CHAPTER VIII.
"IT IS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH."
"And the Prince had the dearest face in all the world. It was not exactly handsome, but it was very strong, and when you looked at it, you knew that he was good. And his eyes were grey and very kind, and——"
"And did he wear white armour, all shining, and a silver crown on his head?"
Baba's voice, clear and imperious, interrupted Christina's dreamy tones, and her dimpled fingers seized and shook the girl's hand, in order to attract her attention, which, as the baby was vaguely aware, had wandered from the fairy tale in process of being told. "Did the Prince have white armour?"
"Yes, I expect so," Christina answered, with momentary hesitation, flushing as a vision flashed into her mind of a tall figure in well-cut dark blue serge, that bore no resemblance whatever to silver armour; "he—he put on armour when he had to go and fight dragons, but when he was in the Castle with the lovely Princess, he wore a velvet tunic, dark blue velvet, and a silver crown upon his head."
"And the Princess was just 'zactly like you," Baba said lovingly, pressing her golden head more closely against Christina's breast, and looking into the girl's face with adoring eyes, "just 'zactly like my pretty lady."
Christina laughed softly, running her hands through the child's curls, and bending down to kiss the uplifted face.
"You are a little monkey, Baba," she said, "and a flatterer. You mustn't call Christina a pretty lady. She isn't a bit pretty, and she's only just your nurse."
"Baba will call Christina just 'zactly what she likes," the child answered sturdily, enunciating her words with the clearness often found in an only child who is constantly with grown-up people. "Christina's a very pretty lady, and Baba loves her."
"Baba's a goose, and we must put on our things and go out in the sunshine and see what we can find in these nice lanes." She put the child off her lap, and, going into an adjacent room, brought out the red cloak in which she had first seen her, and wrapped it round Baba's graceful little form, drawing the hood over the golden curls.
Barely a fortnight had gone by since Christina had first entered Lady Cicely's service, after an interview which had ended precisely as Rupert had laughingly declared it would end, in the engagement of Christina as Baba's nurse. The references the girl had produced from her late employer, Mrs. Donaldson, from an old clergyman who had known her in Devonshire, and from her father's solicitor, had seemed to Cicely to justify her in taking this step, even though the Donaldsons were in Canada, the old clergyman dead, and the solicitor gone to South Africa.
"She looks genuine; I am sure she is genuine," the little lady said afterwards to Rupert; "and she was so overwhelmed with delight and gratitude at the idea of coming to us."
"No doubt she was," Rupert responded drily; "well! no great harm can come of giving her a month's trial. I am glad you had the saving grace to suggest that. And during the month you will be able to see what she is made of."
But the month had not fallen out quite as Rupert had naturally supposed that it would. Lady Cicely, driven nearly distracted by a scare of scarlet fever in the near neighbourhood, and unable to use Bramwell Castle, which was in the builder's hands, had sent Christina and Baba off, almost at a moment's notice, to Graystone. In this remote hamlet on a remote Sussex border, Mrs. Nairne, an old servant of the Staynes family, owned a small farmhouse, and also received lodgers; and here, for the past ten days, Christina and her little charge had been rejoicing in the country sights and sounds, which even in early December had a fascination all their own.
To Baba, the farmyard was an unfailing source of delight; and to Christina, the great spaces of moorland, the deep lanes, the woods whose soft brown hues gave colour to the hillsides, were a welcome change from London streets, and the squalor of London lodgings. To the girl who for so long had been tossing on a sea of struggle and privation, her quiet life at Graystone was like a haven of rest; and her one passionate prayer was, that at the end of her month of probation, she might still find favour in Lady Cicely's eyes, and keep the situation which seemed to her a more delightful one than she had ever dared to hope for in her wildest dreams. With the help of a little pony cart, she and the child could make quite lengthy excursions about the country side, and Christina often found herself wondering why it was the fashion to talk as if there were no beauties to be found in the country in winter time. She revelled in the great sweeps of moorland that rolled away to far hills on the horizon, hills scarcely less blue than the soft blue of the winter sky. And, if the moorlands were no longer clad in their robe of purple heather, or pale pink ling, the duns and browns of heath and bracken, the dark green of fir-trees, and the brightly tinted leaves of the bilberry plants offered no lack of colour. On the oaks in the lanes bright brown leaves still hung; and the trees that were leafless—delicate birches, sturdy ashes, smooth-stemmed beeches, made so dainty a lacework of bare boughs against their background of sky, that the leaflessness was in itself beautiful. The sunlight poured a flood of radiance on the upland road, as Christina and Baba jogged peacefully along it, in the wake of the small black pony, who meandered on at his own pace, just as the fancy took him. Larks sang in the sunlight; in the copse under the hill the thrushes were already beginning to learn their songs of spring; and Christina, drinking in all the loveliness about her, laughed aloud for sheer gladness of heart.
