1940-10-10 — Page 3

Thursday

HONGKONG TEL

October 10, 1940.

DONALD

DUCK

NOW

HURRY, YUNCA DONALD!

By Walt

Disney

SHTH

ONE QUART PLEASE!

AGAZINE PAGE

"We Are Not Alone

FROM THE NOVEL BY JAMES

HILTON

IN a small cathedral town where changes are few,

there are always peop e who remember who used to live in a particular house, what happened to them there and afterwards, and so on. Thus when a chain- store company bought a site at the corner of Shawgate and sent men to

break up the old Georgian frontage, there were re- minders all over the town' "That was where the little doctor lived."

It was a long time ago. The house had never been occupied since, and for a res вол that made passers-by stare curiously as the picks swung through the dust clouds. For the little doctor, who had lived in the house for years, was finally hanged for the murder of his wife. A young woman was charged with him, and she too was sentenced to death.

the

If you were born in Calderbury during the first decade of twentieth century, David Newcome may well have ushered you into the world, for he had begun to practice in 1999. A. year after that he married the daughter of rural dean, they had one child, a

David didn't share many of his wife's interests; sometimes he went to Sunday atrvice with her, but more often-not, for a doctor has all the best excuses.

STEAL

Not that, in any conscious way, he had grown tired of Jessica. It rather that attitude to- wards her had levelled into a passivo acceptance of her status as his no flicker of impulse dis-

wife, turbed something which was not quite serenity and not quite bare- dom either, He

did his

job, Just by year, and would have year been tolerably content with the wrong sort of wife if only he could have had the right sort of child.

It didn't seem, as

as the

years passed, that Gerald was going to be that. There was a nervousness

the boy that

almost WOS pathological, and none the less so because Jessica regarded it 35 mere naughtiness. Upon

thin point of interpretation David and Jessica had their care quarrels,

In

for the boy's tantrums stirred David to a degree of patience which to Jessica was an added irritation.

Curious foolery, so it was reported by those who had access to overlooking win- dows, went on in the Shaw- gate garden between father and son-foolery in which it would have been hard to say. whose behaviour was the more fantastically infantile. Jessica always thought the whole thing was rather dis- graceful.

But when Gerald developed one of his notorious crying as it was. David who would, devote hours, to pacifying him, aghiting the enemy with fear-atiling hands, for David knew the terror a child can havà when a shadow climbs a wall, or when a frald screams through station, or when, in some story "book, a page.

1.15 turned shudderingly upon hated picture,

A

David's practice was one of the best in calderbury," but that: was not so very good. The brass-plate said: “Physician" and Surgeon":" but you did not, unless you belonged to, Cathedral -f society.") amake boa special appointment if you were Hynu come, you welted, if un- well familiar pheno-

You can't dance seith your arm in a sling?”

menon turned the corner of tho street-the little doctor on a very shabby bicycle, with his bag strapped to a carrier over the rear mudguard.

un-

David Newcome was ked in Calderbury. He had, quite sentimentally, D

sense of human fellowship that passed beyond tearful bedside faces to the sub- Ime muteness of suffering-con- tact compared with which personal

exhibitionism. grief was

And there was something more, a sense of the sheer nwfulness of physical existence that gave hit sympathy with every whimpering child, yet also, remotely, with the ills he had to combat, so that he could muse upon the progress of a disease as he might upon the quickening of spring in his own back garden.

