I was delighted with this letter; it made me for the moment angry with Mrs. Rayner for her persistent ignoring of his kind feeling towards her. But, when I remembered her agony over her child on the night of Haidee’s illness, and the settled melancholy I now knew how to detect under her cold demeanor, pity got the better of me again, and I was glad to have an opportunity at last of doing her some good. She was always supposed to be attached to her room on the ground-floor, and Mr. Rayner wrote as if it would be difficult to persuade her to move. But I had two powerful weapons in her husband’s loving letter and her affection for Haidee, and I resolved to use them well.
As I was dining alone, I was just wondering how I could get at her, when the opportunity presented itself, as if at my wish.
“Mrs. Rayner feels well enough to have tea in here with you, miss, this afternoon,” said Sarah.
That then would be my chance. But I reflected that I could not be very persuasive at tea-time, subject to the chance of our common tyrant, Sarah, pouncing down upon us. I went out after dinner and sat, in spite of the damp, on the seat at my “nest” for a little while, trying to invent subtle plans for inveigling Mrs. Rayner into the drawing-room or the schoolroom for an uninterruptedtête-à-tête. As I sat there, I heard some one coming along the path from the house. The trees between were not yet bare enough for me to see through; but, when the steps had gone by, I crept through the branches, peeped out, and saw Sarah getting over the stile into the path which led to the high-road. I ran indoors, asked Jane where Sarah was, and learnt that she had gone to Beaconsburgh to get some groceries; I had noticed a black bag in her hand.
I seemed to breathe more freely at once. Now was my time for seeing Mrs. Rayner. I was a little shy about going into the left wing without an invitation; she might be asleep, or she might not wish to be disturbed. I thought I would reconnoitre first. So I went into the garden with my knife and basket, as if to cut flowers, gathered a few China asters, and ventured round, past the drawing-room window, through the wet rank grass and the swampy earth, to the left wing. I had put on my goloshes, but they were not of much use, for I sank into pools that came over my shoes.
Still I went on, through an unwholesome mass of fallen and decaying leaves, to the dark yews and laurels that grew round Mrs. Rayner’s window. I had never ventured here since the evening of my arrival, when I had strayed this way in my explorations, and been startled by my first dim view of Mrs. Rayner’s pale face at the window of what must be her room. Again I pushed aside the branches of the now almost leafless barberry-tree and looked for the second time at the gloomy window, overhung by an ivy-bush which now seemed to fall lower than ever. There was no face looking out this time; a broken gutter-pipe had caused the rain-water to form a sort of slough under the window, so that I could not go close to it; but I went as near as I could, singing, and cutting off little branches of yew, as if not knowing where I had strayed. My ruse succeeded. Just as one of the branches I had pulled down towards me swung back into its place, Mrs. Rayner’s white face, looking astonished and alarmed, appeared at the window. I smiled good-morning to her, and made a show of offering her my flowers. I wanted her to open the window. This she seemed reluctant to do. But I stood my ground until at last she put a hesitating hand upon the fastening. When the window was just a few inches up, I said, opening upon a point where I knew we had sympathy—
“Sarah has gone to Beaconsburgh. I saw her off. I hope she will be a very long time.”
I was right. She opened the window, which was a little above the level of my head, more confidently; and I saw that it was barred inside.
“Haidee is so much better to-day, Mrs. Rayner, I think she might come downstairs for a little while to-morrow into the dining-room, if we make a good fire there. She was asking to-day why you did not come up and see her, and I told her you were not well enough. She is very anxious about you.”
“Give her my love,” said Mrs. Rayner, with a faint smile. “I could not do her so much good as you have done.” There was a plaintive expression of helplessness in these words which touched me. “Thank you, Miss Christie.”
“I am so glad she is better,” remarked I, venturing impulsively into the slough that I might stretch my hand up to the window-ledge. “I think it did do her good to go upstairs. The lower part of this house is damp, you know; Doctor Lowe said so.”
She seemed to shrink back into herself a little at these words; however, she said—
“You have been very good to the child. It was best for her to go.”
“Yes, I think it was. Don’t you find that the mist from the marsh makes your room very cold this weather, Mrs. Rayner?”
She looked at me in a frightened irresolute way, and then she formed with her lips rather than spoke the words—
“Yes—rather cold—now.”
“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in one of the rooms upstairs while the fogs last?” I insinuated shyly.
But I saw that her breath was beginning to come fast, and the faint pink to tinge her cheek as it did when she was excited.
“Did any one tell you to say that to me?” she asked, in a whisper.
“I told Mr. Rayner, when I wrote, that we had a slight fog here on Tuesday night, and this morning I had a letter saying that he thought it was bad for you to sleep on the ground-floor when the mists had begun to rise high, and that he had told Sarah to prepare the large front spare-room for you.”
Instead of looking grateful for this proof of her husband’s thoughtfulness, she became agitated, and at last her agitation grew almost uncontrollable; she trembled and clung to the bars inside the window, and I saw that her forehead was wet with the effect of some strong emotion—it looked like fear.
“At last—at last! I have been here too long,” she gasped.
I thought that the effect on her nervous temperament of making her leave the room against her will would outweigh any physical good the change might do her. The wild look was coming into her eyes which I had seen there twice before, and I was afraid of her being seized with a paroxysm while I stood there on the other side of the barred window, powerless to help her; so I said gently—
“Of course Mr. Rayner would not wish you to go if you did not wish it.”
But she shook her head, and, putting her face between the bars to be closer to me, she said, in a low broken voice—
“Do you know what his wishes mean when Sarah carries them out?”
I stood looking up at her, appalled. Her terror was so real that it infected me, and for the moment I almost shared the poor lady’s mad belief that there was a conspiracy against her. But her next words restored me to my senses.
“Are you against me too?” she asked piteously. “I always thought you were; but then you were kind to my child—and I don’t know, I don’t know whom to trust!”
“You may trust me, dear Mrs. Rayner, indeed,” said I earnestly. “I would not have suggested your leaving your room if I had thought it would cause you so much pain. Indeed, I did not know you were so much attached to it.”
She shuddered. There was a pause, during which she stared at me steadily and searchingly. But I had no cause to fear her poor mad eyes, so I returned her gaze, and she grew gradually calmer.
“Miss Christie,” said she at last, in a whisper, “you have influence in this house. That night when Haidee was ill you made Sarah obey you. If I may trust you, give me this proof—get me one day’s respite. Let me stay in my own room till—to-morrow.”
Her voice sank till I could scarcely catch the last words.
“I will try,” said I softly. “And, oh, Mrs. Rayner, shall I tell Sam to take the dead leaves away in a wheelbarrow? I am sure it can’t be wholesome to have them so close to your window.”
“No, no, leave them—never mind,” said she hurriedly. “You must be in the water. You will catch cold. Go—Heaven bless you!”
She shut down the window in a frightened way, and disappeared into the room. I could not see in, for the window-sill was some eight or ten inches above my head. I turned and splashed my way back, with my teeth chattering, to the house, and changed my wet shoes and stockings, half crying for pity for the poor, helpless, forlorn lady for whom I could do so little.
At tea-time she came into the dining room, and, as Sarah was there, I practised the innocent deception of pretending not to have seen her before that day. I thought it better that the lynx-eyed guardian should not discover that I had found a way of communicating privately with her unlucky charge. So I said again at tea-time that I had had a letter from Mr. Rayner, and that he thought that on Saturday she had better move into the spare-room.
“Saturday!” interrupted Sarah sharply.
“Yes,” said I, rather frightened at telling such a story. “Do you think you would like to go to-morrow, or would you rather go to-night, Mrs. Rayner?” I asked gently.
“To-morrow,” said she, with a steady look which I took as an acknowledgment; and I turned to Sarah.
