by Annie Haynes
“Do you mean that there is some real obstacle?” he asked slowly.
“Yes—a barrier that can never be passed. I can never marry. I shall never think of marrying.” Elizabeth’s sobs were rising now in her throat, threatening to choke her.
Sir Oswald, in his blindness, felt very far away.
“I can’t understand,” he said helplessly. “Does this mean that you care for someone else—that you are engaged—married even?”
“No” Elizabeth said faintly. She was telling him the bare truth, and yet when she heard his sigh she felt that it was worse than the cruellest of lies.
“But you have cared for someone else?” Sir Oswald hazarded.
“Ah, no, no!” Elizabeth cried, putting up her hands to her throat.
“Then,” said Sir Oswald slowly, “if you are not bound to anyone, if you don’t care, if you never have cared for anyone, I shall not give up hope.”
“Oh, you will! You must!” Elizabeth’s breath came quick and fast, she fought despairingly to regain her self-control, not to yield to the impulse that bade her thrust herself and her story on Sir Oswald Davenant’s mercy. “Don’t you see that unless you promise to forget—to give up—I can’t stay here—at the Priory?” she said, with a hoarse catch in her throat. “And I have nowhere else to go. I am so lonely.”
As he heard the last words Sir Oswald’s face softened and grew very pitiful. He moved a little nearer with his uncertain, stumbling steps, but Elizabeth would not trust herself within touch of those strong, kind hands again.
“I am at your mercy, Elizabeth,” he said gravely. “You may rely at least upon it that I will not speak of it again while you are in my house unless you yourself give me permission. On your part—”
He paused and Elizabeth watched his face anxiously. He went on in a minute. “You must promise to stay here and be good to Maisie and me as you have been hitherto. We can’t do without you, either of us, Elizabeth.”
The hint of weakness in the strong man’s voice touched the governess as no pleading could have done. For one instant she stood beside him, warm, palpitating, hesitating, the next she had caught sight of herself in a small Venetian mirror inlet into the wall opposite her, and hurried breathlessly from the room.
She ran upstairs. On the lawn beneath she could hear Maisie chattering to Barbara Burford. She would go down in a minute or two, but she must have breathing space to think matters over first. That Sir. Oswald should propose to her, want to marry her, had never entered her calculations, changed though his manner had been of late. She had always heard that some men looked upon a flirtation with a governess as a recognized form of amusement, and she supposed that her lot was to be the same as others. But now everything was altered; apart from the fact that she stood on the verge of detection she knew that what had passed would render it impossible for her to remain at the Priory long; and, as she had told Sir Oswald, she had nowhere else to go. Tears welled up in her eyes as she glanced round the pretty bedroom she had learned to look upon as her own.
There was a knock at her door. Eliza, the schoolroom maid, stood in the doorway, her pretty childish face showing unmistakable signs of tears.
“What is it, Eliza?” asked Elizabeth kindly. She liked the girl, who had waited on her since her coming to the Priory, but just at present she found her own worries all-absorbing.
“My mother is ill,” the girl said tearfully. “Her ladyship says I can go home at once, and Ellen can wait on you, but I thought that I should like to tell you myself—” She paused expectantly.
For once Elizabeth’s ready sympathy failed her.
“Your mother is ill, Eliza?” she repeated dully. “I—I am very sorry.”
Chapter Ten
“WHERE ARE you going?” Maisie popped her head through the banisters just as Barbara, ready equipped for walking, came into the hall.
The girl looked up and smiled. “Oh, just for a walk,” she said vaguely.
“Miss Martin and I are going to take some soup to Mrs. Archer at the south lodge. You wouldn’t like to come with us?” Maisie said persuasively.
“Not to-day, I think—” Barbara said slowly.
Maisie stamped her foot.
“It never is to-day,” she said with childish vehemence. “And I thought you would come and have tea with us in the schoolroom and be ever so nice, not stuck up like Sybil. And now I really believe you are worse. I am disappointed in you, Barbara.”
