Nurse Chaffen on Duty.
How short a period of time may serve to bring forth vital chances and
changes! Sir Karl and Lady Andinnian were absent only a week, yet
before they returned a stranger had taken up his abode at Foxwood,
indirectly brought to it by Karl himself; and something had happened
at the Maze.
Lucy was out amidst her plants and shrubs and flowers the evening of
her return, when the shadows were lengthening on the grass. Karl was
writing letters indoors; Miss Blake had hurried up from dinner to
attend vespers. In spite of the estrangement and misery that pervaded
the home atmosphere, Lucy felt glad to be there again. The meeting
with her husband, after the week's entire separation, had caused her
pulses to quicken and her heart to bound with something that was very
like joy. Colonel Cleeve was out of all danger; was nearly well again.
It had been a sharp but temporary attack of sickness. The Colonel and
his wife had pressed Lucy to prolong her stay, had asked Sir Karl to
come and join her; and they both considered it somewhat unaccountable
that Lucy should have persisted in declining. Theresa was alone at
Foxwood, was the chief plea of excuse she urged: the real impediment
being that she and Karl could not stay at her mother's home together
without risk of the terms on which they lived becoming known. So Karl,
on the day appointed, went from London to Winchester, and brought Lucy
home.
For the forbearance she had exercised, the patient silence she had
maintained, Lucy had in a degree received the reward during this
sojourn with her father and mother. More than ever was it brought home
to her conviction then, that she would almost rather have died than
betray it. It would have inflicted on them so much pain and shame. It
would have lowered herself so in their sight, and in the sight of
those old and young friends who had known her in her girlhood, and who
whispered their sense of what her happiness must now be, and their
admiration of her attractive husband. "Martyrdom rather than that!"
said Lucy, clasping her hands with fixed resolution, as she paced the
grass, thinking over her visit, on this, the evening of her return.
Karl came up to her with two letters in his hand. She was then sitting
under the acacia tree. The sun had set, but in the west shone a flood
of golden light. The weather in the daytime was still hot as in the
middle of that hot summer, but the evenings and nights were cool.
Lucy's shawl lay beside her.
"It is time to put it on," said Karl--and he wrapped it round her
himself carefully. It caused her to see the address of the two letters
in his hand. One was to Plunkett and Plunkett; the other to Mrs.
Cleeve.
"You have been writing to mamma!" she exclaimed.
"She asked me to be sure and let her have one line to say you got home
safely. I have given your love, Lucy."
"Thank you, Karl. And now you axe going to the post."
"And now I am going to the post. And I must make haste, or I shall
find the box shut."
He took his hand from her shoulder, where it had momentarily rested,
and crossed the grass, Lucy looking after him.
"How thoughtful and kind he is!" she soliloquised. "It is just as
though he loved me." And her imagination went off wandering at random,
as imagination will. Once more she reverted to that former
possibility---of condoning the past and becoming reconciled again. It
was _very_ good of him, and she felt it so, to have stayed that week
in London. She fancied he had done it that she might know he did not
spend his time at the Maze in her absence. And so, the evening shadows
came on, and still Lucy sat there, lost in her dreams.
Miss Blake, it has been said, had hurried from dinner, to go to
vespers. As she turned into the road from the Court, she saw a boy a
little in advance of her on the other side, his basket on his arm. It
was the doctor's boy, Cris Lumley, against whom Miss Blake had a
grievance. She crossed over and caught him up just as he rang at the
Maze gate.
"Now, Cris Lumley, what have you to say for yourself! For three days
you have not appeared at class."
"'Tain't my fault," said Cris Lumley, who was just as impudent as he
looked; a very different boy indeed from civil-natured Tom Pepp. "It
be master's."
"How is it your master's?"
"What master says is this here: 'I be to attend to him and my place;
or I be to give it up, if I wants to kick up my heels all day at
school.'"
"I don't believe you," said Miss Blake. "I shall speak to Mr. Moore."
"Just do then," said the independent boy.
"The fact of the case is no doubt this, Cris Lumley--that you play
truant for half the day sometimes, on the plea of being all that while
at school."