“I will answer for it to Mr. Rayner, if there has been any mistake,” I said, as modestly as I could, for it was an awkward thing to have to give orders before the mistress of the house, however tottering her reason might be.
“Very well, miss,” said Sarah, to my surprise.
For the second time my use of Mr. Rayner’s name had acted like a charm; and I wondered how this woman, who had dared so much to cut me off from communication with Laurence, could calmly submit to receive orders from me.
After tea, Mrs. Rayner in her turn surprised me by a warning which seemed to show keen observation. She came and stood by me at the fireplace while Sarah was clearing the table, and once, while the latter was for a moment out of the room, breathed softly into my ear, without turning her head—
“Take care—she hates you, and she is dangerous.”
I glanced up quickly; but Sarah was already back in the room, and Mrs. Rayner’s face was as impassive as ever.
I was so much used to living in fear of Sarah that the warning did not make any particular impression upon me, and I went to bed neither more nor less afraid of her machinations than usual.
I woke up in the night without being conscious of any cause for doing so. I had started at once into full wakefulness, and I saw that Haidee was sleeping quietly, and that the fire was still alight, but had burnt low; and I thought I would replenish it.
Then, as I raised myself on my elbow, I thought I heard a sound, too faint to be called a noise, outside the door. So I kept quite still and listened intently. I heard nothing for some time, then again a muffled noise as of something being shuffled softly from one stair to another, then again no sound. The turret staircase was uncarpeted; it had once been polished, but the beeswax had worn off long since and had not been renewed. I got out of bed softly, lighted my candle by putting a match to the dying fire to avoid the noise of striking it, crept to the door, and literally put my ear to the keyhole. And, after a few moments, I heard the same soft shuffling again. It might be Nap, Mr. Rayner’s retriever, trying to find a stair softer than the rest to lie upon; yet they were surely too narrow for him to make the attempt.
Whoever or whatever it was seemed to be making its way down by very slow degrees, until it seemed that it must be about six or seven stairs from the top. I screwed up my courage and resolved to give the intruder, human or otherwise, a fright. All the locks were kept in good condition at the Alders, and there was not such a thing as a creaking door in the place. I turned the key without the least noise, then the handle, and flung open the door, stamping my foot and brandishing the candle. I heard Haidee scream; I had forgotten her.
My plan succeeded only too well. A figure which had been crouching on the stairs sprang up. It was Sarah.
Before I had time to do more than recognize the savage frightened face, her foot slipped, and, with a piercing cry, she fell backward down the stairs. The staircase had one turn. I, trembling at the door, saw her long thin hands clutching and struggling to save herself at the corner; but she failed, and I heard a heavy thud, and then a groan. She had fallen headlong to the bottom.
For one second I leaned against the wall unable to move; then, trembling so that I could scarcely find the top stair, I stepped forward to go down. But on the second stair my foot suddenly slipped, and, if I had not been going very slowly because of my agitation, I must have fallen. On the next stair I slipped again; on the next to that, putting out my foot very cautiously, I found a string fastened across.
With a sudden suspicion, I sat down without advancing farther, and slid my hand along the stair. It was slippery; so were the others. The turret staircase was dark even by day; if I had been running downstairs at my usual pace, nothing could have saved me. It was a trap set by Sarah, if not for getting rid of me altogether, at least for seriously injuring me. She was greasing the stairs one by one when I had heard her; in her alarm at my sudden appearance she had sprung up, her foot had slipped on the greasy plate below which she had been using, and she had fallen herself a victim to the trap she had laid for me. And, as the horrible truth broke upon me, I heard another groan and a murmur I could not distinguish.
Sick at heart, and for the moment almost as helpless as she, I crawled down the stairs, wondering and fearing what spectacle would meet my eyes at the bottom.
Allthe stairs below where Sarah had slipped were safe and in their usual state. At the bottom, an almost senseless heap, lay Sarah, with one arm twisted under her and her head in a pool of blood. She was moaning, with closed eyes, and did not know me even when her eyes opened and she stared round her.
The noise of her fall had by this time brought out Jane from the distant nursery; and she ran for the cook, who was an older and more experienced woman, and who indeed proved useful in this emergency. It was past midnight; but, late as it was, I was obliged to send Jane into the village for Sam, to tell him to take one of the horses and ride as fast as he could to Beaconsburgh for the Doctor. Meanwhile the cook declared her belief that one of Sarah’s arms was broken, for she fainted when it was touched; and then, having discovered that the blood was flowing from a great gash at the back of her head, she bound it up as well as she could to stop the bleeding. Then I ran downstairs for some brandy, which we put to her lips from time to time, but in vain tried to make her swallow. And then we sat in the cold, in the dim light of a candle, both of us crouched on the floor, the cook supporting the wounded woman against her knee, I a little way behind, lest she should recover full consciousness and know me.
It was a ghastly thing to be sitting there with that horrid stain on the floor within a few feet, listening to the feeble moans of the wretched woman whom we hardly expected to live until help came, holding our breath when for a few moments the moaning ceased, I thinking of the awful retribution her malice had brought down upon her, not daring to speak to tell her I forgave her, lest my voice should have some terrible effect upon her wandering mind. And so we sat shivering not with cold alone, until the front-door bell sounded through the silent house, and Jane, who had not dared to come upstairs again since she went to send off Sam, opened the door, and we heard the Doctor’s heavy tread on the stairs.
It was Doctor Lowe. He called first for more light. Jane brought a lamp, and he signed to her to go away. After asking me whether I was hysterical, and hearing me answer “No,” he told me to hold the lamp while he made his examination. He said afterwards that I had strong nerves; but nothing but fear of him kept me steady at my post, as, with averted head, I heard the sharp little cries the wounded woman gave two or three times. The cook had been right; the arm that lay under Sarah was broken; the Doctor could not tell yet whether her spine was not injured too. He cut off her long black hair and strapped up her head, which had received a gash which might affect the brain, he said; and he set and bandaged the broken arm. Then we brought a mattress, and very carefully lifted her on to it, carried her to her room, and put her on the bed.
“Who is going to sit up with her?” asked he.
“I will,” said I, but added doubtfully, “if—”
“If what?” said the Doctor, turning upon me sharply.
I drew him a little apart and said—
“Doctor Lowe, do you think the sight of any one she disliked very much would be bad for her?”
He looked at me very keenly as he answered—
“No. She won’t be able to recognize anybody; but I warn you she will be restless. How did the accident happen?”
“She fell downstairs.”
“The staircase leads to your room, doesn’t it? How came she to be there at this time of night? Why don’t you tell me the truth, and save me the trouble of making stupid guesses?”
I told him the truth, and his only comment was—
“And don’t you think the moral of that is that you should leave this place as soon as possible?”
“I sha’n’t stay here long,” said I, smiling, and thinking of Laurence.
“Oh, you think that young f-fellow at the Hall is going to marry you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I tell you frankly, I wouldn’t take a wife from this house.”
“But then you wouldn’t take a wife from anywhere, Doctor Lowe. If you did, you would think more of the girl than of the place she came from, just as Laurence does.”
“You have a sharp little tongue. I pity Laurence when he comes home late.”
He asked after Haidee; but I could not let him see her, as the staircase was not yet ready; so, after giving me instructions about the treatment of Sarah, he left the house.
There was a fire already in her room, for she was by no means the ill-used creature she liked to think herself. I seated myself in a chair beside it, prepared to watch until early morning, when the cook had promised to take my place. Before long the patient began to grow restless, as the Doctor had predicted; she turned her head from side to side, tried to raise her broken arm, which had been set and bandaged tightly down, muttering and moaning incoherently. Presently she was quite quiet, and I hoped she had gone to sleep. I think I must have dozed myself for a few minutes, when I was startled into full wakefulness by a low hoarse cry of “Jim!”
