Chapter Fourteen.In the Old Library.When the ladies returned to the drawing-room after dinner, two figures in white, with broad blue sashes, rose to greet them.Frances’ face grew still brighter. She had dreaded for her sisters an entrance into an already crowded room, for such to their inexperienced eyes would it have appeared a quarter of an hour or so later, though the number of guests was in reality but a small one. In addition to the Charlemonts, father, mother, and daughter, were one or two odd men, whom Horace had managed to secure from no great distance, and a young married couple, who thought nothing of a twelve-mile drive for the sake of a little variety in what they considered the dullest of dull neighbourhoods, where they were forced to pass three months of every winter, for the sake of pleasing an elderly uncle. They, like the rest of the party, were spending the night at Craig-Morion, and the young wife had been confiding to Frances, in their progressfromthe dining-room, her regret that they were not nearer neighbours. For Miss Morion’s appearance and name had at once caught her attention.“You would find it unbearable here,” said Frances, “if you think Mellersby dull. We consider that neighbourhood quite in the centre of things compared to this.”“Oh, you don’t know—” her companion was rejoining, when her glance fell on the two expectant figures standing near the fireplace. “Who are these?” she broke off. “Parson’s daughters, no doubt.”“They are my sisters,” Frances replied, with dignity, though not without a gleam of amusement in her eyes.“I beg your pardon,” was the instantaneous rejoinder. “They are not like you; but very pretty—” she was going on, when a second glance somewhat modified this impression.Onewas pretty, the taller and fairer of the two, though in neither respect did she equal her eldest sister, but then she was evidently “very young” and would probably improve. But the other, the little slight dark one, was scarcely pretty, not noticeable in any way. And Frances, quick to perceive the hesitation, realised with disappointment that her Betty was by no means at her best. Of her, Mrs Littlewood could not have thought to herself, “How well she lights up!” Frances felt grateful to her hostess when she saw the kindliness with which she was greeting her little guest, seating her on a low chair near herself, and expressing regret at the increasing coldness of the night.“It was really so good of you and your sister to come to us this evening,” she said; “especially as I am afraid the weather is changing.”Betty’s dark eyes looked up in hers gratefully.“Eira and I would have been very disappointed not to come,” she said, “and, oh! I was so glad to get here before you had all come in from the dining-room. May I stay beside you here, Mrs Littlewood, and then—” She stopped.“Certainly,” replied her hostess, with a smile. The girl’s appealingness was a new experience to her. “But what were you going to say?—‘And then?’”A tinge of colour crept into Betty’s cheeks, making her look prettier, at least to one close beside her; indeed, the delicacy of her features and colouring, like those of an exquisite miniature, could scarcely be appreciated from a distance, where the general effect was apt on small provocation, such as a cold day or a little extra fatigue, to fade into insignificance.“I was only going to say,” she replied, “that if I stay near you, mamma and the others won’t think I was shy or ‘absent,’ as they do sometimes, even if I don’t talk much.”“I will protect you then,” said Mrs Littlewood, laughing, though while she spoke she glanced round with the quick discernment of a well-trained hostess. The result was satisfactory. Lady Emma and Mrs Charlemont were getting on famously; Eira and the latter’s daughter had already, thanks to Madeleine’s introduction, coalesced; while at a little distance a group of the remaining three, Frances, her new friend, Lady Leila Bryan, and Madeleine, were talking with interest and animation. Till the men made their appearance at least, Mrs Littlewood was free to devote herself to her little favourite.“We had an unexpected arrival this evening,” she told her, “did you know? Oh no! how could you? Your father’s cousin, Mr Ryder Morion—Mr Morion, I suppose I should say! But since we’ve been here I have learnt to associate that with your father. Ryder Morion arrived here this afternoon.”Betty opened her eyes, profoundly interested. This was news indeed.“Mr Ryder Morion!” she repeated. “I have never seen him. I suppose your being here has made him come. He is a relation of yours, too, isn’t he?”“Not arelation, only a connection,” Mrs Littlewood corrected gently. “My elder son married his sister Elizabeth.”For a second time Betty repeated the name that her hostess had just pronounced.“Elizabeth—Elizabeth Morion she must have been. That is my name, too,” she said; “sometimes I wish it were not. We must both have been called after the same person, our great-grand-aunt Elizabeth.”“It is a nice name,” said Mrs Littlewood, “and Betty is a charming ‘little name,’ as the French say. I am so glad it has come into fashion again. Why do you at all dislike it?”“Because,” said Betty, glancing round her cautiously—Betty firmly believed that she was acquiring great tact and discretion—“because it was she that did all the harm tous, and caused the sort of feeling there has been ever since.”“I have heard something of it,” said Mrs Littlewood. “But it is all so long ago,” she added soothingly.“Yes,” said Betty eagerly, throwing discretion to the winds, “but you know they do say that in one way it isn’t so long ago. I mean—it is still there, so to speak, for they say thatshe”—with an instinctive glance over her shoulder—“has never left off thinking about it, and that shecomes back,”—in an awe-struck whisper—“and I can’t help thinking it is true. I wouldn’t go along the Laurel Walk, and in at that library door at night, for—oh dear!” with a sudden start of horror, as she caught sight of her hostess’ startled expression, “whathaveI been saying? Frances would be so vexed with me!”“Don’t look so distressed, dear; she shall hear nothing about it, and don’t suppose I am the sort of person to be frightened at things of the kind! Not that it doesn’t interest me. You must tell me all about it—some other time. But, of course, it would not do to risk a panic among the servants, and—oh, here they come—the men, I mean!”They all entered the room as she spoke, Horace bringing up in the rear. Catching sight of the as yet ungreeted guests, he crossed at once to his mother’s sofa, and shook hands with Betty, his face lighting up as he did so, but solemn was no word for the glance with which he was greeted, as Betty instinctively crept a little closer to her hostess.“I shall die of fright,” she thought to herself, “if Mr Ryder Morion speaks to me. And I’m so afraid Mrs Littlewood will introduce him. I feel as if hemustknow all the horrid things we’ve said of him behind his back ever since we were old enough to know there was such a person. And now if he knew that I’ve just been telling Mrs Littlewood stories against this place! I wonder which he is?” she went on, for her prejudice against the owner of Craig-Morion was strongly mingled with curiosity.Her first guess fell on a good-looking, brown-haired, rather florid young man, to be, however, almost instantaneously dismissed on hearing him addressed as Hilton or some such name. And then her eyes, straying a little further, lighted on an older, darker man, less “smart” perhaps, but with something about his general bearing more calculated to arrest her attention. He was speaking to Madeleine—no, to Frances—no, after all he seemed to be more engrossed by a very pretty, beautifully dressed young woman, whom Betty, never having seen before, could not identify as Lady Leila Bryan.“How can she? Oh, how dare she talk in that easy, merry sort of way to that grave-looking man?” she thought to herself. “I amsurehe is Mr Morion, and he’s awfully frightening looking; even if he weren’t himself I should think him so. Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said aloud, with a start, as she became aware that Horace Littlewood was speaking to her, had, in fact, addressed her two or three times, without succeeding in obtaining her notice; “were you speaking to me?” she went on, while her face grew crimson.He looked down at her with a curious expression, in which both amusement and annoyance might have been detected.Bettythought it bespoke but contempt, and her confusion increased.“It was nothing—nothing of the slightest consequence,” he replied. By this time his mother was engaged in talking to Mr Charlemont. “I was only asking you if you would care to accompany us on a raid into the library, and that part of the house. Mr Morion—Ryder—says it is years and years since he entered it, and Bryan is interested in old books, so I’ve had it lighted up. I thought,” and here his expression grew significative, “perhaps you would like to see—the library for once at night, in cheerful company.”Betty’s face, as she took in the proposal, was a curious study. In spite of what she had just been saying to Mrs Littlewood, the grim strange room which she had never thoroughly explored had a strong fascination for her. Sometimes when she woke in the night to a fit of tremors, her imagination would picture to itself the long, black, tree-shrouded aisle leading from the old church to the deserted wing of the mansion.“Perhaps,” she would say to herself, “at this very momentsheis creeping out at that door, down those steps, to pace up and down the Laurel Walk;” and then, too frightened even to call out to Eira, she would bury her head in the clothes, only to dream, when she did manage to fall asleep again, of the poor old ghost, for whom, in spite of her terror, she always felt an irrepressible pity. And all this of course had been much more defined since the evening when they had met the vicar in the church, and heard from him more particulars of the heretofore vague old family legend.Joined to these private sensations was the wish to fall in with any suggestion of Mr Littlewood’s. She got up almost with a spring.“I should like very much to come,” she said eagerly. “But, please, is Frances coming too?”Horace smiled.“I expect so,” he replied. “Do you need her to protect you? There’ll be three or four of us, at least.”There were more. For Madeleine, as well as the Bryans and Mr Charlemont, accompanied them, though Eira refused the invitation with so much emphasis that her new acquaintance, Gertrude Charlemont, could not resist, when they were left alone, inquiring what it all meant.It seemed as if Horace had had some prevision of this incursion into what he considered his own quarters at Craig-Morion. For there was a splendid fire burning on the huge hearth, which really did more to lighten up the lofty room than all the lamps and candles which had been hastily carried in, though, in spite of all the sources of illumination, more than half the walls were lost in gloom, culminating in a black expanse of dome overhead.Ryder Morion, who was one of the first to enter, gave a little exclamation.“Dear me,” he said, turning to his nearest companion, who happened to be Frances, “it is a queer-looking place—I had almost forgotten about it. I dare say your father could tell me something about the books,” he continued, when he took in whom he was speaking to.“I scarcely think so,” was the rather cold reply. “I have never heard of his going through your library. It is only the second time in my life that I have entered it. Indeed, it is only since Mrs Littlewood has been here that we have got to know the house at all well,” and Mr Morion saw that he had made a mistake. But he was not of the nature to be easily baffled.“I am sorry to hear it,” he said quietly. “But I hope it is one of the cases in which it is not too late to mend—my ways, I should add,” and here for the first time he smiled, and his cousin of the fourth or fifth degree was obliged to own to herself that the smile was decidedly happy in its effect. Somehow he was conscious of the slight thaw in Frances’ manner.“Miss Morion,” he said, speaking for once in what for him was almost an impulsive tone, “don’t think I’m not aware of my shortcomings hitherto with regard to this place. I shall be more than grateful to you for any hints or information as to the real needs hereabouts. I have heard from Miss Littlewood how good you and your sisters are to your poor neighbours, and—”“Madeleine—Miss Littlewood,” she began, “sees thingstoo partially. In the first place, as you must know, there are scarcely any poor on your property; such as there are, Mr Ferraby can tell you all about far more satisfactorily than I can. And as to other things—other places in the neighbourhood—well, no, I suppose they are not more your affair than that of several other people, to whom I could not apply without seeming officious, and gaining nothing in the end.”But through her rather curt manner he detected a slight hesitation. And in point of fact, at that moment she was asking herself if she should suppress all other feeling in the hope of gaining his interest and assistance where both were so badly needed.“Are you thinking of Scaling Harbour?” he inquired abruptly.Frances’ brow cleared, while her doubts vanished. Yes, this was her opportunity; there was now no mistake about it.“Yes,” she replied, and for the first time she raised her eyes and looked at him fully and unconstrainedly, “I was.”“Thank you,” he said quickly. “I shall not forget. Now, Horace,” he went on, turning to young Littlewood, who had got down a big book containing some very quaint illustrations which he was exhibiting to Betty on a side-table. “Do the honours, can’t you? Oh, I beg your pardon, I see you are doing them already.”Horace looked up, but kept his place.“What do you want me to do?” he inquired; then, without waiting for an answer, he turned to his folio again.“Francie,” came in Betty’s clear treble, “do look here. Did you ever see such queer old figures?”Frances crossed over to her sister’s side, not sorry on the whole that hertête-à-têtewas over.“Yes,” she said, examining the pictures with interest. “They must be about the date of—let me see—Queen Anne! or older than that?”“It is easily seen,” said Horace, turning back to the title-page. There was no fly-leaf, but at the top was written in clear, still black handwriting:“Elizabeth Morion: the gift of her father on the 16th anniversary of her birth.”“Oh!” exclaimed Betty. “It washerbook,” and she drew back with a little shiver.