Christina Part 10

"Troublesome world, indeed," answered Sir Arthur, wagging his head and looking at her solemnly. The saving grace of humour had been omitted from his composition, and he took himself, and the whole world, with a seriousness that could not be shaken; "in this dreadful city, you frolic like children on the edge of a volcano, but one day the eruption will come, and----"

"And then we shall all be little bits of lava, shan't we?" Cicely asked, her blue eyes wide and innocent, her lips parted in an engaging smile.

"You are sadly flippant, Cicely. I had hoped that walking through the vale of misery, your flippancy would have fallen from you. But I fear you are determined to turn this vale of tears, this troublesome world, as you so justly call it, into a mere playground."

"A very delightful vale--sometimes," Rupert said, in his slow, charming voice; "the troublesome world can be beautiful, as well as troublesome, you will allow, especially if you live in the country."

"Beautiful?" Sir Arthur glared at the speaker. "But all to be burnt some day--all to be burnt. When I am asked to admire the mountains near my home--the woods, the river--I say the same thing always; I say, 'It is all being prepared for the burning.'"

"Perhaps we may enjoy its beauties during the time of preparation,"

Rupert said smiling; "until--the conflagration, the beauty is ours."

"I did not call to-day to engage in flippant small talk," Sir Arthur answered sternly. "Like Babylon of old, London is rus.h.i.+ng on its doom, and I have no doubt that the fas.h.i.+onable throng which numbers you amongst its members, has long ago resigned every serious thought and effort. Conversation is as loose as manners and morals, and----"

"My manners and morals are not conspicuously loose, Cousin Arthur,"

Cicely said demurely; "but I don't belong to the smart set, and I don't even want to belong to it, and I expect that is what you meant by the fas.h.i.+onable throng. We live very quietly, Baba and I."

"Quietly? In all this luxury, this pomp?" Sir Arthur glanced round the exquisite room with a shudder. "One of my designs in coming here to-day, was to ask whether you would ever care to come and pay us a visit at Burnbrooke, but we could offer you no such luxury as this.

If, however, you would care to come, we have peace there."

"It is very kind of you, and of Cousin Ellen to have thought of it,"

Cicely faltered with a recollection of a depressing fortnight spent in Sir Arthur's home, during her husband's lifetime; "perhaps in the spring or summer you would let us come and see you."

"We have been away so frequently during the last three years that we have seen few people. My poor wife being a martyr to rheumatism, has had to visit foreign watering places; we have, as you know, been little at home, and we have invited few guests to Burnbrooke. If you will come, we shall be happy to see you; or if at any time you would care to send Veronica with her nurse, to breathe some other air than the pernicious air of this dark town, pray send them."

Cicely made a courteous and smiling rejoinder, but Rupert thought he could read, in the mutinous setting of her pretty lips, that she had small intention of allowing her little daughter to breathe the salubrious air of Burnbrooke.

"You are in town on business only, not for pleasure?" the little lady asked, taking a certain malicious delight in seeing Sir Arthur's start of horror.

"Pleasure? I here for pleasure? Heaven forbid. I have come on troublesome business. I am anxious about the news of my unfortunate brother-in-law and his wife, my poor, foolish sister. Ah! well you never knew her, did you?"

"No, never." Cicely shook her head, wildly trying to unearth from the depths of her mind, any fragments of knowledge she might ever have possessed about Sir Arthur's brother-in-law; but finding herself entirely at sea, gave up the attempt.

"Poor, misguided soul," the visitor went on, with a solemn shake of the head; "she would never listen to reason; never believe what I told her.

My sisters--Ah! well, well, I must not trouble you with our family skeletons. I have come up to try and find out if I can where my brother-in-law is, and to avert worse scandals than already exist."

Cicely, still completely at sea as to the drift of his conversation, murmured something non-committal and sympathetic, and he continued speaking with unabated energy.

"I also have some business to do with Scotland Yard," he said importantly; "my wife has lost a piece of jewellery which she greatly values, and which I also value exceedingly. The loss is a very strange one; and, after serious deliberation, I have decided to put the case into the hands of the Scotland Yard officials."

