CHAPTER VII.
Very soon after Sarah’s somewhat harsh and uncalled-for reproof of my vanity I began to suffer a punishment for it. The country air, which had brought unwonted roses to my cheeks while the weather was fine and dry, affected me very differently when, in the first days of September, the rain fell daily in a steady, continuous downpour that soon swelled the river and turned part of the marsh from a swamp into a stagnant unwholesome lake. The air round the house seemed never free from mist; the pond overflowed and covered the bricks that had formed the footstool of my nest; the lower part of the garden that touched the marsh was a bog; the moss grew greener and thicker on the pillars of the portico, the untrimmed ivy that clung round the house and made it so beautiful dripped all day long, and bright green stains grew broader and broader down the side of that wing of the house where Mr. and Mrs. Rayner’s room was.
I often wondered why they slept there. I knew by the doors and windows that the ground-floor of that wing contained two rooms, a large and a small one. My own was in the same wing, but on the story above; and over mine was a turret that looked out high above the trees, but which was not used, so far as I knew. Haidee slept on the ground-floor in a cot in the dressing-room next to her parents’ bedroom, I knew, while the nursery and servants’ rooms and several spare-rooms were on the upper story besides my own. Why did not Mr. and Mrs. Rayner make one of these their own, and lift themselves out of the reeking damp which must be poisonous to delicate Mrs. Rayner? Even I, who slept in the upper story, soon began to lose my color and my appetite, and to feel at first languid, and then really ill. I showed the change more quickly than any one, being less used to the place; but little fragile Haidee soon followed suit, and grew more wan and listless than ever, until the lustre of her large blue eyes and the unhealthy flush that began to burn in her thin little cheeks frightened me and drew me to the child as her strange reserve had prevented my being drawn before. She answered to the change in my manner as sensitive children do, and one day, putting her little dry hand in mine, she said—
“You are getting thin and white too, like mamma and me. We’ll all go away and be angels together, Miss Christie, now you have begun to love me.”
I burst into tears; I had begun to love the fairy-like little creature long before, if she had only known it. Now I took her up in my arms and rested her flaxen head on my breast, and she said her lessons there that day. And after that, without any more explanation or comment, the sympathy between the child and me was perfect.
But as, on the one hand, the little one’s friendship was a great solace to me, so, on the other, it brought me fresh trouble. For in Mrs. Rayner’s indifferent eyes I could see now a dull flame of jealousy whenever Haidee put her languid little head upon my knee, or came up and said, “Tell me a story, Miss Christie—about fairies and the good Prince Caramel.” I began, from merely pitying, almost to dislike Mrs. Rayner. Why, if she was so fond of Haidee, did she not come into the schoolroom to see her, or take her out during her play-hours, instead of leaving her the whole day with me, without coming to see her until bedtime, when the child was put to bed in the room next to hers, while she herself went into the drawing-room? It was unreasonable to expect to keep the child’s undivided love like that; and yet at meals, when we all met together, she seemed to look at Haidee with strained wistful eyes, as if she loved the child, yet dared not show it. But what was there to prevent her, except the shroud of reserve she seemed to have wrapped round herself?
The weather had been so bad that for two Sundays we had not been able to go to church at all, for which I was very sorry, more sorry than I can tell; one misses church dreadfully in the country. So we knew nothing of what was going on in the parish for two whole weeks. We did not have to wait until the church-porch gathering on the following Sunday, though; for on the second day after the weather had at last grown fine again, when we were all in the drawing-room reading the morning papers over our coffee, as we always did after our early dinner, we heard the sound of a horse’s hoofs coming down the drive. Mr. Rayner threw open the window and stepped out on to the broad space of gravel before the front of the house.
“Hallo, Laurence, you are as welcome as the dove was to the ark! Come in, come in; the ladies will make even more of you than usual. We have had no visitors lately, but an occasional mermaid came up the river from the sea and overflowed into our garden.”
“Can’t come in, thanks, Mr. Rayner—I’m too much splashed; the roads are awful still. I’ve only come with a note from Mrs. Manners to Mrs. Rayner.”
