"DEAR MADAM,—
"I deeply regret that you found the house, at which I had asked you to call, shut up. I reached it a few minutes after you had left, and to my own great surprise found—as you had done—no one there but a caretaker. My friend must have been called away suddenly, for on Tuesday, when I saw her, she most kindly arranged that her house should be at my disposal. Please forgive what must have seemed to you most strange. Would it suit you to arrange any meeting-place that would accord with your wishes? With renewed apologies.
"Yours faithfully,"R. MERNSIDE."
With all her undoubted strength of character, Christina was only human, and the courteous apology she had received from the man signing himself "Rupert Mernside," sorely tempted her. Curiosity to see the writer, and a lurking feeling that he might really be able to find work for her, were mingled with a girlish longing for adventure, and for some of the youthful joys she had missed; and all these sensations made her more than half inclined to assign a meeting-place to this Mr. Mernside. She had known few men, either in her quiet Devonshire home, or when she was in the Donaldsons' service, and any pleasant social intercourse with the other sex had never come in her way at all. There rose before her a vision of meeting this man of the bold, characteristic handwriting—of perhaps being taken by him to tea in one of those tea-rooms about which she had heard—tea-rooms where the waitresses were ladies, dressed in soft lilac gowns, with dainty muslin aprons, and where delicious music was played to the fortunate tea-drinkers. To have tea in such a place, with a man whose business it was for the moment to look exclusively after her and her well-being, would be such a treat as she had never enjoyed in all her life. Her parents had not encouraged any social gaiety; thinking over it now, it seemed to Christina that for some inexplicable reason they had avoided society, and actually warded off those of their neighbours who were inclined to be friendly. And with a sudden revolt against her own loneliness and dullness, the girl felt as though at any cost she must seek friendship, amusement, distraction.
"Of course, I haven't any clothes in which to go to a really smart tea-room," she thought, when, in the shelter of her own small room, she read her letter for the second time; "but there maybe somewhere not too smart, where he could take me; and he leaves me to decide where to meet him—and—oh! I do want some fun; I do dreadfully want it!"
The man who would be the central figure of the entertainment, entered little into her calculations. She was far more interested in her vision of tea-rooms, and the smart folk she might be fortunate enough to see there, than in the man whose "open sesame" was to admit her to the sacred precincts. And only when some chance train of thought reminded her of her recent interview with Lady Cicely, did she reflect that the person who would sit beside her, and attend to her wants at the tiny table in the enthralling tea-room, would be a stranger to her, perhaps even an objectionable stranger.
With the remembrance of her visit to Eaton Square, came also the recollection of the tall man with the grave grey eyes, the man introduced to her by Lady Cicely, as "my cousin," and a hot flush of shame rushed to her face, as she wondered what he would think of her, if he knew she was planning to meet a person she had never seen, and of whom she had only heard through a matrimonial advertisement.
He would certainly despise her; and it was not nice to contemplate the kindly glance of those eyes turned to scorn and contempt.
Although she knew it was absurd to suppose that Lady Cicely's cousin could ever be aware of, or interested in, the doings of so insignificant a person as herself, she shrank oddly from doing anything of which he would disapprove.
"To arrange to meet a strange man isn't really a very womanly thing to do," she said, when she sat down to write her letter to the unknown Mr. Mernside. "I shouldn't ever have answered the advertisement at all, if I had not been so dreadfully poor, and I shouldn't like to look Lady Cicely's cousin in the face again if I met this man."
The letter was not so difficult a one to write as the first had been, and its recipient both smiled and sighed, as he read the terse little sentences in the round, girlish handwriting.
"DEAR SIR,—
"Thank you for your kind letter, but I hope I now have a chance of getting some work, so that I need not trouble you any more.
"Yours faithfully,"C. MOORE."
"Well! that's a relief," Rupert ejaculated, throwing the note into the fire; "what I could have done with the girl if she had agreed to meet me, heaven only knows. Margaret would have helped me—but Margaret——"
His meditations ended abruptly; he drew from his breast pocket a letter that had reached him a post or two before Christina's arrived, and for the fiftieth time read it from end to end. The sense of it had long since imprinted itself upon his brain, but it gave him a painful pleasure to let his eyes rest upon the well-formed letters of the handwriting, though a resentful indignation towards the writer stirred within him. She had not treated him well, and yet—she was the one woman in the world to him—this woman of the dark eyes and rare white beauty, who signed her letter with the one word, "Margaret." No address stood at the head of the letter, it was undated; and the postmark was that of the West Central district.
"Forgive me for having left London so abruptly, and without telling you of my intention," she wrote. "I was summoned away by telegram, and in my hurry and anxiety, I forgot to let you know. I cannot tell you my address just now, but Elizabeth is with me, and I am safe and well. I have often warned you, have I not, my dear, faithful friend, that much in my life must always seem to you strange and mysterious. I can give you no explanation now. But trust me still. MARGARET.
"Letters sent to me, c/o Mrs. Milton, 180, Gower Street, will be forwarded."
