"CHRISTABEL"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 July 1939, Page 10

"CHRISTABEL"

Published by Special Arrangement. Copyright.

By

PEARL BELLAIRS.

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

CHAPTER XXV. (Continued). “H's quite understood!” added Mrs Cavanagh, in the same loud, affil(native tone.

If she had not been thinking so anxiously of Cavanagh, Christabel might have felt like a bad child being led away by a school mistress. Outside on the pavement Mrs Cavanagh nodded to her condescendingly, and delayed at the door of her taxi, pretending to look for something while she made quite certain i that Christabel really did walk away down the street.

Mrs Cavanagh’s son, a pimply-faced boy wearing a public school tie, put his face inquiringly out of the taxi: “Has the old beggar kicked the bucket?”

“How many times am I to toll you not to speak in that tone?” said Mrs Cavanagh, getting into the taxi hurriedly.

She peered out of the window in the back of the hood as the taxi drove away, to see Christabel's slender figure disappearing along the pavement in the direction of Oxford Street. “Yes,” said Mrs Cavanagh to herself. “She’s gone! Really Bertie,” she added, addressing her son, “If you want your uncle to do anything for you, you’ll have to be more careful about what you’say!” CHAPTER XXVI. With matters so definitely decided for her. Christabel walked to Oxford Street and took an omnibus to Marlborough Road. There she got off, and after’ inquiring at a stationer’s shop and walking a long way, she rented a clean, furnished room for 15s a week in one of the large, dingy houses that line the streets of the Boundary Road neighbourhood. There she could live and eke out her £2O until she found another job, or something further happened to decide her future. But she was too anxious about Cavanagh to give much thought to her own problems; the worst thing of all was not not to know whether she should go back to the nursing home. For his sake she could not let her pride stand in the way, though the thought of seeming to intrude—as though she were hoping to gain by it—was utterly humiliating l . • So before she went back to Barking to arrange for a carrier to take her trunks to Marlborough Road, she rang the nursing home to ask how Cavanagh was. v She was asked to hold the line, and the matron herself came to the ’phone. “Yes, Mr Cavanagh was holding his own. But if it was convenient, could Miss Collet go round, as he seemed anxious to see her again.” Christabel was driven into some sort of frankness.

“1 wouldn't have left, only Mrs Cavanagh said that you would send for me if I was wanted.

“Sir Brian gave his instructions to US to ask you to stay here for ds long as you can do so,” replied the matron. “Mr Cavanagh gets very upset, and it’s not at all good for his condition. Of course, if it’s impossible for you ” “It’s perfectly possible,” said Christabel.

She went back to the nursing home. Nobody there either looked or made any comment on her having gone away.

She stayed all the evening, and went back to Marlborough for the night, as it was nearer, leaving her telephone number. When she returned in the morning Cavanagh was very much improved. She talked to him in the morning, and again on the following day, about the future; and her course began to shape itself for her. He still wanted to go away. He wanted her to go with him, but he was loath to ask her to tie herself to him. Marriage was now out of the question. He was partly paralysed and though he had not been told much, he could guess enough to know that after such an attack he could never be completely well again. “I shall go away as soon as I'm well enough to travel,” he said. “If Dora comes with me. could you—would you come with me for a little while? And when you’re tired of it you can leave me. Is that too much to ask?” "Of course I’ll go with you!" said Christabel. “You know I want to g< away; you know 1 shall be happy looking after you! It’s the only thing that will make me able to bear all this!"

He brightened immediately, and a smile wreathed his purplish, discoloured lips. "You make me feel that I've lost very little, after all!” It was decided that he should spend three weeks in the nursing home, and then go to Geneva with Miss Cavanagh and Christabel, to a chalet he had rented there on several former occasions when he was taking an active interest in the League of Nations. He would go by sea to Genoa and from Genoa overland to Geneva, with a trained nurse and a doctor in attendance.

Often when she walked from the bus in Oxford Street, to Portland Place, with Cavendish Square so near on her left Christabel thought about Hewitson. It had occurred to her that the news of Cavanagh's illness might lead him to seek her out; but that expectation soon died. She had too much time for thinking, and the justness of her attitude towards Hewitson sometimes kept her awake at night, arguing with herself. She didn’t hate him in the old way. for what he had once done to her. She knew he hart not really meant to do it; and that kind of hatred was not in her temperament. But the things he had said, particularly about her always having been in love with him. made her relentless. He was just the kind

of person to take any sign of forgiveness on her part as an admission of the truth in what he said. And she would never give him that satisfaction, never.