I dare say I was too old- when I first met him to know the little doctor in his more childlike and elemental sense. I was twelve and had for years suffered from recurring. bouts of asthma.

alde

"I think you ought to keep a diary," he said, "put in it every where you go every day, and how the asthma is every day". For two months I kept that diary. I liked cats and always fondled them. The trouble seemed to be Just cats. But David wasn't anti fied till he had taken me to Chancey Gardens, about fifty miles away, where there were shows, a small zoc, and an amuse- ment park. We tried the merry- go-round, test-your-weight ma chines, and afterward we ate lee cream out of penny cups. When we went into the llon house, I' promptly begin to meczo and gasp for breath. "You see," said David, quite pleased with himself, "any of the cat tribe, apparently! Bo I avoided: the cat tribe and the" asthma left me

Whenever I met David again he would ask me how I was, but I felt that he already half-know and was for that reason less interested, I always hoped he would take me somewhere again but he never, did, and our trip to Chaucey be came strange membry in the end. Because I loved the little doctor"" "and it was beentile of ma: parili

that he was hanged,

O

"The child dogm't mean to lie, Jessica!” -

{NETMcold ̄guaty-night-in- December a boy rang the bell of the doctor's house in Shawgate, and when Susan came to the door left word that there had been an acci- dent to a dancer at the local theatre and would the doctor please come at once.

Bestowing her usual skeptical scrutiny on such # messenger, Susan pressed for further details, but the boy could give none and ran of home, leaving her to waken David from the peacefulness of last pipe in the surgery. He had had a busy day and was tired, but when she reported the message, he nodded yaguely and began putting things in his bag.

"At the theatre, Susan? A dan- cer?"

"So the boy said, I don't know why they should send for you, anyway-Dr. Cowell lives much nebter,"

"I'd better go.".

"It's probably nothing much. Shall I light your bicycle lamp for you?"

only.

"Oh, I think I'll walk It's over the hill past the Cathedral.””” "But it's a rough- night,” AN "Do me good to get some fresh air. I can walk it in five minutes."

nolice of him and after a moment he asked: "Is there a girl here who dances?"

"Ob, you mean.. What's-her- name? Try the door right at the end."

•

Nobody was in the room, but after some trouble he ex- tracted the girl's temporary address from the stage door- keeper: Number 24, Harcourt Row.

ile walked there in a drizzling mist; the wind hud calmed sud- denly, and the bare trees bung tired and still and heavy with raindrops. At Number 24 an elder- ly woman answered his continual ringing; she had to unlock the door. When David, stated his business she muttered truculently: "Well, so far as I know she's in bed

and asleep by now. It's bad enough to let to theatricals with- out having to keep their hours. You'd better come up and see her. I can't understand a word she says she's foreign. She's hurt ber

by

arm

the

look of it," Ho followed upstairs, till the woman

opened the door of a very small room, crowded with shabby furniture, and lit by a single un- shaded gas light, bed occupied most of the space, and on this sat a girl. David saw her face first of all through a wall mirror that happened to be in line with it; though smeared with grease paint, It struck him disturbingly.

Her

amber- eyca. were

matched brown, curiously with reddish-tinted hair; matched, too, in their pained, difficult cagerness; with the

set of lips and mouth. He saw at once that her left wrist, resting over her knee as she sat, hung limply; "It is broken?" she said.

She

T DISNEY-

they seemed to have much to do with her, and you can't hardly blame them, with her not speak- ing the language."

"But weren't there other for- eigners in the company? Wasn't it a French play?"

"Bless you, they was all English except her." And the show's not really foreign-It's just what they call it to make it sound better. She acted a Russinn dancer, so I suppose that's why they gave her the name."

"Leni Arkadrevna real name, then?"

wasn't her

"Shouldn't think so. They never have

real names."

"Do you know where the com- pany's moved on to?"

"That I couldn't say for sure. They'd tell you at the theatre, i daresay!"

But David didn't bother to ask at the theatre. His curiosity was 500 exhausted, for the theatri- cal world had seemed so unfami- liar when he had entered it mo mentarily that he could now accept any strangeness In its behaviour. Nor did he often think about the Russian-German-French girl (or whatever she really was) during the weeks that followed.

The New Year came in, and life for the little doctor continued pretty much U it had been throughout a number of old years, bustly partitioned, and with its own private trouble (about Gerald) to all the gaps between; adult lite If one could not the interest in his job that solely sustained him.

