THE PRISONER'S SISTER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 August 1938, Page 10

THE PRISONER'S SISTER

PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT COPYRIGHT

BY

PEARL BELLAIRS

(Author of “Velvet and Steel”)

CHAPTER XV. Was he joking—or was this a revelation of the manner in which he had decided to marry Lorna Treeves? Julie said painfully, unwilling to show her real disagreement. “I suppose—l suppose that’s one way of doing it!” “Marriages based on mere impulse—on a momentary intoxication, a fortnight’s insomnia because someone has a dimple in her cheek or looks pathetic —marriages based on that sort of thing never succeed, do they?” “It was more a demand than a question, and Julie had to reply: “Sometimes they don’t.” “So that any intelligent person thinks first and chooses deliberately, in accordance with a cool decision as to what kind of partner will profit him most?” “Yes,” said Julie, firmly, looking him in the eye. ' He had been playing with a paper knife on the table, and he threw it down with a crash that made Julie jump. “You know you don’t think that! You think it’s a damnable idea! The ambition of a dead soul—a corrupt, commercialised mind!” Startled by his success in probing her thoughts, Julie flushed under his challenging gaze. “But it’s only your idea of profit that I don’t like,” she protested. “All those things you talk —capital, ambitions, valuable connections—they don’t mean anything! There are things worth so much more than those !” She broke off, appalled by the ease with which he had put her into the position of having to talk about things she wouldn’t have talked of to him for the world. He sat back in his chair, smiling at her, his eyes searching her face. “And what’s your idea of profit?” he asked. Julie was dumb. The seconds ticked over silently in the little window in the face of the electric clock on the table. “Affection, comradeship, romance—what you call love,” said Rand. “That’s your idea of profit, isn’t it?” Julie coloured slowly under his gaze, while she'traced a pattern on the black stuff of her skirt with her fordfinger. Finally she said in a tone of mild protest: “Why do you think you know all about me?” ■ . . “I don’t!” He rose suddenly, as though seized with restlessness again. “I don’t know anything about you. What you want, what you do all day, what you think about !” Julie was astonished; she still sat there with her head bent, tracing a pattern on her knee with her forefinger. “Does it matter to him?” she wondered. When she looked up he was standing before her again. His manner had changed, he was frowning down at her under gloomy brows. “Good-bye, Miss Moffat!” he said. “You’d better go down to your office.” Bewildered at the manner in which he called her here, and sent her there, Julie rose, feeling that she would be helpless ever to understand him. He followed her as she went silently to the door. He seemed absorbed in his thoughts. He opened the door for her, looked at her face again, and said: “Good-night, Julie!” “Good-night,” said Julie quietly, smiling. She walked slowly down the stairs at a loss to find any motive for his words or his actions, or anything that had happene'd since she had come up from her office thinking that perhaps she was going to be scolded or sacked. She made a general tour of inspection to see that everything was in order. At half-past twelve most of the guests were in their rooms; the lights were out; Julie went over to her home above the garages; and so the day ended. CHAPTER XVI. Next day was a busy one for Julie. If she thought that she was going to have any .further conversation with Rand she was mistaken. She saw him on the stairs with Millman. She heard his voice on the ’phone when she was putting a call through to his room. In the morning some hacks were sent round from the local stable, and he and Lorna Treeves went for a ride. Julie heard them laughing and talking. All her little glimpses of .him showed him in the best of spirits. On the previous afternoon a letter —Julie’s first letter —had come from Tom. Only that morning did she have time to read it again and give it her full attention. “I’m only allowed one letter a month,” he wrote. “Last month I wanted to write to Trix” —Trix was his former fiancee —“That’s why you did not hear from me. I had your letter telling me that Rand had fixed things up for you and the children. It’s very decent of him, and I’d like you to let him know how grateful I am. Things aren’t exactly pleasant in here. I don’t mind the work, but I can’t stand the monotony. But I look forward to the time when I’ll be out, and try not to think about the present too much.”

