“Come into the garden for a few minutes until the rest of the family assembles,” said he; and I followed him through the French window on to the lawn.
The morning sun left this side of the house in shade. The birds were twittering in the ivy and stirring the heavy leaves as they flew out frightened at the noise of the opening window; the dew was sparkling on the grass, and the scent of the flowers was deliciously sweet.
“Looks pretty, doesn’t it?” said Mr. Rayner.
“Pretty! It looks and smells like Paradise! I mean—” I stopped and blushed, afraid that he would think the speech profane.
But he only laughed very pleasantly. I was smelling a rose while I tried to recover the staid demeanor I cultivated as most suitable to my profession. When I raised my eyes, he was looking at me and still laughing.
“You are fond of roses?”
“Yes, very, Mr. Rayner.”
I might own so much without any derogation from my dignity.
“But don’t you think it was very silly of Beauty to choose only a rose, when her father asked what he should bring her? I have always thought that ostentation of humility spoilt an otherwise amiable character.”
I laughed.
“Poor girl, think how hard her punishment was! I don’t think, if I had married the prince, I could ever have forgotten that he had been a beast, and I should have always been in fear of his changing back again.”
“The true story is, you know, that he always remained a beast, but he gave her so many diamonds and beautiful things that she overlooked his ugliness. Like that the story happens every day.”
I only shook my head gently; I could not contradict Mr. Rayner, but I would not believe him.
“Now, if you were Beauty, what would you ask papa to bring you?”
I laughed shyly.
“A prince?” I blushed and shook my head.
“No, not yet,” I said, smiling rather mischievously.
“A ring, a bracelet, a brooch?”
“Oh, no!”
“A Murray’s Grammar, a pair of globes, a black-board?”
“No, Mr. Rayner. I should say a rose like Beauty—a beautiful Marshal Niel rose. I couldn’t think of anything lovelier than that.”
“That is a large pale yellow rose, isn’t it? I can’t get it to grow here. What a pity we are not in a fairy tale, Miss Christie, and then the soil wouldn’t matter! We would have Marshal Niel roses growing up to the chimney-pots.”
We had sauntered back to the dining-room window, and there, staring out upon us in a strange fixed way, was Mrs. Rayner. She continued to look at us, and especially at me, as if fascinated, until we were close to the window, when she turned with a start; and when we entered the room the intent expression had faded from her lustreless eyes, and she was her usual lifeless self again.
At dinner-time Mr. Rayner did not appear; I was too shy to ask Mrs. Rayner the reason, and I could only guess, when tea-time came and again there was no place laid for him, that he had gone away somewhere. I was sure of it when he had not reappeared the next morning, and then I became conscious of a slow but sure change, a kind of gradual lightening, in Mrs. Rayner’s manner. She did not become talkative or animated like any other woman; but it was as if a statue of stone had become a statue of flesh, feeling the life in its own veins and grown conscious of the life around it. This change brought one strange symptom: she had grown nervous. Instead of wearing always an unruffled stolidity, she started at any unexpected sound, and a faint tinge of color would mount to her white face at the opening of a distant door or at a step in the passage. This change must certainly, I thought, be due to her husband’s departure; but it was hard to tell whether his absence made her glad or sorry, or whether any such vivid feeling as gladness or grief caused the alteration in her manner.
On the second day of Mr. Rayner’s absence Sarah came to the schoolroom, saying that a gentleman wished to speak to me. In the drawing-room I found Mr. Laurence Reade.
“I have come on business with Mr. Rayner; but, as they told me he was out, I ventured to trouble you with a commission for him, Miss Christie.”
“I don’t know anything about business, especially Mr. Rayner’s,” I began doubtfully. “Perhaps Mrs. Rayner—”
“Oh, I couldn’t trouble her with such a small matter! I know she is an invalid. It is only that two of the village boys want to open an account with the penny bank. So I offered to bring the money.”
He felt in his pockets and produced one penny.
“I must have lost the other,” he said gravely. “Can you give me change for a threepenny-piece?”
I left him and returned with two halfpennies. He had forgotten the names of the boys, and it was some time before he remembered them. Then I made a formal note of their names and of the amounts, and Mr. Reade examined it, and made me write it out again in a more business-like manner. Then he put the date, and wrote one of the names again, because I had misspelt it, and then smoothed the paper with the blotting-paper and folded it, making, I thought, an unnecessarily long performance of the whole matter.
“It seems a great deal of fuss to make about twopence, doesn’t it?” I asked innocently.
And Mr. Reade, who was bending over the writing-table, suddenly began to laugh, then checked himself and said—
“One cannot be too particular, even about trifles, where other people’s money is concerned.”
And I said, “Oh, no! I see,” with an uncomfortable feeling that he was making fun of my ignorance of business-matters. He talked a little about Sunday, and hoped I had not caught cold; and then he went away. And I found, by the amount of hemming Haidee had got through when I went back to the schoolroom, that he had stayed quite a long time.
Nothing happened after that until Saturday, which was the day on which I generally wrote to my mother. After tea, I took my desk upstairs to my own room; it was pleasanter there than in the schoolroom; I liked the view of the marsh between the trees, and the sighing of the wind among the poplars. I had not written many lines before another sound overpowered the rustle of the leaves—the faint tones of a violin. At first I could distinguish only a few notes of the melody, then there was a pause and a sound as of an opening window; after that, Schubert’s beautiful “Aufenthalt” rang out clearly and held me as if enchanted. It must be Mr. Rayner come back. I had not thought, when he said he played the violin, that he could play like that. I must hear better. When the last long sighing note of the “Aufenthalt” had died away, I shut up my half-finished letter hastily in my desk and slipped downstairs with it. The music had begun again. This time it was the “Ständchen.” I stole softly through the hall, meaning to finish my letter in the schoolroom, where, with the door ajar, I could hear the violin quite well. But, as I passed the drawing-room door, Mr. Rayner, without pausing in his playing, cried “Come in!” I was startled by this, for I had made no noise; but I put my desk down on the hall table and went in. Mrs. Rayner and Haidee were there, the former with a handsome shawl, brought by her husband, on a chair beside her, and my pupil holding a big wax doll, which she was not looking at—the child never cared for her dolls. Mr. Rayner, looking handsomer than ever, sunburnt, with his chestnut hair in disorder, smiled at me and said, without stopping the music—
“I have not forgotten you. There is asouvenirof your dear London for you,” and nodded towards a rough wooden box, nailed down.
I opened it without much difficulty; it was from Covent Garden, and in it, lying among ferns and moss and cotton-wool, were a dozen heavy beautiful Marshal Niel roses. I sat playing with them in an ecstasy of pleasure, intoxicated with music and flowers, until Mr. Rayner put away his violin and I rose to say good-night.
“Lucky Beauty!” he said, laughing, as he opened the door for me. “There is no beast for you to sacrifice yourself to in return for the roses.”
I laughed back and left the room, and, putting my desk under my flowers, went towards the staircase. Sarah was standing near the foot of it, wearing a very forbidding expression.
“So you’re bewitched too!” she said, with a short laugh, and turned sharply towards the servants’ hall.
And I wondered what she meant, and why Mr. and Mrs. Rayner kept in their service such a very rude and disagreeable person.