“Nonsense! Come in, mud and all.”
So he tied up his horse and came in.
Mrs. Manners was the clergyman’s wife, and generally sent her notes by one of her half-dozen boys; and I confess I thought, when I heard what a flimsy sort of errand had brought Mr. Reade, that perhaps—that perhaps some other silly motive had helped to bring him too. But my only half-acknowledged fancy was disappointed. Not only did Mr. Reade devote all his conversation to Mr. and Mrs. Rayner, with an occasional word to Haidee, but, when I made a remark, he did not even look at me. I confess I was piqued; I certainly did not want Mr. Reade either to look at me or speak to me, but surely common courtesy, especially to a dependant, demanded that he should not ignore my presence altogether. So I thought I would take a small and impotent revenge by ignoring his, and, when Haidee got up and slipped out of the window to look at Mr. Reade’s horse, I followed her. She was not a bit afraid of him, but ran into the house for some sugar, and then, flattening out her small hand with a piece on it, fed him, and talked to him in a language which he seemed to understand, though I could not.
“Would you like to give him a piece, Miss Christie?” she asked.
But I would not have bestowed such an attention on a horse of Mr. Reade’s for worlds; and, leaving the child and her four-footed friend to continue their conversation, I walked away to gather some flowers for the tea-table, as it was the day for renewing them.
I had my hands half full by the time I heard the voices of the gentlemen at the window and the grinding of soft gravel under the horse’s hoofs as Mr. Reade mounted him. I was near the bottom of the drive, pulling off some small branches of copper beech to put among the flowers, when I heard Mr. Reade ride by behind me. I did not even look round until he called out, “Good-afternoon, Miss Christie;” and then I just turned my head over my shoulder and said stiffly, “Good afternoon,” and went on with my task. He had half pulled up his horse. I dare say he thought I wanted to talk to him. I was not going to let him make such an absurd mistake as that. So he rode on to the gate, and then he stopped, and presently I heard him utter impatient ejaculations, and I looked and saw that he was fumbling with his whip at the fastening of the gate.
“How stupid he is not to get off and open it with his fingers!” I thought contemptuously. “It is quite an easy fastening too. I believe I could do it on horseback directly.”
However, he still continued to make ineffectual efforts to raise the heavy latch, but each time the restive horse swerved or the whip slipped, until I stood watching the struggle intently, and grew quite excited and half inclined to call out to him “Now!” when the horse stood still for a minute. It seemed to me that he deliberately missed all the best opportunities, and I was frowning with impatience, when he suddenly looked up and his eyes met mine. There was nothing for it then but in common civility to go and open the gate for him myself; so I walked up the drive very reluctantly and opened it wide without a smile.
“Thank you, thank you—so much obliged to you! I wouldn’t have given you so much trouble for worlds. If only this brute would stand still!”
“Pray don’t mention it. It is no trouble at all,” I said icily, occupied in keeping my armful of flowers together.
And he raised his hat and rode off at a walking pace, while I shut the gate and turned to go down the drive again. I had such a curiously hurt and disappointed feeling—I could not tell why; but I supposed that, being a dependant, I was naturally very sensitive, and it was surely a slight on Mr. Reade’s part not even to speak to me when we were all in the drawing-room.
“I dare say he wouldn’t have let me open the gate for him if I hadn’t been only a governess,” I thought, as a lump came into my throat. “I wish I hadn’t—oh, I wish I hadn’t! I wish I had let him get off his horse, or jump over it, or anything rather than make me play groom for him.”
And the flowers I was looking at began to grow misty, when again I heard hoofs behind me and the latch of the gate go, and, glancing round, I saw Mr. Reade on horseback inside the gate. He had opened it without any difficulty this time. He seemed to look a little embarrassed, “ashamed of his own clumsiness the first time,” I thought severely; and, jumping off his horse, he led him towards me, saying—
“I must apologize for returning so soon, but I find I have lost a stone from my ring, and I think it must have dropped out while I was fumbling at the gate just now. It is much easier to open from the outside.”
