The house on the marsh

by Florence Warden

CHAPTER XVII.

I got up next morning directly I was called, and was downstairs long before anybody else—but I was glad of that, for I wanted to explore the garden. It was a beautiful, warm, bright morning, and I rejoiced, for it would bring the people to Geldham Church for the harvest-thanksgiving. I went over the lawn, and down the alleys, and round and round the flower-beds, and peeped into the greenhouses, and tried to see through the steaming glass of the hot-houses, which were locked, when, suddenly, turning round one of them, I came face to face with Tom Parkes in his Sunday clothes, with a key in one hand and a basket of eggs in the other. He was evidently disconcerted, and tried by turning to the door of the hot-house to avoid me. But I accosted him at once.

“Tom—Tom Parkes, don’t you know me—Miss Christie?” I said.

“Lor’, yes, miss, to be sure, so it is! Who’d ’a’ thought o’ seeing you here?” said he, touching his hat with rather awkward surprise.

“Why, you must have known me, Tom! You looked as if you had seen a ghost!”

“Well, the truth is, miss, asking your pardon,” said Tom sheepishly, “that I didn’t want you to see me. You see, I’ve been took on here as extry under-gardener and help, and the head-gardener he don’t like Londoners, and I don’t want him to know as I’m a London chap. So, if you would be ser good, miss, as not to mention as you’ve seen me before, I should take it kind.”

“Very well, Tom, I won’t betray you,” I replied, laughing.

And he said, “Thank you, miss,” and touched his hat again, and went off with his eggs. I was very much amused by this encounter and the important secret I had to keep. As if my mentioning that I had seen Tom at the Alders would necessarily entail the awful discovery that he was a Londoner!

By this time I thought I had better go in and see if any of the other people had come down to breakfast; and I was sauntering along, when, as I got near the house, I heard two men’s voices.

“Bella is getting jealous, Tom.”

A grunt in the other voice.

“I say, ain’t it rough on the little one?”

Then I heard Lady Mills’s voice, and when I got to the door there were eight or ten people already assembled. But the two nearest the door, whom I had overheard, were a gentleman named Cole and Mr. Carruthers. It was Mr. Carruthers who had grunted. Who was “Bella”? And who was “the little one”? And what did “rough on” mean?

The bells of Denham Church, which was close by, had begun to ring before breakfast was over, and Lady Mills wanted to know who was going.

“I am going, for one,” said Mrs. Clowes, and she looked across at Mr. Carruthers, who was helping himself to a great deal of marmalade.

“Do try to make up a respectable number,” said Lady Mills. “You can do just what you like, you know, as soon as it is over; and people in the country think so much of it. We scandalize the neighborhood quite enough, as it is, by not going to bed at ten o’clock, and other wicked practices. And last week we were only three at church out of a party of seventeen.”

“Are you going, Miss Christie? Yes, of course you are. I’ll go, if you will find all the places for me,” said Mr. Carruthers.

And when we got to church—we mustered eight altogether—he sat by me, and picked out from among the books the biggest church-service he could find, which he put in front of me when the collect was given out, whispering—

“Find it for me, please.”

At first I would not take any notice, for it was just like playing in church; but he began making such a disturbance, rustling the leaves of his book, looking over those of his neighbors, and dropping with a crash all those within reach on the ledge before him, that I was obliged to find it for him, and all the other places too during the service, just as if he had been a little boy. But I was very angry all the time, and when we came out I would not speak to him. He came however and walked by my side while I talked to somebody else, and at last he said meekly—

“Have I offended you?”

“Yes,” I said; “I think you are very irreverent.”

“I didn’t mean to be irreverent,” he said, in a still meeker tone. “But it is so dull to sit in church and not be able to follow the service, and it looks so bad to be fumbling in one’s book all the time and find the place only when the parson is a long way ahead. And you can always find it in a minute.”

“You should go to church oftener, and then you could find the places as well as I,” rejoined I severely.

“Yes, but I always have such a lot to do on Sunday mornings in town,” said he mournfully—“pipes to smoke, and—and other things. But I’ll try to go oftener; I dare say it will do me good.”

“I don’t believe going to church does people like you any good at all,” remarked I gravely.

And Mr. Carruthers burst out laughing, and said it was very wrong of me to discourage him just when he wanted to try to be good.

At luncheon I sat between him and clever Mrs. Clowes, who described the sermon in a way that made everybody laugh, and said a lot of amusing and sometimes unkind things, as she always did. Presently, in a rather low voice, she addressed Mr. Carruthers across me.