“Don’t be silly, Betty dear,” said Frances. “It makes it all the more interesting.”But Horace’s face expressed some concern, and he murmured something, of which the word “unlucky” was the only one audible to his companions.“What have you got hold of over there, Horace, that is absorbing you so?” said a voice close at hand, and, glancing up, Frances saw Mr Morion standing beside her.“Only one of these queer old books,” Horace replied carelessly, though as he spoke he turned over the pages so that the first one, with the inscription, was no longer visible. For which piece of tact both sisters felt grateful to him.“It would have been disagreeable to have come upon the subject of the split in the family this very first time of our meeting,” thought Frances, while Betty, too, was relieved, though on different grounds.Ryder Morion glanced at the book indifferently. Then his eyes strayed back to the other side of the room.“I’ve found some better books than that already,” he said. “Just look over here, Miss Morion.”Frances could not but follow him, though not particularly desirous of doing so. Horace and Betty remained where they were.“I wish he would leave us alone,” said Betty, half petulantly. “Frances was interested in the book, and then,” with some hesitation, “she doesn’t mind about our great-grand-aunt the way I do. Do you think,” she went on naïvely, “that it can have anything to do with my being named after her, or just—just that Frances is so sensible and good about everything, and that I’m silly?”“Frances,” began Horace, then he checked himself, and his colour deepened a little. “I beg your pardon,” he said, with a slight laugh; but Betty’s face was far from expressing displeasure. “Your sister,” he began again, “deserves most assuredly what you say of her, but you can scarcely expect me to endorse what you say of yourself.”“Oh, I shouldn’t mind in the least,” Betty rejoined. “Iamsilly—very silly in some ways, I know,” and she glanced up at him with a light in her shy eyes, which illumined all the little flower-like face, as if it were a ray of sunshine. “I thought it was because ofthatthat you turned over the pages of this creepy book so quickly.” For by this time Betty had redeemed her promise of telling Mr Littlewood all that she herself knew of the reputed ghost.He looked gratified. Everybody likes to be credited with tact.“I knew it wasn’t exactly a subject you cared to speak about—to strangers,” he replied.“Less still,” said Betty, “to Mr Ryder Morion, who, besides being a perfect stranger to us himself, has to do with it, of course.”“He doesn’t seem to have taken your fancy,” said Horace tentatively.Betty closed her lips in a way she had which expressed more than words.“Tell me,” persisted Horace, “I promise not to let him know. Is it a case of Dr Fell?”“No,” said Betty, in a funny little tone of defiance, “for Idoknow. Besides the old reasons, just now I’m vexed with him for teasing Frances!”Her remark, childish as it was, provoked no smile, but, on the contrary, an almost grave reply, as if the speaker were well considering his words.“You are very, very fond of your elder sister, I see,” said he. “I suppose you have scarcely a thought apart from her?”“Not a single one,” said Betty eagerly; then she stopped suddenly. “No, that isn’t quite true; just lately—well, for some little time, I have had a thought—some thoughts, that she doesn’t know about.” But no sooner had she uttered this sphinx-like speech than her cheeks grew crimson, painfully crimson. “Oh dear,” she exclaimed, “I wish I talked at all! I always say what I don’t mean to!”Horace was regarding her with a very perplexed expression.“Never mind,” he said. “Can’t you get into the way of thinking that it doesn’t matter what you say tome? I wish you would. I really am to be trusted, and—”“What?” said Betty, the distress in her face beginning to fade.“You don’t know,” he went on, “how I like being treated quite—naturally, as you sometimes honour me by doing—as if, so to say, you were beginning to think of me as—as an old friend.”Almost before he had finished speaking Betty’s expression had undergone one of the sudden transformations so characteristic of her. It was all but radiant.“How nice of you!” she said. “How very nice of you to put it like that!”But, strange to say, though he smiled indulgently, a shadow had crept across Horace Littlewood’s face at her eager words.“Perhaps,” he said, “we had better go back to the drawing-room,” and he glanced round to see what the rest of the party was about.Threehad already left the room, Lady Leila and Mr Charlemont escorted by Miss Littlewood, who had come to the rescue on finding them mutually boring each other, Mr Bryan following them with a couple of volumes under his arm, which he meant to study at leisure. There remained Frances and Mr Morion, who were staring out through the unshuttered door-window into the blackness of the Laurel Walk, as if fascinated. And when Horace suddenly addressed her, he was startled as Frances turned to see that her face had grown strangely pale. Or was this only his fancy?“Thereissomething uncanny about the place,” he thought to himself. “Can they have seen anything? I shall find out afterwards from Ryder.”For evidently, if his suspicion were true, this was not the moment for satisfying it, as Ryder Morion hurried forward at once.“Yes,” he said, “we had better return to the drawing-room.” And somewhat to his surprise, Betty started forward at his words.“It is getting chilly,” she said, addressing him directly. “Do let us go,” on which he naturally accompanied her; thus leaving Horace and Frances for a moment or two in the rear.“Wasn’t Madeleine saying something about a walk to Scaling Harbour to-morrow?” began the former in a low and rather hurried tone. “If so, may I join you in it, Miss Morion? I should be glad of the chance of a talk with you.”Frances lifted her grave eyes to his face.“Certainly,” she said, “we quite mean to go, if it is fine.”The words and tone were matter-of-fact and commonplace enough. Not so the inward surmises which his words, still more his manner, suggested.For the first time Frances allowed her thoughts to entertain a possibility which till this evening she had resolutely refrained from even considering.Could it be that her fanciful little sisters had any ground for the castle they were busily constructing, of which the foundation hitherto she would have refused to believe more stable than “in the air?”
When the ladies returned to the drawing-room after dinner, two figures in white, with broad blue sashes, rose to greet them.
Frances’ face grew still brighter. She had dreaded for her sisters an entrance into an already crowded room, for such to their inexperienced eyes would it have appeared a quarter of an hour or so later, though the number of guests was in reality but a small one. In addition to the Charlemonts, father, mother, and daughter, were one or two odd men, whom Horace had managed to secure from no great distance, and a young married couple, who thought nothing of a twelve-mile drive for the sake of a little variety in what they considered the dullest of dull neighbourhoods, where they were forced to pass three months of every winter, for the sake of pleasing an elderly uncle. They, like the rest of the party, were spending the night at Craig-Morion, and the young wife had been confiding to Frances, in their progressfromthe dining-room, her regret that they were not nearer neighbours. For Miss Morion’s appearance and name had at once caught her attention.
“You would find it unbearable here,” said Frances, “if you think Mellersby dull. We consider that neighbourhood quite in the centre of things compared to this.”
“Oh, you don’t know—” her companion was rejoining, when her glance fell on the two expectant figures standing near the fireplace. “Who are these?” she broke off. “Parson’s daughters, no doubt.”
“They are my sisters,” Frances replied, with dignity, though not without a gleam of amusement in her eyes.
“I beg your pardon,” was the instantaneous rejoinder. “They are not like you; but very pretty—” she was going on, when a second glance somewhat modified this impression.Onewas pretty, the taller and fairer of the two, though in neither respect did she equal her eldest sister, but then she was evidently “very young” and would probably improve. But the other, the little slight dark one, was scarcely pretty, not noticeable in any way. And Frances, quick to perceive the hesitation, realised with disappointment that her Betty was by no means at her best. Of her, Mrs Littlewood could not have thought to herself, “How well she lights up!” Frances felt grateful to her hostess when she saw the kindliness with which she was greeting her little guest, seating her on a low chair near herself, and expressing regret at the increasing coldness of the night.
“It was really so good of you and your sister to come to us this evening,” she said; “especially as I am afraid the weather is changing.”
Betty’s dark eyes looked up in hers gratefully.
“Eira and I would have been very disappointed not to come,” she said, “and, oh! I was so glad to get here before you had all come in from the dining-room. May I stay beside you here, Mrs Littlewood, and then—” She stopped.
“Certainly,” replied her hostess, with a smile. The girl’s appealingness was a new experience to her. “But what were you going to say?—‘And then?’”
A tinge of colour crept into Betty’s cheeks, making her look prettier, at least to one close beside her; indeed, the delicacy of her features and colouring, like those of an exquisite miniature, could scarcely be appreciated from a distance, where the general effect was apt on small provocation, such as a cold day or a little extra fatigue, to fade into insignificance.
“I was only going to say,” she replied, “that if I stay near you, mamma and the others won’t think I was shy or ‘absent,’ as they do sometimes, even if I don’t talk much.”
“I will protect you then,” said Mrs Littlewood, laughing, though while she spoke she glanced round with the quick discernment of a well-trained hostess. The result was satisfactory. Lady Emma and Mrs Charlemont were getting on famously; Eira and the latter’s daughter had already, thanks to Madeleine’s introduction, coalesced; while at a little distance a group of the remaining three, Frances, her new friend, Lady Leila Bryan, and Madeleine, were talking with interest and animation. Till the men made their appearance at least, Mrs Littlewood was free to devote herself to her little favourite.
“We had an unexpected arrival this evening,” she told her, “did you know? Oh no! how could you? Your father’s cousin, Mr Ryder Morion—Mr Morion, I suppose I should say! But since we’ve been here I have learnt to associate that with your father. Ryder Morion arrived here this afternoon.”
Betty opened her eyes, profoundly interested. This was news indeed.
“Mr Ryder Morion!” she repeated. “I have never seen him. I suppose your being here has made him come. He is a relation of yours, too, isn’t he?”
“Not arelation, only a connection,” Mrs Littlewood corrected gently. “My elder son married his sister Elizabeth.”
For a second time Betty repeated the name that her hostess had just pronounced.
“Elizabeth—Elizabeth Morion she must have been. That is my name, too,” she said; “sometimes I wish it were not. We must both have been called after the same person, our great-grand-aunt Elizabeth.”
“It is a nice name,” said Mrs Littlewood, “and Betty is a charming ‘little name,’ as the French say. I am so glad it has come into fashion again. Why do you at all dislike it?”
“Because,” said Betty, glancing round her cautiously—Betty firmly believed that she was acquiring great tact and discretion—“because it was she that did all the harm tous, and caused the sort of feeling there has been ever since.”
“I have heard something of it,” said Mrs Littlewood. “But it is all so long ago,” she added soothingly.
“Yes,” said Betty eagerly, throwing discretion to the winds, “but you know they do say that in one way it isn’t so long ago. I mean—it is still there, so to speak, for they say thatshe”—with an instinctive glance over her shoulder—“has never left off thinking about it, and that shecomes back,”—in an awe-struck whisper—“and I can’t help thinking it is true. I wouldn’t go along the Laurel Walk, and in at that library door at night, for—oh dear!” with a sudden start of horror, as she caught sight of her hostess’ startled expression, “whathaveI been saying? Frances would be so vexed with me!”
“Don’t look so distressed, dear; she shall hear nothing about it, and don’t suppose I am the sort of person to be frightened at things of the kind! Not that it doesn’t interest me. You must tell me all about it—some other time. But, of course, it would not do to risk a panic among the servants, and—oh, here they come—the men, I mean!”
They all entered the room as she spoke, Horace bringing up in the rear. Catching sight of the as yet ungreeted guests, he crossed at once to his mother’s sofa, and shook hands with Betty, his face lighting up as he did so, but solemn was no word for the glance with which he was greeted, as Betty instinctively crept a little closer to her hostess.
“I shall die of fright,” she thought to herself, “if Mr Ryder Morion speaks to me. And I’m so afraid Mrs Littlewood will introduce him. I feel as if hemustknow all the horrid things we’ve said of him behind his back ever since we were old enough to know there was such a person. And now if he knew that I’ve just been telling Mrs Littlewood stories against this place! I wonder which he is?” she went on, for her prejudice against the owner of Craig-Morion was strongly mingled with curiosity.
Her first guess fell on a good-looking, brown-haired, rather florid young man, to be, however, almost instantaneously dismissed on hearing him addressed as Hilton or some such name. And then her eyes, straying a little further, lighted on an older, darker man, less “smart” perhaps, but with something about his general bearing more calculated to arrest her attention. He was speaking to Madeleine—no, to Frances—no, after all he seemed to be more engrossed by a very pretty, beautifully dressed young woman, whom Betty, never having seen before, could not identify as Lady Leila Bryan.
“How can she? Oh, how dare she talk in that easy, merry sort of way to that grave-looking man?” she thought to herself. “I amsurehe is Mr Morion, and he’s awfully frightening looking; even if he weren’t himself I should think him so. Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said aloud, with a start, as she became aware that Horace Littlewood was speaking to her, had, in fact, addressed her two or three times, without succeeding in obtaining her notice; “were you speaking to me?” she went on, while her face grew crimson.
