Her Day of Adversity

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3247, 18 January 1926, Page 10

Her Day of Adversity

By MRS. HAYRICK MacGILL

i Oarol pressed e weary hand over 'her forehead: she felt robbed of the power of thought, there it was again thht awful passionate, pleading, unnatural sounding voice. “Carol, if you’ll coma. I’ll never ask anything of you, and I’ll give you (anything on earth you want. You—you needn’t be a wife to me. Just to see you, to hear you, to feel you shake UP' a pillow sometimes is all I ask. It's funny how love turns to good, teas at the finish, and you are good as well as beautiful, Carol. Will you !«ome ?’’

. The sin-stained, hardened man of ;Sho world, old enough to be the 'father of the nineteen-year-old girl •’Whom he addressed, once again made |Xfaa' effort to move himself in his fohair towards Carol. \ . “'Don't! Don’t do that!” she said, Sharply, patting out her hand as if to ’ward oft a blow. j ■ She must have raised her voice a kittle above conversational level, for Itbe.door opened and Arthur Wrangel, Hyho had apparently been talking to jjthe • male nurses outside, came in. Sacoompanled by the two men. A‘ look of inquiry was on their {faces. Jacob Stone scowled darkly at them, and was about to protest When the senior of the nurses, going i«v«r to him, said soothingly: “You ttnust stop- talking now, Mr. Stone, ■re-ally you must. You can come again tf> see Mrs. Stone to-morrow.”

\ Arthur Wrangel said, shortly, "Mrs. Stone is my patient, and I certainly .think that she had been downstairs lions' enough.” As he spoke, he offered Carol his arm, but as they were leaving he turned his head towards Jacob Stone, and said, civilly, "May i have the pleasure of a little chat With you before you go, Mr. Stone ?"

Chapter XX. ( •' The Glad Surprise. \* “Come In," responded Carol in answer to the gentle tap upon her 'door. ' A' maid entered with her breakfast tray, charmingly laid, the food hot |md .tempting, even a flower in a tiny crystal vase In one corner, but the jgreat grey eyes which had dark rings around them through lacK of sleep, searched in vain for that, the anticipation of which had caused Carol to ppend a restless, wakeful, eager night. >‘That,” was a letter from David Murray, Surely he would write, thought Carol, and as the night gave place to day, hope mounted to the sides on mad wings. The postman always called at the house, but natur-

»lly there were never any letters for Carol, ,lhere were only two people Who were sufficiently Interested in her as a human being who were likely to W&nt to set their thoughts about her cn paper, and one of these was In ■prison ,and the other too helplessly Stricken by disease to be able to write ito anybody.

Slowly Carol poured herself a cup

jbf tea, and she tried hard to swallow a morsel of toast, but it was no good, ;the tea was as flavourless as hot ("water, and the crumb of toast might have been a luke-warm cinder for all (the enjoyment that she had of it. It was a glorious morning, blue and gold with that little nip in the »lr beloved of pretty women who possess equally pretty furs, but Carol's youth did not respond; she felt one of the little dun-coloured spar.■wlth life Itself, for was she not along in this, the world’s mightiest city? True, she was at the moment, luxuriously fed and housed, but in reality

was she of any more moment than one of the little run-coloured sparrows hopping about in the London •gardens. It was while she was in this mood ■that Nadia Halkln, looking like a living fashion plate in trim walking suit ■and furs came in to bid her “Good morning,” which greeting was accom{panied: by a kiss lightly dropped on < Carol’s curls.

