In Spite of Evidence

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 858, 9 November 1916, Page 16

In Spite of Evidence

[All Eights Reserved.]

§2 By LILIAS CAMPBELL DAVIDSON, |i Igjl Author of "The Mi3sing Finger," "Tempted," Etc. |P

CHAPTER XXIV. RECOGNITION. Vane leant forward and stared with all his concentrated sight ft the still figure there on the sofa. He felt as if he could not more bear it. He half-rose to his feet, sat down again, jerking his coat from the chair-back that caught it. He took no notice of the thud on the bare floor below that attracted his neighbour's attention. Ford was prowling along the little passage between the chairs, asking for another personal object for his Signorina to exhibit her powers over. The man beside Vane picked up something from the bare floor and held it out to Ford. "Try that, mister,'' he said. "I dunno who it belongs to, but so much the better. See what the young miss will say to that there." Ford, thanking him, departed back to the platform. He put the object to the girl's forehead, let her cover it with the hand that rested there. Vane could not see what the thing was. For an instant there was silence. People stretched forward to watch. Then all at once a cry rang through the room—a startling cry, sudden, anguishing. The girl on the i&ia grew violently agitated, she "began to talk wildly, rapidly. Vane caught the words: "Murder! Murder! Oh, my Clod!" Ford, alarmed at an excitement and a (listless he had never before seen in her, hurriedly stooped over and made some quick passes. The How of words Stopped short. The girl gasped, choked, her eyes opened, she struggled'to sit up. The trance was broken. Ford left her side and came quietly down from the platform, passing down the hall to where Wane sat. He had something in his hand, and he passed it to the man who was Vane's neighbour. "Here, take that back, he said. "I don't know what it is, and you say you don't know where it came from; but it's upset my signorina as I never saw her upset before. There's something bad in it. Take it away, 1 can't use it with her."

The man grunted roughly. " 'Tain't mine. I picked it up from the floor. Perhaps it belongs to the gent here?" Vane would have disclaimed, but the man turned and held out the thing Ford had returned to him. With a shock Vane recognised it —it was the carved jade. It must, have slipped from his pocket" He clapped his hand there. Yes, it was his jade. Celia had recognised it. What was it she had babbled of in her frightened trance? What had it revealed or recalled? Bewildered, •stunned, dazed, he rose froin his seat to leave the place. He had seen aud heard too much there. •

Celia was sitting erect on the couch, passing her hands over her forehead. She looked white and shaken. The violent agitation of the sharply broken trance was still on her. The slight movement and stir in the hall below, as Vane got "tip from his seat and squeezed past his neighbour, made her raise her head, and her eyes fell on the retreating figure of Vane. She half started from her seat, grasping the sides of the couch with both hands. He looked across as he gained the passage. Their eyes met, met for just one second, held, parted. With a sob that was like a cry Celia fell back on the pillows of the couch, and buried her head in them. Vane walked to the door steadily. How he reached it he never could have told. It was the touch of the cool reviving aii- outside that roused him to some consciousness of what he was doing and whither he was goign. lie was striding as hard as he could stride along the road that led away from his hotel, that led to the far-off country. It seemed to him his one impulse was to put between him and her all the distance he could, to pile up barriers of space, to erect walls of absence. He walked and walked till he suddenly came to himself to find he was shivering with fatigue, and that Brighton lay far behind.

the man she had loved, been on the eve of marrying, aud had deserted. For one startled, helpless moment as she looked straight into his eyes, across all those intervening heads, soul seemed to cry to soul, and answer. Then he shoved his way between the staring spectators, tramped rapidly to the door —she heard it bang after him. The room seemed empty, the lights darkened—she was alone. How she got through the rest of the billed performance she never knew. The audience were kindly and pitied her. She was so palpably upset and unlike herself. Ford turned on Mrs Ford again for the final acts, and let the girl creep to the green room and miserably change her white robe for the shabby outdoor garments, shivering as she moved. Mrs Pord had to come and help her hook her blouse when the performance was over, and tie her veil on. The shock still rendered Celia incapable of ordinary thought or action. It was as if she were stunned. The good-natured Ford insisted on giving her his arm as far as the corner of her street, and they all went round that way. though it was what the Fords themselves would have called "a goodish step" further for them on their own homeward way. They parted from Celia telling her to go straight to bed and get a good sleep. Percy was not in. She had time to rake together the fire and put on the stew that had to be warmed up. She was thankful to busy herself, for she wanted to stave thought off till she could be alone with herself. Percy came in presently, cross and moody. When he was like that there was no pleasing him, and the least said the better one escaped from his lashing tongue. She gave him his supper, eating nothing herself. Food would have choked her. Percy never noticed such details as whether she went hungry or finished the dishes. He ate heavily himself to-night. Then, when she had cleared away the plates aud cups, and washed them, her duties were at an end, and she could creep off to her bedroom aud shut her door. She took off her frock and let her hair down, moving with benumbed movements and dazed eyes. Then she suddenly fell upon her knees at the side of the bed. She dropped her head upon her arms, as if she had no power any longer to hold it up. Her eyes were dry. She could not weep. She only lay there, her hands twisted in the greywhite coverlet, her face sunk among the blankets, her whole figure prone and stricken, as if someone had felled her with a crushing blow. Oh, her love! Her lost love! Oh, the bitter anguish of to-night's recognition —oh, the wound torn freshly apart again, when one fondly dreamed it had begun to heal! Oh, the face of the man who was to have been her husband, and whom she loved still with all the strength of her being! What had his eyes said to her? Ah, what disillusion, horror, disgust there must have shone from them, could she have had a minute longer to read what they called aloud! He who was proud and honourable —what must his repulsion have been when he saw her there, degraded to be the vulgar entertainer of a sordid crowd? She hid her face deeper in the blankets as the thought stabbled her. Life could hold no moment more hideous, more horrible, if she lived to be a thousand.