“Shall I pass you the sherry; or is it true that you have taken to milk and water?” she asked meaningly.

“Quite true,” said he. “And you can’t think how nice it is—not half so insipid as you would expect, and a pleasant change after too many stimulants. Let me give you some grapes, Miss Christie.”

And Mrs. Clowes turned away her head, as if there had been something that hurt her in his answer.

Most of the people spent Sunday afternoon just as if it had not been Sunday at all, except that nobody rode or drove. But some went on the river, and some played lawn-tennis, and some lounged about and read novels; and others, of whom I was one, sat under the trees on the lawn and drank iced champagne, which is quite the nicest thing I ever tasted. I heard the mysterious man-servant give an order to Tom Parkes, calling him, “Here, you, gardener, what’s your name?” as if he had never seen him before, and walked up and down Mr. Rayner’s garden, and gone into Mr. Rayner’s stable with him only two nights before. What a silly fellow Tom was with his little mystery! I pointed out the other man to Mr. Carruthers, and asked if he knew whose servant he was.

“He is mine, and the best I ever had. I’ve had him six months now, and of late I’ve given up thinking altogether; he does it for me so much better.”

I began to wonder whether this mysterious man-servant was some poor relation of Mr. Rayner’s, who had taken to this way of earning his living, but was ashamed of it, and who came privately to see his richer connections, to spare them the talk of the neighbors about what people like the Reades, for instance, would certainly consider a great disgrace. So I said nothing more about him to Mr. Carruthers, who was sitting near me, smoking, and teasing me to read a Sunday newspaper, which I did not think right. So at last he began reading it aloud to me, and then I got up and ran away with Mr. Cole to the fruit-garden, where he gathered plums for me; and we looked at the chickens, and watched the fish in the pond, and threw crumbs to them, which they would not take any notice of, until dinner-time.

Mr. Cole had cut me some beautiful flowers to wear in the front of my frock, for I had resolved not to wear my pendant again; but my muslin gown did not look nearly so well without it, and I thought I would just take it out and see the effect of it at my throat close to the flowers, and then put it away again. But, when I unlocked my desk and opened the shabby case in which Mr. Rayner had given it to me, the pendant was gone. Nothing else had been disturbed; the sovereign my uncle had given me lay untouched in its little leather bag close by; the notes I had had from Laurence, tied up with pink ribbon, were just as I had left them. I searched my desk, my pockets, every corner of the room, though I knew it would be of no use. For I remembered quite well, sleepy as I had been the night before, that I had shut it up in the case carefully, turning it about for a few moments in my hand to watch it flashing in the candle-light.

It had been stolen—by whom I could not guess. I sat down after my fruitless search, trembling and too much frightened to cry. For there is something alarming in a mysterious loss like that, an uncomfortable sense of being at the mercy of some unknown power, apart from the certainty that one of the people about you is a thief. At first I thought I would go to Lady Mills and tell her privately all about it; but my courage failed me; for if my loss got known there would be an unpleasant scene for all the servants and a sense of discomfort in the entire household; besides, several of the servants in the house were those of the guests, and not under Lady Mills’s authority. It was just as likely that my pendant had been taken by one of them; and everybody would be indignant at the idea of his or her servant being suspected of the theft. So I resolved to say nothing about it, but to bear my loss, which I felt more than I should have thought possible, in silence. After all, if I could never wear it without exciting more attention than I cared for, and surprising people by my possession of an ornament which they persisted in thinking extremely valuable, it was better that it should have disappeared. I began to think it had already had an unwholesome effect upon me, by my secret wish to wear it again.

So I went downstairs to dinner with a piece of plain black velvet round my throat, told Mrs. Cunningham, who asked why I did not wear my pendant, that I had come to the conclusion that it was too handsome an ornament for a girl in my position, and heard Mr. Carruthers say that the same remark would apply to my eyes.

It was a fine night, not cold, though there was a light breeze; and after dinner some of us went into the garden, and I among them, for I was afraid they would make me play the waltzes again, although it was Sunday. One of the gentlemen did say—

“Let us ask Miss Christie to play for us.”

But the lady he spoke to replied, in a rather offended tone—

“We need not always trouble Miss Christie; and I am sure she would rather not be disturbed. I just tried the waltzes over this morning, and they are quite easy.”

“Just tried ’em over!” muttered Mr. Cole, who was standing by me in the conservatory. “She was hard at it hammering at the piano all church-time.”

