"YOU ARE JUST 'ZACKLY LIKE THE PRINCE."
"The gentleman said he would be back in half an hour; he is staying a
night at the inn, and he just wanted to see you and Miss Baba." Mrs.
Nairne delivered this long message to Christina, when she and her small
charge came in from their afternoon walk a few days later, and at her
words, Christina's heart gave a sudden leap.
Was it possible that the grey-eyed man of the rugged face, the man who
had called himself Lady Cicely's cousin, could be driving that way
again? And was he coming to see the child? She was secretly pleased
to observe that the landlady had provided a tea of superlative
excellence, and that the worthy Mrs. Nairne thought, as _she_ also
thought, that Lady Cicely's cousin might perhaps partake of that meal
with Baba and her nurse.
There was a happy smile on her lips, and her eyes shone brightly, as
she moved to and fro about their little sitting-room, putting it tidy,
and arranging in two of Mrs. Nairne's fearsome vases (cherished
possessions of that good lady, be it known) a tangle of brown leaves
and crimson berries, that she and Baba had brought in from the hedges.
The child's clear voice drifted in to her from the kitchen, where the
small girl was proudly conscious of extreme usefulness, whilst she
pattered to and fro behind Mrs. Nairne, and helped to arrange the
tea-tray.
"We've got the best tea-set to-day," she announced to Christina in
triumph, when she and the landlady entered the sitting-room together,
"and I think the cakes is _beautiful_," she added, with a little sigh
of bliss, as her eyes rested on the table, at which Christina had also
glanced approvingly.
"I thought the gentleman might like a cup of tea," Mrs. Nairne said
apologetically, "and I can't bear for there not to be enough to eat."
"I am sure there will be plenty for us all," Christina answered
gravely, though her eyes twinkled; "and it is good of you to have taken
so much trouble. I can assure you, Baba and I will appreciate all the
good things you have given us, and we are as hungry as hunters."
The sight that greeted Rupert Mernside's eyes, when, a few minutes
later, he came into the firelit room, made a picture that lingered in
his mind for the rest of his life. There were two candles on the round
table, at which the child and girl sat, but the room was really lighted
by the ruddy glow of the fire, whose flames leapt about the great log
of wood on the top of the coals, and shed a delicious radiance all over
the low, old-fashioned apartment. Some dead and departed mistress of
Mrs. Nairne, had given her the oak furniture, of which the landlady
herself spoke deprecatingly, as "queer old stuff," and the firelight
was reflected a hundred times in the highly-polished black of the oak,
and the bright brass of handles and knobs. The chintz that covered the
furniture, had also come from a defunct mistress, whose taste had led
her to love just those soft, dim colours, and the old-world patterns
that best suited the oak of the furniture--and the whole result was
supremely pleasing to an aesthetic taste. Flowers sent from Bramwell
Castle, made a delicious fragrance in the air, and to the man, coming
in out of the cold of a damp and foggy December afternoon, there was a
peace in the atmosphere, that gave him a pleasing sense of home and
restfulness.
The firelight shone full on Baba's delicately-tinted face, and golden
curls; shone, too, on the dusky softness of her companion's hair,
bringing out in it unexpected gleams of brightness, illuminating the
girl's clear white colouring, and her sweet eyes, showing to the man
who entered, the tenderness of the look that was bent on the little
child beside her.
"Cousin Rupert!" Baba shrieked joyfully, scrambling from her seat, and
flinging herself upon him, whilst Christina pushed back her chair more
deliberately, and rose to greet their visitor. "We've cakes with sugar
on them to-day, 'cos Mrs. Nairne thought you'd come to tea."
"Oh! she thought I should come to tea, did she?" Rupert answered,
smiling, as he held out his hand to Christina, looking at her over
Baba's curly head. The child was already in his arms, her soft face
pressed against his, and his chin resting on her rippling curls, whilst
he shook hands with her nurse, and said in his deep pleasant voice--
"I am glad I have just caught you both at tea, Miss Moore. Now you
will let me have some tea, and then I shall hear how you both are, and
be able to carry news of you to my cousin, at first hand."
Christina was far too guileless and simple of soul to read into
Rupert's descent upon them, what was the actual truth--namely, that he
felt impelled, as Baba's guardian, to keep a watchful eye upon the new
importation Cicely had so impulsively introduced into her household;
felt it indeed to be nothing more than his bare duty, to see that
Baba's new nurse was all that Cicely enthusiastically believed her to
be.
"Dear little Cicely's swans have before now turned out to be geese,"
Rupert had said to Wilfred Staynes, Cicely's brother, when he and that
smart young soldier were returning from their motor trip across Sussex.
"She insisted on engaging this lady nurse for the child, and
practically took her without references. The references she gave us,
were, to all intents and purposes, so much waste paper. The writers of
them were all dead, or in the colonies."
