Mr. Reade’s cruel and prejudiced accusations against Mr. Rayner had
not in the least shaken my faith in the kindness and goodness of the
master of the Alders; but I felt anxious to prove to myself that the
charges he brought against him were groundless. Mr. Reade’s suggestion
that he let his family sleep in the damp house while he passed his
nights elsewhere, for instance, was absurd in the extreme. Where else
could he sleep without any one’s knowing anything about it? I often
heard his voice and step about the house until quite late; he was
always one of the first in the dining-room to our eight-o’clock
breakfast, and even on the wettest mornings he never looked as if he
had been out in the rain.
It often seems to me that, when I have been puzzling myself
fruitlessly for a long time over any matter, I find out quite simply
by accident what I want to know. Thus, only the day after my talk with
Mr. Reade in the shop, I was nursing Haidee, who did not feel inclined
to play after lesson-time, when she said--
“Do you ever have horrid dreams, Miss Christie, that frighten you, and
then come true?”
“No, darling; dreams are only fancies, you know, and never come true,
except just by accident.”
I said this because everybody considers it the right answer to give to
a child; but I do believe just a little in dreams myself.
She went on gravely--
“But mine do. I’ll tell you about one I had two nights ago, if you’ll
bend your head and let me whisper. I mustn’t tell mamma, because she
always stops me and says I mustn’t speak of what I see; but I can say
it to you; you won’t tell, will you?”
“No, darling, I won’t tell,” said I, thinking it kindest to let the
child speak out about her fancies, instead of brooding over them, as
the shy little thing was too prone to do.
She put her little hand up to my cheek, and, drawing down my face to
hers, breathed into my ear, in the very faintest, softest whisper I
have ever heard--
“You know that day when we took you up to your new room in the
turret?”
“Yes, dear,” said I.
“Hush! Whisper,” cooed she. “Well, that night Jane put me to bed, just
as she always does, in my little room, and then I went to sleep just
like I always do. And then I dreamt that I heard mamma screaming and
crying, and papa speaking--oh, so differently from the way he
generally does; it made me frightened in my dream! I thought it was
all real, and I tried to get out of bed; but I was too much asleep;
and then I didn’t dream any more, only when I woke up I remembered it.
I didn’t tell anybody; and the next night I wondered if I should have
the dream again, and I didn’t want Jane to go away; and, when I said
it was because I’d had a dream, she said dreams were stuff and
nonsense, and she wanted to go and dream at having supper. And then
she went away, and I went to sleep. And then I woke up because mamma
was crying, and I thought at first it was my dream again; but I
knocked my head against the rail of my bed, and then I knew I must be
awake. And I got out of bed, and I went quite softly to the door and
looked through the keyhole, for there was a light in her room. When
she has a light, I can see in quite plainly through the keyhole, and I
can see the bed and her lying in it. But she wasn’t alone like she
generally is--I could see papa’s hand holding the candle, and he was
talking to her in such a low voice; but she was crying and talking
quite wildly and strangely, so that she frightened me. When she talks
like that, I feel afraid--it doesn’t seem as if she were mamma. And
then I saw papa put something on her face, and mamma said,
‘Don’t--don’t! Not that!’ and then she only moaned, and then she was
quite still, and I heard him go out of the room. And presently I
called ‘Mamma, mamma!’ but she didn’t answer; and I was so frightened,
I thought she was dead. But then I heard her sigh like she always does
in her sleep, and I got into bed again.”
“Were you afraid to go in, darling?”
“I couldn’t go in, because the door was locked. It always is, you
know. I never go into mamma’s room; I did only once, and she said--she
said”--and the child’s soft whisper grew softer still, and she held
her tiny lips closer to my ear--“she said I was never to say anything
about it--and I promised; so I mustn’t, even to you, Miss Christie
dear. You don’t mind, do you, because I promised?”
“No, darling, I don’t. Of course you must not tell if you promised,”
said I.
But I would have given the world to know what the child had seen in
that mysterious room.
Haidee’s strange story had roused again in me all the old feeling of a
shadow of some kind hanging over the house on the marsh which had long
since worn away in the quiet routine of my daily life there. The
locking of the mother’s door against her own child, her wild talk and
crying, the “something on the face” that her husband had had to
administer to calm her, and the discovery that he himself did not
sleep in the same room, all united to call up in my mind the
remembrance of that long talk I had had with Mr. Rayner in the
schoolroom soon after my arrival, the story he had told me of her
boy’s death, and the change it had made in her, and his allusion to
“those outbreaks which sometimes cause me the gravest--the very
gravest anxiety.”
I had understood then that he feared for his wife’s reason, but, never
having witnessed any great change in her cold listless manner myself,
and having seen on the whole very little of her except at meals, all
fear and almost all remembrance of her possible insanity had faded
from my mind, in which she remained a background figure. But now
Haidee’s story caused me to wonder whether there was not an
undercurrent in the affairs of the household of which I knew little or
nothing. What if Mr. Rayner, bright, cheerful, and good-tempered as he
always seemed, were really suffering under the burden of a wife whose
sullen silence might at any moment break into wild insanity--if he had
to wrestle in secret, as, from the child’s story, seemed to have been
the case quite recently on two successive nights, with moods of wild
wailing and weeping which he at first tried to deal with by gentle
remonstrance (Haidee said that on the second night, when she was fully
awake, his voice was very low and soft), and at last had to subdue by
sedatives!