She was breezinoss personified: she seemed part of the blue and gold •parking day. I "Isn’t it georgeous this morning? you glad that it is such a •plendld day for Mr Murray’s release. S'm just off to meet him.” Nadia Hal kin toyed purposely with to button on her glove: even she could not look at those pitifully quivering lips, the pain in the young eyes, while she went ahead with her Bnforglveable falsehoods. There fwas HO answer from Carol, so her hostess passed on to the real object of her early morning call. She determined to oome to the point at once. “1 am awfully sorry, my dear, to psk you to go before you are quite jwell, but as a matter of fact, I’ve had to cable from a cousin in South Africa (jinking me to pay her a visit. She Is gnarrled to a diamond merchant. 1 “South Africa?” It was the first sign of animation JPiat Carol had shown. Her voice was tobarp with surprise, and that other •motion that is as old as the race--(Jealousy. v The exquisitely dressed beautiful lUroraan who was so arrogant In her certainty of herself, might be as far »way from David Murray in South ((Africa as if contingents divided them, K they were going to different parts. But Carol, like every other girl pasipionately in love, was unable to real*pn. unable to restrain the feeling of ■envious futility that made life Itself ipothlng better than a bitter mockery. “Yes, my cousin has a house in iUataL” The Information was given casually, Jfcut the long dark lashes which made fenlike shadows on ’• Nadia Halkin’s ,ijßaooth cheeks flickered Just a second

"It thou faint in the day of adversity thy strength Is small.”—Proverbs

while a glance was darted towards Carol.

The young girl forced herself to speech, and the effort was apparent in the toneless hardened voice which so belled her youth.

“I’m sorry 1 that I’ve given you so much trouble, Miss Halkin.” . . . Nadia Halkin put up an exquisitely gloved protesting hand, and her eyes voice, and, indeed her whole person gave the impression of somebody inexpressibly shocked. “My dear!"

That was all that she said. A wan smile curved Carol’s Ups .

‘Oh, yes. I’ve been a trouble and it’s useless to deny it. But I’ve been somehow caught up in a set of circumstances that have been beyond me.” Poor child! Yes. 1 know.”

Nadia spoke feelingly enough, but she accompanied her words with a swift side-glance at her little Jewelled wrist watch.

Carol blushed. “Don’t let me. make you late," she said courteously, but. she was dangerously near finishing her sentence with a gulp. "But, my dear, I haven’t told you yet of the nice arrangement I’ve made for you as a surprise. You surely didn't think that I’d let you go to some hideously expensive starchy nursing home, did you?” Carol passed a weary hand over her aching brow, and felt the lack of her night’s sleep. "I don’t know what I thought. I’m afraid that I’m not very bright this 'mqrningj, X didn’t sleep,” sh*\ jex- ; plained almost mechanically. "Poor child!” saldj Nadia Halklr. for the second or third time. ‘But listen,” she continued, sitting down on the side of Carol’s bed. taking one of the hot, little hands in her own. “Lottie and your Husband, and Dr. Wrangel and I have planned this surprise for you between us. You’ll Just love It; it’s a perfect little gem of a house In St. Ives, Cornwall, and Mr Stone has rented It for a year. You ate all going down together tomorrow. It won’t take long for your health to come back In that mild, lovely air. Have you ever been to St. Ives?" ’Nadia Halkln rattled on, pretending not to notice the look of blank dismay of Carol’s face. They bad arranged all this behind her back, without even asking If she would consent to go to St. Ives as Mrs Jacob Stone! More than ever Carol felt the need for somebody older and wiser than herself, somebody who -would let her lean upon their strength for a time until her own returned and she could map out her future. But there was nobody: David had clearly shown that he did not want their paths to cross In future, and in illustration of his attitude towards her, he had taken his departure to another country without even writing her a note of farewell. Carol called in Lottie, as soon as her hostess had closed the door, and when she spoke it was with a distinct sense of grievance. "Lottie, I think, that you at least might have told me what was going on behind my back, and not have left me in the dark like this!” Lottie looked a trifle blank and hurt as well. She felt that she was sacrificing a g<r»d deal In consenting to Jacob Stone’s suggestion that she should accompany the little party to Cornwall. The keenness of his own longing that Carol should go with him made Jacob Stone study the feelings of another for almost the first time in his mis-spent life.

To his surprise Lottie had not proved easy to pursuade.. His offer of £3 a week and board for a year if she would go as Carol’s companion was not “snapped” at as he anticipated that it would be. T ain’t out for a job like that, Mr Slone, not even for Carol. I’ve stuck to her cause she was down and out. like, an’ didn’t ’ave a friend in the world, so to speak, but my ’©art’s set on a music ’all career, an* I know I’ll get on in my own line if I stick to it. For a ’undred and fifty you could get a real lady for Carol, someone posh. You can see ’em by the yard in the “Daily Telegraph” any day.” It was Arthur Wrangel who finally persuaded Lottie.

