"CHRISTABEL"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 July 1939, Page 10

"CHRISTABEL"

Published by Special Arrangement. Copyright.

By

PEARL BELLAIRS.

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

CHAPTER XXI (Continued).

She sat by the fire and poured it out. Hewitson became quiet, chastened, almost domesticated; she felt his eyes on her, watching her movements. The light in the room was dimmed by the clouds over the sky, and the fire threw a glow on their faces. Hewitson talked about his sister, pausing to ask first: “You remember Mary?’’

“Yes.” He looked a trifle surprised, and told her:

“She and Sanders are going to be married next week. At some church in Chelsea; Molly told me the name of it, but I can’t remember it. Sanders wanted me to be best man. but thank heaven I’ve got out of that, because it seems that I have to give Molly away. Christabel saw him glance at her, and knew that he was wondering whether she recollected what had happened about Sanders. She deliberately looked as vague as she could, and merely remarked, with mock serious-

ness: “I suppose you will have to try to remember where the church is before the time comes.” “Yes, but I expect someone will tell me.”

He always affected an inability to keep anything which did not interest him in his head.

“I was once invited to go to the races with a party,” he said. “I execrate horse racing, but for some reason 1 said I would go. And I did. But I faithfully drove to Epsom instead of to Goodwood. You can imagine my relief when I found I had arrived at a race course where there was neither a race meeting nor a party. However, I shouldn’t laugh at it; it’s the most acute form of escapism there is—to forget what one wants to forget.”

The manservant came to take away the tea table. When he had gone, Hewitson, conscious of Christabel’s silence, the aloofness about her which kept him at a greater distance than he meant to keep, said:

“You don’t look yourself. How are you feeling?” “Fairly well, ’ said Christabel, evasively, feeling tracked down and near to being trapped, by the searching of his eyes.

“You’re paler than usual, and you've changed. You’re more as you used to look!” He knitted his brows and asked abruptly: “How’s the memory?” “Coming back,” said Christabel. “1 remember more now !” She leaned back in her chair and looked up at him for he had risen to light a cigarette, and was standing over her.

. “Do you? What do you remember?” His tone was kinder, softer than she had ever heard it.

"Things,” said Christabel, evasively. “Just things.” He did not ask her what they were. He put one hand on the back of her chair, leaning over her; then threw away his newly lighted cigarette, and said:

“Let me see what I can do for that headache!” He sat down on the arm of her chair and put his hand on her forehead. Christabel's heart beat heavily, her breath caught by expectation, emotion she hardly knew what. "Look at the fire!" he told her. She found breath to say faintly:

“Don’t hypnotise me. I won't bo hypnotised!”

But his face only leaned nearer over hers, and he said, almost in a whisper: “Look at the fire!” She obeyed. She looked as though relaxed, but in reality every muscle in her body was rigid; years of resentment and indignation rose in resistance against his attempt to impose his will. “You feel very sleepy don’t you?” His voice, conversational at first, gradually dropped to its hypnotic tone. "You feel sleepy, you feel very sleepy, you want to close your eyes . . Your eyelids are too heavy for you to keep them open . . .” His voice went on in a gentle monotone; not quite the usual voice he usee’ for hypnosis, it shook a little, and fel l with the softer murmur of affection. I) spite of herself Christabel was soothed though she did not intend to go tc sleep for him. some nerve in her quivered. and the tears came into her eye; under their closed lids.

"You’re very sleepy . . . sleep you’re going to sleep . . .” A pause, and then his voice said:

“No, you’re not asleep, but nevei mind! You love me . . You love me Christabel, and you're going to marry me!”

Christabel opened her eyes abruptly and stared up at him. The glow from the fn-e lighted his face a little in the shadow, looking down at her. He smoothed the hair on her forehead with his forefinger, saying, still in the same low voice:

"Well? Are you?” A hush in the room; only the whisper of the flames in the hearth and the murmur of London outside. For a moment there was a hush in Christabel’s heart too; the calm of an emotion too deep for tears, too deep even to be understood. And then, while the room was still so quiet, while Hewitson sat without moving or speaking, gazing down at her pale enigmatic face, with its two glimmering dark eyes, the calm within Christabel broke. With a heave, like the rising of a wave in her consciousness, and then another, the pent up emotions of three years burst in her soul, shaking her with grief, wildly demanding expression . . Her breast rose convulsively as she drew a deep Oreath. And then the sharp whirr—-whirr-whirr of the telephone ringing in the hall smote suddenly on their silence.

