ROSAMOND'S ORDEAL

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 457, 19 May 1932, Page 16

ROSAMOND'S ORDEAL

By

Author or “In Apple Blossom Time,” “Threads of Eire,” “Love Set Free,” etc.

L. G. MOBERLY.

CHAPTER XXL Barbara. Barbara sat besicle her mother’s bed looking at the hard handsome face which even in sleep seemed to lose none of its hardness. {Summoned by Somersley’s illness from JSowerby, and setting in order the house her husband had bought, she lingered on at Treadway from day to day, hoping against hope that the dumb lethargy in which her mother seemed sunk would lift. Hour after hour she sat by the sick woman’s bedside, watching the immovable face, longing to lind some way of getting through that mask behind which Marion Somersley shielded herself from all her fellow beings. As she sat there, Barbara's thoughts went back to her childhood when her mother had seemed so remote, yet sc desirable, a being; and they travelled to her girlhood when there had come that sharp conflict of wills, the very remembrance of which made the mature woman shiver, and the haunting sadness in her eyes deepen; and then her thoughts swept shudderingly over the 20 years of her married life which had meant—

She forced her mind away from those memories, trying to concentrate it upon some feasible future for herself and David. If only he had not chosen so remote and desolate a house for their home! {She shuddered again. Certainly Sower by was within a few miles, but the house was so lonely, so unspeakably lonely! David, and she, and those great Alsatian dogs would be so isolated in that place where marsh and moorland shut them down into solitude. Again she shook off her forebodings, her glance turning once more to her mother’s face. The nurse, sitting in the dressing-room, within sight of her patient, found herself wondering why Lady Rawston’s face held such depths of tragedy, why to look into the blue eyes brought a lump into her own throat! And Barbara, for the thousandth time was wondering what had caused her mother’s stroke; why the visit of a perfect stranger, as described by Delia Fraser, should have had such dire results.

As Barbara’s thoughts reached this point, Delia herself slid into the room, and Barbara inwardly scolded herself for the sudden feeling that there was something snake-like about Delia, something creeping and sinister. Yet the girl’s smile was more than usually sweet and deprecating, and her even full of sympathetic anxiety.

‘T can’t bear to see Lady Somersley like this,” elie whispered, “and I wish I had never allowed her to see that horrible girl who upset her.” “Are you sure it was the girl who did the mischief?” Barbara asked, drawing Delia out of the sick-room, and into the adjoining boudoir. ‘•’Are you sure of that ?” “Of course I can’t be sure, because I was not there when they had their talk. But Lady Somersley seemed quite well before she came, and the stroke happened whilst she was here.”

Barbara looked thoughtfully out of the window for a moment, then seemed to come to a sudden resolution.

“I shall go and see that girl,” she said. “Perhaps she can explain what happened. I wonder no one has thought before of going to see her,” she added. “.The doctor did go,” Delia’s eyelids flickered, her green eyes gleamed, “but the girl—Miss Tranbv—only told him she and Lady Somersley had been discussing private business. As though a total stranger, as she was, could really have had private business here. I looked upon that girl as rather a nasty kind of adventuress myself.” Delia’s tone held such conscious virtue that Barbara, still ashamed of her feeling of repulsion, inwardly writhing. “But even if she were an adventuress, why should she make my mother ill ?” I can’t in the least understand it,” Barbara persisted, “or can my cousin, Mr. Hobart.” “I daresay not,” Delia’s tone for a second became venomous, but she dropped back quickly to her normally silken accents. “Mr. Hobart naturally admires Miss Tranby. She is so very charming, but then, the adventuress type usually is charming, isn’t it?” she added further, with a soft laugh. “I really don't know,” Barbara’s voice was cold. “I have no experience of the adventuress type.” Delia’s eyes looked at her narrowly; there was a mischievous smile in their depths. “Oh, Lady Rawston,” she exclaimed, “please don’t look so—so grave and as if I had annoyed you. But—i can’t help feeling a little bitter about this Miss Tranby who has dropped down from nowhere and made dear Lady Somersley ill. It makes me angry to think a stranger should come and cause all this anxiety—and why? That is the puzzle -—why did she do it ” “Why, indeed?” Barbara echoed. “If she did do it. We ought, in justice to her. to be sure of that first.” “And —Lady Rawston,” Delia’s voice was more than ever ingratiating, “I did want to ask you'something very special, only I hate worrying about my own stupid little affairs. But as you have two nurses here, Lady Somersley does not really need me, and I wondered whether I could be spared for a day or two. There is a little business I want to see to in town.”

“Why, yes, of course,” Barabara assented kindly. “My mother certainly will not need any secretarial work done for her at present; whilst I am here I can answer notes and messages and help my father if he. needs me. Do go; and take two or three days away.” Delia’s gratitude was very pretty and fervent, and Barbara, a good deal absorbed in her mother’s illness, did not for a moment connect Delia’s anxiety to go to London with Neil Hobart’s departure on the day before. “If you are going away to-morrow,” she said to the girl, “I will take my bull by the horns and go to see Miss Tranby to-day. You say she left her address.” “Oh, yes, she left her address,” Delia sniffed a little. “She is a kind of ‘help,’ or servant, or something to Mrs. Folkard,, of Wayside Cottage.” “A servant? But I thought she was a lady V* “I daresay she may be,” Delia’s answer was accompanied by another sniff, “but she must be rather queer altogether. You see she was mixed up with that murder the other day.” “Hardly mixed up with it, was she?” Barbara brought her mind back with a wrench to the happenings of the moment. “Surely it was by the merest chance that she found the poor man in the lane.” “T don’t know about chance,” Delia ; said darkly. “It was dragged out of her at the inquest that she had known i Mr. Trevor quite well, that he and she j were old friends.”