And here was Carol “blowing her up” about it!

Chapter XX (Continued.)) A SECOND CHANCE. "I thought you’d be pleased to get out of this show,” the aggrieved Lottie observed in a voice which was a comic mixture of sarcasm and reproach. "Oh, I don’t, say it ain’t been slap-up and swell and all that; but that Miss Alkin’s carney one day and icy the next, treating me like a bit o' dirt, the know-nothiu’ ’ussy—that’s all she is. A real lady wouldn’t do it.” Carol forgot herself and her troubles for a few minutes. "What’s happened to upset you, Lottie?” she asked, innocently. Lottie would have loved to give the truthful reply; “You have. It took your husband two hours to talk me into going.’ and I only said ‘Yes’ at the finish for your sake. And now you’re going off the deep end about it. What’s upset me? Ask yourself ”

But at that moment a tap sounded on the door, and Arthur Wrangel entered, briskly and cheerily as usual, but with an air of one whose whole will is bent towards the achieving of a certain purpose. At a from him Lottie left the room. Something

strange and vaguely disturbing crept [into the atmsophere, and Carol was j not surprised when Arthur Wrangel brought up the subject of her going to Cornwall with her husband. Lottie, and himself.

“I’ve got some photographs of “Sunny Vale’—that’s the nam e of the house—here with me. Look at them, Mrs. Stone. Isn’t this one of the garden a sight for London eyes?”

A pretty little picture of an orchard white with apple blossom, was placed on the bed in front of Carol. It certainly was charming. . "The sea is at the bottom of the garden. Do you know Cornwall, Mrs. Stone? St. Ives is like one of the towns in old Spain, all higgledypiggledly—ragged little buildings and narfow streets, with the natives as dark as Spaniards themselves, some of ’em—but so friendly that you expect to b e called by your Christian name —hundreds and hundreds of seagulls making the air white with their wings and hoarse with their cries, artists with queer cranky wooden studios, painted all colours, on th e beach, and the sunsets ar e enough to Inspire a pork-butcher to an epic. How does that sound,, eh?" “It sounds wonderful,” agreed Carol wistfully, raising the picture and looking at it. Then she laid it down, and there was a ipoment’s silence. “Well, then?” ’

Arthur Wrangel spoke, as one might speak to a dear but rather exasperating child. He knew that there were certain circumstancecs connected with Carol’s marriage that made her detest the idea of being JacofT "Stone’s wife, but Jacob’s illness was infinitely worse than her own. For she had youth, health, and strength on her side, and was marching steadily forward to the goal of a complete recovery—but her husband’s illness had put a different complexion on things. Many of Wrangel’a own hopes, too, wer 0 bound up in Carol’s decision, for his engagement to attend Jacob Stpne depended entirely upon his power to persuade Carol to accompany them.

Jacob Stone had been Impressed but not unduly so, with what he had seen and heard of Arthur Wrangel. To the fact that h e had been struck off the register he paid little or no heed. The moneylender read men with far greater ease than books, and he gauged the character of the man before him to a nicety. Arthur Wrangel might be a fool, but he was a chivalrous fool, earnest and well-meaning, one who had been called on to pay to the utmost for a mistake which was probably as much the fault of another as himself.

Arthur Wrangel decided to throw himself upon Carol’s mercy; his face, which had lost the puffy, blurred outlines of the drunkard, was firm and strong, like the face, of a bronze statue; the once cloudy eyes wer e clear and keen, and his lips were no longer slack, as are the lips of those whose lives lack purpose. There was something unconsciously pathetic in the sight of the man, whose hair was already grey at the temples, pleading with a young girl to help him to retain the manhood which he Had lost and won again, "I’ll tell you how matters stand, Mrs. Stone. You know that I am—er am no longer a member of my profession?"