She had managed to move her head so that her great black eyes, glittering now with fever, were fixed full upon me; and my heart beat fast, for I thought she must know me. But she repeated, still staring at me—
“Jim!” Then she added in a whisper, “They are after you, Jim! It’s about the check. You must be off to-night. Go to the old place. I’ll put ’em off, and I’ll let you know.”
Then more mutterings and exclamations, and before long she began again to speak coherently—
“It’s too risky, Jim. I’ll do it, if you want me to; but it’s putting yourself in danger as well as me. All right, I’ll pass it.”
Then she broke out passionately—
“It’s an ill thing you’re going to do, James Woodfall. What do you want of a lady for a wife? Her money’s none so much, and, as for her pretty face, it’s the face of a fool. I’m twice the woman to look at that she is, and I’m only twenty-five; and I’ve stuck to you through thick and thin. Why don’t you marry me, Jim?”
And it flashed across me, as she went on addressing to me reproaches, coaxings, encouragement, and defiance, that she was living over again some long-past passages in her life—passages, I could not but gather, of a very questionable character. For it was plain that this Jim, or James Woodfall, who occupied all her thoughts had been a very bad man indeed, and that Sarah had assisted him in every way in his wicked deeds.
“Don’t go for that, James,” she said once imploringly. “It’ll be a lifer if they catch you; and they’ve had their eye on you lately. There’s many a safer way of getting money than that.”
Another pause, and then came a speech which chilled me with horror.
“Dead men tell no tales, Jim,” said she, in another fearful whisper. “It’s easy done, and it’s safer. What’s an old man’s life that you’re so shy of touching him? You’ve done many a riskier thing. Why do you always turn coward at that?”
I could scarcely sit and watch this woman-fiend after that. I seemed to see murder in her fierce fiery eyes; and I shuddered even as I moistened her dry lips and touched her burning forehead. She rambled on in the same style, mentioning other names I had never heard, and not a word of me or Mr. and Mrs. Rayner, or even of Tom Parkes, until she broke out angrily—
“Jim’s mad about that little Christie girl, Tom, and he says he’ll marry her in spite of everything, and I’ve got to bring it about,” she hissed between her teeth.
What awful confusion in her mind was there to connect me with her criminal lover of years before? There suddenly woke up in my mind the remembrance of the evening when, hidden in my “nest,” I had overheard a conversation between her and Mr. Rayner’s mysterious visitor, who had afterwards turned out to be Mr. Carruthers’s man-servant, and I remembered that she had then expressed jealousy of some man called “Jim.” Was it the same man? How was it that he never appeared? I had thought at the time that she must mean Tom Parkes, and that the woman she was jealous of was Jane; but, on the whole, she got on well with Jane; and the only person in the house against whom her animosity took any serious form was myself. And now she fancied this “Jim” wanted to marry me—and I had never even seen him!
She was rambling again into the present, though, for the next speech that caught my attention was—
“It’s a good weight, Tom—Jim might have lent you a hand. The water’s deep in the cellar; but it won’t hurt the jewels, and the plate’ll clean. Come on.”
Was it the Denham Court robbery that was on her mind now? I held my breath while she went on—
“Tom, that sneaking Christie girl’s got wind of it somehow. Jim’s that gone on her he won’t listen to me; and, if I don’t prevent it, she’ll be his ruin.”
Again that strange confusion of my name with that of the unknown Jim! My brain seemed to be getting as much confused as her own. I held tightly to the arms of my chair as I listened to her ravings, as if in a futile attempt to steady body and mind. I was mad to discover who this James Woodfall was, and I left my chair, and drew, as if fascinated, nearer to the bed as she said—
“Take care, Jim. You risk too much. There must be some thief-taker in the world clever enough to recognize the forger James Woodfall in the jewel-robber—”
At that moment, while I listened with pulses beating high and eager eyes for the name, the door opened, and the sick woman, distracted by the noise, cried, “What’s that?”
It was the cook come to take my place. But the reaction from the high-pressure tension of my nerves during the last few hours was too much for me. I fell fainting to the floor.
The next morning I awoke late, with a headache and an unpleasant feeling of having gone through some horrible adventure. I told Haidee, who had been very much alarmed, poor little thing, by my antics at the door when I frightened Sarah, and by the noise of her fall, a much modified story of the whole occurrence, and then ventured down the stairs very cautiously; but Jane, instructed by the cook, had already removed the grease and made them safe again.
But I never again went down those stairs at night-time without a shudder.
I telegraphed to Mr. Rayner to inform him of the accident, without, of course, mentioning the cause, as soon as the Doctor’s early visit was over—he said she was suffering from brain-fever, and ought to have a regular nurse. I received a telegram from Mr. Rayner before dinner-time—
“Am much distressed about accident. Give her every care. Have sent off an experienced nurse already.”
And by the afternoon train she arrived—a silent, middle-aged woman, the very sight of whom inspired respect, which in my case amounted to awe.
The fright in the night had made Haidee rather feverish again, so that I thought it better to delay her coming downstairs yet another day. But she got up and sat by the fire in my room, and I sat with her during a great part of the day. Just before dinner we heard a light unaccustomed step on the stairs and a knock at the door, and Mrs. Rayner came in. Seeing her in the full light of my four windows, I was shocked by the change in her since I had first come to the Alders, little more than two months before. Her cheeks were so wan and hollow, her eyes so sunken in their sockets, and her lips so drawn and livid that I seemed to be looking at the face of a dead woman. She made little reference to the previous night’s adventure, only saying—
“I hear Sarah is ill. I had to go in search of my breakfast myself this morning. I hope she is better.”
But the look on her worn face of relief from a hated burden belied her words. She had not dared even to visit her child while that harpy was about. I was sorry Sarah’s illness had been caused by me; but I could not feel much sympathy with her; her wandering speeches of the night before had shown her real cruel, vindictive self too plainly.
When we were called to dinner, which Mrs. Rayner said she would have with me to-day, I went down first, in order to leave her with her child for a few minutes. At the foot of the turret stairs, where a mat had been put to hide the traces of the horrible stain, I found the elfish Mona, as dirty as usual, playing with a large bunch of keys—Sarah’s housekeeping keys. I thought they would be safer in my care than in Mona’s; so I took them from her, not without a struggle and many tearless screams and howls on her part. I did not come much into contact with this young person now, as, when neither Mr. nor Mrs. Rayner appeared at meals, she had hers in the nursery with Jane, which she much preferred, as it did not entail so much washing and combing.
I thought to myself how much annoyed Sarah would be if she knew her keys were in my possession; but I was glad I had found them when, later in the day, after tea, Jane came to me and said Mrs. Saunders, the nurse, could not drink the draught ale from the cask, and wanted some bottled stout.
“And cook says, ‘What shall we do?’ miss. She’s making such a fuss about it.”
“Where is the bottled stout kept, Jane?” said I, thinking of my keys.
“It’s either in the cellar, miss—but Mr. Rayner keeps the key of that—or else in Sarah’s store cupboard.”
“That is in the left wing, isn’t it?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Very well, Jane. I have found Sarah’s keys; so I will look in there and see if I can find any,” said I.
I did not much like taking this task upon myself; but it would not do to offend the nurse; and I thought it better to venture into Sarah’s domain myself than to trust the duty to Jane.
“Oh, and, if you please, Miss Christie, could you get us out some candles and some moist sugar? They are in there I know, for Sarah went to Beaconsburgh for them yesterday.”
