He Who Fights

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6626, 12 August 1931, Page 9

He Who Fights

BYNOPBIS. Madame Apatole, a shrewd old wife of forty years’ standing;, knows well enough the doings of her husband, Pierre. - Bjt her own methods she finds out his hatred of one, Gregolre., : Pierre,' a tail man with great moustaclilous, goes .In . secret fear of. his wife, hut a husband, at ease Is not Madame Atiatole’s I .idea'of conjugal felicity.. • J Barbara Dalllngton lives .with- her mother in Devonshire. Christopher Fraync, Barbara's llance, resides In the same district; with his .sister, Sally. ■ ■ ' . • Mrs Dallliigton Is frlondly.with Mortimer Bhnvn, a man whom everyone dislikes. ■

CHAPTER II (continued.)

• - “Intelligence, too," murmured Mrs •Dalllngton, smiling- provocatively! “Do'iT.t leave me without- that, will you??’’ > All,, no;-that, of, course.” , ■ ' “I’m not sure that I like intellL gence, though,” went on. Mrs.Dalllngton inconsequentiy. . “It’s .fashionable; I. know, my daughter here’s aWfully intelligent, but some'how it has always seemed to. me rather unferffinine, don’t you think?” ’ “Assuredly, as a general rule; but,” here Mr Brown leaned slightly forward towards hor,- over his cup, “there are exceptions to every rule, and you, my dear hostess,, are one." “Oh, but I don’t think I like being an exception," she cried. “You are very difficult to please," he said, rather huffily. “Am I? But surely that’s the prerogative of women?” “I know.” He sighed and was silent a moment, a pause of which Barbara, chafing at his complimentary obseqiousness, look prompt advantage. She launched -out into a description of her walk and the colours of the moor, until Mr Brown, realising that she had no intention of leaving him alone with her mother, rose to go. As he did -so, she caught a glance from him which was so intensely unfriendly that It not merely confirmed, it increased, her worst suspicion. She had had no idea that he felt like that; the presumption! Her cheeks burned, but she said nothing. “Must you go?" interrupted Mrs Dallington, with much cordiality; she had not been unperceptive of the glance, and was much amused at her daughter’s suppressed indignation. “Come again soon.” “You may rely upon me for that,” rejoined Mr Brown ceremoniously, with a quiok, pleased jerk of his head. He took his leave forthwith, upon the definite encouragement, -and Mrs Dallington, turning to her daughter, anticipated her outburst of remonstrance by inquiring affectionately, “So i.t was nice -on the mqor, darling?" “Very,” replied Barbara shortly. “I wish I had your energy,” continued Afr-s Dallirigton, smiling at her. '“lt’s such a climb at the start that it always daunts me. You were not aloiie, of course?” She. added the question negligently, and Barbara checked, laughed, and replied, “Obviously the’ answer is, of course not.” ’ ’ “The obvious answer is- seldom the true one,” commented . Mrs 'Dallington, smiling back,- “but. the exoeption proves the rule.” “And you don’t like exceptions,” cut in Barbara quickly. “I love them,” asserted her -mother. "I don’t like being called one—a wholly different matter. So you met Chris as arranged?” “Well, not exactly. He said he’d be up at the Beacon, and I -said it was just possible I might be around that way some time.” “Just so; quite as much as he could expect.” “How you do like having your little digs, don’t you?’’ “I’ve a great responsibility.” “Youl” Barbara was amused. “1 have, if you like, with a mother who can’t be left alone a minute without collecting the sort of crowd-I found round here just now." “Very entertaining people," murmured Mrs Dallington, with complacence. ‘‘Frightful bores, and worse,” responded Barbara with energy. “Oh, dear, no. To you, perhaps, darling; but then you’re -so positive about people, aren’t you? And you needn’t listen to them, you know. You can always wander off. You can and you do.” “That’s no remedy, really.”

“Everyone to her own taste,” went on Mrs Dallington, smiling. mischievously. “It would bore me to death to walk on the moor with Christopher Frayne; he’s very nice and all that, but there’s no mystery about him—so obvious, like all the young. Now, Mr Brown”—she paused, waiting for Barbara, but Barbara refused to be drawn. Mrs Dallington continued, therefore, after a moment, “Bother, the sun’s off already. If I could only move the moor back a little I should be quite content; its shadow is a sad nuisance. I’m going in; are you coming?” “Impenitent and contrary, that s what you are,” remarked Barbara, rising. “I wish you’d realise I m serious.” “My dear, I do. At your age every one is, and it becomes you admirably; but don’t ask me to be. I’m too old, and to be serious simply devastates me.” “Oh, I despair of you.” Barbara shook her head at her laughing mother, gave up any further intention of direct remonstrance, and they strolled in harmony back into the house. chapter, hi. The Kingdom of Insecurity. Christopher Frayne strode back towards Pengley Park across the upland slopes of the wide moor with a mind preoccupied. He had too much of an intense and personal character to occupy both his heart and his mind. How tantalising and yet how irresistible was Barbara. Was he engaged to her or not? He could nqt determine. He was enthroned, but enthroned on insecurity. The little minx had laughed with him and laughed at him; she had sported with his sentiment till he had no alternative but to sport with it also. The usual experience—a merry, exasperating, intoxicating time, leaving him just where he had been before, no further from his goal certainly, but also no nearer. It could not go on like this; the holidays were slipping to their end; each day here in the quiet and proximity of the moor

(By LORD CORELL.)