He got back again somehow. He made his -way towards the never-ceasing sob of the sea. It was like a woman's tortured robbing. Presently, as he passed down a mean street, his eye was caught by a name on its corner. Dean Street! The street he had been directed to. He cast a glance at the houses. Heavens, that was the number the old curio man had given him. A shadow crossed the blind as he halted and looked, and it was Celia 's shadow!

He recognised at a glance the dark silhouette on the yellow blind. She bent over a table in the window, lifted something, walked across. The shadow vanished. Celia! What did she do in tho house where the jade came from that had been in her father's study the night he died, that had vanished from thence before they found his dead body? Why had the touch, the contact with the stone, even in her clairvoyant trance, sent those shudders of horror through her —torn that cry of anguish from her? Then another shadow crossed the blind. It was a man's shadow. What was there in the contour that flashed a swift, blinding memory over him? Where had ho seen that profile before? And then he remembered—he remembered. If it was not the face he had dimly glimpsed that night from the window of H->'-'>'irt's study, it was so like that be its twin. Was he looking at the shadow of that stealthy lurker in the garden, beside that of Celia? What did it all make plain? What did it involve in still greater obscurity? He could not have told. Thought seemed blotted from him. All the trust, all the faith he had clung to in her, when tho whole world of evidence was against her, rose up now and flickered and died. How could he hold one atom of belief in her? Bowed, as if he were suddenly old, cold and halting and wretched, he got away from that street of horror and back to his hotel. CHAPTER XXV. BY THE SEA. Celia, whon that movement in the audience had arrested her attention, and turned her eyes to the spot it came from ■ —Celia had had an overwhelming shock. All at once, from tho indistinguishable sea of faces, of hats and eyes, there had Sprung at her with a leap the face of

She could not sleep all night. She lay I and stared at the dark ceiling. Had she known that across the town Vane was staring in like case, in his hotel room, it would not have eased her heart. There was nothing in earth or in heaven, it seemed to her, that could bring comfort, alter the facts that were so fixed and ugly. The past was wiped away as with a sponge from her, and there was no future that was not dark. She woke with a headache. She had fallen into a fitful, uneasy slumber with the creeping dawn. When she heard the sounds of stirriug in the kitchen below, through the thin floor, she started, and began to rouse herself. The landlady got their meagre breakfast for them. When the meal was over, and Percy had shaved and read the morning halfpenny paper, and made himself! ready to go out, there was an interval I of peace. She felt sick, and giddy, somehow. She thought she would get into the fresh air for a little and see if it would not take the headache away, so she put on hat, and jacket and took her way through the long stretch of miserable, unattractive streets to the calling sea. She walked along the front as far as she could go, and then descended to the sands, and wandered there. By and by she sat down, and the salt breeze seemed to refresh her. When she felt the wind too chilly she got up and slowly crept on again. Vane had taken his morning meal in silence and gloom. When he had finished he went out into the open. It seemed to him he wanted space to breathe, somehow. He had to make up his mind what to do. He would leave Brighton that day, that was the one thing certain. He went along the sea front too, letting his steps take their own direction; it was all one to him where they carried him. He passed beyond the troops of walkers and motorists, and kept on till the people grew fewer. At last he was alone. All at once he saw a woman by the edge of the water, walking wearily, standing at intervals and looking across the water. It was the desolation of her appearance that first drew his attention to her. She seemed the embodiment of desolation and solitude and drooping misery. Then, with a shock that stirred his pulses, he recognised her. It was Celia once more. The shabby black serge coat and skirt, the hat that was as poor as a charwoman might have worn, they all disguised her. Yet even the walk, from which all the old spring had gone, the droop of the little head once so proudly carried, the dragging steps that had once been so alert and rapid, could not hide her from the heart of the man who once loved her—who now saw her with something like horror. He stopped short where he walked. He dropped his stick, stooped and picked it up again. I In that brief second the figure on the i sands had paused. Ho saw her hand . slip to the pocket of her jacket. She i brought out a small white handkerchief 1 stealthily, as one who hides a crime, ''and he saw her raise it to her face. Her

hack was towards the shore. In the solitude she thought was hers she had dared to let the hot tears come. Vane had been on the point, of turning and hurrying from the place. But this most unexpected sight suddenly caught at his heart and arrested his flight. She was miserable, then; she was forlorn and unhappy in this abominable life she had chosen. She was friendless, perhaps, and forsaken. His whole soul sprang to fire within him. Before he stopped to think, to realise what he meant to do, he had hurried to the first opening in the railings that led down to the sands below. He forgot the dreadful scene of last night, forgot everything in that rush of indignant sympathy and compassion, but that Gelia, his little Celia, stood down there on the edge of the water, and that she was in sore trouble. The soft sand made his approach noiseless. She had no warning of it till he was close beside her. She had stood staring across the sea. She stood with her hands clasped tight across each other now hanging before her with the handkerchief rolled between them into a wet little ball. Her eyes were red and dim with tears. She had battled down the unusual emotion, she who was ordinarily so self-controlled. But her chest still shook with a muffled sob or two, as the hasty tread on the sand behind her made her wheel round startled, and she came face to face with her old lover, aud looked into the eyes of Vane. (To be continued.)