THE PRISONER'S SISTER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 August 1938, Page 12

THE PRISONER'S SISTER

PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT COPYRIGHT

BY

PEARL BELLAIRS

(Author of “Velvet and Steel”)

CHAPTER XIX. During the next few days Julie was not exactly happy. If she faltered at all in her determination not to think aboiit Rand she was helped by the arrival of the next batch of illustrated weeklies. They all had photographs of Miss Lorna Treeves, one of London’s gayest and smartest lovelies, who has recently returned from a Florida holiday, and will be married in August to Mr Ferris Rand. There were pictures of Treeves Towers, in Gloucestershire. There were pictures of Lorna in ravishing postures, with and without bloodhounds. And Julie found one of Rand and Lorna, snapped in a party at a fashionable dance-supper club. One weekly had a page devoted to pictures of Rand’s new bridge over the Thames, taken from all angles, and an inset photograph of Rand getting out of a car, with a number of workmen standing round. All this helped Julie to keep her head, if not to make her any happier. Lime Grove had been well-adver-tised. The day after Rand’s party left, it was open to the public, and the staff was kept busy. It was still winter, and the number of the bookings for the rooms was not large; but there was a constant flow of cars from town in the afternoon and evening, with people for lunch and dinner. An American millionaire with a wife and. two daughters decided to make it their home for six months.

Julie, who had been wondering how it was all to happen, and feeling that perhaps it was easier to build an hotel and decorate it than get people to stay in it at twenty-five guineas a week, found that it seemed to happen by magic; though the magic, she supposed, was mainly contained in the reference to Rand’s venture, treated as a fashionable whim, in the society gossip columns.

So the days passed. As Julie settled more into the routine of her work, she was able to spend more time with Dolly and Will. She had her meals with them in the rooms over the garages, and it was like old times again to have leisure to be with them. She found time to go for long walks with them over a countryside which was beginning to show the first signs of Spring. And then Stuart came down to stay. He had been ill for a week with ’flu and had been ordered a rest. “Isn’t it grand?” he said, with a directness that reminded Julie of Rand, though there was little likeness between the brothers. “I can stay down here and see as much of you as I like!” Afterwards when she remembered the things that Stuart said, and his behaviour in general, she couldn’t think why it was that she had given it so little thought. Perhaps she was too busy, perhaps she got on so well, with Stuart, she was so unself-conscious with him, that she never paused to consider seriously what his feelings towards herself might be. As to Stuart, his interest in her had been aroused before ever he saw her —and by Rand himself. Before he went to the Sudan three months previously Rand had explained the situation to Stuart and asked him to run down to Lime Grove to see how things were going there. Stuart had asked Rand: “What is the girl like, Ferris?” “Out of the ordinary. A nice girl. A gentlewoman. She has a certain quality—one might even call her beautiful. As helpless as a baby, of course But with a devil of a spirit in her for all that!”

The reply had surprised Stuart, because it was usual for Rand to lump all women together as a necessary, but unimportant class of being whose various qualities he couldn’t be bothered to analyse. - So that when Stuart went down to Lime Grove he had been prepared to find Julie attractive. It didn’t occur to him that Rand, who was usually so cool headed, might be attracted by Julie himself. Before he knew where he was Stuart found Julie so easy to talk to and so generally sympathetic that his admiration turned into a craving for her company. Shy and introspective as he was, the women of his own fashionable social stratum repelled him. In his own way Stuart Rand preferred the hard-working every-day world to the world of wealth and fashions—just as Ferris Rand did. But Ferris sought life in great undertakings; Stuart in study and contacts with genuine, unspoiled people. The person who really kept both the Rands moving in the world of fashion was their sister, Mrs Arnot, who was married to a multi-millionaire explorer, and found that violent social activity filled in the time while her husband was away. Stuart, after some unhappiness brought about by half-imagined slights from one or two of the glittering young women in his sister’s fashionable set, was badly wanting someone on whom he could lavish his repressed affections. Julie—more delicately lovely than any of those other idle, difficult young woman, more sympathetic because she knew so much of life, who had suffered and was yet so sweet —seemed a Heaven-sent gift to relieve his loneliness. By the time Stuart came down to Lime Grove after his attack of ’flu he had the tenderest feelings towards her.