Thenext day was Sunday, to which I had already begun to look forward eagerly, as one does in the country, as a break in the monotonous round of days. Old Mr. Reade was not at church, and his son sat in his place with his back to me. Instead of putting his elbows on his knees through the prayers as he had done on the Sunday before, he would turn right round and kneel in front of his seat, facing me—which was a little disconcerting, for, as he knelt with his chin on his hands and his head back, he seemed to be saying all the responses to me, and I could not raise my eyes for a minute from my book without having my attention distracted in spite of myself.
After service, as we stood about in the churchyard, I heard Mr. Rayner telling the doctor and two of the farmers about the races he had been to the week before, and of his having won fifteen pounds on a horse the name of which I forget; and he took out of his pocket a torn race-card, seeming surprised to find it there, and said it must have been that which had caused his thoughts to wander during the sermon. He asked Mrs. Reade whether her husband was ill, and did not seem at all affected by the cool manner in which she answered his inquiries.
“I had the pleasure of lunching with a relative of yours, Mrs. Reade, on the course at Newmarket last week—Lord Bramley. He is a cousin of yours, is he not?”
“Hardly a cousin; but he is connected with my family, Mr. Rayner,” she answered more graciously.
“He thinks more of the connection than you seem to do, for he asked me particularly how you were, and whether you thought of going up to town this autumn. I told him I could not give him any information as to your intended movements, but that you had never looked better than when I saw you last.”
And Mrs. Reade was still talking to Mr. Rayner, with more affability in her haughtiness, when Haidee and I started on our walk home.
At dinner Mr. Rayner gave us part of their conversation, with an excellent parody of the lady’s manner and a funny exaggeration of the humility of his own. He was always particularly bright on Sunday at dinner, the contact with duller wits in the morning seeming to give edge to his own.
On that afternoon I was scarcely outside the gate on my way to church when he joined me.
“No, no, Miss Christie; we are not going to trust you to go to church by yourself again.”
I blushed, feeling a little annoyed, though I scarcely knew why. But surely I could take care of myself, and did not want surveillance, especially Mr. Rayner’s.
“Don’t be angry; I spoke only in fun. I want to see Boggett about some fencing, and I know I shall catch him at church. But, if you object to my company—”
“Oh, no, Mr. Rayner, of course not!” said I, overwhelmed with terror at the thought of such impertinence being attributed to me.
The shock of this made conversation difficult to me, and I listened while Mr. Rayner talked, with even less of “Yes” and “No” and simple comment than usual. When we passed the park, I saw Mr. Laurence Reade, dressed for church, tossing a small prayer-book—men never burden themselves with the big church-service we women carry—and finishing a cigar, with his back against a tree. I think he must have seen us for some time before I caught sight of him, for I was looking at an oak-leaf in my hand while Mr. Rayner explained its structure to me. I had never seen Mr. Reade look cross before, and I thought it a pity he should spoil his nice kind face by such a frown; and I wondered whether he was ill-tempered, and, if not, what had annoyed him.
When one sees people playing with prayer-books and dressed for church, one cannot help expecting to see them there; and I had an unreasonable and absurd feeling almost like disappointment as the little organ droned out a dismal voluntary and the service began, and still Mr. Laurence Reade did not appear; and I caught myself looking up whenever the door creaked and a late worshipper came in, and glancing towards the pew he had occupied on the Sunday before, which I suddenly remembered was very unbecoming in me. But he did not come.
The heat and this absurd little trifle, and my penitence for it, so distracted my attention that I scarcely heard a word of the sermon. But then it was the curate who preached on that afternoon, and his discourses were never of the exciting kind. I just heard him say that it was his intention to give a course of six sermons, of which this was to be the first; and after that I listened only now and then; and presently I noticed that Mr. Rayner, who always looked more devout than anybody else in church, was really asleep all the time. It was a heavily-built little Norman church, very old and dark, and he was sitting in a corner in such an attentive attitude that I thought at first I must be mistaken; but I looked at him twice, and then I was quite sure.
When service was over, he stayed behind to talk to Boggett, while I went on alone. He overtook me in a few minutes; but, when he said the sermon was good of its kind, I had to turn away my head that he might not see me smiling. But I was not quick enough for Mr. Rayner.
“I didn’t say of what kind, Miss Christie. I may have meant it was good as a lullaby. One must be on one’s guard with you demure people. I have never yet been to afternoon service without going to sleep, and I have never before been discovered. Now the spell is broken, and I shall feel that the eyes of the whole congregation are upon me. Are you shocked Miss Christie?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Rayner!”
“You wouldn’t take such a liberty as to be shocked at anything I might do; would you, Miss Christie?”
His tone of grave mischief woke an answering spirit in me.
“Certainly not, Mr. Rayner.”
“Where did you pick up a sense of humor, most rare gift of your sex, and why do you hide it away so carefully, Miss Christie?”
“Indeed I don’t know; and I don’t mean to hide anything,” I answered rather foolishly.
“And how did you like the sermon?”
“I—I wasn’t listening much, Mr. Rayner.”
“Not listening! A religious little girl like you not listening! I’m surprised—I really am.”
His manner grew suddenly so grave, and he really seemed so much surprised, that I felt called upon to make a sort of profession.
“I’m not really religious,” I said hurriedly. “I haven’t meant ever to pretend to be. But I do respect religion and religious people very much, and I hope some day I shall be able to enter into their feelings better than I can now. I do pray for it,” I ended, almost in a whisper.
Mr. Rayner took my hand very kindly.
“It will come, child, it will come,” he said gravely and quite paternally. “Go on quietly doing your duty as you do, and the blessing will come in due time.”
He said it so simply, without any attempt at preaching, that I felt I looked up to him more naturally than even to a clergyman, being quite sure now that he acquitted me of any intention to be hypocritical. And when, after tea, he asked me to accompany his violin on the piano while he played Mozart’s Twelfth Mass, the fervor which he put into the beautiful music inspired me with a corresponding exaltation of feeling, such as no sacred music had ever woke in me before. At the end of the evening Mrs. Rayner wished me good-night and glided softly from the room before I had finished putting the music in order, as Mr. Rayner had asked me to do. When I rose from bending over the canterbury, still flushed with the excitement caused by the music, Mr. Rayner held out his hand with a grave smile.
“You are the best accompanist I have ever met; you catch the spirit of this sacred music perfectly. To-morrow night I shall prove whether you are so accomplished a reader of secular music. Good night, my dear child.”
And he bent down to kiss me. But I shrank back slightly, and so evaded him, trying at the same time to make my movement seem unconscious; and, with a smiling “Good-night,” I left the room.
As soon as I had done so, my heart sank within me. What had I done? Probably offended Mr. Rayner beyond recall by what must seem to him an absurdly strained piece of prudery. It looked as if I thought myself a person of such attractions that he wanted to kiss me to please himself, instead of an insignificant little girl whom he was going to kiss good-naturedly, as he might have done if he had been her father. But then he was not my father, and not nearly old enough to be so, however paternal and kind his manner might be; if he had been forty or fifty, I should have submitted without a moment’s hesitation. But, if Sarah or Mrs. Rayner, neither of whom seemed to like me very much, had suddenly come in and found Mr. Rayner kissing me, she might have mistaken, in a way which would have been very unpleasant for me, the feeling which prompted him to do so. So I comforted myself as well as I could with the thought that, after all, I had done only what was right and prudent; and, if he was offended, well, there was no help for it.
