into the high road Townley turned to the girl. “I suppose your aunt has told you a great deal, and you must have read your father's letter?" “Aunt Agatha only told me just exactly what passed between you yesterday, and I have read my father’s letter. But"—then Diana smiled at the man beside her —“you must not really be hurt, Mr. Townley, if I deal very frankly with you, your coming is so unexpected. The whole matter is so strange, you know, you cannot expect us to fall into line all at once. It is a great upheaval, and I just feel as if I were passing into another world! It is so difficult to realise,” Diana said in a low voice, “that my father has been alive all these years. It —it was not very kind of him to keep me in ignorance of this, was it?" “You do not know what your father was passing through—you do not know of his difficulties, his immense troubles and anxieties, or you would not judge him harshly." “I judge no one harshly,” said Diana in a quiet voice. “I am not a very clever person, l am not a very old person, I only have my own sense of what is honourable, and right, and loyal. I loved my father and I still love him, but I do not consider that I should be taken away from Aunt Agatha so abruptly.” The man beside her was looking at her and frowning a little. “From what I can gather," he answered her briefly, “you have not had too happy a time with Mrs. Thorp. 1 never met her before yesterday, but it’s easy for me to say straight out that I should take it she is a very hard-hearted, harsh, and unpleasant kind of woman. I don’t really think,” he added blandly and with a shrug of his shoulder, “that you need consider her in the very least.” “Perhaps we do not think just alike, Mr. Townley," Diana answered him, and she spoke very coldly. “As you

say, you do not know my aunt, $o i cannot be expected to understand her. j She is a very proud woman, and your i news has given her a great shock. 1 It is only just and wise that she should ask her family lawyer. Mr. Crossman, I who lives in Middleston. to go into ! these matters very thoroughly before ! anything is settled." | “Oh, of course—of course, my dear! • That is, as you say, a wise and proper j way for her to act, but it will be a i waste of time—just simply a waste jof time. Perhaps you would like to look at these illustrated papers? I | have some legal documents that 1 : want to go through." Diana took the newspapers, but as I they went swiftly along the roads, her I uneasiness began to deepen. | Suddenly she put aside the papers and spoke quickly: “Where are you taking me?" He looked at. her from under rather | heavy eyebrows and his lips tightened, j Then he said briefly: ! "To London." “To London!" repeated Diana. She was on fire now with fear and doubt. “But, oh, I can’t go to London!—not at least without letting Aunt Agatha know. I cannot! You cannot do j this!—you must not do this! Mr. | Townley, please stop the car—l want to get out!" “Don’t be foolish, my dear!" anI swered the man. and now he spoke curtly. “The car is not going to be stopped, and you can’t get out. Now, listen to me, Diana Ladbroke. You are going to London with me. and you are going to be in my care as your father has ordained. If you have read his letter you know exactly how you are placed, and you know you must submit. Now don’t let us have any controversy: I have a great deal on my mind, and I am not a verv patient man." (To be continued on Monday.)