A painful blush dyed Arthur Wrangel’s face and neck a dull, brick-red. "Yea, Miss Halkin told me,” said Carol, feeling as almost a* awkward as he.

"That being so, I cannot apply to a hospital for cases to lest any theory that I may have, and as I have no money I cannot afford to treat patients at my own expense, even if they should trust themselves to one struck off the register.” “And my—Mr. Stone —is willing to place himself in your hands?” Arthur Wrangel brightened; Carol’s Interest was encouraging. “Yes, but only on condition that you will come to Cornwall with us.” Carol said nothing; her great grey eyes, sad with a misery only possible to one so young, looked straight ahead out of the window to the patch of blue sky that could be seen from where she lay. Arthur Wrangel did not know what he was asking when he begged so earnestly for. her to take up the Idea of accompanying the party to. St. Ives. If Jacob (Stone responded to his treatment and got better, and she had to take her place by his aide as a wife instead of of a nurse—the sensitive girl shuddered. The fit of exalted madness which had made her go through the ceremony with one man to save another, was over; but probably faced with the same set of circumstances,, she would do the same again.

Carol did not know; all that she knew was that life with Jacob Stone, ill or well, would be living suicide.. If she broke away now she could take up work of kind to fill her life and perhaps In time she could forget, although at present forgetfulness seemed impossible of attainment. Arthur Wrangel could read some, though not all, of the misery that revealed itself in those beautiful eyes. “You would be doing something more than a mere favour, Mrs. Stone,” he said insinuatingly. As Carol did not reply, he went on with the task of trying to persuade her, his rather pleasant volc e becoming passionate in its intense earnestness.

“If it is any satisfaction to you to know this, Mrs. Stone, you hav e saved me from shipwreck of the worst kind, moral and physical. When I was called to you I was not fit to look on any decent woman; I was a brute living the life of a brute,, by my own wish. I wanted to forget that I had ever been a doctor who loved his work, and pitied suffering humanity with all hSs heart. But drink and drugs don’t kill as swiftly as many of their miserable victims would like, and it takes rare courage for a sane man to commit suicide, Mrs. Stone.”

Girl-like, Carol shyly answered how she could possibly have helped in such a way when she had been ill, and making demands upon Lottie and himself for weeks on end?

Arthur Wrangel smiled, and coming seldom, it was a very beautiful smile. “My dear child, that Is why; it was so long since a young sweet life had been entrusted to my cars. You made

me fight for myself as well as you. and in conquering myself I found within resources of which I had not even dreamed. If I can go to Cornwall as your husband’s medical adviser, and try out certain theories. 1 may yet leave something of value behind me when I die.” ' N There fell a troubled silence between the anxiously pleading man and the frankly unwilling girl. But Carol, though so young and hopelessly handicapped by reason of her upbringing and inexperience was yet one with all the countless generalions of women who have lived and greatly loved—husbands,, ;overs, children —in that she felt all that was best in herself respond to the needs of another. "I’ll go, '"Dr. Wrangel,” tshe said quietly, at length, and the man who was getting what so few who stumble and fall by Life’s wayside ever get—a second chance—said no word; but (here was a bright drop on the little hand which he lifted to his lips when he left Carol’s room.

Chapter XXI .Freedom—And Ashes. Carol had gone five days from th,e house in Knightsbridge when David Murray “came out.” The process was a little different from the ordinary prisoner’s restoration to normal life and liberty. For example, very few prisoners when they were summoned to the office for the final leave-taking found awaiting them a beautiful, smiling woman—one of their own friends —in animated conversation with the Governor. * Good morning, Murray," It was the Governor who spoke first, and he accompanied his greeting with a hearty grip of the hand, and a grm which had something slightly sheepish in its quality. But David was not in the least awkward; he took the offered hand frankly, at the same time smiling at Nadia.