The next morning, to my great relief, his manner was just the same as usual; of course what had caused so much thought and anxiety to the girl of eighteen had seemed but a trifle to the man of three-and-thirty. I wondered whether I should be summoned to the drawing-room to accompany him on the violin, as he had spoken on the previous night of wishing me to do. But at tea he was much preoccupied, and told Sarah that a gentleman would be coming to see him presently, who was to be shown into the study.
As he turned to say this, I noticed a sudden flash of horror pass over Mrs. Rayner’s pale features and disappear in a moment, before her husband could see her face again; and I thought I saw on Sarah’s dark face a look of intelligence when the order was given her, as if she too knew something about the expected visitor. I hope I am not very inquisitive; but, in a quiet country-house to which, rightly or wrongly, some suspicion of mystery is attached, one cannot help noticing even trifles connected with unaccustomed events, and wondering whether there is some meaning in them.
I tried not to think any more about it, as it certainly did not concern me; but I did not succeed very well in banishing it from my mind until I sat down in the empty schoolroom to my evening task, set by myself, of translating a page of Markham’s English History into German. I was very anxious to improve myself, so that by and by I might be an accomplished woman and able to take an engagement as finishing governess, which at that time seemed to me quite a lofty ambition. When the translation was finished, I had still to read a chapter of Guizot’s French History; but that was pleasant, easy work, and might be enjoyed in the garden. I had seen the stranger as I was crossing the hall after tea. He was a small slight man, with a fair mustache, who might be old or young; and, although he wore only a gray travelling-suit, he gave one the impression of being very well dressed indeed. I had forgotten all about him long before I made my way, with a heavy volume of history in my arms, to the pond, near the prettiest, reediest corner of which I had made myself a nice little nest. There was here a willow-tree which had been forced by an aggressive oak to grow in a slanting position, and one of its lowest branches hung parallel to the ground. This made my seat, and a piece of cord fastened from branch to branch a foot and a half above made a rest for my back; so, with a couple of old bricks to raise my feet out of the damp grass, I could injudiciously sit there and enjoy the summer evening till quite late. I read my Guizot, conscientiously hunting out in the dictionary all the words I did not know, until the light began to fade, and I was thinking it was time to go in, when I heard voices that seemed to be coming towards me from the house.
I have mentioned a path which led, by a short cut through the plantation, from the house to the high-road to Beaconsburgh. The speakers, a man and a woman, as I could already make out, seemed to be coming along the path. Whoever they might be, I would wait until they had gone by before I went in. I could not see them, nor could they see me, I knew. When they came a little nearer, I recognized Sarah’s voice; the other was that of a man of a class much higher than her own. Could it be the stranger? He was talking familiarly and seriously with her; I could tell that before I heard any words. Sarah was speaking in a tone of bitter complaint, and the first words I heard were hers.
“I won’t stand it much longer—and so I tell you.”
“Tell him, my dear Sally—if you dare. And now oblige me by speaking a little lower, for there is nothing like trees for carrying tales.”
She began again in a lower voice, but in the same tone, and, from the occasional words I heard—for I could not help listening—I gathered that she was angry because some unknown “he” paid too much attention to some unknown “her.” But I could guess who they were. Sarah, it was well known in the house, had an admirer, a man some years younger than herself, who lived a long way off—in London, I think I had heard it said—and who paid her visits at irregular intervals. Mr. Rayner took great interest in this love-affair, and derived much amusement from it; he had somehow discovered that the admirer, whose name was Tom Parkes, was inclined to pay more attention than was meet to the kitchen-maid, Jane; and it was Mr. Rayner’s opinion that there would be very little left of Jane if she encouraged the fickle swain’s attentions.
So Sarah was giving vent to her jealousy in an earnest and intimate conversation with her master’s guest. It seemed a very strange proceeding. I knew that men in the position of gentlemen do treat women of a lower class with more consideration than is necessary when they are young and pretty; but Sarah’s face, which looked as if it was worn and lined before its time with hard work and strong passions, was more repellent than attractive, and I was glad I could not see it as I heard her fierce words more plainly, and knew how her great black eyes must be flashing and her mouth twitching, as they did whenever she was annoyed.
“Look what I’ve done for him; think how I’ve worked for him!” she said. “He would never be where he is now if it wasn’t for me. Does he think his new fancy will plan for him and plot for him, and risk—”
“Hush, hush—don’t speak so loud! Where’s your old discretion, Sally?”
“Let him look for discretion in Miss Baby, with her round face and her child’s eyes. Does he think he can make use of her? Nonsense! It wants a woman that’s strong in her head and strong in her limbs to do the work he wants done, and not a soft little chit like that!”
“Depend upon it, however useful she might be, he would never compare her services with yours, Sally. He is only amusing himself with this little simpleton,” the man said soothingly.
But she interrupted him in a tone of half-suppressed savagery that made me shudder, out of her sight though I was.
“Amusing himself, do you say? Only amusing himself! Looking at her, talking to her, not because he wants to make use of her, but because he likes her, loves her”—she hissed—“as he has never loved any of his poor tools, though they were handsomer a thousand times than this wretched girl! If I thought that, if I really believed that, he’d find me more than his match for once. I’d spoil her beauty for her, and for him, if I hanged for it!”
Oh, what an awful woman! And all because poor little Jane was younger and prettier than herself, and had had the misfortune—for it was indeed a misfortune—to attract the attention of her unprincipled lover!
The man spoke again, this time very gravely. I had to listen with all my attention to hear him, for they had now passed the place where I sat.
“Sally, don’t do anything foolish,” said he. “Jim isn’t a fool, and he knows how to repay services like yours, though he may be a trifle harsh sometimes. Why, he might have thrown you over with the rest when—”
I could hear no more; they had gone too far. I waited till their voices had died away, and then dashed from my perch, through the plantation and the hall, up to my room, as fast as I could, locked the door, and sat down appalled.
What a terrible tragedy in the servants’ hall we were likely to have if things went on like this! If Mrs. Rayner had been only a woman, not a statue, I would have confessed all to her; but, as she was, it would do no good. It was not the sort of thing I could tell Mr. Rayner, and there was no way of letting him know without telling him. There was nothing for it but to hope that little Jane would be wise and leave off provoking Sarah, and that Providence would bring Sarah herself to a better mind.
But what a dreadful woman to have in the house! And why had the stranger spoken of Tom Parkes as “Jim”?
Thenext morning I woke up with that strange feeling of oppression which is caused by something unpleasant heard the night before. I soon remembered what it was, and tried to shake off the recollection of the talk in the plantation and of Sarah’s vindictive tones. I looked at her searchingly as she came in demurely to prayers with the cook and poor little Jane, and I could not help thinking that Tom Parkes, or “Jim” as the stranger had called him—but then a man of such a desperate character as they had described him to be would have a dozenaliases—might be excused in preferring the simple little kitchen-maid Jane to that forbidding-looking shrew. But perhaps, when he first made love to her, she was young and comparatively fair; and, if so, he ought not to desert her just because she had grown thin and hard-looking in doing the wicked things he made her do. What were those wicked things? I wondered. I had seen Tom Parkes, a strongly-made thick-set young man, two or three times, and he had seemed to me to have a stolid but rather good-humored expression; I should have thought him to be more stupid than wicked, and certainly not the sort of man to rule with a rod of iron the formidable Sarah.
