"CHRISTABEL"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 July 1939, Page 10

"CHRISTABEL"

Published by Special Arrangement.

Copyright.

By

PEARL BELLAIRS.

(Author of "Velvet and Steel.” "The Prisoner’s Sister,” etc.)

CHAPTER XIV. (Continued). Christabel absorbed this information silently. It seemed to her dreadful that she could remember nothing of this event, or of the person it had happened to, who must nave been very near and dear to her. “What, did I do afterwards?" she asked, at last. “Oh, you took up nursing again—doing one thing and another,” replied Mrs Haye, white to the lips. “But I’m afraid it upsets you to talk like this and strain your memory! The doctor told me you were to keep quiet, Christabel. We’ll talk about it some more another time!” She went away; and left Christabel wondering why Hewitson should have said that she had been a mystery to him. So far as she could make out there was nothing in her life she would be likely to make into a mystery. But she didn’t know, after all, what she might not have been doing, unknown to her mother. It was an odd situation in which to be. But Mrs Haye was saved the awkwardness of having to find a place to which to take Christabel. In the evening after her mother’s visit, a note was delivered to Christabel at the hospital. It was from Cavanagh, on Kearne Hall notepaper. Dear Miss Collet, it ran. My secretary was told on the ’phone today when he rang the hospital that your people were arranging to send you away somewhere to recover. If you have net somewhere in mind already, I should be delighted to offer you the Pine Cottage at Kearne Hall. It is empty at the moment, ready to be occupied, and you could stay there quite undisturbed for as long as you want to. My housekeeper would send over a girl to attend to your needs, so there would be no servant problem for you. Do make use of the cottage if you would care to. With best wishes for your quick recovery, etc., Arthur Cavanagh. Christabel wrote to her mother, leaving it to her to decide, and Mrs Haye was only too pleased not to have to ask her husband any favours on Christabel’s behalf. Here was a quiet place conveniently provided by the person who' was most responsible, in Mrs Haye’s opinion, for Christabel's accident. She wired to Christabel to accept the offer; and all she had to do was to break it to her husband that she would have to be away for a fortnight with Christabel; instead of having to ask him to finance the expedition as well. And Mr Haye, who perhaps felt that he had come off fairly lightly in the matter of Christabel since her release consented with nothing worse than a look of resignation. So on the Friday Mrs Haye went to Kent in a hired car again—Mr Haye did not want his chauffeur to see anything that might arouse his curiosity—and transported Christabel and her few belongings to Pine Cottage. In a day or two she and her mother were established so that an unknowing person would have thought it the most normal thing in the world for them to be together.

Christabel had written a note to Hewitson, telling him that she was moving from the hospital to Pine. Cottage, and would expect him there to lunch on Sunday. . “Hewitson!” repeated Mrs Haye, when Christabel told her. A sort of shyness had prevented Christabel from mentioning to her mother that he had been to see her at the hospital; now when Christabel told her, Mrs Haye flinched as though someone had struck her in the face, turned red and then white, and seemed dumb with astonishment. “Why, mother? Why do you look like that?” said Christabel, feeling a little chill ol anxiety. “Nothing." stammered Mrs Haye "No reason! I didn't know you knew him!" She had never met Grant Hewitson; she had never even seen him because her husband had not allowed her to goto the court during the trial. Eut she knew that he had done a good deal towards getting Christabel convicted. How on earth had Christabel come into contact with him? Forgetting Christabel’s loss of memory, Mrs Haye burst out; “Where did you meet him?” “I don't remember ” Christabel’s manner was half apologetic. "No, of course not!" Mrs Haye tried to master her feelings. "But he told me that we met at the clinic in Bering Street. He gives treatment to the patients there." When Hewitson arrived at noon on Sunday Christabel was on the lawn. And as he followed her into the house he was thinking how confoundedly dry his life had been for the last ten years. Mrs Haye was in the drawing-room, with it fresh white panelling, its paintings by Frangonard, and its scent of roses from the silver bowls. "Mother, this is Mr Hewitson—Mr Hewitson, Mrs Haye," Christabel introduced them.

Hewitson bowed, and Mrs Haye, pink with mortification because she fancied he knew the family disgrace greeted him faintly. But his manner soon began to reconcile her to her belief. He was perfectly natural, and easy and treated them both with the utmost respect—obviously putting himself out to entertain Christabel. After luncheon Hewitson proposed a walk, and he and Christabel set off. while Mrs Haye made the excuse that she thought it would be too hot for her.