But repression of his feelings had been a habit with him for so long that he didn’t say very much. He sat about reading most of the day; but somehow or other, in Julie’s spare time, he was there at her side —with a book to lend her, or a suggestion for a walk, or some other way of passing the time so that he could be with her. They walked through the heather, and in the pine wods, and talked and

laughed together. He often spoke of his brother, and then Julie’s ears were always alert, in spite of herself. But she was too self-conscious about Rand to ask questions or show any interest. Her feelings at that time changed between doubt, depression, self-con-tempt, and a perpetual puzzling over the meaning of Rand’s behaviour towards herself. Stuart had been down at Lime Grove for over a fortnight. Julie had heard 'nothing from Rand, nor, she gathered, had Stuart. Then one afternoon Julie had snatched the time off for a stroll down to the Wagoners Wells; she and Stuart w’ere walking along by the pools, profound and mirrow smooth in the shadow of the woods as the sun sank; there were thousands of green buds on the branches overhead, and a few violets were showing among the dead leaves round the trunks of the trees.

Julie was thinking about Rand, and it seemed almost an answer to her questing restless thought when Stuart said suddenly: “My sister is back from a holiday in Brioni. I heard from her this morning.” He, hesitated, and then went on: “Apparently Ferris and Lorna have broken their engagement.” For a moment Julie thought that she hadn’t heard aright. The still trees standing over the still pools were suddenly very still indeed. “Really?” Julie managed to say at last, casually. “Why, I wonder?”

“No idea. It’s a mutual arrangement, I gather. Lise—my sister —says that (they’re both very cold-blooded about it.”

“Perhaps their being cold-blooded might be as good a reason, as any for breaking it off!” suggested Julie, faintly. “Quite! Very probably. Poor old Ferris! He’d made up his mind to make such a splendidly intelligent, level-headed, marriage!” Stuart laughed. “Tomorrow there will be an announcement in the Press. You know the sort of thing: ‘The marriage that has been arranged will not take place —’ and everybody who reads it is consumed with vile' curiosity. I think all this publicity about things like that is in rotten bad taste!” “Yes. I think you’re right,” agreed Julie, vaguely. “You know, I think there are lots of things about which we agree, Julie. Is there anything on which we don’t?” “I’m sure not!” replied Julie responding to his whimsical tone, without the least idea of what he. was talking about. So Rand was no longer engaged! that left him free to follow any inclination he wished. Julie hardly heard what Stuart was saying as she accustomed herself to this new idea. “When I’ve got through my exams, I’m going to Cambridge to do physiological research. I’ve got about fifteen hundred a year of my own. What do you think about fifteen hundred a year as an income?” “Oh excellent!” said Julie airily. “You think it’s all right?” “Quite good enough,” said Julie absently, while she watched, for the little patches of purple violets among the leaves and grass and thought about other things. “How would you like to live in Cambridge?” said Stuart. “How would I like what?” “How would you like to live in Cambridge—you yourself, I mean?” “I think it would be quite-nice,” said Julie, and suddenly realised where they had got to in the conversation. What did he mean by what he had been saying? And what sort of interpretation had he been putting on her answers?

“I think we ought to get back to the hotel,” she said, hurriedly, changing her tine. “It’s nearly half-past four!” Julie was disconcerted and wondered about Stuart for a moment. But it was no more than a moment. By the time they had turned round to walk back she was thinking of Rand again. From doubting him, she turned to doubting herself. Her bitterness about Tom was no longer a bitterness certainly . . . Stuart went on talking in a perfectly normal matter-of-fact manner, and when they got back to the hotel Julie took up her duties again, which kept her busy for most of the evening. She saw Stuart for a while before she went over to her rooms. He was going back to town in a week’s time to take a final exam. “Wish me luck, Julie!” he said, as he sat on her desk in the office, smoking a cigarette. “It’s going to be awful if I don’t get through. Waiting about — for so many things!” He smiled appealingly—meaningly; but Julie didn’t meet his eye, and was not willing to face the implication behind his remark. She had a vague idea that he was misunderstanding her attitude; she meant to correct the impression, but couldn’t think of the nicest way of doing it just then, and so she let it pass for the moment. There were more important things to think of. In spite of her feeling that she must struggle against Rand, since the afternoon she had grown more and more tense. Every time the telephone rang she thought it might be a call from his London office to say he was coming down; every time a car drove up to the door she thought he might have come. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the better of this feeling of suspense, and all the time she felt a growing wrath that he could have so much hold over her.

(To be Continued).