"Master said another thing, he did," resumed the young gentleman,
ignoring the last accusation. "He said as if Parson Sumnor warn't no
longer good enough for me to learn religion from, he'd get another boy
in my place, that he was good enough for. There! you may ask him
whether he said it or not."
Declining to bandy further words with him until she should have seen
the surgeon, Miss Blake was hastening on, when the fringe of her
mantle caught against his medicine basket. It reminded her that some
one must be ill. Battling for a moment with her curiosity, but not for
long, she condescended to inquire who was ill at the Maze.
"It be the missis," replied Cris.
"The mistress! Do you mean Mrs. Grey?"
Mr. Lumley nodded.
"What is the matter with _her?_"
"Got a baby," said the boy shortly.
For the instant Miss Blake felt struck into herself, and was dumb. She
did not believe it.
"He were born yesterday," added the boy. "This be some physic for him:
and this be the missis's."
Throwing back the lid of one end of his basket, Miss Blake saw two
bottles, done up in white paper. The larger one was addressed "Mrs.
Grey," the small one "Mrs. Grey's infant."
She turned away without another word, feeling ready to sink with the
weight of the world's iniquity. It pressed upon her most unpleasantly
throughout the evening service at St. Jerome's, and for once Miss
Blake was inattentive to the exhortations of the Rev. Guy. Looking at
the matter as Miss Blake looked at it, it must be confessed that she
had just cause for condemnation.
To return to Lucy. It grew dusk and more dusk; and she at length went
indoors. Karl came in, bringing Mr. Moore, whom he had overtaken near
the gate: and almost close upon that, Miss Blake returned. The sight
of the doctor, sitting there with Karl and Lucy, brought back all Miss
Blake's vexation. It had been at boiling-point for the last hour, and
now it bubbled over. The wisest course no doubt would have been to
hold her tongue: but her indignation--a perfectly righteous and proper
indignation, as she deemed it--forbade that. The ill-doing of the boy,
respecting which she had been about to appeal to Mr. Moore, was quite
lost sight of in this ill-doing. There could be no fear of risking
Jane Shore's sheet of penance in repeating what she had heard. It was
her duty to speak: she fully believed that: her duty to open Lucy's
obtuse eyes--and who knew but Sir Karl might be brought to his
senses through the speaking? The surgeon and Lucy were sitting
near the window in the sweet still twilight: Karl stood back by the
mantel-piece: and they were deep in some discussion about flowers.
Miss Blake sat in silence, gathering her mental forces for the combat,
when the present topic should have died away.
"I--I have heard some curious news," she began then in a low,
reluctant tone: and in good truth she was reluctant to enter on it. "I
heard it from that boy of yours, Mr. Moore. He says there's a baby at
the Maze."
"Yes," readily acquiesced Mr. Moore. "A baby boy, born yesterday."
And Miss Blake, rising and standing at angles between the two, saw a
motion of startled surprise on the part of Karl Andinnian. Lucy looked
up; simply not understanding. After a pause, during which no one
spoke, Miss Blake, in language softened to ambiguousness, took upon
herself to intimate that, in her opinion, the Maze had no business
with a baby.
Mr. Moore laughed pleasantly. "That, I imagine, is Mrs. Grey's
concern," he said.
Lucy understood now; she felt startled almost to sickness. "Is it Mrs.
Grey who has the baby?" was on the point of her tongue: but she did
not speak it.
"Where is Mrs. Grey's husband?" demanded Miss Blake, in her most
uncompromising tone.
"In London, I fancy, just now," said the doctor. "_Has she one at
all_, Mr. Moore?"
"Good gracious, yes," cried the hearty-natured surgeon, utterly
unconscious that it could be of particular moment to anybody present
whether she had or not. "I'd answer for it with my life, nearly. She's
as nice a young lady as I'd ever wish to attend; and good too."
"For Lucy's sake, I'll go on; for his sake, standing there in his
shame," thought Miss Blake, in her rectitude. "Better things may come
of it: otherwise I'd drop the hateful subject for ever."
"Mr. Moore," she continued aloud, "Why do you say the husband is in
London?"
