"Your being in town for Christmas is quite an unusual occurrence, isn't it, Cousin Arthur?"
"Quite unusual; I may almost say, unprecedented. Dear Ellen and I, as you know, have the greatest horror of any prolonged stay in this Babylon, but, at the present moment, it is impossible to avoid it."
"And Cousin Ellen is bearing up pretty well?" Cicely could not keep the twinkle out of her eyes, although her voice was perfectly grave; but Sir Arthur, being, as has been said, totally devoid of humour, only observed the becoming gravity of tone, and not the twinkle.
"As well as can be expected," he responded, with a gloomy shake of the head, "but she dislikes hotels at all times, and at Christmas she doubly dislikes having to live a hotel life. We have our little festivities at home, quite small, unpretentious festivities, for the servants and the men on the estate, and we shall feel not taking part in them."
"And surely the servants will miss you?" Cicely said with her pretty gracious manner, whilst, it must be confessed, she inwardly wondered whether the Congreves' household staff would regret or be relieved, by the absence of their master and mistress at this festive season.
"We hope so, we hope so," Sir Arthur answered pompously; "dear Ellen and I always try to infuse a wholesome spirit into all the little gaieties, and we feel keenly being absent this Christmas. But we must be in London just now. Our own beloved border is too remote." Cicely thought with a shudder of that wild Welsh border on which the Congreve mansion stood, and instinctively she drew her costly furs more closely round her dainty person, as if the very memory of the remote region gave her a sensation of chill.
"You are in town on business, of course," she went on, more for the sake of saying something, than because she felt the slightest grain of interest in the affairs of her husband's elderly cousin. "I must bring Baba to see Cousin Ellen before we go to Bramwell. Baba is the duckiest wee thing in the world—in my prejudiced opinion—and I believe Cousin Ellen will like her."
Sir Arthur disliked all modern terms of endearment. He looked frigidly at Cicely; and wondered, not for the first time, what his sensible and sober-minded cousin, John Redesdale, could possibly have seen to admire, in this frivolous creature who was now his widow.
"I am not surprised poor John died," Sir Arthur reflected; "such flightiness, such flippancy, must have grated on him terribly." It was not given to Sir Arthur to understand his fellow-men, much less his fellow-women; and it is doubtful whether he would have believed John Redesdale himself, if that dear and noble man had risen from the dead, to assure his cousin of his passionate and unswerving devotion to Cicely, his much-loved wife.
"Dear Ellen will be very pleased to see your little girl," Sir Arthur said stiffly, after that swift moment of thought. "You know we always call her Veronica. We disapprove of pet names, and Veronica is a valued name in our family." The vexed question of Baba's style and title, being one that recurred on every occasion when Cicely and Sir Arthur met, the little lady made a hasty change of subject, saying brightly:
"I will bring her one day. You know she was ill at Graystone. She gave me a terrible fright, but she is quite well again, and I think we owe a great deal to Christina, Baba's delightful nurse—a lady, a most dear and charming girl, who is as much of a companion for me, as for her own special charge."
"A lady? A lady nurse? I hope you are wise in this, my dear Cicely; it is rather an innovation, a departure from the good old ways. Now, I have a theory that a middle-aged nurse of the very respectable, old-fashioned type, is the best sort of person to be about a child."
"If only one could dig her out of anywhere," Cicely answered with her bright smile; "but she is so scarce nowadays, as to be practically prehistoric. I have had every variety of nurse, and they seemed to me to oscillate between minxes and humbugs, until I found Christina."
"And with this young woman you no doubt had excellent references?" said Sir Arthur, fixing a piercing glance upon his companion; "too much care could not be exercised about the person who has charge of your little girl."
Cicely gave what she afterwards explained to herself as a mental gasp, but she was mistress of the situation. She looked into Sir Arthur's severe face, with a smile upon her own, and said smoothly—
"I do agree so entirely with you about being very careful who one engages as a nurse for a little child. I often feel that Baba's whole future depends on the hands that mould her now, when her dear little character is so much clay, to be made into what shape the hands choose."
Sir Arthur, let loose on another of his favourite hobby-horses, the education of the young, forgot to notice that his cousin's pretty widow had omitted to answer the question he had put to her, and cantering away on the above horse, did not realise that he was as ignorant as before, about Christina's references. He was still descanting forcibly on the most absolutely perfect, and, in fact, the only way of training a child in the way it should go, when the door of the hotel sitting-room opened, and Lady Congreve entered. She was a depressed-looking little woman, with the meek mouth and deprecating eyes of a wife whose lord's word is law—and more than law—and her first glance was not for their guest, but for the masterful gentleman standing with legs firmly apart on the hearth-rug, giving his opinion, in the full certainty that Cicely's interested attention, signified complete acquiescence in all his views.
"Ah! my dear, there you are," he broke off to say, with a gracious wave of his hand to his wife. "Cicely and I have been talking about education, and I am glad to think she sees matters quite as I see them."
