As soon as we came out of church that morning, I found an
opportunity of speaking to Mrs. Manners, and asked her shyly if she
could give me any message to take that afternoon to Miss Maud Reade at
the Hall.
“Laurence told me to ask you,” I whispered timidly; “it is because he
particularly wants my next letter to be enclosed in hers. He didn’t
say why; but he is very emphatic about it.”
“Dear, dear,” said kind Mrs. Manners anxiously, “it is a pity young
people cannot get on without so many subterfuges! I don’t know whether
Mr. Manners would approve. But there--I promised Laurence I would help
you--and there is no harm in it--and so I will. Come up to the
Vicarage after afternoon service, and I’ll give you a packet of tracts
for her.”
I thanked her; but she had already turned to reproach a deaf old woman
bent with rheumatism for not coming to church oftener, and to promise
to send her some beef-tea jelly next day. I made my way to where Mr.
and Mrs. Rayner were standing, the former advising old Mr. Reade to
send his plate, which was known to be valuable, to the bank at
Beaconsburgh for safety.
“Jewel-robberies are epidemic, you know, and I dare say we haven’t
seen the last of this series yet,” said he. “There was Lord Dalston’s,
and now Sir Jonas’s; but they never stop at two. You remember some
years ago, when there were five big robberies within six weeks? I
shouldn’t wonder if the same sort of thing occurred again.”
“They wouldn’t try for my little store; it wouldn’t be worth their
while,” said Mr. Reade, with undisturbed good-humor. “If Laurence were
at home, perhaps I’d get him to send the lot off; but I can’t see
after things myself; and, if I put ’em all in a cart and packed ’em
off to Beaconsburgh, the chances are they would all get tilted into a
ditch. So they must take their chance in the old chest at home. I’ve
given Williamson a blunderbuss--but I think it frightens him more than
it would a thief--and I sleep with a revolver at my bedside; and a man
can’t do more.”
“Don’t you think the thieves will be caught, Mr. Rayner?” asked
Gregson, the village carpenter, timidly. It was rumored that he had
fifteen pounds and a pair of silver muffineers hidden away somewhere;
and he turned to Mr. Rayner, who always took the lead naturally in any
discussion, with much anxiety.
“Not in the least likely,” answered Mr. Rayner decisively. “Why should
they be? They might be if they had their equals in wits pitted against
them; but they haven’t. The ordinary detective has the common defect
of vulgar minds, want of resource. The thief, if he is clever enough
to be a successful jewel-robber, has the abilities of a general. The
bolder he is, the more certain he is of success. The detective, in
spite of repeated failures, believes himself infallible. If I were a
thief, I should commit robberies as nearly as possible under the
detective’s nose. That astute being would never suspect the man who
braved him to his face.”
“Ah, it’s very fine to talk,” said one acute villager, who thought Mr.
Rayner was really going too far; “but, when it came to the detective
being there, you’d be about as bold as the rest of us, I’m thinking.”
Mr. Rayner laughed good-humoredly enough, and said perhaps he was
right; and I heard the acute villager bragging of having put down Mr.
Rayner, who, he said, was a bit bumptious for just a
gentleman-fiddler, and wasn’t so much cleverer than the rest of ’em,
he guessed, for all his talk.
At dinner Mr. Rayner tried again to induce his wife to go to Monaco,
and encouraged me to join my persuasions to his, which I did most
heartily. But to all we said she only replied steadily and coldly that
she disliked travelling, did not feel well enough to undertake a
journey, and preferred remaining at the Alders. She added, in the same
parrot-like tone, that she thought the change would do me and Haidee
good, and that it was very kind of my mother to go.
After dinner I ran upstairs to my room, and, opening the door softly,
found Haidee dozing by the fire. So I sat down to write my
scarcely-begun letter to Laurence.
I first told him how happy his letter had made me, and then, obeying
his injunction to tell him everything that happened at the Alders, I
gave him a full account of the way Sarah had prevented our meeting on
Wednesday evening, and of her stealing my letter out of the bag on
Thursday, of Mr. Carruthers’s visit to tell me of the robbery at
Denham Court, of the accident to Sarah on Friday night, of her ravings
about a bad man named James Woodfall, of Mr. Rayner’s return, and of
his intention to take Haidee, my mother, and me to Monaco in a few
days.