I said I would; and, lighting a candle, I rather nervously pulled open the heavy door of the left wing and entered that mysterious part of the house sacred to Mrs. Rayner. Oh, how cold it was as the door closed behind me! I was growing nervous after the adventures I had had lately, and I did not like to hear the muffled thud of that door as it swung to after me. The store-room was the first door on the right, I knew; and I tremblingly tried the keys until I came to the one which opened it. I shivered. It was colder than ever in there, a great big bare room, with shelves and cupboards, and old hampers and boxes, and odds and ends of lumber. I could not help thinking how angry Sarah would be if she knew I was in the room, where no member of the household but herself ever ventured, and which had therefore grown into an importance it did not deserve, for it was a very ordinary apartment, and the cupboard I first opened, in search of candles and moist sugar, was a very ordinary cupboard, with the usual store of jams and pickle-jars and household stores of all kinds, except, of course, I thought angrily, as I shivered again with the cold, the candles and moist sugar of which I was in search. I opened another cupboard, I searched on the open shelves, but could not find either of the things I wanted.
At last I caught sight of a black bag lying on the floor; it looked like the very black bag Sarah had had in her hand when I saw her start for Beaconsburgh on the previous day; perhaps she had not taken her purchases out yet. I took it up; but suddenly my attention was diverted by the fact that in one of the boards of the floor on the spot where it had lain there was a tiny ring. If I had not had my attention very much on the alert in this unaccustomed place, it would have escaped my notice. As it was, I put my finger through it, and found that it raised a trap-door.
I raised it only a few inches, and shut it again directly—not that I had no curiosity about it, but that I had also some fear. An unsuspected trap-door in a house so full of surprises as the Alders had an interest of a rather appalling kind. At last I gathered up my courage, and little by little raised the door and put it right back, not without a horrid wonder whether there was any spring in it which would shut me down if I ventured on the ladder I saw below me.
The rush of cold air when the trap-door was wide open seemed to take my breath away. I held my candle over the opening, and saw that some three feet below the ladder was green and slimy, and that a foot below that there was water. Was it a well? Suddenly there flashed through my mind Sarah’s words in her delirium of the night before—“The water’s deep in the cellar.” I looked about me for something to try the depth of the water with, for go down I must. I found a rod that looked like those used for the bottom of window-blinds, and cautiously, candle in hand, ventured on the ladder. It was quite firm.
As soon as I was on the bottom dry step, the fourth from the top, I saw that I was in a large cellar, on one side of which were empty wine-bins which looked rotten and green. Above the level of the water the walls were green too. There was a tiny grating high up, from which down to the water there was a long green streak, as if water continually ran down there. I heard the drip, drip at intervals while I stayed. The cellar ran to the left—under Mrs. Rayner’s room, I suddenly thought with horror. Did she know that she might as well be living over a well? I tried the depth of the water; it was between three and four feet. Then I looked through the rungs of the ladder I was standing on, and thought I saw something behind it. Putting out my rod, I felt something soft which shook at the touch. I peered round the ladder and saw, on a big deal table the top of which had been raised to about eight or ten inches above the water’s level, the little brown portmanteau I had seen Tom Parkes carry across the lawn, the same that I had afterwards discovered inside the back-door. And I remembered now where I had seen it before—stowed away at the bottom of a cupboard in the room I had occupied at Denham Court. I knew it by an old Italian luggage-label, “Torino,” which I had noticed then.
It was within arm’s reach through the rungs of the ladder. With trembling fingers I opened it—for it was not even fastened—and, to my horror, drew out from a confusion of glittering things with which it was half filled a serpent bracelet I had seen Lady Mills wear. I put it back, closed the portmanteau with difficulty, and clung to the ladder, overwhelmed by my discovery.
Again my brain seemed to whirl round, as it had done on the previous night when Sarah had been on the point of revealing James Woodfall’s other name. My candle slipped from my fingers, fell with a hiss and a splash into the water below, and I was in darkness.
I gaveone cry as my candle fell, and then, instinctively shutting my eyes, as if to hide from myself the dreadful fact that I was in darkness, I felt my way up the ladder out of that dreadful cellar into the store-room above. It was seven o’clock, and only just enough light came through the one little grated window high up in the wall for me to see that there was a window there. But, once on the store-room floor, I crawled cautiously round the square hole I had come up through until I came to the door, which I shut down with a strong sense of relief. Then I groped about, stumbling over hampers and boxes now and then, and scarcely able to repress a cry at each fresh obstruction, until I came at last to the door. I had left it unlocked; and the moment after I touched the handle I was on the other side. Luckily I had slipped the keys into my pocket at first sight of the black bag; and, after long but impatient fumbling, I managed in the dark to fit in the right one and to turn the lock securely. Then I groped my way along the passage; and I never in all my life felt such a thrill of heart-felt thankfulness as I did when the great baize-covered door swung to behind me, and I found myself once more in the lighted hall.
I flung myself into a chair, overwrought and exhausted by what I had suffered in the left wing, and it was not for some minutes that I noticed an envelope directed simply, in Mrs. Manners’s handwriting, to “Miss Christie, The Alders,” which lay on the table beside me. I tore it open, and, scarcely glancing at her kind little note saying she had received the enclosed when she called at the Beaconsburgh post-office that afternoon, pressed Laurence’s letter to my lips again and again before I opened it. It said—
“Nice, Friday.“My own sweet Violet,—I had hoped to find a letter from you waiting for me on my arrival here; but I know very well it is not your fault that I am disappointed, even if I do not hear from you for a whole week—for I will never doubt my darling again. I have had the battle with my mother prematurely, and gained the victory. I intended, as you know, to break my resolution to her gently; but she herself hurried thedénouement. We broke the journey at Paris, stopping there last night. As soon as we got there, I opened my writing-case and wrote a tiny note to my darling, just to tell you how I walked up and down the deck of the steamer and sat in a railway-carriage, thinking of you and the last look I had into your beautiful loving gray eyes in the drive on Tuesday night—such a long time ago it seems! I left the room for a minute to order something to eat, with my letter closed up and directed to you on the table, ready to be enclosed to Mrs. Manners. When I came back, I found my mother there; she had torn open my letter and was reading it. Then we had a scene. I asked for my letter, and she tore it up and flung it into the fireplace, with some words about you that sent my forbearance to the winds, and I told her she was speaking about my future wife.“ ‘Your future wife,’ answered she, drawing herself up to her full height and rolling out her voice in a way that always reduces my father to nothingness, ‘is Miss Langham of Greytowers.’“ ‘You have been misinformed, mother. In such a matter it is always best to get your information at first hand. Your future daughter-in-law is Miss Violet Christie, the most beautiful girl in Norfolk or out of it. And as for Miss Langham, if you are so bent upon having her for a daughter-in-law, and she doesn’t mind waiting, you can save her up for Jack.’“I expected a lot more nonsense; but she was so much taken by surprise that that speech broke the back of the difficulty; and now, though she receives all my attentions frigidly and we are getting along very uncomfortably, she knows her control over her eldest son is at an end. I only wish, my darling, that my promise to my father had not prevented my telling her this while we were still in England, for I begin to fancy this journey ‘for her health’ was nothing but a trick—a plot, for there were two in it—for getting me away from you. However, I suppose I must live through the two months now somehow, as I promised her. She will keep me to that.“But I am in a fever of anxiety about you. I will not distress you by a lot of vague suspicions that are rising in my mind to torture me; but I beg of you, my beautiful gentle love, to let me know every little event that happens at the Alders. I pray Heaven you may have very little to tell. And now I entreat you to comply with this my earnest, solemn request. Don’t trust your letters to any one to post—don’t even post them yourself—but give them to my youngest sister, to send on to me. She teaches in the Sunday-school. Get Mrs. Manners to send you up to the Hall on some pretext on Sunday; get Maud alone, and you will find she will do what you ask. Tell her to remember her last promise to me in the conservatory, and I’ll remember mine.“Keep this letter where no one can get at it—not in a desk—if you don’t tear it up. I feel already such a hunger for a sight of your sweet face—I can’t think of the touch of your little clinging hands about my throat without the tears rising to my eyes. I think I must jump into the sea if I cannot find some means of getting back to you sooner. Good-by; Heaven bless you! Write to me; don’t forget. Keep safe and well, till you are once again in the arms of“Yours devotedly for ever and ever,“Laurence.”
