"CHRISTABEL"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 July 1939, Page 10

"CHRISTABEL"

Published by Special Arrangement. Copyright.

By

PEARL BELLAIRS.

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

CHAPTER XXVII. (Continued).

She spent many Hours a ciay sitting on the verandah in the sunshine with Cavanagh. She walked in the garden every morning, up and down on the lawn above the bluff that dropped away to the lake, as soon as the sunshine came over the mountain tops. In the afternoon she rested, or she sewed, and conversed mildly with Miss Cavanagh.

Of all the inmates of the chalet, Cavanagh was perhaps most truly alive in his discomfort. As he grew better, he began to want more of lite; and then there began to be visitors at the chalet.

He know many of the persons connected with the permanent staff of the League of Nations, and when in October there was a sitting of the League Assembly many of the visiting diplomats came up to the chalet. He had entertained them before in the days when he was fit and active; he could still talk; he could still sit at the head of his table in a wheeled chair, he could still take a keen interest in current events.

To most of these men not the least attractive thing about these latter visits to' Cavanagh's chalet, was his pale, graceful, dark-eyed companion who sat on his right at dinnei and attended to his wants—a defence against the difficulties with which a paralytic's world is lull. In such, company, and knowing that she made a successful impression on it Christabel could not help blossoming and gaining confidence. Interested in tne conversation she soon began to take part in it; and international affairs began to fill a mind which had been all too blank except for regrets; and there was soon nothing she could not talk about when it came to the League and the policies of the various powers.

She had a responsive mind, and a light-hearted view of such things, and the harrassed diplomats and economists fotind it refreshing to talk to a lovely young woman who was not at all erudite but knew enough about foreign politics to be entertained by their livelier side.

At first her position in Cavanagh's household was a trifle mysterious, though Miss Cavanagh's presence made it perfectly proper; but her tragic engagement to Cavanagh just before his seizure soon became known, and this pathos added to the romantic aura which began to surround her in the eyes of. Cavanagh’s visitors. While admiring Christabel’s charm and loveliness they would never fail tn shake their heads, and add that both were being tragically wasted. The shadow of the sick-roorn which had lain so heavily on the chalet lilted with this influx of interesting persons from all over the world; at times Cavanagh was able to forget that ho was not his old active self. His feeling for Christabel changed, and he found that he looked on her as he might have looked on a very beloved daughter. Her state of mind puzzled him a little. She was passive, and yet he did not believe that she was really happy.

One day lie said to her: “When 1 go, Christabel—and sooner or later, you know. I shall —I want you tc go out into the world and have all the happiness you've missed so far. I'm going to give you the means.”

"Please, Arthur, I don't want anything!” Christabel meant it. She shrank from the thought of everything that would be said of nor if he did. However, she knew that nothing would stop him; and she gradually came to accept the idea that she would be comfortable and independent for the rest of her life, and that all the world would bo hers at last. But her attitude to life was one of complete disillusion; at times cheerlul and at others soul weary. Once Cavanagh looked at her gravely with the eyes that had faded so noticeably since his illness, and commented suddenly: "Christabel, I sometimes see you looking out of the window over the lake with such a look in your face that I think of a thrush shut up in :: cage!" The blood flushed up under her delicate skin and she protested at once: "How foolish! 1 never feel like that!"

"1 feel that I'm being utterly selfish in allowing you to stay with me. if I were to give you the means now, while you’re young, would you go? Go to Paris, to New York, or Florida? People who have been nere have given you plenty of invitations. Go out into the world. Christabel, and find all Ihat it has to offer!" "1 know all that it has to offer." "But you don't, my dear!" She took his palsied hand in hers; he noticed how the marks of prison labour had al last gone from her lingers. "I hate the world," she said. He was shocked by the calm certainty of her tone. She sighed, pressed his hand and smiled. It was strange to him that she. with her young and beautiful exterior, and lie with his worn out. useless body, should , have come to the same total lack of inner expectation. "It's difficult to rue to realise that you can have come to feel that permanently," he said. "I may live a long time, Christabel. Years and years. Won't you be wise my dear, and go?” "I'll go if you want me to." "You know I don't want you to go!" There was no mistaking his conviction about that: his voice shook with it. "1 feel that 1 do you some good,” Chistabel said.