The tiniest smile dimpled about Cicely's mouth. Sir Arthur's interpretation of her total silence during his harangue, pleased her sense of humour, but, being of a peace-loving disposition, and averse to argument, especially with such an obstinately one-sided arguer as Sir Arthur, she allowed his statement to pass without contradiction, and greeted Lady Congreve with the charming cordiality, that gave her so delightful a personality.
"I am so sorry you have to be in town at this time of the year, just when you must want to be at home," she said sympathetically. Lady Congreve cast another fleeting glance at her husband, then looked with a sigh round the stiffly-furnished sitting-room, with its suite of brightly upholstered furniture, and its particularly unhomelike air.
"It is a great disappointment to us both," she answered, in her soft, deprecating voice, that to Cicely always seemed to be apologising for daring to make itself heard at all. "I dislike this terribly noisy, wicked city as much as dear Arthur does; and we had looked forward to our usual pleasant Christmas gathering. To me, Christmas is scarcely Christmas if it is not spent in a home—a real home."
In the flash of a second, Cicely, with her wonted kindly impulsiveness, made up her mind to do what in the bottom of her soul, she knew she loathed doing, and what she knew would rob her own Christmas of all its joyousness. She looked from one to the other of the two Congreves—Sir Arthur still upright on the hearth-rug; his wife a small, dejected heap in an armchair—and said in her most gracious manner—
"I do wonder if you will do what I am going to ask you to do? I know you are here on business, but just at Christmas time itself, just for Christmas Day and Boxing Day, you can't do any business at all, so will you come and spend at least those days with us at Bramwell? We go to-morrow; could you come three days hence—on Christmas Eve, or earlier, if you will. I quite see that your own home is too far away, but our home is so near, only an hour by train, and we mean to try and have a home-like Christmas. Do come."
Lady Congreve's pathetic little face brightened, a gleam of pleasure shot into her wistful eyes. Somewhere in that small, crushed soul of hers—the soul that for nearly forty years her husband had manipulated with ruthless hands—she had a profound longing for all the colour and glory of life, and in some nebulous and inexplicable way, Cicely had always seemed to her the embodiment of both.
"Oh, Arthur!" she faltered. "Could we? It would be delightful; such a relief after this great wilderness of an hotel. Could we go, dear?"
Sir Arthur drew his brows together in a judicial way peculiar to him, and bearing no relation to the importance of the matter in hand.
"Very kind of you to think of such an arrangement, my dear Cicely," he began; "very kind, indeed. And it is true, as you say, that ordinary business cannot be transacted at Christmas-time. But—we are not here on quite ordinary business. I think I told you when I last saw you, that my unfortunate brother-in-law is giving us great uneasiness."
"Yes, you did mention it," Cicely answered, again racking her brain in vain to remember what constituted the misfortunes of the brother-in-law, "but I did not know——"
"Quite so, quite so," Sir Arthur interrupted, waving her words aside; "we do not discuss the subject frequently, because, as you are aware, it is one which is most repugnant to us. But, for my poor sister's sake, I feel bound to come forward now, greatly as I dislike being mixed up with such an affair. I belong to those who believe that the touch of pitch defiles."
Cicely wondered more and more who and what the recalcitrant brother-in-law could be, that the mention of him drew such strong expressions from Sir Arthur's lips, brought so stern a look to his face; but he did not allow her time to ask any questions, or make any comment on his speech, resuming with scarcely a pause—
"I am using what influence I possess, to have the whole matter hushed up, as far as is compatible with right and justice. The poor man himself is not likely to live long enough to be punished; and if scandal can be averted from our family, which for so many generations has beensans reproche, I shall feel rewarded for all my trouble."
Cicely reflected that it was quite useless to try and disentangle the meaning of Sir Arthur's mysterious and incomprehensible words; and, being by nature the least inquisitive of beings, she asked no further questions.
"But if all that you have to do leaves you free for two or three days at Christmas, please come to us," she said; "we shall be only a very small party. My brother Wilfred can't come, and I am afraid Rupert Mernside, my cousin, may not be with us this year; but my dear old governess, Miss Doubleday, always comes to us for Christmas, and Baba, Christina, and I are the gay and youthful elements. I like to make Christmas a very happy time for my girlie," she added, almost apologetically when she saw how, at her words, Sir Arthur's lips closed tightly. "You think it rather wrong to be young and gay, don't you?" she went on, a touch of defiance in her pretty voice; "but, you see, I am—anyhow—not at all old—and I want to keep myself as young as ever I can for Baba."
"I have no objection to youth, as such," Sir Arthur answered, with a lofty condescension that gave Cicely an overpowering wish to giggle feebly; "but I should have thought you, a widow, with so many cares, so many responsibilities, and above all with an immortal soul entrusted to your care, that you would have put childish things behind you, and taken up life with greater seriousness."
