"CHRISTABEL"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 July 1939, Page 10

"CHRISTABEL"

Published by Special Arrangement.

Copyright.

By

PEARL BELLAIRS.

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

CHAPTER XII. (Continued).

“Yes,” said Sanders humbly, and went, looking very uncomfortable, Christabel walked up and down the office restlessly when he had gone. She had wholly forgotten that she had ever hesitated, about Sanders for a moment. She was dismayed because it looked as though Hewitson was angry. She wanted his friendship because the main-spring of her existence at that moment was but one desire to tell him one day about herself and what he had done to her, in a manner which would make him realise. She stopped abruptly, her hands over her heart, her emotion at the thought rocking her like a wave.

The day was Wednesday. She wrote that evening to the nurse in Kent, saying that she would like to change places with her for a fortnight, and would go down to Kearne Hall on the coming Friday. She waited nervously for Hewitson’s evening visit. He came. She did not see him. She had to wait until late in the evening before she could take his coffee in order to do so.

His face was not exactly stern. It wore a studied indifference, and he seemed to avoid looking at her; merely said, “Thanks!” when she put his tray down and went on writing some notes.

Lately he always had something to say—frequently quite a lot in order to prevent her from getting out of the room immediately. But now Christabel had to draw his attention by speaking to him. “There will be a new nurse here when you come on Monday, Mr Hewitson. Are there any instructions you would like me to give her?” He looked up then; she saw the flash of surprised speculation in his eyes. “Are you leaving ,us?” “Not permanently.” Christabel replied. “I’m changing places for a fortnight with a nurse at a children’s camp in Kent.” x Oh!” He frowned, still speculating she could see, and seemed about to turn back to his notes. Christabel added diffidently, while she could still catch his eye and launch an appeal with her own: “I think perhaps it would be a good thing, if I went away from here for a while!” He looked surprised, his whole manner altered in a moment; his gaze questioned her, and its coldness vanished; he still looked a trifle grim; but his grimness was no longer directed at her. “For the sake of your health?” he inquired, drily, and she could see that he was her friend again, and believed her to be his. “Not mine," said Cnristabel, with a little smile. He said nothing. He understood her; and it was not a thing they could very well discuss. Christabel drew back from the desk, her heart be'ating with triumph; she was not only reinstated, but by now she had his confidence. He rose, throwing down his pen on the table; as she got to the door, he said in a voice of assumed weariness: “It must be a nuisance to be so attractive!” She half turned a face of cool astonishment towards him, with a faint rosiness on her cheeks and lowered eyelids, and a smile on her lips. “Well, I'm sorry you’re going away,’ he said, “I came down yesterday to ask you if you’d came to come to Wimbledon with me on Saturday to see the tennis.” "And today," said Christabel, raising her eyes, "You were not going to ask me!” He made no reply to that, but merely said: “I hope you enjoy your holiday and: gain a just reward!” “Thank you.” said Christabe.l and went out. She closed the office door behind her; but it opened again from the consulting room side, and he put his head through. “Where is this place in Kent that you're going to?" She told him. “May I come down?" Christabel answered him after a pause: “If you’d like to.” “Good!” His eyes challenged her, he smiled, and the door closed again. Christabel put her hand over her ribs; her heart was thumping against them. A few minutes later she heard him go out. CHAPTER XIII. Hidden behind a grove of chestnut trees on Ihe slight uplands which rise to the hills behind Romney Marsh, was Cavanagh’s child welfare camp. Thirty little children from the most dismal areas in London spent holidays of a month and more in the homestead and outhouses of what had been a farm on Cavanagh’s estate. The matron, Miss Thorpe, was a capable elderly woman, who had been a hospital nurse for many years; two of the other girls were trained nurses, and when these used to sit in the kitchen at night with Miss Thorpe exchanging reminiscences. Christabel was frequently aware of her own silence. Christabel's beauty and her silence tended to make the other women curious. even a little suspicious. One or another would sometimes ask her a direct question; had she been nursing long—and so on. “I began to train at St Bridget’s,” I she told Miss Thorpe. “But J gave it up and got married, when I was very i young.” ' “Did you now?” said Miss Thorpe;

