"CHRISTABEL"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 June 1939, Page 10

"CHRISTABEL"

Published by Special Arrangement.

Copyright.

By

PEARL BELLAIRS.

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

CHAPTER VIII. What surprised Christabel, that a rising K.C. should have turned psychologist. was not unnatural in Hewitson’s case; the study of criminology when he was taking his law degree had fostered his interest in general psychology; and all the time during his work at the bar the human material with which he had come into contact had fed his interest .in men’s motives and the working of their minds. “To understand all is to forgive all”; and he sometimes said that it was that fact which finally made his career as an advocate impossible as well as as absurd.

A year or two before the Milsom case he had published a treatise on the criminal mind which had received enough recognition to encourage him; but his legal colleagues were astonished by his contempt for the success they envied him, when he took advantage of the seven Hundred a year he acquired when his father died, to give up the law altogether. During the year previous to Christabel's discharge from prison he had been attending the Bering Street clinic twice a week, giving treatment and collecting material for a book which had become almost his only interest in life.

He was unmarried, obstinately so. It had been hard enough io find time to practise at the bar and interest himself in criminal psychology as well, without finding time, to marry. Even though he attracted women, he found them too esay, too average, or too illogical—at any rate, no woman had interested him enough to make him want to marry her.

So every Monday and Thursday his car could be seen outside the Bering Street clinic with his terrier Gip waiting. patiently in the front seat. On that particular inursday evening Hewitson arrived 10 minutes late, and knowing that he was likely to have two or three patients waiting for him, he seized Gip by the scruff of the neck, haled him out of the car, and hurried inside.

“Constable says there are dog thieves about, so in you come, my lad!” he told the dog as he carried him hastily along the passage to the office. He half-opened the door, pushed Gip inside, glimpsing a female figure within, which he took to be that of the nurse he knew, and said: “Here’s something for you to look after!”

He slammed the door, and went away to attend to nis patients. After a particularly difficult hour, Hewitson rang his bell for the coffee he usually took midway ’ through the evening. The door- opened and the nurse came in with his tray. Hewitson saw at once that it wasn't Miss Tite—and remembered that Miss Tite had told him she was leaving and there would be somebody new. He watched Christabel put the tray on his desk, the glow of the reading lamp falling softly on her face. He saw a line of dark hair on the smooth white forehead below the nurse’s cap; the glint of dark eyes under beautiful lids, a soft shadow under the curve of her cheekbone .». . his attention was sharply distracted from the patient on the couch. She straightened to look at him, with deliberation, something that puzzled him in the dark enigma of her eyes; something that puzzled him in his own reaction. Where had he seen her before? For a moment there was a silence utterly different from any silence of awkwardness one might expect when a new nurse brings in the practitioner’s coffee. "Thanks," said Hewitson. He was going to say that he had forgotten that Miss Tite had gone when he put his dog into the office, wnen she spoke first: “I hope your coffee is not too strong. I don’t know how you like it.” Her voice was full and rounded, with a mysterious timbre, the suggestion of a sigh in it, matching the poignance of her face. “Yes, thanks. I'm sure !” Hewitson bent forward, as though startled t< look at the- coffee. With a smile that was even more extraordinary than the rest of her, she drew back to the door, slipped out ol it and left him looking at it as it closed. Christabel walked back along the passage to the office with a feeling that a fatal moment had been passed. He had stared at her for some reason: but had he recognised her?” He had not changed. Perhaps there was a touch of grey in the hair at his temples; but ho still had the same alert looking figure; the same vitality in his manner, the keen intelligence in his eyes. It might have been yesterday, not nearly throe years ago that he had stood before her. pointing an accusing finger at her, “the female accused,” while his voice rang contemptuously through the tense silence of the court. Christabel leaned against the office door, feeling suddenly weak. Since she had arrived at the clinic everything had gone well; she had done her work satisfactorily so far as she knew from the behaviour of the three practitioners who had come down in thenvarious hours to attend their patients. The job was well within her powers. But she had not expected the sight of Hewitson to disturb her so. She trembled as she wondered “Did he recognise me? Will he recognise me?’’