"Do you know," Cicely answered very softly, though her eyes shone, "John, my dear husband, told me he hoped I should always keep my young heart, and I hope I shall. I want to be young—as he liked me to be—when I meet him again. And I want to keep Baba always with her child soul, too," she went on, a sudden dreaminess in her glance. "John used to say that the Kingdom of Heaven was for the child-like, and the children. But I mustn't waste your time and Cousin Ellen's in argument," she exclaimed, with a brisk change of tone; "only promise to come to Bramwell for Christmas, and we will try to make you happy. And I am sure you will like my dear little Christina."
"You are not allowing her to presume on her being a lady, I do trust, Cicely?" Sir Arthur said gravely. "You keep her in her place? If she has undertaken to be a children's nurse, she should learn to occupy the position usually occupied by children's nurses, and only that."
Cicely lifted lovely pleading eyes to his censorious blue ones.
"I am afraid you will think me all sorts of dreadful things, but I could not keep Christina exclusively in the nursery. When you see her, you will understand what I mean. She and Baba are a good deal with me, and at Bramwell they will probably be with me still more." There was a gentle dignity about her manner, which made even the outrageous autocrat before her, understand that he had touched the limit of interference. Cicely might appear to be sweet and yielding; and, indeed, she was almost invariably more inclined to yield her own will, than to struggle to attain it, but there was no lack of character in her small person, and when she had once determined that a course of action was expedient or right, nothing had power to turn her from that course.
"Your cousin Ellen and I will enjoy spending Christmas with you very much," Sir Arthur said, beating his retreat with dignity. "I have no doubt I can manage to be out of London for three days, and I should like to see Bramwell again. John and I had many talks about the alterations and improvements he carried out there."
Cicely had a vivid recollection of her husband's whimsical description of Sir Arthur's well-meant, but annoying, suggestions about those same alterations, and she was conscious again of a giggle choked on its way to birth, but she contrived to make a suitable reply, adding hastily—
"And when you were in town in November, you told me you had some business with Scotland Yard about a pendant. I do hope the police have found the jewel for you."
"Alas! no. It is altogether a most singular thing about that pendant. I told you it was a family heirloom, a magnificent emerald with three letters A.V.C. twisted together above it."
"Yes?"
"The police had a very strange clue the other day, a clue that, so far, has come to nothing. A pawnbroker in a back street in Chelsea, came forward, and stated that a pendant, answering in every particular to the stolen one, had been offered to him for sale, a few weeks ago."
"Then why didn't he send for the police, and give the person offering it for sale into custody?" Cicely asked.
"Because the police had not then notified the pawnbrokers of London of the loss. In fact, as far as I can make out, the attempted sale must have taken place at almost identically the same time when I came to London to make enquiries about the pendant. The pawnbroker himself, it seems, did not see the pendant. Two of his assistants were in charge of the shop, when a young woman came in, and asked them what they would give her for it. They seem to have suspected her from the first, for she was obviously very poor, and not at all the sort of person likely to be possessed of such a magnificent ornament. They made her an offer, and apparently she took flight, and left the shop in a violent hurry. She evidently saw and understood their suspicions of her, but unfortunately they lost sight of her in the fog, and all trace of her is completely gone."
"I think I remember you suspected a young woman of the theft? Does the description of the young person who went to the pawnbroker, answer to the woman who was alone in the railway carriage with Cousin Ellen's dressing-bag?"
"The pawnbroker's assistants can only give a confused account of a shabbily-dressed girl, who seemed badly in need of money. Their descriptions are far from explicit. According to our maid, the young woman in the railway carriage, was neatly dressed and very respectable in appearance, but the two people might very easily be identical."
"Very easily," Cicely answered; "but it is unfortunate that the pawnbroker's assistants let the girl go. By now, I suppose, the pendant may be broken up, and the stones untraceable."
"Only too likely," Sir Arthur answered; "and yet I cannot help still hoping to recover the thing intact. I cannot bear to think that a jewel my mother so greatly valued, one which indeed has become an heirloom, should be irretrievably lost."
"Not irretrievably, I hope," Cicely answered, as she rose to go. "Perhaps, when you come to us at Bramwell, you will be able to bring us good news of the missing jewel, and—" she added with some hesitation, "and about your brother-in-law, too." Again she wished that she could in the least recollect what the scandal had been. Possibly, she might never even have heard it, for John, her chivalrous and tender husband, had kept from her ears everything that could vex or soil them, and if she had ever heard the story, it had long since been buried in oblivion. At her words, Sir Arthur's face clouded.
"All! there will never be any good news about that wretched man. The best news about him, the only news I can honestly say I wish to hear, would be that he was safely in his grave. My sister, poor silly woman, is infatuated about him still, I believe. She was always a fool where he was concerned, always a fool." Sir Arthur's tones were irascible; "you never saw her, of course?"
"I never saw either of your sisters," Cicely answered gently; "they—I think they had been married and had gone right away, long before I knew any of you. You see it is only six years since I married John."