"Cicely was always like that," Cicely's brother made reply. "She had
the rattiest collection of sick and sorry animals in her youth, and of
sick and sorry friends as she grew older. She has a way of stepping
down into the highways and hedges, and compelling their inhabitants to
enjoy her hospitality. It makes one feel one could always turn to
Cicely if one went wrong, you know," he added thoughtfully; "she's
always 'for the under dog,' as somebody once put it."
"Cicely is the dearest soul in the world," Rupert said quickly. "We
all love her for her loving heart--but at the same time, I can't risk
letting Baba fall into the hands of a stray adventuress, because
Cicely's heart has been touched."
"If it's a question of adventuresses, I'll come and see the kid too,"
Wilfred answered laughingly. "I like the type; it amuses me. Bronze
hair, green eyes, seductive manner. Oh! Rupert, my friend, if you
think Baba is in the care of an adventuress, take, oh take me to call
on her too!"
"What an ass you are, Wilfred," Rupert answered, with a lazy laugh.
"Is it likely that even our dear and impulsive Cicely, would hand Baba
over to the care of your adventuress type of woman? No; the only time
I saw her, the girl seemed a most harmless, quiet little individual."
"You've seen her?"
"Yes; I saw her in the nursery at Eaton Square, making friends with
Baba, but she made no impression upon me; she was just quite an
ordinary-looking girl."
"Oh! la, la! then you may go alone to call on her at Graystone, and see
that she is performing the whole duty of the nurse. The
ordinary-looking girl makes no appeal to me."
His own, and Wilfred's idle words, flashed back into Rupert's mind now,
as, across Baba's tangle of golden curls, his eyes looked down into the
eyes uplifted to his--eyes to which the dancing firelight gave an oddly
elusive effect. What colour were they? he wondered--grey, hazel, or
green--deep soft green with great black pupils, and sweeping dark
lashes, that curled upwards in a deliciously fascinating way. There
was something child-like and appealing about those sweet eyes,
something of the eternal child indeed, about her whole face, from the
unclouded brow on which the dusky hair fell in soft tendrils and curls,
to the half-parted lips, on which the smile over Baba's latest sally of
wit, still lingered. There was nothing of the adventuress type about
this girl, that was very certain, was his first thought; his second,
that the uplifted face was in some way familiar to him, that quite
lately he had seen it uplifted in precisely this way; and thirdly, he
remembered how and when they had met.
"Why," he exclaimed, "how oblivious you must have thought me the other
day! Surely you _are_ the young lady to whom my cousin and I gave a
lift in the car?"
A vivid blush flooded Christina's face with colour, her eyes wavered
under his glance.
"Yes, it was I who stopped your car, and I thought afterwards how
dreadfully audacious and impatient I must have seemed. But I was
anxious to get quickly to the doctor, that----"
"Not for this young person, was it?" Rupert interrupted, looking down
at the child in his arms "she doesn't wear an invalid appearance."
"Oh! no, no, not for her." Christina spoke hurriedly, remembering the
secrecy that had been enjoined upon her by the lady of the lonely
house, and anxious to lead the conversation away as soon as possible
from her visit to the doctor. But Rupert, having deposited Baba in her
chair, seated himself beside her, and helped himself to a slice of Mrs.
Nairne's hot buttered toast, continuing to talk placidly of the very
subject the girl most desired to avoid.
"I am afraid somebody was really ill?" he said, and Christina noticed
again what a musical voice his was. "You seemed to be desperately
anxious to get the doctor as soon as possible."
"Yes," Christina, answered, trying to speak in matter-of-fact tones;
"someone had asked me to fetch the doctor for them, and I didn't want
to lose any time."
"I hope you found the doctor a satisfactory sort of person? Sometimes
the medical men in these out-of-the-way places, are very impossible."
"I found a very unusual man," Christina said thoughtfully; "he is a Dr.
Fergusson, doing _locum tenens_ work here. He has a remarkable
personality; he made one feel he was meant to be a leader of men."
"I hope he will do the patient good."
"I hope he will," Christina said hurriedly; "he--was in a great
difficulty that night, and--I hope I did not do wrong in giving him
some help he asked for?" she added, looking deprecatingly into the grey
eyes fixed on her face, feeling that it was her obvious duty to tell
this man, who was Lady Cicely's representative, of the night during
which she had left Baba.
"I don't think you can have done anything very wrong," Rupert answered
with a smile, and speaking almost caressingly, as he might have spoken
to a child. His smile, and the tone of his words, set the girl's
pulses beating, although she vaguely realised he was treating her with
the same kindliness, he might have bestowed upon Baba.
"Dr. Fergusson was in a great difficulty," she went on, trying again to
speak in matter-of-fact tones. "The lady of the house to which he
went, was--was very lonely, and he asked me to take care of her for the
night. In fact"--Christina smiled at the recollection--"he was very
masterful--he really made me go. But I should not have gone, if I had
not known that Baba was absolutely safe with Mrs. Nairne. And"--she
paused--"I think I was able to help somebody in great trouble."
