Christie Redfern's Troubles Part 29

Claude had been sitting on the balcony into which the windows of the green room opened, and he came forward, led by Christie, at the doctors desire. After a minute's talk with the child, his eye fell on her.

"What! are you here? I thought you had been far enough away by this time. How came you to leave your charge?"

Christie came forward shyly, looking at Mrs Seaton.

"Mr Lee thought her not strong enough," said Mrs Seaton. "There was no other one to go; and she hardly seemed fit for the charge of all."

"Humph! He has made a mistake or two before in his lifetime--and so has she, for that matter," said the doctor, with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Mrs Lee didn't know when they would come back again, and she didn't like to take me so far-away," said Christie; "and I was very sorry."

"And so you are to be Claude's nurse, it seems?"

Christie looked at Mrs Seaton.

"She came, in the meantime, to go out with Clement and to help in the nursery generally. I have kept Claude with me altogether of late." And as Christie took the little boy to the balcony again, she added, "I don't see how I can leave him. Poor little fellow! He will let no one care for him but me."

The doctor shook his head.

"That may be very well for him, but it is very bad indeed for you.

Indeed, it must not be. Let me make a plan for you. You can quite safely leave him with this new nurse. I would recommend her among a thousand--"

"A child like that!" interrupted Mrs Seaton.

"A child in appearance, I grant, but quite a woman in sense and patience. She has surprised me many a time."

"But she has had no experience. She cannot know--"

"Oh, that is the best of it. She will do as she is bidden. Save me from those 'experienced' persons who have wisdom enough for ten! I can trust this little maid that she will do exactly as I bid her. She is a very conscientious person--religiously inclined, I should think. At any rate, she is just the nurse I should choose from all the sisterhood for your poor little boy--just the firm and gentle attendant he needs now.

Trust me. I know her well."

It is possible that in speaking thus the doctor's first wish was to set the mind of the mother at rest about leaving her child, but he could say what he did without doing any violence to his conscience. He really had admired and wondered at Christie's management of the little Lees during his frequent visits to their nursery.

"And besides," he added to himself, "the poor little fellow will be better when away from his mother's unbounded indulgence for a while. It will be better for all concerned."

So the matter was arranged--not without many misgivings on Mrs Seaton's part, however. Her directions as to Christie's management of the boy were so many and so minute that the poor child was in danger of becoming bewildered among them. To all she could only answer, again and again:

"I will be very careful, ma'am;" or, "I will do my best."

It was well for Mrs Seaton that there was but little time left, or her heart, and Christie's too, might have failed. At the very last moment the mother had a mind to change her plans.

"After all," she said, "perhaps it would have been wiser to send him to his aunt's. Her children are noisy and troublesome, to be sure; but I should have felt easier about him. Mind, Gertrude, you are to write every day till your father returns. And, Christie, remember, you are to obey the doctor's directions in all things. He is to call every day.

And don't let Clement fret him. And, Gertrude, be sure to write."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

NEW FRIENDS.

The house seemed very quiet after Mrs Seaton went away. For that day and the next, Christie and her little charge were left to the solitude of the green room and the garden. Miss Gertrude and Clement had gone to visit their aunt, and not knowing when they might return, Christie was beginning to wonder what she should do during the long hours that her little charge slept or amused himself quietly without her. There were no books in the green room--at least, there were none she cared for. In the nursery there were a few story-books for little children--fairy tales, and rhymes, with pictures of giants and dwarfs and little old women, among which Christie recognised some that had been great favourites long ago. But after the first glance she cared no more for them.

On the morning of the third day, when Claude was taking his nap, the time began to hang heavy on her hands. She took her Bible and read a chapter or two, but in spite of herself she grew dull and dreary. The stillness of the house oppressed her. The other servants were busy in a distant apartment. She seemed quite shut in from all the world. Just opposite the window was a large locust-tree, which hid the garden from her; and the only sound that reached her was the murmur of the wind among its branches, and the hum of the bees that now and then rested a moment among the few blossoms that still lingered on them. Her thoughts turned homewards.

"I might write to Effie," she said to herself. But she was not sufficiently in the mood for it to go to her trunk for her small store of paper and pens; and she sat still, with her head leaning on her hands and her eyes fixed on the swaying leaves, vaguely conscious that the indulgence of her present mood was not the best thing for her.