“Nice, Friday.
“My own sweet Violet,—I had hoped to find a letter from you waiting for me on my arrival here; but I know very well it is not your fault that I am disappointed, even if I do not hear from you for a whole week—for I will never doubt my darling again. I have had the battle with my mother prematurely, and gained the victory. I intended, as you know, to break my resolution to her gently; but she herself hurried thedénouement. We broke the journey at Paris, stopping there last night. As soon as we got there, I opened my writing-case and wrote a tiny note to my darling, just to tell you how I walked up and down the deck of the steamer and sat in a railway-carriage, thinking of you and the last look I had into your beautiful loving gray eyes in the drive on Tuesday night—such a long time ago it seems! I left the room for a minute to order something to eat, with my letter closed up and directed to you on the table, ready to be enclosed to Mrs. Manners. When I came back, I found my mother there; she had torn open my letter and was reading it. Then we had a scene. I asked for my letter, and she tore it up and flung it into the fireplace, with some words about you that sent my forbearance to the winds, and I told her she was speaking about my future wife.
“ ‘Your future wife,’ answered she, drawing herself up to her full height and rolling out her voice in a way that always reduces my father to nothingness, ‘is Miss Langham of Greytowers.’
“ ‘You have been misinformed, mother. In such a matter it is always best to get your information at first hand. Your future daughter-in-law is Miss Violet Christie, the most beautiful girl in Norfolk or out of it. And as for Miss Langham, if you are so bent upon having her for a daughter-in-law, and she doesn’t mind waiting, you can save her up for Jack.’
“I expected a lot more nonsense; but she was so much taken by surprise that that speech broke the back of the difficulty; and now, though she receives all my attentions frigidly and we are getting along very uncomfortably, she knows her control over her eldest son is at an end. I only wish, my darling, that my promise to my father had not prevented my telling her this while we were still in England, for I begin to fancy this journey ‘for her health’ was nothing but a trick—a plot, for there were two in it—for getting me away from you. However, I suppose I must live through the two months now somehow, as I promised her. She will keep me to that.
“But I am in a fever of anxiety about you. I will not distress you by a lot of vague suspicions that are rising in my mind to torture me; but I beg of you, my beautiful gentle love, to let me know every little event that happens at the Alders. I pray Heaven you may have very little to tell. And now I entreat you to comply with this my earnest, solemn request. Don’t trust your letters to any one to post—don’t even post them yourself—but give them to my youngest sister, to send on to me. She teaches in the Sunday-school. Get Mrs. Manners to send you up to the Hall on some pretext on Sunday; get Maud alone, and you will find she will do what you ask. Tell her to remember her last promise to me in the conservatory, and I’ll remember mine.
“Keep this letter where no one can get at it—not in a desk—if you don’t tear it up. I feel already such a hunger for a sight of your sweet face—I can’t think of the touch of your little clinging hands about my throat without the tears rising to my eyes. I think I must jump into the sea if I cannot find some means of getting back to you sooner. Good-by; Heaven bless you! Write to me; don’t forget. Keep safe and well, till you are once again in the arms of
“Yours devotedly for ever and ever,
“Laurence.”
It was new life to me, it was heart-felt unutterable joy, to read this and put my cheek against the signature, to tuck it inside my gown and feel that I was in possession of the most precious treasure the whole world could produce, the first real long letter from the man I loved.
I went into the dining-room, took it out again, and began kissing each line in turn, I was so silly with happiness. I had got to the middle of the second page in this fashion, when the iron bar which fastened the shutters suddenly fell down and swung backwards and forwards almost without noise. I thrust my letter hastily back into my gown and stared at the shutters, too much startled to think what could be the reason of this, when one of them slid softly back, and a man was in the room before I could get to the door. With a cry of relief, I sprang towards him.
“Oh, Mr. Rayner, how you frightened me! I thought you were a burglar.”
“My poor dear little girl, I often come in this way to save kicking my heels at the door; but I wouldn’t have done it, frightening you out of your wits, if I had known you were in here. I thought everybody would be occupied with the two invalids. And how are you, little woman?”
I was so delighted to see him back once more, to feel that at last there was some one to look up to and trust in the house again, that I laughed and cried together as he shook my hands and patted my shoulder, and told me that it would never do to leave me at the Alders in his absence again; he should have to take me with him. I laughed.
“Why, I am too useful here, Mr. Rayner! I don’t know what they would have done without me, with first Haidee ill, and then Sarah. You see, as Mrs. Rayner is never well enough to give any directions, I was obliged to take a good deal upon myself; and I hope you won’t be angry when you hear all I’ve done.”
“No, my child, I am sure I shall not,” said he, helping himself to some cold beef on the sideboard—there was no regular supper at the Alders, but there were always meat and biscuits on the sideboard after tea for those who cared for them. “How is Mrs. Rayner?”
I told him that she was no better and no worse, and that she had moved to-day into the front spare-room.
“To-day?”
“Yes. She was so reluctant to leave her own room that I took the liberty of telling Sarah I would answer to you for delaying the change this one day. Was it too forward of me?” I asked timidly.
“No,” said he very kindly, drawing me into a chair beside him at the table; “I give you full permission to use my authority in any way you think proper.”
“Thank you, Mr. Rayner. And, oh, I don’t know what you will say, but I made Sarah take Haidee’s cot up to my room! The dressing-room in the left wing is so very cold. And then I sent for Doctor Lowe. Was that right? I had heard he was the best doctor in Beaconsburgh.”
I asked this rather nervously, for I knew Mr. Rayner disliked Doctor Lowe. But he was in too good a humor to find fault with anything.
“All that you have done is perfectly right, and always will be, in my eyes; so you need never fear what I may say to you, child. Have you any more news? I want to hear all about Sarah’s accident, and whether you were very much alarmed when you heard about the robbery at Denham Court.”
“I have a lot to tell you,” I said hesitatingly; “but I won’t tell you any of it to-night, Mr. Rayner, because it is all bad, miserable news, and I won’t spoil your first evening. It is bad enough to come back to a house as full of invalids as a hospital. But it will all come right again now you are back.”
Mr. Rayner laughed, and seemed much pleased. He put his hand on mine, which was lying on the table, and looked into my face very kindly indeed.
“Do you think so, my child? Are you so glad to see me again?”
“Yes, indeed I am. You can’t think how dull the place is when you are away. There is nobody to talk or laugh, and one creeps about the house as if one were in a Trappist monastery, and didn’t dare to break the sacred silence.”
“Thanks, my child; that is the very prettiest welcome home I have had for—years,” said he, with much feeling in his voice.
And he kept me a long time chatting to him and listening to his account of what he had seen in London, until at last I grew very sleepy while he finished the story of his adventures; and I said I must really go to bed, or I should never be able to get up in time for breakfast. As it was, the clock struck eleven before I went upstairs.
The next morning at breakfast the talk was chiefly about the robbery at Denham Court. Mr. Rayner had read the accounts of it in the newspapers, besides the bare mention of it I had made in my letter to him; but now he wanted to hear all we had heard, and whether we were very much alarmed by it. Mrs. Rayner said very little, as usual; and I only told him Mr. Carruthers’s story, reserving the suspicious things I had seen for when I should be able to talk to him alone. The opportunity soon came.
I went into the schoolroom after breakfast, thinking I would employ the hour and a half there was to spare before church-time in just beginning my letter to Laurence. But I had not got beyond “My own dearest Lau—” when Mr. Rayner came in and smiled in a mischievous manner that brought the color into my cheeks when he saw what I was doing. I put away my letter at once, so I do not know how he guessed to whom I was writing.
