The Master of the Priory (18 page)

“No, I don't!” Sir Oswald said bluntly. “The owner of the voice I am thinking of is poor and friendless, working for her living. Yet the likeness is extraordinary.”

“What is this friendless woman's name?” Miss Treadstone's voice was slightly sarcastic.

“Martin!” Sir Oswald answered. “Elizabeth Martin.”

Miss Treadstone left her daffodils and sat down opposite.

“What was she like? Did she resemble me in appearance as well as in voice?”

“I—don't think so,” Sir Oswald said uncertainly. “That is to say, I was blind. I never saw her face. But she has been described to me as pale and dark and tall. I believe she wore glasses.”

“Um! Not a very attractive description,” Miss Treadstone answered. “I'm afraid I can't help you, Sir Oswald. I am sure there is no one answering to it on the Rock. And a good many voices are similar in some respects.”

“I have never heard anyone's that reminded me of hers but yours,” Sir Oswald said decidedly.

Miss Treadstone got up quickly. “I don't know that I feel flattered,” she said with a little shrug of her shoulders. “Now, Sir Oswald, I am going to pick you some more daffodils over there on the Rock.” She stepped out through the window.

Left alone, Sir Oswald lay back on his couch feeling strangely puzzled. Some sixth sense told him that Elizabeth was near, and yet how was he to find her? He felt convinced that both Lady Treadstone and Rosamond could have told him more if they would. Both of them had impressed him as playing a part. But the more he thought of it the more certain he became that the key to Elizabeth's disappearance must lie within the Hold.

Rosamond Treadstone, too, had raised his interest in no ordinary degree. Even apart from the strange likeness her voice bore to the missing Elizabeth, her beauty, some touch of mystery there was about her, appealed to him strongly. He found himself picturing her face, trying to recall her faint, elusive smile.

Still his enforced inaction made the day seem a long one. Garth motored over to Poltrowen, a town where they had thought of staying for a day or two, and where letters might reasonably be expected to be awaiting them.

He got back just before dusk. There was a pile of correspondence for Sir Oswald, topped by one of Maisie's childish epistles. Garth left his cousin alone to get through it.

Sir Oswald was still smiling over some of Maisie's expressions when Rosamond Treadstone came softly into the room.

“I thought perhaps you might like to see the papers, Sir Oswald. They are late to-day. Oh, I beg your pardon.”

She was turning away when Sir Oswald put out his hand.

“Please don't go,” he said courteously. “This is a letter from my little girl, and she's rather quaint sometimes.”

“Your little Maisie. I have heard my mother speak of her,” Miss Treadstone said quietly. She seated herself in a low chair opposite. “How is she, Sir Oswald?”

“Quite well, thanks,” he answered absently. “Poor little soul, she says she thinks she would rather have a blind daddy at home than a daddy with eyes who is always away.”

Rosamond laughed. “Poor child! Well, I expect there is something to be said for her point of view.”

“‘And I wish my dear Miss Martin were back,'” Sir Oswald went on reading from the letter. “‘Miss King is very good, but she doesn't tell me fairy tales, and she has headaches and can't play with me, and I heard her tell somebody the other day that I was a troublesome child.'”

“What a shame!” Miss Treadstone said indignantly. “Why, Maisie is the best child in the world if she is only managed properly. She—” She pulled herself up sharply.

But Sir Oswald had sprung up on his couch, his eyes ablaze with excitement. Forgetful of his sprained knee he stepped across the rug, he gripped her hands in his.

“How is it you know so much about Maisie?” he questioned fiercely. “You—because I know it now—because my heart told me, the first moment I heard your voice—because you are Elizabeth.” 

“Y
OU ARE
Elizabeth!” Sir Oswald repeated. All the room seemed whirling round him with the shock of his discovery. Rosamond turned her face away, but he had seen the colour that surged over her cheeks in one hot, tumultuous flood that died away to pallor. She tried to free herself, but his hand held hers like a vice.

“Elizabeth! Why have you been so cruel to me—to all of us who cared for you? Why didn't you at least let us know that you were safe?”