He looked down at her with a curious expression, in which both amusement and annoyance might have been detected.Bettythought it bespoke but contempt, and her confusion increased.
“It was nothing—nothing of the slightest consequence,” he replied. By this time his mother was engaged in talking to Mr Charlemont. “I was only asking you if you would care to accompany us on a raid into the library, and that part of the house. Mr Morion—Ryder—says it is years and years since he entered it, and Bryan is interested in old books, so I’ve had it lighted up. I thought,” and here his expression grew significative, “perhaps you would like to see—the library for once at night, in cheerful company.”
Betty’s face, as she took in the proposal, was a curious study. In spite of what she had just been saying to Mrs Littlewood, the grim strange room which she had never thoroughly explored had a strong fascination for her. Sometimes when she woke in the night to a fit of tremors, her imagination would picture to itself the long, black, tree-shrouded aisle leading from the old church to the deserted wing of the mansion.
“Perhaps,” she would say to herself, “at this very momentsheis creeping out at that door, down those steps, to pace up and down the Laurel Walk;” and then, too frightened even to call out to Eira, she would bury her head in the clothes, only to dream, when she did manage to fall asleep again, of the poor old ghost, for whom, in spite of her terror, she always felt an irrepressible pity. And all this of course had been much more defined since the evening when they had met the vicar in the church, and heard from him more particulars of the heretofore vague old family legend.
Joined to these private sensations was the wish to fall in with any suggestion of Mr Littlewood’s. She got up almost with a spring.
“I should like very much to come,” she said eagerly. “But, please, is Frances coming too?”
Horace smiled.
“I expect so,” he replied. “Do you need her to protect you? There’ll be three or four of us, at least.”
There were more. For Madeleine, as well as the Bryans and Mr Charlemont, accompanied them, though Eira refused the invitation with so much emphasis that her new acquaintance, Gertrude Charlemont, could not resist, when they were left alone, inquiring what it all meant.
It seemed as if Horace had had some prevision of this incursion into what he considered his own quarters at Craig-Morion. For there was a splendid fire burning on the huge hearth, which really did more to lighten up the lofty room than all the lamps and candles which had been hastily carried in, though, in spite of all the sources of illumination, more than half the walls were lost in gloom, culminating in a black expanse of dome overhead.
Ryder Morion, who was one of the first to enter, gave a little exclamation.
“Dear me,” he said, turning to his nearest companion, who happened to be Frances, “it is a queer-looking place—I had almost forgotten about it. I dare say your father could tell me something about the books,” he continued, when he took in whom he was speaking to.
“I scarcely think so,” was the rather cold reply. “I have never heard of his going through your library. It is only the second time in my life that I have entered it. Indeed, it is only since Mrs Littlewood has been here that we have got to know the house at all well,” and Mr Morion saw that he had made a mistake. But he was not of the nature to be easily baffled.
“I am sorry to hear it,” he said quietly. “But I hope it is one of the cases in which it is not too late to mend—my ways, I should add,” and here for the first time he smiled, and his cousin of the fourth or fifth degree was obliged to own to herself that the smile was decidedly happy in its effect. Somehow he was conscious of the slight thaw in Frances’ manner.
“Miss Morion,” he said, speaking for once in what for him was almost an impulsive tone, “don’t think I’m not aware of my shortcomings hitherto with regard to this place. I shall be more than grateful to you for any hints or information as to the real needs hereabouts. I have heard from Miss Littlewood how good you and your sisters are to your poor neighbours, and—”
“Madeleine—Miss Littlewood,” she began, “sees thingstoo partially. In the first place, as you must know, there are scarcely any poor on your property; such as there are, Mr Ferraby can tell you all about far more satisfactorily than I can. And as to other things—other places in the neighbourhood—well, no, I suppose they are not more your affair than that of several other people, to whom I could not apply without seeming officious, and gaining nothing in the end.”
But through her rather curt manner he detected a slight hesitation. And in point of fact, at that moment she was asking herself if she should suppress all other feeling in the hope of gaining his interest and assistance where both were so badly needed.
“Are you thinking of Scaling Harbour?” he inquired abruptly.
Frances’ brow cleared, while her doubts vanished. Yes, this was her opportunity; there was now no mistake about it.
“Yes,” she replied, and for the first time she raised her eyes and looked at him fully and unconstrainedly, “I was.”
“Thank you,” he said quickly. “I shall not forget. Now, Horace,” he went on, turning to young Littlewood, who had got down a big book containing some very quaint illustrations which he was exhibiting to Betty on a side-table. “Do the honours, can’t you? Oh, I beg your pardon, I see you are doing them already.”
Horace looked up, but kept his place.
“What do you want me to do?” he inquired; then, without waiting for an answer, he turned to his folio again.
“Francie,” came in Betty’s clear treble, “do look here. Did you ever see such queer old figures?”
Frances crossed over to her sister’s side, not sorry on the whole that hertête-à-têtewas over.
“Yes,” she said, examining the pictures with interest. “They must be about the date of—let me see—Queen Anne! or older than that?”
“It is easily seen,” said Horace, turning back to the title-page. There was no fly-leaf, but at the top was written in clear, still black handwriting:
“Elizabeth Morion: the gift of her father on the 16th anniversary of her birth.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Betty. “It washerbook,” and she drew back with a little shiver.
“Don’t be silly, Betty dear,” said Frances. “It makes it all the more interesting.”
But Horace’s face expressed some concern, and he murmured something, of which the word “unlucky” was the only one audible to his companions.
“What have you got hold of over there, Horace, that is absorbing you so?” said a voice close at hand, and, glancing up, Frances saw Mr Morion standing beside her.
“Only one of these queer old books,” Horace replied carelessly, though as he spoke he turned over the pages so that the first one, with the inscription, was no longer visible. For which piece of tact both sisters felt grateful to him.
“It would have been disagreeable to have come upon the subject of the split in the family this very first time of our meeting,” thought Frances, while Betty, too, was relieved, though on different grounds.
Ryder Morion glanced at the book indifferently. Then his eyes strayed back to the other side of the room.
“I’ve found some better books than that already,” he said. “Just look over here, Miss Morion.”
Frances could not but follow him, though not particularly desirous of doing so. Horace and Betty remained where they were.
“I wish he would leave us alone,” said Betty, half petulantly. “Frances was interested in the book, and then,” with some hesitation, “she doesn’t mind about our great-grand-aunt the way I do. Do you think,” she went on naïvely, “that it can have anything to do with my being named after her, or just—just that Frances is so sensible and good about everything, and that I’m silly?”
“Frances,” began Horace, then he checked himself, and his colour deepened a little. “I beg your pardon,” he said, with a slight laugh; but Betty’s face was far from expressing displeasure. “Your sister,” he began again, “deserves most assuredly what you say of her, but you can scarcely expect me to endorse what you say of yourself.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t mind in the least,” Betty rejoined. “Iamsilly—very silly in some ways, I know,” and she glanced up at him with a light in her shy eyes, which illumined all the little flower-like face, as if it were a ray of sunshine. “I thought it was because ofthatthat you turned over the pages of this creepy book so quickly.” For by this time Betty had redeemed her promise of telling Mr Littlewood all that she herself knew of the reputed ghost.
He looked gratified. Everybody likes to be credited with tact.
“I knew it wasn’t exactly a subject you cared to speak about—to strangers,” he replied.
“Less still,” said Betty, “to Mr Ryder Morion, who, besides being a perfect stranger to us himself, has to do with it, of course.”
“He doesn’t seem to have taken your fancy,” said Horace tentatively.
Betty closed her lips in a way she had which expressed more than words.
“Tell me,” persisted Horace, “I promise not to let him know. Is it a case of Dr Fell?”
“No,” said Betty, in a funny little tone of defiance, “for Idoknow. Besides the old reasons, just now I’m vexed with him for teasing Frances!”
Her remark, childish as it was, provoked no smile, but, on the contrary, an almost grave reply, as if the speaker were well considering his words.
“You are very, very fond of your elder sister, I see,” said he. “I suppose you have scarcely a thought apart from her?”
“Not a single one,” said Betty eagerly; then she stopped suddenly. “No, that isn’t quite true; just lately—well, for some little time, I have had a thought—some thoughts, that she doesn’t know about.” But no sooner had she uttered this sphinx-like speech than her cheeks grew crimson, painfully crimson. “Oh dear,” she exclaimed, “I wish I talked at all! I always say what I don’t mean to!”
Horace was regarding her with a very perplexed expression.
“Never mind,” he said. “Can’t you get into the way of thinking that it doesn’t matter what you say tome? I wish you would. I really am to be trusted, and—”
“What?” said Betty, the distress in her face beginning to fade.
“You don’t know,” he went on, “how I like being treated quite—naturally, as you sometimes honour me by doing—as if, so to say, you were beginning to think of me as—as an old friend.”
Almost before he had finished speaking Betty’s expression had undergone one of the sudden transformations so characteristic of her. It was all but radiant.
“How nice of you!” she said. “How very nice of you to put it like that!”
But, strange to say, though he smiled indulgently, a shadow had crept across Horace Littlewood’s face at her eager words.
“Perhaps,” he said, “we had better go back to the drawing-room,” and he glanced round to see what the rest of the party was about.Threehad already left the room, Lady Leila and Mr Charlemont escorted by Miss Littlewood, who had come to the rescue on finding them mutually boring each other, Mr Bryan following them with a couple of volumes under his arm, which he meant to study at leisure. There remained Frances and Mr Morion, who were staring out through the unshuttered door-window into the blackness of the Laurel Walk, as if fascinated. And when Horace suddenly addressed her, he was startled as Frances turned to see that her face had grown strangely pale. Or was this only his fancy?
“Thereissomething uncanny about the place,” he thought to himself. “Can they have seen anything? I shall find out afterwards from Ryder.”
For evidently, if his suspicion were true, this was not the moment for satisfying it, as Ryder Morion hurried forward at once.
“Yes,” he said, “we had better return to the drawing-room.” And somewhat to his surprise, Betty started forward at his words.
“It is getting chilly,” she said, addressing him directly. “Do let us go,” on which he naturally accompanied her; thus leaving Horace and Frances for a moment or two in the rear.
“Wasn’t Madeleine saying something about a walk to Scaling Harbour to-morrow?” began the former in a low and rather hurried tone. “If so, may I join you in it, Miss Morion? I should be glad of the chance of a talk with you.”
Frances lifted her grave eyes to his face.
“Certainly,” she said, “we quite mean to go, if it is fine.”
The words and tone were matter-of-fact and commonplace enough. Not so the inward surmises which his words, still more his manner, suggested.
For the first time Frances allowed her thoughts to entertain a possibility which till this evening she had resolutely refrained from even considering.
Could it be that her fanciful little sisters had any ground for the castle they were busily constructing, of which the foundation hitherto she would have refused to believe more stable than “in the air?”