Mernside wrote four letters, each one of which in turn he tore up and flung into the fire as soon as it was written, finally writing a fifth, which appeared to satisfy him, for, having addressed and stamped it, he put it into his pocket when he went out.
"Drive sharply to 180, Gower Street," were his directions to the driver as he swung himself into a passing hansom, and leant forward on the closed doors, watching the traffic with listless glances, which only saw a woman's dark eyes, set in a white face.
"No, sir, I couldn't tell you Mrs. Stanforth's address," was the uncompromising reply to his question, and Mrs. Milton's inflexible countenance, and flat, rigid form were as uncompromising as her speech; "she bid me say to anyone enquiring, that she was gone in the country for a time, and I can only answer the same to you, as I answers to the rest. Letters and people—they come on here from Barford Road, and I says the same to all of 'em."
Rupert's creed as a gentleman forbade his pressing for the address of a woman who wished to keep herself hidden, but with all the hatred of his sex for mysteries, he moved impatiently away, speculating grimly on the eccentricities of women. Why, when she had a house of her own, did Margaret have her visitors and letters sent to Gower Street for information, or re-addressing respectively? What object was being served by all this mysterious behaviour? And why was she sometimes so apparently frank with him, at other times so strangely secret?
True, that her very uncertainty was part of her charm; but, without swerving in his unshakable loyalty to her, he felt himself occasionally wishing that Margaret had some of the transparent candour of his little cousin, Cicely Redesdale. Cicely was incapable of dark secrets, or hidden, mysterious actions; she and Baba were children together, and one was scarcely more innocent and crystal pure than the other—which reflections brought him by easy stages to his cousin's estates, and his own trusteeship; and the memory of a paper needing Cicely's signature, made him retrace his steps to his own chambers, and thence to Eaton Square, where he found Cicely and her small daughter enjoying the delights of tea together, in the bright nursery at the top of the house.
"Jane has got a sick mother," Cicely explained dolefully; "Jane was imperatively needed at home, at an hour's notice—and behold me, head nurse and nursery-maid rolled into one, and Baba in the seventh heaven of bliss. If you want any tea, Rupert, you must have it here—hot buttered toast and all. Dawson won't approve, but I am tired of trying to live up to him." Dawson was the butler, a magnificent personage who had only condescended to anything more insignificant than a ducal mansion, in consideration of Mr. Redesdale's generosity in the matter of wages; and Dawson regarded any departure from the orthodox, with disapproving eyes.
"You will never succeed in reaching Dawson's criterion of correctness," Rupert laughed; "meanwhile, nursery tea is much jollier than the drawing-room meal. We can eat double as much, and we can spread our own jam."
"But you know, Rupert, I can't spend my whole life in the nursery," Cicely began, when the appetites of the baby and the big man had been partially satisfied. "Baba has chosen a new nurse for herself, but—I can't let her decide anything so important; I am afraid you will call me quixotic if I say I am half inclined to—
"Is it the young person—James's young person?" her cousin broke in. "I knew that girl with the green eyes and shabby clothes was making indelible marks on your kind heart. But—you know nothing about her, dear, and, as you told me, you must have unimpeachable references."
"Rupert, to remind a woman of the things she has said in a remote past, is like driving a pig towards the north, when you want him to go there. When you have a wife, you will understand the inwardness of my remark."
"I shall never have a wife," was the quick retort, "and am I to infer from your remark that you are intending to engage a nurse who cannot produce the necessary references?"
"I don't know what she can produce yet, but I have written to ask your green-eyed friend of the shabby hat, to come and see me, and—then I thought we could talk things over."
"Then 'things' are a foregone conclusion," said Rupert, with a laugh. "I know you, Cicely. The girl seemed to have a way with children; she looked and spoke like a lady, and——"
"And Baba loved her"; Cicely lowered her voice, but the child, absorbed in putting a consignment of dolls to bed, gave no heed to her elders; "and ever since the girl came here, Baba has gone on saying: 'Baba would like that pretty lady to live with her; can't the pretty lady come?' And sometimes children and dogs have wonderful instincts about people, don't they? Baba's instinct may be just the right one."
"It may. Let us hope it will. There was something very straightforward about that girl's eyes, and her voice was particularly pleasant. It reminded me of somebody, but who the somebody is I can't for the life of me remember."
"By the way, didn't you tell me the other day you knew of a nursery governess who wanted work? Can she come and see me as well? Perhaps you have found out more about her by now?"
"She has just succeeded in hearing of work," Rupert answered, and Cicely noticed that, as before, he spoke with a trace of embarrassment. "I have found out nothing more about her, but I hear she is, or hopes to be, 'suited,' as the servants say."
"I am very strongly inclined to try the girl who brought Baba in from the fog. Something about her appealed to me, and she must be able to produce some kind of reference. She can't just have 'growed,' like Topsy, into her present position. Oh! Dawson, who and what is it?" she broke off to say, as the butler's stately form and impassive face appeared in the doorway.
"Sir Arthur Congreve wishes to see your ladyship very particularly," was the reply.
