That night I was so anxious to find out whether Mr. Rayner did really sleep out of the house, as he had been accused of doing, that I had the meanness to leave my own bedroom door wide open, as well as that at the bottom of the turret staircase, and listen for footsteps on the ground-floor, and the sound of a key in the garden door through which Sarah had taken the violin. But I heard nothing, though I was awake until long after the rest of the household must have gone to bed. And I felt almost as much relieved as if it had been my own father proved innocent of a mean action imputed to him.
On the following night there was a high wind, which shook and swayed the trees and whistled round my turret, and made the door which stood always fastened back at the top of the kitchen-stairs rattle and creak on its hinges. At last I could bear this last sound no longer. I had been sitting up late over a book, and I knew that the household must be asleep, so I slipped downstairs as softly as I could. I had got to the top of the back-staircase, and had my hand on the door, when I saw a faint glimmer of light coming along the passage below. I heard no sound. I drew back quickly, so quickly that my candle went out; and then I waited, with my heart beating fast, not so much to see who it was, as because I did not dare to move. The faint light came along swiftly, and, when close to the foot of the stairs below me, I could see that it was a shaded lantern, and could just distinguish the form of a man carrying it. Was he coming upstairs? For the next few moments I scarcely dared to breathe, and I could almost have given a cry of joy when, by some movement of the head, I recognized Mr. Rayner. He did not see me; he put the key in the lock, turned it, took the key out, went through and locked it after him so quickly and so entirely without noise that a moment afterwards I could almost have thought that I had imagined the dim scene. It had been so utterly without sound that, if my eyes had been closed, I should have known nothing about it. I made the door secure with trembling fingers, and went back to my room again, not only profoundly sorry that Mr. Reade’s surmise was correct—for I could no longer doubt that Mr. Rayner did sleep over the stables—but impressed with an eerie dread of the man who could move about in the night as noiselessly and swiftly as a spirit.
When I awoke however in the fresh morning, with the wind gone down, and the sun shining in through my east window, all unpleasant impressions of the night before had faded away; and, when Mr. Rayner brought into the drawing-room after dinner a portfolio full of his sketches and panels, and was delighted with my appreciation of them—I knew something about pictures, for my father had been a painter—I felt that it was not for me to judge his actions, and that there must be some good motive that I did not know for his sleeping far out of the damp, as for everything else that he did. He proposed to paint me, and I gave him a sitting that very afternoon in the dining-room, which had a north light, though there was not much of it; and he said that he must finish it next day in his studio, and, when I objected to neglect my lessons again, he said the whole family should emigrate thither for the morning, and then perhaps I should be satisfied.
So the next day, at eleven o’clock, he came into the schoolroom with Mrs. Rayner, who wore her usual air of being drawn into this against what will she had, and we all four crossed the garden to the stables, and went up through the harness-room to the big room over the coach-house, which looked even more comfortable than I had expected.
For the floor was polished, and there were two beautiful rugs, a handsome tiger-skin, and a still handsomer lion-skin with the head attached, which Haidee crept up to, drew upon her lap, and nursed all the time we were there. At one end of the room was a partition, and behind this partition I guessed that Mr. Rayner slept. There was a bright fire burning in the tiled fireplace, and there were soft easy-chairs, rather worn by constant use, but very comfortable, and there were pictures on the walls, and there was a dark carved-oak cabinet full of curious and beautiful things, and a writing-table; and lastly there were the easel and a great confusion of portfolios and half-finished sketches and studies. Altogether the room contrasted very favorably with the mouldy-looking drawing-room. Perhaps Mrs. Rayner thought so as she sat down, with one eager intent look round the room, as if she had never seen it before; and then, without any remark, she took out her knitting and worked silently, while I posed again as I had done on the previous day, with my head on one side, and my hands, as Mr. Rayner had placed them, clasped under my chin, while he painted and talked.
“You like those sketches I took in Spain, Miss Christie?”
“Yes—only there are too many nasty black priests prowling about in them.”
“Oh, you little bigot! Those black figures are just what the hot, rather glaring Spanish scenes want, to relieve the monotony of bright colors and sunshine. You must tolerate them from a picturesque point of view.”
“Very well, but from no other. They remind me of the Inquisition. They all look like Jesuits.”
“And where is the harm of looking like a Jesuit? I have a partiality for Jesuits myself.”