LEFT OUT IN THE COLD.
Even Mrs. Abercarne, at the other end of the table, could see that
something had gone wrong: Mr. Bradfield’s voice as he loudly assented,
had not the right ring: Mr. Graham-Shute looked mischievous, his wife
looked anxious, while Chris looked as if she had been frightened.
The housekeeper gave the signal hastily to Mrs. Graham-Shute, even
in the midst of the laughter and cracker-pulling which was going on
among the young people. Lilith and Rose were surprised, but both Mrs.
Graham-Shute and Chris jumped up in a hurry, quite eager to leave the
scene of what looked like the beginning of a serious quarrel. For,
although no angry words had passed between the gentlemen, Marrable’s
effusive geniality in face of his host’s ever-increasing abruptness,
looked ominous to those who knew the temper of the latter.
When the ladies were assembled in the drawing-room, and Chris had
sat down to the piano to play some carols, Mrs. Graham-Shute, for
want of a better, was forced to make a confidante of the obnoxious
lady-housekeeper.
“Exceedingly unpleasant, was it not, to have to endure the presence of
that extraordinary individual at dinner,” she said to Mrs. Abercarne
in a confidential tone. “Of course, it is very good of my cousin to
remember his old friends, but it’s a pity he cannot find some who
would make themselves more agreeable to the rest of us. Such a pleasant
party we should have been, too, if it hadn’t been for that!”
Now Mrs. Abercarne had been smarting for the past week under the snubs
and slights which Mrs. Graham-Shute had administered to her daughter
and herself, and she was by no means mollified by the Bayswater
lady’s momentary condescension. She pricked up her ears, figuratively
speaking, rejoicing in her opportunity.
“Yes,” she answered, frigidly, drawing herself up and surveying Mrs.
Graham-Shute in a manner full of stately vindictiveness. “I quite agree
with you. Mr. Bradfield is a great deal too good to his old friends;
and they do make themselves excessively disagreeable; and the party
would be much pleasanter without them.”
And poor Mrs. Graham-Shute, try as she would, could not look as if
she did not perceive that this speech was a barbed one. She turned
away abruptly, and, taking the place at the piano which Chris had just
vacated, began hurriedly and very badly, and with vicious thumps upon
the keys, a hymn about “peace on earth and goodwill towards men.”
Chris had stolen into the recess formed by the great bay window on the
western side of the room. She heard a sound like the breaking of glass
outside, and had left her place at the piano to look out. Raising the
heavy curtain, and pulling back the blind, she saw dimly through the
moisture on the window-pane, the forms of two men, one of whom was so
close that he seemed to have been trying to look through the window.
She could just see enough of them to know that the figures were those
of Mr. Richard and his keeper Stelfox, and her heart leapt up, and
her brain seemed suddenly to be on fire, as there rang in her ears the
words used by Mr. Marrable about Gilbert Wryde.
Gilbert Wryde! Gilbert Wryde--Mr. Bradfield’s benefactor! She
remembered the portrait bearing that name, and she remembered Mr.
Bradfield’s change of expression at the sight of it. That expression,
which she had taken for annoyance, must then have been caused by some
more tender emotion, to which also the subsequent disappearance of the
miniature must be traced. And then the likeness between the portrait of
Gilbert Wryde and the solitary occupant of the east wing? Chris felt
sick with excitement, bewilderment and fear. She would have given the
world to be able to forget the problem which was beginning to trouble
her peace of mind, to shut her mind to the questions she could not help
asking.
In the meantime, a great impulse of pity for Mr. Richard, spending his
Christmas alone except for his attendant, and peeping in through the
windows at the warmth and light inside the room he was not allowed to
enter, seized her, and caused her to find an opportunity of leaving the
room unobserved. Putting on a hooded cloak, and wrapping it tightly
round her, she went out into the garden.
Chris, who had run down the steps, paused at the bottom. The impulse
upon which she had acted in coming out into the night was the kindly
one of exchanging a Christmas greeting with the outcast from the east
wing. But to this impulse had succeeded a fit of maidenly shyness.
Twice since their last meeting in the barn, she had encountered Mr.
