I was down in the dining-room the next morning, with the unfailing
punctuality of a new-comer, at the sound of the breakfast-bell, before
any one else was there. Mr. Rayner came in in a few minutes, handsome,
cheerful, but rather preoccupied; and I was listening to his bright
small-talk with the polite stranger’s smile, when I discovered,
without having heard any sound, that Mrs. Rayner was in the room. She
had glided in like a ghost, and, without more interest in the life
around her than a ghost might show, she was standing at the table,
waiting. I was thankful to see that there was no trace in her eyes now
of the steadfast eager gaze which had disconcerted me on the night
before, nothing but the limpest indifference to me in the way in which
she held out her hand when her husband introduced me.
“She must have been pretty ten years ago,” I thought, as I looked at
her thin face, with the fair faded complexion and dull gray eyes.
There was a gentleness about her which would have been grace still, if
she had taken any pains to set off by a little womanly coquetry her
slim girl-like figure, small thin hands, and the masses of long brown
hair which were carelessly and unbecomingly dragged away from her
forehead and twisted up on her head.
Then the door opened, and the servants came in to prayers, with the
elfish baby and a pretty delicate-looking child, blue-eyed and
fair-haired, who was presented to me before breakfast as Haidee, my
pupil.
Nobody talked during the meal but Mr. Rayner, and the only other
noticeable thing was the improper behavior of the baby, who kept
throwing bits of bread at her father when he was not looking, and
aimed a blow with a spoon at him when he passed her chair to cut
himself some cold meat. He saw it and laughed at her.
“It is a most extraordinary thing, Miss Christie,” said he; “but that
child hates me.”
I thought he spoke in fun; but, before I had been long at the Alders,
I found that it was true that this most unpleasant baby’s strongest
feeling was dislike of her father, though there seemed to be no reason
for it, since he never did anything harsher than laugh at her. She
would not even take sweets from his hand.
“You do not yet know what primitive people you have come among, Miss
Christie,” said Mr. Rayner during breakfast. “We dine here at
half-past one. If we were to suggest late dinner, we should have to
prepare our own food, like excommunicated persons. It is hard as it is
to keep our modest staff of three servants. They say the place is
damp, which, being interpreted, means that it is too far for their
‘young men’ in the town to come and see them. Were you not surprised
at the wording of my advertisement?”
“Yes, Mr. Rayner.”
“My wife was afraid that it would frighten off many desirable young
ladies by its ogreish abruptness. The fact is, the lady who has just
left us, quite a typical instructress of forty, with prominent teeth
and glasses, nearly frightened our lives out. She wouldn’t talk, and
my wife wants a cheerful companion; and she said she was dying of
rheumatism, and threatened to prosecute me for decoying her to such a
damp place. So we registered a solemn vow that we would have nothing
to do with hoar antiquity again.”
“How could she say anything against such a lovely place?” said I.
“Well, now, Miss Christie, I grant she had a show of reason on her
side. I have sometimes thought the place damp myself; but my wife has
got attached to it; haven’t you, Lola?”
“Yes,” said she, without a sign of feeling or interest.
“And so we remain,” he went on. “A lady’s wishes must be considered;
and there are special reasons why they should be in this case. You
must know, Miss Christie, that I am a penniless wretch, dependent on
my wife; am I not, Lola?” He turned playfully to her.
“Not quite that,” said she gently, but with no more warmth than
before.
“Practically I am,” he persisted. “She was an heiress, I a ruined
spendthrift, when she married me. Yet she trusted me; and the only
condition she would allow her friends to make was that I should settle
in the country--out of the reach of temptation, you see, Miss
Christie.”
He spoke with some feeling, and looked affectionately at his wife at
the end of this unexpectedly frank confession; but she remained as
impassive as ever.
I could not help feeling rather sorry for Mr. Rayner. He was always
kind and attentive to his wife; but, whether he was in a bright mood,
and tried to make her smile, or silent, and needing to be roused out
of his gravity, she was always the same, limp, nerveless, apathetic,
speaking when necessary in a low soft voice, slowly, with many pauses.
She had a habit of letting the last words of a sentence die away upon
her lips, and then, after a few moments, as if by an effort, she would
say them aloud. I soon grew quite afraid of her, started if I met her
unexpectedly, and felt more restrained in her presence than if she had
been one of those brilliant satirical women who take the color out of
the rest of their sex. Anxious to shake off this strange diffidence,
which was beginning to cast a shadow over my life, I offered to read
to her when my short hours of study with my pupil were over.
She accepted my offer, and I went into the drawing-room that very
afternoon and read her some chapters of _Adam Bede_, while she sat in
a rocking-chair, with a piece of embroidery making slow progress in
the thin white fingers. I stopped at the end of each chapter, waiting
for the comment which never came, and rather hoping for some little
compliment upon my reading, an accomplishment I took pride in. But she
only said “Thank you” very gently, and, when I asked her if I should
go on, “Yes, if it will not tire you.”
