THE PRISONER'S SISTER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 August 1938, Page 12

THE PRISONER'S SISTER

PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENT COPYRIGHT

BY

PEARL BELLAIRS

(Author of “Velvet and Steel”)

CHAPTER XXV. —Continued. “Buck up!” said Julie. “Get well! You’re half through it Tommy, dear! When you come out you’re going on a sea voyage. We’re not down. and out any more now. You're going to have a new life, so don’t worry about the old one!” Tom smiled. Julie talked on; her face shone. Rand stood in the background, trying not to listen, looking along the dreary prison ward, his heart heavy with the bitterest regrets. “What’s this about your getting married, Julie?” said Tom. “Yes,' I’m getting married. To Stuart Rand.” “Stuart Rand! Gosh, it seems extraordinary. Thank God I don’t seem to haye' done you much harm, Julie!” “Don’t be silly.” “D’you like him, Julie? Is he a decent chap?”/ “He’s a dear, Tom?” She stroked Tom’s hand feverishly, as though she wanted to instil some of her own hopeful young life into his weary body. And it seemed as though she had, for when, twenty minutes later tne warder motioned to them that it was time to leave, there was more blood in Tom’s hollow cheeks and new light in his eyes. Before they went Tom shook hands with Rand. “Thank you, sir!” he said.

Julie’s fact still wore a smile when she turned it towards the bed for the last time. Not a word was said as they walked out of the ward and along the passage. Rand was relieved by her apparent calm. They went out of the prison, got into the car; the car drove out of the yard, the gates closed behind them.

Julie sat-upright oh the seat beside Rand, trying to control herself because of his-presence. But it was impossible. To have to leave Tom there like that! She struggled, but the stiff mask of her face relaxed, and she broke down utterly. The car drove on. Julie covered her face with her handkerchief and wept helplessly. The strain of being cheerful with Tom had been too much for her. ‘

For a minute or two Rand sat silently, not looking at her. His face was the face of a man resisting torture. Then he put his arm about her and drew her towards him so that her head rested against his shoulder. It had the effect of checking Julie’s sobs; she drew, a long breath, and rested there with her wet face against the rough tweed of his coat. ! She was too shaken to feel any impulse to draw away. Long sobs still tore at her body. “Come!” he murmured. “Don’t, Julie —please!” She grew quieter. Resting there, it seemed as though the black cloud of misery which had overwhelmed her had cleared away. Gradually a feeling of peace and resignation stole over her; she was recovered enough to have lifted her nead from his shoulder and drawn away from his encircling arm. But she had not the will. She did not move, and her sense of peace deepened until it became something like bliss. His gentleness made her wonder. It seemed so strange. Still with his arm round her he leaned forward, picked up the speaking tube, and spoke to the chauffeur on the front seat:

“Stop at the nearest respectable pub, Kelcher, please.” Julie looked up at his face as he spoke, and saw that it was pale and ravaged with emotion as she had never before seen it. She drew away from him as he sat back, aware that she must look perfectly dreadful herself. She wiped her eyes and straightened her hat. Rand said nothing, but his dark face was very sombre. In a minute or two the car pulled up outside a clean and prosperous looking roadside hotel. “We’ll go in here for a few minutes,” Rand said. Feeling very weak in the knees Julie allowed herself to be escorted inside. They were shown into a small private sitting room on the first floor, clean and old-fashioned, with red plush chairs and lace curtains. His manner was a queer mixture of wretchedness and solicitude. To Julie, now she had expended all the violence of her grief for Tom, it seemed that Rand was more deeply upset than she was. It surprised her that such a state of affairs could ever occur. She sat in" her’chair in the state of exhausted calm which follows a storm. Rand sat opposite. The ’ waiter came in and put tea, down on the small table beside them.

Rand handed hers to Julie, but left his own untouched. At last he said: “After what we’ve just seen I can very well understand your being bitter against mel’t Julie shook her head, disclaiming any such sentiments, but he went on: “When you first came to me, I though I was right in not letting you influence me too much. It was all very simple, and as I though I was right I didn't care very much whether you were bitter about it or not. But now —” He paused, and drew a deep breath. “Now I don’t even believe I was right. And if anyone had told me then what your attitude would come to mean to me, I’d have told them they were mad!”

Julie’s heart stood still, she sat staring at him, only half-believing her ears. He talked without looking at her, bent forward with his hands clasped between his knees, frowning. “I wasn’t going to let you know that, of course,” he said, and the shadow of a smile crossed his face. “But it’s been obvious from your- manner that you haven't forgiven me about your brother —and now I suppose this sight of him is going to make things worse. Well, I’ve no defence! But I’m going away tomorrow, and I’ve got to take the knowledge of it with me. It’s all I have got to take with me. I don’t believe you’ve got it in you to be wilfully cruel. It would help a little if I didn’t think that you were thinking so darned badly of me.” Julie swallowed hard. She trembled so that she had to put down her teacup. “I don’t —I don’t think badly of you!" she’ managed to say breathlessly. When Rand spoke again he sounded more like himself, and looked more at ease. “You know, don’t you, that if Stuart hadn’t got his oar in first I’d never have let him have you? When I came down to Lime Grove after Lorna and I broke our engagement I was going to ask you then. I don’t know that I thought you’d say ‘yes’ at once. But I believed that I’d make you in the end. Dislike or no dslike, I used to tell myself I’d win through and get you