"Because Mrs. Grey said something to that effect," he answered. "At
least, I understood her words to imply as much; but she was very ill
at the moment, and I did not question further. It was when I was first
called in."
"It has hitherto been represented that Mr. Grey was travelling
abroad," pursued Miss Blake, with a tone and a stress on the "Mr.
Grey."
"I know it has. But he may have returned. I am sure she said she had
been up to London two or three weeks ago--and I thought she meant to
imply that she went to meet her husband. It may have been a false
conclusion I drew; but I certainly thought it."
Sir Karl took a step forward. "I can answer for it that Mrs. Grey did
go up," he said, "for I chanced to travel in the same carriage with
her. Getting into the up-train at the station one day, I found Mrs.
Grey seated there."
Lucy glanced towards him as he spoke. There was no embarrassment in
his countenance; his voice was easy and open as though he had spoken
of a stranger. Her own face looked white as death.
"You did!" cried the doctor. "Did she tell you she was going up to
meet Mr. Grey?"
"No, she did not. I put her into a cab at the terminus, and that's all
I know about it. It was broiling hot, I remember."
"Well," resumed the doctor, "whether it was to meet her husband or
whether not, to London she went for a day or two in the broiling
heat--as Sir Karl aptly terms it--and she managed to fatigue herself
so much that she has not been able to recover it, and has been very
unwell ever since. This young gentleman, who chose to take upon
himself to make his appearance in the world yesterday, was not due for
a good couple of months to come."
Lucy rose and left the room, she and her white face. Karl followed her
with his eyes: he had seen the whiteness.
"Is it a healthy child?" he asked.
"Quite so," replied the surgeon; "but very small. The worst of these
little monkeys is, you can't send them back again with a whipping,
when they make too much haste, and tell them to come again at proper
time. Mrs. Grey's very ill."
"Is she?" cried Karl.
"Yes. And there's no nurse and no anything; matters are all at sixes
and sevens."
"I hope she'll do well!" breathed Karl.
"So do I."
Miss Blake looked at the two speakers. The one seemed just as open as
the other. She thought what a finished adept Karl Andinnian was
getting to be in deception.
"I am going to the Maze now," said the doctor: "was on my way to it
when you seduced me in here, Sir Karl. Good evening, Miss Blake."
He took his departure hastily as he spoke. He was, as he told them, on
his way to the Maze then. Karl went with him to the outer gate, and
then paced the lawn in the evening twilight.
"After all, it is well it's over," ran his thoughts. "This expected
future illness was always putting itself in view when I was planning
to get away Adam. Once Rose is well again, the ground will be, so far,
clear. But good heavens! how it increases the risk! Here's Moore going
in at any hour of the day or night, I suppose--and Adam so incautious!
Well, I think he will take care of himself, and keep in seclusion for
his own sake. And for myself--it brings more complication," he added
with a sigh. "The child is the heir now instead of me: and the whole
property must eventually come to him. Poor Lucy! I saw she felt it.
Oh, she may well be vexed! Does she quite comprehend, I wonder, who
this baby is, and what it will take from us?--Foxwood amidst the rest?
I wish I had never married! I wish a merciful heaven had interposed to
prevent it."
When Mr. Moore, some eight-and-forty hours previously, received a
hurried visit from Mrs. Grey's servant, Ann Hopley, at the dusk of
evening, and heard what she had to say about her mistress, he was
excessively astonished, not having had the slightest idea that his
services were likely to be wanted in any such way at the Maze. It is
possible that some doubts of Mrs. Grey's position crossed his mind at
the moment: but he was a good man, and he made it a rule never to
think ill if he could by possibility think good; and when he came to
see and converse with Mrs. Grey, he felt sure she was all she should
be. The baby was born on the following morning. Since then the doctor,
as Karl expressed it, had been going in at all hours: Ann Hopley
invariably preceding him through the Maze, and conducting him out of
it again at his departure. As he marched on to the Maze tonight after
the above conversation at the Court, he wondered what Miss Blake had
got in her head, and why she should betray so much anger over it.