"I will be down in one moment," she answered; and, when the door had closed noiselessly after the butler, she turned to Rupert, and made a small grimace.
"Now, what has brought that tiresome old person here to-day," she demanded of the world in general; "you don't know him, do you? He is a cousin of John's; and the most intolerable bore ever created to worry his long-suffering relations."
"I know him by name, naturally; but I never had the pleasure——"
"Come and have it now." Cicely sprang to her feet, and rang the bell. "I must get a housemaid to take care of Baba; and you come and be introduced to my pet bugbear. He and his wife hardly ever come to town. They look upon it as modern Babylon, sunk in iniquity. He is hugely rich, and their jewels are amazing, but very few people ever see them. He lives in a very remote corner of the country, somewhere on the Welsh border, about ten miles from every reasonable sort of place, and my private opinion is that he is more mad than sane."
"Why?"
"Oh! a woman's reason. I think him so, because I think him so. No; but without joking, all sorts of queer things have happened in that family—dark mysteries, and I fancy even crimes; but John never told me details. Sir Arthur is a most unspeakably conventional person, but I believe some of his relations were quite the reverse. Come and help me entertain him," she added, when a housemaid had entered the nursery; "he will probably disapprove of you, and tell me later on that your presence in the house is damaging to my reputation," she added as they went down the stairs together.
The elderly gentleman who stood on the drawing-room hearthrug, surveying the room with an air of disapproval, was, Rupert thought, one of the handsomest men he had ever seen. White-haired, with a heavy white moustache, his complexion was clear and healthy as a girl's, and his refined, well-cut features were almost cameo-like in their perfect chiselling His eyes were dark, and very bright, and they fixed themselves at once upon Rupert with a glance of suspicion.
"My dear Cicely," he said, shaking her stiffly by the hand, "urgent business, tiresome family business, brought me to this city of dreadful night for a few hours, and I thought I must call and enquire after your health, and the health of Veronica."
"Thank you, Cousin Arthur; do sit down; I am very flourishing, and Baba is in rude health. We don't call her Veronica yet, you know; she is really only quite a baby still."
"I strongly deprecate the calling of children by fancy names," Sir Arthur answered pompously. "Veronica is a name in our family; a name about which, alas! cling many sad associations. But still, I am convinced that if her poor father had lived, your poor daughter——"
"I haven't introduced you to my cousin," Cicely cut in unceremoniously, feeling that any comments upon her husband's possible conduct would be unendurable from Sir Arthur's lips. "I believe you have never met him. Mr. Mernside, Sir Arthur Congreve."
Sir Arthur bowed stiffly. Rupert's greeting was pleasant and friendly; the older man's rigid attitude merely amused him.
"No; I have certainly never met Mr. Mernside," Sir Arthur said coldly; "as you know, my dear Cicely, I never come to this terrible Babylon, unless absolutely driven to do so by irresistible circumstances. And in your husband's lifetime, I do not ever remember to have seen your cousin," he added, with a severe glance at Mernside.
"If you had been much in town in John's lifetime you would often have met Rupert," Cicely answered quickly. "Rupert was one of John's greatest friends, and is Baba's trustee and guardian. But you," she tried to speak more lightly, "you and Cousin Ellen bury yourselves so completely in your country fastness, that you know nothing of the troublesome world in which we live."
"Troublesome world, indeed," answered Sir Arthur, wagging his head and looking at her solemnly. The saving grace of humour had been omitted from his composition, and he took himself, and the whole world, with a seriousness that could not be shaken; "in this dreadful city, you frolic like children on the edge of a volcano, but one day the eruption will come, and——"
"And then we shall all be little bits of lava, shan't we?" Cicely asked, her blue eyes wide and innocent, her lips parted in an engaging smile.
"You are sadly flippant, Cicely. I had hoped that walking through the vale of misery, your flippancy would have fallen from you. But I fear you are determined to turn this vale of tears, this troublesome world, as you so justly call it, into a mere playground."
"A very delightful vale—sometimes," Rupert said, in his slow, charming voice; "the troublesome world can be beautiful, as well as troublesome, you will allow, especially if you live in the country."
"Beautiful?" Sir Arthur glared at the speaker. "But all to be burnt some day—all to be burnt. When I am asked to admire the mountains near my home—the woods, the river—I say the same thing always; I say, 'It is all being prepared for the burning.'"
"Perhaps we may enjoy its beauties during the time of preparation," Rupert said smiling; "until—the conflagration, the beauty is ours."
"I did not call to-day to engage in flippant small talk," Sir Arthur answered sternly. "Like Babylon of old, London is rushing on its doom, and I have no doubt that the fashionable throng which numbers you amongst its members, has long ago resigned every serious thought and effort. Conversation is as loose as manners and morals, and——"
"My manners and morals are not conspicuously loose, Cousin Arthur," Cicely said demurely; "but I don't belong to the smart set, and I don't even want to belong to it, and I expect that is what you meant by the fashionable throng. We live very quietly, Baba and I."
