The Master of the Priory (6 page)

It was unexpectedly familiar, and yet she could not place it. “Now where in the world,” she cogitated, “can I have seen that face before?” 

“L
ADY
D
AVENANT
wishes me to dine to-night.”

“So do I,” Sir Oswald said with a smile. The delicate colour that the fresh air of Davenant had brought to Elizabeth's cheeks deepened a little. She was sitting in her accustomed place at Sir Oswald's writing-table. Sir Oswald was leaning back in one of the big easy chairs near the window.

Elizabeth got up and came over to him.

“Well, I don't know that it is very good for Maisie to sit up so late, but of course Lady Davenant's wishes and yours are paramount.”

“Especially mine.” He laughed whimsically. He was looking infinitely brighter than in the days when Sybil Lorrimer was acting as his secretary. He was growing more exacting in his demands on Miss Martin's time, too, and Maisie often had an unexpected holiday. To-day the Rector and his wife were dining at the Priory. They were bringing an old friend who was staying. Maisie was a great favourite of theirs, they had begged that she might dine, and Lady Davenant had made a special point of Miss Martin's accompanying her pupil.

It was the first time such an occasion had arisen since her coming to the Priory, and the governess would have done much to avoid it. This, however, was impossible in the face of Lady Davenant's wishes, and she perforce had to resign herself to the inevitable.

Sybil Lorrimer was still away. Her father had died a couple of days after his relapse, and there had been much to arrange. It was understood, however, that Miss Lorrimer was returning to the Priory as soon as possible to pay a long visit and to recruit her health after the strain through which she had passed. Nerves were supposed to have been the cause of the burglar scare, for the strictest search had failed to reveal any trace of nocturnal intruders. Nothing of value was missing. Elizabeth alone had lost a tiny parcel. She had come to the conclusion, after much vain searching and many tears, that in the hurry and excitement of Sybil's entrance she must have thrown it into the fire with the papers.

Elizabeth was twisting her fingers about nervously. Some sixth sense told the blind man opposite that she was in trouble.

“What is it?” he asked quietly. “Is it anything I can do for you?”

“Yes, I think so.” Elizabeth's lips were trembling. It was obvious that she was speaking only under the stress of some strong emotion. “It is—Sir Oswald—Lady Davenant has asked me to sing to-night. And I can't—I can't—to-night.”

“To sing,” Sir Oswald repeated, his dark face softening. “But don't you know that I want to hear you—that it was at my suggestion that my mother asked you? I know that you must sing divinely—I can hear it in your voice, and can't you guess what music is to a blind man?”

“Ah, yes!” There was a little sobbing quiver in the girl's voice now. “And another time I will sing to you as much as you like, but not to-night—not to-night. Won't you help me?”

There was a momentary pause. Then Sir Oswald said gently:

“Of course you shall not sing if you would rather not. But is it a promise? Will you sing to me another day?”

“Yes, yes!” Elizabeth said feverishly. “Any other time that you like.”

Sir Oswald rose and stretched out his hand.

“That is a bargain, then.” He held her slim, cool fingers in his a moment. “Why, surely you know I—we would not ask you to do anything that would cause you pain?”

The governess drew her hand away decidedly.

“You and Lady Davenant are always very kind to me,” she said stiffly. “Is that all, Sir Oswald? I have finished the letters and I have to dress.”

“Pray do not let me detain you. I am sure you must be tired. I am much obliged for your kind help,” Sir Oswald said courteously. His tone was perceptibly colder. It was evident that he had felt the rebuff.

Elizabeth stood a moment, her colour flickering, her lips parted as though she was about to speak, then her hands dropped to her side, she turned and left the room.

She hastened upstairs. On the bed was laid out the one evening dress she possessed. It was not in any sense a fashionable one, it was too long in the sleeves and too high in the neck, but it was better made than most of her garments and fitted her tall, slim figure to perfection. When it was donned, she looked at herself with dissatisfied eyes, then she put on her smoked glasses and gave a sigh of relief. “That is better.”