Three or four days went on. The doctor passed in and out in the care
of his patient, and never a notion entered his head that the Maze was
tenanted by any save its ordinary inmates, or that one under a ban was
lying there in concealment. Ann Hopley, letting her work go how it
would, attended on her mistress and the baby; the old gardener was
mostly busy in his garden as usual. On the fifth or sixth day from the
commencement of the illness, Mr. Moore, upon paying his usual morning
visit, found Mrs. Grey worse. There were rather dangerous symptoms of
fever.
"Has she been exciting herself?" he privately asked of Ann Hopley.
"She did a little last night, sir," was the incautious admission.
"What about?"
"Well, sir--chiefly talking."
"Chiefly talking!" repeated the doctor. "But what were you about, to
let her talk?" he demanded, supposing Ann Hopley to be the only other
inmate of the house. "What possessed you to talk to her?"
Ann was silent. She could have said that it was not with her Mrs. Grey
had talked, but with her husband.
"I must send a nurse in," he resumed. "Not only to see that she is
kept quiet, but to attend to her constantly. It is not possible that
you can be with her always with your housework to do."
But all of this Ann Hopley most strongly combated. She could attend to
her mistress, and would, and did attend to her, she urged, and a nurse
she would not have in the house. From the first, this question of a
nurse had been a bone of contention: the doctor wanting to send one
in; Ann Hopley and also Mrs. Grey strenuously objecting. So once more
the doctor yielded, and let the matter drop, inwardly resolving that
if his patient did not get better during the day, he should take
French leave to pursue his own course.
Late in the afternoon he went in again. Mrs. Grey was worse: flushed,
restless, and slightly delirious. The doctor said nothing; but when he
got home, he sent a summons for Mrs. Chaffen. A skilled nurse, she;
and first cousin to the Widow Jinks, both in respect to kin and to
love of gossip.
That same evening, after dark, when Adam Andinnian was sitting in his
wife's room, and Ann Hopley was concocting something in a saucepan
over the kitchen fire, the gate bell clanged out. It had been nothing
unusual to hear it these last few days at any hour; and the woman,
putting the saucepan on the hob for safety, went forth, key in hand.
No sooner had she unlocked the gate than Mr. Moore brushed past her,
followed by a little thin woman with a bundle. Ann Hopley stared: but
never a word said he.
"Keep close to me, and you won't lose yourself," cried he to the
little woman; and went tearing off at a double-quick pace through the
intricacies of the maze.
Ann Hopley stood like one bewildered. For one thing, she had not
possessed the slightest notion that the surgeon knew his way through,
for he had given no special indication of it, always having followed
her. He could have told her that he had learnt the secret of the maze
long before she came to Foxwood. It had been shown to him in old Mr.
Throckton's time, whom he had attended for years. And, to see a second
person pass in, startled her. All she could do was to lock the gate,
and follow them.
On went the doctor; the little woman keeping close to his coat tails:
and they were beyond the maze in no time. Mr. Moore had no private
motive for this unusual haste, except that he had another patient
waiting for him, and was in a hurry. In, at the open portico, passed
he, and made direct for the stairs, the woman after him. Ann Hopley,
miles behind, could only pray in agony that her master might escape
their view.
But he did not. The doctor had nearly reached the top of the
staircase, when a gentleman, tall, and in evening dress, suddenly
presented himself in front, apparently looking who it might be, coming
up. He drew back instantly, strode noiselessly along the corridor, and
disappeared within a door at its extreme end. It all passed in a
moment of time. What with the speed, and what with the obscurity of
the stairs and passages, any one, less practical than the doctor,
might have questioned whether or not it had happened at all.
"That's Mr. Grey, come down," thought he. "But he seems to wish not to
be noticed. Be it so."
Had he cared to make any remark upon it to Mrs. Grey, he could not
have done so, for she was quite delirious that night. And, as he saw
no further sign of the gentleman at any subsequent visit, he merely
supposed that Mr. Grey had come down for a few hours and had gone
again. And the matter passed from his mind.