No one could do for me what you

"Then let me stay, for I couldn t possibly have a pleasanter existence, and if 1 help to keep you cheerful, them I don't think it's wrong."

"But you could have so much mine in life!"

"I know too much about that more already!" replied Christabel, with another sigh and a laugh; and nothing he could say would move her. "It's getting cold," Cavanagh said. "We must move on!”

The day was darkened by masses of snow clouds and the flakes drifted against the window panes; the lake below was the colour of steel, and the trip in the launch was nearly always rough. November found them established in a villa on the outskirts ol Algiers, beyond the dusty, heated city, among small, steep hills, patched with varicoloured cultivation.

In Algiers there was not so much society, and what there was was mainly French. ' Life went on against a back-ground of cool, tiled rooms and Moorish arches; of blazing marigolds, and the distant battlement of the Atlas mountains reminding one always cf the giant whose patience held up in nature!"

Its main theme seemed to be the visits of the young French oflicial with a high place in the colonial government. who fell in love with Christabel at first sight; by the time the winter had passed he was putting into words what she did not want to consider:

"Forgive me, mademoiselle, but you cannot spend the rest of your lite at the bedside of an invalid! You are young, beautiful, a rfoman —it is not nature!”

He was really pleading for himself having asked her to marry him. He was a very nice looking young man with charming manners, who came of a solid French family, and his prospects were of the best. Christabel could imagine what mama would have said if she- had known, what he was contemplating. But there was no need to tell him anything about herself but the one truth, which was that she did not love him.

She did not want to love anybody. It seemed to her almost as though there was a conspiracy afoot to make her feel what she did not want to feel. None of the men she met aroused more than the most, fleeting superficial interest; or just a simple friendliness. Late in April they returned to Geneva.

A friend of Cavanagh’s, Paul Sylvester, a successful novelist and playwright, had taken a chalet higher on the mountainside. He was a man of about forty, good looking in a rather world-weary fashion; he had been everywhere, done everything, and in a less realistic way, fancied like Christabel that he had. exhausted the possibilities of life.

He went to see Cavanagh a good deal: Cavanagh liked talking to him. and Christabel too, found him good company. They discovered a mutual sense of humour and general way of looking at things. Cavanagh noticed their growing friendship, and searched in his heart for a pang of any sort. He could not find one. All he wanted was quiet and physical comfort, and the peace of knowing that the people about him were happy. He encouraged Christabel to go to concerts, and for walks with Sylvester. “You like Paul, don't you?” Cavanagh said to Christabel one day. "Yes, 1 like Paul,” she replied, with perfect frankness; but she was a little anxious lest Cavanagh' should be hurt by her friendship with the novelist, and so she added: "But I only like him. There’s no ‘attraction' between us, Arthur."

"Not on his side?" Cavanagh queried, with a smile. "No, I don't think so. I think he’s tired to death of all that sort of thing. He tells me he likes being with me because he doesn't have to think of me as a woman at all."

She believed what Sylvester said. They talked and laughed so easily together; but although he found, her so ready to understand what he told her of his own life, he soon found that she said extraordinarily little about herself. By the time he had explained how tired he was of emotions, and how weary of anything but a coolly calculated existence, she had roused his imagination.

Several things that Cavanagh said to him made Sylvester realise that Cavanagh did not intend, and did not wish, to keep Christabel tied to his side. In September. Sylvester had to go to London for the production of a play of his; and when he came to say goodbye to Christabel, he surprised her by saying: "Well. Christabel, it. has been all in vain! 1 seem to be more in love with you than I ever was with anyone before." "He smiled at her astonishment. "I'd like to marry you!" he said. "That's all very well,” said Christabel, with some reproach for his apparent disregard of the matter. “But in any case. I wouldn't leave Arthur!" "Oh. but I've told Cavanagh." said Sylvester. "He told me to go ahead. I. didn't hurt him. He isn't hurt by the idea." She was doubtful at first; but she was aware that Cavanagh's attitude had changed towards her; she had been thankful for his sake that it had. because a hopeless longing could only have made his illness more painful to him. (To be Continued.)