LADY SARAH’S DUPLICITY
If Rhoda could have followed Lady Sarah into the study, she would
have discovered that her suspicions and forebodings were amply
justified.
Sir Robert was deep in his studies when she entered like a whirlwind,
with bright eyes and voluble tongue, bearing in her arms a roll in
which the baronet altogether failed to recognise his lost picture.
“Bertie, Bertie, look here, I’ve news, good news for you!” she cried
with excitement, as she dashed across the floor and plunged her burden
into the midst of his letters and papers, his books and his writing
materials.
“Good gracious, my dear, what is it?”
She sprang up, clapped her hands, nodded her head, and beamed upon
him.
“See for yourself,” said she.
He rose from his chair with a troubled look on his face. Although he
now guessed what the surprise was which was in store for him, and
although he had spent the night and morning in lamenting his loss,
instinct told him that there was something to learn which he would
rather not have known, in connection with the recovery of his
treasure.
“What is it?” he asked hoarsely, as he touched the roll, and looked at
her.
“I believe you know what it is,” replied she, “but if not, I’ll show
you.”
Her hands were wet and trembling, for all her affectation of gaiety
and unconcern, and it was with difficulty she performed the simple
task of tearing the paper from the roll, and exhibiting its contents
to her husband.
“There!” she said, rather tremulously, as she unrolled it, “Your
picture! Back again, and quite safe and unharmed, I believe.”
But he looked at her with a frown.
“What does it mean?” he said hoarsely. “Who brought it back? Where
does it come from?”
She glanced at him quickly. He was staring at the roll with a look of
intense distress in his grave eyes. She drew her breath quickly, and
glanced at him once more anxiously as she laughed, and said:
“I wish you would just take your luck, Bertie, without asking any
questions.”
“How can I? I must know.”
“You’ll be sorry, and--and you’ll be angry,” faltered she, her colour
coming and going.
“Never mind. I think you can trust me to be just.”
She suddenly made a spring at him, and held his arms, looking up with
a bewitching air of entreaty into his face.
“Suppose some one you knew, and liked, and trusted, should have fallen
a victim to a temptation too strong, under pressure of friends who
wanted help badly. What then?”
“Well, who is it?”
His voice was stern, almost hard. Lady Sarah, frightened, began to
weep.
“I can’t tell you,” she said quickly, “while you look like that. I
daren’t.”
He patted her shoulder kindly.
“Nonsense,” he said. “You can trust me to be just.”
“I don’t ask you to be just, I want you to be merciful. I want you to
promise that you will accept this act of restitution without any
questions, and that you will be satisfied not to speak of the matter
again. The thief has repented, as you see, and has proved repentance.”
“I must know who it is,” said Sir Robert, with more sternness than he
had ever used to his wife before.
“Yes, if you will promise to forgive and--forget.”
“I promise,” said Sir Robert after a pause.
He was looking pale and anxious in his turn, as he sat down, after
placing a chair for his wife, and folding his hands, kept his head
bent, as he waited for her promised revelation.
“What would you say if you were to learn that it was a lady in your
employment, one who has proved herself very useful, very devoted, who
yielded to a temptation she couldn’t resist?” said she.
Sir Robert looked up sharply.
“I should say,” said he quietly, “that it wasn’t true.”
Lady Sarah bit her lip, disconcerted.
“I swear to you,” said she earnestly, after a short pause, “that it
was she who gave me back the picture and begged me to give it to you
and to ask you to say nothing, to ask nothing, but to be content to
have recovered it.”
He turned round to face his wife.
“Ask her to come and speak to me,” said he quickly.
“If I do, she will leave the house at once. She told me so,” said she
sharply.
Sir Robert rose from his chair, and paced up and down the room.
“There is something more in this,” said he with decision.
“Do you doubt my word?”
“Not for a moment, of course. But what I mean is that what she has
told you is not the whole of the truth. She is shielding some one
else, the guilty person.”
Lady Sarah drew herself up.
“What is the divinity that hedges Miss Pembury,” she asked haughtily,
“that she must be considered incapable of any sort of error?”
He stopped and answered her steadily.
“She is a perfectly noble and irreproachable lady,” he said, “and as
incapable of a mean and despicable theft as you are yourself.”
His wife looked down, with the blood rising in her cheeks.
“You will then be satisfied with her message. You won’t try to find
out anything more?” she said in a low voice.
“I will say nothing to any one at present,” he said quietly. “I think,
Sarah, you must be satisfied with that.”
She looked at him doubtfully, but affected to think that he had given
her the promise she wanted; and then she kissed him and tripped out of
the room.
But she left her husband in a state of acute distress. It was not
possible for him to believe that his wife had deliberately deceived
him, although even that sometimes seemed more likely than that the
patient, high-minded Rhoda should have been guilty of deception and
ingratitude.