It did not so pass from the nurse's. Mrs. Chaffen had distinctly seen
the gentleman in evening attire looking down the stairs at her and the
doctor; she saw him whisk away, as she phrased it, and go into the
further room. In the obscure light, Mrs. Chaffen made him out to
be a very fine-looking gentleman with beautiful white teeth. She had
keen eyesight, and she saw that much: she had also a weakness for
fine-looking men, and felt glad that one so fine as this should be in
the house. It could not make much difference to her; but she liked
gentlemen to be in a dwelling where she might be located: they made it
lively, were pleasant to talk to; and were generally to be found more
liberal in the offers of glasses of wine and what not than the
mistresses. Like the doctor, she supposed this was Mrs. Grey's
husband, come down at last.
She neither saw nor heard more of the gentleman that night, though she
sat up with her patient. Neither did she on the following day--and
then she began to think it somewhat odd. At dusk, when Mrs. Grey and
the baby were both sleeping, she went down stairs.
When Ann Hopley found the nurse installed there and that she was
powerless to prevent it, she had to make the best of the unfortunate
occurrence--and most unfortunate it was destined to turn out in the
end. She gave the nurse certain directions. One of them was, "Ring for
everything you want, and I will bring it up." The woman's meals also
were brought to her punctually: Ann's object of course being to
prevent her going about the house. But nurses are but human. Mrs.
Chaffen was longing for a word of social gossip, and downstairs she
went, this night, and made her way to the kitchen. Ann Hopley was in
it, ironing at a table under the window.
"What do you want?" cried she, in a quick startled tone, as the nurse
appeared.
"I thought I'd get you to give me a sup o' beer, Mrs. Hopley," was the
answer. "I'm a'most faint, stopping so long in that there room with
its smell of ether about."
"Why could you not have rung? I'll bring it up to you."
In the very teeth of this plain intimation, Mrs. Chaffen sat herself
down on a chair by the ironing board, and began fanning her face with
a corner of her white apron. "The missis is asleep," she said: "she's
a sight better to-night; and I shall stop here while I drink the beer
for a bit of relief and change."
Ann took a small jug that was hanging on the dresser shelves, went
down in the cellar, brought up the beer and poured it into a tumbler.
Mrs. Chaffen took a good draught and smacked her lips.
"That ain't bad beer, is it, Mrs. Hopley?"
"Not at all," said Ann Hopley. "Drink it up."
She would not go on with her ironing, lest it might seem an excuse for
the nurse to linger; she stood by the fire, waiting, and evidently
wanting the nurse gone.
"Your husband's a-taking of it easy out there!"
Ann glanced from the window, and saw the gardener seated amongst a
heap of drying weeds, his back against the tool house, and a pipe in
his mouth.
"He has done his work, I suppose, for the day," she said.
"And he knows his missis's eyes can't be upon him just now," added the
nurse, taking another draught. "He don't hardly look strong enough to
do all this here big garden."
"You couldn't offend Hopley worse than by telling him that. His
mistress says nothing about it now, it puts him up so. Last May, when
he was laid up in bed with the rheumatis, she ordered a gardener in
for two or three days to clear up some of the rough work. Hopley was
not at all grateful: he only grumbled at it when he got about again."
"It's just like them good old-fashioned servants that takes pride in
their work," said the nurse. "There's not many of the young uns like
'em. The less work they have to do the better it pleases _them_. Is
that a hump now, or only a stoop of the shoulders?" continued she,
ignoring good manners in her sociability.
"It used to be only a stoop, Mrs. Chaffen. But those things, you know,
always get worse with years."
Mrs. Chaffen nodded. "And gardening work, when one has a natural
stoop, is the worst sort of work a man can take to."
"True," assented Ann. She had spoken absently all along, and kept
glancing round and listening as though ill at ease. One might have
fancied she feared a ghost was coming down the staircase.
"What be you a-harkening at?" asked Mrs. Chaffen.
"For fear the baby should cry."
"The baby's in a sweet sleep, he is. I wonder whether he'll get
reared, that baby?--he's very little. Where's the gentleman?" abruptly
inquired Mrs. Chaffen, after a pause.
"What gentleman?"
"Mrs. Grey's husband. Him we saw here last night."
