I gave one cry as my candle fell, and then, instinctively shutting
my eyes, as if to hide from myself the dreadful fact that I was in
darkness, I felt my way up the ladder out of that dreadful cellar into
the store-room above. It was seven o’clock, and only just enough light
came through the one little grated window high up in the wall for me
to see that there was a window there. But, once on the store-room
floor, I crawled cautiously round the square hole I had come up
through until I came to the door, which I shut down with a strong
sense of relief. Then I groped about, stumbling over hampers and boxes
now and then, and scarcely able to repress a cry at each fresh
obstruction, until I came at last to the door. I had left it unlocked;
and the moment after I touched the handle I was on the other side.
Luckily I had slipped the keys into my pocket at first sight of the
black bag; and, after long but impatient fumbling, I managed in the
dark to fit in the right one and to turn the lock securely. Then I
groped my way along the passage; and I never in all my life felt such
a thrill of heart-felt thankfulness as I did when the great
baize-covered door swung to behind me, and I found myself once more in
the lighted hall.
I flung myself into a chair, overwrought and exhausted by what I had
suffered in the left wing, and it was not for some minutes that I
noticed an envelope directed simply, in Mrs. Manners’s handwriting, to
“Miss Christie, The Alders,” which lay on the table beside me. I tore
it open, and, scarcely glancing at her kind little note saying she had
received the enclosed when she called at the Beaconsburgh post-office
that afternoon, pressed Laurence’s letter to my lips again and again
before I opened it. It said--
“Nice, Friday.
“My own sweet Violet,--I had hoped to find a letter from you waiting
for me on my arrival here; but I know very well it is not your fault
that I am disappointed, even if I do not hear from you for a whole
week--for I will never doubt my darling again. I have had the battle
with my mother prematurely, and gained the victory. I intended, as you
know, to break my resolution to her gently; but she herself hurried
the _dénouement_. We broke the journey at Paris, stopping there last
night. As soon as we got there, I opened my writing-case and wrote a
tiny note to my darling, just to tell you how I walked up and down the
deck of the steamer and sat in a railway-carriage, thinking of you and
the last look I had into your beautiful loving gray eyes in the drive
on Tuesday night--such a long time ago it seems! I left the room for a
minute to order something to eat, with my letter closed up and
directed to you on the table, ready to be enclosed to Mrs. Manners.
When I came back, I found my mother there; she had torn open my letter
and was reading it. Then we had a scene. I asked for my letter, and
she tore it up and flung it into the fireplace, with some words about
you that sent my forbearance to the winds, and I told her she was
speaking about my future wife.
“‘Your future wife,’ answered she, drawing herself up to her full
height and rolling out her voice in a way that always reduces my
father to nothingness, ‘is Miss Langham of Greytowers.’
“‘You have been misinformed, mother. In such a matter it is always
best to get your information at first hand. Your future
daughter-in-law is Miss Violet Christie, the most beautiful girl in
Norfolk or out of it. And as for Miss Langham, if you are so bent upon
having her for a daughter-in-law, and she doesn’t mind waiting, you
can save her up for Jack.’
“I expected a lot more nonsense; but she was so much taken by surprise
that that speech broke the back of the difficulty; and now, though she
receives all my attentions frigidly and we are getting along very
uncomfortably, she knows her control over her eldest son is at an end.
I only wish, my darling, that my promise to my father had not
prevented my telling her this while we were still in England, for I
begin to fancy this journey ‘for her health’ was nothing but a
trick--a plot, for there were two in it--for getting me away from you.
However, I suppose I must live through the two months now somehow, as
I promised her. She will keep me to that.
“But I am in a fever of anxiety about you. I will not distress you by
a lot of vague suspicions that are rising in my mind to torture me;
but I beg of you, my beautiful gentle love, to let me know every
little event that happens at the Alders. I pray Heaven you may have
very little to tell. And now I entreat you to comply with this my
earnest, solemn request. Don’t trust your letters to any one to
post--don’t even post them yourself--but give them to my youngest
sister, to send on to me. She teaches in the Sunday-school. Get Mrs.
Manners to send you up to the Hall on some pretext on Sunday; get Maud
alone, and you will find she will do what you ask. Tell her to
remember her last promise to me in the conservatory, and I’ll remember
mine.