“Am I disturbing you?” said he.
“Oh, no! I was only writing a note to pass away the time.”
“Well, and now for all the ‘bad, miserable news’ which was too overwhelming for me to hear about last night.”
“Oh, Mr. Rayner, I don’t know where to begin, and it seems ungenerous to tell it you now, as the person it concerns most is ill and unable to answer for herself!”
“Well, trust to my generosity, child,” said he gravely. “I suppose you mean Sarah. Has she been annoying you again?”
“Oh, yes! But that is not the worst. If it had been only that, I would not have told you anything about it until she was well enough to defend herself. Indeed I am not so inhuman as to have any vindictive feeling against the poor woman now, when her very life is in danger. But I must tell you this, because I know something ought to be done, and you will know what it is.”
“Tell me first how she has annoyed you, and—how the accident happened.”
“She stopped a letter of mine by running after the postman and getting it out of the bag by some excuse or other.”
“When was that?”
“On Wednesday.”
“That is the most unwarrantable thing I ever heard of. I knew the woman was prejudiced against you; but one has to forgive old servants a good many things, and I never guessed she would dare so much as that.”
“Oh, don’t be so angry with her, or I shall never dare to tell you the rest, Mr. Rayner!”
And it required several questions and guesses on his part to draw out from me the account of the accident to Sarah, and the inevitable suspicions as to how it came about. Mr. Rayner turned quite pale when I came to my slipping on the stairs and catching my foot in the string, and he looked up and out of the window from under his frowning brows with an expression of hard fury that made me instinctively move away from him on my chair, it was so terrible, so merciless. And I had still so much that I must tell him! It was with averted head that I whispered all the suspicious things I had seen and heard connecting Sarah and Tom Parkes with the Denham Court burglary—my view of Tom carrying something across the lawn; his returning with Sarah; the fact of two men in a cart having been seen outside—I did not say by whom, but I fancy Mr. Rayner guessed; my seeing the brown portmanteau inside the back-door; and lastly my discovery of the portmanteau in the cellar under the store-room, and my recognition of it and of the bracelet I took out of it at haphazard as having both come from Denham Court.
Mr. Rayner listened with the deepest interest, but with some incredulity.
“My dear child, it is impossible—at least I hope from my soul it may turn out to be so! Poor old Sarah is, I acknowledge, the worst-tempered and most vindictive woman alive. But the accomplice of thieves! I cannot believe it.” He got up and walked about the room, questioned me again closely, and then remained for a few minutes in deep thought. “She would never dare! Sarah is afraid of me, and to bring stolen goods into my house would be a greater liberty than even an old servant would take, I think.”
“Ah, but you were away, Mr. Rayner! She may have reckoned upon getting the things out of the house before your return,” I suggested.
“And Tom Parkes, too, a fellow I have a great liking for, and whom I have trusted with money too over and over again,” he went on to himself, scarcely noticing my interruption.
I wondered Mr. Rayner did not ask me for the store-room keys and go himself to prove at least one part of my story; but I did not like to suggest it, half fearing, coward that I was, that he would ask me to go with him to that dreadful cellar.
“Don’t say a word about this to any one, child,” said he at last. “I must sift the matter to the very bottom. It is possible that they may both have been cheated by some clever knave into assisting him innocently. But didn’t you say you saw Tom Parkes carrying what you took for the portmanteau on Tuesday night?”
“Yes, Mr. Rayner.”
“But the burglary was on Wednesday! No, no; you may depend there will be some explanation of the matter as soon as Sarah is able to give an account of herself. In the mean time I will make inquiries, and I will set your mind at rest as soon as possible.” He remained silent again for a little while, then shook his head, as if to dismiss all disagreeable thoughts, and said, in his usual bright tone, “And now I have a little bit of news for you, which I hope you will think neither bad nor miserable. How would you like to leave the Alders for a short time, and spend a couple of weeks on the borders of the Mediterranean?”
I looked up at him in bewilderment, which amused him.
“You look at me as if you thought me a magician who could transport you against your will to the uttermost parts of the earth by a wave of my wand. This is how it is. I have to see one of Mrs. Rayner’s trustees on important business at once. He is staying at Monaco, which is, as you know, not far from Nice, where, I learnt by a letter from Mrs. Reade the other day, she and her son are staying. But I dare say that is stale news to you, and anyhow it is a matter of no consequence.”
This was said so mischievously that I could not help growing very red indeed and being thankful when he went on—
“Having to go there myself, I thought the change might do my wife good; and this morning I tried every inducement to persuade her to go, but in vain, as I expected. But for Haidee some change is absolutely necessary, as the Doctor told you. And, as I cannot look after the child entirely by myself, I pondered as to who could do it for me, and I decided upon you.”
“Oh, but,” I began, the impossibility of my travelling alone over Europe with Mr. Rayner and Haidee being clear even to my not very wise brain.
“Now listen, and hear how cleverly I have managed it. Haidee goes to look after her papa, Miss Christie goes to look after Haidee, Mrs. Christie goes to look after Miss Christie.”
“My mother!” I exclaimed.
“Yes. I went to see her yesterday, and proposed the plan to her, not forgetting to put in a word about our friends at Nice. She was delighted, and asked your uncle’s consent at once. We have already settled that she is to meet us at Liverpool Street on our arrival in town next Friday morning.”
“Next Friday!” said I, utterly bewildered. “And leave Mrs. Rayner all alone here?”
“Unless you can persuade her to go with us. You can wheedle a bird off a bough, and I really believe you have more influence with her than I have.”
Indeed it seemed so; for I had often wondered how she could be so obstinate with him, when to me she always seemed as weak as a reed.
“There, child,” said Mr. Rayner, taking a letter from his pocket and putting it into my hands. “You don’t seem able to take it all in. Read that.”
It was a letter in my mother’s handwriting. I opened it, still utterly bewildered. It said—
“My darling Violet,—Your kind friend Mr. Rayner is waiting; so I can pen you only these few lines; and I don’t know how to express my feelings at his generous offer. He says I am to write to you and persuade you to go; but I do not think you will need much persuasion. He has directed me to provide an outfit for you at his expense, and bring it with me to Liverpool Street Station, where I am to meet you on Friday, though I don’t like starting on a journey on a Friday. Heaven be praised for sending us such kind friends! I have no time for more, as Mr. Rayner is waiting. With best love from your uncle and cousins, in the fond hope of seeing you very soon,“Your affectionate mother,Amy Christie.”
“My darling Violet,—Your kind friend Mr. Rayner is waiting; so I can pen you only these few lines; and I don’t know how to express my feelings at his generous offer. He says I am to write to you and persuade you to go; but I do not think you will need much persuasion. He has directed me to provide an outfit for you at his expense, and bring it with me to Liverpool Street Station, where I am to meet you on Friday, though I don’t like starting on a journey on a Friday. Heaven be praised for sending us such kind friends! I have no time for more, as Mr. Rayner is waiting. With best love from your uncle and cousins, in the fond hope of seeing you very soon,
“Your affectionate mother,Amy Christie.”
My dear mother! It was just like her to see nothing so very extraordinary in this offer, to take it as a matter of course, and thank Heaven for it in the most simple-minded way, while it troubled me somewhat still. I read the letter twice through, and then tried deprecatingly to thank him for the outfit he had got her to provide.
“Oh, does she mention that? I told her not to do so,” said he, laughing.
“You don’t know my mother. When she has anything to tell, she can’t resist telling it. This letter is just like her. But she has done two things she never in all her life did before—dated her letter and put no postscript.”
Assoon as we came out of church that morning, I found an opportunity of speaking to Mrs. Manners, and asked her shyly if she could give me any message to take that afternoon to Miss Maud Reade at the Hall.