“Are you really?” Barbara laughed in spite of herself. “I am sorry it is as bad as that, Maisie. But of course I will have tea with you this afternoon if Miss Martin will ask me when I come back. But I can’t walk down to the lodge. I have a big thing that I must do by myself.”
“Like daddy does?” Maisie said wisely. “Oh, well, if you will come to tea, Barbara, I will forgive you. You really are a dear.” She sprang down the stairs two steps at a time, and bestowed an enthusiastic kiss on the girl.
Barbara laughed again as she returned it, but her face wore a very worried expression as she closed the front door behind her and set off across the park. Life was becoming a very complex thing now to Barbara Burford. Everything had seemed to lie so straight before her until she came to the Priory, and then a few minutes had sufficed to change everything. She was staying much longer than she intended at the Davenants’. She had caught eagerly at Lady Davenant’s invitation to extend her visit, thinking to give herself breathing space and perhaps to find out that she was troubling herself needlessly. But now her father had written to recall her, she was wanted at home and in the parish, one week longer was all that he was willing to allow her. And Barbara was faced by the fact that she must make up her mind on a very important matter before her return.
All her life, as it seemed to her, she had loved Frank Carlyn. For years their friendship had been an established thing, no one had doubted that it would ultimately end as it had. There had been a few months last year when a sort of estrangement had grown up between them, but it had been ended by Frank’s proposal and since then Barbara had been happier than she had ever been in all her life. Happier—and more miserable. For now Barbara was deliberating with herself whether it was not her duty to put an end to the engagement. Did Frank Carlyn care for her, as he could care for someone else—nay, as he had cared and perhaps did care for someone else? Barbara could not answer this question to her satisfaction. All this time of her engagement she had been haunted by the feeling that, old friends as they were, something stood always between her and Frank, some figure or shadow of the past. Now it was assuming a more tangible shape, and Barbara was faced by a problem more difficult than anything her young, unguarded life had hitherto encountered.
No solution had occurred to her as she entered the mossy wood, and turned slowly down the path.
She knit her brows as she walked on deep in thought. So absorbed was she that but for a chance movement on the part of a man lounging against a tree trunk at the side of the road she would have passed him unobserved.
Then she looked up, and after a moment’s bewilderment stopped short in surprise at sight of a familiar face.
“Why, Marlowe, is it you? What brings you to this part of the world?”
The ex-policeman touched his cap.
“My missus comes from these parts, miss. Her people have a bit of a farm over Cowley way, and she hasn’t been just the thing lately, so I brought her over for a change. I’m only here for the week-end. I couldn’t leave the business any longer. And how’s all the people down at Carlyn, miss, if you will pardon me for asking, the rector and the young Squire—Mr. Carlyn?”
“They are quite well, thank you,” Barbara answered mechanically.
She was recalling what she had heard when Constable Marlowe left Carlyn. He and his wife had come into money. It was said that he was giving up the police force on the strength of it and taking a small business somewhere in the Black Country. It seemed plausible, and yet Barbara could not help feeling that something lay behind the story
. The man was glib enough with his tale, but she fancied she had detected a shade of discomfiture in his face when she recognized him.
“I am sorry to hear Mrs. Marlowe has not been well,” she went on after a pause. “Where are you living now—I forget?”
“Over in Burchell, a village on the other side of Stoke,” Marlowe lied glibly. “My uncle left me a bit of a shop there, china and so forth, and we are making a decent living at it, and it doesn’t take it out of a man like the police force.”
“No, I daresay not,” Barbara assented absently.
The man was obviously anxious to move on, and she had no excuse to detain him. He touched his hat and she nodded her good-bye. Yet as she pursued her walk she felt vaguely uneasy. Marlowe’s presence in Castor might mean so much or so little.
Meanwhile Mr. Marlowe was cursing himself for a stupid fool. He had heard there was a young lady stopping at the Priory, but in his preoccupation with other matters he had failed to ask her name. This neglect had brought this recognition on himself, with the possible ruin of all plans. He had nearly reached the edge of the wood when he caught sight of the figure for which he had been waiting. It was a pleasant, rosy-faced young woman in black who approached him.