“Keep this letter where no one can get at it--not in a desk--if you
don’t tear it up. I feel already such a hunger for a sight of your
sweet face--I can’t think of the touch of your little clinging hands
about my throat without the tears rising to my eyes. I think I must
jump into the sea if I cannot find some means of getting back to you
sooner. Good-by; Heaven bless you! Write to me; don’t forget. Keep
safe and well, till you are once again in the arms of
“Yours devotedly for ever and ever,
“Laurence.”
It was new life to me, it was heart-felt unutterable joy, to read this
and put my cheek against the signature, to tuck it inside my gown and
feel that I was in possession of the most precious treasure the whole
world could produce, the first real long letter from the man I loved.
I went into the dining-room, took it out again, and began kissing each
line in turn, I was so silly with happiness. I had got to the middle
of the second page in this fashion, when the iron bar which fastened
the shutters suddenly fell down and swung backwards and forwards
almost without noise. I thrust my letter hastily back into my gown and
stared at the shutters, too much startled to think what could be the
reason of this, when one of them slid softly back, and a man was in
the room before I could get to the door. With a cry of relief, I
sprang towards him.
“Oh, Mr. Rayner, how you frightened me! I thought you were a burglar.”
“My poor dear little girl, I often come in this way to save kicking my
heels at the door; but I wouldn’t have done it, frightening you out of
your wits, if I had known you were in here. I thought everybody would
be occupied with the two invalids. And how are you, little woman?”
I was so delighted to see him back once more, to feel that at last
there was some one to look up to and trust in the house again, that I
laughed and cried together as he shook my hands and patted my
shoulder, and told me that it would never do to leave me at the Alders
in his absence again; he should have to take me with him. I laughed.
“Why, I am too useful here, Mr. Rayner! I don’t know what they would
have done without me, with first Haidee ill, and then Sarah. You see,
as Mrs. Rayner is never well enough to give any directions, I was
obliged to take a good deal upon myself; and I hope you won’t be angry
when you hear all I’ve done.”
“No, my child, I am sure I shall not,” said he, helping himself to
some cold beef on the sideboard--there was no regular supper at the
Alders, but there were always meat and biscuits on the sideboard after
tea for those who cared for them. “How is Mrs. Rayner?”
I told him that she was no better and no worse, and that she had moved
to-day into the front spare-room.
“To-day?”
“Yes. She was so reluctant to leave her own room that I took the
liberty of telling Sarah I would answer to you for delaying the change
this one day. Was it too forward of me?” I asked timidly.
“No,” said he very kindly, drawing me into a chair beside him at the
table; “I give you full permission to use my authority in any way you
think proper.”
“Thank you, Mr. Rayner. And, oh, I don’t know what you will say, but I
made Sarah take Haidee’s cot up to my room! The dressing-room in the
left wing is so very cold. And then I sent for Doctor Lowe. Was that
right? I had heard he was the best doctor in Beaconsburgh.”
I asked this rather nervously, for I knew Mr. Rayner disliked Doctor
Lowe. But he was in too good a humor to find fault with anything.
“All that you have done is perfectly right, and always will be, in my
eyes; so you need never fear what I may say to you, child. Have you
any more news? I want to hear all about Sarah’s accident, and whether
you were very much alarmed when you heard about the robbery at Denham
Court.”
“I have a lot to tell you,” I said hesitatingly; “but I won’t tell you
any of it to-night, Mr. Rayner, because it is all bad, miserable news,
and I won’t spoil your first evening. It is bad enough to come back to
a house as full of invalids as a hospital. But it will all come right
again now you are back.”
Mr. Rayner laughed, and seemed much pleased. He put his hand on mine,
which was lying on the table, and looked into my face very kindly
indeed.
“Do you think so, my child? Are you so glad to see me again?”
“Yes, indeed I am. You can’t think how dull the place is when you are
away. There is nobody to talk or laugh, and one creeps about the house
as if one were in a Trappist monastery, and didn’t dare to break the
sacred silence.”
“Thanks, my child; that is the very prettiest welcome home I have had
for--years,” said he, with much feeling in his voice.
