"CHRISTABEL"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 July 1939, Page 12

"CHRISTABEL"

Published by Special Arrangement.

Copyright.

By

PEARL BELLAIRS.

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

CHAPTER XVII. (Continued). Cavanagh shook his head, and stubbed out his cigarette; from his expression the contraction of his eyebrows she could see that he was telling the truth and. not making an idle bid for her sympathy. "I'm wholly alone!” he said. She sat silently watching him while he stood looking towards the window; the last of the summer twilight streaming into the room across the park, showed his hair as whiter, his face more lined; he seemed to have shrunk and grown smaller, as though in his avowed, loneliness among so much material grandeur he had really grown old. "My wife died when my boy was five years old," he said. "And then I lost the boy himself three years ago. Since then I have lost the only person who could have consoled me at all for it. A woman, hardly a woman really, not much more than a girl—but internationally famous as an actress. You would probably have heard of her. My attraction towards youth is fatal. I'm afraid!” He paused, and turned from his pained stare out of the window to smile with an effort at jauntiness: "She preferred youth, too, Miss Collet. So who am I to blame her?” His grey eyes, set in their good-hum-oured wrinkles, dwelled, on Christabel seriously and searchingly. "Don’t think that it’s only my love of youth which draws me to you, Miss Collet,” he said, suddenly. "But as you are now, as you must feel this ghastly loneliness which surrounds us all!” Christabel was moved. She felt very sorry for him, and there was . a common chord, as he said, in their feelings. "I’m not unhappy," she told him. "I’m much better! I'm beginning to remember things.” And when she thought of Hewitson she felt very far from needing anyone’s sympathy. “Happy thing, I hope?” said Cavanagh; and went on even more feelingly. "That is another thing that appeals to me about you! You look so extraordinarily sensitive, and yet so innocent. I would like to shield that innocence from damage, to protect that sensitivity from being blunted by this abominable world !” Christabel gazed at him in astonishment, and he at once looked slightly ashamed of himself. “Yes,” he said.’ “I’m going too fast. We won’t talk about it any more now. Perhaps after you’ve seen a little more of me—! Forgive a stupid fellow who is growing- a little old and a little sad, and was carried away by so much life and beauty!” Christabel smiled and murmured something about there being no necessity to “ask forgiveness for one's good impulses.” She hardly knew what she said; her state of inner confusion still made it difficult for her to know how to respond to people. Cavanagh only shook his head and said: “Come —it’s time we joined the others!”

Christabel rose, and when lie put his hand on her arm to assist her towards the door she had no instinct to recoil from him. She liked him. and she did not doubt him. All that he said was compatible with his actions, the linanc.-' ing of mental clinics and children’s holiday camps. After more pleasant and enlivening conversation in the library with the playwright and the American from the Embassy, Christabel walked home with her mother through the moonlit park. It had been the sort of evening to put her in a pleasant frame of mind. But the beauty of the night sky suffused with silver light, and the still pools of shadows under the aged trees of the avenue across the park, would not let Christabel thing about Cavanagh’s misfortune for long; soon she was thinking of Hewitson. “Well, it was very enjoyable —very enjoyable indeed!” said Mrs Haye, who looked forward to the triumph of being able to tell Mr Haye that through Christabel they had had an invitation to dine at Kearnc Hall with Arthur Cavanagh. Not only that, but Mrs Haye realised that Christabel had made a very good impression; though it would not be of much use to mention the fact to Mr Haye, because he wouldn't really believe it. CHAPTER XVIII. The week passed quietly away; on Wednesday afternoon Cavanagh called to inquire after Christabel: on Thursday lie invited her and her mother to afternoon tea and showed them his Oriental collection. His tom l io Christabel was never so personal as it had been when she had dined there, but the same friendliness shone with a growing warmth in his eyes. Saturday was hot; Christabel was out among the raspberry canes in the Pine Cottage picking raspberries in the broiling sun. while her mother preferred the shade and a book in the drawing room. Mrs Haye was peacefully reading when the maid came running into the room: "Oh. please, madam, quick—Miss Collet has fainted in the garden!" Mrs Haye hurried out, and found Christabel sitting at the foot of a tree, with her head in tier hands, and a basket of raspberries spilled on the lawn beside her. Mrs Haye and the maid between them, helped her into the house; she was limp and incoherent, and when they laid her on the couch she lapsed into unconsciousness again. The rnai dfel.ched some brandy, and five minutes after they had given it to her Christabel was eonr.C'ious again, though pale ana weak.