Instalment 3.

was an opportunity, and he was letting eaoh go. In another fortnight n would be back' in "London at woiU* and Barbara would be’-gadding about with her mother or on her own, paying visits and making 'new' friends, and even when she returned to London he would not be inevitably Just round the corner, but would have to 'depend-upon formal arrangements-and invitations and she would he more elusive than ever. He must. bring matters to a head somehow and quickly. ■ > As he descended the slope, Frayne went over the events of his afternoon 'in the hope of extracting encouragement. Had it been .as always before? Not quite. In - words he had. approached no nearer, hut there was one topic -that they. had. chanced, upon that seemed to have in it something more . intimate than usual. Barbara had talked .of her mother, at first in pure, whimsical humour but dater as taking him into her confidence. Almost before, she. was aware,. in tU® sympathetic yielding of herself to. the beauties of the day and scene, Barbara had passed into a sharing of some of the anxieties inherent In the position of a daughter to a very attractive, very receptive, and very cosmopolitan widow —those thoughts to which she had given free rein as she saw the group on the lawn as she returned. She had not voiced Frayne’s direct concern, but she had said enough wildly to encourage that young man and to make it necessary firmly to damp him down again. The latter process was familiar. Frayne In his retrospect omitted it. As he strode homewards he felt himself warmed once more by the inference that had brought it upon him. He was concerned, vitally, i.by Gadl It would never do to have'Mortimer Brown In the family. ' . Frayne'tried to be just; he tried to put on one side his dislike of the man, his immediate cause of ( enmity. He tried to think of him dispassionately as a possible suitor for the hand of the delightful, but tantalising, Mrs Dallington, and adjudged him wanting in most, if not all, of the qualities requisite for that exalted position; but, even as he did so, he knew that his- effort to be dispassionate was a hopeless failure. . He was too young to be dispassionate.. .Wherever possible, he reduced things. to their elements;. and in these 'two cases now in his mind he had admirably succeeded —he loved Barbara, he hated Mortimer Brawn. . That was very simple and very satisfactory, .none of your reservations and paradoxes for him. Year after year throughout his boyhood the dear old Graingers had been down for the. summer in the bungalow now rented by Brown; they were dead and it' was now leased out to strangere, and strangers on the moor wero always objectionable. But it was not merely that; Brown had shown from the very first no proper sense of his intrusion; he had .not heen diffident and apologetic,. hut had gone out of his way to he self-assertive. He oOuld be .thick enough with Mrs Dallington; anyone* could see what a catch she would be for him; but- he was damnably offhand to everyone else. Frayne with more than a mile to go to get back to his home felt at this point that his objections were very real. Right in front of him stretched the long, triangular strip of enclosed moor on which the Graingers, old friends with his father, had erected their bungalow; ever since he was old enough to remember Frayne had gone across the triangle whenever he wished as though it were still pant of his father’s land/ 1 * The Graingers had liked it; they had enjoyed seeing him—■ and it saved him a long stretch of winding lane on his passage from Pengley Park to the open wilderness. He had come across as usual after the Grainger’s death; earlier tenants conceded his right, they may not have welcomed it, but he did no possible harm and they at anyrate took no steps to prevent him. And now this upstart, this sojourner for a couple of summer months, forbade it. Mere resented it so actively that he had threatened to fling Frayne into the adjoining bog if he tried it again. Spurred by such a threat, Frayne had felt it incumbent upon him immediately to try it again, and—vastly to his surprise and disgustfound himself for all his youth and agility in a grip such as he had never experienced and in the bog almost before he k new what had happened. To repeat the offence would have been to risk giving and receiving something worse than a besliming, and, moreover, a second involuntary plunge into mud and liquid peat, supposing he got the worst of it, would have rendered him a laughing-stock throughout the Duchy. Besides, Brown had the law on his side. Frayne had no right to oross the triangle if permission was refused, E’rayne swore heartily as he clambered out of the bog and later, but outwardly at all events saw nothing for it but to accept the situation. ‘Til get back on the brute somehow,” he declared to his friends, “but it’ll not be done J>y inarching-across his ground. Why did father ever sell that strip ? He might have known the Graingers wouldn’t last for ever.” The question oppressed him as he dropped, into the lane that skirted the triangle and reluctantly struck along it. Pengley Park sounded well enough as a note-paper heading, but none knew better than Frayne what unremunerative little estates sometimes bore high-sounding names on Dartmoor. He was a land-owner, since his father’s death, in the sense that he had a holiday house with a few moist and unproductive acres and certain rights on the manor, but in no other. It was all he and his young sister, Sally, had asked for, with the whole moor to range over as a playground; but it was not wealth. It was the reverse, a tax on him that he could only just afford. (To he continued.)