But then it was not likely that Mr. Rayner would care to hear his beautiful home called a pest-house!
We drove slowly down to the hall door, which was open, and a gaunt untidy-looking servant came out and carried in my boxes. Mr. Reade helped me down and stood by me, apparently examining the harness, while I looked in an ecstasy of admiration at the dark red house thickly covered with ivy, and at the gray stone portico, the pillars of which were stained with picturesque patches of green, while the capitals were overgrown with soft bronze and brown moss. Then he seized a moment, when Mr. Rayner was speaking to the servant, to stoop and say to me quickly, in a low voice—
“Don’t let them put you near Mrs. Rayner’s room.”
I could not answer, could not ask why, for the next moment he was calling out good-by to Mr. Rayner, and, raising his hat to me, was walking by the side of the dog-cart up the steep drive that led through the garden to the road. I was sorry he was gone. I wanted to ask what he meant by his strange warning, and to thank him for his kindness. A distressing sense of loneliness came over me. Mr. Rayner, who had grown grave and silent and deeply occupied with his letters during the last part of the drive, had gone into the house forgetting to invite me in; the servant had disappeared with my last box. Instead of following her, I stood watching the dog-cart and its owner out of sight, until a harsh woman’s voice startled me.
“Won’t you come in? I’m to show you to your room.”
It was the gaunt servant who addressed me. I turned, blushing, and followed her into a low long hall, dark, cool, and old-fashioned, such as the outside of the house had prepared me for; up an oak-lined staircase; through a few of those short and inconvenient passages which abound in old houses that have been added to from time to time, to a corner-room, shabby, dark, and bare-looking, where my boxes were already installed. I sat down on one of these, the only friendly things I had about me, and began to cry. Somebody might at least have come to the door to meet me! I thought of Mr. Reade’s words, and began to wonder with a new sense of dread what Mrs. Rayner was like. Was she an invalid? Was she—mad? If not, why had she left the correspondence about her child’s governess entirely to her husband? My tears dried slowly as I went on puzzling myself uselessly about this mystery which must be so very soon solved; and I was scarcely ready when the servant returned to tell me that tea was waiting for me. But my curiosity was only to be sharpened. Tea was prepared for me alone, the servant saying that Mr. Rayner was busy, and had had his taken into the study. Not a word about Mrs. Rayner—no sign of a pupil! So great were my anxiety and curiosity that I forgot how hungry I was, and in a few minutes I had finished my tea, and was standing by the window looking out into the garden.
It was not yet seven o’clock and a bright summer evening. A light breeze had sprung up and was swaying the tops of the trees that grew thickly round the house. On the side of the dining-room a mossy lawn stretched from the roots of the trees right up to the French windows. I opened one of these and went out. I had never been in such a beautiful garden before. The grass was soft and springy and well kept; there were no stiff beds of geraniums and verbenas, but under the trees and against the house, and wherever there was a spare corner, grew clumps of Scotch and monthly roses, Canterbury bells, prince’s feather, and such simple flowers. The house was built on the very border of the marsh, at the bottom of a hill which sloped down, covered with trees, towards the dining-room side of the house. I made my way round to the front and the moss-grown portico—from here one caught glimpses of the marsh through the thick trees. I followed a grass-path cut through them, facing the front of the house, until I came to the pond which had excited my admiration from the dog-cart. Here the vegetation grew unchecked. The water was half covered with smooth green duckweed and water-lilies, and the reeds and rushes, which grew tall and thick round the margin, had encroached much upon the little sheet of water. The path I had followed was continued through the trees, within a few feet of the pond, to the outer edge of the little wood which enclosed the house and garden; there a few rough steps over the fence connected it with the foot-path along the borders of the marsh, which joined the road at the descent of the hill. This was the short cut by which Mr. Rayner had reached the house before us that afternoon.
I had turned back towards the garden, and was close to the pond, when I heard a low crooning sound which seemed to come out of the ground at my feet. Looking about, I saw sitting among the reeds, at the very edge of the water—so close to it that her little shoes kept slipping in the moist yielding earth—a tiny elfish-looking child, about two years old, in a dirty white frock and pinafore, with a small pale wrinkled face and thin straight red hair, who rocked herself to and fro and went on with her monotonous chant without seeming at all disturbed by the appearance of a stranger. She only stared at me, without altering her position, when I told her that she must not sit so near the water, or she would fall in and be drowned; but, when I stooped to lift her up, she proved her humanity by screaming loudly and reproaching me in baby language too indistinct for me to understand. I supposed her to be the child of the gardener or of some neighboring cottager, and, not quite knowing what to do with her, I carried her, still screaming, to the house, where I met the servant whom I had already seen.
“I found this child sitting with her feet nearly in the pond!” I said tragically.
“Oh, yes, miss, there’s no keeping her away from the pond! She’s there pretty nearly all day by herself. Come now, Mona, it’s time for you to go to bed. Dirty little girl, look at your pinafore!”