CHAPTER IV.

RHODA RETURNS TO MILL-HOUSE

“Ah, Miss Pembury, there’s been a many changes since the night when you ran away from here!” she said, as she sighed and folded her hands in her lap. “But why did you go so quick and so quiet? And why didn’t you come forward when the inquest was held?”

“I--I went away because I’d displeased Sir Robert,” said Rhoda. “So that I couldn’t bear to meet him again. And as for the inquest, if you mean that on the poor butler, I never heard anything about it till long after it was over. I fell ill, you know, and they wouldn’t let me know anything.”

Mrs. Hawkes nodded.

“I know that was what they said, but we all thought that it was only an excuse, and that the truth was you didn’t want to come forward, because you knew too much.”

“Too much!” faltered Rhoda.

“Yes. By the time you were missed, and by what we heard of your arriving at the hotel where you stayed the night, we thought as how you couldn’t but have heard or seen something of the murderer of poor Langton.”

Rhoda trembled at the recollection.

“Who was the murderer?” she asked in a whisper.

The housekeeper shook her head.

“Nobody knows from that day to this,” she answered. “The inquest was held, after being put off, and they brought it in ‘by some person unknown.’ But people talked, and it was very unpleasant for us all.”

“What did they say?” asked Rhoda hoarsely.

The housekeeper closed the window, and went to the door, looked out and came back again.

“These aren’t things one likes to talk about, even now,” she said. “Of course the thing was really clear enough. It was a thief tried to rob the house, did get in a little way, and poor Langford went down and struggled with him and got killed.”

“How was he killed?” asked Rhoda.

“He must have been flung down into the fireplace with so much force that it killed him, they said. He was found with his head in the stone fireplace, covered with blood and dead. Fractured skull, the doctors said he died of. But his hands were gashed as if he’d been struggling with some one for a knife.”

Rhoda was listening, in a state of stupefaction with horror. But she would not betray herself. Sitting very still, with her head bent, she listened.

The housekeeper went on:

“No knife was found, and though they saw some footsteps coming to the house, they found none going away again. That was odd and mysterious. Especially,” the housekeeper looked round her again, and dropped her voice, “as Sir Robert had been out in the grounds very late.”

“Sir Robert!” echoed Rhoda, appalled.

Mrs. Hawkes nodded.

“That was the part of it that made us all uncomfortable,” she said, below her breath. “And that was why they wanted you to come forward. And you would have had to come, only your father said you knew nothing about it at all, and that it would have endangered your life to have had to come.”

“Oh!” gasped Rhoda.

“For everybody thought even more than they said. Everybody wanted to know if you had seen anybody.”

She paused, and tried to look into Rhoda’s face. But the girl kept her head obstinately bent. Not for the world would she have had the nurse see the look of horror which she felt there must be in her own eyes.

It was not that she thought that Sir Robert had killed his servant: not for one moment would she have admitted such a possibility. But she could herself have borne witness to the fact that some one did go upstairs after the struggle in the drawing room.

Who could it have been?

“There was lots of talk and idle gossip,” went on Mrs. Hawkes. “And even after the verdict was given, the talk went on just the same. You see it was known that nobody had any quarrel with Langford except the master, and it was known that Langford had had his notice, though why he got it was not rightly known.”

There was a pause, but still Rhoda refrained from asking any questions.

“And it never has been known,” added the housekeeper solemnly, “from that day to this.”

“I couldn’t have said anything to help,” said Rhoda at last in a stifled voice.

“Didn’t you see anything, or hear anything then?”

“Yes. I heard a noise in the drawing-room,” admitted Rhoda, “and I went out by the front door.”

“Yes, we knew that, for some one heard it shut. And that was one reason why we thought you must have known something.”

Rhoda suddenly sat up.

“Surely,” she said sharply, “nobody was so foolish and wicked as to think that Sir Robert, the best man in the world, had anything to do with it?”

The housekeeper answered quickly:--

“Of course we, who knew him, didn’t think so. But there were plenty of unkind things said outside, you may be sure, miss.”

“How shocking!”

“And folks thought as the marriage would be broken off, for the Marquis was a good deal cut up about the gossip. But then Lady Sarah she stood up like a high-minded lady, and she said as how she didn’t allow such foolishness to disturb her for one moment. And she married him, and even married him the sooner for the talk. Which was handsome of her, and which Sir Robert he thought the world of in her, you may be sure.”