It was late in the evening when Mr. Carruthers, who had been in the billiard-room with some of the others, came out and sauntered, with a cigar in his mouth, up to the grape-house, where I was standing with Sir Jonas, who had taken a fancy to me and insisted on cutting me some grapes straight from the vine.

“Lady Mills wishes me to say that Miss Christie will get her death of cold if she comes out of the hot-house into the cold air with nothing round her shoulders,” said Mr. Carruthers, when we were at the door.

“Bless me—so she will! Fetch her a shawl, Tom.”

“I have anticipated the lady’s wants; I always do,” said Mr. Carruthers; and he wrapped round my head and shoulders a beautiful Indian shawl belonging to Lady Mills.

“Take her in quickly, Tom. I should never forgive myself if she caught cold,” said kind old Sir Jonas anxiously, standing at the door of the grape-house with his knife still in his hand.

“Nor should I,” muttered Mr. Carruthers. “Now run, Miss Christie.”

I was not a bit cold, and I told him so; but he said, “Never mind—won’t do to run risks,” and put his arm in mine, and made me run as fast as I could until we were round the corner of a wall, out of Sir Jonas’s sight.

“And now,” said he, “we’ll run another way.”

And he took me down a long path between apple and pear trees until we got to a side-gate that I had not seen before.

“I am going to take you for a walk,” said he.

“But it is so late, and I am dressed so queerly.”

“Never mind. You are not sleepy, are you?”—and he looked down into my face. “No, your eyes are quite bright and—wide awake. And nobody goes to bed here till they are sleepy, which is a very good plan. As for your dress, I think it very becoming—very becoming—quite Oriental. And, as it is too late for anybody else to be about, and too dark for them to see you if they were, I am the only person you need consult.”

So we went through the gate and by a narrow foot-path over the grass down to the river. We stopped when we got there, by the boat-house, and Mr. Carruthers said it would be a lovely night for a sail.

“Just down there to the broad,” said me, “and along that path of moonlight, up to those trees and back again. Wouldn’t it be jolly?”

“Yes, if it were not Sunday,” I said timidly.

No other objection occurred to me. He looked down at me, as if hesitating about something, and then said—

“You are right. You see I respect your scruples, if I do not share them;” and he took out his watch. “It is just a quarter to twelve. By the time I have got the boat ready it will be Monday morning, and then there will be nothing against it.”

He had one foot in the boat before I could do more than say—

“But, Mr. Carruthers, it is so late. What would Lady Mills say?”

“I’ll make it all right with Lady Mills; and you are such a good little girl that nobody will think anything of what you do.”

I did not understand this speech so well then as I did later; but it gave me a sense of uneasiness, which however was but momentary, for he talked and made me laugh until he had the boat ready, and we heard the big church-clock strike out twelve.

“Now, unless that clock is fast, our consciences are free. Give me your hand. Step carefully. There you are.”

I was in the boat, smiling with pleasure, yet ready to cry out at every movement, for I had never been on the water before.

“There isn’t much wind; but I think there is enough to bring us back, so I’ll just scull down stream to the broad. Take the lines—so—and pull whichever one I tell you.”

I disengaged my hands from the shawl I was shrouded in, and, overwhelmed by a sense of my new responsibility, did as I was told without a word. And, as there was not much steering required, I fell to thinking of Laurence. I had had to talk a great deal during the last two days; but whenever I was not talking my thoughts flew back at once to him, as they did now.

“You are not thinking of me,” said Mr. Carruthers quietly.

I started, blushed, and pulled the wrong line at once.

“Never mind,” said he meekly—“only it’s ungrateful. He isn’t half so much absorbed in you as I am.”

“Absorbed in me! I was thinking of—of Mrs. Manners.”

“Happy Mrs. Manners, to be able to call up such a smile of beatitude on the face of a beautiful girl!”

“Who did you think it was, Mr. Carruthers?”

“If I tell you, you will upset me, or command me to land you at once.”

“No, I won’t. And you wouldn’t pay any attention if I did.”

“Let me come and sit by you, and I’ll tell you. We can drift.”

So he came and sat by my side, and directed our course by splashing in one of the sculls, first on one side and then on the other, as we went on talking.

“Why is it,” he asked suddenly, “that a woman never cares for the man who loves her best?”

The question, which was quite new to me, startled me.

“Doesn’t she—ever?” I asked anxiously.

