The Man She Never Married

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 11735, 24 January 1924, Page 3

The Man She Never Married

Coralie Stanton and Heath Hosken

Author* of " Throe Men Who Came Bach,** ■' Sword and Pioujh," •• The Beaten Trach,* Ac , Ae. '

fCOPYRIOBT. I

CHAPTER XIV. When Dolly reached Signet Walk, the first person she encountered tvae her beautiful mother, who appeared agitated. “My dear Dolly, where on eartf have you been?” she cried. “We have been looking everywhere for you. 1 had no idea that you had gone out, You really shouldn't rush oS like thii without a word to a soul.” “But, mums, I’ve only been awaj a few minutes." “Nearly two hours,” mother corrected, with unusual severity. Two hours I It seemed to Dolly bul a minute or two. “I’m sorry,” she said, and then she perceived that mother was really die tressed. Something had happened. “Whore have you been?” askec mother. Dolly was lempted for a moment t< prevaricate, but only for a moment “I’ve been to see Mr Rawson,” sh< said, quietly. “Whatever for? Mr Rawson? Whal did you want to see Mr Rawsoi ;about ?” i “Oh, never mind, mother dear. Bul I think I ought to tell you that I am engaged to Tony.” She was quite bra zen about it. “He is coming to see iyou and daddy later on. 1 j’ “Tony—who’s Tony?” gasped Mrs Champneys. | “Tony is short for Anthopy,” an|awered Dolly, “and Anthony is the Christian name of Mr Rawson. Please ■forgive me, darling. It was all very sudden. And I’m frightfully happy. Don’t say a word more now. I want ;to bo alone for a few minutes and i think matters over. It has all been ;so very sudden.” | ‘ ‘Sudden 1 I should think it has been sudden,” exclaimed Mrs Champneys, in breathless astonishment. “My dear mad child, what will your father say?” “I really don’t think father will say anything much. He likes Tony, and Tony likes him—and you,” 6he added. “He thinks no end of you, mums, and T don’t wonder at it. There please say you forgive me ” “I never heard such nonsense in my life,' 1 Mrs Champneys exclaimed. “Why, we hardly know the man.” “Well, I know him quite well,” said Doily, with a smug little smile that exasperated her mother even more. “And you needn’t be afraid that be isn’t in a position to marry me. He’s most awfully rich, and has a simply wonderful old house in Queen Anne’s Gate, full of the most lovely things. But I shouldn’t care tuppence if he were as poor as a church mouse, like poor Jack.” t “Poor Jack!” sniffed Mrs Champneys. “You seem to lose precious little time in changing your mind.” At this Dolly flushed and bit her lip. It was rather mean of mother, that. Nevertheless, she w-as not going to argue about it now. She trusted her impulse. She knew herself. “I am, am I?” she said to herself. “Who else matters ?” She knew now that she

never did love Jack, not really love him as she loved Tony. She had not 6 known. She had believed that her 3! love for Jack had been the real thing, t - But now she knew that it was not. a i She really knew, or, at any rate, 1 , awakened dimly to the realisation, the 3 ! very moment she first met Tony. Tony J! i had been in her thoughts ever since then. The revelation of what he meant to her had come slowly hut surely. And now she knew. There was no shadow of a doubt about it. Tony was her man. If Jack were to come back now, as she felt sure that he would sooner or later, she would boldly tell him the truth, and she felt somehow that he, J too, would understand and forgive her. 1 Perhaps in time he, too, would dis--1 cover the real thing and would be transoendentally happy. Poor Jack! , She would always be fond of him, . alive or dead. He would ever fill a big niche in the temple of her memoi ries. But Tony Diana Chynpneys sank into a chair and stared incredulously at her extras ordinarily impetuous daughter. Several times she made as if to speak her thoughts, but she seemed incapable of saying anything coherent. The situation had taken her so completely by surprise. It had upset all previous plans and calculations. Then she suddenly remembered the thing which Dolly’s startling announcement had driven from her mind. “Oh. dear,” she exclaimed, “what can Ibe thinking about? Your sudden turning up with this extraordinary announcement has taken everything out of my head. I have very bad news for you.” Dolly caught her breath. “Bail news?” “Yes, poor Brian Stanford has been taken very seriously ill last night. They don’t expect him to live out the day.” “I’m sorry,” said Dolly, somewhat perfunctorily, it must be admitted: but, of course, she was genuinely sorry for a young man, however unpleasing be might be to her, who was thusstruck down in the, heyday of youth. “What’s the matter'with Kim?” “A sudden collapse, I understand—the heart I believe. No on? seems tt. know. But they hare sent- for you.” “For meP What on earth can T do?” “My dear Dolly, please do not be so utterly heartless. Who know* — you may possibly be able to save his life. At any rate, you can make his last moments happy.” “My dear mother, what are you say ingP Have you taken leave of your senses? What can I possibly do?” “The message came almost immediately after you left the breakfast table, and we have been looking for you high and low ever since. It is now nearly twelve o’clock. Poor Brian is in a Nursing Home in We!beck street—number four hundred and fifty. They took him straight there from his dub. Sir Luke and Lady Stanford were wired for, and. got up to town in the early hours this morning. , I havw been talßing to poor dear Lady Stanford on the telephone. You can imagine the state of miud she is in—her only son, too. And she says Sir Luke is nearly crazy with anxiety.” “Yes, ves,” interrupted Dolly a littlo irritably; “I can quite understand that. But what has it got to do with me?” “If you’d only listen a moment without interrupting I will tell yon. Hie is now quite conscious--Brian I J mean —and he has asked particularly ! to see you. He insists on seeing , you—” , “I am not going to see him,” said 11

