To have a raving lunatic under the same roof with you is an experience which appeals differently to different minds. To the middle-aged it is a fact calculated to send a “cold shiver down the back,” while to the very young it suggests untold possibilities of danger and excitement.
It is not surprising, therefore, that while Mrs. Abercarne made up her mind to go as soon as she heard of the existence of Mr. Richard, to Chris this was only another inducement to stay. It was a hard matter, however, to bring her mother to her way of thinking; and when Mrs. Abercarne insisted on replacing in her trunks the things which she had begun to unpack, the young girl almost gave up hoping to change her determination.
“Now I shall go downstairs and knock at the door of the study, and explain to Mr. Bradfield how impossible it is that we should remain here under the circumstances,” said the elder lady decidedly, as she straightened the lace she wore round her neck, preparatory to making an imposing entrance into her employer’s presence.
“But, mother, you told him just now that you were not a bit frightened, and he will think you are very changeable to have altered your mind so soon.”
“I have had time to think it over,” explained her mother, rather weakly. “One does not see everything in the first minute. And it is not for myself I care. But a young girl like you must not be exposed to the vagaries of a madman, nor live in a house that is talked about.”
Chris was silent. Against those mysterious conventions which bound her mother down more tightly than prison walls, she knew that all her arguments, all her persuasions, would be powerless. With sorrowful eyes she watched her mother finish repacking, shut down the lid of the last portmanteau, and leave the room with the firm steps of a woman who had finally and firmly made up her mind.
Then Chris went into the beautiful Chinese-room, and looked lovingly round the walls, and longingly out of the window. She had never been inside a house half so nice as this, she thought, and she had not yet got over the first ecstasy of joy on finding what a beautiful place they were to have for a home. Now they would have to go back to London, she supposed; and as their own house had been given up, and the furniture sold, they would have to take cheap and dreary lodgings until they could find some other engagement. And when would they be so lucky as to find another together?
Chris was not more inclined to tears than other girls of her age, but the weight of the woes upon her gradually grew too heavy to be borne without some outward demonstration. So that, when at last the door opened to admit, as she supposed, her mother, Chris was curled up in one of the low arm-chairs by the window and could not for shame exhibit her tear-stained face.
“Oh, mother,” she sobbed, without looking up, “how can you have the heart to leave this lovely place to go back to that hateful London? We should have been so happy here; I’m sure we should!”
“There!” exclaimed a man’s gruff voice loudly, and Mr. Bradfield, for he was the intruder, burst into a loud, ironical laugh.