Love Set Free

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1042, 5 August 1930, Page 5

Love Set Free

COPYRIGHT

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

By

L. G. MOBERLY

Author ol "CLe&oamg Fir**.” “In Apple Blossom Time,” “Threads ot Lile.” etc.

STNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. PROLOGUE. —Concerns husband and wife—Dr. and Mrs. Dash wood. Millicent is a hard-hearted, worldly-minded, fliprant young woman, with a lovely face and no soul to speak of. She flies into one of her tantrums. Her husband speaks reasonably, trying to pacify her, but fails. CHAPTER I.—A fire in Bramstone Theatre. Panic ensues. There are many fatalities. .Judith Merivale, in the front row of the upper circle, stands firm, watching the pandemonium. A man touches her shoulder, saying he will, try to get her out. Amid the smother and pother he gets her to a fire-escape. The fireman gets her down in a semi-consci-ous condition. Later the man emerges from a side door into an alley. He is much singed and is suffering. He batters on the door of a house. A woman admits him; then he faints. He wakes to find himself in a bedroom, lying on a feather bed. Mrs. Gregson finds him conscious, and cheerfully informs him that there are lots of dead. The doctor, who had come in the night before?, could not find anything wherewith to identify .his patient. After drinking some tea he falls asleep again. Later the woman informs him that Dr. Dashwood has perished in the fire. She gives him the newspaper and he reads the information that his body has been found and identified as that of the rising surgeon. Dr. Dashwood, clad in his singed clothing, thanks Mrs. Gregson for her care of him and walks quietly away. CHAPTERS 11. and lll.—Judith Merivale calls on Dr. Davidson, an old friend of her dead father’s. She sees the Photograph picture of Dr. Dashwood, and recognises her rescuer. Dr. Davidson tells her that Dr. Dashwood perished in the fire She asks him for advice about work. Her father died a poor man, much to her surprise. Dr. Davidson suggests the post as companioti to Dr. Dashwood’s widow, who has written to him about it. The doctor has no high opinion of Mrs. Dashwood. Judith decides to try for the position, and Dr Davidson writes a letter of introduction. Armed with this, Judith goes to Cavendish Square. She rings the bell, and, while waiting for an answer, a young man dashes out, almost colliding with Judith. He apologises and vanishes Mrs. Dashwood receives Judith courte-. ousiy, but her voice does not ring true. £ne gives Judith the impression that her husband's death is a great relief. Mrs. Dashwood engages her and bids her come tomorrow. A gentleman is announced whom Mrs. Dashwood greets effusively. Judith knows him as a former acquaintance of her father’s —a man whom she distrusts and dislikes — Horace Robertson. He, in his turn, greets Miss Merivale and speaks to his hostess of the artist Merivale’s beautiful Paintings She tells him that Miss Meri'ale is coming to live with her as her companion. As she leaves, Judith’s peace m mind is disturbed by the thought that •florace Robertson knows where she is. CHAPTERS IV. and V.—Horace Robertson and his victim, Herbert Holt, have falk together. Robertson taunts him with his addiction to opium. Holt taunts Robertson about Merivale. He is slowly l! CoVer,n £ from his last doping. Roberttells Holt that he has put himseir outside the pale, to which Holt replies t *v e ’ Robertson, had introduced hlqi m the filthy stuff, but his energy soon h* and be becomes inert. Robertson uecides to put Holt into a lodging house which he knows in the East End ta? *F omes roun< 3. and once more starts ending with laughs and sobs, ft", finishes with his taunts about the f.fbst, Merivale, and turns his atten’°n V> fbo daughter, Judith. Roberton shuts him up quickly. CHAPTER V.

You need not concern yourself 3oout Miss Merivale,” Robertson laid «ress on the surname. “She and I thoroughly understand one another.” r* e smiled significantly in spite of