"Quietly? In all this luxury, this pomp?" Sir Arthur glanced round the exquisite room with a shudder. "One of my designs in coming here to-day, was to ask whether you would ever care to come and pay us a visit at Burnbrooke, but we could offer you no such luxury as this. If, however, you would care to come, we have peace there."
"It is very kind of you, and of Cousin Ellen to have thought of it," Cicely faltered with a recollection of a depressing fortnight spent in Sir Arthur's home, during her husband's lifetime; "perhaps in the spring or summer you would let us come and see you."
"We have been away so frequently during the last three years that we have seen few people. My poor wife being a martyr to rheumatism, has had to visit foreign watering places; we have, as you know, been little at home, and we have invited few guests to Burnbrooke. If you will come, we shall be happy to see you; or if at any time you would care to send Veronica with her nurse, to breathe some other air than the pernicious air of this dark town, pray send them."
Cicely made a courteous and smiling rejoinder, but Rupert thought he could read, in the mutinous setting of her pretty lips, that she had small intention of allowing her little daughter to breathe the salubrious air of Burnbrooke.
"You are in town on business only, not for pleasure?" the little lady asked, taking a certain malicious delight in seeing Sir Arthur's start of horror.
"Pleasure? I here for pleasure? Heaven forbid. I have come on troublesome business. I am anxious about the news of my unfortunate brother-in-law and his wife, my poor, foolish sister. Ah! well you never knew her, did you?"
"No, never." Cicely shook her head, wildly trying to unearth from the depths of her mind, any fragments of knowledge she might ever have possessed about Sir Arthur's brother-in-law; but finding herself entirely at sea, gave up the attempt.
"Poor, misguided soul," the visitor went on, with a solemn shake of the head; "she would never listen to reason; never believe what I told her. My sisters—Ah! well, well, I must not trouble you with our family skeletons. I have come up to try and find out if I can where my brother-in-law is, and to avert worse scandals than already exist."
Cicely, still completely at sea as to the drift of his conversation, murmured something non-committal and sympathetic, and he continued speaking with unabated energy.
"I also have some business to do with Scotland Yard," he said importantly; "my wife has lost a piece of jewellery which she greatly values, and which I also value exceedingly. The loss is a very strange one; and, after serious deliberation, I have decided to put the case into the hands of the Scotland Yard officials."
"Have you had a burglary?"
"No, nothing of that kind at all. We can only account for the loss in one way. We were travelling home last week, after a visit, and at Liverpool station my wife's maid put her mistress's dressing bag into the carriage, she herself standing beside the door. One person was in the compartment, a quiet-looking young lady, so the maid describes her. We reached home. My wife discovered the loss of the jewel she so much values. It had been put into the bag at the last minute before we left our friends' house, as she had been showing it to a visitor. The bag, it is true, was unlocked, but the maid vows she did not leave the carriage door, and that the young person in the carriage seemed to be a lady. The fact remains that the pendant has vanished."
"A pendant, was it?" Cicely asked with interest.
"A very beautiful pendant, one that, to my mind, is unique. It is made of a single and very remarkable emerald, set in beautifully chased gold, and above the emerald there are three initials twisted together in gold; the initials A.V.C."
"And the Prince had the dearest face in all the world. It was not exactly handsome, but it was very strong, and when you looked at it, you knew that he was good. And his eyes were grey and very kind, and——"
"And did he wear white armour, all shining, and a silver crown on his head?"
Baba's voice, clear and imperious, interrupted Christina's dreamy tones, and her dimpled fingers seized and shook the girl's hand, in order to attract her attention, which, as the baby was vaguely aware, had wandered from the fairy tale in process of being told. "Did the Prince have white armour?"
"Yes, I expect so," Christina answered, with momentary hesitation, flushing as a vision flashed into her mind of a tall figure in well-cut dark blue serge, that bore no resemblance whatever to silver armour; "he—he put on armour when he had to go and fight dragons, but when he was in the Castle with the lovely Princess, he wore a velvet tunic, dark blue velvet, and a silver crown upon his head."
"And the Princess was just 'zactly like you," Baba said lovingly, pressing her golden head more closely against Christina's breast, and looking into the girl's face with adoring eyes, "just 'zactly like my pretty lady."
Christina laughed softly, running her hands through the child's curls, and bending down to kiss the uplifted face.
"You are a little monkey, Baba," she said, "and a flatterer. You mustn't call Christina a pretty lady. She isn't a bit pretty, and she's only just your nurse."
"Baba will call Christina just 'zactly what she likes," the child answered sturdily, enunciating her words with the clearness often found in an only child who is constantly with grown-up people. "Christina's a very pretty lady, and Baba loves her."
"Baba's a goose, and we must put on our things and go out in the sunshine and see what we can find in these nice lanes." She put the child off her lap, and, going into an adjacent room, brought out the red cloak in which she had first seen her, and wrapped it round Baba's graceful little form, drawing the hood over the golden curls.
