CHAPTER IX. MR. BRADFIELD’S “SMART” RELATIONS.
To have a personal attack made upon her by a lunatic is enough to alarm the most intrepid girl. And Chris, although not a coward, not even given to hysterical attacks over black-beetles, was a good deal frightened by her first experience of Mr. Richard’s violence.
By the time she was safely out of the enclosure, however, she had recovered from her first alarm; and, dropping from a run into a walk, she paused before carrying out her first idea of running indoors to tell her mother what had happened.
Why should she say anything about it to Mrs. Abercarne? Her mother had hardly yet got over her repugnance to staying under the same roof with a lunatic. If her terrors were to be revived by hearing of the adventure that had befallen her daughter, she would make fresh difficulties about staying, and perhaps exhaust Mr. Bradfield’s patience. And Chris, though she could not be blind to the difficulties which Mr. Bradfield’s admiration began to put in the way of their remaining in his house, did not wish to hasten the moment when they must leave it. So she turned away from the house, and sauntered between the bare borders and empty flower-beds, to calm herself a little before returning to her mother’s presence.
“Well, what did I tell you?” said Mr. Bradfield, in an exultant tone. “Are you still as anxious as ever for an interview with our young friend?”
Chris, annoyed with herself, vented her annoyance on him. So she turned to say, snappishly:
“Yes, quite as anxious; and more anxious still that he should be seen by a doctor.”
Mr. Bradfield’s face changed. The sullen frown which, whenever it appeared, made his dark face so very unprepossessing, came over it as he said shortly:
“You presume too much.”
And he turned on his heel abruptly, and went indoors.
Chris felt quite glad she had offended him. From one point of view, as the master of the house where she and her mother lived so comfortably, she liked him very much. From any other she began to feel that she did not like him at all. She felt again the aversion with which he had inspired her on the day of her arrival, an aversion which his kindness had been gradually dispelling. Perhaps it was that he showed too decided an acquiescence in the fact that his ward’s mental malady was incurable. Or it may have been vexation at his exposing her to the danger of the madman’s anger, and at the daring familiarity with which he had put his arm round her shoulder in an alleged attempt to protect her. Or, possibly, her renewed dislike was only the result of that instinct by which women leap to conclusions without reasoning out the facts. It is at any rate certain that the girl felt at that moment considerably more fear of Mr. Bradfield than she did of the madman in the east wing. To be sure, the latter was shut up, and the former was not.
She did not go indoors until she had quite recovered from the effects of the scene she had gone through; so that Mrs. Abercarne noted nothing unusual in her countenance or manner.
It was after luncheon on the same day, that Chris, sitting with her embroidery in the corridor, which was warmed with hot-water pipes, and was her favourite retreat, was surprised to be addressed by Stelfox, who was carrying a couple of large books from one of the upstairs bookcases in the direction of the east wing.
“You were not much frightened, I hope, this morning, miss, by Mr. Richard’s antics?” he asked, in his quiet, stolid manner. Chris had a liking for this man as unreasonable as her dislike of his master. She had seldom spoken to him; when he met her he had usually stood out of her way like an automaton, so that it was not upon discerning acquaintance that her predilection was founded. Still, it was a fact and she smiled as she assured him that if she was frightened she soon got over it.
“But where were you?” she went on in some surprise. “Were you upstairs with Mr. Richard? No,” she continued, answering herself, as she remembered to have seen Stelfox coming in by the front gates as she ran out of the enclosure, “you had gone out into the town. How did you know, then, that I was frightened? Did Mr. Bradfield tell you?”
Stelfox allowed his straight mouth to widen a little in what passed with him for a smile.
“No, miss. Master never talks about Mr. Richard to anyone. I heard it from the young gentleman himself when I took him in his luncheon.”
Chris looked at him in astonishment.
“He told you! He’s sane enough to know what he does, then, and to talk about it afterwards? Do you believe that he is really incurable?”
“Well, he’s pretty bad sometimes,” answered he, not giving a direct answer. “Perhaps you haven’t heard the way he cries out, and the odd noises he makes, miss?”
Chris gave a little shudder.
“Yes; and it’s very dreadful to hear him. But——”
She paused, and looked at the sky, which, now darkening a little towards evening, could be seen between the bare branches of the trees. Stelfox was silent too, but it suddenly flashed through the mind of Chris that his was a discreet silence which had meaning in it. Before either spoke again, Stelfox lifted the lid of the box-ottoman near which he was standing, and rapidly but very quietly slipped inside the two books he had been carrying, and was immediately in the same attitude of respectful attention as before. Then for the first time she heard the creaking of a stair, and, turning her head, she saw Mr. Bradfield approaching.
To her great delight, for she had begun on the instant to dread a tête-à-tête with him, Mr. Bradfield scowled as he caught sight of her, and disappeared into a sort of workshop he had on the first floor, where he often spent the afternoon busy with a turning-lathe.
As soon as his master was out of sight, Stelfox took the two books out of the ottoman. Chris watched him in evident surprise. Then a thought struck her.
“You were going to take those books to Mr. Richard?” she asked, in a low voice.
“Yes, miss.”
“And you were afraid he wouldn’t like you to?”