Rhoda nodded. From what she had seen of the flippant and vivacious flirt she wondered whether high-mindedness was really the quality to which Sir Robert owed her steadfastness.

There was a pause, and Mrs. Hawkes gave a deep sigh, which made Rhoda look at her, and perceive that an expression of the deepest disappointment was on the good woman’s features.

“I was in hopes as you would be able to tell something, something that would have cleared things up, miss,” she said.

Rhoda’s eyes filled with tears, while a hot blush rose to her cheeks. It was quite true that she did know something, just a little more than anybody else appeared to know, about the doings of that fatal night. But as it was nothing definite enough to absolve anybody or to convict anybody, she felt that wisdom lay in keeping that little to herself, for the present, at any rate.

“And so Lady Sarah was staunch, and earned Sir Robert’s gratitude?” she said, her constraint making her words sound rather stiff.

Mrs. Hawkes looked enigmatic for a moment, and then came a little closer.

“Seeing you know so much about them, I may tell you, in confidence, that it’s not been as happy a marriage as, from such a beginning, one might have hoped,” she said. “You see it was a disappointment there being only the one child, this poor boy that never was strong. And then, well, Lady Sarah’s tastes and Sir Robert’s they don’t seem to go well together. So my lady’s most often away, either in town or abroad for her health, and Sir Robert, he don’t seem to care to leave his house and his boy that he loves so much.”

“And doesn’t Lady Sarah care for her boy too?”

The housekeeper’s face altered a little in expression.

“Of course she does,” she replied diplomatically. “But there’s different ways of caring, and the sight of him with his little couch and his spinal chair, well, it hurts my lady, who would have liked to have a boy handsome and tall and strong.”

Rhoda felt chilled.

“It’s a pity she ever married Sir Robert,” she cried impulsively.

The housekeeper looked rather shocked.

“Well, miss, he wouldn’t let her be till she’d promised him, he was so much in love,” she said quickly. “And anyhow, he’s pleased his fancy. He married the lady he liked best.”

“Yes.”

Another question was on Rhoda’s tongue, but it was one she was shy of uttering.

It took a different form from the one at first in her mind when at last she said, timidly:

“Is Mr. Rotherfield married?”

Mrs. Hawkes looked at her quickly.

“No, he’s not married,” she said slowly. “I think he’s in love too often to fix upon any one lady.”

There was something in her face that prevented Rhoda from asking any more questions on that subject. Indeed, Mrs. Hawkes was not prepared to answer any more, for she changed the subject and said: “Do you remember the two children who were here at the time of your accident, miss?”

“Why, yes, of course I do. George and Minnie. What has become of them? The Terrors you used to call them.”

“And the Terrors they are still,” said Mrs. Hawkes emphatically. “They’re away now; Master George he’s at Sandhurst, and Miss Minnie she’s staying in Normandy with friends for the summer holidays. But they live here still, and I don’t say I’d be without them, though their battles with my lady don’t give one much peace.”

“Battles?”

“Yes, they’re just what they always were, and the plague of all our lives.”

“I wonder whether they’ll recognise me!” said Rhoda.

“Trust them for it!”

“But Sir Robert doesn’t.”

Mrs. Hawkes looked at her.

“Well, there’s no need to be astonished, for he’s so short-sighted, and he lives so much shut up with his books and his collections, that he hasn’t much memory for anything else. He’s taken to collecting since you were here, miss, and he’s got a gallery of pictures that people come for miles to see. That’s what the north wing was built for, to put them in. And the south wing, that was for my lady’s dances. Not that she gives many of them now.”

There was a little constraint on both sides now that Rhoda had confessed that Sir Robert had failed to recognise her. Mrs. Hawkes looked disturbed. At last she said:

“I was wondering, if I may make so bold as say so, miss, whether Sir Robert would let you stay here again, if he was to remember you.”

Rhoda looked startled and uneasy.

“Why should he mind?” she asked quickly.

“Oh, only that he doesn’t in general like to be reminded of that time. And if he had recognised you, he couldn’t but have thought of it, could he?”

“N-no,” said Rhoda, beginning to feel nervous.

There was another silence, and then Mrs. Hawkes ventured:

“Would it be taking too great a liberty, miss, to ask how you came to want to come back here, after all these years? For you must have remembered too, what happened, and have felt uncomfortable about it, I should think?”