They had driven for some distance along the main road, when they came to a spot where four roads met, and towards one of them Baba pointed a fat forefinger.
"Let's go along there," she said; "it's such a ducky wee road, and there's a pond."
Christina was lain to confess that the road indicated had special attractions of its own. It wound down from the upland, between hedges which in summer must be a tangled loveliness of briar roses, honeysuckle, and clematis; and, skirting a common where a pond reflected the sunshine on its small ruffled waves, turned down again between woods that climbed steeply up the hill-side on either hand. The lane narrowed as it wound onwards, and Christina was beginning to wonder whether it would end in a mere grassy track, when she saw a clearing in the woods on the right-hand side, and became aware of chimney-pots showing above a very high wall.
"What an extraordinarily lonely place," the girl reflected, looking with a little shudder at the height of the wall, and at the dense woods which hemmed it in on every side. Excepting where the space for the actual house itself had been cleared, and where the lane meandered past it, it was entirely shut in by woods—beech, oak, and birch on the lower levels, pines climbing upward to the summit, closing the building in from all observation. Thanks to the steep hills and the overhanging woods, only a very small proportion of sunshine could filter into the lane, and Christina shivered again, feeling that there was something sinister about this secluded spot, and the house that was barely visible behind its encircling walls.
"Baba thinks p'raps the Princess lives behind there," said the baby, looking with round blue eyes at the frowning walls; "it's a awful, dreadful place; and p'raps the Dragon's got the Princess safe in there; and she's waiting for the Prince to come and get her out."
"The Prince will come in his shining armour," Christina answered brightly; "and then the Princess will come away, and be happy ever after."
At the moment they were driving past a green door in the wall; and as she spoke these words, the door was hurriedly opened, and a tall woman stepped out into the lane. She was closely wrapped in a dark cloak, and some magnificent black lace draped her hair. But it was the sight of her face that made Christina draw in her breath sharply, for she thought she had never seen anything more beautiful than its white loveliness, anything more sad than the glance of the great dark eyes. She panted a little, as though she had been running; there was a strange mingling of fear and anguish in her expression, and she held up her hand with so pleading a gesture, that Christina pulled up, and leaning from the cart, said gently:
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
The dark eyes met hers, a startled look, one would almost have said a look of recognition swept over the white face, then she exclaimed breathlessly:
"Why—I thought—you were—I beg your pardon—it was foolish of me—of course, I have never seen you before."
"No, never," Christina answered emphatically, knowing that the lovely face of this woman, once seen, could never have faded from her memory; "but, I am afraid you are in trouble; can I help you?
"A doctor," the other panted. "I must have a doctor; and yet—I am afraid—I am afraid," she wrung her hands together, and her lips quivered pitifully.
"We are driving back to Graystone. Can I send a doctor if there is one in the place? Or, can I send over to the nearest town?" Christina asked, struck afresh by the anguish in the other's eyes, and realising that only some vital necessity could so have moved her.
"I must have a doctor," the words were reiterated, and the woman put her hands upon the cart, and leant heavily against it. "I can't let—him—die—and yet—no one must know if the doctor comes here," she exclaimed, suddenly pulling herself upright, and speaking fast and earnestly; "not a living soul must ever know; and the doctor himself? If you find a doctor for me, promise to make him swear that he will never divulge where he has been, or what he sees in this house."
Christina looked the bewilderment she felt, and a faint wonder flashed across her mind whether this woman could be sane. Her speech savoured of melodrama, her hurried, breathless sentences, the nervous glances she cast over her shoulder, and the strangeness of the words she spoke, all tended to make the girl doubt the speaker's sanity. But the dark eyes, unfathomable and sad as they were, looked straight into hers without a trace of madness; and though she was plainly afraid of something or somebody, it was not the unreasoning fear of insanity.
"Is there someone ill in that house?" the girl questioned practically; "is it of great importance to have a doctor?"
"It is a matter of life and death," was the broken answer; "when I heard wheels in the lane I came out, hoping it might be someone who would help me. I—cannot leave him myself; I have no one to send—it is all that my servant and I can do to manage——" she pulled herself up abruptly, adding after a moment, "for pity's sake help me if you can."