Rupert's eyes still rested kindly on her face.
"I don't know that I should recommend you to make a practice of leaving
Baba, and sitting up with people at night," he said, his smile taking
away any possible sting from his words; "but I am sure in this
instance, you only did what seemed most right. You and Baba are happy
here?" he went on, anxious to spare her any unnecessary embarrassment.
"Baba likes this nice place," the child struck in, "and Christina tell
about the prince. Baba thinks the prince is just 'zackly like you,"
she ended, with a wise nod of her curly head. Rupert found himself
speculating why, at the child's speech, Baba's nurse flushed with such
extreme vividness, and why she evinced so sudden a desire to change the
subject.
"Oh! Baba--we don't want to talk about fairy stories now," she
interposed. "Tell--tell all about the pony-cart, and our nice drives.
Do you know," she added, looking at him with a shy glance, which seemed
to him infinitely attractive, "I have never heard your name, so I don't
know what to call you."
"Call him the prince," Baba's clear little voice remarked; "he's my
Cousin Rupert, but he's 'zackly like the prince--and you're just
'zackly like the princess," she added, to Christina's no small
discomfiture, pointing a dimpled forefinger in the girl's direction,
"and some day the prince will marry the princess, and so they'll live
happy ever after." Again a flood of colour rushed over Christina's
face, and though Rupert saw it in the swift glance he cast at her, he
was merciful enough to turn his eyes upon the child, and say gaily--
"You must find a much better prince than I am for your princess, little
maid. Cousin Rupert is a battered old gentleman, with no prince-like
qualities. Princes are always young and handsome, with blue eyes and
golden hair, and silver armour, and lots of other jolly things like
that, aren't they, Miss Moore?"
"Yes, certainly," she answered, rallying to his mood, and laughing
brightly; "they always dress in silver armour, and the princesses never
wear anything but white gowns."
"Sometimes--green gowns do quite as well for princesses," he answered,
glancing at the girl's well-made green gown, with eyes of commendation.
"Green belongs to fairyland," he added, when again the colour flushed
into her cheeks. "I believe that you and Baba have only quite lately
come from that enchanted country--both the two of you, as my old nurse
used to say."
"We like fairyland--Baba and I," the girl said gently, "and we both
hope, some day, to see the fairies inside the flowers, or dancing round
one of their lovely rings. We have found ever so many fairy rings in
the fields round here." She spoke with something of a child's
eagerness, all her momentary embarrassment gone, and Rupert looked at
her, with an increasing sense of approval. Cicely had not acted
altogether unwisely, in deciding to give her small daughter this
unknown, unvouched-for girl as a nurse. She was obviously a lady, and
a cultured lady, and she possessed that nameless quality which never
failed to appeal to Rupert's fastidious taste--the restful charm of the
true gentlewoman. He liked this Miss Moore, he told himself, he
distinctly liked her, and he inwardly commended Cicely's choice, whilst
he said to Christina--
"And all this time I have most rudely left your question unanswered.
You asked my name: it is Mernside--Rupert Mernside."
"Oh!" was the only word that jerked itself out of Christina's lips,
whilst her eyes gazed at him with an expression of such unmistakable
dismay, that he looked at her in surprise.
"Have you any unpleasant associations with my name?" he asked. "Has
anybody called Mernside ever annoyed you?"
"Oh, no!" she answered quickly. "Only--once I heard the name
before--just R. Mernside--and I was surprised when--when it turned out
to be your name too." The words were so incoherent, the sentence so
oddly turned, that Rupert only looked as he felt, more puzzled than
before.
"I had not ever seen you, had I, until I saw you in Baba's nursery?" he
questioned.
"No--never." She looked increasingly disconcerted, beneath his puzzled
stare. "It was only--that I had heard--had come across the name
before, and it--surprised me to hear--it again."
Not wishing to add to her almost painful embarrassment, Rupert
tactfully changed the subject, but being an unusually observant man, he
noticed that she was not really at her ease during the whole course of
his visit. He rose to go, therefore, earlier than he would otherwise
have done, seeing how singularly peaceful he found the home-like
atmosphere. The girl, with her sweet eyes and restful manner, the baby
with her flower-like face, and her loving ways; the old-world firelit
room, the pervading sense of what was child-like, simple, serene--all
these soothed the man, racked with suspense and misery. It was with
reluctance that he closed the door upon it all, Baba's parting words
echoing in his ears, as he ran downstairs, and out into the fog of the
December evening--
"I think you are just 'zackly like the prince--my pretty lady's
prince--and she's the princess!"