Chapter Fifteen.Breaking Ground.Mrs Littlewood glanced up quickly as Betty and Ryder Morion entered the room. She was seated not far from the door, showing some photographs of her grandchildren to Mrs Charlemont. A curious expression, half annoyance, half expectancy, stole into her face as she caught sight of the two, and between handing the portraits to her friend and listening: to her comments thereupon, she managed to keep a keen though unobtruded watch on the doorway.She had not long to wait. Scarcely a minute had elapsed before her son and Frances made their appearance. Mrs Littlewood’s perceptions and instincts were very quick: something told her that the two had been talking more or less confidentially, for Horace looked eager and slightly nervous; his companion, on the other hand, grave and almost absent, with a dreamy look in her eyes, which her hostess—little as, comparatively speaking, she knew her—felt intuitively was not Frances’ habitual expression.“It cannot surely have come to anything serious as yet,” with a sudden rush of alarm which almost startled herself. “He would never dream of it without consulting me, dependent on me as he is, and surely I have more hold on his affection and respect thanthatwould show!”But the misgiving was there. Had she been a woman of less breeding and self-control she could scarcely have hidden her uneasiness. Even as it was, she did so less completely than she imagined, or else Frances herself was all but morbidly acute to-night, for as Mrs Littlewood moved to her with some polite commonplace, the girlfeltthat the courtesy but overlay increasing coldness and disapproval.“She has never really liked me,” thought she, “and now she is on the way to less negative sentiments, I fear.” Nor was this belief in any way softened by the hostess’ manner when the time came for saying good-night—the difference between her kindly, all but affectionate tone to Betty and the chilly though irreproachably courteous farewell to herself was so marked.And it deepened the impression of Horace’s words. “His mother is afraid of it,” said Frances to herself; “I can feel that she is.”She was glad that he had kept away from her during the rest of the evening, talking more to the two younger girls, Eira and Miss Charlemont, with whom Betty had taken refuge.Altogether, the sister’s well-balanced mind had good need of its practised self-restraint that evening. And during the drive home, short as it was, it was all she could do to reply in an ordinary way to the comments on her family’s unwonted piece of dissipation, which not unnaturally came to be expressed.It had left a favourable impression on her father and mother; thus much Frances was satisfied to see. Beyond this she felt incapable of further discussion.“I am a little tired, dears,” she said to her sisters as they were making their way upstairs. “Don’t let us talk over anything till the morning.” And, though with a little disappointment, Betty and Eira yielded at once to her wish.“Frances is, don’t you think, alittlestrange, not quite like herself?” said Betty, when she and Eira were alone in their room. “She might have told us a little about the dinner, who took her in, and all that. We were so pleased to make her look so nice,” and she gave a little sigh.“You are rather stupid, Betty,” was the reply. “Things couldn’t be better. Even her wanting not to talk to-night.”“Talking” was easy to avoid, not so thinking. Frances felt, with a strange sensation of excitement, as if she were on the verge of some great change or changes in life; almost, as it were, on the brink of some discovery. And this was not solely owing to her scarcely avowed anticipation of distinct intention as regarded herself on the part of Horace Littlewood. He had not been mistaken as to the startled, strange expression on Miss Morion’s face at the moment of his suggestion that they should leave the library, which had caused her to turn somewhat suddenly from the window overlooking the Laurel Walk. Shehadseen, or at least believed that she had seen, something mysterious and inexplicable, and, what was more, she knew that her companion, Ryder Morion, had seen it too.“What was that?” were the words which had escaped her in a low tone, with an involuntary appeal to him; and his reply, “Some curious reflection of the light in here, I suppose,” though intended as reassuring, had not achieved its object, not even so far as to make her feel that he was expressing his own conviction.For what they had both perceived was no stationary gleam such as is often thrown on glass with a dark background in such circumstances: it was a faintly luminoussomething, slowly moving down the path towards the church, gradually fading into nothingness as it neared the little gate.“Whatcanit have been?” Frances now asked herself, with a shiver of sympathy for Eira, as she recalled the girl’s impressive words about the effect of “really having heard something.”“I do feel,” thought the elder sister, though with a little smile at her own weakness, “as if I had reallyseensomething! It looked about the height of a small woman moving slowly. Can such things be? Shall I speak of it again to Mr Morion? I have such a shrinking from any allusion to him, to that old story. No, I would rather leave it. Possibly he may tell Mr Littlewood about it, and in that way I may hear if it made any impression on him.” And with the reference to Horace, her thought grew again absorbed by the still vague surmises which his manner, even more than his words, had given rise to.“To-morrow will give me more grounds for real consideration,” she thought. “It isn’t as if I were a mere girl who could be excused for beginning fancying things which after all may have no existence. It isn’t even as if I were one of the younger ones. I am rather ashamed of myself. After all, I doubt if I am not older than he, and in any case I probably seem so to him,” with a little sigh. “It all comes, I suppose, from this strangely isolated life of ours—things of no importance in the eyes of others seem to us so wonderful.”Yet in spite of herself the impression was made, and deepened undoubtedly—much as this would have been regretted by the lady herself—through the unmistakable change to increasing coldness and formality in Mrs Littlewood’s bearing to her that evening.Considerably to Frances’ relief, somewhat too to her surprise, though the former feeling prevented her dwelling on the latter, she was not subjected the next morning to any cross-examination on the part of her sisters as to her experiences the night before, previous to their own appearance on the scene. On the contrary, Betty and Eira seemed fully absorbed by the plans for that day. They had arranged more definitely than Frances knew with Madeleine and her young guest for the expedition to the fishing village which Horace had alluded to.“They are to call for us,” said Betty, “or we for them. That is to say, we are both to start from our own doors at half-past one; most likely we shall meet in the park. You mustmanage, Francie, to get us some sort of luncheon before we go. We’ve asked mamma, and she doesn’t mind, if you can arrange it with the cook.”Betty’s prevision came true. The sisters had just entered the Craig-Morion grounds when they caught sight of a little group coming to meet them.“Dear me! what a lot of people they seem,” said Eira. “Whom has Madeleine brought? Oh, I see,” she went on, “it is only Miss Charlemont and her father and one of those other men: do you know his name, Frances?”But Frances did not reply; indeed, she scarcely heard her sister’s remarks. For perhaps the first time in her life, she was feeling self-conscious and constrained.Hewas there of course, Horace, that is to say, looking his best in his rough tweed suit and brown leather gaiters, bright and eager and evidently in excellent spirits as he shook hands with his fair neighbours. Though underneath this, one who knew him intimately—his sister, had she been on the lookout for it—might have discerned a certain nervousness, of which a superficial judgment would little have suspected this very smart young man of the day of being capable.The air was exhilarating; with one exception they were all young, and as they walked on together, the sound of their voices in lively talk, broken now and then by Betty’s silvery laugh in response to some merry speech, told their own tale, and that a pleasant one.Frances glanced at her little sister with satisfaction.“Betty is looking ever so much better than last night,” thought she; “perhaps she is one of those people—they are often really the loveliest—who are at their best by daylight, though as far as dress goes she and Eira are almost more at a disadvantage than in the evening,” as her eyes strayed from her sister’s neat but unmistakably “home-made” country attire to the perfect finish and cut of Madeleine’s and Gertrude’s short-skirted “tailor” costumes.For the days are past, if indeed they ever existed, in which “anything,” however dowdy or shabbily fine, was considered “good enough” for country wear. Partly, perhaps, owing to the fact, ignored or scarcely realised, that our ancestresses at no very remote period—those who figured, and deservedly, in books of beauty or on immortal canvases—knew not what country life in our modern sense of the word really is or should be. They neverwalked; for who would call a stroll up and down a terrace or across a park in clinging draperies and lace “fichus” worthy of the name?As they emerged from the lodge gates, the party fell naturally into twos and threes. Madeleine, with her usual unselfishness undertaking the entertainment of Mr Charlemont, led the way. And soon Frances, though, needless to say, by no connivance of her own, found herself to all intents and purposestête-à-têtewith Horace.“What has become of Mr Morion?” she asked, more for the sake of saying something than from any real interest in that personage’s movements.“I really don’t know,” Horace replied, half absently. “He’s a queer fish. He went off this morning early somewhere; that’s rather his way. When you’re staying at Witham-Meldon you never see your host till late in the day. He doesn’t mind how many people he has to stay so long as they look after themselves or each other till late afternoon or dinner-time. I have even known him stroll into the drawing-room when everybody was assembled as if he had nothing to do with it all, and greet people here and there with an offhand ‘good-morning.’”“It must be rather uncomfortable,” said Frances, “rather as if you were all staying at a hotel?”Horace laughed.“Wait till you see it,” he said. “It’s splendidly managed, even though for the greater part of the year he lives in a corner of it shut up with his books. No,” warming to enthusiasm as he went on, “it is simply perfection to stay at. Besides his huge wealth, which he knows how to use, he is far cleverer than you would think in some ways. I don’t mean his learning, but socially speaking, as the string-puller, so to say. He knows how to get the right people together, and you’re always sure of somebody interesting there; and he very often has my sister-in-law—his sister, you know—to act hostess, and she is quite charming, though almost plain.”Frances had grown interested by this time, and forgetful for the moment of her own preoccupation.“You put Mr Morion in rather a new light to me,” she said. “Somehow I have always thought of him, if indeed I have thought of him at all, as a sort of bookworm and recluse, with no sympathy or geniality about him—indifferent to the rest of the world. That is why I have sometimes almost—” She stopped short.“Do go on,” said Horace, with the persuasive charm of manner, sometimes quite irresistible, about him. “You know surely by this time that you can trust me perfectly?”“It was more,” she replied, “that I felt ashamed of what I was going to say. It was that I have almost grudged him his wealth, thinking him one of those people that didnotknow how really to use it—for others.”“There you wrong him,” said Horace quickly: “he is by no means selfish, or even self-absorbed—as I have good cause to know,” he added, in a lower voice, as if thinking aloud. “His manner is certainly against him,” he went on; “he gives one the impression of being much more indifferent—cynical—than he really is. In point of fact I know few men, if any, that would have been what he is in the same position; quite unspoilt by coming into all that money and property—Witham-Meldon is really princely—so young as he did.”Frances was one of those people who instinctively respond to expressions of generous appreciation or admiration of others. There was real pleasure in her face as she turned to Horace, quite unrestrainedly now, for as the conversation went on its increasing: interest had tended more and more to make her for get her perplexing thoughts of the preceding night.“You and he must be reallyfriends,” she said. “He must be quite different from what I thought.”Horace smiled, but without speaking. Then half nervously he began to flick at some withered leaves at the side of the path where they were walking, with the stick he held. And almost instantaneously Frances again became self-conscious, or conscious, rather, that her companion was feeling so.She was right: the young man’s first words confirmed her suspicion.“Miss Morion,” he began, “do you remember my saying last night that I should be so glad of the chance of a quiet talk with you? I hope it won’t bore you, if—if I try to make you realise a little how I am placed. I have never minded it, or thought much about it till lately, and now everything seems coming upon me at once. Not that for worlds I—I would be without these—new experiences—I would almost say, whatever the end may be! I have never in my life, I don’t think, felt really alive till now. Never so happy, and yet—the other thing too, so terribly anxious—oh! I can’t express it! I have always been a duffer at putting feelings into words. Most men are, don’t you think so?”“Perhaps,” Frances replied, forcing herself to speak in an ordinary matter-of-fact tone, as her instinct of dignity demanded; but that was all.“But I may explain a little to you, may I not?” he went on eagerly. “You see, I am the younger son, and entirely, or as good as entirely, dependent on my mother. And she has been a very kind mother, for I have cost her more than I should have done, and she has never reproached me.Nowshe wants me to leave the army, and—as she expresses it—‘settle down,’ as my brother Con has done. But, then, think of the huge difference between his position and mine. I couldn’t—I really couldn’t think of marrying for money; indeed, if I was inclined to care for a rich girl I think the fact of her being so would destroy her attraction! I am not hitting at my brother in saying this: he had plenty on his side too to offer, and he did care for Elise. The only way out of it I can see is for me to stay where I am, to stick to my profession. Then, if the worst came to the worst—it’s horribly difficult for me to say it—but if it were against my mother’s wishes, there would still be something to fall back upon. That is to say, if I was fortunate enough to find I might hope. What do you think?”Frances was silent. She seemed to be reflecting deeply, though no one would have guessed from her quiet manner the internal tumult which his half-disjointed speech had aroused.“Is there any necessity,” she at last managed to say, “for you to decide anything—as to your plans—just yet? It all seems to me so—so sudden.”Her voice was low and somewhat tremulous. He glanced with a quick shade of apprehension in his honest blue eyes.“You don’t mean to say,” he asked anxiously, “that I had better not build upon—what it all hangs on, after all?”“I—I don’t mean to say anything,” she replied, her tone growing firmer as she went on, “to influence you one way or the other. I—naturally it is rather bewildering—it is difficult for me to take it in—all at once.”“But you can’t but have known it was coming, that itmustcome?” he said questioningly. “At least I feel as if youmusthave known it, as if every one must! I suppose when one is so absorbed by a thing like this, it feels as if itwerewritten on one’s very forehead. Ever since that first afternoon at your house when I was so stupid—you remember?—and thought none of you would ever look at me again—I understand now why I minded so much—ever since then, I see how it has been with me.”Frances felt strangely touched, and the real feeling which his straightforward words evoked somehow made it easier for her to reply. She even looked up at him with a touch almost of tenderness in her eyes.“Don’t you see,” she said, “how very difficult it is, how wrong it would be, for me to risk misleading you? Imustthink it over; besides the personal questions, there is the fear, the reluctance, to risk disturbing your happy relations with your mother. Indeed, they would be more than risked—she would not like it.”His face fell.“To some extent I am afraid you are right,” he answered. “But two people, if I may dare think of it as concerning two, are more than one, and that one not a principal in the matter. Little as you have said, Miss Morion, I thank you for that little—more even than if youhadsaid more—for I trust your every word. The question of returning to India,” he went on, “seems to me almost decided, and for myself I don’t mind. But I have always shrunk from it for—for a wife. There is so much that goes against the grain for a girl—a woman—of refinement and all that sort of thing.”“But,” said Frances, more timidly than she had yet spoken, “if two people really care for each other, must not that make all the difference in the world?”Though scarcely had the words passed her lips before she regretted them; she would indeed have given worlds to recall them. Had she any right to say as much? Was it not distinctly wrong to do so, uncertain of herself and of the possibilities of her own feelings as she was? A sort of cold misgiving seemed to creep over her, which in her peculiar inexperience she was unable to explain. Was this what all girls felt or went through, she asked herself, on first actual realisation of a man’s devotion? She was gratified, touched; but was that enough? Were her motives entirely pure as regardedhim—what he deserved?—or was she influenced by secondary ones, laudable enough in themselves, but to a woman of her character no longer so if allowed to interfere with the plan of the one great question—could she love him?All this surged through her mind far more quickly than it takes to tell it. She looked up with the intention of some attempt at modifying her last speech, but what she saw in Horace’s face told her it was too late. It was illumined with pleasure.“Of course,” he replied, “that is everything—everything. Thank you a thousand times, Miss Morion; it is more by far than I was daring to hope for at present.”Something, an impalpable something, struck her in his words: was it his still addressing her by her formal name? All things considered, this seemed scarcely natural, scarcely consistent. A quick terror seized her that her inferred encouragement, grateful as he was for it, might have seemed premature!“Don’t put more into my words than I meant,” she forced herself to say; “remember it was an ‘if.’”But the radiance did not fade from his face.“Do not deprive me of the little I have got,” he said, “and do trust me. I shall do nothing further without your full knowledge and approval.”And again, as at that moment a summons from others of the party interrupted them, Frances felt a touch of perplexity.
