LOVE SET FREE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1051, 15 August 1930, Page 5

LOVE SET FREE

rnPY RIGHT

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

6/1

L.G. MOBERLY

Author o* ’’ CiMDunc Fim.” - In Apple Blos*om Time.” •'Threads of Lif*.’ 1 «tc

CHAPTER XV. — (Continued.) “You poor dear,” she said. ‘‘l was a brute to let you go to the Hornbys. You are about as fit for that pandemonium as a dove is fit for a nest of vultures! But Mrs. Hornby seemed so piteous and stranded; I felt really sorry for her, and you were craving for work; so I thought we might try the temporary experiment; but it must certainly be only temporary.” “And I am not going to grouse, and I am not such a dreadfully delicate dove that I can’t exist in the Hornby household, which is not exactly a vulture place, only very muddly and what I should call unkempt. And the more I try to get kemptness into it (if I may coin a word), the more the kemptness evades me! Augean stables, perhaps, describes it.” "And you look so exactly fitted to clear out an Augean stable,” Alison said with affectionate sarcasm, her glance resting on Judith's dainty col ouring, and soft, troubled eyes. Judith laughed. “My nerves will really stand quite a good deal more of the Hornby menage, and I quite like the doctor. He is a valiant little soul." “He is a dear little man,” Alison responded, “but I don’t intend to have you worn down by the Hornbys. Bear them a short time; something better will turn up. Perhaps Dr. Smith might help us. Take heart, dear, and good-bye for the present. I must go in here; I have one or two patients to look after.” She paused before a tall, red-brick house and Judith saw that she was admitted by a gaunt-looking woman in black. Late that same evening when she had just finished clearing away the supper from the Hornbys’ sittingroom, and Dr. Hornby, a small man

with dark eyes and a wistful expression, was filling his pipe to the running accompaniment of his wife’s chatter, the door-bell rang. “Goodness, I hope nobody wants you tonight, Simon,” Mrs. Hornby exclaimed, as Judith went to the door to find Alison on the doorstep. “I am ashamed of troubling you,” the uurse said quickly, “but one of my patients in the house where you left me today, is asking for you. and it seems urgent.” “Somebody ill asking for me? A sick man? I know nobody down here.” ' _ “He knows you. He has worked himself up into a great state of excitement about It. Could you possibly come and see him?” “I will ask Mrs. Hornby if she can spare me. You see lam not quite my own mistress.” “1 know, and I feel it is my fault that you are tied here,” Alison said under her breath, “I ought never to have let you—” “No, no,” Judith interrupted, speaking also in low tones, and laughing softly. “I won’t have you blaming yourself tor doing me what was a real kindness. 1 was stranded. 1 wanted work then and there, actually down on the nail. And you found it for me. Could anyone else have done more, or even as much? Now I will just go and ask for leave to go out.” She left Alison standing in the narrow entrance hall, and went back to the sitting-room. “Nurse Alison has come to ask me to go and see a patient who wants to speak to me,” she said. “Could you spare me for a little while?” “Good gracious alive,” Mrs. Hornby cried, when Judith had finished her explanation. “What a mystery! Somebody iu these wilds wanting you? Well I never! I thought you knew nobody down here?” “I didn’t know I had a single acquaintance here, except Nurse Alison. But she says a patient has been asking urgently for me. May I go? T will be as quick as l can.” “Go? Why certainly, of course. Miss Merivale,” the doctor intervened. “If a sick person wants you don’t wait a moment. One doesn’t like to delay in a case of urgency. You never know what it may mean. Go straight away at once, and don't hurry back. I’ll give my wife a helping hand, if she needs one.” “And whatever can it mean?” his wife questioned, when the front door had closed behind Judith and Alison.

“She told me quite distinctly that this part of the world was quite strange to her! And now some sick person is clamouring for her. It sounds to me very funny, very funny. I daresay she's another dark horse, like that wretched Dr. Smith. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised. Perhaps she is a real adventuress, just hiding here.” “Now. my clear, my dear,” Simon Hornby glanced deprecatingly at his wife, whose torrential flow of words had a baffling effect upon him. “Y'ou really must not let your imagination run away with you. Miss Merivale is no more an adventuress than you are. The idea is absurd. And T do wish you would not call Dr. Smith names, and say things against him. He —well, my clear, he is a very remarkable man; very remarkable.” It was not often that the little doctor managed to speak for so long, and his wife laughed shrilly. “Remarkable fiddlestick!” Susan Hornby turned down a corner of the page she was reading, and prepared to do battle. “That man’s taking your practice from under your nose, and he may be a criminal from a convict prison for all you know; yet you sit still under it, and do nothing!” Simon gave vent to a faint giggle. Two hours earlier he hai been sitting in the most restful room he had ever come across, iu the whole course of

