CHAPTER IV
In spite of the rain and the mud, Mr. Rayner was in the brightest of humors; and his first words dispelled my fear that he might have overheard the warning Mr. Reade had just given me not to stay at the Alders. He caught sight of me first as he came under the roof of the dark shed.
“At last, Miss Christie! It was a happy thought of mine to look for you here. But how in the world did you discover this place of refuge?” Then, turning, he saw my companion. “Hallo, Laurence! Ah, this explains the mystery! You have been playing knight-errant, I see, and I am too late in the field; but I shall carry off the lady, after all. My wife noticed that you started without your ulster, Miss Christie, and, as soon as service was over, she sent me off with it to meet you.”
He helped me on with it, and then I stood between them, silent and rather shy at receiving so much unaccustomed attention, until the rain began to fall less heavily, and we seized the opportunity to escape. When we got in sight of the park, Mr. Reade wanted to take a short cut through it to the house; but Mr. Rayner pointed out that there was no object to be gained by catching a bad cold wading through the long wet grass, so we all went together as far as the park gates, where Mr. Reade left us.
“Nice young fellow, that,” said Mr. Rayner, as soon as the other was out of earshot. “Just the kind of open frank lad I should have liked to have for a son in a few years’ time. Handsome too, and good-natured. There’s not a girl in all the country-side who hasn’t a smile and a blush for Laurence.”
I did not think this so great a recommendation as it seemed to Mr. Rayner, but I said nothing; and he went on—
“He is worth all the rest of his family put together. Father—self-important, narrow-minded old simpleton; mother—ill-dressed vegetable, kept alive by a sense of her own dignity as the penniless daughter of an earl; sisters—plain stuck-up nonentities; younger brother—dunce at Eton. But they haven’t been able to spoil Laurence. He may have a few of their prejudices, but he has none of their narrow-minded pig-headedness. You don’t understand the rustic mind yet, Miss Christie. I assure you there are plenty of people in this parish who have condemned me to eternal punishment because I am fond of racing and, worse than all, play the violin.”
“Do you play the violin? Oh, I am so fond of it!”
“Are you? Poor child, you had better not acknowledge the taste as long as you remain in this benighted spot; they class it with the black art. I believe I am popularly supposed to have bewitched the Alders with my playing. Some of the rustics think that the reeds round the pond play all by themselves about midnight, if they are accidentally touched.”
“Oh, Mr. Rayner, aren’t you rather hard upon the rustics?” I said, laughing.
“Not a bit, as you will find out soon enough. However, if you are not afraid of being bewitched too, you shall hear my violin some evening, and give me your opinion of it.”
We were within the garden gates by this time, and, as we walked down the path, I saw a woman’s figure among the trees on our right. The storm had left the evening sky so dark and she was so well hidden that, if I had not been very sharp-sighted, I should not have noticed her. As it was, I could not recognize her, and could only guess that it was Mrs. Rayner. The idea of those great weird eyes being upon me, watching me, just as they had been on the evening of my arrival, made me uncomfortable. I was glad Mr. Rayner did not look that way, but went on quietly chatting till we reached the house. He left me in the hall, and went straight into his study, while I, before going upstairs to take off my bonnet, went into our little schoolroom to put my church-service away. The French window had not been closed, and I walked up to it to see whether the rain had come in. The sky was still heavy with rain-clouds, so that it was quite dark indoors, and, while I could plainly see the woman I had noticed among the trees forcing her way through the wet branches, stepping over the flower-beds on to the lawn, and making her way to the front of the house, she could not see me. When she came near enough for me to distinguish her figure, I saw that it was not Mrs. Rayner, but Sarah the housemaid. I stood, without acknowledging it to myself, rather in awe of this woman; she was so tall and so thin, and had such big eager eyes and such a curiously constrained manner. She was only a few steps from the window where I stood completely hidden by the curtain, when Mr. Rayner passed quickly and caught her arm from behind. She did not turn or cry out, but only stopped short with a sort of gasp.