She was not permitted to indulge it long, however. The little boy stirred and tossed in his crib, and she went to arrange the coverlet over him; and as she was moving listlessly about the room, something glistened in a stray sunbeam and caught her short-sighted eyes, and from the cushions of the great easy-chair, where it had lain since the first day of her coming, she drew the book that Miss Gertrude had been reading when she watched the pretty picture she made as she sat beneath the drooping leaves.

With a cry of delight, she recognised her old favourite, "The Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life." The very same! though this was glittering in blue and gold, a perfect contrast to the little, brown-covered book, with the t.i.tle-page lost, which had made Christie forget her bread and her cooling oven on that unhappy day. But the remembrance of the old time and the old favourite came back all the more vividly because of the contrast. The memory of the old times came back. Oh, how long ago it seemed since that summer afternoon when she lay on the gra.s.s and read it for the first time! Yet how vividly it all came back! The blue sky, with the white clouds pa.s.sing over it now and then, the sound of the wind among the low fir-trees, the smell of the hawthorn hedge, the voices of the children in the lane beyond, seemed once more above her and around her. And then the sound of her mother's gentle chiding, when she found her sitting there after the shadows had grown long, came back.

Her voice, her smile, the very gown and cap she wore, and the needlework she carried in her hand, came sensibly before her. Yet how long ago it seemed! Christie remembered how many times she had taken it with her to the fields, when the incompleteness of their fences during the first year of their stay on the farm had made the "herding" of the sheep and cows necessary that the grain might be safe. She had read it in the woods in spring-time, by the firelight in the long winter evenings, and by stealth on Sundays, when the weather had kept her from the kirk. It was a.s.sociated in her remembrance with many things pleasant and many things sad; and no wonder that for a while she turned over the leaves, catching only here and there a glimpse of the familiar words, because of the tears that hid them.

Sitting on the floor, with the book held close to her face, she read, and forgot all else. The little lad tossed and murmured, and mechanically she put forth her hand and rocked him in his crib; but she neither heard nor saw when the door opened and some one came in.

It was Miss Gertrude. A look of surprise pa.s.sed over her face as she caught a glimpse of the reader on the floor, but it gave place to interest and amus.e.m.e.nt as she watched her. Her absorbed look never changed, even when she rocked and murmured soothing words to the restless child. She read on--sometimes smiling, sometimes sighing, but never lifting her eyes--till Miss Gertrude came forward and spoke.

"Well, how have you been getting on?"

Christie started, as if it had been Aunt Elsie's voice she heard; and at the look of astonishment and dismay that spread itself over her face, the young lady laughed.

"How has Claude been, all these days?" she asked, softly, as she bent over the crib.

"He has been quite well and quite good, I think," said Christie, trying to collect her scattered wits.

"Has the doctor been here?" asked Miss Gertrude.

"Yes; he was here this morning. He asked when you were coming home, but I couldn't tell him."

"Well, I'm here now; and I'm going to stay, too! If the doctor thinks he is going to banish Clement and me from home for the next month, he will find himself mistaken. For my part, I don't see the use of his coming here so often, just to shake his head and look grave over poor little Claude. Of course the child's mother wishes it; but it is all nonsense."

Christie looked at her in astonishment. But that the words were so quietly and gravely spoken, she would have thought them uncalled for, not to say impertinent, from a girl scarcely older than herself. They needed no reply, however, and she made none.

She did not then know that Mrs Seaton was not Gertrude's own mother, and that she was only half-sister to the two little boys, upon whom she looked as mere children, whilst she felt herself a young lady.

"Have you been lonely here?" she asked, in a few minutes.

"A little. It is very quiet," said Christie, hesitatingly. "But I like it."

"Is Claude fond of you?" asked Gertrude, gravely.

Christie smiled a little.

"He does not object to me. I dare say he will be fond of me in time. I am sure he will be very glad to see you and his brother. It is very quiet for him to be left alone with me."

"But the doctor wishes him to be quiet," said Gertrude; "and his mother won't have him vexed on any account. I have seen her quite tremble when his brother has come near him; and after all it is no wonder."

"Clement is so strong," said Christie; "but he will learn to be gentle with his brother in time. How very much alike they used to be! We used to see them driving together. We didn't know their names, but we always called them the two pretty boys."

"Yes, they were very much alike; and it will grieve Clement, when he is older, to know-- Did you never hear about it? They were playing together, and Claude fell. The doctor thinks that fall was the cause of his illness. His mother can't bear to think so, it is so sad; and besides, it seems to make his illness more hopeless. I am afraid he will never be strong and well again."