The Marriage of Celia

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20283, 18 April 1934, Page 12

The Marriage of Celia

“joan Falrile's • Cross-roads,” “The Black Bretrayal,” “Love’s Tangle,” elc.

By

MADGE BARLOW.

CHAPTER XIII. “Ocli, aye, Colin, it’s the day following the bride’s home-coming—late afternoon, to be precise—and Airs. Lennox has been to see the hospital, and has gone; and I find her not a bit like the Airs. Lennox of yesterday. She was spuriously gay, and had a high colour, and a peculiar hardness of the eyes. Out of the corners of them I noticed her taking stock of me in a furtive way. Her manner was as friendly as heretofore, but in a single night she’s grown older, and seems to seethe with bitterness under the surface gaiety. Perhaps she expected a letter from hubby, and didn’t get one. I wish you’d tell me precisely "how matters stand between her and Robert, you cantankerous, aggravatNurse Effie pulled a face at Colin MeHaffie’s photograph on her sitting room chiffonier. Lennox and he were taken together, and for her mind’s easing Effie often talked to and at her dear enemy. Mac would have been aghast . couhl he have heard the things his photograph was made to say, the things said to it. “I displayed you both to her, all dressed up in your tropical rig,” she resumed, “and the eyes she fastened on Robert were baleful. Her eyes are a beautiful baby-blue, and the expression spoiled them. You' don’t like blue eyes, do you? Eh, what’s that? You prefer ’em brown and velvety. Why, mine are. brown and at a pinch one might call them velvety. Oh, Colin!” Nurse Effie feigned bashfulncss. “A compliment from you is rarely precious,” she dimpled, “for if you aren't snapping the nose off me you are blind, deaf and dumb when I am by. No wonder I spit and scratch and abuse you to Mrs. Robert. I took her round the wards, and she did her best to appear engrossed in your patients, but half the time she wasn’t seeing them, she .was seeing something inward, something ugly, Colin. I hope I’m in error, and she’s only lonely, and sensitive to our bleak surroundings, not warped and bitter for reasons mysterious. Ech, sirs, ’twould be a peety of me were I sensitive. I’d be amang the inools, a victim of your thrawn disposition.” She drooped her lips mock-dole fully. A wholesome ability to poke fun at herself kept Effie lively beneath Mac’s dour rule. None suspected, Mac least of any, that she had given him her heart to trample on. Always at warfare, they were apparently sworn foes. “I praised Robert to Blue-eyes, thinking to soften her,” she murmured. “And did I? On the contrary, you’d have thought I had dipped her in boiled starch and dried her. Stiff as your Sunday linen she was. Cutting my sugary licks short, and perking her chin, she bade me tell her more of Mr. McHaffie. Said I, ‘Mistress Lennox, I’d thank you to spare me further discussion of that blister. The subject nauseates. The man’s a fair scunner.’ ‘A jvhat?’ asks so I explained it meant you were a thing which nauseated. Then, Colin, Blue-eves curled her dainty nose at you, and I felt like slapping her. Who is she to disdain you? You haven’t snubbed and glowered at her. haven’t been rude to her. I’ll swear. I wanted to take her sauciness to task, and couldn’t, because I had set her the bad example. “Well, she’s .gone home, leaving me nothing the wiser of the cause of her hardness. Curious how hard these babyfaced girls can be. They are worse than vixens of my type. You said to Mrs. Lachlan’s niece, Teenie, that I was a vixen, didn’t you? Twas an ill-turn I have requited with Christian charity, running over to the lodge Teenie is preparing for you. seeing she doesn’t scamp her work, giving your rooms the touch of a daintier hand, filling your cupboard and nailing up your pipe-rack. You’ll never know it was my labour of love, and if you did you’d upset the whole place for spite.” Her bright eyes clouded, but not for long. “A prickly lad you are. but since I look for no reward I’ll suffer no disappointment. I’m botliprflig more about Robert at present, Colin, truly. That attack of ague was peculiar. He told me his health was perfect, and he has the appearance of perfect health. Can it be he’s reluctant to join ’ his bride, or she’s reluctant to have him back? I know be loves her, therefore the reluctance can’t be his, and must bo hers. I doubt whether she cares for him, whether either of them is happy, and I'm aching to pump you dry on the subject. You, the Fidus Achates, ought to be able to put your finger on the sore spot. I’ve the oddest creepy sensation of disaster coming to Red Craigs through Blue-eyes, of whom I am really fond.” With a sigh Effie moved away to her duties. To get at the root of this alteration in Celia we revert to the previous night, when, in her bedroom, she went through the pages of Robert’s blotter. Between the middle leaves she found the torn pieces of the letter Mrs. Conor had read to her own undoing. Until Celia examined it the book had remained unused. Recognising her liusband’s handwriting, she would have refrained from reading had not one sentence riveted her first casual glance, shocked and agitated her. That sentence concerned her vitally, and in a breathless flurry she claimed the right to read every word. Sitting on the carpet, her shoulders propped against the trunk, she studied Robert’s distracted outpourings. She had to study them many times before she could marshal them in orderly array, in dreadful sequence of array. And thus they met her startled gaze: “I cannot marry Celia Conor. It complicates the issue that Celia loves me, yet my decision is fixed. To-morrow I’ll inform Mrs. Conor the engagement is broken off. All day I have kept my room in the Beverlej r on the pretext of letter-writing, and my condition is pitiable. Almost immediately I shall quit Scarcliffe and return to you, and you and I will go away together. If you refuse me your companionship I’ll attach myself to another expeditionary party bound for the African interior; but you won’t desert me. You will come for my sake. I need you. “The heat has indisposed Mrs. Conor, or I would tell her at once marriage is impossible, although T have no fault to find with Celia. While shrinking from the ordeal, I wish it were tomorrow. T was mad to propose. Owing to a mad moment I am now compelled to make C'elia wretched and brand myself a heartless trifler, but it consoles to remember that she i*> young and will j