That very day I had an opportunity of comparing my impression of Tom, when I thought him a harmless and inoffensive person, with my impression of him now that I knew him to be a rogue of the most determined kind. When Haidee and I returned from our walk, we came into the garden by a side-gate at the back of the house, and had to pass by the servants’ entrance. Tom Parkes was sitting outside the door in as easy an attitude as the broken chair he sat on would permit, eating bread and cheese; while opposite to him stood Jane and Sarah, both apparently in high good humor. One held a jug, the other a glass, and they seemed united in the desire to please him by ministering to his wants, and by a rough kind of humor to which he was not slow in replying. They were talking about kisses, and I think they were going to illustrate the subject, when Tom suddenly became aware of our presence, and, taking his arm from round Jane’s waist, pulled his cap off apologetically and remained standing until we had gone by.
What a strange contradiction this scene seemed to give to what I had overheard on the night before! Sarah was scarcely the sort of woman to exercise great self-control when among her equals; yet here she was, all laughter and rough gayety, submitting in the best of tempers to receive a share only, and evidently the smaller share, of Tom’s attention with her rival Jane! I was rather ashamed of my strong interest in this low-class love-affair; but Sarah was such an exceptional woman, and her admirer, from what I had heard, such an exceptional man, that I could not help puzzling myself as to whether she had been only acting good humor, or whether the love-affairs of the uneducated were conducted on different principles from those of other people.
That evening, after tea, when, my translation finished, the time came for Guizot, I remembered, with a pang of conscience, that I had left that nicely-bound book out in the damp all night, forgotten in my hasty flight. I hurried through the plantation, eager to see whether it was much injured; but, when I got within a few yards of my nest, I saw Mr. Rayner there before me, standing with the unlucky volume in his hand.
If I had been conscience-stricken before, when my guilt was known only to myself, what did I feel now that it was discovered? I had not the courage to face him, but turned, and was sneaking back towards the house, when he called me—
“Miss Christie!”
I might have known I should not escape his sharp eyes and ears. I went back slowly, murmuring, “Yes, Mr. Rayner,” and blushing with mortification. It was only a trifle, after all, but it was a most vexatious one. To Mr. Rayner, to whom I could not explain that I was too much occupied in listening to a strictly privatetête-à-têteto think of his book, it must seem a most reprehensible piece of carelessness on the part of a responsible member of his household; it would serve me right if he requested me not to touch any of his books in future. He was turning over the leaves with his eyes bent on the book as I came up; but I have since thought that he took a mischievous pleasure in my discomfiture.
“I am very sorry, Mr. Rayner,” I began, in a low voice which almost threatened tears; “I brought that book out here to read yesterday evening, and I—I forgot to take it with me when I went in. I know it was most inexcusable carelessness—indeed I will never bring one of the library-books out again.”
“And why not, Miss Christie?” said he, suddenly dispelling my anxiety by looking up with his usual kindly smile. “I am sure Guizot is dry enough to stand a little moisture, and, if you were to throw him into the pond, you would be his only mourner, for nobody takes him off his shelf but you. But what makes you spoil your young eyes by plodding through such heavy stuff as this? It is very laudable of you, I know; but, if you were to bring out a volume of poetry or a novel, that would run no risk of being forgotten.”
“I am so ignorant,” said I humbly, “and I want some day to be able to teach girls much older than Haidee, so that I have to read to improve myself. And I don’t read only dry things. This morning I found time to read nearly the whole of yesterday’s paper.”
“Well, that was dry enough; there was nothing in it, was there?”
“Yes, there was an account of another murder in Ireland, and a long article on the present position of the Eastern difficulty, and the latest details about that big burglary.”
“What burglary?”
“Haven’t you read about it? A large house in Derbyshire, belonging to Lord Dalston, was broken into last Wednesday, and a quantity of valuable things stolen. They say they’ve got a clue, but they haven’t been able to find any of the thieves yet.”
“And they won’t either. They never do, except by a fluke.”
“They say that the robbery must have been most carefully planned, and that it was most skilfully carried out.”
“They always say that. That is to excuse the utter incompetency of the police in face of a little daring and dexterity.”
“And they say that it looks like the work of the same hand that committed several large jewel robberies some years ago.”
“Whose hand was that?”
“Ah, they don’t know! The man was never discovered.”
“That is another newspaper commonplace. To say that the way one ladder was placed against a window, the window opened and entered, and the diamonds taken away, looks very like the way another ladder was placed against another window, and another set of diamonds taken away, sounds very cute indeed; and to imply that there is only one thief in England with skill enough to baffle them raises that uncaught thief into a half divinity whom it is quite excusable in mere human policemen to fail to catch.”
“Well, I hope they will catch this one, whether he is a half divinity or not.”
“Why, what harm has the poor thief done you? You have nothing to fear from diamond-robbers, because you have no diamonds.”
“I believe you have more sympathy with the thieves than with the policemen,” said I, laughing.
“I have, infinitely more. I have just the same admiration for the successful diamond-robber that you have for Robin Hood and Jack Sheppard, and just the same contempt for the policeman that you have for the Sheriff of Nottingham and Jack’s gaol.”
“Oh, but that is different!” I broke in hotly—for I always put down “Robin Hood” in confession-books as “my favorite hero,” and I was not without a weakness for Jack.
“Oh, yes, it is very different, I know!” said Mr. Rayner maliciously. “Robin Hood wore Lincoln green and carried a picturesque bow and arrow, while Sheppard’s costume, in colored prints, is enough of itself to win any woman’s heart. And then the pretty story about Maid Marian! Jack Sheppard had a sweetheart too, hadn’t he? Some dainty little lady whose mild reproaches for his crimes proved gentle incentives to more, and who was never really sorry for her lover’s sins until he was hanged for them.”
“Well, Mr. Rayner, their very appearance, which you laugh at, shows them to be superior to the modern burglar.”
“Have you ever seen a modern burglar?”
“No; but I know what they look like. They have fustian caps and long protruding upper lips, and their eyes are quite close together, and their lady-loves are like Nancy Sykes.”
“I see. Then you don’t sympathize with a criminal unless he is good looking, nicely dressed, and in love with a lady of beauty and refinement?”
“Oh, Mr. Rayner,” I cried, exasperated at having my words misconstrued in this mischievous manner, “you know I don’t sympathize with criminals at all! But Robin Hood and Jack Sheppard lived in different ages, when people were not so enlightened as they are now; and, besides,” said I, brightening in triumph as a new idea flashed across me, “I don’t know what the real Robin and Jack did; but the Robin Hood and Jack Sheppard of the novels and poems that I can’t help liking and admiring robbed only rich people who could afford to lose some of their ill-gotten wealth.”
“But all wealth is not ill-gotten,” interposed Mr. Rayner mildly.
“It was then,” I went on hastily—“at least, generally. And Robin Hood didn’t rob the good rich people, only the bad ones; and most of his spoil he distributed among the poor, you know,” I finished triumphantly.