Once a week, on Fridays, vary ing the routine, he spent a whole day In Sandmouth.. Ho had sev- eral patients in that rising water- ing place. Ho caught

the seven-five an absurdly carly train, but there was no other till afternoon, and In those days travellers were at the mercy of railway schedules. It was during the afternoon that he made his visits that were usually finished by five. But the call at Mrs. Draw- bell's lengthened because a nie staying with her had taken chill. and Major Sanderson's lengthened because the Major insisted on des- cribing a new kind of indigestion Ire had acquired and in the end David reconciled himself to losing the train. He had three hours to spare.

The air was cool and full of fragrance lifted by the rain, and now that the evening promised to be fine the crowds were beginning to emerge from houses.

hotels

Arrived

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and lodging Whiteaway, Laidlaw & Co., Ltd.

David reached the Plerhead and, on sudden impulse paid his two- pence and clicked; on to the wooden planks. There was something in the sound of walking on them, and and in the splash of water below, that gave him memories too far and strange to be analysed; he had not been on Sandmouth Pier for years. It was a quarter of mile long, terminating in a pavilion in After bandaging the wrist be set about cleaning the cut on her

which summer concert companies Jeg. "You're going to have to rest

gave twice-weekly performances. for a while!" he said. She nodded

eye caught a programme but he was not sure that she

announcement: "Lani Arkadrov understood his words.

"Whirlwind he reread, no," "You dance,

don't

youpr

Petersburg" Danseuse from St.

and on a nodded.

Then he remembered, know some Eng- lish?" "Ein wenig:

second impulse, he turned to the a little!" "That's about how much I speak pay booth and bought a shilling deck chair seat' facing the open- your language, too."

nir stage. The show was just be ginning. He did not find it very entertaining. A young man with an, attractive, smile came Jauntily, forward and sung a song—a piqu- ant prelude to the appearance of the whirlwind dancer from St. -Petersburg who spoke German. But, to his surprise, she didn't up- pear, and her item on the pro- lauation. Suddenly he realised gramme was amitted without ex-

that the show: was

and the audience move away, AVENARI

cause he rose with them After a pause and municred toward the exit, puzzled, but hardly troubling

"I didn't send for you," she answered in German. "It was the boy who sells chocolates.. Hoʻsent: for you.. He said you were always 50 very kind. He called you the Hittle doctor."1" David was cm- - barrassed....... He tried to make con- versation but soon came to the end of bis scantilyrecollected German. As he packed bla bag to go, came a revelation of her own mute solitarinesain suffering that nothing could ever ease the embrace of pain and its victim except a gentle blessing on that embrace; and such a blessing he gave, in secret, on her behalf. "Good night he said, adding

A rough night, indeed. There were few strollers in such wen ther, and the Cathedral, chiming the hour of ten, seemed to bowl the strokes along the corridors, of the wind. He turned 'the' angle whence Showgate makes it steeper Bini

direct to the Cathedral towers. And because he was tired and a little breathless from climbing against

the

Role

he halted a mo- ment by a street lamps and again because there was,, a playbule of the local theatre in a shop window near by, he crossed the pavement to give it a moment's glancer Itt advertised "a" show's called ver "Les Nuit (sic) de Paris; which

described as “A Riot of Mirth Provoking Naughtiness, Direct from, the Gaya Capital, with Galaxy of Continental Starn third and lay act was nearly vermorning,, same as the

when David arrived at the He walked between clifts: swaying canvas tillä

over,

beginning: to get up and

much. When, however, he passed

that he would call and see her On Monday, when he called, the again on Monday morning,mann in Pierrot costume who.

sns Embout to enter,u pay... booth,.

had left to be asked what had happened to the

0%

N. Monday tie anked the Fold woman at house when the ri "She just went off.

cala

lodging lett.

sterday

hentris

"Happened to her? You can

ark that Just then another Pierrot rushed up and said some-- thing into, the car of the first one, whole response was to throw up Chisuma with a gesture of despair:

“My God--she would?" "And now

do we dot. A doctor-where- The devil can we and a doctor?” doctor sald David

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