Holt’s incredulous stare. “Miss Merivale will, I think, fall in with my hopes and wishes. We shall wipe the past off the slate.” He smiled again, a satisfied smile which seemed to stupefy his companion. “Meanwhile,” he added, sharply, “you must go to this address, and at any rate for a time stay there. Do you get that? You are to stay at this address till I tell you to move.” THE LITTLE HOUSE BY THE RIVER. It exactly answered to the name given to it by the dwellers in the neighbourhood—“The little house by the river.” And the man who stood In the sitting room, facing the swiftly-moving stream, smiled as he looked at the novel scene before him Why that small house had been left among all the warehouses and wharves and docks which had sprung up round about it, only some none-resi-dent landlord could possibly have explained. But the fact remained There it was, the little house wich a ridiculous pocket handkerchi-.f patch of garden, against whose wait the river actually lapped. And now ite new tenant stood in his recently acquired domain, looking about hiru with profound contentment. “Nothing could do better,” he said, to the young man who stood watching him, the clerk of a local agent. “It is exactly what I want. I should use this room as my own private sitting room, the front room as a surgery, and two bedrooms are quite enough for me. I propose to find a man who will come to earetake and cook for me. This place is just what 1 want.” “Then you will take it without delay?” The clerk eyed with interest and respect, a person who could make up his mind at such lightning speed, and who could, furthermore, pay a premium without demur or delay. Such clients did not often come in Matt Elkins’s way, and his East End soul was prepared to grovel at the feet of this stranger with the quiet eyes, and the voice that affected Matt in some fashion which he could not explain. “Seemed to ..ull at your very guts, his voice did,” he said with ungraceful crudity to his mother that same evening, while eating his supper. “I couldn’t tell you what it was, hut gosh, if he said, ‘Jump in the river, I’d jump in. If he said, ‘Come on round the world with me,’ I’d go. ’ Mrs. Elkins did not see in the least. She privately thought her son must be “off his dot,” as she put it. But she smiled an agreeable smile, and helped him to more sausage. “And is this new gent furnishing that little God-forsaken house?” she asked, feeling that anyone who took a house jammed in among warehouses, when they could presumably acquire a Brixton or Highgate villa, was freak, pure and simple! “Does he mean to live there? And whatever sort of gent is he?” “A real one,” Matt answered sol

emnly. “None of your fancy gents. Nothing shoddy or make-believe about him —as real as' they’re made he is And he’s going to live there light enough, you bet your best pair of high-heeled shoes, old dear. Why, he’s going down there to doctor all the blighters in those filthy little lanes and places. To doctor them! Better give ’em a dose of chloroform and a’ done with It, if you ask me?” Matt laughed loudly at his own jest, and his mother laughed, too, believing that her son’s humour was of the choicest kind, and deserved hearty applause. “Well, I never!” she ejaculated next. “Some folks have bats in their belfries, and you can’t call it anything else. Bit balmy he must be, that doctor fellow! What’s he like to look at?” ,

“Oh, lie’s tallish, and got a little beard- —newish one I should say. And he isn’t quite young, mind you, and his eyes, well his eyes, they seem to see into your inside. They do, straight! And then there’s his voice as well.”

“Oh, yes, you've told me all about his voice. Seems to have struck you all of a heap, his voice does. And no wife you say? He hasn’t got a woman to see to him?”

“He’s going to have a caretaker, a man, and 1 told him Ben Chandler might do, him having been a ship’s steward. But it’s all a fair knockout, that’s what I call it, a fair knockout.”

“You never told me Lis . name. Mat t.” “His name’s Smith, pla.n Smith. That doesn’t get you no forwarder, do it? Matt grinned. He guessed what a mass of unsatisfied curiosity still rioted in his mother's mind, and he made a very shrewd guess as to how she would satisfy it.

“Smith.? Plain Smith? No Christian namq?” Mrs. Elkins’s eyes grew round.

“John Smith was the name he signed, John Smith, and that doesn’t get you much further than Smith alone, eh?” Again Matt grinned, and Mrs. Elkins’s thin, sharp face puckered itself into a maze of wrinkles. “Seems to be downright funny any gentleman should want to come and settle himself down in a little house like that,” she said thoughtfully. “Now, old lady, don’t you go inventing a whole lot of stuff out of thttt busy brain of yours, when there’s nothing to invent,” her not over-duti-ful son adjured her-. “You re forever reading a lot of detective stories and rubbish till you've got so that you’d scent a mystery out of a rheumatic old man running for a bus! There’s nothing mysterious in the doctor. Takb my word for that. He’s ;-.s straightforward as anybody need to be. Going to do a lot of research work down here, too, and wants a quiet place for it.” “And where was he before? That’s what 1 should like to know. Where was he before? And what makes him drop down here, out of the blue, as you might say?” “Out of the fiddle-faddle fiddlesticks,’ mocked the disrespectful Matt. “Look here. Listen to me. There’s no mystery about Dr. Smith, and there are no flies on him. He’s come to do a definite job, and he’s got the right house to do it in, and that’s just all about it. So don’t you go prying about, trying to nose out mysteries, where there are none to be nosed out! And tell the same to all lhe other Nosey Parkers round about,” he called out as he left the room to go round to the select billiards club to which he belonged. “I wonder whatever Nurse Alison will say to the new doctor?” his mother shouted after him, and he shouted back;

“Nurse Alison knows a good thing when she sees one, or my name isn’t Matthew Elkins!”