Mrs Littlewood glanced up quickly as Betty and Ryder Morion entered the room. She was seated not far from the door, showing some photographs of her grandchildren to Mrs Charlemont. A curious expression, half annoyance, half expectancy, stole into her face as she caught sight of the two, and between handing the portraits to her friend and listening: to her comments thereupon, she managed to keep a keen though unobtruded watch on the doorway.
She had not long to wait. Scarcely a minute had elapsed before her son and Frances made their appearance. Mrs Littlewood’s perceptions and instincts were very quick: something told her that the two had been talking more or less confidentially, for Horace looked eager and slightly nervous; his companion, on the other hand, grave and almost absent, with a dreamy look in her eyes, which her hostess—little as, comparatively speaking, she knew her—felt intuitively was not Frances’ habitual expression.
“It cannot surely have come to anything serious as yet,” with a sudden rush of alarm which almost startled herself. “He would never dream of it without consulting me, dependent on me as he is, and surely I have more hold on his affection and respect thanthatwould show!”
But the misgiving was there. Had she been a woman of less breeding and self-control she could scarcely have hidden her uneasiness. Even as it was, she did so less completely than she imagined, or else Frances herself was all but morbidly acute to-night, for as Mrs Littlewood moved to her with some polite commonplace, the girlfeltthat the courtesy but overlay increasing coldness and disapproval.
“She has never really liked me,” thought she, “and now she is on the way to less negative sentiments, I fear.” Nor was this belief in any way softened by the hostess’ manner when the time came for saying good-night—the difference between her kindly, all but affectionate tone to Betty and the chilly though irreproachably courteous farewell to herself was so marked.
And it deepened the impression of Horace’s words. “His mother is afraid of it,” said Frances to herself; “I can feel that she is.”
She was glad that he had kept away from her during the rest of the evening, talking more to the two younger girls, Eira and Miss Charlemont, with whom Betty had taken refuge.
Altogether, the sister’s well-balanced mind had good need of its practised self-restraint that evening. And during the drive home, short as it was, it was all she could do to reply in an ordinary way to the comments on her family’s unwonted piece of dissipation, which not unnaturally came to be expressed.
It had left a favourable impression on her father and mother; thus much Frances was satisfied to see. Beyond this she felt incapable of further discussion.
“I am a little tired, dears,” she said to her sisters as they were making their way upstairs. “Don’t let us talk over anything till the morning.” And, though with a little disappointment, Betty and Eira yielded at once to her wish.
“Frances is, don’t you think, alittlestrange, not quite like herself?” said Betty, when she and Eira were alone in their room. “She might have told us a little about the dinner, who took her in, and all that. We were so pleased to make her look so nice,” and she gave a little sigh.
“You are rather stupid, Betty,” was the reply. “Things couldn’t be better. Even her wanting not to talk to-night.”
“Talking” was easy to avoid, not so thinking. Frances felt, with a strange sensation of excitement, as if she were on the verge of some great change or changes in life; almost, as it were, on the brink of some discovery. And this was not solely owing to her scarcely avowed anticipation of distinct intention as regarded herself on the part of Horace Littlewood. He had not been mistaken as to the startled, strange expression on Miss Morion’s face at the moment of his suggestion that they should leave the library, which had caused her to turn somewhat suddenly from the window overlooking the Laurel Walk. Shehadseen, or at least believed that she had seen, something mysterious and inexplicable, and, what was more, she knew that her companion, Ryder Morion, had seen it too.
“What was that?” were the words which had escaped her in a low tone, with an involuntary appeal to him; and his reply, “Some curious reflection of the light in here, I suppose,” though intended as reassuring, had not achieved its object, not even so far as to make her feel that he was expressing his own conviction.
For what they had both perceived was no stationary gleam such as is often thrown on glass with a dark background in such circumstances: it was a faintly luminoussomething, slowly moving down the path towards the church, gradually fading into nothingness as it neared the little gate.
“Whatcanit have been?” Frances now asked herself, with a shiver of sympathy for Eira, as she recalled the girl’s impressive words about the effect of “really having heard something.”
“I do feel,” thought the elder sister, though with a little smile at her own weakness, “as if I had reallyseensomething! It looked about the height of a small woman moving slowly. Can such things be? Shall I speak of it again to Mr Morion? I have such a shrinking from any allusion to him, to that old story. No, I would rather leave it. Possibly he may tell Mr Littlewood about it, and in that way I may hear if it made any impression on him.” And with the reference to Horace, her thought grew again absorbed by the still vague surmises which his manner, even more than his words, had given rise to.
“To-morrow will give me more grounds for real consideration,” she thought. “It isn’t as if I were a mere girl who could be excused for beginning fancying things which after all may have no existence. It isn’t even as if I were one of the younger ones. I am rather ashamed of myself. After all, I doubt if I am not older than he, and in any case I probably seem so to him,” with a little sigh. “It all comes, I suppose, from this strangely isolated life of ours—things of no importance in the eyes of others seem to us so wonderful.”
Yet in spite of herself the impression was made, and deepened undoubtedly—much as this would have been regretted by the lady herself—through the unmistakable change to increasing coldness and formality in Mrs Littlewood’s bearing to her that evening.
Considerably to Frances’ relief, somewhat too to her surprise, though the former feeling prevented her dwelling on the latter, she was not subjected the next morning to any cross-examination on the part of her sisters as to her experiences the night before, previous to their own appearance on the scene. On the contrary, Betty and Eira seemed fully absorbed by the plans for that day. They had arranged more definitely than Frances knew with Madeleine and her young guest for the expedition to the fishing village which Horace had alluded to.
“They are to call for us,” said Betty, “or we for them. That is to say, we are both to start from our own doors at half-past one; most likely we shall meet in the park. You mustmanage, Francie, to get us some sort of luncheon before we go. We’ve asked mamma, and she doesn’t mind, if you can arrange it with the cook.”
Betty’s prevision came true. The sisters had just entered the Craig-Morion grounds when they caught sight of a little group coming to meet them.
“Dear me! what a lot of people they seem,” said Eira. “Whom has Madeleine brought? Oh, I see,” she went on, “it is only Miss Charlemont and her father and one of those other men: do you know his name, Frances?”
But Frances did not reply; indeed, she scarcely heard her sister’s remarks. For perhaps the first time in her life, she was feeling self-conscious and constrained.Hewas there of course, Horace, that is to say, looking his best in his rough tweed suit and brown leather gaiters, bright and eager and evidently in excellent spirits as he shook hands with his fair neighbours. Though underneath this, one who knew him intimately—his sister, had she been on the lookout for it—might have discerned a certain nervousness, of which a superficial judgment would little have suspected this very smart young man of the day of being capable.
The air was exhilarating; with one exception they were all young, and as they walked on together, the sound of their voices in lively talk, broken now and then by Betty’s silvery laugh in response to some merry speech, told their own tale, and that a pleasant one.
Frances glanced at her little sister with satisfaction.
“Betty is looking ever so much better than last night,” thought she; “perhaps she is one of those people—they are often really the loveliest—who are at their best by daylight, though as far as dress goes she and Eira are almost more at a disadvantage than in the evening,” as her eyes strayed from her sister’s neat but unmistakably “home-made” country attire to the perfect finish and cut of Madeleine’s and Gertrude’s short-skirted “tailor” costumes.
For the days are past, if indeed they ever existed, in which “anything,” however dowdy or shabbily fine, was considered “good enough” for country wear. Partly, perhaps, owing to the fact, ignored or scarcely realised, that our ancestresses at no very remote period—those who figured, and deservedly, in books of beauty or on immortal canvases—knew not what country life in our modern sense of the word really is or should be. They neverwalked; for who would call a stroll up and down a terrace or across a park in clinging draperies and lace “fichus” worthy of the name?
As they emerged from the lodge gates, the party fell naturally into twos and threes. Madeleine, with her usual unselfishness undertaking the entertainment of Mr Charlemont, led the way. And soon Frances, though, needless to say, by no connivance of her own, found herself to all intents and purposestête-à-têtewith Horace.
“What has become of Mr Morion?” she asked, more for the sake of saying something than from any real interest in that personage’s movements.
“I really don’t know,” Horace replied, half absently. “He’s a queer fish. He went off this morning early somewhere; that’s rather his way. When you’re staying at Witham-Meldon you never see your host till late in the day. He doesn’t mind how many people he has to stay so long as they look after themselves or each other till late afternoon or dinner-time. I have even known him stroll into the drawing-room when everybody was assembled as if he had nothing to do with it all, and greet people here and there with an offhand ‘good-morning.’”
“It must be rather uncomfortable,” said Frances, “rather as if you were all staying at a hotel?”
Horace laughed.
“Wait till you see it,” he said. “It’s splendidly managed, even though for the greater part of the year he lives in a corner of it shut up with his books. No,” warming to enthusiasm as he went on, “it is simply perfection to stay at. Besides his huge wealth, which he knows how to use, he is far cleverer than you would think in some ways. I don’t mean his learning, but socially speaking, as the string-puller, so to say. He knows how to get the right people together, and you’re always sure of somebody interesting there; and he very often has my sister-in-law—his sister, you know—to act hostess, and she is quite charming, though almost plain.”
Frances had grown interested by this time, and forgetful for the moment of her own preoccupation.
“You put Mr Morion in rather a new light to me,” she said. “Somehow I have always thought of him, if indeed I have thought of him at all, as a sort of bookworm and recluse, with no sympathy or geniality about him—indifferent to the rest of the world. That is why I have sometimes almost—” She stopped short.
“Do go on,” said Horace, with the persuasive charm of manner, sometimes quite irresistible, about him. “You know surely by this time that you can trust me perfectly?”
“It was more,” she replied, “that I felt ashamed of what I was going to say. It was that I have almost grudged him his wealth, thinking him one of those people that didnotknow how really to use it—for others.”
“There you wrong him,” said Horace quickly: “he is by no means selfish, or even self-absorbed—as I have good cause to know,” he added, in a lower voice, as if thinking aloud. “His manner is certainly against him,” he went on; “he gives one the impression of being much more indifferent—cynical—than he really is. In point of fact I know few men, if any, that would have been what he is in the same position; quite unspoilt by coming into all that money and property—Witham-Meldon is really princely—so young as he did.”
Frances was one of those people who instinctively respond to expressions of generous appreciation or admiration of others. There was real pleasure in her face as she turned to Horace, quite unrestrainedly now, for as the conversation went on its increasing: interest had tended more and more to make her for get her perplexing thoughts of the preceding night.
“You and he must be reallyfriends,” she said. “He must be quite different from what I thought.”
Horace smiled, but without speaking. Then half nervously he began to flick at some withered leaves at the side of the path where they were walking, with the stick he held. And almost instantaneously Frances again became self-conscious, or conscious, rather, that her companion was feeling so.
She was right: the young man’s first words confirmed her suspicion.