his life; a room of soft colouring, and dark oak furniture; a room that filled you with a most blessed sense of peace; a room where there was a fascinating picture of a monk with his finger on his lips, enjoining silence. He rather wished Susan could learn a lesson from that monk. Silence was so golden—so wonderfully golden! The eyes of the man who sat and talked to him iu that room where the monk’s picture hung, emphasised that feeling of peace. And his voice! He lost the thread of Susan’s river of talk, remembering that voice. It had held so much of power, yet such serenity. It was a voice that rested you, but it made you want to he up and doing. By degrees the sense of Susan’s remarks drifted into his mind. He caught her words—criminal—a convict. prison. All at once he sat upright, a little spot of colour on each cheek; his eyes very bright. He was no longer a small, rather deprecating man, easily reduced to quietness. Some new power had come to him. “Don’t talk outrageous nonsense, Susan,” he said, and the extraordinary spectacle of Simon asserting himself with vigour, reduced Susan to open-mouthed, open-eyed silence. She scarcely knew her own husband. “You are giving an opinion on a subject of which you know nothing, nothing whatever. No —wait,” he held up a hand as his wife showed signs of recovering from her momentary amazement. “Let me finish what 1 wish to say. Understand, once for all, that I will have no more innuendoes uttered against Dr. Smith; I will have nothing said against him. I know all about him, where he came from, what are his qualifications (here the little doctor smiled faintly), everything. He is a wonderful chap and I won’t allow you to make such ridiculous statements, understand that. I won’t have a word said against Dr. Smith.”

If her husband had all at once seized a large stick and laid it about her back, Susan Hornby could scarcely have been more surprised than she was by this sudden outburst from a man who was usually completely subservient to her dominating personality. “But he will take your practice. He will get you turned out.” This was all she was capable of saying, and she stammered it out, gaping at her husband with wide, astonished eyes. “You have the children to think of, Simon, and this stranger will snatch away your practice." “He will do no such thing.” Simon spoke with grave assurance, as though lie had not a doubt of the truth of what he said. “He will see a limited number of patients in his surgery, just a limited number, and I am more than willing that he should. He will do a great deal of research work, such work as I could not touch; it is not in my province at all, but be is a master at it. I take off my hat to him.” Mrs. Hornby emitted a feeble snort, but her husband went on speaking with decision in his voice. “He, Dr. Smith, will give me a helping hand with difficult cases! and he will let me help him sometimes.”

Susan stared, stupefied, at his irradiated face and shining eyes. She found herself wondering dully whether Simon really had taken leave of his senses.

“Let you help him!” she cried, “a mere upstart stranger! You who have the biggest practice in the neighbourhood. I can’t imagine what you are thinking about, or what Dr. Smith is thinking about, either.” “I don’t know what he is thinking about,” Simon was asserting himself to some purpose. “I don’t suppose, as a matter of fact, that he thinks about me at all. I am the merest minnow in his pond.” Susan opened and shut her mouth like a distraught fish. Speech was beyond her. “I know what I am thinking.” Simon’s tones were jubilant. “I think I am one of the luckiest fellows on eartli to be working with such a man. It’s an honour.” “An —honour!” Susan gasped, “to work with a man living in that little house, a man from nowhere, a man of whom you know nothing?” A vision of that restful room, and of the man who had welcomed him there, flashed before Simon’s eyes. He felt uplifted, ennobled. He laughed softly, happily,“I know all about Dr. John, my dear. I know all that is necessary to know,

you can take my word for that. To work with him is an honour and a delight.” CHAPTER XVI. “TELL ME THE TRUTH” “But why are you here?” It was a clean, simply-furnished room to which Alison had taken her friend, a room in a big house in a quiet street, not far from the Hornbys. Judith stood looking down at the patient in the bed in an amazement ment that found vent in those five words. “But why are you here?” She had at once recognised the man whose hollow eyes looked up at her, and astonishment gripped her. “The doctor put me in this place,” the patient’s glance roamed restlessly round the room, “and Nurse Alison. They’ve been good to me.” His lingers picked at his sheet; his words trailed into incoherent mutterings. Judith in perplexity turned to Alison who stood by the table, pouring medicine into a glass. “Mr. Holt was in lodgings, not very nice lodgings, and Dr. Smith had him brought here when he was too ill to be left alone.’’ Alison said under her breath. “He is very, very ill, you realise that?” She looked pityingly down at the man’s ashen face and half-closed eyes.