And then a suggestion occurred to me which would at least explain
Sarah’s important position in the household. Was she perhaps in truth
a responsible guardian of Mrs. Rayner, such as, if the latter’s reason
were really feeble, it would be necessary for her to have in her
husband’s absences? I already knew that the relations between mistress
and servant were not very amicable. Though she treated her with all
outward signs of respect, it was not difficult to see that Sarah
despised her mistress, while I had sometimes surprised in the wide
gray eyes of the other a side-glance of dislike and fear which made me
wonder how she could tolerate in her household a woman from whom she
had so strong an aversion. That Mr. Rayner was anxious to keep the
scandal of having a mad wife a secret from the world was clear from
the fact that not even Mr. Laurence Reade, who seemed to take a
particular interest in the affairs of the household at the Alders, had
ever shown the least suspicion that this was the case. So the secluded
life Mrs. Rayner led came to be ascribed to the caprice--if the
village gossips did not use a harsher word--of her husband, while that
unfortunate man was really not her tyrant, but her victim.
The only other possible explanation of what Haidee had seen was that
Mr. Rayner, kind and sweet-tempered to every one as he always was, and
outwardly gentle and thoughtful to a touching degree towards his cold
wife, was really the most designing of hypocrites, and was putting
upon his wife, under the semblance of devoted affection, a partial
restraint which was as purposeless as it was easy for her to break
through. This idea was absurd.
The other supposition, dreadful as it was, was far more probable. I
was too much accustomed by this time to Mrs. Rayner’s listless moods
and the faint far-off looks of fear, or anger, or suspicion that I
sometimes saw in her eyes, to be alarmed even by the possibility of a
change for the worse in her--the thought that she was perhaps scarcely
responsible for her words and actions reconciled me somewhat to her
cold manner towards myself and to her jealousy of the hold I was
surely getting upon Haidee’s affection. But my strongest feeling was
not for the half-witted wife nor for the unfortunate husband, but for
the child herself, the unsuspected witness of her mother’s outbreaks
of incoherent words and cries. It was strange that these attacks
should occur only at night, I thought at first; but then I remembered
that day when I had read _Adam Bede_ aloud to her in the drawing-room,
the tearful excitement into which, apparently without any cause, she
had fallen, which her husband’s entrance had as suddenly subdued--at
least for the time; for how could I tell what had followed when he had
led her away into that bedroom of hers which was beginning to have for
me the fascination of a haunted chamber?
The immediate result of the child’s confidences to me was a great
increase of my love for and interest in herself. We became almost
inseparable in and out of school-hours; I encouraged her to talk; and
she soon fell into the habit of telling me, whether I was listening or
not, those long rambling stories which have no beginning, no sequence,
and no end, which are the solace of children who have no companions of
their own age. When my attention was wandering from these incoherent
tales, I sometimes had it abruptly brought back by some flight of her
childish fancy, which set me wondering if it had been suggested by
some half-forgotten experience. Thus one day, when I was working, and
she was sitting on a footstool by my side, with two or three twigs
bearing oak-apples which represented, as far as I could judge from her
severity to some and her tenderness to the others, the personages of
her story, my attention was arrested by the words--
“And so the Prince said to Princess Christie”--the heroine of the
story, so named in honor of me--“‘I’ve brought you some jewels much
finer than yours.’ But Princess Christie cried and said, ‘I don’t want
them. Where did you get them? I know where you got them. You are a
naughty bad Prince, and I won’t wear any jewels any more.’”
And I thought of what Mr. Rayner had told me of his wife’s hearing, on
her return home from a ball, of her baby-boy’s death and of her saying
she would never wear jewels again. But Haidee had been but a baby-girl
at the time; her words must be a mere coincidence. But some of the
coincidences of her narrative were less difficult of explanation, for
she went on--
“And so Prince Caramel said, ‘Very well; I’ll send you some more roses
if you won’t throw them away, and some marbles. But you mustn’t cry,
you know. I won’t have a Princess that cries. I sha’n’t look at you in
church if you cry. If you don’t cry, I’ll let you have some jam too as
well as butter, and you shall have a ride on the butcher’s horse up
and down the back-yard. And then I’ll put you in a fairy-boat, and
we’ll fly away--fly away right over the trees and over the marsh, and
past Mr. Boggett’s and up into the clouds, and live in a swallow’s
nest, and never do any lessons.”
And so on, going off in a wild and unexpected way into all sorts of
extravagances, while I thought, with burning cheeks, that my demure
little maiden had heard and seen more than I had suspected, and
marvelled at the tangle of fancy and reality that grew up from it in
her innocent mind. And sometimes she would say, “Let us sing, Miss
Christie;” and I would sing some ballad, while she would coo an
irregular but not inharmonious accompaniment. And we were occupied in
this fashion, sitting by the open window one afternoon, when Mr.