But he felt sure that he had only heard part of the story, and the
conclusion to which he still clung, after turning the matter over in
his mind, was that Rhoda was shielding some one else. Who that some
one was, however, he had no idea. And that it could be the man who had
been dear to him for so many years, in conjunction with his own wife,
who had robbed him, never for one moment entered the baronet’s mind.
He was far too loyal himself to suspect disloyalty in his nearest and
dearest, and his conjecture was that it was some member of his
household, one of the under servants, and not one of those who had
been in his service many years, who had committed the theft both of
the picture and of the snuff-boxes.
Knowing, as he did, that Rhoda had been the first to discover the
theft of the picture, he decided that she must have found out more
than she confessed to have done, but that she held her peace until she
had forced the thief to restore at least part of the plunder.
Withal he was hurt to think that she had not come straight to him
herself. Surely she might have known that she could come to him
without fear, and that he would temper justice with mercy.
The consequence of this slight feeling of injury was a certain
coldness in his manner when he met her at luncheon; and the unhappy
Rhoda at once jumped to the conclusion that he suspected her of the
theft. She thus did less than justice to him, and more than justice to
his wife. For she little thought that the artful Lady Sarah had done
her very best to divert suspicion from herself and Jack Rotherfield by
accusing the companion of her little son.
Rhoda was heartbroken. She was crying quietly by herself in a distant
corner of the grounds, when she suddenly found two long lean arms put
round her neck from behind, and heard Minnie Mallory’s voice in her
ear, saying in tones of encouragement:
“Look here, don’t you cry. Aunt Sally’s been making mischief, I
suppose, with Uncle Bertie?”
Rhoda was startled, and turning quickly, asked the girl what she
meant.
By this time Minnie, with a battered and bent hat cocked over one eye,
was squatting on the grass like a large-sized toad, looking up at her
keenly out of her light eyes.
“What was in that gun-case?” she asked suddenly.
Rhoda dashed away her own tears and stared at the girl in dismay. Was
Minnie a witch?
“W--w--what gun-case?” stammered she.
Minnie gave her a supercilious glance and a shrug.
“Oh, you know,” she said. “That gun-case you took out of Jack’s car
just before he went away.”
“A gun, I suppose,” Rhoda replied quickly.
“Then what did you take it indoors for?”
There was a pause. Minnie shrugged her shoulders again.
“Oh, of course, you needn’t tell me unless you like, but I can’t help
guessing, can I? And I can’t help wondering why Jack looked so awfully
cross when he came out again.”
“You see quite enough, without being told anything,” was Rhoda’s
comment.
Minnie nodded.
“Well, I do keep my eyes open, especially in a house like this, where
there is so much to see. But I shouldn’t cry, if I were you. Because
nobody will ever blame _you_ for anything that ever happens here.”
There was a weird air of prophecy about this remark which made Rhoda
feel uncomfortable. But she only sighed, and said:
“Nothing that happens will matter to me, for I am going away.”
“Oh, no, you’re not,” croaked the witch.
“You’ll see,” said Rhoda, as she rose with an air of determination,
and started to walk back to the house.
The mocking laughter of Minnie sounded uncannily in her ears, as she
disappeared into the yew path.
She went straight to the study and knocked at the door. Almost at the
same moment she became aware that some one was talking inside the
room, and she would fain have retired. But as Sir Robert called out
“Come in,” she had to enter, blushing and apologetic, and then she
found that Jack Rotherfield and Lady Sarah were both in the room with
the baronet.
“I’m so sorry, I thought you were alone,” said Rhoda.
“And he will be alone in a moment,” cried Lady Sarah merrily. “Jack’s
had a breakdown, and he had to come back, and he’s been telling us all
about it.”
It flashed through Rhoda’s mind that, as Jack’s errand to town had
probably been connected with the disposal of the Romney, the breakdown
had not been a very serious nor a very inconvenient one. And then,
rendered suspicious by circumstances, she noted that Lady Sarah, in
spite of her statement that she was going, did not go. And it occurred
to Rhoda that Lady Sarah wished to avoid the possibility of a
_tête-à-tête_ between her husband and Rhoda.
Sir Robert turned to the girl courteously, and asked what he could do
for her. In a low voice, striving to repress every sign of emotion,
Rhoda said that she would be glad if she might leave the Mill-house at
once, and return home to her parents.
The baronet did not seem surprised.
“Of course we can’t keep you against your will,” he said. “But I am
very sorry, and we shall miss you very much. Have you spoken to Lady
Sarah about it?”
She saw that he too was striving to speak more calmly than he felt.
“No. I thought I ought to come to you first.”
“I can only repeat that I am more sorry than can say. And as for
Caryl----”
He broke off, deeply moved. There was a pause, during which Rhoda
noticed that though Lady Sarah appeared to be chattering idly to Jack
she was watching with the keenest attention what went on between her
husband and Caryl’s companion.