As she turned to leave the room a sudden vision of the last time she had dined late rose before her eyes and filled them with hot, scorching tears. She saw again the big dining-room, the exquisitely appointed table, above all the kind, smiling eyes of the father who had loved her, whose pride she had been. She heard her own voice.

“So Céleste has done my hair in the newest fashion, daddy. Don't I look grown up?”

“Ah, but I don't want my little girl turned into a grown-up woman,” her father had returned with a gay laugh. It was the last time his eyes had smiled at her, the last time she had been “Daddy's little girl.”

It was just ten years ago to-night. As she thought of the father whose grey hair had gone down in sorrow to his grave she bent her head for a moment over her clasped hands, then Maisie's voice was heard outside. Elizabeth dashed the tears from her eyes. She was the governess again, nothing more.

Maisie was much excited at the prospect of dining downstairs. The guests, the rector and his wife and their visitor, had already arrived. Maisie hurried off to greet her friends. The governess slipped quietly into a seat half shadowed by the heavy window curtains.

Then she glanced round the room.

Sir Oswald was talking to Mrs. Stamways, the rector's wife, and his face wore the look of sadness that was becoming habitual to it. Elizabeth looked in vain for the rare smile that at times transformed his whole expression.

“So I hear you are a stranger in the neighbourhood, like myself.”

The voice made Elizabeth start; she looked up quickly. The Stamways' guest had come over to her corner and was taking a seat near.

She was a pleasant-looking woman, still in the early forties. Her dark hair was powdered with grey, but her complexion was as fresh, her eyes as bright as those of a young girl. Voice and manner were alike pleasant, and Elizabeth felt strangely drawn to her.

“I am thinking of taking a house in the neighbourhood for the summer,” she went on conversationally. “Walton Grange. I wonder if you know it?”

“I don't think so,” Elizabeth said doubtfully.

“Ah, well! You will have to bring Maisie to see me when I am settled there,” the other said quickly. “It is quite an Elizabethan house, you know—a moat and all that sort of thing.”

They went on talking. Lady Davenant was talking over parish matters with Mrs. Stamways. Sir Oswald and the rector were discussing the political prospects, Maisie was occupying the attention of the only other visitor—the curate.

When dinner was announced, Elizabeth felt that she had made a friend, and she looked forward eagerly to a renewal of the conversation.

“I think I shall have to take you in, Miss Martin,” said Maisie, offering her little arm gravely as the others paired off.

At the dinner table Elizabeth found herself between Maisie and Mr. Meyer, the curate, while opposite she could catch a glimpse of her new friend talking to Sir Oswald.

For some time the conversation was general, but at last there came a lull.

Sir Oswald was speaking.

“Yes, Walton Grange is a delightful old house. A trifle gloomy, perhaps, and I hope you won't find it dull in the neighbourhood, Lady—” Elizabeth did not catch the name. “I don't know whether Walton is quite the house for a lady living alone.”

“Oh, but I think I shall not be alone long,” his partner interrupted him with the flashing smile Elizabeth found so delightful. “I hope later on to have my daughter with me.”

“Oh, you have a daughter, I beg your pardon, but I had no idea—” Sir Oswald said with a puzzled air.

“She has been away from home so long that, like the rest of the world, you have forgotten,” she interrupted him, and it seemed suddenly that her mouth and eyes grew sad. “But I naturally remember, and I do not think it will be long before she comes home now. And then you see I shall not find Walton Grange gloomy, and I shall not mind your neighbourhood being dull, because I shall have my girl at home again.”

“But surely—” Elizabeth did not catch the rest of Sir Oswald's rejoinder.

Quite a hubbub of conversation seemed to rise around and she heard no more.

But as she listened and replied to the curate's mild platitudes, she could not help thinking of the sweet-faced woman opposite and wondering what the daughter could be like who apparently of her own free choice left such a mother to solitude. She looked again at the kind eyes and the tender mouth, and a sudden swift longing that she had known such a mother came over her. Surely then she would have been guarded and protected, and she would not have made havoc with her life.

