Twixt Two Eyes

Otago Witness, Issue 3327, 19 December 1917, Page 59

Twixt Two Eyes

[ATX KIGJTTS KEStItVED.") |

"It is fortunate," said Miss Lucia Stretton, "that you came to me, Isabel, instead of Enid. This is what my godson says." She straightened the letter and read out: " 'Dear Old Fairy,' " pausing to explain, "That is Michael's name tor me. He says I always give him exactly what he wants." "How sweet of you!" murmured Isabel. "And how sweet of him!"

"Perhaps," Miss Streiton said, "you had better read it for yourself while I make the tea."

Isabel rose, a slim figure, dainty and feminine, which Miss Stretton, who abhorred' masculine girls, eyed with approval.

"I suppose," she remarked, "Enid is very different from you. Sometimes your mother wrote of Isabel and sometimes of Enid, and once she sent me a couple of snapshots of your sister, in what I conclude was her gymnasium gaib, and you in a tea-gown. I must confess, my dear, I always liked you best, though I felt when you all come to England I must not invite 'you specially, and' make invidious distinctions."

Isabel stopped and kissed her affectionately. "You are an absolute dear," she said. "I wanted to come dreadfully." As she read the letter a smile touched the curves of her mouth.

My dear old Fairy,—So one of thenew nieces is turning up for Christmas! Of course I'll come. It will be such a relief to see you in your lavender silk and lace, with your white hair and fragile, white bennged hands, instead of all these nondescripts that pass for women nowadays. Oh 1 I know they are splendid, and they had to start work, and jolly well they have done it—some of them! . I take off my hat to them all, but I don't hanker to take any one of them to my heart, and I miss the frills and furbelows and the frou-frou of silk petticoats more every day. I am an idealist, Fairy, and things have become so deuced material and idealism is out of date. I pine for a pretty girl in a chiffon frock, who is afraid of firearms, and would run away from a cow as fast as her high-heeled shoes would carry her. Disgraceful of me, isn't it, and all behind the times? I don't want business confabs as man to man with bachelor-women—an oldfashioned girl who can flirt is much more interesting. If the niece is a hefty traction-driver, or a chocolatecomplexioned tiller of the soil, or a coalheaver, who can swing me with one hand over her shoulder, I shan't bandy words with her, and shall tie myself on to your lace-apron string. But perhaps she may be a modified version of the new woman. Well, here's hoping! Till Christmas Eve.—Yours, Micky Gkaxt.

"What fun!" said Isabel under her breath, adding, "Rather fastidious, isn't he, auntie? Does he do any work himself?"

"Work! My dear, Micky doesn't know what it is to be idle except when he is here. He is supervising a big manufactory up there —some sort of machinery. You see, he is handicapped for many things, poor boy, by losing his arm." Isabel's mischievous look softened. "His arm ! Oh, poor fellow !" "Yes." Miss Stretton sighed. "He did his bit out there gallantly, and he makes light of his loss. I think you'll like him. I hope you will get on well together." When Captain Grant arrived Isabel had retreated to the library and established herself with a book in front of the great lo<t fire —one of the Manor features, since it had never been allowed to go out for two hundred years. Night and day the logs wore replenished, and every morning, under a heap of feathery ashes, the embers were still glowing. Absorbed in reading, she was startled by a tap at the French window, and lookins round, saw a tall, keen-eyed, spare young man, with an empty sleeve attached to his coat, making signals for her to admit him.

As she threw open the window she said primly: "I conclude you are Captain Grant. Hadn't you better go round to the front door? *My aunt might not approve of my letting you in before we have been introduced."

Micky broke into a laugh of unrestrained enjoyment. "By jove!" ho said, "it's simply ripping—corking! I can't believe you're real. I thought Fairy was pulling my leg about you—and I was scouting in ambush!' Don't tell m« you're not Isabel."

She Tetreated in marked confusion, "But I do tell you I am not Isabel—to you," she said. "Miss Stretton, pleas©— or Miss Isabel, if Aunt Lucia, desires it." Micky sat down on the arm of a big chair, and surveyed her with rapturous admiration. "An old-fashioned f,drl—redtape business and all," he remarked. "I feel as if I had jumped back years. Misa Isabel, you have restored my faith in women—you have filled a shrine long empty. You have brought sunshine into the winter of my discontent." "You are very fluent, Captain Grant," Isabel answered demurely. "Do you always criticise strangers to their faces and confide your inmost feelings to thern?" "Not always," he answered with mock gravity; "as a rule, my criticisms and sensations are not polite enough. But I have set you up in a niche, you fee, and am making my confession." "I'm not sure," she objected, "that I want' to be a'piaster saint, or that Aunt Lucia would wish you to confess to mo. She is very orthodox, you know." Micky touched the brown, well-shaped hand nearest to him. "A little suspicious," he remarked, 'that sunburn. Don't shatter my illusion! Don't say you earn an honest living in some outdoor job. I couldn't bear the disappointment." Isabel pushed her cuff back an inch, and revealed a line of demarcation between the white arm and the sun-tanned hand. " Que gets burnt on board ship/' she said pensively; "it will wear off. But you should see Enid when she is ploughing!" He made a horrified exclamation. 'Your sister a ploughman!" "Not exactly a ploughman," she demurred. " Enid farms her own landabout three hundred acres. Her face gets as scarlet as a berry at the beginning of summer, then it turns brown—a good solid brown, —and it takes the whole winter to wear off."