“Thank you,” said Rhoda. “I will say good-bye to Caryl at once, if I
may.”
“You are going to-day, then? It’s rather sudden? For your own sake, if
I might suggest, I should say you had better wait till to-morrow. You
look tired, and unfit for a journey.”
She raised her eyes to his face and gave him one swift glance. There
was a world of feeling in her own sensitive face as she looked at him:
gratitude, regret, affection, and even reproach, all expressed
themselves in that one quick up-look of her tender blue eyes.
And the answering look which Sir Robert threw at her was hardly less
eloquent. There was in his grave face a look of earnest affection, and
an expression of almost childlike helplessness in the face of an
unexpected blow.
Rhoda choked down a sob, and crossed the room quickly to Lady Sarah.
“I’m going away,” she said quickly; and without thinking it necessary
to give any explanation to a lady who, she was sure, must understand
her decision without it, she added: “I’m going upstairs to say
good-bye to little Caryl.”
With Lady Sarah’s perfunctory regrets ringing in her ears, mingled
with the polite expressions of surprise from Jack Rotherfield, she
went out of the room.
She crept up the stairs with her heart beating very fast. If it was
hard to leave Sir Robert, what would the parting with poor little
Caryl be?
He was lying by the window of his sitting-room, which had once been
the nursery, and he clapped his hands as she came in.
“Oh, Rhoda, Rhoda, what a long time you’ve been! I’d thought you had
forgotten me!” he cried, as soon as he caught sight of her.
And as she looked at his thin face, and saw the flush of pleasure in
his cheeks and the brightness which came into his eyes, as the nurse
got up, and, smiling, gave her chair to the new-comer, Rhoda felt as
if her heart would burst.
“My dear Caryl,” she said as she bent to kiss him, “I’m afraid you
won’t like to hear something I’ve got to tell you.”
A look of vivid intelligence appeared on his face, and he glanced
anxiously towards the nurse.
“Oh, is it what she says?” he asked tremulously. “Are you going away?”
Rhoda turned quickly. Had the possibility of her going been discussed,
then, in the servants’ hall?
“Yes, I’ve been here such a long time that my father and mother want
to see me,” she said, trying to speak brightly. “You wouldn’t begrudge
them a sight of their own daughter, would you?”
“Not just a look at them, I wouldn’t begrudge you that,” he said. And
then he called, “Nurse!”
The girl came back into the room.
“What is it, Master Caryl?”
“Ask my father to come and see me, please.”
Rhoda bent quickly to kiss him again, but he detained her, clinging to
her.
“You must wait, you must wait a minute,” he said feverishly.
And the touch of his hot hands made her shiver.
“If you want me to say good-bye to Sir Robert and Lady Sarah, I have
just done so,” said she.
But Caryl would say nothing about that.
“Sit down,” he said, “and tell me what you’ve been doing, and where
you’ve been. You’ve never left me so long alone before.”
“Well, I’ve been in the grounds, Caryl.”
“Yes, I saw you go. And I thought it very unkind of you not to take
me. But I know why you didn’t,” and he pressed her hand with his
little thin fingers. “You wanted to cry, that’s why you wanted to be
by yourself. And that’s why you want to go home. You’re not happy,
Rhoda. You look so different from what you did at first, before mama
came back.”
“It’s nothing to do with mama, Caryl,” said Rhoda quickly.
“Oh no. But you have been crying, though?”
“Perhaps I have. Perhaps I don’t like leaving you, Caryl.”
He sighed, and played with her fingers quietly, and said very little
more till his father came into the room.
Sir Robert looked flushed and uneasy; he caught sight of Rhoda at
once; and the presence of the lady seemed to make him graver than
ever.
“Come here, papa.”
The baronet came and bent over his little couch.
“Give me your hand,” said the boy.
The baronet obeyed, still without looking at Rhoda, who was trying to
withdraw her fingers from the tight clutch of the child.
“Papa,” said Caryl, “I sent for you because I want you to tell Rhoda
not to go away and leave me.”
Sir Robert gazed down at his little son.
“When a lady makes up her mind to do a thing, Caryl, it’s not kind or
courteous to try to dissuade her,” said he.
But Caryl persisted.
“I don’t believe she really wants to go, papa. I think she’ll stay if
you ask her to,” said he.
“No, no, Caryl, I must go,” said Rhoda hoarsely.
Sir Robert looked up then, and his eyes met hers. In his there was a
look of grave, tender kindness of gentle reproach, which cut her to
the heart.
“I never thought, Caryl, that she could have left you,” he said in a
low voice.
And Rhoda, bending suddenly very low over the child, hid her face and
whispered:
“Caryl, you’re don’t know what you’re asking, dear, but--I’ll stay.”