“Miss Morion,” he began, “do you remember my saying last night that I should be so glad of the chance of a quiet talk with you? I hope it won’t bore you, if—if I try to make you realise a little how I am placed. I have never minded it, or thought much about it till lately, and now everything seems coming upon me at once. Not that for worlds I—I would be without these—new experiences—I would almost say, whatever the end may be! I have never in my life, I don’t think, felt really alive till now. Never so happy, and yet—the other thing too, so terribly anxious—oh! I can’t express it! I have always been a duffer at putting feelings into words. Most men are, don’t you think so?”
“Perhaps,” Frances replied, forcing herself to speak in an ordinary matter-of-fact tone, as her instinct of dignity demanded; but that was all.
“But I may explain a little to you, may I not?” he went on eagerly. “You see, I am the younger son, and entirely, or as good as entirely, dependent on my mother. And she has been a very kind mother, for I have cost her more than I should have done, and she has never reproached me.Nowshe wants me to leave the army, and—as she expresses it—‘settle down,’ as my brother Con has done. But, then, think of the huge difference between his position and mine. I couldn’t—I really couldn’t think of marrying for money; indeed, if I was inclined to care for a rich girl I think the fact of her being so would destroy her attraction! I am not hitting at my brother in saying this: he had plenty on his side too to offer, and he did care for Elise. The only way out of it I can see is for me to stay where I am, to stick to my profession. Then, if the worst came to the worst—it’s horribly difficult for me to say it—but if it were against my mother’s wishes, there would still be something to fall back upon. That is to say, if I was fortunate enough to find I might hope. What do you think?”
Frances was silent. She seemed to be reflecting deeply, though no one would have guessed from her quiet manner the internal tumult which his half-disjointed speech had aroused.
“Is there any necessity,” she at last managed to say, “for you to decide anything—as to your plans—just yet? It all seems to me so—so sudden.”
Her voice was low and somewhat tremulous. He glanced with a quick shade of apprehension in his honest blue eyes.
“You don’t mean to say,” he asked anxiously, “that I had better not build upon—what it all hangs on, after all?”
“I—I don’t mean to say anything,” she replied, her tone growing firmer as she went on, “to influence you one way or the other. I—naturally it is rather bewildering—it is difficult for me to take it in—all at once.”
“But you can’t but have known it was coming, that itmustcome?” he said questioningly. “At least I feel as if youmusthave known it, as if every one must! I suppose when one is so absorbed by a thing like this, it feels as if itwerewritten on one’s very forehead. Ever since that first afternoon at your house when I was so stupid—you remember?—and thought none of you would ever look at me again—I understand now why I minded so much—ever since then, I see how it has been with me.”
Frances felt strangely touched, and the real feeling which his straightforward words evoked somehow made it easier for her to reply. She even looked up at him with a touch almost of tenderness in her eyes.
“Don’t you see,” she said, “how very difficult it is, how wrong it would be, for me to risk misleading you? Imustthink it over; besides the personal questions, there is the fear, the reluctance, to risk disturbing your happy relations with your mother. Indeed, they would be more than risked—she would not like it.”
His face fell.
“To some extent I am afraid you are right,” he answered. “But two people, if I may dare think of it as concerning two, are more than one, and that one not a principal in the matter. Little as you have said, Miss Morion, I thank you for that little—more even than if youhadsaid more—for I trust your every word. The question of returning to India,” he went on, “seems to me almost decided, and for myself I don’t mind. But I have always shrunk from it for—for a wife. There is so much that goes against the grain for a girl—a woman—of refinement and all that sort of thing.”
“But,” said Frances, more timidly than she had yet spoken, “if two people really care for each other, must not that make all the difference in the world?”
Though scarcely had the words passed her lips before she regretted them; she would indeed have given worlds to recall them. Had she any right to say as much? Was it not distinctly wrong to do so, uncertain of herself and of the possibilities of her own feelings as she was? A sort of cold misgiving seemed to creep over her, which in her peculiar inexperience she was unable to explain. Was this what all girls felt or went through, she asked herself, on first actual realisation of a man’s devotion? She was gratified, touched; but was that enough? Were her motives entirely pure as regardedhim—what he deserved?—or was she influenced by secondary ones, laudable enough in themselves, but to a woman of her character no longer so if allowed to interfere with the plan of the one great question—could she love him?
All this surged through her mind far more quickly than it takes to tell it. She looked up with the intention of some attempt at modifying her last speech, but what she saw in Horace’s face told her it was too late. It was illumined with pleasure.
“Of course,” he replied, “that is everything—everything. Thank you a thousand times, Miss Morion; it is more by far than I was daring to hope for at present.”
Something, an impalpable something, struck her in his words: was it his still addressing her by her formal name? All things considered, this seemed scarcely natural, scarcely consistent. A quick terror seized her that her inferred encouragement, grateful as he was for it, might have seemed premature!
“Don’t put more into my words than I meant,” she forced herself to say; “remember it was an ‘if.’”
But the radiance did not fade from his face.
“Do not deprive me of the little I have got,” he said, “and do trust me. I shall do nothing further without your full knowledge and approval.”
And again, as at that moment a summons from others of the party interrupted them, Frances felt a touch of perplexity.
Chapter Sixteen.“I Don’t Quite Remember.”The summons had come from one of the younger girls, for they had reached a point on the road to Scaling Harbour at which there was a question of two ways thither.“Shall we take the sea-road?” said Eira, “or the higher one?”Frances hesitated and glanced at Horace.“Which do you think gives the best view, the most picturesque to newcomers?” she asked.“The sea-road, I should say,” he replied, “decidedly so. Shall we lead the way?” he went on, addressing Betty as he hastened forward to where she, Eira, and Miss Charlemont were standing; and in a moment or two, Frances, who by this time had attached herself to Madeleine and the two other men, heard by the sound of their merry voices that Horace’s spirits were at their highest.“How considerate he is!” she thought to herself, “so careful not to involve me in any kind of notice. I wish I could—I do hope—” but then she put it all resolutely aside for the moment; the time had not yet come for a good thorough “thinking out” of it all, and in spite of Madeleine’s evident readiness to leave her undisturbed should she wish it, she joined with seeming interest in the talk going on around her, thereby winning still more golden opinions from her friend as to her unselfishness and self-control. For the little manoeuvres by which her brother had cleverly secured the covetedtête-à-têtehad been by no means unperceived by his sister.A few minutes’ quick walking now brought the party on to what was called the sea-road; another quarter of an hour and the queer little village lay close before them. Unanimously they came to a halt.“It is indeed picturesque,” said Gertrude, whose taste lay in the direction of sketching.“If only it were summer—not too cold for sitting still!”“Wait till we have gone a little farther,” said Horace. “It isn’t only the place, the people themselves will tempt you still more.”And when they found themselves in the one straggling street, where the reddish sandstone cottages looked much as they might have done at any time since the famous Armada days, when—so ran the legend—the strange little colony had first been founded, Miss Charlemont fully agreed with him. Here and there swarthy-faced men were seated at their cottage doors, occupied in the never-failing resource of a fisherman’s “off-hours”—mending their nets. A few women looking out, or here and there gossiping with each other, had a strangely un-English air, not only as to their, in most cases, black hair and eyes, but in the very colour and tone of their carelessly adjusted garments, in which a vivid blue and almost orange-scarlet, however stained and faded, still predominated. The very children, from the tumbling-about babies to the bare-legged, brown-skinned urchins of both sexes, who, considering the cold especially, seemed to take life uncommonly easily, all shared the same distinct and peculiar characteristics.The strangers were much struck.“Curious,” said Mr Charlemont meditatively, “how the Southern strain is still so predominant. It reminds me of—” but his daughter interrupted him.“It’s worth coming any distance to see,” she said enthusiastically. “Even the very smell of the place isn’t like an English village! Do you often come here?” she went on, turning to theMorionsisters.“Idon’t,” Betty replied. “I like our own poor people far better. But Frances and Eira—and Madeleine too—have taken to rushing off here this winter, as often as they can get; once or twice a week sometimes.”“What for?” asked Miss Charlemont. “Sketching? I don’t mean out of doors, of course, but the people themselves?” and as, at that moment, a woman passing along the road—a young and handsome woman—looked up with a smile and a half-graceful, half-bashful gesture of greeting, she added, glancing at her, “Is she a model of yours?”Frances and Eira smiled.“Oh no,” said the latter, “we are not half as accomplished as you think us. It is for something quite different that we come. And but for Madeleine we should never have been able to do it at all.”Eira and Gertrude were now walking together; Horace and Betty behind them. Madeleine, who was just in front, caught Eira’s words, and looked back with a smile of deprecation.“Don’t praise me so undeservedly,” she said. “I assure you, Gertrude, it is all their doing. I have only helped in the smallest way. I don’t see how I could possibly have done less.”“Tell me about it,” said Gertrude to her companion; and Eira, by no means unwillingly, gave her a rapid little sketch of their “plan” for helping and instructing the poor, neglected fisher-folk of this outlying little village.Gertrude listened with interest, the greater perhaps for the impression made upon her by the uncommon aspect of her surroundings.“So you see,” Eira concluded, with her usual frankness, “we couldn’t possibly have managed it without Madeleine’s help, though Mrs Ramsay’s money did come in for the first start. Madeleine has given us, I know, all she possibly could, out of her own money.”“But she has plenty,” said Gertrude, though with no wish to decry one for whom her admiration was unbounded.“Of course I know she is rich,” said Eira in a lower voice; “but then she does and helps such heaps of things already. It isn’t as if this were her home. I don’t know,” she went on reflectively, “if she will be able to continue things here when she leaves. It doesn’t do to look forward—we had never hoped to manage half we have already got done this winter.”“But doesn’t the village belong to Mr Morion, Mr Ryder Morion I mean?” asked Gertrude, a practical little person in her way.“Onlypart of it,” was the reply; “and he has never,”—she stopped abruptly. “Oh, Gertrude,” she exclaimed—for the two young things had already arrived at the Christian-name stage of intimacy—“oh, Gertrude, speak of—” and again she stopped, for at that moment down a steep, rocky path, leading on to the main street from some cottages perched above, appeared two figures, those of the part-proprietor of the village and of Mr Darnley, the Craig Bay curate-in-charge, the eager aspirant to the same post at Scaling Harbour.He was talking eagerly, with some explanatory gesticulation, to his companion as they came along. Mr Morion, on the contrary, looked cooler, almost colder, than his wont. It was he who first caught sight of the little procession of visitors. A shade, though but a slight one, of annoyance crossed his face: he had heard something of the projected expedition, but had hoped and intended to get his own business there completed in time to leave before coming across any of the others. But his investigations, even under Mr Darnley’s experienced guidance, had taken longer than he anticipated; taken longer and impressed him more deeply and more painfully than he had been in any way prepared for. But he was not the man to show this; on the contrary, he hastened forward with more than usual alacrity to meet the party.“So there you are,” he said, in a pleasant but somewhat nonchalant manner. “I have had the start of you, however; indeed, I scarcely expected to see you down here.”“But you will wait, now we have met, and walk back with us, won’t you?” said Madeleine. “You don’t know the treat that is in store for us all,” she went on, turning with her hearty smile to Frances and the others. “Tea and buns! half-past three, at Mrs Silver’s! I sent down about it this morning.”“What a good idea!” “How nice!” were the exclamations that greeted this announcement. For the walk in the keen air and the very early luncheon had naturally an invigorating effect on everybody’s appetite.“I am specially glad to hear of it,” said Mr Darnley, “on Mr Morion’s account. I’m afraid I have used you very badly,” he went on, turning to the person in question. “We have been at it since ten this morning, and you have had no luncheon at all. Though,” with a touch of admiration and pleasure that he was too young and enthusiastic to suppress, “I must say it wasn’t all my fault, you have gone into things so very thoroughly!”A look of real annoyance flashed into Mr Morion’s eyes at these words, to be, however, as instantaneously expelled, for he caught sight of the flush of gratification on his companion’s eager, still boyish face, and he had not the heart to snub him. One person only, of those about him, saw and understood this little by-play, and that was Frances. And often in days to come she was glad that she had done so. For the memory of it helped to obviate, or at least modify, misconstruction of a character none too easy to interpret.“And how about your own luncheon, my good fellow?” were the words genially substituted for the cold rejoinder which had been on the speaker’s lips. “You deserve at least three buns and two cups of tea.—Yes, Madeleine,” he went on, “yours was a capital thought, and if some one will lead the way to Mrs Silver’s we shall all gladly follow.”