Presently I found out that she was not listening, except for a few
minutes at a time, but that she was sitting with her hands in her lap
listlessly playing with her embroidery, while her eyes were fixed on
the garden outside, with a deep sadness in them which contrasted
strangely with her usual apathetic indifference to all things. Still I
read on, pretending not to notice her mood, until such a heavy
despairing sigh broke from her pale lips that my heart beat fast for
pity, and I involuntarily stopped short in my reading, and raised my
eyes, with tears in them, to hers. She started, and, turning towards
me, seemed to hold my eyes for a moment fixed on hers by the
fascination of a gaze which seemed anxious to penetrate to the deepest
recesses of my thoughts. A little color came to her cheeks; I could
see her breast heaving through the muslin gown she wore; she half
stretched out one hand towards me, and in another moment I believe she
would have called me to her side, when a voice from behind her chair
startled us both.
Mr. Rayner had entered the room so softly that we had not heard him.
“You look tired, my dearest Lola,” said he gently; “you had better go
and lie down for a little while.”
At the sound of her husband’s voice Mrs. Rayner had shrunk back into
her usual statuesque self, like a sensitive plant touched by rough
fingers--so quickly too that for a moment I almost thought, as I
glanced at the placid expressionless face, that I must have imagined
the look of despair and the gesture of invitation. I timidly offered
to read her to sleep, but she declined at once, almost abruptly for
her, and, with some conventional thanks for my trouble, took the arm
her husband held out, thanked him as he carefully wrapped round her a
little shawl that she generally wore, and left the room with him.
After that, her reserve towards me was greater than ever; she seemed
reluctant to accept the smallest service of common courtesy at my
hands, and refused my offers to read to her again, under the plea that
it was wasting my time, as she was hardly well enough to listen with
full attention. I was hurt as well as puzzled by this; and, being too
young and timid to make any further advances, the distance between me
and the silent sad lady grew greater than ever.
An attempt that Mr. Rayner made two days after the above scene to draw
us together only sent us farther apart. He came into the schoolroom
just as Haidee and I were finishing the day’s lessons, and, after a
few playful questions about her studies, dismissed her into the
garden.
“The child is very like her mother in face; don’t you think so?” said
he. “But I am afraid she will never have her mother’s strength of
intellect. I see you cannot help looking surprised, Miss Christie. My
wife does not give herself the airs of a clever woman. But you would
not have doubted it if you had known her five years ago.”
He was in one of those moods of almost embarrassing frankness, during
which the only thing possible was to sit and listen quietly, with such
sparing comment as would content him.
“I dare say,” he continued, “it will seem almost incredible to you,
who have never heard her say more than is absolutely necessary, but
she was one of the most brilliant talkers I have ever met, and four
years ago she wrote a book which took London by storm. If I were to
tell you the _nom de plume_ under which she wrote, you would be afraid
of her, for it became at once a sort of proverb for daring of thought
and expression. People who did not know her made a bogy of her, and
many people who did looked with a sort of superstitious awe upon this
slight fair woman who dared to write out what she thought and
believed. But they had no idea what a sensitive nature lay under the
almost masculine intellect. We had a boy then”--his voice seemed to
tremble a little--“two years older than Haidee. The two children had
been left in the country--in the best of care, mind--while my wife and
I spent the season in town; it was a duty she owed to society then, as
one of its brightest ornaments. We heard that the boy was not well;
but we had no idea that his illness was serious. I assure you, Miss
Christie”--and he spoke with touching earnestness--“that, if my wife
had known there was the slightest danger, she would have flown to her
child’s side without a thought of the pleasures and excitements she
was leaving. Well--I can scarcely speak of it even now--the child
died, after only two days’ illness, away from us. It was on her return
from a ball that my wife heard of it. She sank down into a chair, dumb
and shivering, without a word or a tear. When at last we succeeded in
rousing her from this state, she took off her beautiful jewels--you
have heard she was an heiress--and flung them from her with a shudder
of disgust. She has never looked at them since.”
He paused for a few minutes, and I sat waiting for him to continue,
too much interested to say much.
“I hoped that the depression into which she sank would wear off; but,
instead, it only grew deeper. I have told you before that by an
arrangement on our marriage our settled home was in the country; after
her boy’s death, my wife would never even visit town again. When Mona
was born, just before we came to this place, a change came, but not
the change I had expected. I had hoped she would reawaken to interest
in life, and perhaps, if the child had been a boy to replace the one
she had lost, it would have been so. Instead of that, her apathy
deepened, until now, as you see, she shuts herself from all the world
and raises a barrier between herself and the life around her which to
strangers is often insurmountable. I have been looking for an
opportunity to tell you this, Miss Christie, as I was afraid you might
have been puzzled, and perhaps offended, by her strange manner the
other day when you were reading to her. When I came in, I thought you
looked rather frightened, and I supposed that something you had read
had recalled the grief which is always slumbering at her heart, and
perhaps led to one of those outbreaks which sometimes cause me the
gravest, the very gravest anxiety.”