Walking briskly up the village street in the direction of the inn, he
smiled, as the words spoken in the clear little voice recurred to him
again, and the picture of the child and the girl stayed in his mind
during the remainder of the evening, whilst he sat in the
uncompromisingly dull sitting-room with Wilfred, listening with very
fluctuating attention to that young man's chatter, about motoring,
sport, and the possibilities of a Frontier campaign.
"And what about Baba and her nurse?" the young man ended by saying.
"As Baba's uncle, I believe it was really my stern duty to go and look
her up."
"Ah, well, I happen to be her guardian," Rupert answered drily; "and
you were very much occupied with that American and his Daimler, when I
went out----"
"And has the nurse the bronze hair of the typical adventuress, only
tell me that," Staynes answered, stretching out his long legs to the
fire. "If she has, I shall feel it imperative to call on Baba
to-morrow, before----"
"Don't talk rot, my good fellow." Rupert's tones had in them a note of
irritation, which his astute cousin was not slow to observe. "Didn't I
explain to you that Cicely, with all her tenderness of heart, has too
much common sense to give over Baba to the care of any doubtful sort of
person? The child's nurse is--just a nice, quiet girl, who looks after
her well and keeps her happy."
"Great Scott! _A nice, quiet girl_! I think I can safely take her on
trust, if you are satisfied that she is--nice--and quiet. The
adventuress appealed to me, but nice quiet girls--no, thank you,
Rupert! Now if only she had been like that delightful young person
with green eyes, who stopped the car the other day--I--should have felt
twinges of conscience about my duty as an uncle."
"What an utter rotter you are!" In spite of himself Mernside laughed,
knowing from a long and intimate acquaintance with Wilfred, that the
young man's surface nonsense went no deeper than the surface, and that
Staynes was in no sense of the word a Lothario. A slight, a very
slight, twinge afflicted his own conscience, when he remembered the
identity of the girl he had left that afternoon, in the home-like,
firelit room, with the girl to whom his cousin had just alluded.
"There is no necessity to tell him that the two girls are one and the
same," Rupert argued with himself. "Some day, presumably, he will meet
Miss Moore, and he may then recognise her again. But the probability
is that by that time, the motor incident will have gone out of his
head." Meanwhile, throughout the bantering conversation he carried on
with Wilfred, he found himself constantly wondering why the sound of
his name, had caused Baba's nurse such surprise and embarrassment. She
had seemed so friendly, so natural, so simple, until the moment when
his name had been mentioned, and then she had changed into hesitating
self-consciousness, her eyes afraid to meet his, her manner uneasy and
shy.
The real reason for the change in her never, of course, occurred to
him. It was only very occasionally that he even remembered the
annoying episode of the matrimonial advertisement, and then merely with
a passing feeling of regret, that he had failed to help the girl who
had been his fellow-victim in Jack Layton's hoax. The girl's initials
had faded from his memory, in the more personal and acute trouble of
Margaret Stanforth's continued absence and silence, and he never for a
moment connected the writer of the wistful little note signed "C.M.,"
with Baba's newest and most devoted slave. If his thoughts that
evening ran with curious persistency on Christina, her thoughts turned
with no less persistency to him and his visit, and above all, to the
dismaying discovery that he was the R. Mernside to whom she had
audaciously written, who in return had written to her so kindly. After
Baba had been safely tucked up in her cot, sleepily asseverating that
she meant to go for a ride in Cousin Rupert's car, and that he was "her
Christina's prince," Christina herself returned back to the
sitting-room, and, seated before the fire, went over in her own mind
all the conversation of the afternoon, with its final climax.
"And I don't know whether I ought to tell him who I really am, or not,"
the girl reflected, looking deep into the heart of the glowing coals.
"He was so kind to-day, but I don't believe he would go on feeling kind
to a girl who could answer an advertisement like that--even though he
would still be kind, because he is a gentleman. I wonder if I ought to
tell him? And yet--it would be horrible--horrible to have to say it.
I should be so ashamed---so dreadfully ashamed. Only--I think,
perhaps--he would understand how poor I was, how desperate I felt, that
day when I wrote to him. He has such an understanding face, and his
eyes look as if they had seen so much sorrow, so that he would know
what other people's sorrows mean. I wish--I--could be a rest-bringer
to him." From that thought, she drifted away to the lonely house in
the valley, to the beautiful woman whose troubled face and deep,
anguished eyes haunted the girl like an obsession, and to the sick man,
whose death, so Dr. Fergusson had said, was only perhaps a matter of a
few short weeks. What strange tragedy was hidden by the four walls of
that lonely house? What did it all mean--the secrecy, the isolation,
and above all the trouble that had been written so plainly on that
beautiful woman's face?
"I don't suppose I shall ever see her again," was Christina's final and
regretful thought, as she rose to go to bed. "I wish people didn't
have to be like 'ships that pass in the night'--only passing--not
staying together for a little while."