The hope of seeing Laurence again soon had by this time swallowed up
every other thought concerning the journey; and I was eager for Friday
to come, that we might start.
Then I told him that I had some very grave suspicions about the
robbery, that I had told them to Mr. Rayner, who did not think so
seriously of them as I did, but that he said I ought not to repeat
them to anybody until he had thoroughly sifted the matter, and I had
promised not to do so.
“So now you are not to be anxious about my safety any more, my dearest
Laurence. For Sarah, the only person who wished me harm, is too ill to
move, and is in danger, poor woman, of losing, if not her life, at
least her reason, the Doctor says. And Mr. Rayner has promised not to
go away again for more than a day at a time, either on business or for
pleasure. There seems a curious fatality about his absences, for both
these dreadful robberies that have frightened everybody so much
lately, the one at Lord Dalston’s and the one at Denham Court, have
happened while he was away, with no man in the house to protect us
against burglars or our fears of them. I think your prejudice against
Mr. Rayner ought to break down now that through him we are to meet
each other so soon; for when we are at Monaco you will come over and
see us, won’t you? My mother is very anxious to make your
acquaintance, though she does not know of our engagement, for I dare
not tell her any secrets. I think Mr. Rayner must have guessed it
though, for he says little things to tease me and make me blush. And
you see he does not try to prejudice me against you, as you thought he
would. But he might try, and everybody else in the world might try,
for years and years, but they would never succeed in changing the
heart of your own ever loving
“Violet.”
I had said at dinner that day, in answer to Mr. Rayner’s inquiries,
that I was not going to afternoon service, but I had not mentioned
that I was going to the Vicarage. I felt sure that I should blush if I
did, and then Mr. Rayner would guess my visit had something to do with
Laurence; and I did not want to be teased any more. So, when five
o’clock came, and I knew that service must be over, I put on my
outdoor things, kissed Haidee, who was now awake, and slipped softly
downstairs and out by the schoolroom window. I was not afraid of
leaving that unfastened, now that Mr. Rayner had come back again.
Mrs. Manners met me in the hall of the Vicarage, took me into the
drawing-room, and gave me a packet of tracts, two or three of which
had names lightly pencilled on them, as specially suitable to certain
of the parishioners, as, “The Drunkard’s Warning”--Mrs. Nabbitts; “The
Cost of a Ribbon”--Lizzie Mojer. These I was to deliver to Miss Maud
Reade for distribution in her district this week.
“Tell her to notice that I have marked some specially,” said Mrs.
Manners, as she gave them to me; and I rather wondered how the persons
they were directed to would take the attention.
I thought that, in spite of her hatred of subterfuge, Mrs. Manners
seemed to enjoy the little mystery which hung over my engagement. She
kissed me very kindly as she sent me off, and told me I was to let her
know when Sarah was well enough to be read to, and she would send
something to be read which might do her good. I promised that I would;
but I hope it was not impious of me to think, as I could not help
thinking, that she was too wicked for any of Mrs. Manners’s good books
to have much effect upon her.
I went through the side-gate of the Vicarage garden, where I had run
against Laurence on that happy evening which seemed so long ago,
although in truth only eight days had passed since then, and my heart
beat fast, and I walked slowly, for it seemed to me that Laurence must
be coming round the corner again to meet me; but of course he did not;
and I quickened my pace as I crossed the park to the Hall.
The mist was growing very thick, although it was only a little past
five; and I knew I must make haste back, or I might risk losing my
way, short as the distance was between the Hall and the Alders.
I rang the bell, and asked for Miss Maud Reade; and the servant who
opened the door, and who, I felt sure, was the Williamson who was
afraid of the blunderbuss, showed me into the drawing-room. There was
no one there, for they were all at tea.
This was my first entrance into Laurence’s home; and I was so much
agitated between pleasure at being in the house he lived in and shame
at feeling that by some of the inhabitants at least, if they knew all,
I should be looked upon as an unwelcome intruder, that I sank into a
chair and buried my face in my hands. It was a very comforting
thought, though, that I was sitting on a chair that Laurence must
certainly have sat upon; and then I wondered which was his favorite,
and tried one that I thought likely, to see if any instinct would tell
me if I were right. I had not made up my mind on that point when the
door opened and Miss Maud Reade came in.
She was a girl of about sixteen, with a weak but not disagreeable
face; and she shook hands with me rather timidly, but not unkindly.