"Dash!” said Hewitson. lie rose from the arm of her chair

and stood with his back to the hearth, a little pale, half smiling. His man tapped on the door, and entered diffidently:

Sir Bernard Trapper on the ’phone.

"Very well, Sims. Excuse me. Christabel!” Hewitson walked out. and the manservant followed him. closing the door. The moment she was alone Christabel sprang up from her chair. She took a short step towards the door, then turned again, as though goaded into frantic movements by the wild conflict of her emotions —for there was a conflict, a sort of melting grief, a glimpse of possible joy which checked the old hatred and resentment for an instant.

But the sense of wrong, which she had brooded over for so long during her prison torment surged up and over-powered everything else. She was possessed by the emotions she had indulged too bitterly, a helpless automaton bent upon the destruction of the whole world and herself, if need be—only to be revenged.

There was Hewitson’s manuscript on the table, the fruit of a long labour and ambition. There was the fire. And in her head was still that idea that had come into it earlier that afternoon. She could hear the murmur of his voice on the ’phone. Another minute —two perhaps —but enough to rob him of his three years’ labour, even though he could not be robbed of three years of life!

Her hands grasped the neat pile of manuscript; she thrust it under her arm, clutched the pile of case notes. The room rang faintly with the ringing in her ears, and looked dark as she crossed it to the fire, loose sheets falling from the notes and fluttering behind her.

She threw the manuscript on to the fire first, but it off the grate, collapsing in the hearth, even as she realised that the main part would take minutes to burn. Crouching in the hearth she snatched up the thickest bulk of paper and divided it, wrenching it apart from the clips which held it, and applied a smaller bundle, corner down, to catch the flames. Edges blackened, words curled away, vanished in smoke; flames roared up the chimney, glared in her eyes . . On one of the y/rithing sheets Hewitson’s writing seemed to start towards her in the moment of extinction. “Case No. 10. Mrs D., a charwoman, aged forty-five, suffering from a minor epilepsy . . .” The rest of„the sentence vanished in flame.

The sight of that sentence pulled Christabel together, brought her with a sudden shock to the full realisation of what she was doing . . The stuff she was burning was all concerned with the allevation of suffering, the curing of sick minds. It had value to other people besides Hewitson. Despair overwhelmed her—her purpose broke. She snatched the papers out of the fire, beat out the flaming edges in the hearth. Two thirds of them were badly scorched, but still decipherable, only a dozen sheets completely destroyed. Beating out the last flames, she threw down the blackened sheets on tc the unburned remainder of the manuscript where it lay wrenched to pieces on the floor beside her. Not much was burned; the rest could be put in ordei again.

She rose slowly to her feet, sick with reaction, with weak knees, and stood trembling. Her burned finger; throbbed and stung, but she hardly noticed the pain. ' She accepted her own weakness in not being able to take that particular revenge. The mistake was in having started to do it, not in stopping She tried to get her breath, to strengthen herself.

She heard the click of the receiver going down, a step outside, and Hewitson came in.

“He seemed determined to talk for half an hour. I’m speaking to some society of his, and he wanted to know whom I could suggest as chairman- — His voice died suddenly. It might have been the sight of Christabel’s face, or the blue smoke hanging in the air, or the scorched papers scattered at her feet—or all together, perhaps which arrested him.

His eyes flashed to the table, then back to the hearth.

“What the deuce ?” Incredulous, he t . stepped forward, swung her aside, picked up the manuscript, saw at a glance its condition; his first anxiety for his work was followed by another, and a worse one. He thought for a moment that as a final result of concussion. Christabel had gone mad. "What have you been doing?” he said. "Christabel!" "I’m not mad." said Christabel. White as a sheet, staring at his astounded face, she added with difficulty, her voice nearly dying to a whisper: “I wanted to do it show you—what a long time —three years is!" She drew a breath, and with it a certain cold composure, though she was still trembling. "What are you talking about?” Anger seemed to be getting the better of his anxiety. She asked him:

"Do you remember the Milsom case?” Before he could speak she went on: “You had a good deal to do with it. hadn’t you? You had a good deal to do with getting Mrs Milsom convicted. You used that power of yours to sway a jury, that you once spoke to me about—you used it to good effect in the case of Mis Milsom! Sir Ross Barnes was a rival of yours, and you wanted to get a conviction, and so

(To be Continued.)