“What were you doing in the shrubbery just now, Sarah?” he asked quietly. “If you want to take fresh air in the garden, you must keep to the lawn and the paths. By forcing your way through the trees and walking over the beds you do damage to the flowers—and to yourself. If you cannot remember these simple rules, you will have to look out for another situation.”
She turned round sharply.
“Another situation! Me!”
“Yes, you. Though I should be sorry to part with such an old servant, yet one may keep a servant too long.”
“Old! I wasn’t always old!” she broke out passionately.
“Therefore you were not always in receipt of such good wages as you get now. Now go in and get tea ready. And take care the toast is not burnt again.”
I could see that she glared at him with her great black eyes like a tigress at bay, but she did not dare to answer again, but slunk away cowed into the house. I was not surprised, for the tone of cold command with which he spoke those last insignificant words inspired me with a sudden sense of fear of him, with a feeling that I was face to face with an irresistible will, such as I should have thought it impossible for light-hearted Mr. Rayner to inspire.
The whole scene had puzzled me a little. What did Sarah the housemaid want to stand like a spy in the shrubbery for? How had Mr. Rayner seen and recognized her without seeming even to look in that direction? Was there any deeper meaning under the words that had passed between them? There was suppressed passion in the woman’s manner which could hardly have been stirred by her master’s orders to keep to the garden paths and not to burn the toast; and there was a hard decision in Mr. Rayner’s which I had never noticed before, even when he was seriously displeased. I waited behind the curtain by the window until long after he had gone back towards the study, feeling guiltily that his sharp eyes must find me out, innocently as I had played the spy. If he were to speak to me in the tone that he had used to Sarah, I felt that I should run away or burst into tears, or do something else equally foolish and unbecoming in an instructress of youth. But no one molested me. When I crept away from the window and went softly upstairs to my room, there was no one about, and no sound to be heard in the house save a faint clatter of tea-things in the servants’ hall. At tea-time Mr. Rayner was as bright as usual, and laughingly declared that they should never trust me to go to church by myself again.
That night I pondered Mr. Reade’s warning to me to leave the Alders; but I soon decided that the suggestion was quite unpractical. For, putting aside the fact that I had no stronger grounds than other people’s prejudice and suspicion for thinking it imprudent to stay, and that I could see no sign of the dangers Mr. Reade had hinted at so vaguely, what reason could I offer either to my employers or to my mother for wishing to go? This sort of diffidence at inventing excuses is a strong barrier to action in young people. And, if I had overcome this diffidence sufficiently to offer a plausible motive for leaving the Alders, where was I to go?
My father was dead; my mother, who had been left with very little to live upon, had been glad, at the time when it was agreed that I should begin to earn my own living, to accept an offer to superintend the household of a brother of hers who had not long lost his wife. My uncle would, I know, give me a home while I looked out for another situation; but I understood now how few people seemed to want the services of “a young lady, aged eighteen, who preferred children under twelve.”
And what a bad recommendation it would be to have left my first situation within a month! And what could I say I did it for? If I said, Because the house was damp, people would think I was too particular. And, if I said I was afraid my pupil’s mother was mad, they would want some better reason than the fact that she talked very little and moved very softly for believing me. And, if I said I had been told the place was dangerous, and so thought I had better go, they would think I was mad myself. And, besides these objections to my leaving, was there not, to a young mind, an unacknowledged attraction in the faint air of mystery that hung about the place, which would have made the ordinary British middle-class household seem rather uninteresting after it? So I decided to pay no attention to vague warnings, but to stay where I was certainly, on the whole, well off.
The next morning, as I put on a dainty china-blue cotton frock that I had never worn before, I could not help noticing how much better I was looking than when I lived in London. Instead of being pale, I had now a pink color in my cheeks, and my eyes seemed to look larger and brighter than they used to do. After a minute’s pleased contemplation of my altered appearance, I turned from the glass in shame. What would my mother say if she could see how vain her daughter was growing? Without another look even to see whether I had put in my brooch straight, I went downstairs. Mr. Rayner was already in the dining-room, but no one else was there yet. He put down his newspaper and smiled at me.
“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 a souvenir of 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.