and the silence which fell seemed eloquent with the question: "What are you doing here then? Where is your husband?" Christabel could see Miss Thorpe settling on a scandal of some sort immediately; Christabel was parted ' or divorced from her husband. Kindly as Miss Thorpe was, she was enough of an old maid to tend to want to disapprove of any woman who was manifestly more attractive than herself. Christabel saw that she must go on with the story, or have her reputation forever complicated by Miss Thorpe's fancies. "I call myself Miss Collet,” said Christabel. "But I'm really a widow. My husband died not long ago, and unfortunately 1 was. not provided for —so I had to go back to nursing. I was lucky to get the job at Bering Street.” Which was perfectly true, Miss Thorpe rather surprisingly believed her. At once, as the young widow, Christabel took on a romantically sad appearance in Miss Thorpe’s eyes. A note came from Hewitson. "Dear Miss Collet,” it ran. “Can I come down on Friday and take you for a run in the car?” We might go over to Canterbury. Let me know if the camp could spare you for the day? —Yours, etc., Grant Hewitson.” She asked Miss Thorpe if she might have Friday off; and then posted a card to him saymg that she would very much like the run over to Canterbury. at the camp much of the conversation was about Mr Cavanagh. Cavanagh was then staying at Kearne Hall. He was, it seemed, a man of fifty-odd, with an income running into five figures derived from a business in which he took no active part; he interested himself in art and science and social questions instead; and he was said to be acquainted with all the famous and distinguished persons of the day. He was a widower, and his one son had been killed in a flying crash three years before. Christabel’s first sight of Cavanagh was early one morning, when he walked over to the camp with two people who were staying with him, during the children’s breakfast. He was a man of medium height, with silvery hair and a kindly, cultured face; her first glance at him gave her the impression that he was probably not very strong physically. The next occasion of her meeting him was altogether different. She was out walking with some of the children a day or two later, in one of the winding lanes which led down to the green levels of the marsh, when one of her charges, a particularly hungry-looking, grey faced little mile, made a sudden dart across the road to pick a purple thistle. "Take care. Dorrie, said Christabel. "H’s prickly." The child proved the truth of this after an attempt or two. “Come back, dear- —there’s a car coming!” called Christabel, who could hear the noise of one behind them round the bend in the road. Dorrie hesitated, started to run across the road then stopped dead in the middle of it, and looked about her: she had dropped her linen hat out of sight in the ditch by the thistle. "Quickly, Dorrie!” called Christabel, and started towards the child, as an abrupt increase of noise warned her that the car was nearer than she had supposed—— The next instant, with the child, who was slow and partly deaf, still standing in the middle of the road, the car swung round the bend, just behind her; Cavanagh’s big coupe-de-ville. On the near side was a crowd of children, and on the other no room for the car to swerve between Dorrie and the hedge. Christabel’s body worked quicker than her mind. She only knew that she had launched herself across the road in front of thecar, that she caught up the child and flung it and herself towards the roadside. The hedge seemed to spring towards her, and there was a screaming sound in the air—the brakes of the car; but before she struck the hedge something else seemed to strike her. She reeled, and the whole world shot upwards in a flash of light, abruptly blotted out . .

The first that Hewitson heard about the accident was when he went to the clinic on Thursday evening. The nurse who had taken Chistabel’s place, a voluble young woman, said to him when she brought him his coffee: "Isn't it awful about Nurse Collet, doctor?” “Isn’t what awful?” said Hewitson, startled.

The girl's voice quivered with excitement, ineffectually disguised as compassion. "Oh. she had an accident, • doctor! Mr Cavanagh’s car knocked her down on the road. The police rang here for the address of her people; and I rang Mr Mortimer, and he didn’t know; and he rang ihe agency which sent her here, and she'd left an address with them; and they got in touch with her family—" ■ ‘,’ls she dead? What are you talking about?” He cut her short in a voice of such furious alarm, that the girl fell into astonished silence, and then stammered: "Oh. no doctor. She had concussion. they said. She's in hospital." "Whore?” "Down there. In the Cottage Hospital at Kearne.” "When did it happen?” “Yesterday afternoon, doctor.” Hewitson said nothing. He was surprised by his own reaction. He had thought she was dead. His hand still* shook a little as he lifted his coffee cup. ■' He tried to appear at ease as he said: "Thank you! I thin]-: 1 have all I want.” | His gesture suggested that he want-

Fd"thUconsulting room to himself. But he stopped her as she got to the dooi, by asking: "Have you heard how Miss Collet is today? "No, doctor.” “Oh!" She went out. Hewitson sat very still, drawing on his cigarette, thinking. He had to take his mind off the matter then, in order to deal with two patients who were waiting for him; but when he had finished with them he had difficulty in controlling an impulse to go down to Kent, and see Christabel for himself. It seemed to Christabel that she had come floating up out of darkness; yet where she had come to was equally dark. She could feel herself lying on a bed. For a panic instant it occurred to her that she was blind, her eyes were open, and yet she could not see. But then she detected traces of light outlining a heavily curtained window. Her head seemed too heavy to move; she .could only lie stupidly trying to fathom the darkness within and without. A shaft of light fell across the bed from a suddenly opened doorway. A figure with a nurse’s cap bent over her. (To be Continued.)