He said little more. The tone of the letter was cheerful enough, but Julie knew what depression must be behind it. ;The grim, sordid suffering of the prison cast a shadow over the carefree prosperity of Lime Grove and its fortunate occupants. Julie put the letter away, and returned to her work with reddened eyes. Even Stuart could not cheer her. He told her he had wanted to come and talk to her on the previous evening, only someone had got him into a rubber of Bridge. He had to go back to town before luncheon. In a slack moment during the afternoon she went into the lounge to put the chairs and cushions straight and collect the variou; periodicals which

the guests had scattered about it. It was an L-shaped room; the main part of it was empty, but Julie could hear a murmur of voices from two people sitting round the corner by the log fire. As Julie was moving about quietly she could hear what they were saying. “Too young?” “Oh much, my dear!” They were women’s voices. “Sheer charity, really.” > That was Lorna Treeves’s voice, Julie was sure. She didn’t want to eavesdrop, but it was impossible not to hear. “I suppose she’s hopeless at the job.” Julie froze, as a suspicion of what they were talking about came into her mind. It would be the worst luck in the world if in overhearing she were to hear something about herself. “Oh, I gather Ferris made Hill get hold of the most violently efficient people he could find in London for the rest of the staff, so I suppose it won’t be too disastrous!” said Lorna Treeves’s voice. Julie’s instinct was to leave the room, she was standing over a little table well within their view now; she thought they must see her and stop. /“Ferris has the whole family on his hands?” said the other woman. “So I gather. Do him good,” said Lorna Treeves. “Change for Ferris to do something for somebody besides himself.”

“Really, dear! Is that the way to speak of one’s future partner in life!” “Because I’m going to marry the man it doesn’t mean that I have to be blind to his faults!” “Oh well !”

Their voices died into silence, and Julie realised that they had noticed her at last. Then the silence was broken by Lorna Treeves saying in a louder voice:

“Would you be too, too considerate and pass me the magazine on the floor there?” Julie realised that Lorna was addressing her, and turned. The magazine was lying on the floor a few feet from the chair in which the girl was sprawling, and apparently she was feeling too exhausted to pick it up. Julie silently handed it to her, and saw, as she did so that the two women had recognised her. They looked at her in surprise, and she could tell that they were wondering how much she had heard. But there was as much amusement as anything else in their embarrassment—little of the real shame they might have felt if she had been their social equal. Julie silently left the room, and heard the hushed comment of one and the little burst of laughter from the other before she closed the door. So all thfese people know about her and why she had been given the job! More than that, she was not supposed to be competent to perform it properly; she had it only through Rand’s charity. Pale with humiliation Julie went about her work. She gave the servants their orders with a set, grim face; and if any of them had imagined that it,was going to be easy to get past their youthful manageress, they must have changed their minds. She was quite sure that she could be as good a manageress as any hotel could need. But there was no pleasure in the work —there could never be any pleasure in it! When she sat down for a moment, or two during the dinner Julie glanced through the “Situations Vacant” column in the paper with desperate eyes. Through the glass wall of the office she glimpsed Lorna Treeves passing through the hall on the way to the lounge after dinner, a glistening figure in white, followed by Rand and Captain Marsham. Rand turned back on the bottom stair, and Julie thought that he was coming to the office; at the same time Harbin came into it through the inner door, and whether Rand had been coming or not, Julie did not know. A moment or htfo later while she was talking to the maitre d’hotel, Harbin, about an order of langouste that had not arrived from London the day before, she saw Rand going up the stairs again. Later there were sounds of the radio playing; up in the lounge they were dancing to music from Paris. There was no Stuart to come and talk to Julie and cheer and reassure her. Now that the other members of the staff had arrived Mrs Bolton had slipped back into her place in the kitchen; she addressed Julie as “madam” if there was anyone there. There was not even Mrs Bolton for Julie to talk to. The only reassuring person was Harbin. Formal and respectful, there was something in his quiet eye which made Julie feel he was a friend. But with him one only talked about the day’s work. And tonight his calm efficiency was a reminder to Julie—an efficient staff had been chosen to offset her own possible short-comings. Poor Julie badly wanted a shoulder on which she could put her head and cry comfortably. At ten o’clock one of the maids came down to say that one of the gentlemen had broken a window practising a golf shot in the lounge. This was Julie’s job. She went up to look at the damage. Trying to look as stern and competent as possible she walked into the room, and glancing neither to right nor left, went to look at the window. The baronet was standing by the door still swinging his club at imaginary balls. “Wonderful straight drive it was, too, by jove!” he was saying.

(To be Continued).