When he rose to go, I accompanied Mr. Carruthers to the door, where a dog-cart was waiting for him; but Sarah, whose duty by her mistress’s side was suddenly over, followed close behind, and I had no chance of suggesting to him my own suspicions about the burglary. When he had gone, I reflected that it was better for me not to have said anything to a comparative stranger to implicate one of the servants in the house where I was living until I had consulted Mr. Rayner.
To give vent to my excitement over the important secret I fancied myself on the track of, I wrote to Laurence. With Sarah about, a letter was a thing requiring caution, as the event proved. I was so sensible of this that I contented myself with giving an account of Mr. Carruthers’s visit and of the robbery at Denham Court, only saying, in conclusion, that it might have some connection with what he had seen, and that I had something to add to that. I said that I would write more fully as soon as I had an opportunity of going to Beaconsburgh to post my letter myself; and then I said a great deal more concerning different things which were perhaps really less important, but which were much pleasanter to write about.
The postman called for the letter-bag at six every evening; so I waited at the schoolroom window until I saw him come up to the house and heard Sarah give him the bag; then I ran out into the hall, as if I had only just finished my letter, and put it into the bag which he held. Sarah could not even see the direction as I put it in, and I congratulated myself upon my artful strategy; but I might have known that she was not to be baffled so. I had stood at the door and watched him turn into the drive, and returned to the schoolroom in a flutter of excitement at my own audacity, when from the window I saw Sarah flit after him. I dashed out on to the lawn, and got into the drive just in time to see the postman fasten up the bag and go on again, while Sarah, saying something about “a misdirection,” put a letter into her pocket; and I knew that it was mine. With my heart beating fast, I walked up boldly to her.
“What did you take my letter out of the bag for, Sarah?” said I, half choking with anger.
“It’s not your letter, miss. What should I want with any letter of yours?” said she, looking down at me insolently. “It’s a letter to my sister that I’ve forgotten to put the number of the street on.”
I knew quite well that this was a falsehood, but I could not prove it; for I had indeed been too far off to recognize my letter when she put it into her pocket, and my moral certainty counted for nothing. She knew this, and stalked off defiantly to the house with my letter, while I crept back to the schoolroom, and sobbed bitterly at the tyranny I was suffering from this hateful woman.
Well, it would soon be over now—that was a comfort. I would tell Mr. Rayner all I had seen on Tuesday night, and about the cart Laurence had met outside—perhaps I would not mention it was Laurence who saw it—and about Parkes’s wishing to avoid me at Denham Court. I should not dare to suggest to Mr. Rayner any doubt about Gordon, who seemed to be in some way a personal friend of his. But now, with all my thoughts turned to jewels and jewel-robberies, I could not help thinking again about that strange disappearance of my own pendant while I was staying at Denham Court, and its restoration by this man. Then his treating Tom Parkes as a stranger at Denham Court, when I had seen them together one night at the Alders, seemed to me now a rather suspicious circumstance. I congratulated myself on having been so cautious in my letter to Laurence that Sarah would not learn much by reading it, and wondered when I could make an excuse to go to Beaconsburgh, to post one to him with my own hands. It seemed very hard to be cut off in this way from the relief of opening my heart to him; but it would be all right on the morrow, when Mr. Rayner came back—she would not dare to annoy me then.
But the next morning, to my great disappointment, I got another letter, saying he should not be back until Monday afternoon. I had written to him on Wednesday, and he had got my note. He said, as I mentioned that the weather was bad and the fogs had begun to be thick, it would be better for Mrs. Rayner to leave the ground-floor and sleep upstairs.
“I expect you will have difficulty in persuading her to leave her own room,” the letter went on; “but I am so anxious about her, for it seems to me she has looked paler than ever lately, and I feel so sure she would be better on a higher floor that I beg you, dear Miss Christie, to use all your powers of persuasion to induce her to move. Tell her that it is only for a time, that she shall go back to her old room as soon as the weather is warmer again; tell her I wish it, tell her anything you think likely to affect her. I have great trust in your diplomatic powers, little madam, and I anticipate the happiest results from them in this instance. I have given Sarah orders by letter to prepare the big front spare-room.”
I was delighted with this letter; it made me for the moment angry with Mrs. Rayner for her persistent ignoring of his kind feeling towards her. But, when I remembered her agony over her child on the night of Haidee’s illness, and the settled melancholy I now knew how to detect under her cold demeanor, pity got the better of me again, and I was glad to have an opportunity at last of doing her some good. She was always supposed to be attached to her room on the ground-floor, and Mr. Rayner wrote as if it would be difficult to persuade her to move. But I had two powerful weapons in her husband’s loving letter and her affection for Haidee, and I resolved to use them well.