“I—I am afraid not,” said he, in a very low voice, bending his face to mine with a sad look in his eyes that troubled me.

“But how is she to tell?” I asked tremulously.

“I think she can tell best by the look in his eyes when they are bent on her,” he whispered, with a long steady gaze which disconcerted me.

I turned away my head.

“If,” he went on, still in the same soft voice quite close to my ear, “she raises her lips to his and then tries to read in his eyes the emotion he feels for her—”

“But I did,” said I quickly, turning to him with my heart beating fast at the remembrance of Laurence’s first kiss.

Mr. Carruthers drew back, stroked his mustache, and looked at me in quite a different manner.

“You have not lived all your life in the country, Miss Christie, I think,” said he dryly.

And I saw in a moment, by the change in his look and voice, what I had done. He had been making love to me, while I was thinking of nothing but Laurence. I put out my hand to his very gently, and said—

“Don’t be offended with me, Mr. Carruthers. I dare say all you say is true; but I am so fond of him that I cannot help thinking he does love me best.”

I said this just to comfort him, for I could not really have doubted Laurence for the world. He took my hand and kissed it, but not, I thought, as if he cared about it very much, and then he said we had better think about getting back; so he turned the boat round and put up the sail, and, the wind having freshened a little, we got back in a very short time, not talking much; but we were quite good friends again, for my mingled delight and fear amused Mr. Carruthers.

When we landed at the boat-house, the church clock was just chiming the half-hour past one. The lateness of the hour shocked me.

“Never mind,” said he. “They are sure not to have all gone to bed yet. I’ll take you in by a side-door I know, and you shall slip into the library and open a big book before you. And I’ll bring in Cole and one or two others, and say we didn’t know what had become of you; and you can pretend to have fallen asleep over a book.”

“But why should I do all that?” said I. “I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of. You said Lady Mills would not mind.”

“No, of course not, my dear child; I’ll tell Lady Mills all about it. Don’t trouble your head about that. She won’t say a word to you, and you need not say a word to her. But none of the other ladies could have done a thing so unusual as you have in your innocence—and—and Sir Jonas would scold you for your rashness, and say you might have taken cold.”

“But it wouldn’t look innocent to pretend I had never been out at all, Mr. Carruthers. And I wasn’t alone; I was with you—so I was all right. I dare say Lady Mills has not gone to bed yet. I’ll go and see.”

And I ran away before he could prevent me, and found Lady Mills and Mrs. Clowes in the drawing-room, the former looking anxious and grave, the latter hard and angry.

“My dear child, where have you been? We thought you were lost!” Her voice trembled.

“Oh, Lady Mills, I am so sorry! I went on the water with Mr. Carruthers. He said you would not mind; but I ought to have known better when it was so late.”

“The later the better, my dear, I should say,” said Mrs. Clowes, in her most cutting tone.

But Lady Mills’s face was lightening as she looked at me.

“Don’t you know, my dear, that Mr. Carruthers is one of the most dangerous men—”

Then she stopped, for Mr. Carruthers had come into the room; and, turning from me to him, she said, in such a stern voice that it made me tremble—

“Tom, aren’t you just a little ashamed of yourself?”

And he answered very gravely—

“Perhaps; but that doesn’t matter. This inquisition is out of place, Stephana, for it is easy to see that to that child night and day are all the same; and, if I had been my respected father in iniquity himself, she would have been none the worse for my society. It was very sensible of you to come to Lady Mills, child,” said he to me kindly.

And he shook hands with me, and Lady Mills kissed me, and Mrs. Clowes gave me a cold little bow; and they sent me off to bed without knowing even then the enormity of the breach of propriety I had committed.

Sir Jonas, who was going up to town the next morning, was to drive me to the Alders, and then go on to Beaconsburgh station. Every one—nearly every one, for Mrs. Clowes never came near me at all—bade me a very kind good-by; and, just as I was sitting in the phaeton, waiting for Sir Jonas to take his place beside me, Gordon, Mr. Carruthers’s mysterious servant, came up to me in his stolidly respectful manner, and said—

“I think this is something of yours, ma’am. You must have dropped it, for I found it on the stairs, and I am afraid it has been slightly injured.” And he put my pendant into my hands.

I was so much astonished that he was gone before I could even thank him; and then, turning it over in my hands, I found that the little shield on which the initials were engraved had been wrenched off.

Was Gordon himself the thief, and had he repented? Or had the person who took it been ashamed to restore it in person? Or had I really dropped it, and only dreamt that I put it away?