Rhoda blushed hotly.

“Of course I knew what happened, through the newspapers and what I was told,” she said. “But I didn’t think it could matter. How should it? I didn’t know anything.”

“No, miss.”

Mrs. Hawkes looked down again.

“May I venture to ask whether you found the master altered, miss?”

Rhoda’s lips trembled a little as she replied:

“Yes, I did. He doesn’t look so young, of course, as he did then.”

“Nor so happy,” suggested the housekeeper almost under her breath. “And do you still think him as handsome as you did?”

Rhoda tried to laugh.

“You want to know, I suppose, whether I still feel the infatuation I felt then about him?” she said. “Of course I don’t. It was a young girl’s childish fancy. But I do think he is a most sympathetic, kindly natured man, and I should be very glad, considering what my obligations are to him, if I could be of any use in taking care of his child.”

She was wondering, as she spoke, what Lady Sarah would say when she found her installed at the Mill-house. Until that moment, strange to tell, she had felt no curiosity on this point; it was only now, when she saw the view the housekeeper took of her coming, that this question suggested itself to her. However, there were some days to pass before Lady Sarah would return from abroad, and in the meantime Rhoda might pass her time very happily with the child, she thought.

And so it fell out. Within a few minutes her _tête-à-tête_ with the housekeeper was interrupted by a message to the effect that Master Caryl wanted to see her, wanted to know whether she would have tea with him, and Rhoda, hastily divesting herself of her hat, went downstairs to the boy’s room, where she found him, flushed and eager, awaiting her coming and welcoming her with a cry of delight.

The next few days were among the happiest she had ever passed. Caryl was a charming companion, affectionate, docile on the whole, though somewhat spoilt. He had taken a great fancy to Rhoda, and would not leave her much time to herself, while Sir Robert, delighted at his son’s finding an interest in life, overwhelmed her with signs of his appreciation.

Rhoda wondered sometimes whether he did not begin to remember her; for she would find him regarding her as it were by stealth, with a frown of pain upon his face, and although he asked no questions, she felt sure that he must already be wondering whether he had not met her before.

To Rhoda the sadness in his quiet face was infinitely touching, and little by little she found ways of making herself useful to him, by copying the notes he had made concerning his curios, as well as by letting him talk to her concerning them.

“It’s very good of you to let yourself be bored, Miss Pembury,” he would say to her with a shy laugh when he had been expatiating upon the beauties of his enamels or of his old Sèvres china. “When Lady Sarah comes back, she will say that you have spoilt me. I’m not used to having my dull dissertations listened to with so much appearance of interest. And I’m quite sure,” he added archly, “that it can’t be more than an appearance.”

“Indeed I wouldn’t pretend to be interested if I were not, Sir Robert,” Rhoda assured him humbly and earnestly.

And she told the truth. She would not, indeed, have found the pictures and curios so intensely interesting as she did, if they had not belonged to the man who had once saved her life. But for his sake she liked them, and her sympathy delighted the grave and rather lonely gentleman.

He was profusely grateful to her for the pains she took in collecting and copying his notes, and in sorting his papers for him. And he said to her with intense appreciation, one day when she had succeeded in deciphering some of his notes which he himself could not read:

“Miss Pembury, if you hadn’t come here as companion to my boy, I should have had to keep you here as my secretary.”

He could not guess the pleasure the simple words gave to the sensitive and grateful Rhoda. She had to pause a moment before she could reply with calmness:

“I wonder you have never before thought of having a secretary, Sir Robert.”

He shook his head.

“I wouldn’t have one for worlds,” he answered with decision, “unless I could get one to undertake the duties of free will. What! To have a professional secretary fingering my papers, and handling my treasures coldly, because it was his or her duty to do it!” And with a little playful assumption of horror, he added: “Do you know, I really think it would injure the pictures and the china too, to be subjected to the perfunctory care of some one specially engaged to look after them? No. I’m fanciful about my treasures. Whatever work is done in connection with them, must be done for love.”

The ingenuous words struck a responsive chord within the breast of Rhoda, and she did not say a word.

But the implied compliment to her thoughtful help was treasured up in her heart, and it made her happy for the day.

Lady Sarah’s return was delayed for a week, so that, when at last Mrs. Hawkes received word that she was to prepare her rooms, Rhoda had been a fortnight at the Mill-house, and was already feeling quite at home.

