"CHRISTABEL"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 June 1939, Page 12

"CHRISTABEL"

Published by Special Arrangement. Copyright.

By

PEARL BELLAIRS.

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

CHAPTER IX. (Continued). Christabel, who was typing out a diet sheet .for him on the office typewriter, coloured, and then turned whiter than ever. A moment later she pulled the paper out of the machine, tore it up, and began the sheet again. Dr Sanders talked on. He seemed in no hurry to go as the other men were when their patients had gone. He told her how keen ne was on mountaineering, asked her if she liked tennis, and whether she cared for the country, all questions which might lead her to say something about herself. Beyond allowing him to know that she had a room in naifa Road, when he offered to give her a lift into town, Christabel let him know nothing, except that she nad been in Grindelwald for Christmas in 1932. As she walked home to her lonely little room she wondered if he had any suspicions. •She wasn’t vain enough to guess the thing that Dr Sanders was trying to conceal from himself as well as from her. In the four times he had seen her she had aroused his interest to such a pitch that he had to stay and talk . . She didn’t think about Dr Sanders much. On the next two occasions when she saw Hewitson he was too busy to have much to say to her. She could only look at him ironically, speculating on what he would think if he knew ■who she was. But Hewitson was conscious of her. With a purely .academic interest .he wanted to know if her mind matched her face. It might have been due to that that he came into the clinic office one evening to have nis coffee, instead of having it in the consulting room. “Aren't you having any, nurse?” he asked, when she handed him his cup. “No, thank you!” While he stood drinking, his presence held her in speechless tension; with an effort at carelessness she gazed out of the window at the blank night which hid the back yards of the Bering Street slums. Suddenly he asked her, with startling directness: “Well, Miss Collet, and what are you looking at out there in the dark where I can see nothing?” The question was rather apt in view of her thoughts. ‘What was she seeing where he could sec nothing?” She smiled and replied: “One might see a lot of things in a dark glass!” The reply not only matched the enigma of her face, but out-did it. He looked a trifle puzzled. “Only reflections of one’s’ own mind; and it’s always wiser to deal with realities,” he said. “Realities!” She laughed oddly, sceptically. “You think life is best viewed from a distance?” “Safest,” replied Christabel. He drank some coffee, and then told her, as he walked up and down the room: “That sort of attitude is of no use! You begin by avoiding trouble, and end by avoiding experience of any sort. The most unhappy people are those to whom nothing ever happened.” She was amused by his talking to her of “trouble/’ “It all depends what you mean by trouble,” she said. “I mean that one must learn to grasp the nettle.” “Thank you,” she said. “I will!” She looked at him, smiling openly, puzzling him 'with the mockery in her eyes. He gave her a level glance and said: “I don’t suppose for a moment that you haven’t always done so!” When she said nothing, he added: “Nursing is hardly the best way of avoiding the realities of life.” “I haven't done much of it. I trained for two years before ” She stopped, and concluded: “I began when I was twenty, but I didn't get beyond my second year.” “A more attractive way. of passing the time presented itself?” “I suppose so.” It was a non-commital reply. He gave her his coffee cup to fill arid went on talking: “What I say about facing realities is true. Half the troubles of the people I deal with in my work are based on fear; and half the fears of our modern age are unnecessary, mere left-overs from a barbarous state. Most people won’t follow their impulses even so far as good sense and society allow.” "But there are all sorts of bad impulses!” said Christabel. “A few.” “Selfishness. Ambition.” She paused. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!” “Why do you think of that particularly?” asked Hewitson, his sharp senses finding a significance in the remark at once. She turned her eyes away from him slowly. “It was a thing that came into my head.” He let the conversation end there, with a reluctance that was not lost on her; and after thanking her for the coffee, he went back to the consulting room, and left a few minutes later. She felt intensely disturbed by the conversation. He had been interested in it. Not only that, she did not think she was mistaken, but he had been interested in her. Why? Did he suspect ? But she put that fear aside as a foolish fancy. He was just—interested! She felt a sudden, extraordinary, fierce elation. CHAPTER X. Next time Hewitson came down, in th,e afternoon, he was too busy to talk