"Only six years. And it is more than twenty years since both my sisters left the old home. Both left it under a cloud; both insisted on marrying men of whom my father and mother did not approve. Ah! it was a sad business altogether, a sad business. They both belonged to the order of women who go on caring for a man, whatever follies or sins he may commit. I confess I cannot understand the attitude of mind of such women."
"No, I daresay not," Cicely answered, her eyes thoughtfully fixed on his severe face. "I expect you feel that love and respect must always go hand in hand, and that when a man has once lost a woman's respect, he ought to lose her love as well."
"Certainly, I think so. When respect goes, everything had better go. I have no patience with the sentimental clinging to a man who has forfeited all right to affection."
"I suppose"—Cicely paused, into her eyes there came a queer little gleam, which neither of her companions could understand. "I suppose when a woman takes a man for better or worse, the worse may mean evil doing, and perhaps it is possible for her to hate the sin, and yet to love—the sinner?"
Sir Arthur looked a trifle taken aback, but he disliked being worsted in an argument, and he would not ever own that he could be worsted by a woman. Hence, he begged the question.
"Well, well," he said airily; "there is often a great deal of sentimental nonsense talked about love, and I can answer for it, my dear Cicely, that my poor sisters paid very dearly for their sentimentality. One vanished completely from our ken; went down into the depths of poverty and obscurity, and we could never hear of her again. The other, I have seen and remonstrated with times without number, but all in vain; and now—she has got that miserable husband of hers in hiding somewhere, and I am bent on finding them both, and preventing worse scandals—if I can."
"I hope you will do as you wish." Cicely was shaking hands now with little Lady Congreve, who had taken no part in the conversation, beyond giving occasional utterance to a faint ejaculation, or a timid laugh. "I hope we shall all have a very happy Christmas together at Bramwell. I will let you know, about trains. Till then,au revoir."
"Baba would like her doctor man to come to her Christmas-tree; Baba does love her doctor man." At the sound of the pleading voice, the sight of the appealing blue eyes, Cicely put down her pen with a laugh, and caught the child in her arms.
"You most absurd and beguiling infant, why do you want your doctor man, as you call him?"
"'Cos Baba does. She loves him awful, drefful much," and to give her mother some glimmering idea of the depth of her affection, Baba clasped her hands round her own small person, and looked into Cicely's face, with another appealing glance.
"Christina, do you imagine Dr. Fergusson could be induced to come over here for Christmas?" Cicely questioned, as Baba's nurse came into the cosy boudoir at Bramwell Castle; "this picanniny of mine wants him invited to her Christmas-tree."
"I should think it would depend on how busy he is just now. The practice seemed to be a big one. But perhaps at this time people will be considerate enough not to fall ill, and will give the doctor a little rest. Surely, Dr. Fergusson could motor over? It can't be very far from here to Graystone."
"Quite within a motor drive; and he was so very good to Baba, I should like to ask him to come if he will. Rupert writes, that, as he feared, he cannot be with us. He has had to start off post haste to Naples. That tiresome boy, Jack Layton, a mutual cousin of Rupert's and mine, has gone and got typhoid there, and of course Rupert, being a sort of unattached, universal fairy godfather, has been sent for to look after him."
"Is Mr. Mernside a fairy godfather?" Christina smiled at the quaint nomenclature.
"I always think so. He is ready to do any thing for any of his aggravating relations, at any moment, and as Jack has selected this particular moment to get typhoid, Rupert will be away for Christmas. I wonder whether Dr. Fergusson would think it very odd and unconventional, if I invited him here, on our rather short acquaintance?"
Cicely looked thoughtfully across her pretty room at Christina, and the girl laughed, and shook her head.
"He is not so silly," she answered. "Dr. Fergusson is just one of those simple, straightforward men who take things as they are meant, and don't hunt round for ulterior motives. He won't even begin to think whether your invitation is conventional or unconventional, he will only think how good it is of you to ask him at all."
"How wise you are," Lady Cicely exclaimed; "where does that little dark head of yours get all its wisdom?"
Christina laughed again. In those days of her happy life with Baba and Baba's mother, her bright young laugh rang out very often—the laugh that seemed such a true index to her young, bright soul. She had put behind her all the misery and hardship of the past, and, with the wholesome philosophy natural to her, lived in the full enjoyment of her present content; and the few weeks of happiness, good food, and freedom from anxiety, had changed the white-faced, hollow-eyed girl who had perforce tried to pawn her mother's jewel, into a charming, and very pretty semblance of her former self.
"I am not wise," she said; "only I have had a good many rough times, and I have learnt to do what one of my landladies called, 'sizing up men and women.' I have had to size people up, and try to get a just estimate of them."
"And you have 'sized up' Dr. Fergusson?"
"I have found out that he is the very soul of simplicity and straightforwardness, and that he is so kind that there is nothing he would not do for his fellow creatures," she answered eagerly; "and as for worrying about the conventional, I am sure it never enters his head to do such a thing."