“Even if they were, I don’t see that she was mixed up in the murder.” “There was something queer about it all,” Delia insisted, “and I believe that woman at the rectory, that white-faced woman, who seems to have bewitched young Mr. Dyson, was a friend of Mr. Trevor’s, too. In fact, I even heard a rumour that he and she were more than friends.” “Isn’t it wiser not to listen to rumours?” Barbara rejoined gently. “It so often spreads lies; and the relationship of that unfortunate Mr. Trevor to the lady at the rectory is decidedly no concern of ours. I thought the rector gave me to understand that his own son was going to marry the lady.” Delia tossed her head. Roger Dyson's indifference to her charms had aroused her active dislike, and she was acute enough to know that lie was not only indifferent to her, lie actually disliked her; and this affront to her vanity was beyond forgiveness. “Poor creature! It she Is going to marry Mr. Dyson, I pity her,” she said acidly. “He will be a regular ‘l’m-tlie-master-of-tlie-house’ sort of husband, expecting a doormat wife. I know his type.” Barbara’s instinctive repulsion from the girl became at that moment active dislike. She cut short the conversation with a curtness very unlike her usual gentle courtesy; and half an hour later was speeding in her small car along the moorland road towards Wayside Cottage. She was determined to get to the bottom of that story about the visitor who had upset her mother; she intended to induce Miss Tranby, of whom Delia Fraser had spoken so scornfully, to tell her every detail of that interview which had ended so disastrously. She looked with interest at the low white house by the wayside, and Mrs. Folkard received her more or less courteously. Indeed, that sharp-tongued individual was feeling wonderfully mellowed by the advent of a titled lady, and she melted into something like graciousness beneath Barbara's disarming smile, and vibrating “You wish to Bee Miss Tranby?” she said in accents more honeyed than Rosamond could have believed possible. “She is out in the kennels, but I will fetch her in. She’s wonderfuly good with the dogs. They seem to know she understands them.” “My husband has two of your beautiful Alsatians,” Barbara remarked, as Mrs. Folkard took her into the small drawing room. “They are quite at home now in our new house near Sowerly.” “Oh, they were lovely dogs. I don’t think Sir David will ever regret buying them. He isn’t with you just now?” “No —not just now.” Barbara’s easy, spontaneous manner all at once stiffened. “He is getting our new house in order.” “And I believe you will like the dog he picked out the other day,” Mrs. Folkard chattered on with some irrelevance, “as nice a Sealvham as I have ever had.” “The other day? But my husband has not been down here looking at dogs lately ?”

“Not so very many days ago; but I expect he only ran down just for the dog,” Mrs. Folkard said quickly, conscious of a possible indiscretion. “He was keen on a Sealyliam, and simply ran down to see it.”

“Yes, perhaps,” Barbara assented, wondering, nevertheless, why her husband had not mentioned his visit to the neighbourhood, and why he had not been to Treadway Court. “The dogs will have a happy home with us,” she added absently, her gaze fixed upon the tall girl, who at the moment became visible through the open window. “Is that Miss Tranby?” she asked quietly. “Yes, and oddly enough Miss Tranbv’s people live near Sowerly, too. I only found that out the other day. I can’t think why she has to work —I think she fell out with her stepmother. Her people will be near neighbours of yours.”

Mrs. Folkard spoke quite eagerly, with an undefined regret that she had not been more polite to the girl whose own relations were apparently county people, a girl upon whom so important a person as Lady Rawston had come to call. “Near neighbours of mine?” Barbara asked vaguely. “Oh, you mean at Sowerly? Very likely. I know nobody there yet, and we arc some way from the village.” Her eyes were still fixed on the girl who had now come in through the French window.

“The children said I was wanted,” Rosamond looked from Mrs. Folkard to the visitor, the colour coming and going upon her face, and her eyes very bright. She had recognised Barbara, having seen her both in Treadway Church and in the tiny village street, and for a moment astonishment made further speech impossible.

“Thank you so much for allowing me to speak to Miss Tranby,” Barbara said pointedly to Rosamond’s employer. “There are one or two questions I should like to ask her, on a private matter,” she added, a hint which Mrs. Folkard was reluctantly forced to take.

She swept out of the room rather noisily, with an unnecessary banging of the door, and the two who were left behind stood silently contemplating one another, in a silence which Barbara was the first to break. “Miss Tranby,” she said slowly, her glance taking in the girl’s youthful grace, the sea-blue loveliness of her eyes, the daintiness of her colouring, “I came here to-day to ask you whether you can explain my mother’s illness.” “Yes,” Rosamond replied, “I think 1 can explain it. I went to ask her who I really am, and the question upset her.”

“Who—you—really—arc?” Every word was emphasised with a pause between each, and Barbara drew a step nearer to Rosamond, as she breathed quickly. “Why did you go to my mother?” “Because Mrs. Peters told me Lady Somersley knew. But when Lady Somersley would not tell the truth, I said I should ask you. Will you tell “I ” said Barbara, “If” And suddenly slic flung out appealing hands towards the girl, and broke into a storm of soft sobbing. (To be continued daily.)