“Laurence told me to ask you,” I whispered timidly; “it is because he particularly wants my next letter to be enclosed in hers. He didn’t say why; but he is very emphatic about it.”
“Dear, dear,” said kind Mrs. Manners anxiously, “it is a pity young people cannot get on without so many subterfuges! I don’t know whether Mr. Manners would approve. But there—I promised Laurence I would help you—and there is no harm in it—and so I will. Come up to the Vicarage after afternoon service, and I’ll give you a packet of tracts for her.”
I thanked her; but she had already turned to reproach a deaf old woman bent with rheumatism for not coming to church oftener, and to promise to send her some beef-tea jelly next day. I made my way to where Mr. and Mrs. Rayner were standing, the former advising old Mr. Reade to send his plate, which was known to be valuable, to the bank at Beaconsburgh for safety.
“Jewel-robberies are epidemic, you know, and I dare say we haven’t seen the last of this series yet,” said he. “There was Lord Dalston’s, and now Sir Jonas’s; but they never stop at two. You remember some years ago, when there were five big robberies within six weeks? I shouldn’t wonder if the same sort of thing occurred again.”
“They wouldn’t try for my little store; it wouldn’t be worth their while,” said Mr. Reade, with undisturbed good-humor. “If Laurence were at home, perhaps I’d get him to send the lot off; but I can’t see after things myself; and, if I put ’em all in a cart and packed ’em off to Beaconsburgh, the chances are they would all get tilted into a ditch. So they must take their chance in the old chest at home. I’ve given Williamson a blunderbuss—but I think it frightens him more than it would a thief—and I sleep with a revolver at my bedside; and a man can’t do more.”
“Don’t you think the thieves will be caught, Mr. Rayner?” asked Gregson, the village carpenter, timidly. It was rumored that he had fifteen pounds and a pair of silver muffineers hidden away somewhere; and he turned to Mr. Rayner, who always took the lead naturally in any discussion, with much anxiety.
“Not in the least likely,” answered Mr. Rayner decisively. “Why should they be? They might be if they had their equals in wits pitted against them; but they haven’t. The ordinary detective has the common defect of vulgar minds, want of resource. The thief, if he is clever enough to be a successful jewel-robber, has the abilities of a general. The bolder he is, the more certain he is of success. The detective, in spite of repeated failures, believes himself infallible. If I were a thief, I should commit robberies as nearly as possible under the detective’s nose. That astute being would never suspect the man who braved him to his face.”
“Ah, it’s very fine to talk,” said one acute villager, who thought Mr. Rayner was really going too far; “but, when it came to the detective being there, you’d be about as bold as the rest of us, I’m thinking.”
Mr. Rayner laughed good-humoredly enough, and said perhaps he was right; and I heard the acute villager bragging of having put down Mr. Rayner, who, he said, was a bit bumptious for just a gentleman-fiddler, and wasn’t so much cleverer than the rest of ’em, he guessed, for all his talk.
At dinner Mr. Rayner tried again to induce his wife to go to Monaco, and encouraged me to join my persuasions to his, which I did most heartily. But to all we said she only replied steadily and coldly that she disliked travelling, did not feel well enough to undertake a journey, and preferred remaining at the Alders. She added, in the same parrot-like tone, that she thought the change would do me and Haidee good, and that it was very kind of my mother to go.
After dinner I ran upstairs to my room, and, opening the door softly, found Haidee dozing by the fire. So I sat down to write my scarcely-begun letter to Laurence.
I first told him how happy his letter had made me, and then, obeying his injunction to tell him everything that happened at the Alders, I gave him a full account of the way Sarah had prevented our meeting on Wednesday evening, and of her stealing my letter out of the bag on Thursday, of Mr. Carruthers’s visit to tell me of the robbery at Denham Court, of the accident to Sarah on Friday night, of her ravings about a bad man named James Woodfall, of Mr. Rayner’s return, and of his intention to take Haidee, my mother, and me to Monaco in a few days.
The hope of seeing Laurence again soon had by this time swallowed up every other thought concerning the journey; and I was eager for Friday to come, that we might start.
Then I told him that I had some very grave suspicions about the robbery, that I had told them to Mr. Rayner, who did not think so seriously of them as I did, but that he said I ought not to repeat them to anybody until he had thoroughly sifted the matter, and I had promised not to do so.
“So now you are not to be anxious about my safety any more, my dearest Laurence. For Sarah, the only person who wished me harm, is too ill to move, and is in danger, poor woman, of losing, if not her life, at least her reason, the Doctor says. And Mr. Rayner has promised not to go away again for more than a day at a time, either on business or for pleasure. There seems a curious fatality about his absences, for both these dreadful robberies that have frightened everybody so much lately, the one at Lord Dalston’s and the one at Denham Court, have happened while he was away, with no man in the house to protect us against burglars or our fears of them. I think your prejudice against Mr. Rayner ought to break down now that through him we are to meet each other so soon; for when we are at Monaco you will come over and see us, won’t you? My mother is very anxious to make your acquaintance, though she does not know of our engagement, for I dare not tell her any secrets. I think Mr. Rayner must have guessed it though, for he says little things to tease me and make me blush. And you see he does not try to prejudice me against you, as you thought he would. But he might try, and everybody else in the world might try, for years and years, but they would never succeed in changing the heart of your own ever loving“Violet.”
“So now you are not to be anxious about my safety any more, my dearest Laurence. For Sarah, the only person who wished me harm, is too ill to move, and is in danger, poor woman, of losing, if not her life, at least her reason, the Doctor says. And Mr. Rayner has promised not to go away again for more than a day at a time, either on business or for pleasure. There seems a curious fatality about his absences, for both these dreadful robberies that have frightened everybody so much lately, the one at Lord Dalston’s and the one at Denham Court, have happened while he was away, with no man in the house to protect us against burglars or our fears of them. I think your prejudice against Mr. Rayner ought to break down now that through him we are to meet each other so soon; for when we are at Monaco you will come over and see us, won’t you? My mother is very anxious to make your acquaintance, though she does not know of our engagement, for I dare not tell her any secrets. I think Mr. Rayner must have guessed it though, for he says little things to tease me and make me blush. And you see he does not try to prejudice me against you, as you thought he would. But he might try, and everybody else in the world might try, for years and years, but they would never succeed in changing the heart of your own ever loving
“Violet.”
I had said at dinner that day, in answer to Mr. Rayner’s inquiries, that I was not going to afternoon service, but I had not mentioned that I was going to the Vicarage. I felt sure that I should blush if I did, and then Mr. Rayner would guess my visit had something to do with Laurence; and I did not want to be teased any more. So, when five o’clock came, and I knew that service must be over, I put on my outdoor things, kissed Haidee, who was now awake, and slipped softly downstairs and out by the schoolroom window. I was not afraid of leaving that unfastened, now that Mr. Rayner had come back again.
Mrs. Manners met me in the hall of the Vicarage, took me into the drawing-room, and gave me a packet of tracts, two or three of which had names lightly pencilled on them, as specially suitable to certain of the parishioners, as, “The Drunkard’s Warning”—Mrs. Nabbitts; “The Cost of a Ribbon”—Lizzie Mojer. These I was to deliver to Miss Maud Reade for distribution in her district this week.
“Tell her to notice that I have marked some specially,” said Mrs. Manners, as she gave them to me; and I rather wondered how the persons they were directed to would take the attention.
I thought that, in spite of her hatred of subterfuge, Mrs. Manners seemed to enjoy the little mystery which hung over my engagement. She kissed me very kindly as she sent me off, and told me I was to let her know when Sarah was well enough to be read to, and she would send something to be read which might do her good. I promised that I would; but I hope it was not impious of me to think, as I could not help thinking, that she was too wicked for any of Mrs. Manners’s good books to have much effect upon her.