“It won’t do, Miss Christie; I must destroy your edifice of argument at a blow,” said he, shaking his head mournfully. “I happen to know something about this Lord Dalston whose house was broken into; and he is a very bad rich person indeed, much more so than the poor old abbots whom your favorite Robin Hood treated so roughly. He ill-treated his mother, stole and squandered his sisters’ fortunes, neglected his wife, and tried to shut her up in a lunatic asylum, knocked out in a passion the left eye of one of his own grooms, had embezzled money before he was twenty-one, and now owes heavy debts to half the big tradesmen in London. So that he is something like a thief. Now, if you were to find out that the man who had the chief hand—for, of course, there were dozens at work over it—in planning the robbery of this wicked rich man’s property was young, good-looking, well dressed, a large subscriber to charities, and in love with a pretty lady-like girl, you ought, if you were logical, to admire him as much as you do Robin Hood, and more than you do Jack Sheppard.”
“Oh, Mr. Rayner,” said I, joining in his laughter, “how absurd! But it is too bad of you to make fun of my logic. I can’t put it properly; but what I mean is this. In those days the laws were unjust, so that even good men were forced into defiance of them; but now that the laws are really, upon the whole, fair, it is only wicked people who disobey them.”
“Then you don’t like wicked people, Miss Christie?”
“Oh, Mr. Rayner, of course not!” said I, aghast at such a question, which he asked quite seriously.
“Ah, you must know some before you decide too hastily that you don’t like them!” said he.
“Know some wicked people, Mr. Rayner?” I gasped.
He nodded gravely; and then I saw that he was amusing himself with my horror-struck expression.
“You won’t like all of them, any more than you dislike all the good people you know. But you will find that those you do like beat the good people hollow.”
“Indeed I am sure I shouldn’t like them at all. I wouldn’t speak to a wicked person if I could help it.”
“But you can’t. You won’t be able to tell them from the good ones, except, as I said before, that they are nicer; and by the time you find out they are wicked you will like them too much to go back.”
It was too bad of Mr. Rayner to tease me like this; but, though I saw he was enjoying my indignation, I could not help getting indignant.
“You are quite mistaken in me indeed,” I said, trying to keep down my annoyance. “I can prove it to you by something that happened to me not very long ago. I knew a person against whom I had heard nothing who always seemed to me to look good-natured and simple. And then I found out that he was really a most wicked man; and when I saw him after that his very face seemed changed to me, to look evil and cunning; and the sight of him made me shrink.”
I was thinking of Tom Parkes and the change I had seemed to see in him that morning. Mr. Rayner looked at me keenly while I said this; but I was not afraid of his finding out whom I meant in such a cautious statement.
“And what would you do if, in the course of your career as a governess, you found yourself in a family of whose morals you could not approve? Would you give them lectures on the error of their ways and try to convert them all round, Miss Christie?”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t do that!” said I humbly. “If I found myself among very dreadful people, I should just run away back to my uncle’s house, where my mother lives, on the first opportunity, without saying anything to any one till I was gone, and without even writing to say I was coming, lest my letter should be intercepted. I should be so horribly afraid of them.”
“Well, child, I hope you will never have to do anything so desperate as that; but the profession of teaching has its dangers for a beautiful woman,” he said gravely.
The last words gave a shock to me. I had never heard them applied to me before, and for a moment I was without an answer. He had been sitting on my seat, and I had been standing with my back against a young oak-tree, a few feet from him and nearer to the pond. He got up and came towards me, when a shrill little cry as from out of the ground caused him to start. It was the only sound that ever drew forth such a display of ordinary human weakness from self-possessed Mr. Rayner. It came from the lips of his baby-daughter Mona, who, ragged, dirty, and withered-looking as usual, had walked or crawled through the mud and rushes till she had silently taken her place in the long grass a little way from us, and who now, seeing her father approach, had given vent to her extraordinary dislike of him in her usual undutiful manner.
For one moment I saw in the dusk a look pass over Mr. Rayner’s face which made me catch my breath; it reminded me instantly of his tone on that Sunday night when he had caught Sarah in the garden; and, quickly as it passed and gave place to a light laugh, it had frightened me and made me long to escape. Mona was an excuse.
“Oh, you naughty little girl to be out so late at night—and without a hat! Sarah must have forgotten you. Come—I must take you in now. Be a good girl, and come with me.”
Mona had somehow come to regard me with less animosity than she did most of the household. So she let me take her in my arms without much opposition, and gave only one more yell when her father, while wishing me good-night, shook hands with me and accidentally touched her dirty little shoe. I took her into the house and gave her to Sarah in the hall; then I went into the schoolroom to replace the dissipated volume of Guizot that had been out all night among its more sober brethren, and then, moved by some spring of vanity, took my candle to the mantelpiece and looked at myself in the glass above it.
I suppose no girl can hear herself called a beautiful woman for the first time, no matter by whom, without a slight thrill of gratification. To be called pretty falls, I suppose, at some time or other, to the lot of most girls; but the other term implies a higher measure of attractiveness, and I certainly was not insensible to the pleasure of hearing it applied to me. I had lived such a very quiet life with my mother, and had had so few acquaintances, that I had never known flattery of any kind. The thought that flashed through my mind as I looked at my dark gray eyes, brighter than usual, and at my cheeks, flushed with gratified vanity, was—“Does Mr. Laurence Reade think me—beautiful?”
I was too much absorbed in my vain contemplation of myself, and in the foolish thoughts to which it gave rise, to notice that I was not alone in the room. Suddenly I was startled, as I well deserved to be, by a harsh ironical voice breaking in upon the silence of the room.
“Yes, it’s a pretty face enough now, and you do right to set store by it, for it won’t last pretty long—not long; in a few years it will be all lines and wrinkles, and not worth looking at; and you’ll turn away in disgust from the glass, thinking of how you used to look, and how the men used to look at you—the fools!”
I had turned, and was looking at Sarah’s hard, cruel face as she stood, with Mona still in her arms, her eyes flashing scornfully on me as she hissed out the spiteful words. I felt ashamed of my vanity, though, after all, it seemed harmless enough; and I felt sorry for her, for she spoke so bitterly that I was sure she must be thinking of the changes a few years of anxiety and hard work had wrought in herself; so I said gently—
“I suppose we women all think more than we ought about our looks sometimes, Sarah; but, after all, they are a very important matter to every woman, and make a great deal of difference to her life. You know you must be glad not to be ugly, Sarah.”
I own this was a little bit of innocent flattery, for I did think her very ugly—and I thought I had never seen her look so hideous as she did as she stood there glaring at me—but I was anxious to soothe her at all hazards, and I was thankful to see that the bait took.
“Handsome is that handsome does,” she said less viciously; and, with a toss of her head, she left the room.
Verysoon after Sarah’s somewhat harsh and uncalled-for reproof of my vanity I began to suffer a punishment for it. The country air, which had brought unwonted roses to my cheeks while the weather was fine and dry, affected me very differently when, in the first days of September, the rain fell daily in a steady, continuous downpour that soon swelled the river and turned part of the marsh from a swamp into a stagnant unwholesome lake. The air round the house seemed never free from mist; the pond overflowed and covered the bricks that had formed the footstool of my nest; the lower part of the garden that touched the marsh was a bog; the moss grew greener and thicker on the pillars of the portico, the untrimmed ivy that clung round the house and made it so beautiful dripped all day long, and bright green stains grew broader and broader down the side of that wing of the house where Mr. and Mrs. Rayner’s room was.