• Dolly very firmly. “"What madness! What good can I do?” “The doctors,” Mrs Champneys went on unheeding, ‘‘say that it mightdo a lot of good if you went round at once. But no time must be loot. Both daddy and I have spoken to Lady Stanford and to Air Helton Tenner, the great heart specialist. >»*o anew. They sent a car round for you. It waited here for more than an hour. But of course, no one could find you. Oh, it has been most distressing. My dear Dolly, you must come round with me at once. There is not a moment to be lost. You cannot possibly refuse when perhaps his very life may depend upon it. And, even if his life 13 not at stake, you cannot be so heartless and inhuman as to refuse whatever comfort it is in your power to give to a dying man.” Put like that Dolly felt that perhaps her mother was right. After all, if the poor creature was on the threshold of Eternity—“Ah light,” she said brusquely, “I’ll go. Of course, I’ll go. Forgive me, mums, I didn’t mean to ho a brute.” “They said something about his having something ' very important -to tell you, which he couldn’t tell to anyone else. lam so upset and distraught that I really didn’t quite understand what it all meant. All 1 know is that they have been expecting you round at the nursing home ever since half past nine this morning. He may be dead by this time ’ “Well, come along then,” said Dolly. “Let us go at once. Get your hat on and I’ll tell Jones to nog up a taxi.” A few minutes later, Airs Champneys and her daughter were at the noising home in Welbeck street. An amiable matron in uniform received them in a spacious and wellfurnisfaed .waiting room out of whioh opened a large conservatory ablaze with flowers. Hoses were everywhere in bowls and vases around and about the room. The place did not look like a nursing home. There was nothing to suggest illness or death. “He is just the same, a little easier perhaps,” said the matron quite cheerily. ‘‘l’m glad you’ve come. He has been constantly asking for you. Sir Luke and Lady Stanford have only just left. They null be back in about an hour The sister is with him now. I will just run up and see if everything is all right. Do sit down. What lovely weather we are having.” “Is it —is it very serious?” asked Dolly, who was feeling very nervous. The cheery matron became suddenly grave. She shook her head slowly. “I’m afraid there is no hope,” she said. “They have had three specialists. The consultation was at ten this morning. Air Jenner has only just left. The end may come at any moment.” “Oh. poor Brian,” murmured Mrs Champneys and fought back her tears. , Then the matron smiled again reassuringly as if to say: “Don’t be alarmed. It is notjiing to worry about. Life, death, disease —they are all in a day’s march.” And tripped off gaily with: “I won’t keep you a moment.” Dolly absently picked up a “Punch” from the table and tried to read it. Mrs Champneys commenced to rearrange some roses, exclaiming in a | tense whifper all the time: “How dreadful I How dreadfull” Then the matron returned, bringing with her just the faintest suggestion of medicine, of iodoform, chloroform, disinfectants—that intangible odour of the house of the sick.

“Will you como up with m«, Mias CJhamtmeys,’ 'she said. Dolly responded wsth alacrity. If the truth were known she wanted to get the thine over with the least possible delay. . .was like being in a dentist’s waiting room. Mrs Champnejß made aa if to follow her daughter, but the nurße interposed: “If you don’t mind, Mrs Ghampneys, he wants to see Miss Champneys alone.’’ “Then I’H wait, dear,” said Mrs Champneys to Dolly. “Please give dear Brian my love, and tell him I hope he’ll soon be all right again.”

Matron beamed over her shoulder. “I’ll see he gets your message,”- she purred and led Dolly away. Brian Stanford lay like a corpee in a large bed in a large, 000 l room. Flowers were here, too, in profusion. The blinds were partially drawn. It was very eerie and very silent. The sister moved noiselessly. Dolly found herself instinctively tiptoeing and holding her breath. “He has just had an injection,” the sister whispered at the door. “Don’t let him excite himself if you can help it. I shall be just outside if you want me. You can stay just as long as you like, as long as he wants you ” There was something sinister in the way 6lie said that: “As long as he wants you.” Stanford’s great, velvet-brown eyes, unnaturally-large and luminous, stared at her from the whiteness of face and sheets —just two eyes and a grev blue smudge that was a mouth. He looked very ill. Indeed, but for the living, burning eyes, he looked dead. Dolly went and stood at the end of the bed. She tried to speak, to say she was sorry he was ill, to mutter some conventional remark; but her tongue was dry. She could not speak. For a moment she wished she had brought him some flowers, but sihe had never thought of it. “Sit down,” he said at last, breaking the uncanny silence with a voice that seemed full and large and harsh, incongruous with the frail, white body. “It was good of you to come. I thought perhaps you wouldn’t. Sit down. I won’t keep you long. There’s a chair by the side of the bed.Y She eat down and waited. For the life of her she oould not articulate a syllable. She was frightened. Just as in life he caused her fear, so here, lying prone and almost lifeless, he filled Her with that same terror. She dare not look into those flaming eyes. “Eyes like fantastic moons that shiver in some stagnant lake.” She had an indefinable feeling that, powerless, and ill, and on the very brink of the grave, he was going to make love to her. The idea was as terrifying as it was nauseating. But she was wrong, and she soon discovered Her mistake. (To be continued.)