It flashed across Cicely's mind to wonder whether Christina's praise of the doctor rose from any warmer feeling than that of friendly gratitude, but the girl's eyes met hers so frankly, her manner was so simple, and the very outspokenness of her enthusiasm, seemed to point to such a heart-whole condition, that the brief thought was dismissed.
"I wish I could accept your most tempting invitation," Fergusson wrote, in reply to Cicely's letter; "but, alas! Christmas does not promise much diminution of the work here. If, however, you will allow me to come to you for Miss Baba's tree, on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, I could manage to do that in my car. It will give me great pleasure to see my small patient again."
As she folded up the letter, Cicely felt that it would also give her pleasure to see the kindly-faced doctor, whose personality during Baba's illness, had impressed her as being so helpful, who, in some dim and unexplained way, made her think of the husband, for whose loss her heart had never ceased to ache.
"I am afraid I am very glad Cousin Arthur and Cousin Ellen cannot arrive before eight o'clock dinner on Christmas Eve," she said to Christina, after receiving Fergusson's letter; "they mean so well, poor dears, but they are such sadly wet blankets. Cousin Arthur would certainly send our spirits down to zero, by telling us that the more we enjoyed ourselves the more wrath to come was being stored up for us! You know he says he never sees any beautiful scenery without remembering that it will all be burnt some day!"
"How delicious! I am afraid I am looking forward to seeing Sir Arthur; he is at least original."
"He won't approve of you, or Baba, or of anything any of us do," Cicely answered; "his attitude of mind is disapproving. He has got the kind of mind that always gets out of bed on the wrong side."
Perhaps, at the back of her own mind, her little ladyship was not sorry that Sir Arthur and Fergusson should have no opportunity of meeting; for, as her natural astuteness told her, if Sir Arthur looked with disapproving eyes upon Rupert, with how much more disapproval would he regard a stranger, who was also a doctor. Sir Arthur belonged to the old school of county magnates, who looked upon men of medicine as on a level very little higher than a butcher or baker, and entirely refused to entertain the notion that doctor and gentleman could ever be synonymous terms. And Cicely was well aware that the old gentleman's disapproval might conceivably find voice, and that she would be reproached for receiving such guests in "poor dear John's" house.
Fortunately for everyone's peace of mind, the Congreves, being unable to leave London until late on Christmas Eve, were also unable to play the part of kill-joys at Baba's Christmas-tree, and the little party which assembled in the big hall of the Castle, was composed of congenial and friendly folk, who were ready to become little children again, to play with a little child.
The hall, oak-panelled, and hung with suits of armour, and weapons handed down from war-like Redesdale ancestors, had long since been converted into a luxurious lounge, where, if comfortably upholstered chairs, big palms, masses of flowers, and tables strewn with the latest books, were incongruities, the incongruity at least made the hall a most pleasant and sociable sitting-room. And so Fergusson thought it, when from the sharpness of the grey winter day, he passed through an outer vestibule, into the well-warmed, well-lighted place. Only he himself knew with what an unaccountable sinking of the heart he had driven up the beech avenue leading to the Castle, and realised what an imposing place it was, to which he had been bidden. Involuntarily, and in sharp contrast, the thought of his own modest house rose before his mental vision, and the usually cheery doctor, for perhaps the first time in his disciplined and philosophical existence, felt disposed to curse the Fates, for dividing rich and poor by gulfs of such appalling dimensions. But that sinking of the heart, and all the other unwonted sentiments stirred in him by the sight of the great pile of Bramwell, its stately park and lordly surroundings, were swept away by the cordial greeting bestowed upon him, by the little lady of the house, and by Baba's enthusiastic welcome.
"Baba's doctor man," the child cried, with a small shriek of delight when he appeared, and Baba monopolised her doctor man during the whole two hours he was able to spend with them. But if to the larger number of the party assembled in the hall, Fergusson seemed to have neither eyes nor ears for anyone but the child-queen of the occasion, Christina's observant eyes told her that his glance often rested upon Cicely's fair head, and that whenever it did so, a great tenderness crept into that glance. As she had told Lady Cicely, the rough school in which her life had lately been spent, had taught her to study and understand her fellow beings, and the doctor's secret, unknown to himself, was shared by Christina, on that happy Christmas Eve. She was a very safe and discreet guardian of secrets, this girl with the sweet eyes, but she gave a quick little sigh when she understood the meaning of Fergusson's glance, for to her, as to himself, there seemed an unbridgeable gulf, between the hard-working doctor, and the daintychâtelaineof Bramwell Castle. Before he left, Fergusson contrived to make his way to Christina's side, and to say in an undertone:—
"I think you will be sorry to know that your beautiful lady of the lonely valley is in great trouble."
"Oh!" Christina exclaimed softly, her eyes darkening; "has the end come for him?"
"Yes, five days ago. She is wonderful, but the heart-break in her eyes is pitiful to see. I sometimes doubt whether her strength will hold out; she is very fragile, and all the strain has told on her more than I like."
"Was he buried at——" Christina was beginning, when Fergusson finished the sentence quickly.
