The butler, John Hales, admitted Loveday, shouldered her portmanteau and told her he would show her to her room. He was a tall, powerfully-built man, with a ruddy face and dogged expression of countenance. It was easy to understand that, off and on, there must have been many a sharp encounter between him and old Sandy. He treated Loveday in an easy, familiar fashion, evidently considering that an amanuensis took much the same rank as a nursery governess—that is to say, a little below a lady’s maid and a little above a house-maid.
“We’re short of hands, just now,” he said, in broad Cumberland dialect, as he led the way up the wide stair case. “Some of the lasses downstairs took fright at the fever and went home. Cook and I are single-handed, for Moggie, the only maid left, has been told off to wait on Madam and Master Harry. I hope you’re not afeared of fever?”
Loveday explained that she was not, and asked if the room at the extreme end of the north wing was the one assigned to “Madam and Master Harry.”
“Yes,” said the man; “it’s convenient for sick nursing; there’s a flight of stairs runs straight down from it to the kitchen quarters. We put all Madam wants at the foot of those stairs and Moggie herself never enters the sick-room. I take it you’ll not be seeing Madam for many a day, yet awhile.”
“When shall I see Mr. Craven? At dinner to-night?”
“That’s what naebody could say,” answered Hales. “He may not come out of his study till past midnight; sometimes he sits there till two or three in the morning. Shouldn’t advise you to wait till he wants his dinner—better have a cup of tea and a chop sent up to you. Madam never waits for him at any meal.”
As he finished speaking he deposited the portmanteau outside one of the many doors opening into the gallery.
“This is Miss Craven’s room,” he went on; “cook and me thought you’d better have it, as it would want less getting ready than the other rooms, and work is work when there are so few hands to do it. Oh, my stars! I do declare there is cook putting it straight for you now.” The last sentence was added as the opened door laid bare to view, the cook, with a duster in her hand, polishing a mirror; the bed had been made, it is true, but otherwise the room must have been much as Miss Craven left it, after a hurried packing up.
To the surprise of the two servants Loveday took the matter very lightly.
“I have a special talent for arranging rooms and would prefer getting this one straight for myself,” she said. “Now, if you will go and get ready that chop and cup of tea we were talking about just now, I shall think it much kinder than if you stayed here doing what I can so easily do for myself.”
When, however, the cook and butler had departed in company, Loveday showed no disposition to exercise the “special talent” of which she had boasted.
She first carefully turned the key in the lock and then proceeded to make a thorough and minute investigation of every corner of the room. Not an article of furniture, not an ornament or toilet accessory, but what was lifted from its place and carefully scrutinized. Even the ashes in the grate, the debris of the last fire made there, were raked over and well looked through.
This careful investigation of Miss Craven’s late surroundings occupied in all about three quarters of an hour, and Loveday, with her hat in her hand, descended the stairs to see Hales crossing the hall to the dining-room with the promised cup of tea and chop.
In silence and solitude she partook of the simple repast in a dining-hall that could with ease have banqueted a hundred and fifty guests.