“Well, what luck?” he demanded impatiently.
“Give me a minute,” she responded, pressing her hand to her side. “I am out of breath with climbing that hill. I have got the place.”
“That is right,” he said heartily, his face clearing. “When do you go in?”
The girl laughed. “To-night. I haven’t let the grass grow under my feet, have I?”
Marlowe looked at her admiringly. “You are a good girl. I always did say you were smart, Susy.”
Few people would have taken the two for brother and sister. Susan was as slim and alert as Marlowe was portly and phlegmatic looking. The girl, however, was devoted to her brother. She had as great a belief in his powers as he had himself, and it was mainly on her advice that he had thrown up his position in the police to work for Mr. Gregg. That gentleman had been one of the detectives sent down to Carlyn to investigate the death of John Winter. He had started a detective agency on his own account soon afterwards, and the opinion he had formed of Mr. Marlowe’s abilities had led him to offer him a liberal salary to join him. This was not the first time that Susy had been called upon to help in their plans, and more than once she had been found invaluable.
Marlowe had soon discovered that his inquiry into the past of the governess at the Priory was hopeless from the outside. Nothing was known of her in the village, and unless on an errand for Lady Davenant she seldom went beyond the Park, and the woods close to the house, with her little charge.
The fact that the situation of schoolroom maid was vacant at the Priory gave him his opportunity. Susan was the very person to wait on Miss Martin and incidentally to find out all that that unfortunate young woman wished to remain hidden.
Sybil Lorrimer had professed a previous acquaintance with the girl, and acted as her reference, and Susan’s obtaining the situation was a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless Marlowe had been afraid of some hitch and his relief was unmistakable.
“You saw Miss Lorrimer?” he questioned.
Susan nodded. “That is why I am a bit late. She took me up to her bedroom saying I was an old friend, and she did talk. How she hates Miss Martin!”
Marlowe looked thoughtful. “I know. But look here, Susan, my girl. I don’t suppose my letter made it clear to you that Miss Lorrimer’s interests and ours—Mr. Gregg’s and mine—may not run just on the same lines. All that Miss Lorrimer wants is to get rid of the governess from the Priory.”
Susan looked wise. “I gathered as much. Miss Martin stands in Miss Lorrimer’s way with Sir Oswald. Of course she wants to marry him herself.”
“Yes, that is her point of view,” Marlowe assented. “But what we mean to find out is whether this Miss Martin isn’t somebody who has been wanted by the police for over a year. If she is—why, there will be a big reward for the ones that find her. As for getting rid of her from the Priory, that is an easy matter, and we could do it to-morrow as easy as that,” snapping his fingers. “But it doesn’t suit our purpose. You must temporize with Miss Lorrimer, Susan, temporize—that is the word.”
Susan’s rosy face looked thoughtful, she wrinkled up her brows and pursed up her lips until a certain comical resemblance to her brother made itself apparent.
“Miss Lorrimer will not be a patient person to deal with, I can see that. But it ought not to take me long to find out what you want. Still, you remember that your letter wasn’t very definite. You merely told me to go to the Priory and apply for the post of schoolroom maid, and that Miss Lorrimer would be my reference. Oh, yes, and that I was wanted to watch the governess. All the rest of the explanation I have had comes from Miss Lorrimer, and the chief ground she gave me to work on was that she was sure the governess dyed her hair. There is nothing very extraordinary in that.”
The ex-constable’s eyes looked cunning. “Ah! And yet there is more turns on that than Miss Lorrimer knows, or you think, Susy. For if she is the woman we want she is not tall and dark, but tall and fair, leastways with hair that some folks call auburn and some golden.”