Still the girl did not speak, her lips quivered faintly, but no sound came.

“You don't know how I have searched for you—how the fear that some evil had befallen you has haunted me by night and day.”

His clasp was insensibly slackening, the pain in the bruised tendons of his knee was beginning to reassert itself.

She tore herself away. With a supreme effort she steadied her voice.

“You are making some strange mistake, Sir Oswald,” she began. Then she caught sight of his face. “Your knee,” she cried. “Dr. Spencer said it would not be fit to stand upon for a week yet and here you are—” She drew the sofa forward. “Sit down at once,” she commanded.

The pain was making Sir Oswald dizzy, great beads of perspiration were standing on his brow, but he held out bravely.

“Not until you promise that you will not go away, that you will stay and tell me.”

“Oh, but you are taking a mean advantage,” the girl broke in passionately. “I will not—yes, yes!” as his face grew suddenly pale beneath its tan. “I will promise you anything you like, only sit down.”

With a sigh of relief Sir Oswald sank back.

“Sit near me,” he pleaded. “I want to see you. I want to realize what you are like, you wonderful new Elizabeth.”

Rosamond did not obey, she stood on the rug, one hand lying on the high, carved mantelboard.

“Don't you think you take things a little too much for granted, Sir Oswald?” she questioned.

“No, I do not,” he returned bluntly. “Do you think you could cheat me now? That you could make me believe that you are some one else, and not my Elizabeth at all? Can't you guess something of the joy it is to have found you—to know at least that you are safe? Ah, what torments I have gone through! Blind, helpless, unable even to defend you, dreading what a day might bring forth—” he broke off suddenly. “It won't bear thinking of. And all the while you were here, safe and well. If you had only sent us one word.”

The woman standing before him drooped her head.

“I did not think you would care.”

“You did not think I would care!” Sir Oswald repeated. “I had told you I loved you. I had asked you to be my wife.”

“Yes.” She stirred restlessly. She looked away from him down into the blazing heart of the fire. “But that was before you knew.”

“Before I knew—what?” Sir Oswald questioned blankly.

“That I had come to your house under false pretences, that people called me a murderess,” Rosamond said quietly enough, though her eyes were full of passionate misery.

“A murderess!” Sir Oswald repeated scornfully. “You—a murderess!” He laughed aloud at the very idea. “To think they should dare to bring such a charge against you. I would have thrown it back in their teeth. Had you come to me for help that night instead of going to Lady Treadstone, I would have advised you to face it out. I would have stood by your side through the world. Surely you did not doubt that we who knew you would be convinced that you were innocent?”

“No, I didn't know,” Rosamond said wearily. All her strength seemed to desert her, she sat down suddenly in a chair at the end of the couch. “I couldn't expect you to believe my word—just my bare word,” she went on, a growing passion in her voice. “I had deceived you. I had made my way into your house in my dead friend's name. I knew I could teach a little child like Maisie. It was only gradually afterwards that I came to see how wrong I had been.”

“Wrong!” Sir Oswald cried. “You were not wrong, Elizabeth. You were most divinely right. We loved you, Maisie and I; what did it matter by what name you choose to be known? You were yourself, that was all that mattered.”

“Yet the world is not generally so charitable to a woman who gets a situation through false references,” Rosamond said calmly. “Oh, I assure you, Sir Oswald, I know every hard word that can be applied to my conduct—”

“Hard words, hard words!” Sir Oswald broke in hotly. “What do I care about them? All I can think of now is that all these weary months are over, that I have found you at last. Won't you give me at least a welcome, Elizabeth? Won't you tell me you are glad to see me?”

“What if I am not glad?” Rosamond asked passionately. “I have tried so hard to forget,'' she went on, with a quiver in her voice. “I have tried to put all the past from me and to live only in the present. And now you are bringing it all back to me—the misery and the pain and the humiliation—”

“Stop,” Sir Oswald interrupted. His expression had grown suddenly colder. “Heaven knows I don't want to remind you of anything you wish to forget. If you bid me I will go out of your life altogether. You shall never hear of me again—if you tell me that you do not care for me, that there is no hope for me.”

