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.