"Have you had a burglary?"

"No, nothing of that kind at all. We can only account for the loss in one way. We were travelling home last week, after a visit, and at Liverpool station my wife's maid put her mistress's dressing bag into the carriage, she herself standing beside the door. One person was in the compartment, a quiet-looking young lady, so the maid describes her.

We reached home. My wife discovered the loss of the jewel she so much values. It had been put into the bag at the last minute before we left our friends' house, as she had been showing it to a visitor. The bag, it is true, was unlocked, but the maid vows she did not leave the carriage door, and that the young person in the carriage seemed to be a lady. The fact remains that the pendant has vanished."

"A pendant, was it?" Cicely asked with interest.

"A very beautiful pendant, one that, to my mind, is unique. It is made of a single and very remarkable emerald, set in beautifully chased gold, and above the emerald there are three initials twisted together in gold; the initials A.V.C."

CHAPTER VIII.

"IT IS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH."

"And the Prince had the dearest face in all the world. It was not exactly handsome, but it was very strong, and when you looked at it, you knew that he was good. And his eyes were grey and very kind, and----"

"And did he wear white armour, all s.h.i.+ning, and a silver crown on his head?"

Baba's voice, clear and imperious, interrupted Christina's dreamy tones, and her dimpled fingers seized and shook the girl's hand, in order to attract her attention, which, as the baby was vaguely aware, had wandered from the fairy tale in process of being told. "Did the Prince have white armour?"

"Yes, I expect so," Christina answered, with momentary hesitation, flus.h.i.+ng as a vision flashed into her mind of a tall figure in well-cut dark blue serge, that bore no resemblance whatever to silver armour; "he--he put on armour when he had to go and fight dragons, but when he was in the Castle with the lovely Princess, he wore a velvet tunic, dark blue velvet, and a silver crown upon his head."

"And the Princess was just 'zactly like you," Baba said lovingly, pressing her golden head more closely against Christina's breast, and looking into the girl's face with adoring eyes, "just 'zactly like my pretty lady."

Christina laughed softly, running her hands through the child's curls, and bending down to kiss the uplifted face.

"You are a little monkey, Baba," she said, "and a flatterer. You mustn't call Christina a pretty lady. She isn't a bit pretty, and she's only just your nurse."

"Baba will call Christina just 'zactly what she likes," the child answered st.u.r.dily, enunciating her words with the clearness often found in an only child who is constantly with grown-up people. "Christina's a very pretty lady, and Baba loves her."

"Baba's a goose, and we must put on our things and go out in the suns.h.i.+ne and see what we can find in these nice lanes." She put the child off her lap, and, going into an adjacent room, brought out the red cloak in which she had first seen her, and wrapped it round Baba's graceful little form, drawing the hood over the golden curls.

Barely a fortnight had gone by since Christina had first entered Lady Cicely's service, after an interview which had ended precisely as Rupert had laughingly declared it would end, in the engagement of Christina as Baba's nurse. The references the girl had produced from her late employer, Mrs. Donaldson, from an old clergyman who had known her in Devons.h.i.+re, and from her father's solicitor, had seemed to Cicely to justify her in taking this step, even though the Donaldsons were in Canada, the old clergyman dead, and the solicitor gone to South Africa.

"She looks genuine; I am sure she _is_ genuine," the little lady said afterwards to Rupert; "and she was so overwhelmed with delight and grat.i.tude at the idea of coming to us."

"No doubt she was," Rupert responded drily; "well! no great harm can come of giving her a month's trial. I am glad you had the saving grace to suggest that. And during the month you will be able to see what she is made of."

But the month had not fallen out quite as Rupert had naturally supposed that it would. Lady Cicely, driven nearly distracted by a scare of scarlet fever in the near neighbourhood, and unable to use Bramwell Castle, which was in the builder's hands, had sent Christina and Baba off, almost at a moment's notice, to Graystone. In this remote hamlet on a remote Suss.e.x border, Mrs. Nairne, an old servant of the Staynes family, owned a small farmhouse, and also received lodgers; and here, for the past ten days, Christina and her little charge had been rejoicing in the country sights and sounds, which even in early December had a fascination all their own.