"I will do the best I can," Christina answered, bewildered surprise still her dominant sensation. "I am a stranger in Graystone. We are only staying in a farmhouse there, but by hook or by crook I will get a doctor for you."
"I think you will carry through whatever you undertake," the other answered, a smile flitting across the wan misery of her face, as her eyes rested on the girl's square chin, and firmly cut lips; "you look as if you would not easily be beaten."
Christina smiled back at her and shook her head.
"I was very nearly beaten a little while ago," she said, gathering up the reins and preparing to turn the pony's head up the steep ascent again; "when one is poor, and hungry, all the fight seems to go out of one. But I don't like being beaten, and I shall find a doctor for you."
She nodded her head cheerily, and was touching the pony lightly with the whip, when the stranger clutched the side of the cart again, and laid a hand on the girl's shoulder.
"Remember, no one must be told that the doctor is coming here; and he himself must be sworn—sworn to secrecy. Promise me you will not tell a soul you have seen me, not a living soul." She was labouring under strong excitement, and it alarmed Christina to notice how the whiteness of her face had extended to her very lips, and what black shadows of suffering and fear lay under her eyes.
"Promise," she repeated, her grasp tightening on Christina's shoulder.
"I—promise," Christina answered slowly. "I will not tell anyone that I have seen you, or what you have said to me; and I will—do as you wish about the doctor."
Having received the girl's assurance, the woman drew back from the cart, and stood watching it retrace its way up the hill, her hands wrung together in anguish, her dark eyes wide with pain.
Baba had been a silent spectator of the strange little scene, understanding very little of what passed between her two elders, but watching the face of the beautiful stranger with an intent scrutiny, curious in one so young.
"That was a beautiful Princess," she said, after the cart had driven a short distance. "Baba hopes the Prince will come soon, and take her right away."
"Perhaps he will," Christina answered absently, relieved that the child had woven the strange lady into a fairy tale, thus obviating the possibility that close attention would be paid to remarks Baba might make about their encounter with her; and speculating vainly over all that she had just heard and seen, and over the striking personality of the woman who had commissioned her to do so strange an errand.
Resourceful as nature and necessity had made her, Christina was nevertheless a little puzzled to think how she could make enquiries about a doctor, without betraying what she had been especially conjured to keep secret; but during the drive home her plans were matured, and, having reached the farm, and put Baba into her cot for her afternoon nap, she went to the kitchen in search of Mrs. Nairne.
That worthy dame was engaged in making scones for tea, and turned a flushed but kindly face to Christina, who had already won her heart.
"Well, missy, you and the precious baby's had a nice drive; and I'm sure you're wise and right to take her out early, in the sunshine, and let her rest a bit before her tea—a prettier baby never was."
"She is a darling," Christina answered, "and if she hadn't the sweetest, most wholesome nature in the world, she would be spoilt, everybody adores her so!"
"There! and who can wonder, miss. The little dear! I was baking some scones for her tea and yours, miss, and——"
"That is very good of you, Mrs. Nairne. I was going to ask whether you would be so kind as to look in upon Baba presently; she is asleep in her cot, and quite safe there. But, if you would look at her now and then I should be so grateful. I haven't had the cart, sent round to the stables, for I must go up to the post office."
"And I'll do it with pleasure, miss. You go out with a light heart; no harm shall come to that little dear, that I'll promise you."
The post office, which occupied one side of the tiny general shop, was at the end of the straggling row of houses Graystone called its village street; and Mr. Canning, the postmaster, besides watching over His Majesty's mails, served customers with bacon and butter, sweets or string, sugar or tea, as occasion required. He was weighing out very brown and moist looking Demarara sugar when Christina entered the shop, and he looked at her over his spectacles, with all the absorbing interest felt by a villager for the stranger in their midst.
"A shillingsworth of penny stamps, please," Christina said, when with much deliberation he had tied up the parcel of brown sugar and handed it to his customer, "and a packet of halfpenny cards." Then, when the customer had departed, she asked a few questions about the neighbourhood, adding, with well-feigned carelessness:
"I suppose in such a small place as this you have no resident doctor?"
"Well, no, miss," the man answered; "we have no one nearer than Dr. Stokes—Dr. Martin Stokes. He lives on the other side of the hill at Manborough. I hope the little lady is not ailing?" Mr. Canning asked sympathetically, for Baba's gracious little personality had endeared itself to the postmaster, and to the rest of the villagers.
"No; oh, no!" Christina answered quickly; "she is very well, and we like this lovely place so much. It is a good thing, though, to know where the doctor lives, isn't it?" she added, brightly and evasively.
"Ah! there you are right, miss. Getting the doctor in time saves fetching the undertaker, as I've said more than once," and Mr. Canning bowed Christina out of his shop, with all the empressement of a courtier.
"Manborough—the other side of the hill." It was, as the girl knew, at least three miles off, and Sandro, the fat pony who stood lazily flicking his tail before the shop door, was not to be hurried under any circumstances.
"A matter of life and death!" Those words, and the anguished tones in which they had been uttered, recurred to her, as she stood looking thoughtfully up the village street, and before her eyes rose the white, agonised face of the woman who uttered them.
"I think you will carry through whatever you undertake." Other words spoken in that same voice, came back to the girl's thoughts, and she looked with a puzzled frown at Jem, the farm boy, who stood at the pony's head.
"Taking the short cut over the moor, I believe I can walk there as quickly as Master Sandro would joggle along the main road," she reflected, saying aloud after that second of reflection:
"You can take the cart back, Jem; and please ask Mrs. Nairne if she will be so very kind as to give Miss Baba her tea; and say I have been detained."
The boy nodded and drove off, whilst Christina walked away in the opposite direction, following the main road to Manborough, until she reached a point some way beyond the village, where a steep path—the short-cut she had recollected—struck across the open moorland. She had just reached this point, and was about to turn into the by-path, when the hoot of a motor sounded behind her, and turning, she saw a large car coming slowly up the road. It contained only two occupants; and with a leap of the heart at her own audacity, Christina suddenly resolved to stop them, and ask for their help.
"A matter of life and death!" the words still rang in her ears, and with the resourcefulness in emergency which belonged to her character, she held up her hand to the two men in the car, and signalled to them to stop. The great car instantly slowed down, and Christina, flushing rosily at her own audacity, stepped forward to speak to one of the two men who bent towards her. Both were gentlemen, she saw at once, and one of them she recognised, and her heart almost stopped beating, when her eyes met the grey eyes of Lady Cicely's cousin.
He looked at her with grave courtesy, but evidently with no idea that he had ever seen her before; and, indeed, on the one and only occasion when they had met in Lady Cicely's boudoir, he had paid very scant attention to the girl, beyond observing that she was white and thin, and very shabbily dressed. The girl who stood now beside his car was neatly and becomingly gowned in garments of soft dark green, which had the effect of making her eyes look very deep and green; she was flushing rosily and becomingly, and the wind blew her dark hair into fascinating little curls about her forehead.
"Oh! please forgive me for stopping you," she exclaimed breathlessly, "but—are you going to Manborough?"
"Yes," Rupert answered, "we are going through Manborough. Is there anything we can do for you?"
Christina noticed again, as she had noticed on the occasion of their first meeting, the peculiarly musical quality of his voice; its tones sent little thrills running along her pulses, and a dreamy conviction crept over her, that, if only he would go on speaking, she could willingly stand here for ever, listening to his deep, vibrating voice. His question roused her to the absurdity of her thoughts, and, flushing more vividly, she answered:
"I hardly dare ask you what flashed into my mind to ask, when I stopped you. But I am very anxious to get quickly over to Manborough to the doctor; it is an urgent case, and I——"
"Of course we will drive you over," Rupert broke in quickly, opening the door, and holding out his hand to help her into the back part of the car. "I am very glad we happened to be passing."
"It was dreadfully audacious of me to stop you," Christina answered, smiling in response to his smile, "but I do so want to get to the doctor as fast as I can, and when I saw the car, I thought of nothing but what I wanted to do."
Rupert glanced back at her, an amused twinkle in his grey eyes.
"You don't let obstacles hinder your attaining your goal?" he questioned.
"I—don't think I do," was the reply; "and especially when it is a matter of real importance—one of life and death." By this time they were whirling along the road at a pace which rendered conversation difficult, and Christina sat back in her comfortable seat, looking first at the man who had spoken to her, and was now steering the machine, then at his companion who sat beside him. Now that Rupert was no longer smiling pleasantly at her, she observed how grave and worn was his face, what new deep lines seemed to have carved themselves about his mouth, what a shadow of pain, or of some gnawing anxiety lay in his eyes.