"No, not at Graystone. I don't know where she took him, but it was away from that part of the country altogether. She and her faithful Elizabeth went with him, and now she is back in that lonely house again. I have tried to persuade her to leave it—to go to London—to go anywhere away—but she answers me she is happier there, and I cannot oppose her. But it is all a tragedy, an inexplicable tragedy."
He could say no more, but what he had told Christina, filled the girl's heart with sadness; her beautiful lady had made a profound impression upon her, and the thought of the sorrowful woman in that lonely house in the valley, hurt the girl's tender soul.
"I am glad we asked Dr. Fergusson," Cicely said to her, when later on in the evening the two were alone together in Baba's day nursery; "there is something so cheering about him, something," she added, with a wistful look into Christina's face, "that makes me think of my husband."
"Is he like Mr. Redesdale?" Christina asked sympathetically.
"No, not in the least—it is not that. At least, his eyes are brown, and my husband had brown eyes, but it is not exactly a likeness that can be defined feature for feature. It is something subtly indefinable, but when I see Dr. Fergusson, and when he talks to me, it makes me think of John. It makes me almost feel as if John were here again."
*****
"You are to come down to dinner to-night, and you are to wear the new frock," Lady Cicely's tones were very decided, her blue eyes shone, her face was dimpling with smiles.
"Oh! but—indeed—I don't think I ought; how can I? It—it wouldn't be suitable, would it, for Baba's nurse to dine downstairs?"
"Will you let Baba's mother decide what is best for the nurse to do?" Cicely answered, laughing, and patting Christina on the shoulder; "you are just to do what I tell you, and I tell you you must come down to dinner to-night, and wear the new frock."
"I don't know how to thank you for that," Christina said, with girlish eagerness. "I haven't ever had a frock like it in all my life. You see, when my father and mother were alive, we never went to parties, so I didn't have evening gowns. And since I have been working for myself, of course I haven't needed any, but this one you have given me is much, much too lovely."
"Perhaps I am the best judge of that, too! I want you to look suitably dressed when you come downstairs, and you must look your very best to-night, to disarm Cousin Arthur."
"I am afraid already he doesn't approve of me," Christina said ruefully; "he looked at me with such severe eyes after church this morning, and began at once to ask me about my theories of education. And—I haven't got any." A ripple of laughter broke from her. "I had to say so, and he seemed so shocked."
"But he is very easily shocked; take heart of grace and remember that. And dear old Miss Doubleday thinks you are managing Baba splendidly. She is a competent judge because she had the managing of me!"
"Then I don't think there was anything wrong with her system of education," Christina said quickly, with a glance of shy admiration at her employer, who had sunk into the nursery rocking-chair, and was swinging her daintily-shod feet up and down before the fire; "if Baba grows up like her mother, she need not wish for anything better. I like kind old Miss Doubleday, she is so friendly to me."
Miss Doubleday, Cicely's old governess, was spending Christmas at Bramwell, and had shown appreciation of Christina and her ways.
"You nice little enthusiast!" Cicely looked affectionately up at the girl, who stood on the hearth beside her; "you idealise everybody, don't you, Christina?"
"I don't know about idealising," Christina spoke thoughtfully, "but, when I care about people, I do see all the best in them——"
"And are blind to all the worst? Yes, I understand," Cicely laughed, "if you liked Cousin Arthur, you would even see him through rose-coloured spectacles?"
"He is a very good man," Christina answered sturdily; "there is something about that uncompromising puritan spirit that appeals to me. His views may be narrow——"
"They certainly are," Cicely murmuredsotto voce, "but they are all on the side of loftiness and right."
"I wish I could make out why there is something familiar to me about his face and manner. I am sure I have never seen him before, and yet I seem to have associations of some sort with him. He looks so sad and worried, too; and that very look on his face is vaguely familiar." Christina spoke thoughtfully, her brows drawn together.
"There has been some trouble about a brother-in-law," Cicely answered. "I know I ought to have the story at my fingers' ends, but I can't remember one single detail of it, and I don't like to tell Cousin Arthur so. Nor do I like to ask any questions. He and Cousin Ellen both look so much gloomier and more upset than they were in town. I have been wondering whether any fresh developments have occurred. However, it isn't any real business of mine, and we will try to give the poor dears a happy time here. I must go and dress, and you are to do as I told you; put on your new frock, and come down to the drawing-room. Janet is quite able to manage Baba for one evening."
Christina's fingers shook with eagerness, as she drew from its tissue wrappings Lady Cicely's Christmas present to her—the simple, yet charming gown, which to her girlish eyes seemed the acme of all that was most lovely. Poor little girl, she had never seen herself in a dress cut low at the neck before, and though this gown was only cut in the most modest of squares, her own reflection in the glass told her that the rounded lines of her throat and neck were enhanced by the delicate lace that trimmed the soft silk of the gown, and that the dress itself, in its severely simple lines, suited admirably the slimness of her graceful young form. Her eyes shone like stars, there was a colour in her cheeks, and she had piled her dusky hair into a loose and becoming knot, on the top of her small, well-shaped head.