"There’s no need to fetch the doctor,” she said when Mrs Haye prepared to go and do so. "1 feel perfectly well, mother. But the sun was so hot, and I suddenly felt giddy as I was walking back —and that was the last thing 1 knew!” Mrs Haye, however. insisted on sending the maid over to the hall to ring the Kearne Hall village doctor; meanwhile Christabel lay on the couch in the the drawing-room. She stayed there until the doctor came, when ho advised her to keep very quiet for two days, to go to bed in a darkened room, and lie on the couch in the drawing-room all through the following day. Christabel was disappointed. She had been looking forward to (he morrow, when Hewitson was coming. She was annoyed with herself for picking raspberries. "We’ll have to put nim off, mother," So the maid was sent down to the post office with a telegram for Hewitson, saying that Mrs Haye regretted that Christabel was not quite so well, and had to rest. Next morning summer had burst into torrents of ram, and the wind swept round the cottage, ana the rain clouds hurried ov’er the trees in the park. On her couch in the sitting-room, feeling rather dull, and with an aching head, Christabel felt as though the end of the summer had come though she would not quite admit to herself how much of her disappointment was due to the fact that she would not be seeing Hewitson.

But at half-past two a car drove up to the gate; the bell rang, and Hewitson was announced Christabel’s heart leaped. If she had had any doubt as to hei - feeling towards him the surge of joy through her veins as lie walked into the room left her with very little. "How good of you to come!” she said, as she stretched out her hand to him from the, couch. "And on such a horrible day 1 !” “Of course, I came! Your mother’s telegram said you were not so well — wasn’t that every reason why I should come?”

He shook hands with Mrs Haye also, and seated himself beside Christabel, asked how she felt, and what had happened to her. “Yes," he said, when she told him. "You must certainly rest.” “I don’t feel ill,” Christabel said, "But my head aches a little, and I have a —how shall I describe it? —a confused feeling!” / “You’re not to talk,” he said. “I shall only stay for half-an-hour. Mrs Haye, you must see to it that she keeps absolutely quiet. Ho stayed for three-quarters of an hour, talking mainly to Mrs Haye, carrying on the sort of conversation that kept Christabel amused but. did not need any response from her; but all the time, his attention was on. her. his eyes came back to her, and his gaze held hors, Christabel listening to his voice, smiling at his words, and watching the changing expressions of his face, felt radiantly happy. Finally he rose to go. "I shall be back at the clinic at the end of the week,” said Christabel. He stood looking down at her. “What do you trunk, Mrs Haye? Isn’t she talking nonsense? I can’t understand these idle, pampered people, who won’t even take the trouble to take care of themselves!” "Well, our time here will be up," began Mrs Haye, tentatively. “And so if she's well—that is unless Mr Cavanagh offers us the cottage for another week ’’

“I shall come down on Friday and see how she is!” said Hewitson in an amiably decisive tone which put an end Io any argument from either of them. He prepared to go; and then an after thought seemed to strike him. "By the way—-that book of mine, ’Some Theories of the Unconscious’ — I wonder if you have finished with it. Miss Collet?" "Of course," said Christabel. "I meant to return it to you. Mother, it’s on the little table in the morning room." j Mrs Haye loft the room and they were alone. Hewitson stood by the couch for a moment, listening to Mrs Haye’s departing tread, then turned to Christabel. "Goodbye!" he said. And before she knew what was coming, he bent swiftly, and kissed her full on the lips. Startled, she started back, and was held under the weight of his mouth; she put her hands on his shoulders to push him away, but her fingers could only cling instead. In another instant Mrs Haye’s returning footsteps sounded in the hall; Hewitson straightened quickly, moved a step from the couch, and was ready to moot her when she entered Hie door. "Thanks very much.” he said, taking Hie book, and to Christabel. "Goodbye. Take care of yourself. His eyes glinted at her. Inwardly on fire, outwardly red and white by turns, Christabel could only gaze at him speechlessly from under the halflowered lids of her eyes. He walked out with Mrs Haye, and said good-bye to her in the hall. "Well. It was very good of him to come so far on such a wretched day!" remarked Mrs Haye, coming back into (he room. Christabel drew a deep breath, and expelled it in a sigh. "Are you tired, dear?" said Mrs Haye. (To be Continued.)