Richard in the park in a manner which could scarcely have been the
result of chance, and on each of these occasions the silent happiness
he had shown in her society had touched her deeply; so deeply, indeed,
that she could not help feeling a little self-consciousness about this
meeting which she herself was bringing about. Whether she would have
turned back, following the dictates of her impulse of shyness and
maidenly modesty, it is impossible to say. For at that moment she heard
a footstep on the path, and a great thrill of a feeling she did not
understand passed through her as a voice she had never heard before
said low in her ear:
“I wish you a merry Christmas.”
With a start she turned, and put her hand into that of Mr. Richard, who
kissed it with the fervour of a lover.
“I am afraid your Christmas is not a very merry one,” she said gently.
They were standing in the full moonlight, and Mr. Richard was gazing
with his usual melancholy into her face.
“No, it has not been happy,” he answered very slowly, and with an
apparent effort, “until now.”
Then he stood for a short time in silence, and Chris, utterly thrown
off her balance by new and strange feelings, did not notice, or did not
mind, that he held her hand in his own with a warm pressure which said
more than his words had done.
Chris roused herself by an effort from the trance of pleasant feeling
into which the first words she had ever heard him utter had thrown her.
“You are here by yourself!” she exclaimed. “I thought Stelfox was with
you!”
Mr. Richard seemed to find it even more painful than she had done to
break by speech the spell which the happiness of the meeting had cast
upon him. His first answer was a heavy sigh. Then he said, gently, with
the same strange appearance of speaking with difficulty, as if the
exercise of speech were an unaccustomed thing which made him shy and
nervous:
“He is not far off. He did not want me to come out here to-night. But I
begged that the day might not pass for me without one sight of you.”
He uttered these words in such a low voice, and so indistinctly, that
Chris had some difficulty in understanding him. Perceiving this he
became so painfully nervous, that in repeating the words he was more
indistinct than ever. He had scarcely finished saying them for the
second time when Stelfox came with his usual noiseless footsteps round
the angle of the house.
He started on seeing the young lady, and, without uttering a word, made
a sign to his charge which Chris understood to be an imperious command
to return to the east wing. Mr. Richard was as submissive as a lamb.
Taking the young lady’s hand for one moment in his, he pressed it for
a moment in his own, and whispering in a very low voice, “Good-bye,”
disappeared rapidly towards his rooms, returning by the north side of
the house.
As soon as he was out of sight, his attendant shook his head gravely.
“It’s a great risk we’re all of us running, through my letting the
young gentleman out, as I’ve done the last few days,” he said, in a
warning voice; “but he’s begged so hard and he’s behaved so well that
I’ve done it to keep him quiet for one thing, for fear he’d get out
without my leave, instead of with it.”
Here was her opportunity. In a voice which was one of earnest entreaty,
Chris said:
“Why should he not be let out? He is not mad, you know he is not mad,
Stelfox. You would never dare to let a man who was really insane go
about as he has done the last few days. Why should you ever have been
afraid to let him out? And why have you changed your mind now?”
Stelfox looked rather alarmed by the young lady’s vehemence. He gave a
glance round and made a gesture of warning, as if afraid they might be
overheard; but Chris went on in a reckless tone:
“I can’t understand you. Either this unhappy man is mad, in which
case he certainly ought not to come out at all, now more than at any
other time, or he is not mad, in which case it is very wicked of Mr.
Bradfield to shut him up, and very wicked of you to be quiet about it,
and very silly of Mr. Richard himself not to get away when he can.”
“Hush, ma’am, pray don’t speak so loud; you wouldn’t if you knew the
harm you might be doing the poor gentleman by it. Mr. Richard’s mad,
and he’s not mad, and that’s the truth. You can see for yourself
there’s something wrong with him,” he went on, looking into the young
lady’s face, with an expression of some doubt and curiosity. “He’s
reasonable enough in many ways, as I told you before. He’s as mad as a
hatter in his likes and dislikes. It’s by his liking for you, ma’am,
that I’m keeping him in order. But he hates Mr. Bradfield so much
that if I were to allow him to meet my master alone, I wouldn’t give
sixpence for Mr. Bradfield’s chances of getting away from him alive.”
The night air was clear and still, and keen with frost. The great
evergreen oaks above them were lightly powdered with snow, which there
was not even a breath of wind to shake off. For a moment after Stelfox
had uttered these words there was a dead, silent calm, which increased
the dread roused by the man’s words in poor Chris.
Then, from the north side of the house, there came suddenly, piercing
their ears, a ringing cry of “Help--help!”
Then there came a crash, the sound of a heavy fall, and then again
perfect stillness.