“SHADOWS”

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17411, 25 May 1928, Page 3

“SHADOWS”

' CHAPTER XXI. Drake looked formidable at that moment. The lamplight was behind him, so that his eves gleamed strangely in a dark face, and he threw a fantastic shadow on the wall. Suddenly he caught the trembling girl against him. When he spoke his voice had a metallic timbre. “Listen!” he said grimly. “You can’t make a plaything of me. You’ve promised to be my wife—and I won’t be flung aside like this.” “Then what do you mean to do?” she asked defiantly. “I’m going to marry you—l refuse to release you.” “I can’t be married against my will.” “No"—his arms almost bruised her, so fierce was his embrace —“but you don’t realise what you’ve jSaid. I believe that you love me, in spite of everything. If I let you go you will come back." “I won't!" she flashed.

“Yes you will, because you know that in breaking my happiness you wiil wreck your own.” There was a tense silence. It was lorn by a sudden, shrill laugh. It was a forced, unnatural laugh, ending in a sobbing note. Drake flinched as though he had been struck. He hesitated for an instant, and then, without a word, he released her. With shaking hands Shelagh adjusted her gloves. What would happen next? She stared at him half defiantly and haif tearfully. This was her triumph. She ought to exult. . .

She fought back the bitterness and misery surging in her heart. So far she had been stronger than she had dared to hope. But it must finish now. She couldn’t bear this tension any longer. She strove to speak naturally. “I suppose I can be driven to the station?” She half expected him to refuse. But that would have been childish. Drake gazed at her for a full minute and then nodded. “So this is the end?” "Yes.”

“I refuse to accept that. You will come back—and you will marry me.” “I would rather —” But she checked her retort. Suddenly she saw Drake through a blurr. A blinding mist stung her eyes. She turned abruptly and hurried with bowed head from the room.

A Night of Anguish. The door slammed behind her. Silence once more. No sound but the ticking of the clock and presently the hum of a car in the drive. Drake stood in the centre of the room, his fingers twitching restlessly on the cold bowl of his pipe. Shelagh had gone. It was like a dream, lie could hardly believe it. But she had gone, and, despite all he had said, she might never come back. He might never see her again; she would be swallowed up by the vast, formless shadows from which she came as completely as though she were dead. Better dead—for there would be a sweetness and fragrance in the memory.

For a while she had illumined his life, filled it with colour and glamour and beauty, restored to him the youth he had almost lost. How they had dreamed together of the future, how they had loved. . . And must he believe that even those dreams were a sham, that her kisses were a mockery, that she had lived a monstrous life, pretending to love him, anel all the time nursing this terrible revenge? He revolted from the thought. Apart from all else, it was unjust. He had not ruined her father deliberately. But how could he explain the complexities of speculative finance. How could he convince her that her father had merely played high and lost?

Folding his hands behind his back he commenced to pace the room, lie walked up and down with stooping shoulders and bent brows, and all the time the wound that had been inflicted seemed to grow more agonising. It was a feeling of despair—that perhaps he had lost her for ever. What else was there in ifie? How could this great void, this emptiness, be filled? Drake did not go to bed that night. The lamp was still burning in the library when dawn broke. An astonished man-servant found him crouching in a chair, his head clasped by his hands. The first problem arose when he confronted his mother. On the spur of the moment he invented a plausible story. Shelagh, he explained, had received a telegram from'a relative who was dangerously ill. She had to catch the midnight express hack to town. The old lady studied her son thoughtfully. “‘I shall be so much happier when j you are married,’ she said. "We shall he—soon," he replied.

« • « m With a feeling that she had started on entirely new chapter in life. Shclagh reached London. She had turned her back on the past; and yet she caught herself wondering if the years lo come would ever hold half as much as those few months. She had lived intensely. There was not a single moment that could be effaced from her memory. And now—• it was over, She had passed through the ordeal. She had destroyed the happiness of the man who loved her. Wasn’t that enough? For the time, however, there were practical problems that would absorb all her attention. It would be impossible to go back to her old job. She, must start Ihc weary search for work j all over again, or—there was one alternative. j She had very little money left. She had not only Jived up lo her income, but had dipped into her small capital. Refusing to accept any gifts from Drake it had been necessary to spend a great deal on clothes, since at least three or four times every week they had dined and danced at fashionable restaurants. ' Her former training, moreover, had not helped her to be economical. She j had been accustomed only to buy the ! best of everything, and that was im- j possible on six pounds a week. j She arrived at Vernham House | thoroughly exhausted after a sleepless I night journey. Recklessly she induig- j ed in a taxi from Paddington. What j did money matter after all? J A letter was waiting for her in the rack. Instantly she recognised Moyston’s handwriting. Ripping it open, wonderingly, she found it contained an invitation to dinner for that night. “Ring me up,” it added, "if you can come.”

She barely hesitated. Moystou, with all his defects, seemed the only living soul in the whole of London to whom she could lurn. And after her experience she dreaded being alone; she was afraid of her own self once she started to think of what she had done. She crossed to tha Mlephone. A few

(BY PATRICIA LEIGH.) Author of “A Modern GirJ,” Etc

(Copy right.)

minutes later she was agreeing to have dinner with him at the Avignon. She njjinaged to. sleep most of the morning. In the afternoon she wrote a letter to Carlist explaining that certain circumstances had made it impossible for her to return to ‘“European Art.” Then, with time still on her hands, she sat in the lounge. The blue curtains and carpets, the primrose pottery, and the silence were soothing after the rush of the day before. "part from an elderly woman at the far end she was the only occupant of the lounge, since everyone else was at work. She did what was unusual for her, except at night—she lit a cigarette. A nvial thing; yet indicated a restless activity of mind that could And no out•Mi Victims of a Fat©. She had burnt the bridge. There could be no retreat now. She had obeyed an urge which was stronger at the time than any other emotion; with the result that Drake had gone out of her life as completely as if he had never existed. Had she hesitated any longer perhaps she would never have b«d the ■courage. She would have drifted into an impasse; £he might even have married him. And what then? Could she have found happiness that way? Was she finding it now? “I’m not happy,” she admitted to herself. “Perhaps I'm not intended to be!” But she mustn’t dwell on the past. It was dangerous even to think of Drake. She was beginning, already, to feel a pity for him—to wonder if, after all, they weren’t both victims of a fate over which they could have no control. She had been near, perilously near, to giving him her love. He had touched hidden springs, deep down in her heart; he had aroused an unrest, a j yearning, a mysterious tumult that still j persisted.

It was a girl who had vowed to win his heart and then break it; but it was a woman who found that her heart been broken too.

With a sigh she stared out of the window. Taxis were rushing across the square. Already the streets were filling as the first crowds were returning from work. A group of girls were coming towards the club, laughing and talking as eagerly as though released from school.

Their lives were simple enough. They had no problems, none of the conflicts that in three months had added twice as many years to her life. She envied them even their obscure employment., their care-free hearts. Time was dragging like lead: and it would always be the same. Her life had suddenly become without object. She recalled Drake’s confident prediction : “You will come back—and you will marry me.” Suppose she did—but no, that was unthinkable. There was still one solution that remained. It was not ideal; she even shrank from it. But slowly, against her own will, she became convinced it was the only course she could take.

She bit her lip, but as she stood up the colour mounted unconsciously to her face, desperately stemming back a wave of depression she went upstairs to get ready and meet Hugh. (To be continued on Monday.)