And he kept me a long time chatting to him and listening to his
account of what he had seen in London, until at last I grew very
sleepy while he finished the story of his adventures; and I said I
must really go to bed, or I should never be able to get up in time for
breakfast. As it was, the clock struck eleven before I went upstairs.
The next morning at breakfast the talk was chiefly about the robbery
at Denham Court. Mr. Rayner had read the accounts of it in the
newspapers, besides the bare mention of it I had made in my letter to
him; but now he wanted to hear all we had heard, and whether we were
very much alarmed by it. Mrs. Rayner said very little, as usual; and I
only told him Mr. Carruthers’s story, reserving the suspicious things
I had seen for when I should be able to talk to him alone. The
opportunity soon came.
I went into the schoolroom after breakfast, thinking I would employ
the hour and a half there was to spare before church-time in just
beginning my letter to Laurence. But I had not got beyond “My own
dearest Lau--” when Mr. Rayner came in and smiled in a mischievous
manner that brought the color into my cheeks when he saw what I was
doing. I put away my letter at once, so I do not know how he guessed
to whom I was writing.
“Am I disturbing you?” said he.
“Oh, no! I was only writing a note to pass away the time.”
“Well, and now for all the ‘bad, miserable news’ which was too
overwhelming for me to hear about last night.”
“Oh, Mr. Rayner, I don’t know where to begin, and it seems ungenerous
to tell it you now, as the person it concerns most is ill and unable
to answer for herself!”
“Well, trust to my generosity, child,” said he gravely. “I suppose you
mean Sarah. Has she been annoying you again?”
“Oh, yes! But that is not the worst. If it had been only that, I would
not have told you anything about it until she was well enough to
defend herself. Indeed I am not so inhuman as to have any vindictive
feeling against the poor woman now, when her very life is in danger.
But I must tell you this, because I know something ought to be done,
and you will know what it is.”
“Tell me first how she has annoyed you, and--how the accident
happened.”
“She stopped a letter of mine by running after the postman and getting
it out of the bag by some excuse or other.”
“When was that?”
“On Wednesday.”
“That is the most unwarrantable thing I ever heard of. I knew the
woman was prejudiced against you; but one has to forgive old servants
a good many things, and I never guessed she would dare so much as
that.”
“Oh, don’t be so angry with her, or I shall never dare to tell you the
rest, Mr. Rayner!”
And it required several questions and guesses on his part to draw out
from me the account of the accident to Sarah, and the inevitable
suspicions as to how it came about. Mr. Rayner turned quite pale when
I came to my slipping on the stairs and catching my foot in the
string, and he looked up and out of the window from under his frowning
brows with an expression of hard fury that made me instinctively move
away from him on my chair, it was so terrible, so merciless. And I had
still so much that I must tell him! It was with averted head that I
whispered all the suspicious things I had seen and heard connecting
Sarah and Tom Parkes with the Denham Court burglary--my view of Tom
carrying something across the lawn; his returning with Sarah; the fact
of two men in a cart having been seen outside--I did not say by whom,
but I fancy Mr. Rayner guessed; my seeing the brown portmanteau inside
the back-door; and lastly my discovery of the portmanteau in the
cellar under the store-room, and my recognition of it and of the
bracelet I took out of it at haphazard as having both come from Denham
Court.
Mr. Rayner listened with the deepest interest, but with some
incredulity.
“My dear child, it is impossible--at least I hope from my soul it may
turn out to be so! Poor old Sarah is, I acknowledge, the
worst-tempered and most vindictive woman alive. But the accomplice of
thieves! I cannot believe it.” He got up and walked about the room,
questioned me again closely, and then remained for a few minutes in
deep thought. “She would never dare! Sarah is afraid of me, and to
bring stolen goods into my house would be a greater liberty than even
an old servant would take, I think.”
“Ah, but you were away, Mr. Rayner! She may have reckoned upon getting
the things out of the house before your return,” I suggested.
“And Tom Parkes, too, a fellow I have a great liking for, and whom I
have trusted with money too over and over again,” he went on to
himself, scarcely noticing my interruption.