To Baba, the farmyard was an unfailing source of delight; and to Christina, the great s.p.a.ces of moorland, the deep lanes, the woods whose soft brown hues gave colour to the hillsides, were a welcome change from London streets, and the squalor of London lodgings. To the girl who for so long had been tossing on a sea of struggle and privation, her quiet life at Graystone was like a haven of rest; and her one pa.s.sionate prayer was, that at the end of her month of probation, she might still find favour in Lady Cicely's eyes, and keep the situation which seemed to her a more delightful one than she had ever dared to hope for in her wildest dreams. With the help of a little pony cart, she and the child could make quite lengthy excursions about the country side, and Christina often found herself wondering why it was the fas.h.i.+on to talk as if there were no beauties to be found in the country in winter time. She revelled in the great sweeps of moorland that rolled away to far hills on the horizon, hills scarcely less blue than the soft blue of the winter sky. And, if the moorlands were no longer clad in their robe of purple heather, or pale pink ling, the duns and browns of heath and bracken, the dark green of fir-trees, and the brightly tinted leaves of the bilberry plants offered no lack of colour. On the oaks in the lanes bright brown leaves still hung; and the trees that were leafless--delicate birches, st.u.r.dy ashes, smooth-stemmed beeches, made so dainty a lacework of bare boughs against their background of sky, that the leaflessness was in itself beautiful. The sunlight poured a flood of radiance on the upland road, as Christina and Baba jogged peacefully along it, in the wake of the small black pony, who meandered on at his own pace, just as the fancy took him. Larks sang in the sunlight; in the copse under the hill the thrushes were already beginning to learn their songs of spring; and Christina, drinking in all the loveliness about her, laughed aloud for sheer gladness of heart.

They had driven for some distance along the main road, when they came to a spot where four roads met, and towards one of them Baba pointed a fat forefinger.

"Let's go along there," she said; "it's such a ducky wee road, and there's a pond."

Christina was lain to confess that the road indicated had special attractions of its own. It wound down from the upland, between hedges which in summer must be a tangled loveliness of briar roses, honeysuckle, and clematis; and, skirting a common where a pond reflected the suns.h.i.+ne on its small ruffled waves, turned down again between woods that climbed steeply up the hill-side on either hand.

The lane narrowed as it wound onwards, and Christina was beginning to wonder whether it would end in a mere gra.s.sy track, when she saw a clearing in the woods on the right-hand side, and became aware of chimney-pots showing above a very high wall.

"What an extraordinarily lonely place," the girl reflected, looking with a little shudder at the height of the wall, and at the dense woods which hemmed it in on every side. Excepting where the s.p.a.ce for the actual house itself had been cleared, and where the lane meandered past it, it was entirely shut in by woods--beech, oak, and birch on the lower levels, pines climbing upward to the summit, closing the building in from all observation. Thanks to the steep hills and the overhanging woods, only a very small proportion of suns.h.i.+ne could filter into the lane, and Christina s.h.i.+vered again, feeling that there was something sinister about this secluded spot, and the house that was barely visible behind its encircling walls.

"Baba thinks p'raps the Princess lives behind there," said the baby, looking with round blue eyes at the frowning walls; "it's a awful, dreadful place; and p'raps the Dragon's got the Princess safe in there; and she's waiting for the Prince to come and get her out."

"The Prince will come in his s.h.i.+ning armour," Christina answered brightly; "and then the Princess will come away, and be happy ever after."

At the moment they were driving past a green door in the wall; and as she spoke these words, the door was hurriedly opened, and a tall woman stepped out into the lane. She was closely wrapped in a dark cloak, and some magnificent black lace draped her hair. But it was the sight of her face that made Christina draw in her breath sharply, for she thought she had never seen anything more beautiful than its white loveliness, anything more sad than the glance of the great dark eyes.

She panted a little, as though she had been running; there was a strange mingling of fear and anguish in her expression, and she held up her hand with so pleading a gesture, that Christina pulled up, and leaning from the cart, said gently: