The Singer from the Hills

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1077, 15 September 1930, Page 5

The Singer from the Hills

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PCBUSHEP BY SPECIAL ARKANGEMEIST

Ay

ROWAN GLEN

CHAPTER IV. She hart smiled while she hart spoken, and her voice had been kindly, but Mrs. Cameron was not completely mollified. “Juvergarroch,” she repeated to herself when she was alone. “I wish you an' me were back there, that I do. All this l’uss an’ nonsense about a career, getting that bonny head of yours turned. Well, J haven’t got the second-sight, but I’ll warrant that there’ll be queer happenings ahead for you, mebbe danger, too.” While the woman was murmuring thus gloomily, Hew Kennedy was holding both of Sheila’s hands and swinging them this way and that, as he had so often done in the old days In the north. Also he was looking deep into those large, blue eyes, which always held so great a lure for him. “You get more and more lovely each time I see you,” he told her, and though he was smiling the words were said sincerely. “And by the way, I have not seen you half often enough.” Gently she drew her fingers from his. “I’d like to know whose fault that is,” she returned, as she seated herself on a small couch and, with a gesture, invited him to join her there. “I’m beginning to realise that one of the busiest young men in London is a certain Dr. Hew Kennedy. What with his hospital work, and nis studies, and the patients that he’s collecting so quickly, he has not much spare time, has he? It is so, is it not? You’re always on the go.” “Not always,” he corrected. “Take this evening, for instance. I'm going to allow myself as many blessed hours of freedom as you will be gracious enough to share with me. Why the sudden shadows in the eyes, Sheila? You’re not going to tell me, are you. that you’ve got something else on? I know that this is not one of your practice nights, so ” He hesitated, and looked so mournful that Sheila laid a hand on one of his arms and let it rest there for a moment or two.

“Listen, Hew, dear, and please don’t be too disappointed,” she said. “You were going to ask me to spend the evening with you, were you not?” “Yes, that was the idea. I was paid an unexpected and quite respectable fee today and I proposed to spend as much of it as I could on taking you to dinner, and then to some theatre, where we would sit among the financially elect, and then on to supper, at one of those places where they have a cabaflet show. But I can see that it is not going to be. You’re fixed up?” She nodded, and if she were sorry for him then she was sharing something at least op his all too evident disappointment, and was genuine when she said: “Yes, and I’m dreadfully sorry. I really am, so you need not screw up the bridge of your aristocratic nose

Author of "Tbo Qrvat Anvil.” “Th* Stronger P-a»ion " ‘ The Romantic Road. - ' etc.

that way. I would have loved to help you with your extravagance, but you’ll have to put the money aside, if you’re willing to wait, that is. I’ve promised to meet Charles Wadeburn and have dinner with him and one or two of his friends, and it's a promise that 1 simply must keep. I’m looking at things in a business way, you know. It seems half the theatrical business is done at a table where there are things to eat and drink.” In the short silence that followed she glanced at her wrist-watch, and though Kennedy was not supposed to see that glance he did see it. There was nothing of pettishness in his mental nor emotional make-up, but perhaps he loved so deeply, he was almost super-sensitive. “I know—or, anyway, I can understand,” he said, as he rose. “I’ll do what you say, then. I'll play the cautious game and put the cash that I’d earmarked for tonight into an entertainment fund for you and me.” When they stood by the room-door, and his fingers were on its handle, he looked at her straightly, and his eyes were sombre.

“Don’t think I’m saying it because you cannot come out with me,” he remarked, “but I still feel the same, you know. Oh, I’m meaning about my personal feelings, where you’re concerned. I’ll never alter about those —not even if I live to be old and doddery. I mean about you having to come to London, and having got mixed up with this Wadeburn man and the sort of folk who fawn on him, or on whom he fawns. He’s a good enough fellow in his own way, I don’t doubt. But —well, I scarcely know how to put it. ( You are so different from all that bunch. Is it too late even now to cut out this new career and go back to the old one? Your happiness means so much to me, everything, I think, and the way I see it ”

She knew a faint irritability as she interrupted him, and this, though she realised that he loved her, so she assured herself, with nothing of mockmodesty, she did not deserve to be loved. • “Hew, for goodness sake don’t start that again!” she begged. “Matter of fact, I’ve just had a dose of the same sort of thing from old Meg, and, honestly, I cannot stand any more. There was some excuse for her, perhaps, for she’s been brought up to think of London as a den of sin and the stage as a place where people are rubbing shoulders with wickedness all the time. But there’s no excuse for you. You’re what’s called a man of the world. Don’t you think that, instead of throwing cold water on my schemes, you might try to buck me up about them? Are you not glad that Pm getting the chance to be a success as a singer? I thought you would have been. I know that I’ll be glad and proud when success comes to you—as it will do.” A drop or two of moisture had come

to his brow, but he did not attempt to wipe them away. “You make me feel ashamed,” he told her, and meant it.. “Of course, I want you to be a success, and, o£ course, I will be proud of you when I hear you swaying huge audiences, as Wadeburn says you will. It was only that I —oh, I don’t think I could express what it is that I really meant.”

It was on that unsatisfactory note that they parted, and if, an hour or two later, in the expensive restaurant where she was the guest of Charles Wadeburn, and where her fellowguests included an ultra-conventional society girl called Dorothy Beamish and a much-gossiped-about baronet called Sir William Catterton (“Bill” to his intimates, of whom he had many). Sheila was at her gayest and

most charming, nervousness was close behind the gaiety. Of the little party, it was only the astute Wadeburn who noticed traces of this nervousness, and, when he bade her good-night he referred to it with the greatest possible tact. “A little bit scared of the folk 1 introduced you to, were you?” he asked. “Well, I do not wonder, my dear, tor Billy Catterton is a handful at the best of times, and Dorothy Beamish is pretty fresh herself. She is not at all the sort of young person who’d make a hit with the good folk up in your beautiful Invergarroch. But they mean well in their way, and you’ll get used to ’em. You had to meet Bill, anyway, for he’s very nearly in the millionaire class, and, every now and then, one of my chief back ers.” “I understand,” Sheila said. “1 only hope that I didn’t seem to be too much ot the country cousin. I did feel a bit that way.” ' “What? You? Heaven bless the

girl! Doesn’t she know that she was the star turn, both during dinner and afterward? There’s modesty for you! Do not worry, Sheila. You’ve got the stuff in you, and if there’s just a hint of Scottish accent in your speech still, we find it fascinating. The point is that when you sing there's no accent at all.’’ The praise was sweet enough and it warmed her pleasantly, but when she went to bed in a room next to that where Meg Cameron was snoring more loudly than any human being has a right to snore, Sheila fell to wondering what Hew Kennedy would have thought of her new and highlyplaced friends. She wondered, too. what he had done with his evening of leisure and did not guess that, lacking her companionship, he had put leisure and entertainment on one side and had spent the hours studying that delicate surgical art of which he hoped to be a master some day.

The weeks passed and while Kennedy was busy with his “doctoring,” as Meg Cameron phrased it, and Meg herself tried to be busy in keeping the rooms where she and her young patroness lived clean and tidy, and with sewing and knitting, Sheila worked hard and with ever-increasing success. (To be continued tomorrow.) _