I often wondered why they slept there. I knew by the doors and windows that the ground-floor of that wing contained two rooms, a large and a small one. My own was in the same wing, but on the story above; and over mine was a turret that looked out high above the trees, but which was not used, so far as I knew. Haidee slept on the ground-floor in a cot in the dressing-room next to her parents’ bedroom, I knew, while the nursery and servants’ rooms and several spare-rooms were on the upper story besides my own. Why did not Mr. and Mrs. Rayner make one of these their own, and lift themselves out of the reeking damp which must be poisonous to delicate Mrs. Rayner? Even I, who slept in the upper story, soon began to lose my color and my appetite, and to feel at first languid, and then really ill. I showed the change more quickly than any one, being less used to the place; but little fragile Haidee soon followed suit, and grew more wan and listless than ever, until the lustre of her large blue eyes and the unhealthy flush that began to burn in her thin little cheeks frightened me and drew me to the child as her strange reserve had prevented my being drawn before. She answered to the change in my manner as sensitive children do, and one day, putting her little dry hand in mine, she said—
“You are getting thin and white too, like mamma and me. We’ll all go away and be angels together, Miss Christie, now you have begun to love me.”
I burst into tears; I had begun to love the fairy-like little creature long before, if she had only known it. Now I took her up in my arms and rested her flaxen head on my breast, and she said her lessons there that day. And after that, without any more explanation or comment, the sympathy between the child and me was perfect.
But as, on the one hand, the little one’s friendship was a great solace to me, so, on the other, it brought me fresh trouble. For in Mrs. Rayner’s indifferent eyes I could see now a dull flame of jealousy whenever Haidee put her languid little head upon my knee, or came up and said, “Tell me a story, Miss Christie—about fairies and the good Prince Caramel.” I began, from merely pitying, almost to dislike Mrs. Rayner. Why, if she was so fond of Haidee, did she not come into the schoolroom to see her, or take her out during her play-hours, instead of leaving her the whole day with me, without coming to see her until bedtime, when the child was put to bed in the room next to hers, while she herself went into the drawing-room? It was unreasonable to expect to keep the child’s undivided love like that; and yet at meals, when we all met together, she seemed to look at Haidee with strained wistful eyes, as if she loved the child, yet dared not show it. But what was there to prevent her, except the shroud of reserve she seemed to have wrapped round herself?
The weather had been so bad that for two Sundays we had not been able to go to church at all, for which I was very sorry, more sorry than I can tell; one misses church dreadfully in the country. So we knew nothing of what was going on in the parish for two whole weeks. We did not have to wait until the church-porch gathering on the following Sunday, though; for on the second day after the weather had at last grown fine again, when we were all in the drawing-room reading the morning papers over our coffee, as we always did after our early dinner, we heard the sound of a horse’s hoofs coming down the drive. Mr. Rayner threw open the window and stepped out on to the broad space of gravel before the front of the house.
“Hallo, Laurence, you are as welcome as the dove was to the ark! Come in, come in; the ladies will make even more of you than usual. We have had no visitors lately, but an occasional mermaid came up the river from the sea and overflowed into our garden.”
“Can’t come in, thanks, Mr. Rayner—I’m too much splashed; the roads are awful still. I’ve only come with a note from Mrs. Manners to Mrs. Rayner.”
“Nonsense! Come in, mud and all.”
So he tied up his horse and came in.
Mrs. Manners was the clergyman’s wife, and generally sent her notes by one of her half-dozen boys; and I confess I thought, when I heard what a flimsy sort of errand had brought Mr. Reade, that perhaps—that perhaps some other silly motive had helped to bring him too. But my only half-acknowledged fancy was disappointed. Not only did Mr. Reade devote all his conversation to Mr. and Mrs. Rayner, with an occasional word to Haidee, but, when I made a remark, he did not even look at me. I confess I was piqued; I certainly did not want Mr. Reade either to look at me or speak to me, but surely common courtesy, especially to a dependant, demanded that he should not ignore my presence altogether. So I thought I would take a small and impotent revenge by ignoring his, and, when Haidee got up and slipped out of the window to look at Mr. Reade’s horse, I followed her. She was not a bit afraid of him, but ran into the house for some sugar, and then, flattening out her small hand with a piece on it, fed him, and talked to him in a language which he seemed to understand, though I could not.
“Would you like to give him a piece, Miss Christie?” she asked.
But I would not have bestowed such an attention on a horse of Mr. Reade’s for worlds; and, leaving the child and her four-footed friend to continue their conversation, I walked away to gather some flowers for the tea-table, as it was the day for renewing them.
I had my hands half full by the time I heard the voices of the gentlemen at the window and the grinding of soft gravel under the horse’s hoofs as Mr. Reade mounted him. I was near the bottom of the drive, pulling off some small branches of copper beech to put among the flowers, when I heard Mr. Reade ride by behind me. I did not even look round until he called out, “Good-afternoon, Miss Christie;” and then I just turned my head over my shoulder and said stiffly, “Good afternoon,” and went on with my task. He had half pulled up his horse. I dare say he thought I wanted to talk to him. I was not going to let him make such an absurd mistake as that. So he rode on to the gate, and then he stopped, and presently I heard him utter impatient ejaculations, and I looked and saw that he was fumbling with his whip at the fastening of the gate.
“How stupid he is not to get off and open it with his fingers!” I thought contemptuously. “It is quite an easy fastening too. I believe I could do it on horseback directly.”
However, he still continued to make ineffectual efforts to raise the heavy latch, but each time the restive horse swerved or the whip slipped, until I stood watching the struggle intently, and grew quite excited and half inclined to call out to him “Now!” when the horse stood still for a minute. It seemed to me that he deliberately missed all the best opportunities, and I was frowning with impatience, when he suddenly looked up and his eyes met mine. There was nothing for it then but in common civility to go and open the gate for him myself; so I walked up the drive very reluctantly and opened it wide without a smile.
“Thank you, thank you—so much obliged to you! I wouldn’t have given you so much trouble for worlds. If only this brute would stand still!”
“Pray don’t mention it. It is no trouble at all,” I said icily, occupied in keeping my armful of flowers together.
And he raised his hat and rode off at a walking pace, while I shut the gate and turned to go down the drive again. I had such a curiously hurt and disappointed feeling—I could not tell why; but I supposed that, being a dependant, I was naturally very sensitive, and it was surely a slight on Mr. Reade’s part not even to speak to me when we were all in the drawing-room.
“I dare say he wouldn’t have let me open the gate for him if I hadn’t been only a governess,” I thought, as a lump came into my throat. “I wish I hadn’t—oh, I wish I hadn’t! I wish I had let him get off his horse, or jump over it, or anything rather than make me play groom for him.”