‘Jolly good of you to come and meet me, Nadia.” he said with evident pleasure, but not overmuch enthusiasm. , Nadia Halkin was worth a smile that morning from any man who had eyes in his head, and the red blood of normal manhood in his veins. Tall and lithe, and exquisitely vital, with that strange, potent lure in the depths of her eyes, in the rich red promise of her mouth, and her whole being that belongs to nobody save a woman deeply in love. Nadia Halkin had been a target for many pairs of masculine eyes that morning. ' "I’ve been awake since daybreak longing for the time to pass. I got up at six and cleaned the car. I’ve got her outside,” said Nadia, holding Davl’s right hand between her own kid-gloved palms. Her expensive fragrance had in it a suggestion cf the idle luxury-loving set which had temporarily captured Him—until then a stranger to idleness—and made him one of themselves. Somehow the whole thing nauseated him. In his present mood he would have preferred almost anybody to Nadia Halkin —even old Mrs Naylor, the mother of the now crippled boy, who had served under him in France, who always smelled of soap-suds, but for whom he would never have met Jacob Stone or Carol, or been mixed up In any of the unsavoury business which had ended in a couple of months in gaol.

He would far rather have taken a taxi back to his flat, where Stringer would be waiting' for his orders as to what he must pack in preparation for the Journey to South Africa. But It would have been churlish not to appear pleased at Nadia’s kindness in coming to meet him, and her very evident delight that he appeared so well.

The formalities of his release over, David stepped out of the big, black iron-studded door Into freedom. Several people, obviously of the poorest class —a couple of old women in rusty crape bonnets and antiquated capes ,a young woman dressed defiantly in clothes of pillar-box red, with vegetable-silk stockings and cheap, patent shoes, and a man with a little child in his arms who kept asking when mummy would come—all these stared rudely and enviously at the handsome young man with the beautifully dressed, scornful looking Woman who was bbviously returning to a life such as they had sometimes dreamed of and often witnessed from the outside, but never hoped to experience.

“’S'pose he’s one of them swell mobsmen,” said one.

"Wonder what his stretch (was,” said another. "It pays to fly high. Might as well get a stretch for having some fun as the same stretch for having none—only all the dirty work to do,” was the loudly expressed opinion of the third. David’s face burned, but Nadia remained quite cool and unmoved by any emotion save that of contempt.

“What a set of animals,” she observed almost involuntarily—and was sorry when she saw the expression oa David’s face at the remark. “No man living is fit to judge another unless he has experienced exactly the same trials and temptations in the same set of circumstances,” he said shortly. Seeing her mistake, Nadia made a clumsy attempt to retrieve her lost ground, “You are quite right,” David. I should’t have said that. Book at your own case, for example,” she gushed, sympathetically. “Oh, that!”

David dismissed the remark with r shrug-, and said something about the weather to change the subject. Until they got into a fairly smooth stretch of road where the traffic was light, conversation was not possible; but when Nadia had steered the car into a comparatively quiet avenue, she turned her radiant face to David and said, ‘Tin taking you home, you know.” "Home?”

David looked a trifle at sea; he always alluded to his place aa "the flat.” He opened his mouth to wry "Thanks," but Nadia forestalled him,

“I mean to my home, of course, I've got a surprise for you, David. Ton are not to ask what it is before ws

get there,” said the Infatuated girl, fondly. David touched the slim hand at the “wheel, and a thrill like an electric current ran through every nerve of the shapely body. “Is Carol still with you? Will shi be there?” he asked, and his voice betrayed the lonely longing of his heart. Nadia Halkin’s face froze until it was as expressionless as the face of an Ivory idol. “She is not staying with us now, She and her husband let: for some place on the Continent — Italy, I think—anyway, she said she’d write.’ ’ Nadia felt furious that Carol's name should be mentioned in this, the first hour of David's release. Was she not beautiful enough to drive such milk-and-water sop out of any man’s mind? But it would not be wise to air her feelings with regard to Carol; so sha said, with every appearance of enthusiasm, ‘‘Mrs Stone was a charming girl; no trouble at all while she was ill. It’s a tragedy for one so young to be tied to a helpless invalid, bat she has a very high sense of duty, and nothing would induce her to allow a professional nurse to take her place at her husband’s side. David could have kicked the unoffending car to pieces in his angar. (To be Continued.)