Her face would grow hot and she would clench her fists as she lay in the dark.

And then one day she saw him as she was walking through from Oxfoid Street. The first thing she noticed was the dog which ran to her, wagging its tail as though it knew her. With a little shock she saw it was Gip. She looked up, and there was Hewitson, coming towards her along the pavement. Her heart gave a sickening jump; involuntary, she composed her face into a stony formality. He saw her, with a momentary startled checking of his step. He too tried to look formal.

He raised his hat. She bowed—and they were past one another. She walked on with the ebb tide of the crowd, and he was swallowed in its flow.

Her logs felt weak under her as she walked; there was a cool spot on her ankle where the dog had nosed her. He had looked tired—older. Evidently he had been out to buy a paper, there was one unfolded in his hand. She wondered if she should have looked or clone differently. But what did it matter? She would never see him again.

Three days later, looking at a new illustrated monthly in the waiting room at the nursing home she came upon a small photograph of a bride and bridegroom coming out of a church. Arrested as she recognised the faces, she paused to look more lyIt was a photograph of Molly Hewitson and Dr Sanders, married in the previous week. Molly Hewitson looked radiant. Both were smiling. CHAPTER XXVII. Late- in August the great Dutch luxury liner bound for the East Indies put out from Southampton; ton; and for the second time in her life Christabel watched the low coast of England sink away, under the faint grey clouds of a rainy day. Certainly she felt a queer wrench in leaving England—felt it as she had never expected to feel it. In the dim line of shore, as the ship moved out into the Solent, she fancied the fields and woods, beyond them London, the dusty clamour of Bering Street, the drab, hostile walls of the prison. Goodbye to the man who had said: “You will never escape!” More than one of her fellow passengers, watching the graceful woman as she moved away from the rail, looked at her face and wondered what thoughts were going on behind its pale calm.

It was soon known among the passengers. English. Dutch and German, that she was travelling with Cavanagh’s party and had been engaged to marry him before he was stricken down. The women shrugged, and said wasn’t it obvious why she was devoting herself to the invalid? The men envied Cavanagh because money brought a man so much. Christabel spent her time beside Cavanagh’s couch in his suite. She read to him. talked to him, or sat sewing while he dozed. She would have been happier if there had been more to do for him in a practical way; but the trained nurse and the doctor and Lee did everything for him that there was to be done.

Every day, early in the morning, with Miss Cavanagh and alone after nine o'clock at night when Cavanagh had gone to sleep, she walked on the deck to get air. Then she was conscious of curious eyes staring at her from all sides—and again, the intense male interest, to which she was growing quite indifferent. , Already the private secretary and the doctor found excuses to be with Cavanagh when she was there; Lee seemed to find that he needed air at the same hours that she did; the doctor told her foolish anecdotes of his student days. But at the same time they looked at jnc another warily, she and the doc'.or and the nurse and Lee; because they were strangers to one another, with the expectation of monotony and difficulty to be shared. Three of them were in some way making a sacrifice; Christabel the sacrifice of the best time <>f her life .even though she would not admit it herself; the doctor was giving up experience and practice for the sake of a cushy job; the secretary was going where he would be away from all opportunity but that offered by a private secretaryship to a dying man . . .

At times it seemed to Christabel that some such atmosphere hung round the luxurious suite, with the little Javanese stewards squatting outside on their mats, must have hung over the parly which accompanied Napoleon into exile..

The journey from Genoa to Geneva was not quite so easy. It was imposssible for Cavanagh to be made as comfortable in a wagon-lit as he had been aboard the liner. But when at last they arrived at the chalet and he was established in a room with wide glass doors opening on to a verandah, with a wide view over the lake, he was as well as fie had been when he left London. The doctor settled down to giving Cavanagh electrical treatment, reading text books, practising billiards, and telling anecdotes to Christabel. Miss Cavanagh talked regretfully of the dogs she had left Behind, but bought two new ones in Geneva. Lee kept Cavanagh in touch with his affairs, tried to write a novel, and now and again persuaded Christabel to have tea with him on the Qua! de Mont Blanc, when Cavanagh insisted that she should go out for a change. (To be Continued.)