Barely a fortnight had gone by since Christina had first entered Lady Cicely's service, after an interview which had ended precisely as Rupert had laughingly declared it would end, in the engagement of Christina as Baba's nurse. The references the girl had produced from her late employer, Mrs. Donaldson, from an old clergyman who had known her in Devonshire, and from her father's solicitor, had seemed to Cicely to justify her in taking this step, even though the Donaldsons were in Canada, the old clergyman dead, and the solicitor gone to South Africa.
"She looks genuine; I am sure sheisgenuine," the little lady said afterwards to Rupert; "and she was so overwhelmed with delight and gratitude at the idea of coming to us."
"No doubt she was," Rupert responded drily; "well! no great harm can come of giving her a month's trial. I am glad you had the saving grace to suggest that. And during the month you will be able to see what she is made of."
But the month had not fallen out quite as Rupert had naturally supposed that it would. Lady Cicely, driven nearly distracted by a scare of scarlet fever in the near neighbourhood, and unable to use Bramwell Castle, which was in the builder's hands, had sent Christina and Baba off, almost at a moment's notice, to Graystone. In this remote hamlet on a remote Sussex border, Mrs. Nairne, an old servant of the Staynes family, owned a small farmhouse, and also received lodgers; and here, for the past ten days, Christina and her little charge had been rejoicing in the country sights and sounds, which even in early December had a fascination all their own.
To Baba, the farmyard was an unfailing source of delight; and to Christina, the great spaces of moorland, the deep lanes, the woods whose soft brown hues gave colour to the hillsides, were a welcome change from London streets, and the squalor of London lodgings. To the girl who for so long had been tossing on a sea of struggle and privation, her quiet life at Graystone was like a haven of rest; and her one passionate prayer was, that at the end of her month of probation, she might still find favour in Lady Cicely's eyes, and keep the situation which seemed to her a more delightful one than she had ever dared to hope for in her wildest dreams. With the help of a little pony cart, she and the child could make quite lengthy excursions about the country side, and Christina often found herself wondering why it was the fashion to talk as if there were no beauties to be found in the country in winter time. She revelled in the great sweeps of moorland that rolled away to far hills on the horizon, hills scarcely less blue than the soft blue of the winter sky. And, if the moorlands were no longer clad in their robe of purple heather, or pale pink ling, the duns and browns of heath and bracken, the dark green of fir-trees, and the brightly tinted leaves of the bilberry plants offered no lack of colour. On the oaks in the lanes bright brown leaves still hung; and the trees that were leafless—delicate birches, sturdy ashes, smooth-stemmed beeches, made so dainty a lacework of bare boughs against their background of sky, that the leaflessness was in itself beautiful. The sunlight poured a flood of radiance on the upland road, as Christina and Baba jogged peacefully along it, in the wake of the small black pony, who meandered on at his own pace, just as the fancy took him. Larks sang in the sunlight; in the copse under the hill the thrushes were already beginning to learn their songs of spring; and Christina, drinking in all the loveliness about her, laughed aloud for sheer gladness of heart.
They had driven for some distance along the main road, when they came to a spot where four roads met, and towards one of them Baba pointed a fat forefinger.
"Let's go along there," she said; "it's such a ducky wee road, and there's a pond."
Christina was lain to confess that the road indicated had special attractions of its own. It wound down from the upland, between hedges which in summer must be a tangled loveliness of briar roses, honeysuckle, and clematis; and, skirting a common where a pond reflected the sunshine on its small ruffled waves, turned down again between woods that climbed steeply up the hill-side on either hand. The lane narrowed as it wound onwards, and Christina was beginning to wonder whether it would end in a mere grassy track, when she saw a clearing in the woods on the right-hand side, and became aware of chimney-pots showing above a very high wall.
"What an extraordinarily lonely place," the girl reflected, looking with a little shudder at the height of the wall, and at the dense woods which hemmed it in on every side. Excepting where the space for the actual house itself had been cleared, and where the lane meandered past it, it was entirely shut in by woods—beech, oak, and birch on the lower levels, pines climbing upward to the summit, closing the building in from all observation. Thanks to the steep hills and the overhanging woods, only a very small proportion of sunshine could filter into the lane, and Christina shivered again, feeling that there was something sinister about this secluded spot, and the house that was barely visible behind its encircling walls.
"Baba thinks p'raps the Princess lives behind there," said the baby, looking with round blue eyes at the frowning walls; "it's a awful, dreadful place; and p'raps the Dragon's got the Princess safe in there; and she's waiting for the Prince to come and get her out."
"The Prince will come in his shining armour," Christina answered brightly; "and then the Princess will come away, and be happy ever after."
At the moment they were driving past a green door in the wall; and as she spoke these words, the door was hurriedly opened, and a tall woman stepped out into the lane. She was closely wrapped in a dark cloak, and some magnificent black lace draped her hair. But it was the sight of her face that made Christina draw in her breath sharply, for she thought she had never seen anything more beautiful than its white loveliness, anything more sad than the glance of the great dark eyes. She panted a little, as though she had been running; there was a strange mingling of fear and anguish in her expression, and she held up her hand with so pleading a gesture, that Christina pulled up, and leaning from the cart, said gently:
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
The dark eyes met hers, a startled look, one would almost have said a look of recognition swept over the white face, then she exclaimed breathlessly:
"Why—I thought—you were—I beg your pardon—it was foolish of me—of course, I have never seen you before."