somehow!” He drank slowly. When he spoke again he was smiling ruefully. “Stuart knocked that on the head before I even got started! The first thing he told me when I arrived at Lime Grove was that he was hoping you’d marry him. He even asked me to help him—! Well, you can’t cut your own brother out, and so that was that! And ever since then I’ve been keeping a stiff upper lip.” He looked across at Julie, and some of the cloud had cleared from his face with the relief of talking. Her colour was high, while doubt, astonishment, and an anigmatic light that was almost like fear looked out of her eyes. “Stiff upper lip!” Rand repeated ruefully. “It’s crumpled pretty badly today, I’m afraid. I’ve told you every darned thing I had sworn you were never to know!” “I never thought—” Julie began, lamely, and broke off. She had never felt so speechless and dumbfounded in her life. “I never thought you felt like that!”

“I never intended you to think so!” said Rand shortly, and rose abruptly as though suddenly recollecting himself. His face was hard and bitter again. “It’s time you went home!” Julie finished her tea. Her mind was in a turmoil. She wanted to speak. But now he only looked as though he wanted to get away, as though he felt he had said too much. She walked downstairs, only half aware of where she was going. In a moment they would be in the car. Then she would finct something to say. She looked at him, but he seemed too much absorbed in his own gloom and humiliation to want to look at her. She got into the car. To her surprise, her sudden dismay, he did not follow her. He- closed the door on her, and spoke through the window. “There seems to be a railway station across the road. I’ll go back to town by train. Kelcher will drive you back to Lime Grove.” • His face Was rather white, and showed exactly what he meant—that he wanted to be alone for a while. He smiled, and stepped back. Julie leaned forward to speak, but she had no time tb get out the hesitating protest on her lips. The car drove away and left him standing there. Julie sank back on the seat. So Rand loved her! He was not just attracted by her as she had one imagined, but he loved her—so much that he had to tell her so when there could be no hope, nothing but humiliation for himself! Julie stared blindly out at the passing countryside, uplifted by a wave of stupefying happiness. Why should she be so wildly, passionately glad? Why should her heart be singing as it had never sung before? It was a minute or two before she came to earth out of this rapture to realise exactly what it meant. She was in love with Rand. Unbelieveable—that all her former dislike should change so suddenly! And yet perhaps the very hatred she had felt had been attraction in disguise—denied because of Tom, because of her humiliating position, because of everything— However that might be, with Stuart she had always had to examine her feelings, wondering how much she really did care for him; but about her feelings now there could be no mistake.

Her head throbbed. The blood was racing through her body. If Rand had been there she would have thrown herself into his arms. , After a moment pr two she was glad that he was not there. All her ecstasy was changed to dismay, though her happiness could not be driven quite out. ■ •

She was engaged to Stuart. • She could not possibly let him down. Now she looked back she saw the irony of it—it had been the bitter loneliness of believing that Rand had slighted her which had driven her to Stuart for comfort. Now when she found out her mistake she must abide by if; she must stand by Stuart. “I do love Stuart —I do love him!” she told herself frantically. And it was true. She was fond of him, she could not bear to hurt him, she had been willing to marry him. But all that did not make a fifth of her passionate hunger for Rand when she thought of how he had looked and spoken—telling her that he loved her. "Stuart must never know,” Julie told herself. “Whatever happens, Stuart must never know.” It was with this idea in her head that she arrived at Lime Grove. She told herself that all would be well. Rand would be going away the next day, immediately after the opening of the next Thames Bridge. He would be away for six months. No one need ever know what he had told her in the shabby little parlour at the hotel. But with this came the first most piercing pang of grief. How could she endure his going away? How could she let him go away without a word, not knowing that she loved him—and herself marry someone else and lose him for ever? “I’ll forget him,” Julie told herself desperately. “It’s only an infatuation. It will pass. I must be mad!" Kelcher had gone back to town with Rand’s car. Everything looked as before at the hotel. The children came home from school and told her their usual tales of things that had happened.

And yet everything was different. Everywhere were memories of Rand. There he had sat, there he had said such and such a thing to her. Oh, that her stupid pride had let her admit long ago how important he had been to her, how vital everything about him had always seemed! She felt now that even if he had looked upon her with complete indifference she still should have been proud to admit that she was in love with him. There was nd sleep that night for Julie. She did not want to sleep. But by the time the dawn came she knew what she must do, and when she went to the window and looked out just as the sun was rising above the pine woods, her struggle was over, her sacrifice already made. She could not let Stuart down. She would say nothing—and by five o’clock that evening Rand would be gone, out of the country, out of their lives. (To be Continued).