“Do you think so? We don’t find any difference,” I said simply.
He gave me a quick inquisitive glance and a half smile, as if to see what I meant, and then, finding that I returned his look quite gravely, he turned back to the gate and began searching about in the gravel. Politeness obliged me to help him. He fastened his horse’s rein round the gate-post and showed me the ring, and I saw the hole where there was a stone missing. Suddenly it flashed through my mind that, while we stood under the shed on that Sunday in the rain, I had noticed the very same hole in the very same ring, and I was just going to tell him that it was of no use for him to look, for he had lost the stone much longer than he fancied, when another thought, which brought the color swiftly to my face and made my lips quiver and my heart beat faster, flashed into my mind and stopped me. And the thought was that Mr. Reade must know how long ago he had lost that stone, at least as well as I did. And from that moment a spirit of daring mischief came into me—I don’t know how—and I would not condescend to pretend to look about any longer; but I patted the horse’s neck and glanced every now and then at his master, and thought how foolish he looked hunting about so carefully for what he knew he should not find. Then he looked up, red with stooping, and caught me smiling, and he had to bite his lip in order not to smile himself as he walked up to me.
“I can’t find it. It isn’t of any consequence; I sha’n’t look any longer,” he said.
“Oh, but it would be such a pity to lose such a large stone, Mr. Reade!” I said boldly. “I’ll tell the gardener to hunt for it, and Sam the boy, and—”
“No, no—indeed it doesn’t matter.”
“And Jane the kitchen-maid. She has sharp eyes; she might spend an hour or two hunting,” I murmured confidentially, while he protested.
And I think he began to suspect my good faith; and we both got into such a giggling excited state that it was very difficult to go on talking, and I was glad when some of my flowers fell down and Mr. Reade had to pick them up, and we had time to regain a little of our lost composure.
“You are fond of flowers, Miss Christie?”
“Oh, yes! But the best of them are over now; the rain has spoilt them all.”
“The rain spoils a good many things here,” he said, with sudden gravity. “You don’t look nearly so well as you did a fortnight ago, Miss Christie, and I expect it is the damp of this place. You might as well live in a cave, you know, as in that house in a rainy season,” he added, dropping his voice. “Don’t you find yourself that your health is affected by it?”
I hesitated.
“It is damp, I know; but it isn’t half so bad for me, who am strong, as it is for Mrs. Rayner or for little Haidee.”
“But they can’t help themselves, poor things, while it lies in your own power whether you will put up with it or not.”
“You mean that I ought to go away?”
“No, no, I don’t mean that,” said he hastily.
“But that is what you advised me to do,” said I, looking up, surprised.
“Did I? Ah, yes! But, now that you have grown attached to—to—the place, and—and Mrs. Rayner—”
“No, indeed I haven’t,” I interrupted. “I don’t like her at all.”
“Well, to Haidee, or the baby. You must have grown attached to something or to somebody, or you wouldn’t talk as if you didn’t want to leave the place,” he said, with such abrupt earnestness as to be almost rude.
“I like the house, in spite of the damp, and I love the garden even when it is a swamp, and I like Haidee, and Jane the kitchen-maid, and Mr. Rayner,” I said quietly.
With nervous fingers Mr. Reade began playing with his horse’s bridle.
“You like Mr. Rayner, you say? Then I suppose our sympathies must be as far apart as the poles. For he seems to me the most intolerable snob that ever existed, and so selfish and heartless as to be almost outside the pale of humanity.”
This tirade amazed me; but it also made me angry. I could not let him abuse a person whom I liked, and who had been consistently kind to me, without protest.
“You surely cannot judge him so well as I, a member of his household,” said I coolly. “Whether he is a snob or not I cannot tell, because I don’t quite know what it means. But I do know that he is kind to his wife and his children and servants and dependants, and—”
“Kind to his wife, do you say? I should not call it kindness to shut up my wife in the darkest, dampest corner of a dark, damp house, until she is as spiritless and silent as a spectre, and then invent absurd lies to account for the very natural change in her looks and spirits.”