If Ann Hopley had been apathetic before, she was fully aroused to
interest now, and turned her eyes upon the nurse with a long stare.
"Why what is it that you are talking of?" she asked. "There has been
no gentleman here. Mrs. Grey's husband is abroad."
"But I saw him," persisted the nurse. "He stood right at the head of
the staircase when me and Dr. Moore was a-going up it. I saw him."
"I'm sure you didn't."
"I'm sure I did."
Then they went on, asserting and re-asserting. Nurse Chaffen
protesting, by all that was truthful, that she did see the gentleman:
Ann Hopley denying in the most emphatic language that any gentleman
had been there, or could have been. Poor woman! in her faithful zeal
for her master's safety; in her terrible inward fear lest this might
bring danger upon him, she went so far as to vow by heaven that no
living soul had been in the house or about it, save her mistress and
the infant, herself and Hopley.
The assertion had its effect. Nurse Chaffen was not an irreligious
woman, though she did indulge in unlimited gossip, and love a glass of
beer when she could get it; and she could not believe that a thing so
solemnly asserted was a lie. She felt puzzled to death: her eyes were
good and had never played her false yet.
"Have ye got a ghost in the house?" she asked at length, edging a
little nearer to the ironing board and to Ann Hopley.
"I have never seen or heard of one."
"It's a rare old place this house. Folks said all kinds of queer
things about it in Miser Throckton's time."
"He left no ghost in it, that I know of," repeated Ann.
"Well I never! I can't make it out. You might a'most as soon tell me
to believe there's no truth in the Bible. He stood atop o' the stairs,
looking down at me and the doctor. It was dusk, I grant; a'most dark;
but I saw him as plain as plain could be. He had got white teeth and a
suit of black on; and he went off into that door that's at the fur end
of the passage."
A keen observer might have detected a sleeping terror in Ann Hopley's
eyes; but she was habitually of calm manner and she showed perfect
calmness now, knowing how much was at stake. A great deal had all
along depended upon her ready presence of mind, her easy equanimity in
warding off suspicion: it depended more than ever on her at this
trying time, and she had her wits at hand.
"Your eyes and the dusk must have misled you, Mrs. Chaffen," she
quietly rejoined. "Is it possible--I put it to yourself--that any
gentleman could be in this house, and me and Hopley not know it? That
night I had run down from my mistress's room, where she was lying off
her head with the fever, and the baby asleep in its little bed by the
fire, and was making a drop of gruel in the kitchen here, when the
ring at the gate came. I had a great mind to send Hopley to open it: I
heard him out yonder putting up his tools for the night: but I should
have had to go close up to make him understand, for he's as deaf as a
post; and his knees would have been a long while making their way
through the maze. So I went myself: it seemed less trouble; and I let
in you and the doctor. As to any soul's having been in the place, save
me and Hopley and the missis and baby, it's a moral impossibility; and
if necessary I could swear to it."
"Where do that there end door lead to?" questioned Mrs. Chaffen, only
half-convinced and that half against her will.
"It leads to nowhere. It's a sitting-room. Mrs. Grey does not often
use it."
"Well, this beats everything, this do. I'm sure I could have swore
that a gentleman was there."
"It was quite a mistake. Hark! there _is_ the baby."
Nurse Chaffen flew up the stairs. Ann Hopley went on with her ironing;
her face, now that she was alone, allowing its terror scope.
"It is so foolish of my master to run risks just at this time, when
the house is liable to be invaded by strangers!" she ejaculated
wearily. "But who was to foresee the doctor would come bursting in
like that? Pray Heaven master doesn't show himself again like that
while the woman's here!"
Mrs. Chaffen sat in the sick-room, the awakened baby occupying her
lap, and the problem her mind. Never in all her life had she felt to
be in so entire a mist. Ann Hopley she could not and would not
disbelieve: and yet, in her reasoning moments she was as fully
persuaded that a gentleman had been there, and that she had seen him,
as that the sun shone in the sky.