I went through the side-gate of the Vicarage garden, where I had run against Laurence on that happy evening which seemed so long ago, although in truth only eight days had passed since then, and my heart beat fast, and I walked slowly, for it seemed to me that Laurence must be coming round the corner again to meet me; but of course he did not; and I quickened my pace as I crossed the park to the Hall.
The mist was growing very thick, although it was only a little past five; and I knew I must make haste back, or I might risk losing my way, short as the distance was between the Hall and the Alders.
I rang the bell, and asked for Miss Maud Reade; and the servant who opened the door, and who, I felt sure, was the Williamson who was afraid of the blunderbuss, showed me into the drawing-room. There was no one there, for they were all at tea.
This was my first entrance into Laurence’s home; and I was so much agitated between pleasure at being in the house he lived in and shame at feeling that by some of the inhabitants at least, if they knew all, I should be looked upon as an unwelcome intruder, that I sank into a chair and buried my face in my hands. It was a very comforting thought, though, that I was sitting on a chair that Laurence must certainly have sat upon; and then I wondered which was his favorite, and tried one that I thought likely, to see if any instinct would tell me if I were right. I had not made up my mind on that point when the door opened and Miss Maud Reade came in.
She was a girl of about sixteen, with a weak but not disagreeable face; and she shook hands with me rather timidly, but not unkindly.
“Mrs. Manners asked me to bring you these tracts for your district, Miss Reade. She has marked some for people she thinks them specially suitable for,” said I, giving her the packet.
“Thank you; it is very kind of you to take so much trouble,” said she.
“Oh, it is no trouble at all!” I answered.
There was a pause of rather awkward constraint; and then I said in a whisper—
“Laurence—your brother—told me to come and see you, and to ask you to put a—a letter from me to him inside yours. He said I was to tell you to remember your promise, and he would remember his; he underlined that.”
Miss Reade’s constraint broke up at once, and she grew as much excited and as mysterious as I.
“Did he? Then he hasn’t forgotten!” she said, in a hissing whisper. “I suppose you know what it is; it’s about getting Mr. Reynolds to come here next winter. Oh, do keep him up to it! I’ll do anything in the world for you—that won’t get me into trouble with mamma or Alice—if you will!”
“I will. I’ll remind him again in my next letter—or when I see him. I’ll say, ‘Don’t forget to invite Mr. Reynolds in the winter.’ Will that do?”
“Oh, yes, that will do beautifully! But it is a long time to wait,” sighed the girl.
I thought she was much too young to be in love, when she was still in short frocks and wore her hair in a pigtail; but I was obliged to help her, in return for the service I wanted her to do me.
“I have brought my letter,” said I mysteriously. “Shall you be writing soon?”
“I have a letter ready now, and I will put yours inside and give it to a gentleman who is here, and who is going back to London directly after tea, and I will ask him to post it at once.”
“Oh, thank you!” said I; and tremblingly, with fear lest the dreaded Alice should get hold of it, I put my letter into her hands, and soon afterwards left the house.
The fog was already so much thicker that I wondered whether the gentleman with our letter would be able to find his way back to London that night, and even whether I could find mine back to the Alders. I must be sure to keep to the drive in crossing the park. But, before I got to that, I lost myself among the garden-paths, and walked into a flower-bed; and I began to think I should have to find my way back to the door and ask ignominiously to be led to the gate, when I heard voices on my left; and I made my way recklessly in their direction across grass, flower-beds, and everything. I could not see the speakers yet, for there was a hedge or something between us; but I could distinguish that they were the voices of a young man and a young woman of the lower class. Thinking one of them at least must be a servant at the Hall, and able to direct me, I was just going to speak through the hedge, when a few words in the man’s voice stopped me.
“I have had enough of you Norfolk girls; you are too stand-off for me.”
It was the voice of Tom Parkes.
“Yes, to such weather-cocks as you,” answered the girl, with rough coquetry. “Why, you were keeping company with that ugly Sarah at Mr. Rayner’s; and, now she is ill, you want to take up with me. Oh, a fine sweetheart you’d make!”
But she was not as obdurate as these words promised. It seemed to me, with my suspicions concerning Tom already strong, that in the talk which followed he managed with very little difficulty to find out a good deal about the ways of the household, and also that he spoke as if he had learnt from her a good deal already. Presently I heard the sound of a kiss, and he promised to come and see her again on Wednesday; and then they went away; while I, seized by a sudden inspiration, found my way not to the park, but back to the house, which was less difficult.
I asked for Miss Maud Reade again; and this time she rushed out of the drawing-room and met me in the hall as soon as I was announced, and whispered—
“They are all in there. Come into the library.”
“May I have my letter back, just to put in something I have forgotten?” said I.
“Oh, yes; here it is!”—and she drew it from her pocket. “Write it here. I will give you a pen. Why, how white you look! Has anything happened?”
“Oh, no, no, nothing, thank you!”
I wrote on a half-sheet of paper, which I carefully folded inside my letter, these words—
“A man who was at Denham Court, and about whom I have strong suspicions, is hanging about the Hall now. He is coming here again on Wednesday night.”
“A man who was at Denham Court, and about whom I have strong suspicions, is hanging about the Hall now. He is coming here again on Wednesday night.”
I put my letter into a fresh envelope, and put the torn one into my pocket that it might not be seen about; then I begged Miss Reade earnestly to send the letter off at once, as there was something in it of the utmost importance; and she whispered again, “Remember—Mr. Reynolds in the winter!” and, having this time got Williamson to show me as far as the beginning of the drive across the park, I made my way in safety, but slowly and with much difficulty, back to the Alders.
I slipped through the schoolroom window, which I had left unfastened; and, as soon as I was inside, I heard Mr. Rayner’s study door open, and his voice and that of Tom Parkes in the passage leading from the hall. Mr. Rayner was speaking in his usual kind and friendly way to him, and I thought to myself that it would be useless for me to tell him what I had just heard, which, after all, was nothing in itself, and only became important in connection with the suspicions I already had of the man—suspicions which Mr. Rayner himself refused to share. And, when Tom Parkes had said, “Well, good-night, sir,” and gone in the direction of the servants’ hall, and Mr. Rayner had returned to his study, I ran upstairs and prepared for tea, at which meal I felt rather guilty, but said nothing of my expedition or its results.
That evening Mr. Rayner kept me in the drawing-room accompanying his violin, and talking, until after Mrs. Rayner had gone up to the room she now used on the upper floor. He described to me the beauties of the Mediterranean shore, and said that I should be happier there than I had ever been in my life—which I could easily believe when I thought how near I should be to Laurence. He asked me if I was not anxious to see the pretty dresses my mother had been commissioned to get for me, and told me I should look like a little princess if I were good and did just what I was told.
“There is no fear of my not doing that, Mr. Rayner,” said I, smiling. “But you must not give me too handsome dresses, or I shall not feel at home in them.”
“You will soon get used to them,” said he, with a curiously sharp smile. “There is nothing that women get used to sooner than fine clothes and beautiful jewels, and pretty idleness and—kisses.”
Certainly I liked Laurence’s kisses; but the tone in which Mr. Rayner said this grated upon me, and brought the hot blood to my cheeks uncomfortably. He saw the effect his words had upon me, and he jumped up and came towards where I was standing ready to light my candle.
“You look hurt, my child, but you have no reason for it. Don’t you know that all those things are the lawful right of pretty women?”
“Then it is a right a good many of them are kept out of all their lives, Mr. Rayner,” said I, smiling.
“Only the silly ones,” he returned, in a tone I did not understand. “Well, I will explain all that to you on our journey to Monaco.”
He looked very much excited, as he often did after an evening spent with his violin; and his blue eyes, in which one seemed to see the very soul of music, flashed and sparkled as he held my hand.