" Let Enid and me be strangers for all time," he said fervently. "Women-farmers ai-e admirable, but I'm afraid of them. I want .to find a girl who is quite useless at any sort of manual work, and only looks nice and plays the piano." "I play?a little," confessed Isabel.

" Exactly—-a little—the dear old stereotyped phrase that recalls the blameless musical parties of our youth." "Your youth," she amended; "there haven't been any of that kind in mine. And I say only ' a little ' because " she hesitated—" well, I haven't much time for music. Still, I will play to you now if you think Aunt Lucia will not consider it forward of me," she said. He gave her a dubious glance. But her eyes were frankly innocent, and she seemed to be blushing slightly. He decided that her maidenly hesitation was not assumed.

" Come along to the drawing room," he said, and as they crossed the passage he added, " Shall we have ' The last rose of summer' or 'Caller herrin'?"

" ' Caller herrin'! " she echosd. "Do you know I had forgotten what a beautiful song that was and how appropriate to these times. Yes, I'll sing you that." It was a revelation. --Long before she ended it Miss Stretton had stolen in, and was listening with tear-ladcn eyes to the impassioned words--

Folk may call tliem vulgar farin', We call them lives o' men ! her heart stirred by the noted of a pure contralto laden with emotional feeling. The small brown hands could draw the soul of music from the piano; and the girl was master of it, as she was of the cadence and power of expression in herself. Micky Grant's flippancy fell from him like a garment, and it was a different man who looked at her when the chords throbbed into silence.

"You are wonderful," he said reverently ; " I won't ever dare to criticise you again. Please forgive me for my cheek." He went across to Miss Stretton and touched her shoulder. " You have revealed my dream-girl to me. Fairy. What a perfect Christmas we are going to have, aren't we? Heaven be praised it was Miss Isabel who came!"

And somehow Micky—especially with that pathetic empty sleeve—was so appeal--ing in his serious moon that Isabel almost decided to let him off the lesson she was bent on teaching. As the week went on Micky alternated between phases of devotion to the abstract, foolish, and ; adorable feminine thing that Isabel represented, and vague regrets that his ideal was, after all, in these material days, not unalloyed perfection. For she seemed unable to east away the shackles of conventional femininity,

and was afraid of everything from mice to motor cars! Miss Stfetton had many plans about them, but .she wondered sometimes whether Micky did' not need someone of stronger calibre as a partner in lite. "Four days mora," he said one morning, "and then back to work. I suppose, •Miss Isabel, you wouldn't like a job in a machine factory for a change?" She looked at him so reproachfully ..hat he added in whimsical perplexity, _" 1 think I shall have to put a pair of wings in hand for vou. You tfre not meant for this dull earth. We must let you eoar. It was that afternoon that the snow began to fall in feathery flakes that promised a white New Year. " Real Christmas weather," Micky re- ' marked. " I wonder if I could find some skating hereabouts." "There's a capital pond two miles • off," Miss Stretton answered; " you can have the car, ar.d Hales will drive you. But Micky decided to cycle, and as Isabel saw 'him start he said with a touch of wistfulness, " I wish you cycled and skated. We could have had such a ripping afternoon. I suppose you wouldn't like to learn?" . , She shook her head, and again Micky s spirits sank a little. For she was so sweetly perfect as a girl that he hated himself for wanting her in any way different. ~ "Micky promised to be back to tea, ■ Miss Stretton said uneasily, sipping her eecond cup ; "it seems a little unsafe for him bicycling through this snow." "How would it be to send the car to meet him?" suggested Isabel. "I have let Hales take a holiday, Miss Stretton answered. " I wish I had not now." Isabel said no more, but presently slipped out of the house and ran round to the stables, which she found deserted, the lad being indoors at tea. "Oh, Mickv," she cried under her breath; "if I had only gone, too! I .shall never forgive myself if anything has happened to you." """ Meanwhile Micky, after two hours skating, had started for home, the alluring vision of Isabel in one of her dainty teapowns drawing his thoughts like a magnet. She? had a white-one with touches of pink that made her look like a bit of Sevres'china, exquisitely ornr.mental and useless. There was a sharp turn at the foot of a hill, and he heard the burr of a car beyond, so went warily, but as he neared the bend a dark mass .shot through the snow across the road, and' there was a sound of splintering glass, followed by a man's deep voice groaning. In a flash Mickv was off his bicycle. and realised the ghastly thing that had happened. The car had run over a projecting spur of low hedgerow hidden by the snow, and overturned, flinging the driver through the glass screen on to the farther bank. A deep gash in the man's forearm just above the wrist had severed an artery, and almost before his groan of agony ceased he had become unconscious, his life blood welling out over the white car-oetjjc-und him. Micky instantly pressed his thumb on the artery and stopped the flow; but even as he did so he realised the plight that they were in. The question was when would help come?