“It is distinguished,” said Madeleine, “by being the cleanest cottage in the place, you will be glad to hear. Indeed,” catching sight of a slightly apprehensive look on Betty’s face, “it is more than that, it is reallyclean.”“Thank goodness,” Betty murmured to herself, at which Horace, who was beside her, could not repress a smile.“You don’t share your sister’s enthusiasm for—no, I won’t say ‘slumming,’ it is such a hateful word, and has been so abused,” he said.“Slumming?” repeated Betty, “I don’t quite know what you mean.” And she looked up in his face naïvely.The questioning in her eyes made her look even more childlike than usual. For a moment Horace seemed to have forgotten what they had been saying; then he pulled himself together, as it were.“I am very glad you don’t,” he said, “and of course anything your sister does would be on quite different lines from that kind of sensational philanthropy. I only meant that you have a natural shrinking from—well, dirty cottages and people, and that sort of thing! I am sure I sympathise with you in it. Any one so sensitive—”But, rather to his surprise, Betty’s expression had grown somewhat shamefaced.“Oh,” she said quickly, “it’s just selfishness, I’m afraid. I often think I am rather the spoilt one at home; Frances and Eira are so good, and never think about themselves. I dare say disagreeable things are quite as disagreeableto themas to me. But they always save me from them in every way. I believe it began by my not being as strong as they when I was quite a little girl. And even mamma petted me much more than the others.”“I don’t wonder at it,” said Horace; “there are some people made to be petted, and the world would be a worse place than it is without them.”“But,” said Betty, again scarcely seeming to notice his words, and with a funny little air of dignity, “I am really not so babyish as you might think! With such an elder sister as Frances, how could I be? I do help a little, even in what they do here. I write out a good deal. We have made large sheets of directions in printed letters of what to do in accidents and so on, copied from our books, of course, and the others say I can print better than they can. So that issomething,” with a touch of satisfaction.“Yes, indeed,” said her companion, “a pretty big something, I should say. It must be tiresome work. I hope,” he went on, with a little hesitation, “that now Ryder has seen things for himself more thoroughly than before—indeed, I doubt if he ever walked through this village before to-day—I hope that he will give some substantial help.”“I hope so too,” said Betty dryly. “Oh,” she went on, with a little gasp, “itwouldbe nice to be rich!”Horace’s face fell a little.“Do you feel that?” he said quickly. “Don’t you think that people are often quite as happy, or happier, who are not very rich, especially if they are without great responsibilities? Of course few things would be worse than to be a large proprietor with lots of people you should look after, and no means for doing it.”“Yes,” Betty agreed, “it reminds me of what mamma has often told us about grandpapa’s and Uncle Avone’s difficulties in Ireland. But with your Mr Morion it is quite different, of course—isn’t heveryrich?”“I should say so,” said Horace.“I don’t think I should wish to be very rich like that,” said Betty simply. “There would be such a lot of trouble about it, and I should not be clever enough to manage things well—even a woman’s part of things. Now Frances, for instance,” she went on thoughtlessly, “would be perfection in such a position.”“I can well imagine it,” said Horace cordially; but, instantly realising that she had said one of the things she had better have left unsaid, Betty looked up at him with one of those sudden changes of expression peculiar to her, and by no means always easy to interpret.“Oh, but don’t misunderstand about her,” she said. “She’s not a bit ambitious or fond of being important, or—or anything like that. She would be quite happy in a far simpler kind of life. Indeed, I don’t knowanysort of life she couldn’t fit herself into, though Eira and I can’t help feeling that she is thrown away here, in this little out-of-the-way corner.”“But yet what would you do without her?” said Horace. “Could you—can you imagine for yourself—we’ll say—the ever being happy away from her?”“Oh yes,” said Betty, eager to remove any false impression she might have given. “She often says it would be better for me to have to depend a little more on myself.”“I can scarcely picture your ever being very independent,” said Horace. “I should not like to do so. But—you may not always have her to take care of you, and yet not be left quite to your own devices!”He glanced down at her as he spoke, with some scrutiny in his smile.“No,” she replied, in a matter-of-fact tone, “of course there would still be Eira, though she says she wouldmakeme be the elder sister.”Mr Littlewood turned away half abruptly. “Here we are,” he remarked, “this must be Mrs Silver’s abode!”He was right. The young woman who was to act as their hostess, or, as she would have expressed it, “to serve tea to the gentlefolk,” was on the lookout for them. She was a pleasing-looking person, though of a slightly different type from the people about, with fairer hair and skin, which rather curiously contrasted with her dark eyes. For her mother had been an “inlander,” to use the term of the fisher-people for any one not purely of themselves. Her husband did not appear. He had been out for two days, she informed her visitors, on some remark being made about the weather and the fishing prospects, but she expected him home that evening.“Isn’t it dreadfully dull for you when he is away?” asked Gertrude Charlemont, “and don’t you get terribly frightened if you hear the wind at night?”The young woman shook her head with a little smile.“We get used to it, miss,” she replied. And Mr Morion, whom the girl’s questions had struck as scarcely judicious, came to Mrs Silver’s assistance.“Dwellers by the sea learn to have brave hearts,” he said; “and then there is always the pleasure of a safe home-coming to look forward to.”“It will be an out-of-the-way pleasant one to-night, if all’s well, thanks to you, sir,” the young woman replied; and turning to Frances, she added, “It’s the pigsty I’m thinking of, miss. I’m that pleased about it. We’ve been wishing for one so long. It’ll be company for me when Joe’s away!”It was impossible not to laugh at this, impossible for Mr Morion not to join, though he had been more than half-inclined to be vexed at the matter being mentioned.“There must be something Irish about these good people as well as Spanish,” he said, in a lower voice, as Mrs Silver, to his relief, turned her attention to the tea-table.“Scarcely so,” said Frances in reply. “In Ireland the absence of a sty would certainly not be any difficulty in the way of keeping pigs!”“No,” Horace agreed, “they would be in and out all over the place. Genuine company if you like!”This provoked another laugh, for when people are inclined to be happy it takes very little to give things a merry turn. And tea at Mrs Silver’s proved a great success. There was not much time to spare after it was over, if they were to get home by a reasonable hour. A little détour by the shore, sufficient to give them some idea of the picturesqueness of the rugged coast, was all that could be attempted, and Gertrude Charlemont declared that by hook or by crook she must come back to the neighbourhood in the long-day season, for sketching purposes.“Oh, I wish you would,” said Betty eagerly.—“Craig Bay is quite a nice place to stay at, isn’t it, Mr Littlewood?” she went on, as, happening to glance round, she caught sight of him at her side, “and we should so enjoy having friends there!”“I should say you could get very comfortable quarters there,” he agreed heartily; “and I hear there is excellent fishing—river fishing—a little way inland. I mean to find out about it, and come down here again, later on, perhaps, before my leave is up. You won’t think me too much of a bad penny if I do, I hope, Miss Betty?”Betty raised her eyes to his with a half-inquiry in them, which he did not understand.“Of course not,” she said, the little flush in her cheeks which came with the words rendering her very charming at that moment. “Of course not; we should be only too pleased to think that you like the place, though it is so dull and out-of-the-way. Your all being here this winter will have quite spoilt us, I’m afraid,” with a little sigh. “It has been—it is—so—delightful.”“You delight me by saying so,” was the quick answer, heard by no one but Betty herself, for somehow or other by this time she found that he and she had drifted a little apart from the others.“If only I were Eira,” thought Betty, “what a good opportunity I could make of this for finding out a little more! but I get so shy and silly immediately,” and when she spoke again it was with a little effort.“It is very pretty about here in the summer,” she said. “Up at Craig-Morion—I mean down here the seasons don’t make so much difference in the look of things. I’m glad,” she continued, “that we don’t live nearer the sea; it frightens me.”“You have never been a voyage, I suppose?” said her companion. “You would soon get used to it, I dare say. Now-a-days, with the splendid boats there are, many people go backwards and forwards from India for the mere pleasure of the thing, you know.”“Thank you,” said Betty, laughingly. “I’ve no ambition of the kind! Dull as it is here, I should rather stay safe on dry land.Franceslongs to travel, and I wish she had more chance of it! She is so clever, you know, she would find—”“But you yourself,” persisted Horace, “you don’t intend surely to spend all your life in this little nest of a place? The Eyrie, as Madeleine calls it.”“Oh, I don’t know,” said Betty. “If I must, I must! Don’t make me discontented. I am afraid I am rather so already,” with a touch of penitence.“And why shouldn’t you be?” he responded eagerly. “Think how young you are, and how—” here he checked himself—“how much there is to see in the world,” he added, rather lamely.“But, you see,” said Betty, “I should scarcely be fit for it!—for making my way in society, or anything of that kind. I get frightened and stupid about nothing at all.”She felt that he was looking at her with kindly sympathy, and, impressionable as she was, it encouraged her. Almost before she knew what she was about, she found herself giving him her innocent confidences to an extent which she had rarely, if ever, done to any one, certainly not to any man. And the way home seemed marvellously short that winter afternoon.Long, it must be owned, it was not found by any of the little party. Gertrude and Eira were enjoying themselves under the escort of Horace’s friend, young French, who could make himself very entertaining; Mr Charlemont and Mr Darnley, on each side of Madeleine, were interesting her by a discussion on one of her pet hobbies in a philanthropic direction; and Frances, bringing up the rear with Mr Morion, found herself more nearly on common ground with him—thanks in part, no doubt, to the unexpected side-light Horace had thrown on his character—than a few hours previously she could have believed possible. And it was pleasant to her to feel that the young man’s influence bid fair to dissipate the prejudices she had half-unconsciously harboured. Once or twice even she glanced round with a half-formed wish that Horace should notice how well she and her far-off cousin were getting on. But he was some way ahead with Betty.“I can tell him about it afterwards,” she thought, with a curious little thrill at the realisation of the confidence already existing between them. Though even without this new prepossession in his favour, Ryder Morion would probably have won his way towards her esteem and liking by the quiet, unassuming manner in which he told her of his increasing interest in, and sense of responsibility for, the till now almostterra incognitaof his northern possessions. It would have been affectation for him to avoid the subject after what the curate-in-charge had said, and the meeting himself on the very spot where help was most needed. And despite her own preoccupation of mind, Frances was too well trained in habitual unselfishness not to feel warmly delighted, almost indeed breathlessly so, at the projects as to which he consulted her, and the means which he proposed to lay at the disposal of herself and Mr Darnley.Altogether the expedition seemed to have been eminently successful, and no one felt this more heartily than Eira, whose spirits were always ready to rise, and not easily depressed, save perhaps by chilblains, or the apprehension of them!“Betty,” she said, when they were dressing rather hurriedly for dinner, “isn’t it all going on too beautifully?”Betty was seated on the end of her bed looking somewhat fagged.“Yes,” she agreed, “we have had a very nice day; but I must be quick!” starting up as she spoke.“I thought it so considerate of him,” continued Eira, “to walk home withyou, not to make Frances, you see, too conspicuous, as it were. Was he talking of her all the way?”“No—no, not all the way, I don’t think,” said Betty, in the intervals of coiling up her long black hair. “I—I don’t quite remember.”“How tiresome you are!” said Eira; “you can’t have forgotten so quickly. I thought you’d have such a lot to tell me, and that you’d be in such high spirits.”“I never feel in high spirits when I’m tired,” said Betty, “though no doubt it isn’t right.—I don’t know,” she added to herself, “why I don’t feel as happy about it as Eira does. He couldn’t have been nicer, but can it be that he’s only friendly about usall?”
The summons had come from one of the younger girls, for they had reached a point on the road to Scaling Harbour at which there was a question of two ways thither.
“Shall we take the sea-road?” said Eira, “or the higher one?”
Frances hesitated and glanced at Horace.
“Which do you think gives the best view, the most picturesque to newcomers?” she asked.
“The sea-road, I should say,” he replied, “decidedly so. Shall we lead the way?” he went on, addressing Betty as he hastened forward to where she, Eira, and Miss Charlemont were standing; and in a moment or two, Frances, who by this time had attached herself to Madeleine and the two other men, heard by the sound of their merry voices that Horace’s spirits were at their highest.
“How considerate he is!” she thought to herself, “so careful not to involve me in any kind of notice. I wish I could—I do hope—” but then she put it all resolutely aside for the moment; the time had not yet come for a good thorough “thinking out” of it all, and in spite of Madeleine’s evident readiness to leave her undisturbed should she wish it, she joined with seeming interest in the talk going on around her, thereby winning still more golden opinions from her friend as to her unselfishness and self-control. For the little manoeuvres by which her brother had cleverly secured the covetedtête-à-têtehad been by no means unperceived by his sister.