"I do really believe I look very nearly pretty," she said naïvely, nodding to herself in the mirror.
"I wish——" but she did not put her wish into words, only, as the colour deepened on her face, and she turned away from the sight of her own confusion, she found herself thinking that it was a pity Mr. Jack Layton had chosen this inopportune moment to fall ill with typhoid, and that Mr. Mernside had not been able to make one of the house party this evening. At sight of Christina, Baba, who was being prepared for bed by Janet, danced about the nursery in her pink dressing-gown, clapping her hands and chanting in a shrill monotone—
"Oh! Baba's pretty lady, Baba's pretty lady, oh!" until her nurse caught the small, soft creature in her arms, cuddling her closely and covering her laughing, rosy face with kisses.
"But youisBaba's pretty lady to-night," the child said solemnly, stroking Christina's neck and face with her dimpled hands. "I like you in a white frock, and when the pink colour runs up your cheeks. Put something round your neck," she went on imperiously. "Mummy's got lots of sparkle things to put round her neck, and you must have something sparkle on your pretty white neck."
"Something sparkle on your pretty white neck." Why should she not, just for this once, wear the only piece of jewellery she possessed? As it was Christmas Day, and everything was more than usually festive, surely she might put on the lovely pendant her mother had given her? Christina stood still in the middle of the nursery, cogitating upon the momentous question, whilst Baba danced round her, holding the pink dressing-gown well above her pink slippered feet, and shaking her golden curls whilst she chanted again—
"Oh! Baba's pretty lady; Baba's pretty lady, oh!"
"Even though I am a nurse, I am a lady, too," Christina reflected; "and Lady Cicely has given me this beautiful frock, so that I may look my best downstairs, and, my pendant would be right with the white gown. I think it wouldn't be wrong to wear it."
Her thought was quickly translated into action. Going back to the night nursery, she extracted from the bottom of her modest trunk, the box in which she kept her treasure, and drawing out the pendant on its slender chain, held it up to catch the rays of light from the hanging lamp over the chest of drawers. The great emerald shone brightly like some vividly green star, Christina thought, and the brilliants with which it was set, sparkled and scintillated in the light.
"It does look nice," the girl whispered complacently, as she clasped the chain, and saw the exquisite jewel resting against the whiteness of her neck, "and I wonder what those twisted letters A.V.C. mean? Mother's first name was Mary, her second name was Helen, and not anything beginning with A or V, and of course I don't know what was her surname. I wonder why the initials are A.V.C."
But her speculations were of short duration, and soon forgotten in the excitement of going downstairs to join the rest of the party in the hall, after receiving Baba's bear-like good-night hug, and parting words of admiration.
"I am going to have such a very happy evening," Christina said to herself, as she went along the corridor, and stood for a moment at the top of the wide staircase, looking down into the hall below. "I didn't think I was ever in my life going to have such a happy time, as Lady Cicely lets me have, and to-night will be lovely, just lovely. And how beautiful the hall looks." Her face was bright with eagerness, her eyes shining with excitement, as she ran down the stairs, quite unaware of what a charming picture she made against the background of dark oak, in her simple white gown, with her crown of dusky hair, and the shining happiness of her eyes. She was right in designating the hall as beautiful. Lighted by myriads of candles, the old walls reflected the bright armour, and the leaping flames of the huge fire that burnt on the hearth; the carpets and rugs were all of rich soft hues, that harmonised with the black oak and the shining armour, and pots of bright azaleas, of roses, and of tall lilies, filled the place with colour and fragrance. Christina drew a long breath of delight, and the momentary shyness that had swept over her, when the little group by the fireplace turned to watch her descend the stairs, was dissipated when Lady Cicely put out a hand, and said kindly:
"Come close to the blaze, dear, and enjoy it. Is that monkey of mine safely in bed?"
"She is on her way there, but I left her dancing round the nursery, singing improvised songs about my clothes, and——"
Her sentence was cut short by a sharp exclamation from Sir Arthur, who, as she came near the fire at Cicely's invitation, cast a keenly enquiring glance at her, taking in each detail of her person, from the crown of her hair to the tip of the shoe just showing beneath her white gown. And when that inquisitorial glance fell upon the jewel resting on her neck, that sharp exclamation broke from him.
"How did you come by that pendant?" he questioned, the words jerked out with an abruptness totally lacking in courtesy. "Did it not strike you as rather rash to flaunt it here, in my very face?"
"'How did you come by that pendant?' he questioned."'How did you come by that pendant?' he questioned.
"'How did you come by that pendant?' he questioned."'How did you come by that pendant?' he questioned.
"'How did you come by that pendant?' he questioned.
"To—flaunt—it here?" Christina said shakily, her hand going instinctively to her treasure. "I—don't understand."