“I am sure he is.” Judith’s own glance at Holt was lialf fearful, but also full of pity, for the ghastly face, laboured breathing, and the man’s whole appearance were significant, even to her ignorance. “But why did he ask for me? I cannot imagine what made him want to see me. Or how he could know I was anywhere near.” Her voice trembled a little. Alison saw that she was very shaken and pushed her gently into a chair. “He won’t louse up again for a minute or two. Just wait here until he is conscious. I don’t for a moment think he knew you were anywhere in this neighbourhood. The fact that I knew you, and that I also knew you were quite near at hand, is a mere chance, or ought we to say an act of God?” she ended reverently. “I—l don’t know,” Judith’s voice faltered. “I can't understand why he wants to see me, why he thought of me at all. He came sometimes to see Dad, but he only came with —with somebody else, and I knew him very slightly. It seems such an extraordinary thing that I should be close by, just when he asked for me.” “Isn’t it perhaps what 1 called it, an

i act ot God?” Alison answered gently. 1 always think these apparent coincidences go much deeper than mere chance. I first came across Mr. Holt in a most wretched lodging —a horrible place, with a horrible vampire of a landlady. He got worse and worse and our new doctor. Dr. John Smith, went to see him. He thought very badly ot him, and moved him here. Dr. John —as we call him —has made this into a kind ot improvised nursing home of a very simple sort tor some of his cases. The nurse who is looking after Mr. Holt is off duty, and I came here for an hour or two to sit with him. That is another strange coincidence that 1 should be here when he asked for you. For the last hour and more he has been continually saying your name—calling out to you most piteously and imploring you to come; imploring you with heartbreaking earnestness, and at last I felt I must fetch you. It seemed as though he had something important to tell you. You say you do know him?” “Very slightly. He was a friend ot that horrible Mr. Robertson. You know whom I mean?” Alison nodded. “He came with Mr. Robertson to see Dad. He —”

“Sweet eyes,” the man In the bed exclaimed suddenly, trying to drag himself up on his pillow, and looking wildly about him. “She has such sweet eyes. I can't bear doing anything that may hurt her. It’s a shame. Horace. I tell you it’s a shame. I won’t have it. Onl}',” his voice sank to a despairing note, “you always make me do whatever you choose.” The sentence ended in a whimper, which chilled Judith’s blood. It wus so cringing, so terrible. But the sick man almost at once began to speak again.

“Yes. I know. You needn’t tell me. I can see as well as you. He takes to the dope like a duck to water. He likes it, poor old chap! It makes him happy; it bucks him up. But it isn’t fair, Horace. Her sweet eyes—and she trusts us. Don’t do it, don't do it.” His sentences became rambling and vague, his voice rose into shrillness, and Judith, stirred to pity went back to the bedside. “Mr. Holt, is there anything I can do for you?” she asked, speaking very slowly and distinctly. Her clear tones reached his clouded brain; intelligence leapt into his eyes; he put out his hand eagerly. “You have come,” he said. “I didn’t dare hope you would really come, but you have. Thank God! Only—what right has a skunk like me to say ‘thank God’? What right have I to say or do anything that decent people do and say?” The unutterable despair in his voice made Judith shiver again. It was like the desperate cry of a lost soul, and her heart ached for the miserable man. “Tell me why you want me,” she said, very gently and firmly, anxious to seize his wandering attention before he drifted back into semi-con-sciousness. “You asked to see me. Why ? What did you want to see me for?” “Because ” he frowned, “because—Horace—Horace and I ” He paused, as though trying to snatch at his elusive thoughts. "Horace—but I must share the blame. Horace and I made your father—l don’t know that it was all my fault—but Horace and I made your father ” He paused for so long that Judith repeated; “Made my father—what? What did you do to him? Try and tell me.” “He was a good man, your father He was good but weak, Very weak Horace could do what he liked with him. Horace is strong. He can twist people, and he twisted your father round his finger. He has got me all twisted rouud his finger, too. My soul isn’t my own any more. It belongs to Horace.” He laughed strangely. "And it was the same with your father. His soul wasn’t his own any more. It began with dope. Horace taught the old man to (To be continued tomorrow.)