I wondered Mr. Rayner did not ask me for the store-room keys and go
himself to prove at least one part of my story; but I did not like to
suggest it, half fearing, coward that I was, that he would ask me to
go with him to that dreadful cellar.
“Don’t say a word about this to any one, child,” said he at last. “I
must sift the matter to the very bottom. It is possible that they may
both have been cheated by some clever knave into assisting him
innocently. But didn’t you say you saw Tom Parkes carrying what you
took for the portmanteau on Tuesday night?”
“Yes, Mr. Rayner.”
“But the burglary was on Wednesday! No, no; you may depend there will
be some explanation of the matter as soon as Sarah is able to give an
account of herself. In the mean time I will make inquiries, and I will
set your mind at rest as soon as possible.” He remained silent again
for a little while, then shook his head, as if to dismiss all
disagreeable thoughts, and said, in his usual bright tone, “And now I
have a little bit of news for you, which I hope you will think neither
bad nor miserable. How would you like to leave the Alders for a short
time, and spend a couple of weeks on the borders of the
Mediterranean?”
I looked up at him in bewilderment, which amused him.
“You look at me as if you thought me a magician who could transport
you against your will to the uttermost parts of the earth by a wave of
my wand. This is how it is. I have to see one of Mrs. Rayner’s
trustees on important business at once. He is staying at Monaco, which
is, as you know, not far from Nice, where, I learnt by a letter from
Mrs. Reade the other day, she and her son are staying. But I dare say
that is stale news to you, and anyhow it is a matter of no
consequence.”
This was said so mischievously that I could not help growing very red
indeed and being thankful when he went on--
“Having to go there myself, I thought the change might do my wife
good; and this morning I tried every inducement to persuade her to go,
but in vain, as I expected. But for Haidee some change is absolutely
necessary, as the Doctor told you. And, as I cannot look after the
child entirely by myself, I pondered as to who could do it for me, and
I decided upon you.”
“Oh, but,” I began, the impossibility of my travelling alone over
Europe with Mr. Rayner and Haidee being clear even to my not very wise
brain.
“Now listen, and hear how cleverly I have managed it. Haidee goes to
look after her papa, Miss Christie goes to look after Haidee, Mrs.
Christie goes to look after Miss Christie.”
“My mother!” I exclaimed.
“Yes. I went to see her yesterday, and proposed the plan to her, not
forgetting to put in a word about our friends at Nice. She was
delighted, and asked your uncle’s consent at once. We have already
settled that she is to meet us at Liverpool Street on our arrival in
town next Friday morning.”
“Next Friday!” said I, utterly bewildered. “And leave Mrs. Rayner all
alone here?”
“Unless you can persuade her to go with us. You can wheedle a bird off
a bough, and I really believe you have more influence with her than I
have.”
Indeed it seemed so; for I had often wondered how she could be so
obstinate with him, when to me she always seemed as weak as a reed.
“There, child,” said Mr. Rayner, taking a letter from his pocket and
putting it into my hands. “You don’t seem able to take it all in. Read
that.”
It was a letter in my mother’s handwriting. I opened it, still utterly
bewildered. It said--
“My darling Violet,--Your kind friend Mr. Rayner is waiting; so I
can pen you only these few lines; and I don’t know how to express my
feelings at his generous offer. He says I am to write to you and
persuade you to go; but I do not think you will need much persuasion.
He has directed me to provide an outfit for you at his expense, and
bring it with me to Liverpool Street Station, where I am to meet you
on Friday, though I don’t like starting on a journey on a Friday.
Heaven be praised for sending us such kind friends! I have no time for
more, as Mr. Rayner is waiting. With best love from your uncle and
cousins, in the fond hope of seeing you very soon,
“Your affectionate mother, Amy Christie.”
My dear mother! It was just like her to see nothing so very
extraordinary in this offer, to take it as a matter of course, and
thank Heaven for it in the most simple-minded way, while it troubled
me somewhat still. I read the letter twice through, and then tried
deprecatingly to thank him for the outfit he had got her to provide.
“Oh, does she mention that? I told her not to do so,” said he,
laughing.
“You don’t know my mother. When she has anything to tell, she can’t
resist telling it. This letter is just like her. But she has done two
things she never in all her life did before--dated her letter and put
no postscript.”