to her. But on the following Thursday he came into the office again for his coffee. He talked to her about the work that was done in the clinic, and took a book from the shelves, in which he told her she would find a simple explanation of the principles on which the patients were treated. “Borrow it, if you like.” “Thank you, I will!” She took it with a little glow of traitorous triumph. “You might find it interesting,” he said. His manner towards her was quite unaffected, full of the zest he felt for his subject, and a gratified admission that she was worth talking to about it. It was strange, getting to know, him; there was a fascination in meeting his gaze so openly, while she told herself that he might fancy he saw into her very heart, but could never know what was really in it. All this aroused a good deal of speculation in her as to what might happen in the end. It was no deliberate wish which made her fan the interest she had already produced in him; she simply could not help it. The opportunity was too rare; the triumph so unique. Full of the zest of living, when he left the clinic he drove away to some other part of London, to a private life no doubt full of interest to himself; while she went back to her room in Haifa Road, alone, defeated, a friendless ghost. . The desire to make him smart, instead of getting less through knowing him and seeing qualities in him to admire, grew always more. One day Hewitson’s sister Molly, a very pretty, golden-haired girl, with blue eyes rather like his own, came down to the clinic. She came with Doctor Sanders, to whom, it seemed, she was engaged. The girl was being shown round the place and Hewitson introduced her to Christabel. “I expect we’re butting in in the middle of work, and I’m surerny brother is furious!” said Molly Hewitson. “I’ve wanted to come down here for a long time, to see what it was like, but I had to wait for Dr Sanders to bring me.” “I don’t think Mr Hewitson looks particularly annoyed,” replied Christabel with a smile. With a unconscious tenderness the girl slipped her arm through Dr Sanders’ as she looked, at the books on the shelves, and made a face at their titles. “More psychology! I can’t stand it, can you, Miss Collet? I’ve heard so much about it that the mere sound of the word complex drives me nearly mad!” “My dear Molly, you musn’t compare yourself with Miss Collet,” said Hewitson. “She’s an intelligent woman.” “Listen to him! Why don’t you defend me, Roger?” said his sister. "Why don’t you put him in his place?” “You can’t put a man in his place if he doesn’t know it,’ said Sanders. “Can you, Miss Collet?” He spoke lightly, but turned rather red as he stared at her. Christabel, who found it impossible to efface herself because Hewitson and the girl were looking at her with frank interest, too, was forced to make a reply. “Do I know enough about Mr Hewitson to say?” Molly Hewitson remarked suddenly. with the frankness of a nature too vital for reserve: “I’ve heard such a lot about you, Miss Collet!” “About me?” said Christabel, in surprise. “Yes, Dr Sanders and my brother both think you're the most extraordinarily beautiful person they have ever met!” Christabel, with a faint laugh, and a faint flush of colour of her cheeks, glanced at Hewitson, who merely looked grim. But it was a real discomfort which Dr Sanders seemed to try to overcome, as he said: “Miss Collet will be frightfully embarrassed if you say tnings like that :.o her!” “Oh, no, why should she be?” said Molly Hewitson. “Besides, I was just going to say that I think you’re both right!” Christabel, a little bewildered, yet touched by the kindness of those people she hardly knew, did not know what to say. She felt she could have liked this girl and her fiance, even Hewitson .himself —if she had not known him. But she did not know, she knew a thousand things that the others-did not and so the situation was too tense to be a pleasant one for her. There was a significance in the fact that Hewitson thought her “the most extraordinarily beautiful person he had ever met" that the others were quite unaware of . ; ! When Hewitson nad finished his work the three drove back to town to his flat in Cavendish-square. When they were there Molly said to Hewitson: "Your Miss Collet is really lovely, isn’t she? Who is she, what is she. where does she come from?” “No idea,” said Hewitson. Dr Sanders did not reply but took a book out of a shelf and seemed engrossed in it. “Doesn’t she talk about herself?” said Molly. “No.” replied Hewitson. “Not to me.” “She’s rather a mystery.” "What is there mysterious about her? said Hewitson. "She’s merely a nurse.” Oh, but she is—there’s something mysterious about her manner, she seems to be thinking hundreds of things one simply knows nothing about!" said Molly. (To be Continued.)