“Why, Jim!” Susy’s eyes were growing rounder, the rosy colour in her cheeks deepened, her breath quickened. “Tall and auburn-haired,” she repeated. “Jim, you don’t never think that it is—”
“Sh! Don’t say it,” her brother interrupted her. “There are things that are best left unsaid, even when we are alone like this. You are a sharp one, Susy! I knew you would tumble to it, though I didn’t think it would be as soon as this.”
Susy had not recovered from her astonishment.
“Well, to think of it being that,” she ejaculated. “The thing I have always wanted to be in. You may depend upon me doing my very best for that, Jim.”
“I knew I could,” her brother responded with a gratified look. “Well, now, you see what you have to do. You just find out if she is—this woman; and then we can manage Miss Lorrimer’s business as well as our own. Search her boxes. You have your keys. There must be proof of identification somewhere.”
“Must be,” Susan nodded. “As for the hair, you leave that to me. I know a trick that will manage that. But there is one thing that puzzles me, if she is the person you are looking for, how did she get in as governess at the Priory?
“Ay! There is wheels within wheels. And that’s one of the many nuts we have got to crack.” her brother observed enigmatically. “Miss Martin was recommended to Lady Davenant by a great friend of hers, a Mrs. Sunningdale.”
“Then I don’t see how—” Susan said in a puzzled tone.
“That recommendation didn’t do her much good, however,” her brother pursued imperturbably. “Since a fortnight before this—lady—arrived at the Priory, the Miss Elizabeth Martin who was Mrs. Sunningdale’s governess died of blood poisoning at a hospital in Camden Town.”
Chapter Eleven
BARBARA sat in her own room writing a letter. To speak more accurately, she had apparently written a great many letters, and consigned them all in turn to the same receptacle—the waste-paper-basket. She took up a new sheet of paper and began again.
“My dear Frank.”
Then she paused once more. How was she to say it? In what words should she tell Frank Carlyn that she could never be his wife? For Barbara’s mind was made up at last. Frank should be free, it might be that he owed something to that other one, it might be that he had only proposed to her—Barbara—out of pique. At any rate she would not share a divided affection, and her proud, little head went up at the thought.
She turned back to her paper. After all, the shortest statement of fact would be sufficient—she would couch it in the baldest possible terms. Frank would not criticize it overmuch. Probably he would be glad to get his freedom, she said to herself bitterly.
“Don’t you think we have made a mistake,” she wrote. “We were f
riends, such good friends, but to think that we could be anything more was, as I say, a mistake. Therefore, Frank, I want you to set me free from our engagement, and remain my friend still.” She hesitated a moment, how was she to end it? Then she wrote “Barbara,” as steadily as ever, folded the paper, tucked it into its envelope and addressed it to “Frank Carlyn Esq., Carlyn Hall,” as quickly as possible lest she should change her mind and this latest note should share the fate of its predecessors.
Then she sat back in her chair and tears gathered in her hazel eyes, as she thought of the two to whom she knew this decision of hers would mean the bitterest disappointment—her father and old Mrs. Carlyn. They, like their children, had been firm friends for more years than they cared to count, and Barbara knew that her marriage with Frank had been very dear to both their hearts. Still she told herself that what she had done was unavoidable—had been unavoidable from the first—if only she had had the courage to own it. For Frank she could see no way out of the tangle, but, if he did not know his own mind, it was plainly her duty to make the decision for him.
Nevertheless life looked a very dreary thing to Barbara, and the tears coursed down her cheeks as she contemplated it.
They were still wet when there was a knock at the door and Maisie’s voice called reproachfully.
“I do believe you have forgotten your promise again, Barbara. You said you would come to tea this afternoon, and we have been waiting for you, and at last Miss Martin said I might come and fetch you.”
Barbara hastily removed the traces of her tears, and opened the door.
“I didn’t know it was so late, Maisie dear,” she said apologetically. “But I hadn’t forgotten. I’m so glad you came for me, dear.”
Maisie caught her hand.
“Come on, then. But you look as if you had a headache”—eyeing her critically—“and Miss Martin has had one all day, so I am afraid it will not be a very lively tea-party after all.”