It so chanced that he met Nurse Allson a few minutes later, a rather breathless Nurse Alison, whose face was unusually white and troubled. When she first went to this remote corner of East London, Alison Dorwent had lodged with Mrs. Elkins, whose recent widowhood made lodgers a necessity, and she had known Matt far all the years of his boyhood and young manhood. As he lifted his hat to her now. she stopped him.

“Matt,”, she said, ‘there’s been a dreadful accident in Boulters’s Rents, and every doctor seems to be out.” “What’s up?” “Greyson came in drunk and ell down the stairs. They’ve sent tor me. But there’s not a doctor to be found, and he’s fearfully bad ” “There’s a new doctor in the little house bv the river,” Matt volunteered “He’s not living there yet but he’s stopping there this evening to take measurements and that-. Shall I send him along?” “If he can come, yes. For God’s sake tell him to come quickly,” the

nurse answered breathlessly, and Matt flew toward the river, while the nurse made her way back to Boulters’s Rents, with the appliances she had rushed home to seek. It seemed to her that she had only been kneeling by Greyson’s side a few minutes, doing all that she could do to ease his torture of pain, when a quiet voice rose above the murmur of voices from the men and women about her.

“Let me through. I’m a doctor, and for pity’s sake, move back, all of you. Give the man air. Give the nurse a chance.”

Even in that moment of tense anxiety, Alison recogniseu the compelling power of that voice, and it had an Immediate effect upon the inquisi tive human beings. They shrank back with shamed faces, and the new comer knelt down beside the nurse and gently manipulated the injured man

Alison was aware of a quiet face, whose mouth was hidden by a closely cut beard and moustache. But the eyes caught and held her atteptiou—grave, serene eyes that lookedTlirst at the injured man and then at her Their glance carried with it a seuse of reliability and strength, just as Pis dexterous, quickly moving hands seemed to work magically for the patient’s good. “Fretty bad,” he said, under ilia breath, “hut he may pull through. One of you fellows go for the ambulance.” he called out, and half a dozen men rushed off to do the errand. “He must go to hospital at once,” the quiet voice went on. “I’ll wait till the ambulance comes. You looked fagged out.”

“I was so afraid he would slip through my fingers before I could get help.” Alison’s voice was shaky “I was just coming into the building to see a patient, when he fell.”

“Go home now,” the voice was very firm, very decided. Alison found her self suddenly wondering why ii seemed to her that she had heard this voice before. It was oddly familiar, though how <jr why she could not imagine. “Go home now,” the doctor was repeating. “I will see to things here. I’m coming down to this part of the world to work.”

“Coming here?” Alison looked into his face with a dazed expression, “but you, I mean—this isn’t the kind of neighbourhood ” she broke off, flushing deeply. “I beg your pardon,” she said, “but somehow you don’t look like the kind of doctor who comes to settle in this part of the world.” “I’m the kind who has come here,” he answered whimsically. “And if you are the nurse of this particular district, we may see something of on,e another.”

She went away with those words humming in her brain “we may see something of one another.” That tal) mail with the serene eyes, the voice of shell rare charm, was like no doctor she had ever come across in manv years of slum work. What hail brought him here? Was he burying himself in this unsavoury corner of London, in that funny derelict house by the river? The questions revolved and revolved in her brain, but she could answer none of them. They remained unsolved as she entered the house in which she had two rooms; and they were driven from her mind by tile voice of Mrs. Dawkins, her landlady, who came out of her own kitchen wiping her hands on her apron.

t lb there you are, Nurse,” she said. “I’m glad you’ve come in. That woman, Martha Simmons, has been worritin round here. X told her it was past your hours, and she'd no business to come trapesing round of an evening, even if it is a summer evening and still light. But she paid no more heed to me than if I was a stick or stone, just stood there wringing her hands, and carryin’ ou somethin’ shockin’.”

“Martha Simmonds? What can she want?”