“Mrs. Manners asked me to bring you these tracts for your district,
Miss Reade. She has marked some for people she thinks them specially
suitable for,” said I, giving her the packet.
“Thank you; it is very kind of you to take so much trouble,” said she.
“Oh, it is no trouble at all!” I answered.
There was a pause of rather awkward constraint; and then I said in a
whisper--
“Laurence--your brother--told me to come and see you, and to ask you
to put a--a letter from me to him inside yours. He said I was to tell
you to remember your promise, and he would remember his; he underlined
that.”
Miss Reade’s constraint broke up at once, and she grew as much excited
and as mysterious as I.
“Did he? Then he hasn’t forgotten!” she said, in a hissing whisper. “I
suppose you know what it is; it’s about getting Mr. Reynolds to come
here next winter. Oh, do keep him up to it! I’ll do anything in the
world for you--that won’t get me into trouble with mamma or Alice--if
you will!”
“I will. I’ll remind him again in my next letter--or when I see him.
I’ll say, ‘Don’t forget to invite Mr. Reynolds in the winter.’ Will
that do?”
“Oh, yes, that will do beautifully! But it is a long time to wait,”
sighed the girl.
I thought she was much too young to be in love, when she was still in
short frocks and wore her hair in a pigtail; but I was obliged to help
her, in return for the service I wanted her to do me.
“I have brought my letter,” said I mysteriously. “Shall you be writing
soon?”
“I have a letter ready now, and I will put yours inside and give it to
a gentleman who is here, and who is going back to London directly
after tea, and I will ask him to post it at once.”
“Oh, thank you!” said I; and tremblingly, with fear lest the dreaded
Alice should get hold of it, I put my letter into her hands, and soon
afterwards left the house.
The fog was already so much thicker that I wondered whether the
gentleman with our letter would be able to find his way back to London
that night, and even whether I could find mine back to the Alders. I
must be sure to keep to the drive in crossing the park. But, before I
got to that, I lost myself among the garden-paths, and walked into a
flower-bed; and I began to think I should have to find my way back to
the door and ask ignominiously to be led to the gate, when I heard
voices on my left; and I made my way recklessly in their direction
across grass, flower-beds, and everything. I could not see the
speakers yet, for there was a hedge or something between us; but I
could distinguish that they were the voices of a young man and a young
woman of the lower class. Thinking one of them at least must be a
servant at the Hall, and able to direct me, I was just going to speak
through the hedge, when a few words in the man’s voice stopped me.
“I have had enough of you Norfolk girls; you are too stand-off for
me.”
It was the voice of Tom Parkes.
“Yes, to such weather-cocks as you,” answered the girl, with rough
coquetry. “Why, you were keeping company with that ugly Sarah at Mr.
Rayner’s; and, now she is ill, you want to take up with me. Oh, a fine
sweetheart you’d make!”
But she was not as obdurate as these words promised. It seemed to me,
with my suspicions concerning Tom already strong, that in the talk
which followed he managed with very little difficulty to find out a
good deal about the ways of the household, and also that he spoke as
if he had learnt from her a good deal already. Presently I heard the
sound of a kiss, and he promised to come and see her again on
Wednesday; and then they went away; while I, seized by a sudden
inspiration, found my way not to the park, but back to the house,
which was less difficult.
I asked for Miss Maud Reade again; and this time she rushed out of the
drawing-room and met me in the hall as soon as I was announced, and
whispered--
“They are all in there. Come into the library.”
“May I have my letter back, just to put in something I have
forgotten?” said I.
“Oh, yes; here it is!”--and she drew it from her pocket. “Write it
here. I will give you a pen. Why, how white you look! Has anything
happened?”
“Oh, no, no, nothing, thank you!”
I wrote on a half-sheet of paper, which I carefully folded inside my
letter, these words--
“A man who was at Denham Court, and about whom I have strong
suspicions, is hanging about the Hall now. He is coming here again on
Wednesday night.”
I put my letter into a fresh envelope, and put the torn one into my
pocket that it might not be seen about; then I begged Miss Reade
earnestly to send the letter off at once, as there was something in it
of the utmost importance; and she whispered again, “Remember--Mr.
Reynolds in the winter!” and, having this time got Williamson to show
me as far as the beginning of the drive across the park, I made my way
in safety, but slowly and with much difficulty, back to the Alders.