She spent the day between Caryl and Sir Robert; very often now, indeed, Caryl would insist upon her taking him into his father’s study, where he would lie in a corner watching Rhoda while she deciphered notes and copied inscriptions.

Sir Robert began to entrust more and more of his work to her, always prefacing any request with a humble apology for taking up so much of her time, and always receiving the quiet assurance that what he asked her to do was just what she had been wishing herself that she might do.

Caryl, his father said, was happier than he had ever been before.

“You fill just that place to him,” said Sir Robert enthusiastically, one evening, “that I had always hoped would be filled by my niece Minnie. But of course you don’t know her, so you don’t understand.”

Rhoda remained silent. She did know Minnie, and she knew, too, how hopeless it would have been to expect quiet sympathy from that young lady, if she had fulfilled her childish promise and grown up the mischievous torment she seemed to be inclined to develop into.

It seemed almost tragic to Rhoda that, while speaking thus of his niece, he left out all mention of his wife, who would have seemed to be the boy’s natural companion.

“You’ll be very, very glad to see mama again, won’t you, Caryl?” Rhoda asked that evening, when he had been put to bed and she was bending over him to bid him good-night.

“It doesn’t make so much difference to me whether she’s here or not,” replied the child, in the quaint, old-fashioned way children have who see few playfellows or companions of their own age.

Perhaps Rhoda looked rather shocked. So the boy added:

“Mama is not like you. She likes to be out in her motor-car all day, or playing tennis or dancing. She isn’t quiet, like you.”

“She will have brought you something pretty, I expect,” suggested Rhoda.

“Oh, yes, but she never brings the things that I like,” complained Caryl. “What I want is a book full of pictures of hunting. I know she won’t bring me that.”

Rhoda was struck with the pathos of this wish. For poor little Caryl, condemned to lie on his back and unable to run about and play like other children, had a passion for sport of all kinds, and was never happier than when watching a cricket or a football match; and even now, in early September, he was talking eagerly about the fox-hunting season, and asking Rhoda if she would take him to a meet of foxhounds when cub-hunting began.

She had begun by this time to dread Lady Sarah’s return, to wonder whether her presence at the Mill-house would be resented by the flighty beauty, who would certainly remember her, and who might perhaps look upon her as an interloper, and be jealous of the help she gave to Sir Robert and of the love which little Caryl had already bestowed upon her.

It was the next day that the mistress of the house was to arrive and Rhoda was now on thorns. In the old days, indeed, Lady Sarah had scarcely spoken to her, but she might not look upon her with the same indifference now.

For Rhoda was conscious that there were whispers abroad concerning herself; and she guessed that, although the whole of the household, with the single exception of Mrs. Hawkes, was changed since she was there last, the housekeeper must have told some of the servants about the bicycle accident and the flight of Miss Pembury on the night of the tragedy at the Mill-house, and that there was a certain curiosity abroad concerning her.

It was late in the day when Lady Sarah arrived, and coming up to the bedroom of her little son when he had retired for the night, found Rhoda in the room.

Rhoda, however, regretting that she should have been found there, and fearing that Lady Sarah would think she was trying to take the mother’s place already with the boy, kept in the background, and witnessed, unremarked by Lady Sarah, the meeting between mother and son.

“Well, Caryl, and how are you?” cried she, as she bent over him and gave him a light kiss on the forehead. “They tell me you’ve been getting on famously and that you’ve got an awfully nice companion now.”

“Yes. I love Rhoda, and so will you, mama. Rhoda, come here. You shall see her, mama,” cried the boy in excitement.

Lady Sarah stood up and Rhoda had a good view of her. She saw that the ten years which had passed since she met her first had only served to ripen her beauty. Lady Sarah, though not quite so slim and slender, so like a fairy as she had been in the days of her girlhood, was lovelier than ever. Her dark eyes were just as bright, her complexion was as brilliant, while a little dignity of manner now added to her charms.

She held out her hand graciously, and Rhoda came forward.

But the moment she came within the range of light thrown by the shaded electric lamp on the table at the foot of the bed, Lady Sarah’s face changed. A look of intense horror appeared in her face, and her hand dropped, as she met Rhoda’s eyes with a startled look, and, recognising her at once, said hoarsely, under her breath:

“Miss Pembury!”