“Well, miss,” said Stelfox, again with the contortion he meant for a smile, “Mr. Bradfield don’t understand his ways as well as I do, and he thinks books wouldn’t be safe with him. But I know when to trust him with ’em, and he’s as quiet as a lamb this afternoon.”
He was going on towards Mr. Richard’s room, when the young lady detained him, saying, in a low voice:
“Did he say, Stelfox, that he really meant to hurt me, this morning?”
Stelfox looked down at the carpet, and, for a moment, made no answer. Then he looked up, and caught a look of suspense and impatience on her face. Looking down again at once, he said, drily:
“No, miss; I don’t recollect as he told me that.”
Then he withdrew, leaving the young lady in a state of curiosity and strange excitement.
Why should she care whether this poor lunatic wanted to hurt her or not? Surely the only thing that concerned her was that it should be out of his power to do so. This was what Chris told herself. But her girlish sense of romance was tickled by the whole story—by the knowledge of the solitary and sad life this man was leading, close to his fellow-creatures, and yet shut out from them; by a remembrance of the incident of the miniature, which would have passed for his portrait, and yet which surely could not be his; above all by the man himself, with his handsome face and weary eyes.
For the next few days, neither Chris nor her mother saw much of Mr. Bradfield. But he soon forgot or forgave her indiscreet interference on Mr. Richard’s behalf, for when he did see her, he bantered her, good-humouredly, about the approaching ball, for which the invitations were being sent out. With this work, however, the ladies had little to do, except to help Mr. Bradfield’s secretary—a pale, fair, weak-eyed young man named Manners—in directing the envelopes.
While this work of sending out the invitations was still in progress, Mrs. Abercarne received a note from Mr. Bradfield, requesting that she and her daughter would do him the pleasure of breakfasting, lunching and dining with him every day, and that they would begin that very evening.
No sooner had they taken their seats at the table for the first time, than Mr. Bradfield took an open letter from his pocket, and gave it to the elder lady to read.
“I have asked you to keep me company,” said he, grimly, “to save me from that!”
Mrs. Abercarne read the letter, which was in a large and modern lady’s hand. The paper was perfumed, and in colour a very pale rose-pink—the latest Bayswater fashion in notepaper.
“Cambridge Terrace,
“Kensington, W.“My Dear Cousin John—Need I say how utterly delighted we were with your most kind invitation? Lilith and Rose are perfectly charmed, and so is Donald, whom you will not recognise! He has grown into a splendid fellow. What is this I hear, that you have been so dull that you have had to get a housekeeper? Surely you know that you had only to mention it, and we would have done long ago what we propose to do now, namely—migrate from town to the wilds of Wyngham to be near you. Yes, this is absolutely and truly what we are going to do. Retrenchment is the order of the day, now that we have a family growing up around us, and I think we cannot do better than settle ourselves where we shall get the benefit of the shadow of your wing. I suppose there is some society in or about the place, and the fact of our being related to you, besides the value of our own name, would of course give us the entrée. Would it be asking too much of you to look out for a modest house such as you would care for your relations to live in; not too far away from you, I need not say.
“William wishes to be remembered to you most kindly. As for Rose and Lilith, and the boys, they send so many messages that I cannot remember them all.
“Believe me, dear cousin John, you shall not long be left to the hired society of strangers, when your own family are only too anxious to do all they can to cheer you, and to serve you in any way in their power.
“Ever your sincerely affectionate cousin,
“Maude Graham-Shute.”
Mrs. Abercarne read the letter slowly through with the help of her eyeglasses, and then gave it back in a dignified manner.
“A very affectionate letter,” she remarked, having read between the lines of the effusive epistle and conceived for its writer an antagonism quite as violent as that which the writer evidently felt towards her.
“Very affectionate,” he answered, drily. “It will cost me say two hundred pounds. And cheap at the price, perhaps, you’ll say.”
Mrs. Abercarne coughed: comment was dangerous, and, indeed, unnecessary. Chris, who, without having seen the letter, made a judicious guess at the tenor of it, glanced from the one to the other.
“You will think I have brought it on myself,” he went on, as he glanced once more at the letter before putting it in his pocket. “However, the woman is so amusing with her airs and her pretensions that I am doing the neighbourhood a good turn by providing it with a laughing-stock. A good-natured soul, too! I was in love with her once. There was less of her then.”
Every word he uttered concerning the effusive cousin increased the aversion with which Mrs. Abercarne already regarded her.
“I’ve asked them to come for the week,” he went on. “From Monday to Monday. You will give them what rooms you please, Mrs. Abercarne. There’ll be five of ’em—old couple, two grown-up daughters and a grown-up son. And you and Miss Christina will do your best to amuse them, I’m sure.”
Mrs. Abercarne had grave doubts whether the visitors would allow themselves to be amused, but she did not say so. Mr. Bradfield did not like difficulties to be mentioned in the way of his whims, and it was one of his whims to fill his house at Christmas time, and another to play the patron to his poorer relations. She began to fear that the pleasant and independent time she and her daughter had enjoyed at Wyngham House was over.
For Mrs. Graham-Shute—she knew by a fine woman’s instinct—would “interfere.”