Meanwhile the curate was thinking that Miss Martin was even more difficult to talk to than he had imagined. When he first spoke to her she seemed to look right over his head and replied to his remarks most diconcertingly at random. Those smoked spectacles, too, were a tremendous drawback, he decided; it was like talking to some one on the other side of a screen or down the telephone, an instrument which Mr. Meyer frankly detested.

Yet as she turned to speak to Maisie, he could not help admiring the delicate profile, the dainty moulding of chin and throat, and wishing that he could see her eyes behind the glasses. He rather admired the straight, plain bands of hair, they reminded him of the Madonnas of the early Masters.

He went on talking, perhaps in time she would become more responsive, he hoped. Presently the subject of the Stamways' guest and Walton Grange occurred to him.

“It is a lonely old place,” he prattled on. “The grounds are extensive, and there are quaint yew hedges with birds and beasts carved on the top, don't you know. But I should not care for the moat myself. I should fancy it would make a house damp. Perhaps I am rather inclined to exaggerate that danger, though,” he added with the little laugh which Elizabeth thought so affected, “since rheumatism is a terrible complaint in my family.”

“Indeed! That is very sad,” Elizabeth said politely.

“Yes! It is a cruel infliction,” Mr. Meyer went on. “Not of course that there are not many worse,” he added in his clerical manner, “from which we must be thankful we do not suffer. Lady Treadstone will be an acquisition to the neighbourhood, I am sure.”

“Lady—who?”

The question broke across his halting sentences like a bombshell.

If Mr. Meyer had sought to obtain Miss Martin's attention his words had certainly had the desired effect now. The governess's cheeks, even her lips were white. It was evident that she was suffering from some almost uncontrollable agitation.

“Lady—who?” she repeated feverishly. “What—name did you say? Not—”

Mr. Meyer looked at her, his mild blue eyes wide with amazement.

“Treadstone,” he said again. “Why, Miss Martin, surely you knew that the lady to whom you were talking so long before dinner was Lady Treadstone?”

“No, I did not know,” Elizabeth said dully. A great mist was rising before her eyes, she felt suddenly faint and sick, she bit her lips, she dug her nails deep in the palms of her hands. At all hazards she must not, dare not, faint.

“She is the late Lord Treadstone's widow,” Mr. Meyer went on. “And of course he was immensely rich, he left everything he could away from the title to her. I did not know she had a daughter, but I expect it would be by her first marriage. She was a widow when she met Lord Treadstone.”

“Was she?” For the life of her Elizabeth could say no more. It was with unfeigned relief that she saw Lady Davenant give the signal to leave the table.

As she followed the others into the drawing-room she saw Lady Treadstone make room for her on the settee, she saw the other woman's kind eyes cloud over as she passed on coldly and placed herself behind Lady Davenant.

The evening seemed interminable to her, but it was not in reality long before Lady Davenant signed to her that she and Maisie might retire. She would have passed out with a slight bow, but Lady Treadstone rose.

“Our little chat has made me feel we ought to know one another better, Miss Martin,” she said pleasantly. “Will you drive over with me and look at Walton one day next week? It would give me so much pleasure.”

Elizabeth constrained herself to answer coldly, more than ever thankful for the screen that hid the passion in her eyes.

“You are very kind. But my time is not my own.”

“I am sure Lady Davenant—” Lady Treadstone said eagerly.

But Elizabeth only bent her head. “I fear it would be quite impossible, thank you very much.''

Upstairs in her room she dashed the glasses from her eyes, she threw back her masses of hair.

“Did she know me?” she asked herself wildly. “My God, is it possible she knew me?”

S
IR
O
SWALD
D
AVENANT
was walking up and down his study. Long familiarity with the accustomed furniture had made him able to do so with comparative impunity, though every now and then he caught his foot against something and cursed the blindness that impeded his movements.

He was doing the one thing he had hitherto believed impossible to him, the one thing that had had no place in his well-regulated existence—he was falling in love.

His marriage had been very happy, he had been very fond of Winifred, the boy and girl friendship had ripened into a very real affection, but there had been—as he himself would have phrased it—“no nonsense about it.”