Hewitson’s terrier rose from the mat on which he was lying and came slowly across the room to her, wagging his tail with an expectant look. She bent, and patted his head. So must Hewitson have patted it, often and often. Presumably he was fond of

the dog. The queerness of finding that that figure of human malignance which had haunted her prison nightmares had all sorts of human attributes which one might expect—but which she. some how had never taken into account! She began to put things straight in the office, in preparation for. leaving, to go home to the room she was living in the Haifa road. She heard Hewitson’s patient go. Now, surely, he would come for his dog. She would know if he had recognised her. The bell rang. The dog followed her as she went to answer it. Hewitson was at his desk putting the noteh he had made on the evening's wor ktogether, getting ready to leave. “I’m leaving this envelope for Dr Sanders, if you'll give it to him when he comes down tomorrow.” He rose, his eyes taking her in again casually, it seemed. “Hello, Gip! Tired ot waiting? I hope no wasn't in your way, Miss ?” “Collet,” said Christabel. “Miss Collet, Thank you. I’ll be down on Monday afternoon.” His expression had not altered. His voice was calmly matter of fact. He did not know her. He snapped his fingers at Gip, and said: “Belter lock up carefully, Miss Collet; this isn’t a neighbourhood in which people can resist the temptation of something for nothing!” No sign of what she was thinking showed in Christabel’s face; but part of the loveliness of her smile was due to its suggestion that she was occupied with secret poignancies. Hewitson took a vision of her quiet-ly-smiling face to the car with him. “Curiously speechless sort of creature,” he said to himself, as he pressed the starter. But that smile spoke volumes —about what one wasn’t quite sure. He forgot her; and when he got to his flat in Mayfair he sat down to work in his high-ceilinged, oak-panel-led sitting room before a comfortable fire. He sorted out the notes he had made during the evening. For the last three years he had been writing the first draft of a long work with which he hoped to establish himself as an original contributor to modern psychological theory; everything that he came across in his practical work he considered as possible data. He usually kept a memoranda of the day’s work; and on impulse whose motive eluded him, surprised him a little, he wrote at the end of it: “Cleopatra, Zenobia, Lady Hamilton and the Gioconda rolled into one, waled into the clinic consulting room tonight. Her likeness to the feminine archetype was so strong that for a moment I felt as though I had always known her. But it seems that she’s merely the new nurse.” CHAPTER, IX. “Still thinking of her meeting with Hewitson, Christabel wakened next morning in a clean, mean little bedroom, in a house in the Haifa Road kept by a Mrs Creedy. i But to Christabel there was nothing mean about it. The bed was soft, and the sheets were white, she could lie as long as she liked in the morning. Breakfast consisted of a boiled egg and half a pint of fresh milk was a luxury to her. But that morning she could only think of Hew"itson. “Strange that he goes about the world looking so pleased with everything in it,” she said to herself, bitterly. “And doesn't even remember, very likelyq, that there was ever a Milsorn case, or that a Mrs Milsorn went to prison, for three years as the price of his being so extremely clever!” She wished that meeting him could have removed the grudge she bore him. She felt it to be something outside herself, which possessed her, and corrupted her better judgment. But instead her resentment was becoming deeper and more real. Between that Thursday and the following Monday she did her best to forget him; but with so little else to do it was difficult to keep her thoughts from him. Instinctively avoiding personal contacts as much as possible, she kept her distance from the various specialists who attended the clinic during the week; little knowing that she was discussed by them. Dr Roger Sanders, a typically English, fresh-faced young man. with a fair moustache and a large nose, was particularly interested in her. He remarked to Hewitson, who was a close friend of his: “We seem to have got hold of something rather exceptional looking in the way of a nurse. Where did she come from?" “She was sent from an agency with a reference from some clergyman or other." replied Hewitson. who had himself made the same enquiry of the clinic secretary. “She looks anaemic to me," said Dr Sanders, trying to justify his interest in her appearance. "What is the name of that anaemia that shop girls used to get from working long hours indoors?" asked Tlewitson, who did not pretend to any great knowledge of medicine. Sanders told him. If either of them had known that the recommending clergyman was the chaplain of a women s prison, they might have suspected where Christabel had come from. As it was such a thing never entered their heads; and When Dr Sanders came down to his session on the following Friday, ho said to Christabel: “You look pale, nurse! You ought to get out into the sun.” | (To he Continued.)