"No, never," Christina answered emphatically, knowing that the lovely face of this woman, once seen, could never have faded from her memory; "but, I am afraid you are in trouble; can I help you?
"A doctor," the other panted. "I must have a doctor; and yet—I am afraid—I am afraid," she wrung her hands together, and her lips quivered pitifully.
"We are driving back to Graystone. Can I send a doctor if there is one in the place? Or, can I send over to the nearest town?" Christina asked, struck afresh by the anguish in the other's eyes, and realising that only some vital necessity could so have moved her.
"I must have a doctor," the words were reiterated, and the woman put her hands upon the cart, and leant heavily against it. "I can't let—him—die—and yet—no one must know if the doctor comes here," she exclaimed, suddenly pulling herself upright, and speaking fast and earnestly; "not a living soul must ever know; and the doctor himself? If you find a doctor for me, promise to make him swear that he will never divulge where he has been, or what he sees in this house."
Christina looked the bewilderment she felt, and a faint wonder flashed across her mind whether this woman could be sane. Her speech savoured of melodrama, her hurried, breathless sentences, the nervous glances she cast over her shoulder, and the strangeness of the words she spoke, all tended to make the girl doubt the speaker's sanity. But the dark eyes, unfathomable and sad as they were, looked straight into hers without a trace of madness; and though she was plainly afraid of something or somebody, it was not the unreasoning fear of insanity.
"Is there someone ill in that house?" the girl questioned practically; "is it of great importance to have a doctor?"
"It is a matter of life and death," was the broken answer; "when I heard wheels in the lane I came out, hoping it might be someone who would help me. I—cannot leave him myself; I have no one to send—it is all that my servant and I can do to manage——" she pulled herself up abruptly, adding after a moment, "for pity's sake help me if you can."
"I will do the best I can," Christina answered, bewildered surprise still her dominant sensation. "I am a stranger in Graystone. We are only staying in a farmhouse there, but by hook or by crook I will get a doctor for you."
"I think you will carry through whatever you undertake," the other answered, a smile flitting across the wan misery of her face, as her eyes rested on the girl's square chin, and firmly cut lips; "you look as if you would not easily be beaten."
Christina smiled back at her and shook her head.
"I was very nearly beaten a little while ago," she said, gathering up the reins and preparing to turn the pony's head up the steep ascent again; "when one is poor, and hungry, all the fight seems to go out of one. But I don't like being beaten, and I shall find a doctor for you."
She nodded her head cheerily, and was touching the pony lightly with the whip, when the stranger clutched the side of the cart again, and laid a hand on the girl's shoulder.
"Remember, no one must be told that the doctor is coming here; and he himself must be sworn—swornto secrecy. Promise me you will not tell a soul you have seen me, not a living soul." She was labouring under strong excitement, and it alarmed Christina to notice how the whiteness of her face had extended to her very lips, and what black shadows of suffering and fear lay under her eyes.
"Promise," she repeated, her grasp tightening on Christina's shoulder.
"I—promise," Christina answered slowly. "I will not tell anyone that I have seen you, or what you have said to me; and I will—do as you wish about the doctor."
Having received the girl's assurance, the woman drew back from the cart, and stood watching it retrace its way up the hill, her hands wrung together in anguish, her dark eyes wide with pain.
Baba had been a silent spectator of the strange little scene, understanding very little of what passed between her two elders, but watching the face of the beautiful stranger with an intent scrutiny, curious in one so young.
"That was a beautiful Princess," she said, after the cart had driven a short distance. "Baba hopes the Prince will come soon, and take her right away."
"Perhaps he will," Christina answered absently, relieved that the child had woven the strange lady into a fairy tale, thus obviating the possibility that close attention would be paid to remarks Baba might make about their encounter with her; and speculating vainly over all that she had just heard and seen, and over the striking personality of the woman who had commissioned her to do so strange an errand.
Resourceful as nature and necessity had made her, Christina was nevertheless a little puzzled to think how she could make enquiries about a doctor, without betraying what she had been especially conjured to keep secret; but during the drive home her plans were matured, and, having reached the farm, and put Baba into her cot for her afternoon nap, she went to the kitchen in search of Mrs. Nairne.
That worthy dame was engaged in making scones for tea, and turned a flushed but kindly face to Christina, who had already won her heart.
"Well, missy, you and the precious baby's had a nice drive; and I'm sure you're wise and right to take her out early, in the sunshine, and let her rest a bit before her tea—a prettier baby never was."
"She is a darling," Christina answered, "and if she hadn't the sweetest, most wholesome nature in the world, she would be spoilt, everybody adores her so!"
"There! and who can wonder, miss. The little dear! I was baking some scones for her tea and yours, miss, and——"
"That is very good of you, Mrs. Nairne. I was going to ask whether you would be so kind as to look in upon Baba presently; she is asleep in her cot, and quite safe there. But, if you would look at her now and then I should be so grateful. I haven't had the cart, sent round to the stables, for I must go up to the post office."