And the flowers I was looking at began to grow misty, when again I heard hoofs behind me and the latch of the gate go, and, glancing round, I saw Mr. Reade on horseback inside the gate. He had opened it without any difficulty this time. He seemed to look a little embarrassed, “ashamed of his own clumsiness the first time,” I thought severely; and, jumping off his horse, he led him towards me, saying—
“I must apologize for returning so soon, but I find I have lost a stone from my ring, and I think it must have dropped out while I was fumbling at the gate just now. It is much easier to open from the outside.”
“Do you think so? We don’t find any difference,” I said simply.
He gave me a quick inquisitive glance and a half smile, as if to see what I meant, and then, finding that I returned his look quite gravely, he turned back to the gate and began searching about in the gravel. Politeness obliged me to help him. He fastened his horse’s rein round the gate-post and showed me the ring, and I saw the hole where there was a stone missing. Suddenly it flashed through my mind that, while we stood under the shed on that Sunday in the rain, I had noticed the very same hole in the very same ring, and I was just going to tell him that it was of no use for him to look, for he had lost the stone much longer than he fancied, when another thought, which brought the color swiftly to my face and made my lips quiver and my heart beat faster, flashed into my mind and stopped me. And the thought was that Mr. Reade must know how long ago he had lost that stone, at least as well as I did. And from that moment a spirit of daring mischief came into me—I don’t know how—and I would not condescend to pretend to look about any longer; but I patted the horse’s neck and glanced every now and then at his master, and thought how foolish he looked hunting about so carefully for what he knew he should not find. Then he looked up, red with stooping, and caught me smiling, and he had to bite his lip in order not to smile himself as he walked up to me.
“I can’t find it. It isn’t of any consequence; I sha’n’t look any longer,” he said.
“Oh, but it would be such a pity to lose such a large stone, Mr. Reade!” I said boldly. “I’ll tell the gardener to hunt for it, and Sam the boy, and—”
“No, no—indeed it doesn’t matter.”
“And Jane the kitchen-maid. She has sharp eyes; she might spend an hour or two hunting,” I murmured confidentially, while he protested.
And I think he began to suspect my good faith; and we both got into such a giggling excited state that it was very difficult to go on talking, and I was glad when some of my flowers fell down and Mr. Reade had to pick them up, and we had time to regain a little of our lost composure.
“You are fond of flowers, Miss Christie?”
“Oh, yes! But the best of them are over now; the rain has spoilt them all.”
“The rain spoils a good many things here,” he said, with sudden gravity. “You don’t look nearly so well as you did a fortnight ago, Miss Christie, and I expect it is the damp of this place. You might as well live in a cave, you know, as in that house in a rainy season,” he added, dropping his voice. “Don’t you find yourself that your health is affected by it?”
I hesitated.
“It is damp, I know; but it isn’t half so bad for me, who am strong, as it is for Mrs. Rayner or for little Haidee.”
“But they can’t help themselves, poor things, while it lies in your own power whether you will put up with it or not.”
“You mean that I ought to go away?”
“No, no, I don’t mean that,” said he hastily.
“But that is what you advised me to do,” said I, looking up, surprised.
“Did I? Ah, yes! But, now that you have grown attached to—to—the place, and—and Mrs. Rayner—”
“No, indeed I haven’t,” I interrupted. “I don’t like her at all.”
“Well, to Haidee, or the baby. You must have grown attached to something or to somebody, or you wouldn’t talk as if you didn’t want to leave the place,” he said, with such abrupt earnestness as to be almost rude.
“I like the house, in spite of the damp, and I love the garden even when it is a swamp, and I like Haidee, and Jane the kitchen-maid, and Mr. Rayner,” I said quietly.
With nervous fingers Mr. Reade began playing with his horse’s bridle.
“You like Mr. Rayner, you say? Then I suppose our sympathies must be as far apart as the poles. For he seems to me the most intolerable snob that ever existed, and so selfish and heartless as to be almost outside the pale of humanity.”
This tirade amazed me; but it also made me angry. I could not let him abuse a person whom I liked, and who had been consistently kind to me, without protest.
“You surely cannot judge him so well as I, a member of his household,” said I coolly. “Whether he is a snob or not I cannot tell, because I don’t quite know what it means. But I do know that he is kind to his wife and his children and servants and dependants, and—”
“Kind to his wife, do you say? I should not call it kindness to shut up my wife in the darkest, dampest corner of a dark, damp house, until she is as spiritless and silent as a spectre, and then invent absurd lies to account for the very natural change in her looks and spirits.”
“What do you mean? What lies?”
“The stories he told you about her when you first came. He would never have tried them on any one but an unsuspecting girl, and of course he never thought you would repeat them to me.”
“I wish I hadn’t!” said I indignantly. “You have known Mr. and Mrs. Rayner only during the three years they have lived here. What proof have you that the things he told me were not true?”
“No proof, Miss Christie, but a man’s common-sense,” said he excitedly—“no more proof than of another fact of which I am equally certain, that he is as surely killing his wife as if he were making her drink poison.”
“How dare you say such a thing?” I cried. “You have no right to utter it even if you think it. You are giving way to the most cruel prejudice against a man whose only fault is that he cannot contentedly lead the dull life his neighbors do. I suppose you think, like the villagers, that to play the violin is an impious action, and that it is a shocking thing for him to go to races.”
“If he did nothing worse than that, I should think no worse of him than you do, Miss Christie. But I think you will allow that a man who has lived within half a mile of another man for nearly three years must know more of his character than a young innocent girl who has seen him at his best only for a month.”
“But you cannot judge a man fairly until you have seen him continually in his own home. I have seen Mr. Rayner among his family; I have played for him, walked with him, had long talks with him; and I must surely know him better than you, who have only an ordinary outside acquaintance with him.”
Mr. Reade drew himself up very stiffly, and the color rushed to his forehead. He was getting really angry.
“No doubt, Miss Christie, you know him a great deal better than I do. I have never played for him, and I have not found either talks or walks with him particularly delightful. But then I dare say he did not try so hard to be agreeable to me as he did to you.”
He said this in a sneering tone, which brought the hot blood to my face. I tried to answer, but my voice would not come. I turned away sharply, and left him, with an agony of anger and pain at my heart which would have made him remorseful indeed if he could have guessed what his words had inflicted. As it was, he followed me a few steps down the drive, with apologies to which I was too angry and too much hurt to listen.
“Don’t speak to me now,” I said—“I can’t bear it;” and, turning off rapidly into a side-path, I left him, and fled away through the alleys into the house.
Luckily I managed to keep back tears, so that I could return to the drawing-room with the flowers I had gathered before they began to wonder why I had been so long. Mrs. Rayner told me that the note from Mrs. Manners which Mr. Reade had brought was to ask that the articles which we were preparing for the “sale”—a sort of bazaar on a small scale which was one of the attractions of the annual school-treat—should be sent in to her within a week, as they had to be ticketed and arranged before the sale-day arrived, and whether Miss Christie would be so kind as to give her services at the stall; and, if so, whether she would call upon Mrs. Manners within the next few days to settle what should be her share of the work. I was delighted at the thought of this little excitement, and, although Mr. Rayner warned me that I should have nothing nicer to do than to see the pretty trifles I had worked fingered by dirty old women who would not buy them, and to have hot tea poured over me by clumsy children if I helped at the feast, I would not be frightened by the prospect.