"Come, come, my dear young lady," Sir Arthur answered curtly, waving Cicely aside, when she made an attempt to intervene. "You cannot—you really cannot, pretend to misunderstand my very simple question. I asked you—where did you get that pendant?"
Christina's eyes, wide with fright, and bewildered with the shock of being questioned so brusquely and severely, looked from Sir Arthur to Lady Cicely, as though appealing for help, and Cicely said quietly—
"Cousin Arthur—what does all this mean?"
"It means," he said grimly, "that your child's nurse—herladynurse—is wearing the pendant for which the police and I have been searching in vain. It means——"
"No, oh, no!" Cicely broke in. "I can't believe what you are implying. It couldn't be true. Christina tell Sir Arthur he is making a mistake. Tell him where your pendant comes from."
"From my mother," the girl faltered, still too taken aback by the unexpected onslaught, to be able to think clearly. "This pendant belonged to her; she gave it to me, and I——"
"Tut, tut!" Sir Arthur interrupted irritably; "it is futile to try and throw dust in our eyes in this way. That pendant is unmistakable—quite unmistakable—no one who had once seen it, could be under any delusion about it. It is unique—an heirloom in our family. The very letters above the emerald, are initials of an ancestress of mine."
Christina stood there silently whilst the above words were hurled at her, but her face grew paler and paler, fear deepened in her eyes.
"My mother—gave it to me," she said again, when as Sir Arthur ended, there was an expectant pause, as though some explanation was demanded from her; "she gave it to me when she died—it was hers."
"Then you can, of course, tell us for what names the letters stand?" Sir Arthur said slowly, a tinge of contempt in his voice; and because of that note of contempt, Cicely moved nearer to the shrinking girl, whose frightened, bewildered expression moved the little lady's heart to pity for her, and indignation against the angry old man.
"Cousin Arthur," she said impulsively, "it is not fair to judge Christina, before she has explained about the pendant. Everybody in this land is innocent until he is proved guilty—that is surely only the bare law," and Cicely laughed a little nervously, looking round for support to Miss Doubleday, her kindly old governess, who, also moved by pity for the accused girl, had drawn nearer to Christina.
"I wish to do nothing unfair," was Sir Arthur's chilly rejoinder; "if, as Miss Moore tells us, that pendant belonged to her mother, she will be able to tell us, too, what the initials signify."
"I—don't—know," Christina faltered. "I—have often wondered—I——"
"Perhaps one of them is the initial of your mother's maiden name?" Miss Doubleday said gently, anxious to do everything in her power to help the now trembling girl.
"I—don't know my mother's maiden name——" Christina was beginning, when a short laugh broke from Sir Arthur.
"You do not know your mother's maiden name?" he said slowly; "come, come, surely you cannot expect us to believe that."
"I don't know whether you will believe it or not," Christina answered, with a sudden flash of defiance, "it is true. And I don't know what the initials are, but—my mother gave me the pendant. I am telling you the simple truth. I cannot say more."
"Perhaps you will tell us you never tried to—sell—or pawn that piece of jewellery, at a pawnbroker's shop in Chelsea a few weeks ago?" Sir Arthur asked next, his glance taking in the look of consternation that flashed over her face, the new, shrinking terror in her eyes. "Ah! you cannot deny that fact?"
"No, oh! no," Christina put out her hands as if to ward off an actual blow. "I did try to pawn it. I was so dreadfully poor, but—the man frightened me. I came away from the shop, then——"
"Exactly; they frightened you, because they showed you plainly that they suspected you of having come by the pendant dishonestly. You ran away from the shop."
The dreadful truth of every word spoken, the dreadful difficulty—nay, so it seemed to Christina, the impossibility of refuting the accusation levelled against her, made her feel helpless, tongue-tied, like some creature caught in a trap, from which there was no way of escape. She had no means, none at all, of proving her own story. Her mother, who had given her the jewel, was dead. She had never shown it to anyone; she had never had occasion to show it to anybody; as far as she knew, there was not a living soul in the world, who could come forward to declare that the pendant was hers. Even Mrs. Donaldson, her late employer, could not have vouched for her truth and honesty in this respect, for Mrs. Donaldson had not known that she possessed the beautiful thing; she had only been her mother's acquaintance, not even an intimate friend.
"But surely," the practical Miss Doubleday here intervened, "surely, if Miss Moore were guilty of stealing the pendant, she would not wear it here, under your very eyes, Sir Arthur. It is not likely——"
"I understood Miss Moore to say she was ignorant of the meaning of the initials above the pendant," the old gentleman answered coldly; "presumably, therefore, she is not aware that C stands for Congreve. There is no reason to suppose that she knew from whose bag she was taking the pendant, when she took it."
"But I did not take it," Christina cried; "indeed, indeed, I did not. It is my own, my very own; all I have told you is true." Sir Arthur ignored her words, turning gravely to his cousin.
"My dear Cicely, I am very sorry to be unintentionally the cause of so much unpleasantness for you, but I am afraid that, in the interests of justice, I shall be obliged to make this the subject of police investigation."