"CHRISTABEL"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 June 1939, Page 10

"CHRISTABEL"

Published by Special Arrangement. Copyright

By

PEARL BELLAIRS.

(Author of "Velvet and Steel,” "The Prisoner’s Sister,” etc.)

CHAPTER I. Christabel’s story really begins when she was twenty-two. We see her then, leaning over the book in the vestry of Kensington Church writing her maiden name for the last time, her eyes brilliant with innocence, her arms, clasping their lilies, still thin with youth in the white satin sleeves.

She wasn’t as beautiful then as she became later; only very young. She was just like any other rather dreamy girl you might meet, who had not been happy at home, and had taken up nursing because she wanted to "be of use in the world,” and then had met a young man, and had been carried away by her first experience of love-making, without giving much thought to the ways and means of making a home.

She needed a home, for her father had died when she was a child, and her mother had married a second, wealthier husband, and had had another family; so that Christabel had always felt the odd one out. "Now I shan’t feel in their way any more!” she thought. She was going to be happy. She would always be happy now. That was what she believed as she looked up, radiant, from writing her old name, to think of her new one: "Mary Christabel Milsom!" The name seemed to echo far off, somewhere in the future, significantly, like a call to—who knew what? During the first year of her marriage to Keith Milsom, Christabel was too busy getting used to the sophistication of his friends, and the life he led, to think very much about whether she was happy. Sometimes she stopped to look for a meaning in so much rushing about to clubs and shows and races and parties, particularly as it always seemed difficult for Keith to pay for it all. But Keith couldn’t nave lived in any other way, and he soon persuaded her that she ought to like it too. Then he lost his job with a city firm of sharebrokers, and that put a stop o it all. She never found out why he lost it, though she overheard him having a telephone conversation about a share transfer which made her think that there was some trouble at the office in which he was involved. "Don’t you know I have to conduct private btisiness for clients over the phone?” he burst out, when she asked him a diffident question. So she never found out what was the matter. But the rent was overdue, Keith had' no people to help him, and they had to sell the furniture to pay off his most pressing debts. Christabel was expecting a happy event, which did not look so happy, after all, in the circumstances. However, Keith got another job in the city with a friend. It was not so well paid as the first. They lived in a small furnished flat, and they no longer went about so much. "We can’t afford to keep pace with that crowd!” said Keith. Christabel would not have minded because being poor if Keith had not seemed to find it so intolerable, if his j bitterness had not come to permeate their whole life . . But debts, poverty, lost friends, it was all nothing to her beside the fact that when the baby came it died of pneumonia when it was six weeks old. The meaning went out of everything. There was nothing left in life. It meant nothing to her that Keith used to come in more and more often with his friends “from the city,” or that he liked hei’ to try to look as though she liked their endless conversation about money and horses and shows, and sharp dealing when her head was aching, and her eyes were weary with grief. She could not forget the dead child. She dreamed of it every night. She knew she could have loved it in the whole-hearted way in which she had not been able to love Keith after the first illusion had gone. It was the lack of fervour in her feeling for Keith perhaps, which put l her more under his thumb than any- I thing else. She was always trying to make up for it. If Keith said: "You look awfully tired lately! Why don’t you put some of that blue shadow on your eyes that so-and-so wears?" Christabel would do so; and put black on her eyelashes and crimson on her nails, and wear over emphatic hats and. frocks and try to look as sophisticated as Keith wanted her to be . . . Because he liked it; and because after the baby died she would have dene anything to efface the real self under the make up; a self so painfully but of its element that she only wished it buried as deep as her own dead child. They had been married for three years when they came to know Henry Goring. Timid, conscientious, about 60, Henry had retired from civil service to live in the block of flats next to the Milsoms. His sister, a starchy old lady, kept house for him; and possibly what they both valued most in life was the safely-invested capital which enabled them to live in considerable comfort. Miss Goring didn’t like Henry's friendship with the Milsoms from the first. "Thank you, but I very seldom go out at night,” Miss Goring would reply coldly, when invited to go round with Henry. Christabel tried to make friends, but she didn’t realise that Miss Goring couldn't see through ail the make-up that Keith liked, to the poor Christai bel who dreamed and pined inside; whose sadness was ready to embrace the whole world. Henry often drifted into the flat,