Rayner appeared in the garden.
“Go on, go on; I have been listening to the concert for ever so long.
It is as pretty as birds.”
But of course we could not go on in face of such a critical auditor;
so Mr. Rayner, after complaining that he had taken a ticket for the
series, and was not going to be defrauded like that, told me more
seriously that I had a very pretty voice, and asked why I did not take
pity on their dulness and come into the drawing-room after tea
sometimes and sing to them.
“And you have never tried secular music with the violin, Miss
Christie. I believe you’re afraid. Sacred music is slow, and you can’t
read fast; is that it?”
He was trying to pique me; but I only laughed and pointed out to him
that he had had a visitor on the evening when he was to have tried my
skill, but that I was quite ready to stumble through any music he
liked whenever he pleased, if it were not too difficult.
“I know it is too bad of us to want to trespass upon your time after
tea, which we promised you should have to yourself. But it would
indeed be a charitable action if you would come and let us bore you by
our fiddling and our dull chat sometimes, instead of slipping up to
your turret-chamber, to be no more seen for the remainder of the
evening. What do you do there, if I may ask? Do you take observations
of the moon and stars? I should think you must be too close to them up
there to get a comprehensive view. Or do you peep into the birds’
nests upon the highest branches and converse with the owners?”
“I do nothing half so fantastic, Mr. Rayner. I do my tasks and read
something improving, and then I sit in one of my arm-chairs and just
think and enjoy myself.”
“Well, we are not going to let you enjoy yourself up there while we
are moped to death downstairs; so to-night you may just come and share
our dulness in the drawing-room.”
So after tea Mr. Rayner got out his violin, and I sat down to the
piano; and we played first some German popular songs and then a long
succession of the airs, now lively, now pathetic, now dramatic and
passionate, out of the old operas that have delighted Europe for
years, such as _The Huguenots_, _La Traviata_, _Rigoletto_, and
Balfe’s graceful _Rose of Castile_ and _The Bohemian Girl_. Mr. Rayner
played with the fire of an enthusiast, and again I caught the spirit
of his playing, and accompanied him, he said, while his face shone
with the ecstasy of the musician, as no one had ever accompanied him
before.
Doctor Maitland, an old gentleman who, Mr. Rayner privately told me,
was now resting from his labors with the proud consciousness that he
had seldom failed in “killing his man,” came in while we were playing.
He was our nearest neighbor, and he often came in the evening to play
chess with Mr. Rayner, who always beat him. He listened to the music
with great astonishment and some pleasure for a long time, until he
learnt that I was reading at sight, and that I had accompanied Mr.
Rayner only once before. Then he almost gasped.
“Good gracious! I should never have believed it. You seem to have the
same soul!” he cried, awe-struck.
And after that his astonishment evidently outweighed the pleasure he
took in our performance. Mr. Rayner gave me a strange smile as the
Doctor uttered his quaint speech, and I laughed back, much amused at
the effect of our efforts on a musically ignorant listener. When we
had finished, and Mr. Rayner was putting his violin into its case, he
suddenly discovered that a corner of the latter was damp.
“This will never do,” he exclaimed, with as much affectionate concern
as if a friend’s well-being had been threatened. “I might as well keep
it in the garden as in this den,” he went on, quite irritably for
him--music always wrought him to a high pitch of excitement. “Here,
Sarah,” he added, turning towards the table where she had just placed
the candles. “Take this to my room--mind, very carefully.”
So his room could not be damp, I thought, or he would not allow his
precious violin to be taken there. I had said good-night, and was in
the hall, just in time to see Sarah, carrying the violin, disappear
down the passage, on the right-hand side of the staircase, which led
to the study. Now the wing where Mrs. Rayner’s room was was on the
left-hand side of the staircase. Did Mr. Rayner sleep in the study? I
could not let my curiosity lead me to follow her, much as I should
have liked to solve this little mystery. I knew all the rooms on the
upper story, and, except the nursery where Mona and Jane slept, the
cook’s room, Sarah’s, and the one I had left, they all bore distinctly
the impress of having been long unused. So I was obliged reluctantly
to go upstairs. When I got to the foot of my turret staircase,
however, which was only a few steps from the head of the
back-staircase that the servants used, I heard Sarah’s quick tread in
the passage below, and, putting down my candle on the ground, I went
softly to the top of the stairs--there was a door here also, but it
was generally open and fastened back--and looked down. I saw Sarah,
much to my amusement, give a vicious shake to the violin-case, as if
it were a thing she hated; and then I saw her take a key from her
pocket and unlock a door near the foot of the stairs. That, then, was
Mr. Rayner’s room. But, as the door went back on its hinges and Sarah
took out the key, went through, and locked it behind her, I saw that
it led, not into a room at all, but into the garden.
So far, then, Mr. Reade’s guess was right. But there still remained
the question--Where did Mr. Rayner sleep?