Part 43 (1/2)

In the middle of the room surrounded by a pile of Holland covers and hangings stood Mrs. Eliot, the housekeeper. Christopher had seen her once or twice and she was the only servant, except the butler, with whom he had heard Peter Masters exchange a word. ”Lor', sir, how you made me jump!” she cried at sight of him in the doorway. ”It isn't often one hears a footfall down here, they girls keep away or I'd be about 'em as they know very well.”

”May I come in?” asked Christopher. ”What a pretty room.”

The woman glanced round hesitatingly. ”Well, now, you're here. Yes.

It's pretty enough, sir.”

”Are you getting ready for visitors?”

He had no intention of being curious, he was only thankful to find some distraction from his own thoughts, and there seemed no reason why he should not chat to the kindly portly lady in charge.

”No visitors here, sir. We don't have much company. Just a gentleman now and then, as may be yourself.”

She pulled a light pair of steps to the window and mounted them cautiously one step at a time, dragging a long Holland curtain in her hand.

”Do you want to hang that up?” asked Christopher, watching her with idle interest. ”Do let me do it, Mrs. Eliot, you'll fall off those steps if you go higher. I can't promise to catch you, but I can promise to hang curtains much better than you can.” Mrs. Eliot, who was already panting with exertion and the fatigue of stretching up her ample figure to unaccustomed heights, looked down at him doubtfully.

”Whatever would Mr. Masters say, sir?”

”He would be quite pleased his visitor found so harmless an amus.e.m.e.nt.

You come down, Mrs. Eliot. Curtain-hanging is a pa.s.sion with me, but what a shame to cover up those pretty curtains with dingy Holland!”

”They wouldn't be pretty curtains now, sir,” said Mrs. Eliot, descending with elaborate care, ”if they hadn't been covered up these twenty years and more.”

”What a waste,” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Christopher now on the steps, ”isn't the room ever used?”

”Never since Mrs. Masters went out of it. 'Eliot,' says the master--I was first housemaid then--'keep Mrs. Masters' rooms just as they are, ready for use. She will want them again some day.' So I did.”

Christopher s.h.i.+fted the steps and hung another curtain.

”I didn't know there had been a Mrs. Masters.”

”Most folk have forgotten it, I think, sir.”

”This was her boudoir, I suppose.”

”Yes. And I think he's never been in here since she went, but once, and that was five years after. The boudoir bell rang and I came, all of a tremble, to hear it for the first time after so long. He was standing as it may be there. 'That cus.h.i.+on's faded, Eliot,' he said, 'get another made like it. You are to replace everything that gets torn or faded or worn without troubling me. Keep the rooms just as they are.' He had a pile of photographs in his hand and a little picture, and he locked them up in that cabinet, and I don't suppose it's been opened since. He never made any fuss about it from the first. No, nor altered his ways either.” She drew a cover over a chair and tied the strings viciously. ”It's for all the world as if he'd never had a wife at all.”

Christopher had hung the three sets of curtains now and he sat on the top step and looked round the room curiously. It was less oppressively modern that the rest of the house and he had an idea the master of Stormly was not responsible for that. He felt a vivid interest in the late Mrs. Masters, Why had she gone and why had neither Aymer nor St.

Michael mentioned her existence? He longed to override his own sense of etiquette and question Mrs. Eliot, who continued to ramble on in her own way.

”I takes off the coverings every two months, and brushes it all down myself,” she explained, ”and I've never had anyone to help me before.

If I were to let them girls in they'd break every vase in the place with their frills and their 'didn't see's.'”

”Do those sheets hang over the panels?”

”I couldn't think of troubling you! But if you will, sir, why then, that's the sheet for there. They are all numbered.”

Christopher covered up the dainty walls regretfully. Why had she left it? Had she and Peter quarrelled? It seemed to Christopher, in his present mood towards Mr. Masters, they might well have done so.