"And I'll do it with pleasure, miss. You go out with a light heart; no harm shall come to that little dear, that I'll promise you."
The post office, which occupied one side of the tiny general shop, was at the end of the straggling row of houses Graystone called its village street; and Mr. Canning, the postmaster, besides watching over His Majesty's mails, served customers with bacon and butter, sweets or string, sugar or tea, as occasion required. He was weighing out very brown and moist looking Demarara sugar when Christina entered the shop, and he looked at her over his spectacles, with all the absorbing interest felt by a villager for the stranger in their midst.
"A shillingsworth of penny stamps, please," Christina said, when with much deliberation he had tied up the parcel of brown sugar and handed it to his customer, "and a packet of halfpenny cards." Then, when the customer had departed, she asked a few questions about the neighbourhood, adding, with well-feigned carelessness:
"I suppose in such a small place as this you have no resident doctor?"
"Well, no, miss," the man answered; "we have no one nearer than Dr. Stokes—Dr. Martin Stokes. He lives on the other side of the hill at Manborough. I hope the little lady is not ailing?" Mr. Canning asked sympathetically, for Baba's gracious little personality had endeared itself to the postmaster, and to the rest of the villagers.
"No; oh, no!" Christina answered quickly; "she is very well, and we like this lovely place so much. It is a good thing, though, to know where the doctor lives, isn't it?" she added, brightly and evasively.
"Ah! there you are right, miss. Getting the doctor in time saves fetching the undertaker, as I've said more than once," and Mr. Canning bowed Christina out of his shop, with all the empressement of a courtier.
"Manborough—the other side of the hill." It was, as the girl knew, at least three miles off, and Sandro, the fat pony who stood lazily flicking his tail before the shop door, was not to be hurried under any circumstances.
"A matter of life and death!" Those words, and the anguished tones in which they had been uttered, recurred to her, as she stood looking thoughtfully up the village street, and before her eyes rose the white, agonised face of the woman who uttered them.
"I think you will carry through whatever you undertake." Other words spoken in that same voice, came back to the girl's thoughts, and she looked with a puzzled frown at Jem, the farm boy, who stood at the pony's head.
"Taking the short cut over the moor, I believe I can walk there as quickly as Master Sandro would joggle along the main road," she reflected, saying aloud after that second of reflection:
"You can take the cart back, Jem; and please ask Mrs. Nairne if she will be so very kind as to give Miss Baba her tea; and say I have been detained."
The boy nodded and drove off, whilst Christina walked away in the opposite direction, following the main road to Manborough, until she reached a point some way beyond the village, where a steep path—the short-cut she had recollected—struck across the open moorland. She had just reached this point, and was about to turn into the by-path, when the hoot of a motor sounded behind her, and turning, she saw a large car coming slowly up the road. It contained only two occupants; and with a leap of the heart at her own audacity, Christina suddenly resolved to stop them, and ask for their help.
"A matter of life and death!" the words still rang in her ears, and with the resourcefulness in emergency which belonged to her character, she held up her hand to the two men in the car, and signalled to them to stop. The great car instantly slowed down, and Christina, flushing rosily at her own audacity, stepped forward to speak to one of the two men who bent towards her. Both were gentlemen, she saw at once, and one of them she recognised, and her heart almost stopped beating, when her eyes met the grey eyes of Lady Cicely's cousin.
He looked at her with grave courtesy, but evidently with no idea that he had ever seen her before; and, indeed, on the one and only occasion when they had met in Lady Cicely's boudoir, he had paid very scant attention to the girl, beyond observing that she was white and thin, and very shabbily dressed. The girl who stood now beside his car was neatly and becomingly gowned in garments of soft dark green, which had the effect of making her eyes look very deep and green; she was flushing rosily and becomingly, and the wind blew her dark hair into fascinating little curls about her forehead.
"Oh! please forgive me for stopping you," she exclaimed breathlessly, "but—are you going to Manborough?"
"Yes," Rupert answered, "we are going through Manborough. Is there anything we can do for you?"
Christina noticed again, as she had noticed on the occasion of their first meeting, the peculiarly musical quality of his voice; its tones sent little thrills running along her pulses, and a dreamy conviction crept over her, that, if only he would go on speaking, she could willingly stand here for ever, listening to his deep, vibrating voice. His question roused her to the absurdity of her thoughts, and, flushing more vividly, she answered:
"I hardly dare ask you what flashed into my mind to ask, when I stopped you. But I am very anxious to get quickly over to Manborough to the doctor; it is an urgent case, and I——"
"Of course we will drive you over," Rupert broke in quickly, opening the door, and holding out his hand to help her into the back part of the car. "I am very glad we happened to be passing."
"It was dreadfully audacious of me to stop you," Christina answered, smiling in response to his smile, "but I do so want to get to the doctor as fast as I can, and when I saw the car, I thought of nothing but what I wanted to do."
Rupert glanced back at her, an amused twinkle in his grey eyes.