and Christabel liked him so mud

better than Keitn s other hard-eyed friends, because he was a simple soul. And if Keith said some things about himself to Henry that were not quite true, and liked to play the rising young city man before Henry Goring, she forgave him —where would marriage be without such forgiveness? "He’ll go far, that young man," said Henry Goring. Besides how could she have had the heart to attempt to deny anything Keith might say to make things look better He was so depressed and embittered by not being able to get on. It would have been easier to be poor really, if Keith hadn’t seemed to find it so intolerable. He had never managed to pay off the debts of their newly-married days. A dressmaker's bill came in for twen-ty-one pounds. Once in a moment of affluence Keith had made Christabel start the account and buy the things; he had said he would pay in the following month, but he had never done so in all the months since. Now when it came with a threat to sue, he was very upset; he said he would be ruined if anyone sued him just then, and suggested to Christabel that she should borrow the money from Henry Goring. Afterwards she hardly knew how he persuaded her into it, it was so shameful and unpleasant to her. But he said he would lose his job; scolded, sulked, and finally came home that night the worse for drink which he had taken apparently, on account of the ruin to come. Christabel wrote to Henry Goring next morning; he was staying with his sister at Bognor. “Don’t say I can’t pay; just say you’ve over-spent your allowance and don’t want me to know,” said Keith. “But I can’t say that! He’ll think I'm deceiving you!” “What does that matter? I don’t care what you say, so long as you don’t tell him I can’t pay. The important think is never to let people know that you’re hard up!” There was another dead-lock. Finally he swore he would pay back the money out of his next commission, and she gave way. Henry sent her the money immediately; it was not so bad after she had seen him again, for he was just his old, kind self, and one couldn’t resent being grateful to him.

I'm thinking of buying a house,” said Henry Goring to the Milsom’s, about a month later. "Paying rent for a flat is like throwing money down the drain. My sister and I think that if we bought a house that was likely to increase in value, we’d be getting much more for our money.” And it must have been a week after that that Keith said to Christabel: "I’ll be able to give you that twenty one pounds for Henry in a day or two.” It had been worrying her, and she was very much relieved; she had been collecting it out of the housekeeping, but that was so slow. She hardly believed him, but sure enough in the days’ time, he gave her the twentyone pounds in notes, and she was able, to give them to Henry. She felt bad, thanking him as though Keith knew nothing about it. The next thing was that Keith asked her casually: "I wonder if Henry has done anything about getting a house?” “I don’t think so, Keith. I asked him the other day, and he said no.” "I know of a house in Ealing. You can tell him I can put him on to a good thing if he still wants one.” "Couldn’t you ?” "No; it’s much easier for you to mention it to him. I’ll be getting a commission from West, the chap who owns it, if I sell it for him. You can so easily say to Henry: 'lf you want to buy a house why not let Keith find one for you?’ ” "I suppose there's no reason why I shouldn't do that.” "Of course not.” That was how she came to mention the house in Ealing to Henry Goring. It was a hot summer afternoon, the sunlight streaming in on a bowl of wall-flowers, the windows of the flat thrown open to the London garden. She was trying to bring the conversation round to the subject of the house, but she felt dull, and tired of helping Keith. Instead, quite suddenly, she told Henry all about the baby and how it had died. The tears ran down her cheeks and she seemed to be in winter again, to have entered the outer night behind the brightness of the sun and the brilliance of the summer day.

Henry was a strange sort of person to tell; a man who had never been a father, and was old enough to be her own. But she had never told anyone before there had never been anyone possible to tell.

And yet he seemed to understand, and she felt better afterwards. Poor Henry Goring! He had become very fond of her; perhaps she suggested the wife he had never had, perhaps the daughter. She told him straightforwardly about the house, a minute or two afterwards. Keith knew of a man who had one for sale in Ealing. “I'll have a look at it. then, if Keith thinks it might be suitable,” -said Henry. When Keith came in from the city Christabel told him what Henry had said. "Oh! ’ said Keith, in a non-commit-tal 1 tone | (To bo Continued.)