A day or two went on; and the subject was never out of the woman's
mind. Now leaning to this side of the question, now wavering to that,
she could not arrive at any positive conclusion. But, taking one thing
with another, she thought the house was rather a strange house. Why
did Ann Hopley want to keep her for ever in that one room?--as she
evidently did want to--and prevent her from moving freely about the
house? An unfortunate doubt took possession of her--was there a
gentleman in the house after all; and, for some reason or other,
keeping himself concealed? Unfortunate, because it was to bear
unpleasant fruit.
"Be whipped if it is not the most likely solution o' the matter I've
thought of yet!" cried she, striking her hand on the tall fender. "But
how do he manage to hide himself from Ann Hopley?--and how do he get
his victuals? Sure-_ly_ she can't have been deceiving of me--and as
good as taking oaths to an untruth! She'd not be so wicked."
From that time Mrs. Chaffen looked curiously about her, poking and
peering around whenever she had the opportunity. One morning in
particular, when Mrs. Grey was asleep, and she saw Ann go out to
answer the bell, and Hopley was safe at the end of the garden, for she
could hear him rolling the path there, Mrs. Chaffen made use of the
occasion. She went along the passage to the door where the gentleman
had disappeared, and found herself in a dull sitting-room wainscoted
with mahogany, its wide, modern window looking to the maze. Keenly
Mrs. Chaffen's eyes darted about the room: but there was no other
outlet that she could see. The dark paneling went from the door to the
window, and from the window round to the door again. After that, she
made her way into the small angular passages that the house seemed to
abound in: two of them were bedrooms with the beds made up, the others
seemed to be out of use. None of them were locked; the doors of most
of them stood open; but certainly in not one of them was there any
trace of a hidden gentleman.
That same day when she had finished her dinner, brought up to her as
usual, she hastily put the things together on the tray and darted off
with it down stairs. Mrs. Grey feebly called to her; but the nurse,
conveniently deaf, went on without hearing. The staircase was angular,
the turnings were short, and Mrs. Chaffen, as she went through the
last one, gave the tray an inadvertent knock against the wall. Its
plates rattled, its glasses jingled, betraying their approach: and--if
ever she had heard a bolt slipped in her life, she felt sure she heard
one slipped inside the kitchen door.
"It's me, Mrs. Hopley, with the tray," she called out, going boldly
on. "Open the door."
No answer. No signs of being heard. Everything seemed perfectly still.
Mrs. Chaffen managed to lodge the tray against the door-post and hold
it steady with one hand, while she tried the door with the other. But
she could not open it.
"Mrs. Hopley, it's me with the tray. Please open."
It was opened then. Ann Hopley flung it wide and stood there staring,
a saucepan in her hand. "What, have you brought the things down!" she
exclaimed in a voice of surprise. "Why on earth couldn't you have let
them be till I came up?"
The nurse carried her tray onwards, and put it on the board under the
window. At the table, not having been polite enough to his wife to
take off his flapping straw hat in her presence, sat the gardener,
munching his dinner as toothless people best can, his back to the
light.
"Why did you keep me waiting at the door?" asked the nurse, not
pleased.
"Did you wait?" returned Ann Hopley. "I was in the back place there,
washing out the saucepans. You might have come in without knocking."
"The door was bolted."
"The door bolted!--not it," disputed Ann. "The latch has got a nasty
trick of catching, though."
"This is fine weather, Mr. Hopley!" said the nurse, leaving the point
uncontested, and raising her voice.
He seemed to be, as Ann had formerly expressed it, as deaf as a post.
Neither turning his head nor answering, but keeping on at his dinner.
Ann bent her head to his ear.
"The nurse, Mrs. Chaffen, spoke to you, Hopley. She says what fine
weather it is."
"Ay, ay, ma'am," said he; "fine and bright."
What more might have passed was stopped by the ringing of Mrs. Grey's
bell; a loud, long, impatient peal. The nurse turned to run.
"For pity's sake don't leave her again, Mrs. Chaffen!" called out Ann
Hopley with some irritation. "If you do, I shall complain to Mr.
Moore. You'll cause the fever to return."
"I could be upon my oath that she slipped the bolt to keep me out,"
thought the nurse, hurrying along. "Drat the cross-grained woman! Does
she fear I shall poison her kitchen?"