“What do you mean? What lies?”
“The stories he told you about her when you first came. He would never have tried them on any one but an unsuspecting girl, and of course he never thought you would repeat them to me.”
“I wish I hadn’t!” said I indignantly. “You have known Mr. and Mrs. Rayner only during the three years they have lived here. What proof have you that the things he told me were not true?”
“No proof, Miss Christie, but a man’s common-sense,” said he excitedly—“no more proof than of another fact of which I am equally certain, that he is as surely killing his wife as if he were making her drink poison.”
“How dare you say such a thing?” I cried. “You have no right to utter it even if you think it. You are giving way to the most cruel prejudice against a man whose only fault is that he cannot contentedly lead the dull life his neighbors do. I suppose you think, like the villagers, that to play the violin is an impious action, and that it is a shocking thing for him to go to races.”
“If he did nothing worse than that, I should think no worse of him than you do, Miss Christie. But I think you will allow that a man who has lived within half a mile of another man for nearly three years must know more of his character than a young innocent girl who has seen him at his best only for a month.”
“But you cannot judge a man fairly until you have seen him continually in his own home. I have seen Mr. Rayner among his family; I have played for him, walked with him, had long talks with him; and I must surely know him better than you, who have only an ordinary outside acquaintance with him.”
Mr. Reade drew himself up very stiffly, and the color rushed to his forehead. He was getting really angry.
“No doubt, Miss Christie, you know him a great deal better than I do. I have never played for him, and I have not found either talks or walks with him particularly delightful. But then I dare say he did not try so hard to be agreeable to me as he did to you.”
He said this in a sneering tone, which brought the hot blood to my face. I tried to answer, but my voice would not come. I turned away sharply, and left him, with an agony of anger and pain at my heart which would have made him remorseful indeed if he could have guessed what his words had inflicted. As it was, he followed me a few steps down the drive, with apologies to which I was too angry and too much hurt to listen.
“Don’t speak to me now,” I said—“I can’t bear it;” and, turning off rapidly into a side-path, I left him, and fled away through the alleys into the house.
Luckily I managed to keep back tears, so that I could return to the drawing-room with the flowers I had gathered before they began to wonder why I had been so long. Mrs. Rayner told me that the note from Mrs. Manners which Mr. Reade had brought was to ask that the articles which we were preparing for the “sale”—a sort of bazaar on a small scale which was one of the attractions of the annual school-treat—should be sent in to her within a week, as they had to be ticketed and arranged before the sale-day arrived, and whether Miss Christie would be so kind as to give her services at the stall; and, if so, whether she would call upon Mrs. Manners within the next few days to settle what should be her share of the work. I was delighted at the thought of this little excitement, and, although Mr. Rayner warned me that I should have nothing nicer to do than to see the pretty trifles I had worked fingered by dirty old women who would not buy them, and to have hot tea poured over me by clumsy children if I helped at the feast, I would not be frightened by the prospect.
That evening I debated with myself whether it was not too damp and swampy still for me to go and peep at my nest and see if the water had subsided and left the top of the bricks dry. I chose afterwards to think that it was some supernatural instinct which led me to decide that I would put on my goloshes and go.
When I got there, I found on the bough which formed my seat a basket of Gloire de Dijon roses, and the stalk of the uppermost one was stuck through a little note. I never doubted those roses were for me; I only wondered who had put them there. I looked searchingly around me in all directions before I took up the rose which carried the note and carefully slipped it off. It contained these words—
“For Miss Christie, with the sincere apologies of some one who would not willingly have offended her for the whole world.”
I did not know the writing, but I knew whom it was from. I think, if I had been quite sure that no one could have seen me, I should have raised the note to my lips, I was so happy. But, though I could see no one, the fact of the basket arriving so surely at my secret haunt seemed to argue the existence of a supernatural agency in dealing with which one could not be too discreet; so I only put the note into my pocket and returned to the house with my flowers. I put them in water as soon as I had sneaked upstairs to my room with them.
The supernatural agency could not follow me there, so I slept that night with the note under my pillow.