They walked through the village and out on the high road, and after wandering some way turned aside through a gate in the hedge, through a copse of

spreading beeches, to a little grassy plot in the shade, from which they could see over the Romney Marsh to the glimmering calm of the sea. As Christabel glanced up at Hewitson, full of intense curiosity, she told herself that in face, in figure, in mind and manners he was everything that a man ought to be. At the same time her ignorance was so profound that it was useless to hide it. “You’ll have to tell me —oh, all sorts of things!” “Yes. I said we would have to reeducate you.” CHAPTER XVII.

The cocktails sparkled in their glassed under the crystal lamps, and the haze of cigarette smoke rose to the oak beams of the high ceiling. Mrs Haye, in severe black with a few real pearls, was not out of place; and Christabel, slender in violet, fitted in perfectly with her surroundings in the Kearne Hall library.

Miss Cavanagh was in town, and Cavanagh was playing host. There were four other guests drinking cocktails before dinner; a recently successful young playwright with a haggard face; an American from the embassy, and his wife; and a Belgian millionaire mine-owner.

The talk was general. Except to make a remark which she had heard her husband make, Mrs Haye, a trifle overawed by her surroundings .had nothing to say; and Christabel found that it was not necessary for her to say anything in particular herself, even if she could have remembered enough about the subject, because the Belgian and the playwright began an argument, sitting one on either side of her; and all she had to do was to .make a murmur of encouragement to whichever one appealed to her. Cavanagh, offering her another cocktail, whispered that he hoped that she would not find the party too much for her; but she shook her head, with smiling reassurance in her eyes. Glancing at her from the other side of the room, as .she stood so straight and dignified, and yet so vital; engaging the interested attention of both the Belgian and the playwright, Cavanagh marvelled a moment at his find. Charming as she had seemed, he had hardly expected her to fit in with this kind of cosmopolitan crowd; but she had about her the air of experience of the world which was exactly necessary. He looked at the two men who were talking to her with a tinge of anxiety, lest they, between them, should capture her interest for the evening. But his duties as a host compelled him to talk to Mrs Haye and the couple from the American Embassy. At dinner Mrs Haye was on his left and the American woman on his right. Christabel, delicate and brilliant as a flower, bloomed at the other end of the table. He had expected the dinner to go rather stiffly, but instead the conversation was easy and eager, due, he felt, to the stimulation Christabel produced in. the men at her end of the room. After dinner, when he felt that he had done all that was required of him as a host, he was able to get Christabel to himself. He asked her if she would like to see his collection of painting by Van Gogh. The picture gallery was on the other side of the main hall, an immense, draughty chamber built in Tudor times. Christabel, who knew very little of painting, was not very voluble about the Van Goghs, but Cavanagh, who had only used them to get her away from the others, merely showed them to her with a remark 01- two as to how he had got them, and led her away into a small smoking room. There he ofl'ered her a deep armchair and a cigarette. He sank down a little stiffly into a a chair near to hers, and remarked as he sat back with a sigh of relief: “A bad business —this getting old!” And then wished immediately that he had not said anything about his age. “If you feel no worse than you look,” said Christabel. -You can’t feel very bad!” For in spite of his whitening hair he looked no more than middle-aged. They talked for a while about the beauties of Kearne Hall; and then Cavanagh told her that he was going to sell it.

“But wouldn’t that be a pity?” said Christabel in surprise. Cavanagh frowned and walked up and down the room in the way that men will when they are overcome by a desire to tell all that there is to tell about themselves.

"Oh what use is a place like this to me. Miss Collet? For a while it interested me. My collection of pictures, all my Oriental stuff; for a time it meant something. But what it is doing here, who really appreciates it but myself? It ought to be in the public galleries and museums. And this place is primarily a family mansion. The Kearnes who built it have gone, and the house only remains as a memorial. H ought to belong to the nation. In any case I have no family to leave it to, no one!—” He paused, and then added with a rueful smile. "Life seems to have defeated all my efforts to take root from the personal point of view; and in the end I have no one!" Christabel remerpbered what the matron had told her at the hospital about his life; the death of his wife, and the loss of his son in an aeroplane smash. Her eyes were wistful with sympathy, but she said doubtfully; "Surely, for a man in your position that can’t be true Can you have absolutely no one?” (To be Continued.)