"He is in trouble," the girl thought, her heart contracting with pity, as her eyes rested on the strong, rugged face. "I wish I could help him; he looks as if he had lost something he cared for with all his soul, and it is breaking his heart!"
From the strong face, with its lines of pain, her eyes turned to his companion—a slight, alert man, military in build—and with fair, good-humoured features devoid of any marked personality.
His blue eyes had brightened when Christina stopped the car, and whilst she talked to Rupert, he watched her expressive face with growing admiration. They had only proceeded a short distance on their journey, when he turned round to the girl, and said kindly:
"We are going a great pace, and you are not dressed for motoring; you must be cold. Will you wrap yourself in this?" and, drawing from behind him a heavy fur coat, which he had brought as an extra wrap, if necessary, he handed it to Christina, who gratefully rolled herself in its warm folds.
"By Jove! she looks more fetching than ever, with her face looking out of all that fur," the blue-eyed young man reflected, when he again glanced over his shoulder at her, "those green eyes of hers are like no others I ever saw," and Christina, little as she was in the habit of considering such things, could not help noticing how often during their three-miles' drive, the young man turned to look at her, or to shout a remark. The grey-eyed man looked round only once, to say shortly but kindly:
"Quite comfortable?" But even those two words in the vibrating voice, had, as before, an oddly thrilling effect on Christina's pulses.
That rapid drive across the moorland, in the low sunlight of the December afternoon, seemed to her for long afterwards, like part of some extraordinary dream—a dream in which she, and the grey-eyed man, and the beautiful white-faced woman, were all playing parts; a dream which had no real relation at all to the commonplace details of everyday life.
"Here is Manborough," Rupert called out, when, over the brow of a steep hill, they came in sight of clustering red-roofed houses amongst pine woods; "now where does the doctor live? What is his name?"
"Doctor Martin Stokes is his name; I don't know what his house is called, but Manborough is only a small place," Christina answered. "If you will very kindly put me down in the main street, I shall easily find the right house."
"Oh, no, we will drive you up in state," was the laughing rejoinder; and the car once more slowed down, whilst Rupert put a question to a passing rustic, who jerked his thumb to the right.
"Doctor's house be up among they pines," he said; "Doctor calls 'un Pinewood Lodge."
"Unromantic and ordinary person, that doctor," said Rupert, with a short laugh; "this country and those woods might inspire a man to invent a name with some sort of poetry in it. Ah! here is the lodge in question—and as ordinary as its name," he concluded, stopping the car before a closed brown gate, through which a well-kept drive led to a red-brick house, that might have been transplanted bodily to these heights, from a London suburb.
"I don't know how to say thank you properly," Christina said a little tremulously, when she stood by the brown gate, helped out of the car by the blue-eyed young man, who had skilfully forestalled Rupert in this act of gallantry; "it is very, very good of you to have helped me, and will you please forgive me for being so bold and stopping you as I did?"
Rupert laughed and held out his hand.
"Don't think twice about it," he said heartily. "I am very glad you did stop the car, and very glad we were able to save so much time for you. I hope the doctor will pull your patient well through the illness." His hand closed over Christina's small one, the blue-eyed man likewise shook her by the hand, and before the door bell of the doctor's house had been answered, the car had whirled out of sight.
"Poor little girl, she was very prettily grateful," Rupert said to his companion. "I wonder whose illness she is agonising over. Plucky thing to do, stopping us as she did."
"She is a young woman of resource," the other answered. "I like that sort of 'git up and git' way of tackling a difficulty. Now, in her place, I should have just begun to think what might have happened if I had stopped somebody's car, by the time the car was two miles further down the road."
"My dear Wilfred, you hit your own character to a nicety," Rupert answered with a laugh; "but it's only your confounded laziness of mind that prevents your being as much on the spot as that little green-eyed girl."
"Very fetching eyes, too," Wilfred mused aloud, "and a smile that she ought to find useful. Can't we come back this way to-morrow, old man? We might find she wanted some errand done in the opposite direction, and I'll keep a sharp look-out for her all along the road!"
"As it happens, I have every intention of coming back this way," Rupert answered drily, "though not in order to enable you to rescue distressed damsels. You were not intended for a knight-errant, my good Wilfred; leave well alone. But I am bound to come back through Graystone. I promised Cicely that on my way home from Lewes, I would look in on Baba and her new nurse. They are lodging at old Mrs. Nairne's farm, and it's somewhere near Graystone village. Cicely wants to know whether the new nurse is all she should be; we will look in upon them on our way back."