That evening I debated with myself whether it was not too damp and swampy still for me to go and peep at my nest and see if the water had subsided and left the top of the bricks dry. I chose afterwards to think that it was some supernatural instinct which led me to decide that I would put on my goloshes and go.
When I got there, I found on the bough which formed my seat a basket of Gloire de Dijon roses, and the stalk of the uppermost one was stuck through a little note. I never doubted those roses were for me; I only wondered who had put them there. I looked searchingly around me in all directions before I took up the rose which carried the note and carefully slipped it off. It contained these words—
“For Miss Christie, with the sincere apologies of some one who would not willingly have offended her for the whole world.”
“For Miss Christie, with the sincere apologies of some one who would not willingly have offended her for the whole world.”
I did not know the writing, but I knew whom it was from. I think, if I had been quite sure that no one could have seen me, I should have raised the note to my lips, I was so happy. But, though I could see no one, the fact of the basket arriving so surely at my secret haunt seemed to argue the existence of a supernatural agency in dealing with which one could not be too discreet; so I only put the note into my pocket and returned to the house with my flowers. I put them in water as soon as I had sneaked upstairs to my room with them.
The supernatural agency could not follow me there, so I slept that night with the note under my pillow.
“Youare getting pale again, my dear child,” said Mr. Rayner to me the very next morning—he met me, at the foot of the stairs, dressed for my walk with Haidee. “We must find some means of bringing those most becoming roses back to your cheeks again. You work too hard at those self-imposed evening tasks, I am afraid.”
“Oh, no, indeed I don’t, Mr. Rayner! I am getting very lazy; I haven’t done anything for two or three nights.”
The fact was that I had felt too languid even to sit down and write, and had wasted the last two evenings listlessly turning over the pages of a book I did not read.
“Ah, then you want change of air! Now how to give it you without letting you go away—for we can’t spare you even for a week! You will think me a magician if I procure you change of air without leaving this house, won’t you, Miss Christie? Yet I think I can manage it. You must give me a few days to look about for my wand, and then, hey, presto, the thing will be done!”
I laughed at these promises, looking upon them as the lightest of jests; but the very next day I met a workman upon the staircase, and Mr. Rayner asked me mysteriously at dinner whether I had seen his familiar spirit about, adding that the spirit wore a paper cap and a dirty artisan’s suit, and smelt of beer. That spirit pervaded the house for two days. I met him in the garden holding very unspiritual converse with Jane; I met him in my room taking the measure of my bedstead; I met him in the passage carrying what looked like thin sheets of tin and rolls of wall-paper, and I heard sounds of heavy boots in the turret above my room. Then I saw no more of him; but still there were unaccustomed sounds over my head, sounds of footsteps and knocking, and I met sometimes Jane and sometimes Sarah coming out of a door which I had never known unlocked before, but which I now discovered led to a narrow staircase that I guessed was the way to the turret.
On the fourth day, when I went to my room to dress for tea, I found it all dismantled, the bed and most of the furniture gone, and little Jane pulling down my books from their shelf and enjoying my discomfiture with delighted giggles, not at all disconcerted at being caught taking an unheard-of liberty.
“What does this mean, Jane? I can’t sleep on the floor; and what are you doing with my books?” I cried in one breath.
“I don’t know nothing about it, miss; it’s Mr. Rayner’s orders,” said she, with another irrepressible snigger at my bewildered face.
I was turning to the door to wander forth, I did not know exactly whither, to try to find an explanation of this most extraordinary state of things, when Sarah came in, her dark frowning face offering a strong contrast to that of the laughing Jane.
“Sarah, can you tell me what this means?” said I.
“Mr. Rayner has ordered the room in the turret to be prepared for you,” said she shortly. “Perhaps you will be kind enough to manage down here till after tea, as it’s his orders that you shouldn’t be shown up till the room is quite ready.”
I answered that I could manage very well, and they left the room. I said nothing at tea about my adventure, reflecting that perhaps some surprise for me was intended, which would be sprung upon me at a fitting time. And so it proved. While I was quietly writing in the schoolroom, after tea, Mr. and Mrs. Rayner and Haidee, who had not yet gone to bed, came in and conducted me in a formal procession upstairs, up the narrow winding turret-staircase that I had so often wanted to explore, and, opening the door of the one room the turret contained, Mr. Rayner, in a short but elaborate speech, begged to install me without further ceremony as the “imprisoned princess of the enchanted tower.”
I gave a cry of delight. It was an octagonal room, the four sides which overlooked the marsh containing each a window, while in one of the other sides was a small fireplace with a bright fire burning. The carpet was new, the wall-paper was new; there were two easy-chairs, one on each side of the fire, a writing-table and a Japanese screen, besides the furniture of my old room. It looked so bright and so pretty that my eyes danced with pleasure at the sight, and I could not speak while Mr. Rayner explained that now I should be high and dry out of the damp, and he expected me to become red-faced and healthy-looking immediately—that he had had tinfoil put behind the paper in one of the cupboards which was considered damp, that the picturesque ivy had been torn down—all but a little bit to hide the unsightly chimney—and that I was to have a fire whenever I liked now, and one every day when it began to grow colder.
“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to thank you,” said I, almost pained by the extent of the kindness showered upon me.
I tried to include Mrs. Rayner in my thanks; but she hung back almost ungraciously, and seemed to have been drawn into this demonstration against her will. She was the last of my three visitors to leave the room, and in the moment that we were alone together, before she followed her husband and child downstairs, she said, seeming to be moved out of her reserve by the unaccustomed little excitement, and casting upon me a keen look from her great eyes—
“Are you not afraid of sleeping so far from every one? Or do you prefer it?”
I am not at all nervous; but I was enough impressed by her almost eager manner to answer rather shyly—
“No, I don’t prefer it. But there is nothing to be afraid of, is there?”
She glanced towards the door, and, saying hurriedly, “Oh, no, of course not! I hope you will be comfortable, Miss Christie,” she left the room.
Afraid! No, of course I was not afraid; I never had minded sleeping away from everybody else; and, if burglars were to break into the Alders, they certainly would not expect to find anything worth stealing in the turret. I wished Mrs. Rayner had not put the idea into my head, though. I was not so strong-minded as to be proof against fear even at second-hand, and ever since the sensation caused by that great jewel-robbery in Derbyshire I had been very careful to hide away my watch, my one bracelet, and my two brooches under my pillow at night. But I was too happy in my new abode to trouble myself long with idle fears. I found that, by opening out my screen in a particular position, I could completely hide the bed and wash-hand-stand, and make myself a real sitting-room; then I sat down by the fire in one of the arm-chairs and gave myself up to the enjoyment of this new piece of good fortune; and I was still gazing into the fire, with my feet cosily warming—the nights were already cold enough for that to be a luxury—on a hassock close to the fender, when I heard Sarah coming up the stairs. I knew her footstep, and I would rather not have heard what I considered her ill-omened tread on this first evening in my new room. For I knew that Sarah disliked me, and even the fact that she had brought me up some coals to replenish my fire, which was getting low, did not reconcile me to her presence; I could not help thinking of the cold, grudging manner in which before tea she had announced to me my change of residence. I tried to be friendly, however, and, when I had thanked her for her trouble, I said—