I understood what he meant; but I would not allow myself to appear
alarmed by the suggestion. Mr. Rayner went on--
“I fancied I caught sight of a wild look in her eyes, which is
sometimes called up in them by a reference to the past, or even by a
sudden vivid flash of memory. At such times only I, with the power of
my long-tried affection, can calm her instantly. Do not imagine that
she would ever be violent, but she might be incoherent enough to
frighten you. Tell me, had she said anything that day before I came in
which alarmed or puzzled you?”
“No, Mr. Rayner; she scarcely spoke while I read to her.”
“Was there anything in what you were reading likely to call up
memories of the dreadful time to which I have alluded?”
“I think not. No--none.”
“I need not warn you, my dear Miss Christie, to avoid all reference to
that subject, or anything that might suggest it, in talking to her,
but of course without any appearance of constraint. And I am sure such
a sensible girl as you are will not take needless fright at this
unhappy disclosure, which I thought it safer to make to you, trusting
in your discretion. I still hope that in time she may recover her old
health and spirits, consent to see people, and even move away from
this place for a little change, which I am sure would do her good. I
have begged her to do so over and over again, always unsuccessfully.
I cannot bear to be harsh to her; but there is an iron strength of
resistance in that woman of strong intellect and weak frame which, I
confess, even I have not yet been able to overcome. If you will allow
me to advise you, do not mention that subject either to her. One of my
reasons for wishing for a young governess was that I might provide her
in an unobtrusive manner with cheerful society and let her get
accustomed to seeing a bright young face about her; but I am afraid
her obstinate reserve has so far defeated my object. However, I don’t
despair. Now that you know something of her history, you are more
likely to sympathize with her and to make some allowance for her
seeming coldness. Believe me, underneath all she has a warm heart
still. And I am sure you will spare a little sympathy for me,
condemned to see the wife I adore living a shut-up life, as it were,
seeming to ignore the undying affection of which she must still be
conscious.”
There was something so winning in his voice and manner as he said
these last words that I felt for the moment even more sorry for him
than for her, and I took the hand he held out as he rose to go, and
looked up with all the frank sympathy I felt. He seemed touched by it,
for, as if by a sudden impulse, he stooped and let his lips lightly
touch my hand; then, pressing it once more in his, with a look of
almost grateful kindliness, he left the room.
I was a little surprised by this demonstration, which I thought rather
out of place to a dependant. But he was an impulsive man, the very
opposite in all things to his cold statuesque wife, and the union
between them seemed sometimes like a bond between the dead and the
living.
When I thought over all that he had told me, after he had left the
room, it was impossible, even setting apart my natural inclination as
a woman to put the blame on the woman, not to come to the conclusion
that the fault in this most uncomfortable household was chiefly on the
side of Mrs. Rayner. I had never seen a more attentive, long-suffering
husband, nor a more coldly irritating wife. From all I had seen, I
judged that Mr. Rayner was a sociable man, particularly alive to
sympathy, fond of conversation and the society of his fellow-men. To
such a man the sort of exile his wife’s obstinate reserve and dislike
to society condemned him to must have been specially hard to bear with
patience. It was true he scoffed at the society the neighborhood
afforded, and made me laugh by his description of a country
dinner-party, where one could almost predict with certainty what each
lady would wear, and where more than half the gentlemen were
clergymen, and how the talk would drift after dinner into clerical
“shop,” and one of the ladies would play a colorless drawing-room
piece on the piano, and one of the gentlemen--a curate nearly
always--would sing an unintelligible song, in a husky voice, and, when
told--by a lady--how well it suited his style, would reply modestly
that Santley’s songs always did.
But I fancied that, dull as it might be, Mr. Rayner would have been
glad of more of even such society as the neighborhood afforded; and,
from the bitterness with which he laughed at the paltry pride of small
country gentlemen, I soon began to imagine that he must have been
snubbed by some among them.
The first Sunday after my arrival was so wet that we could not go to
church, so that I had been there a fortnight before I saw a general
gathering of the inhabitants. But on the very day previous to this
event I had an encounter with two of the ladies of the neighborhood
which left a most unpleasant impression upon my mind. Haidee and I
were taking our morning walk, when a big Newfoundland dog rushed
through a gap in the hedge and frightened my poor little pupil so much
that she began to scream. Then a young girl of about fourteen or
fifteen, to whom the dog belonged, came up to the hedge, and said that
she was sorry he had frightened the child, but that he would not hurt
her. And she and I, having soothed Haidee, exchanged a little talk
about the fields and her dog, and where the first blackberries were to
be found, before we parted, my pupil and I going on by the road while
the girl remained in the field. We were only a few steps away when I
heard the voice of another girl addressing her rather sharply.
“Who was that you were talking to, Alice?”
The answer was given in a lower voice.
“Well,” the other went on, “you should not have spoken to her. Don’t
you know she comes from the house on the marsh?”