I slipped through the schoolroom window, which I had left unfastened;
and, as soon as I was inside, I heard Mr. Rayner’s study door open,
and his voice and that of Tom Parkes in the passage leading from the
hall. Mr. Rayner was speaking in his usual kind and friendly way to
him, and I thought to myself that it would be useless for me to tell
him what I had just heard, which, after all, was nothing in itself,
and only became important in connection with the suspicions I already
had of the man--suspicions which Mr. Rayner himself refused to share.
And, when Tom Parkes had said, “Well, good-night, sir,” and gone in
the direction of the servants’ hall, and Mr. Rayner had returned to
his study, I ran upstairs and prepared for tea, at which meal I felt
rather guilty, but said nothing of my expedition or its results.
That evening Mr. Rayner kept me in the drawing-room accompanying his
violin, and talking, until after Mrs. Rayner had gone up to the room
she now used on the upper floor. He described to me the beauties of
the Mediterranean shore, and said that I should be happier there than
I had ever been in my life--which I could easily believe when I
thought how near I should be to Laurence. He asked me if I was not
anxious to see the pretty dresses my mother had been commissioned to
get for me, and told me I should look like a little princess if I were
good and did just what I was told.
“There is no fear of my not doing that, Mr. Rayner,” said I, smiling.
“But you must not give me too handsome dresses, or I shall not feel at
home in them.”
“You will soon get used to them,” said he, with a curiously sharp
smile. “There is nothing that women get used to sooner than fine
clothes and beautiful jewels, and pretty idleness and--kisses.”
Certainly I liked Laurence’s kisses; but the tone in which Mr. Rayner
said this grated upon me, and brought the hot blood to my cheeks
uncomfortably. He saw the effect his words had upon me, and he jumped
up and came towards where I was standing ready to light my candle.
“You look hurt, my child, but you have no reason for it. Don’t you
know that all those things are the lawful right of pretty women?”
“Then it is a right a good many of them are kept out of all their
lives, Mr. Rayner,” said I, smiling.
“Only the silly ones,” he returned, in a tone I did not understand.
“Well, I will explain all that to you on our journey to Monaco.”
He looked very much excited, as he often did after an evening spent
with his violin; and his blue eyes, in which one seemed to see the
very soul of music, flashed and sparkled as he held my hand.
“Don’t be surprised at what I have said to you this evening. You have
brought me luck, and you shall share it. This journey shall take you
to the arms of a lover who will give you all the things I spoke of and
more--a thousand times more!”
That was true indeed, I thought to myself (but did he mean what I
meant?) as I tore myself, laughing and blushing, away and ran
upstairs. There was more delight in the mere fact that Laurence
preferred me to any other woman in the world than in all the beautiful
gowns and jewels that ever princess wore. And I went to sleep that
night with my hands under my pillow clasping his letter.
Haidee left my room next day for the first time, and spent the
afternoon by the dining-room fire. Soon after dinner Mr. Rayner came
in with his riding-boots on, and asked with a smile if I had not a
letter to send to the post. He was going to ride to Beaconsburgh, and,
if I gave it to him, it would go a post earlier than if I put it into
the bag for the postman to fetch.
“No, I have no letter, thank you, Mr. Rayner,” said I, with a blush.
“Not a line for--Nice, to tell--some one you are coming?” said he
archly.
“No,” answered I, shaking my head.
“You posted that one yesterday yourself, didn’t you, Miss Christie?”
whispered little Haidee, putting her arms round my neck.
Mr. Rayner heard the whisper.
“Yesterday?” asked he quickly.
“I--I gave a--a note to Miss Reade to put with hers,” said I.
A curious change passed over Mr. Rayner. The smile remained on his
face, which had however in one second turned ashy white. He said, “All
right, my dear,” in his usual voice, except that I fancied there was a
sort of hard ring in it, and left the room.
“Was it naughty of me to say?” said Haidee, feeling that something was
wrong.
“Oh, no, my darling!” I answered.
I too was afraid I had displeased Mr. Rayner by going to the Hall,
without saying anything about it to any one, in what must seem a sly,
underhand manner; and I wished Laurence had not enjoined me to send my
letter in that way.
That evening, at tea-time, Mr. Rayner announced that he had found a
letter waiting for him at the Beaconsburgh post-office which obliged
him to go to Monaco a day sooner.
So Haidee and I must be prepared to start on Thursday morning.