“She didn't tell me, only she was in a rare takin’! Somethin’ about some young man that lodges there, but I couldn’t make head nor tail or it. Only she said I was to beg of you on my hended knees to go round to her place as soon as you could.” “I wonder whether I just have time for a cup of tea,” Alison said, wearily, with a sudden feeling that she could not go out to face fresh tragedies without some bodily sustenance. “I’ll make you some, my dear,” Mrs. Dawkins exclaimed. She had a real affection for Nurse Alison, “You go and sit down a minute in your armchair, and I’ll bring you a clip of tea and some sandwiches in two ticks.” She was as good as her word, and a very much refreshed Alison a little later wended her way among a network of mean streets, most of which led down to the river. During her early days in St. Chad’s

parish, Alison had been repeatedly told that it was unsafe to venture alone among these streets, that even the police went there in couples; that unknown dangers lurked in those low., sinister-looking houses. But Alison Derwent was not a"woman who shirked her duty even though danger might be behind the duty. She never went about any part of her district, except in uniform, and she had found herself safe, night and day, even in the most unsavoury streets. The one for which she was now bound, Milner Street, bore a particularly unsavoury reputation. A large number of Chinese and other Orientals, herded together in the houses whose doors moslly stood wide open, each house being more of a tenement dwelling than a single building. Evilfaced men slouched along the pavements, blowsy-looking Englishwomen, and foreigners with dark; sinister faces, hung about the open doors, but no one spoke to Alison. Indeed she was known by sight to most of the dwellers in the street, and one or two rough men touched their caps to her with a gruff “Evenin’, nuss.” Her destination, No. 21, was (he last house in the street, and stood at a corner where the street becamfe a narrow and very foul-smelling alley. A little crowd, all talking volubly, ami with a good deal of gesticulation, had collected at the mouth of the alley. “ ’Ere’s the nuss,” Alison heard someone say, and p. silence fell upon the group of excited people, from among whom a stout woman detached herself and went up to Alison. "Dearie, I come for yer because 'e’s .took bad, that chap wot come to lodge in my place a month and more ago, and ’e keeps o ntalkin’ somethin’ shockin’. So I says ‘l’m goin’ for nuss,’ I says, ‘I ain’t goin’ to do this on me own,’ I says, and off I goes to you—and oh. my poor ’ear-t, ain’t it all a worry?”

“Pull yourself together, Martha,” Alison said with quiet sternness, “and take me to your lodger at once. if he is really bad you ought to have sent for a doctor.” "I dunno as he’s really bad,” Mrs. Simmonds whined, as she preceded her visitor into the gloomy recesses of No. 21, “only 'e come over queer, and ’e started talkin’ a lot o’ gibberish, so I says—— ’’ , “Never mind what you said. I am here now. Take me to your lodger’s room.”

Stumbling along a dark passage, feeling her way by faith rather than by sight, Alison finally found herself being ushered into a rom on her right. There was still a trace of daylight in the room, but a candle had also been lighted and stuck into a bottle on the table, and, by its flickering light, Alison saw a man stretched out upon a very ancient sofa which had long since not only seen Its best days hut gone past its worst!

The man's face was of a curious pallor, so much the nurse realised. His dark hair fell limply round it, and had evidently not been touched by a barber for weeks. He was moaning at intervals, and flung out his arms with an oddly gesture. “Whht is his name?” she demanded of Martha Simmonds.

“ ’isself ’Erbert ’Olt,” was the answer, “and 'e come here to be 'andy for the docks, somethin’ to do with a steward ’e said ’e was. But I dunno, I’m sure,” she ended vaguely, and Alison caught in her eyes a sharp look, whether of surprise or of fear the nurse could not quite determine. She’went, to the'side of the man on the couch. “Is there anything i can do for you?" she said.

Her voice roused him. His moaning and inarticulate mutterings came to an abrupt end; he opened his eyesand looked at lier. With a quick movement she lifted the candlestick from the table and put it near him, the light falling full upon his eyes. An understanding look came into her own and she put a finger on his pulse.

“Horace?’ he said, an in oddly nuft'led voice, and in accents which Uison at once noticed were those of

an educated man, “is that you, Horace?” He slid his words together in a curiously thick fashion, and he moved his head restlessly on the filthy cushion behind him. “.Is it Horace?” he asked, after a moment’s pause. “No, I am not Horace,” Alison spoke very slowly and clearly. “1 am the district nurse.”

His drowsy eyes looked at her vacantly. A smile crossed his lips. “Nurse, very sweet eyes, tell Horace,” and with that word he slipped back into what Alison recognised was not delirium, but the oblivion of the opium smoker. She drew a dirty rug over him, put the candle back upon the table and turned to Martha Simmonds, who stood helplessly in the background. “You. know perfectly well what’s wrong with the man,” she said sternly “Why did you come for me?”