soon recover from her pain. Only you can grasp the motive actuating me to such a drastic stop, only you will justify it, my best and. ...” The writing ceased here, at the foot of the page. “Beet and truest pal,” Robert had continued in the revised draft posted to McHaffie. Celia, seeing neither beginning yioi end, assumed that he had . been writing to a woman—his best and dearest —and for some reason had not finished the letter. She recalled the sultry day at Scarclitfe, Robert’s avoidance of her and her mother, his rushing out of the hotel at dusk, the remarks of the foyer loungers on his ghastly face repeated to her later by Sanna. Perhaps, pen in hand, he had been interrupted, and bad hurried out, intending to finish the letter that night or next morning. What had induced him afterwards to relinquish his intention and tear the sheet of paper across? Next morning her mother had died. With the thought Celia’s eyes became smouldering fires. Of course! It was evident that Robert had torn up the letter and renounced the other woman when Mrs. Conor’s death made him feel honour demanded the fulfilment of liis pledge to a girl orphaned and alone. Who was the other woman but Nurse Effie? Celia pondered a remark of his to Mac ou the wedding day. “We are victims of circumstances, travelling the road along which we are driven.” And to herself, subsequently, he had said, “Had Mrs. Conor lived much might have been different.” Different for him and Effie! In a frenzy Celia scramlVcl to her feet. “If mother had lived he’d have thrown me over,” she gasped. “I’d have been jilted in front of that sneering crowd. Robert didn’t want, wouldn’t have kept me at any price, said he was mad to propose. No wonder he went cheerfully to Ireland, and is delaying there. He isn’t sick. It’s an excuse, the same as the Beverley excuse, to be rid of the sio-ht of me. In a couple of weeks lie tired; then how does he expect to live with me for jears and years, and be able to go on pretending an affection that’s just rank hypocrisy? He thought I’d miss his petting and fondling, so he acted a part from the day mother died. And the evening he went to Ireland ho took me on liis knee in Sarnia’s flat and called me his little Celia, his sweetest treasure. Oh, the meanness!” She pictured him striving to be kind and tender lest she should notice his coldness and break her heart, and scarlet anger burned her face. She to break her heart for love of Robert Lennox! She wrenched his pearls from her neck, and the snapping string scattered them on the carpet. Let him pick them up and present them with hi? love to Lflio Ramage. Sanna had warned her about Effie, and she had disbelieved, but his written words were proof positive. The cruelty of jilting her hadn’t turned him from his purpose. She would soon recover from her pain. “Pain, indeed!” she scoffed, her lips trembling. “I’ll show him I’m not on my knees worshipping him as he supposes, wouldn’t care if he were ten thousand miles away. I’ll sting him as I’ve been stung, b:ing his conceit down as he has brought mine.” She was honest enough to admit that even in the height of her past waverings she had been vain of her power to enslave and capture Lennox, proud of his achievements, glad to shine in his reflected glory. The envy of the Beverley spinsters had been honey in her mouth. But he had wearied of her before they were a week engaged. That was bitterest gall. She couldn’t forgive him that; she was too entirely feminine. She craved revenge in full, and knew she craved it chiefly on account of the personal slighting. Her brain buzzed with schemes of revenge calculated to humble Robert to the very dust. She panted to wound him savagely and make him writhe. There is in the most fragile,' delicately fashioned woman more of the elemental savage than the lustiest man can boast. (To be continued daily.)