"You don't let obstacles hinder your attaining your goal?" he questioned.
"I—don't think I do," was the reply; "and especially when it is a matter of real importance—one of life and death." By this time they were whirling along the road at a pace which rendered conversation difficult, and Christina sat back in her comfortable seat, looking first at the man who had spoken to her, and was now steering the machine, then at his companion who sat beside him. Now that Rupert was no longer smiling pleasantly at her, she observed how grave and worn was his face, what new deep lines seemed to have carved themselves about his mouth, what a shadow of pain, or of some gnawing anxiety lay in his eyes.
"He is in trouble," the girl thought, her heart contracting with pity, as her eyes rested on the strong, rugged face. "I wish I could help him; he looks as if he had lost something he cared for with all his soul, and it is breaking his heart!"
From the strong face, with its lines of pain, her eyes turned to his companion—a slight, alert man, military in build—and with fair, good-humoured features devoid of any marked personality.
His blue eyes had brightened when Christina stopped the car, and whilst she talked to Rupert, he watched her expressive face with growing admiration. They had only proceeded a short distance on their journey, when he turned round to the girl, and said kindly:
"We are going a great pace, and you are not dressed for motoring; you must be cold. Will you wrap yourself in this?" and, drawing from behind him a heavy fur coat, which he had brought as an extra wrap, if necessary, he handed it to Christina, who gratefully rolled herself in its warm folds.
"By Jove! she looks more fetching than ever, with her face looking out of all that fur," the blue-eyed young man reflected, when he again glanced over his shoulder at her, "those green eyes of hers are like no others I ever saw," and Christina, little as she was in the habit of considering such things, could not help noticing how often during their three-miles' drive, the young man turned to look at her, or to shout a remark. The grey-eyed man looked round only once, to say shortly but kindly:
"Quite comfortable?" But even those two words in the vibrating voice, had, as before, an oddly thrilling effect on Christina's pulses.
That rapid drive across the moorland, in the low sunlight of the December afternoon, seemed to her for long afterwards, like part of some extraordinary dream—a dream in which she, and the grey-eyed man, and the beautiful white-faced woman, were all playing parts; a dream which had no real relation at all to the commonplace details of everyday life.
"Here is Manborough," Rupert called out, when, over the brow of a steep hill, they came in sight of clustering red-roofed houses amongst pine woods; "now where does the doctor live? What is his name?"
"Doctor Martin Stokes is his name; I don't know what his house is called, but Manborough is only a small place," Christina answered. "If you will very kindly put me down in the main street, I shall easily find the right house."
"Oh, no, we will drive you up in state," was the laughing rejoinder; and the car once more slowed down, whilst Rupert put a question to a passing rustic, who jerked his thumb to the right.
"Doctor's house be up among they pines," he said; "Doctor calls 'un Pinewood Lodge."
"Unromantic and ordinary person, that doctor," said Rupert, with a short laugh; "this country and those woods might inspire a man to invent a name with some sort of poetry in it. Ah! here is the lodge in question—and as ordinary as its name," he concluded, stopping the car before a closed brown gate, through which a well-kept drive led to a red-brick house, that might have been transplanted bodily to these heights, from a London suburb.
"I don't know how to say thank you properly," Christina said a little tremulously, when she stood by the brown gate, helped out of the car by the blue-eyed young man, who had skilfully forestalled Rupert in this act of gallantry; "it is very, very good of you to have helped me, and will you please forgive me for being so bold and stopping you as I did?"
Rupert laughed and held out his hand.
"Don't think twice about it," he said heartily. "I am very glad you did stop the car, and very glad we were able to save so much time for you. I hope the doctor will pull your patient well through the illness." His hand closed over Christina's small one, the blue-eyed man likewise shook her by the hand, and before the door bell of the doctor's house had been answered, the car had whirled out of sight.
"Poor little girl, she was very prettily grateful," Rupert said to his companion. "I wonder whose illness she is agonising over. Plucky thing to do, stopping us as she did."
"She is a young woman of resource," the other answered. "I like that sort of 'git up and git' way of tackling a difficulty. Now, in her place, I should have just begun to think what might have happened if Ihadstopped somebody's car, by the time the car was two miles further down the road."
"My dear Wilfred, you hit your own character to a nicety," Rupert answered with a laugh; "but it's only your confounded laziness of mind that prevents your being as much on the spot as that little green-eyed girl."
"Very fetching eyes, too," Wilfred mused aloud, "and a smile that she ought to find useful. Can't we come back this way to-morrow, old man? We might find she wanted some errand done in the opposite direction, and I'll keep a sharp look-out for her all along the road!"
"As it happens, I have every intention of coming back this way," Rupert answered drily, "though not in order to enable you to rescue distressed damsels. You were not intended for a knight-errant, my good Wilfred; leave well alone. But I am bound to come back through Graystone. I promised Cicely that on my way home from Lewes, I would look in on Baba and her new nurse. They are lodging at old Mrs. Nairne's farm, and it's somewhere near Graystone village. Cicely wants to know whether the new nurse is all she should be; we will look in upon them on our way back."