And at this very moment there loomed out of the whirling canopy of flakes a horse picking its way carefully round the corner, with a rider whose eager face under a drenched bowler hat broke into a gladness that was like sunlight, while Isabel's amazed voice said with almost a sob, " Micky—oh, Micky 1 What has happened to you? 1 ' » She had swung herself down as she spoke, and, holding the rein with one hand, stepped nearer to him, a slender, stripling figure in boots and corduroy foreeche-., with a coat and shirt and knotted neckerchief, like a man's. Then she saw why he was kneeling on the snow. In an instant she had looped the rein over the lamp of the upturned car and was beside Micky, her neckerchief in her hand.

Knotting the scarf round the man's arm above the artery, she passed her ridingcrop through and twisted it until it" was tight enough for'Micky to release his hold. " Will yon ride back while I stay with him?" she questioned, adding rapidly; *' but no, I had better go. I can bring the car for both of you." She swung herself lightly up into the saddle, and lurried the- horse's head towards home, and they vanished into the 6wirl once more. Micky stared after them bewildered. Ho could have believed it a vision of the snow but for the tourniquet round the arm of tht, unconscious man at his feet. What did it mean? At last the sound of a welcome hoot came, followed by the lights of a motor, and Isabel, drawing up at his side, sprang down from the seat, a fur coat added to her riding kit. Together they lifted the insensible man into the car, covered him with the rug, and then Micky took his seat beside her. For some minutes as they swung along the road he was silent, watching the small brown hands that he recognised were those of an expert driver. A loose strand of her hair was wafted close to his lips. He caught it and held it to them, and saw her flush rosy red. " What does it mean, Isabel?" he whispered vehemently. " You have been playing with me. Why? Don't you know that it's life and death to me? Don't you understand I have been falling in love with you?"\ - "You loved Isabel." she answered recklessly, "and I am Enid." "Enid! A farmer! You?"

" Yes. I drive ploughs and tractors — and cattle and market vans. I haven't any nerves, though I have feelings. I'm Just the kind of girl you oan't stand. Thero's the doctor's house. We will take this poor fellow there." She pulled up deftly at the gate, and the doctor came out to them, followed by his assistant.

"It's the Veseys' chauffeur," he said; " they are patients of mine. We will carry" him in and look after him. You two had better go straight on to the Manor. It is going to be a thick night, and you might not bo able to get along later."

" You amazing child," said Micky, as they drove on again," and then suddenly, before she could speak or stay him, he put his arm round her. But gently she drew away. "You remember A - our letter to Aunt Lucia about the sort of girl you liked?" she asked. " Well, she showed it to me. Now, do you see?" "I don't care if you are Enid or not," he said. " I only know I worship you." "But I work "on the land," she persisted. " I earn my living by the sweat of my brow. I know all about turnips and mangolds and beasts and pigs.'' " And sing like an angel," he put in. "And, besides, there's Isabel —-your ideal!" she went on.

"My ideal no longer. I want you—only you—no other girl in the world. Isabel' or Enid—what does it matter so long as she mine?" Then she relented. " Very well. You shall have us both —or.e for work and one for play. It was>a joke of mother's to call me a "twin, because she said I had two separate identities —the ornamental and the useful. She had me photographed first as one and then as the other. I have my Isabel days and my Enid days, only the Enid davs last Lnnjrest."

"And which of'you love me best?" he asked, audaciously—" Enid or Isabel?" "Both," she answered inconsequently, while he leant closer and kissed her. " You poor children!" said Miss Stretton, as the two soaked figures appeared in the hall. "I have been frantic about you. Where on earth have you been?" " Nowhere on earth," Mickv answered, taking Isabel's hand with fond possession. "We have made a little excursion to heaven, Fairy, xlear, and we want your blessing !" [Th'e End.]