Rosamond did not speak. She looked away from him. Sir Oswald, leaning forward eagerly, could see only her delicate profile silhouetted against the carved oak wainscoting, the droop of her long upcurled lashes as they lay like a dark shadow upon the fairness of her skin. But something in her attitude, in the quiver of her lips, in some vague fashion gave him hope. He managed to catch one of the hands hanging listlessly at her side.

“What am I to do?”

“It would be much better for you if you did go away,” she said beneath her breath.

“But do you want me to go?” Sir Oswald persisted. A new light was dawning in his eyes, his clasp was growing firmer. “Tell me, Elizabeth.”

“I—don't know,” she whispered.

“Don't you?” Sir Oswald drew her nearer. “You will have to let me help you to make up your mind, dear. Let me teach you to say two little words—‘Stay, Oswald.'”

The girl caught her breath, once she tried to drag her hands from his. “Oh, I can't! And what is the good of it all? You can never be anything to me.”

“Why not?” Sir Oswald questioned. “If we care for one another, that is all that matters.”

“That is nothing,” she contradicted. “The barrier between us can never be broken.”

“What barrier?” Sir Oswald questioned, his face growing graver as he noted her agitation.

“The mystery of John Winter's death,” she answered. “That must set me apart for ever.”

“Not from the man who loves you,” Sir Oswald said steadily. “Not from the man you love. Dear, give me the right to fight for you, let me make you my wife, and we will go abroad together while the cleverest detectives in Europe find out the truth.”

For a moment the flush in Rosamond's face grew deeper, then it died away and left her very white. She put out her hand as though to thrust the very idea from her.

“No, no! I have told you it is impossible. Love and marriage are not for me. And you must go away and forget. Try and think how little you really know of me, and it will not be difficult.”

“Won't it?” Sir Oswald laughed bitterly. “As for really knowing you, those months at the Priory last year, when you were an angel of pity to me in my blindness, were worth a life-time of ordinary acquaintanceship. Can't you trust me as you have trusted Lady Treadstone?”

“Trusted Lady Treadstone?” echoed Rosamond. “But don't you understand that she has cared for me for my dead father's sake, because she would not have disgrace brought on his name? If she has pitied me, if she has been kind as any mother to me, it has all been for my father's sake?”

Sir Oswald looked a little bewildered. The truth had not yet dawned on him.

“Your father?” he questioned. “Do you mean that he—?”

“My father was Lord Treadstone—Lady Treadstone's husband,” Rosamond told him quietly. “She is my stepmother. It was on my account that she came down to the Priory and took Walton Grange, and when arrest seemed imminent, and I could think of no one else who could help me, I went to her.”

“You are Lord Treadstone's daughter,” Sir Oswald said slowly. “Then how or why did you—?”

“Did I marry John Winter, that is what you would ask me, isn't it?” she finished, drawing her hand from his. “By the maddest act of folly of which any girl was ever guilty. Oh, yes! You shall know the whole truth now. I was not quite seventeen, a spoiled, indulged only daughter, who had had her own way in everything. One day my father had been at home as affectionate as ever, the next I had a letter from him to tell me that he was to be married that very morning to a woman I had never even heard of. I went mad. I must have gone, really mad. I heard some of the servants talking, they were saying that it was partly on Miss Treadstone's account that my father had done it—that I wanted breaking in. It added fuel to my wrath, if any was needed. I rushed out and while I was still wild with rage I met John Winter.”

She got up suddenly, and going over to the mantelpiece leaned her head on her hands.

A great pity dawned in Sir Oswald's eyes as he looked at her.

“Yes,” he said slowly. “And he—?”

“He rented some land from my father and he trained horses and sold them,” she went on in a low voice. “Latterly he had been breaking in a colt for us, and I—I knew every animal in the place; I had been down to see it several times and consequently had seen John Winter. I rather liked him; he was willing and agreeable, good-looking too, in a flashy kind of way. That afternoon he was on his way to the house to ask me to come down and look at the colt in harness in the new dog-cart. I—oh, how can I tell you what a fool I was?” She broke off, bitter scorn in her voice.