“’E didn’t get it ’ere, I swear 'e didn't, and it's no good to put the p’lice on me, for ’e didn't get it ’ere.” the woman whimpered.

“But why did you come for me?” Alison persisted. “You knew he wasn't ill.” “'E carried on somethin’ awful when first ’e Come in,” Mrs. Simmonds said, looking genuinely frightened. “ ’E’s out a lot always and when 'e come in this evenin’ 'e looked like death, and ’e carried on awful before 'e lay down on that couch.” “Who is he?” was Alison's next question. “You say his name is Herbert Holt. Is that his real name?” “I dunno, dearie. As sure as I stand ’ere, I'm tellin’ you the truth. I dunno no more than what 'e told me. ’E said 'e was working on one of the ships in the doGks, and 'e wanted a room where ’e could be quiet See? So ’e come ’ere, and I’m sure 'e's been quiet enough, and I carn’t say ’e’s give me any trouble either Only this evenin’ when ’e come in e was carryin’ on and shoutin' out and callin’ for.’Orace.” “And who is Horace?” Alison asked, as she turned to the door, and Mrs. Simmonds shook her head “Who I wonder, is Horace?”

CHAPTER VI. A NEW WAY OP LIFE

It was just that to Judith —a new way of life. Accustomed to a quiet

existence in the country, taking care of her father's house, interesting herself in his painting, giving her interest, too, to the village folk, throwing herself into the joys and sorrows ol the little place, she found that her daily round in Millicent Dashwood's household went along very different lines.

The luxury in which Francis Dashwood's widow lived sometimes made her metaphorically gasp; Millicent herself told her frankly that she had been left exceedingly well off by her husband.

“He had a splendid practice,” she said, on one of the rare evenings when she and Judith were sitting alone tu her special sanctum, “a perfectly splendid practice, among the right sort of people.” She rather preened herself, as though her cleverness was responsible for the status of her hus band's clientele. “But he was ever grousing about it.” Judith remembered the strong face, the quiet eyes of the man who had saved her from death, and she smiled faintly at his wife’s expression "He was for ever grousing about it' It seemed to her wholly impossible that the man in question could eves have “groused” about anything. if a misfortune was conquerable, he would conquer it; if inevitable, he would bear it with a great heart- —to that she felt prepared to swear. Grousing and Francis Dashwood were incompatible. She wondered faintly how anyone who sat day after day, as his wife did, opposite his portrait in the dining-room, could, even in her thoughts, admit such an expression, much less utter it aloud. How. for the matter of that, could the woman who had been Francis Dashwood’s wife, misunderstand him so completely? Why, even she. a total stranger, who had seen the man only for those .tew hurried, dreadful moments, knew better than to suppose he was of the grousing breed Her musings had drifted so far when Millicent’s tvoice. rather sharp and shrill, roused her.

“1 do hope you aren’t tn the habit of day-dreaming. Miss Merivale. I’ve asked you a question twice over, and you’ve simply sat there staring into vacancy, and not answering.” . "I do beg your pardon.” Judith sat up, and looked apologetically across at

Millicents annoyed face. "What you said sent me off on a train of thought.”

“What I said? Good gracious alive! What did I say to send you off into a kind of trance?” “You said Dr. Dashwood groused about his practice, and I wondered about it.”

“Oh. is that all? You would tit wonder if you had known him! He was cracked about research work, t i one thing, and he didn't a bit want • <-> sit in his consulting-room and listen to tales of woe from smart women who came because they had nothing better to do. That was his way of putting it. Anyhow, he didn’t like his consulting-room work. It was 1 who kept his nose to the grindstone, and thank Heaven I did! If I hadn t gone on telling him, day in, day out. that all my comfort and happiness depended upon his doing successful work, I would have been left with twopence to bless myself with, instead of which I am fairly comfortable.” Fairly comfortable! Judith glanced round the luxurious room, thought d the lavish expenditure of the whole establishment, and her heart sickened within her.

Her companion continued complacently-:

“If it hadn’t been for me. and that 1 had a grain of commonsense in my composition, do you know what wouid have happened? My husband would have thrown up his practice, this really fine practice, and gone down to some God-forsaken part of the East End to practice there among a whole lot of horrible slum people. That, f you please, was his ambition. lie wanted to go and live in a slum, right in the middle of those dreadful creatures, who are better dead than ali-e, anyhow!”