A few minutes’ quick walking now brought the party on to what was called the sea-road; another quarter of an hour and the queer little village lay close before them. Unanimously they came to a halt.
“It is indeed picturesque,” said Gertrude, whose taste lay in the direction of sketching.
“If only it were summer—not too cold for sitting still!”
“Wait till we have gone a little farther,” said Horace. “It isn’t only the place, the people themselves will tempt you still more.”
And when they found themselves in the one straggling street, where the reddish sandstone cottages looked much as they might have done at any time since the famous Armada days, when—so ran the legend—the strange little colony had first been founded, Miss Charlemont fully agreed with him. Here and there swarthy-faced men were seated at their cottage doors, occupied in the never-failing resource of a fisherman’s “off-hours”—mending their nets. A few women looking out, or here and there gossiping with each other, had a strangely un-English air, not only as to their, in most cases, black hair and eyes, but in the very colour and tone of their carelessly adjusted garments, in which a vivid blue and almost orange-scarlet, however stained and faded, still predominated. The very children, from the tumbling-about babies to the bare-legged, brown-skinned urchins of both sexes, who, considering the cold especially, seemed to take life uncommonly easily, all shared the same distinct and peculiar characteristics.
The strangers were much struck.
“Curious,” said Mr Charlemont meditatively, “how the Southern strain is still so predominant. It reminds me of—” but his daughter interrupted him.
“It’s worth coming any distance to see,” she said enthusiastically. “Even the very smell of the place isn’t like an English village! Do you often come here?” she went on, turning to theMorionsisters.
“Idon’t,” Betty replied. “I like our own poor people far better. But Frances and Eira—and Madeleine too—have taken to rushing off here this winter, as often as they can get; once or twice a week sometimes.”
“What for?” asked Miss Charlemont. “Sketching? I don’t mean out of doors, of course, but the people themselves?” and as, at that moment, a woman passing along the road—a young and handsome woman—looked up with a smile and a half-graceful, half-bashful gesture of greeting, she added, glancing at her, “Is she a model of yours?”
Frances and Eira smiled.
“Oh no,” said the latter, “we are not half as accomplished as you think us. It is for something quite different that we come. And but for Madeleine we should never have been able to do it at all.”
Eira and Gertrude were now walking together; Horace and Betty behind them. Madeleine, who was just in front, caught Eira’s words, and looked back with a smile of deprecation.
“Don’t praise me so undeservedly,” she said. “I assure you, Gertrude, it is all their doing. I have only helped in the smallest way. I don’t see how I could possibly have done less.”
“Tell me about it,” said Gertrude to her companion; and Eira, by no means unwillingly, gave her a rapid little sketch of their “plan” for helping and instructing the poor, neglected fisher-folk of this outlying little village.
Gertrude listened with interest, the greater perhaps for the impression made upon her by the uncommon aspect of her surroundings.
“So you see,” Eira concluded, with her usual frankness, “we couldn’t possibly have managed it without Madeleine’s help, though Mrs Ramsay’s money did come in for the first start. Madeleine has given us, I know, all she possibly could, out of her own money.”
“But she has plenty,” said Gertrude, though with no wish to decry one for whom her admiration was unbounded.
“Of course I know she is rich,” said Eira in a lower voice; “but then she does and helps such heaps of things already. It isn’t as if this were her home. I don’t know,” she went on reflectively, “if she will be able to continue things here when she leaves. It doesn’t do to look forward—we had never hoped to manage half we have already got done this winter.”
“But doesn’t the village belong to Mr Morion, Mr Ryder Morion I mean?” asked Gertrude, a practical little person in her way.
“Onlypart of it,” was the reply; “and he has never,”—she stopped abruptly. “Oh, Gertrude,” she exclaimed—for the two young things had already arrived at the Christian-name stage of intimacy—“oh, Gertrude, speak of—” and again she stopped, for at that moment down a steep, rocky path, leading on to the main street from some cottages perched above, appeared two figures, those of the part-proprietor of the village and of Mr Darnley, the Craig Bay curate-in-charge, the eager aspirant to the same post at Scaling Harbour.
He was talking eagerly, with some explanatory gesticulation, to his companion as they came along. Mr Morion, on the contrary, looked cooler, almost colder, than his wont. It was he who first caught sight of the little procession of visitors. A shade, though but a slight one, of annoyance crossed his face: he had heard something of the projected expedition, but had hoped and intended to get his own business there completed in time to leave before coming across any of the others. But his investigations, even under Mr Darnley’s experienced guidance, had taken longer than he anticipated; taken longer and impressed him more deeply and more painfully than he had been in any way prepared for. But he was not the man to show this; on the contrary, he hastened forward with more than usual alacrity to meet the party.
“So there you are,” he said, in a pleasant but somewhat nonchalant manner. “I have had the start of you, however; indeed, I scarcely expected to see you down here.”
“But you will wait, now we have met, and walk back with us, won’t you?” said Madeleine. “You don’t know the treat that is in store for us all,” she went on, turning with her hearty smile to Frances and the others. “Tea and buns! half-past three, at Mrs Silver’s! I sent down about it this morning.”
“What a good idea!” “How nice!” were the exclamations that greeted this announcement. For the walk in the keen air and the very early luncheon had naturally an invigorating effect on everybody’s appetite.
“I am specially glad to hear of it,” said Mr Darnley, “on Mr Morion’s account. I’m afraid I have used you very badly,” he went on, turning to the person in question. “We have been at it since ten this morning, and you have had no luncheon at all. Though,” with a touch of admiration and pleasure that he was too young and enthusiastic to suppress, “I must say it wasn’t all my fault, you have gone into things so very thoroughly!”
A look of real annoyance flashed into Mr Morion’s eyes at these words, to be, however, as instantaneously expelled, for he caught sight of the flush of gratification on his companion’s eager, still boyish face, and he had not the heart to snub him. One person only, of those about him, saw and understood this little by-play, and that was Frances. And often in days to come she was glad that she had done so. For the memory of it helped to obviate, or at least modify, misconstruction of a character none too easy to interpret.
“And how about your own luncheon, my good fellow?” were the words genially substituted for the cold rejoinder which had been on the speaker’s lips. “You deserve at least three buns and two cups of tea.—Yes, Madeleine,” he went on, “yours was a capital thought, and if some one will lead the way to Mrs Silver’s we shall all gladly follow.”
“It is distinguished,” said Madeleine, “by being the cleanest cottage in the place, you will be glad to hear. Indeed,” catching sight of a slightly apprehensive look on Betty’s face, “it is more than that, it is reallyclean.”
“Thank goodness,” Betty murmured to herself, at which Horace, who was beside her, could not repress a smile.
“You don’t share your sister’s enthusiasm for—no, I won’t say ‘slumming,’ it is such a hateful word, and has been so abused,” he said.
“Slumming?” repeated Betty, “I don’t quite know what you mean.” And she looked up in his face naïvely.
The questioning in her eyes made her look even more childlike than usual. For a moment Horace seemed to have forgotten what they had been saying; then he pulled himself together, as it were.
“I am very glad you don’t,” he said, “and of course anything your sister does would be on quite different lines from that kind of sensational philanthropy. I only meant that you have a natural shrinking from—well, dirty cottages and people, and that sort of thing! I am sure I sympathise with you in it. Any one so sensitive—”
But, rather to his surprise, Betty’s expression had grown somewhat shamefaced.
“Oh,” she said quickly, “it’s just selfishness, I’m afraid. I often think I am rather the spoilt one at home; Frances and Eira are so good, and never think about themselves. I dare say disagreeable things are quite as disagreeableto themas to me. But they always save me from them in every way. I believe it began by my not being as strong as they when I was quite a little girl. And even mamma petted me much more than the others.”
“I don’t wonder at it,” said Horace; “there are some people made to be petted, and the world would be a worse place than it is without them.”
“But,” said Betty, again scarcely seeming to notice his words, and with a funny little air of dignity, “I am really not so babyish as you might think! With such an elder sister as Frances, how could I be? I do help a little, even in what they do here. I write out a good deal. We have made large sheets of directions in printed letters of what to do in accidents and so on, copied from our books, of course, and the others say I can print better than they can. So that issomething,” with a touch of satisfaction.
“Yes, indeed,” said her companion, “a pretty big something, I should say. It must be tiresome work. I hope,” he went on, with a little hesitation, “that now Ryder has seen things for himself more thoroughly than before—indeed, I doubt if he ever walked through this village before to-day—I hope that he will give some substantial help.”
“I hope so too,” said Betty dryly. “Oh,” she went on, with a little gasp, “itwouldbe nice to be rich!”
Horace’s face fell a little.
“Do you feel that?” he said quickly. “Don’t you think that people are often quite as happy, or happier, who are not very rich, especially if they are without great responsibilities? Of course few things would be worse than to be a large proprietor with lots of people you should look after, and no means for doing it.”
“Yes,” Betty agreed, “it reminds me of what mamma has often told us about grandpapa’s and Uncle Avone’s difficulties in Ireland. But with your Mr Morion it is quite different, of course—isn’t heveryrich?”
“I should say so,” said Horace.
“I don’t think I should wish to be very rich like that,” said Betty simply. “There would be such a lot of trouble about it, and I should not be clever enough to manage things well—even a woman’s part of things. Now Frances, for instance,” she went on thoughtlessly, “would be perfection in such a position.”
“I can well imagine it,” said Horace cordially; but, instantly realising that she had said one of the things she had better have left unsaid, Betty looked up at him with one of those sudden changes of expression peculiar to her, and by no means always easy to interpret.
“Oh, but don’t misunderstand about her,” she said. “She’s not a bit ambitious or fond of being important, or—or anything like that. She would be quite happy in a far simpler kind of life. Indeed, I don’t knowanysort of life she couldn’t fit herself into, though Eira and I can’t help feeling that she is thrown away here, in this little out-of-the-way corner.”
“But yet what would you do without her?” said Horace. “Could you—can you imagine for yourself—we’ll say—the ever being happy away from her?”
“Oh yes,” said Betty, eager to remove any false impression she might have given. “She often says it would be better for me to have to depend a little more on myself.”
“I can scarcely picture your ever being very independent,” said Horace. “I should not like to do so. But—you may not always have her to take care of you, and yet not be left quite to your own devices!”
He glanced down at her as he spoke, with some scrutiny in his smile.
“No,” she replied, in a matter-of-fact tone, “of course there would still be Eira, though she says she wouldmakeme be the elder sister.”
Mr Littlewood turned away half abruptly. “Here we are,” he remarked, “this must be Mrs Silver’s abode!”
He was right. The young woman who was to act as their hostess, or, as she would have expressed it, “to serve tea to the gentlefolk,” was on the lookout for them. She was a pleasing-looking person, though of a slightly different type from the people about, with fairer hair and skin, which rather curiously contrasted with her dark eyes. For her mother had been an “inlander,” to use the term of the fisher-people for any one not purely of themselves. Her husband did not appear. He had been out for two days, she informed her visitors, on some remark being made about the weather and the fishing prospects, but she expected him home that evening.
“Isn’t it dreadfully dull for you when he is away?” asked Gertrude Charlemont, “and don’t you get terribly frightened if you hear the wind at night?”
The young woman shook her head with a little smile.
“We get used to it, miss,” she replied. And Mr Morion, whom the girl’s questions had struck as scarcely judicious, came to Mrs Silver’s assistance.
“Dwellers by the sea learn to have brave hearts,” he said; “and then there is always the pleasure of a safe home-coming to look forward to.”
“It will be an out-of-the-way pleasant one to-night, if all’s well, thanks to you, sir,” the young woman replied; and turning to Frances, she added, “It’s the pigsty I’m thinking of, miss. I’m that pleased about it. We’ve been wishing for one so long. It’ll be company for me when Joe’s away!”
It was impossible not to laugh at this, impossible for Mr Morion not to join, though he had been more than half-inclined to be vexed at the matter being mentioned.
“There must be something Irish about these good people as well as Spanish,” he said, in a lower voice, as Mrs Silver, to his relief, turned her attention to the tea-table.
“Scarcely so,” said Frances in reply. “In Ireland the absence of a sty would certainly not be any difficulty in the way of keeping pigs!”
“No,” Horace agreed, “they would be in and out all over the place. Genuine company if you like!”
This provoked another laugh, for when people are inclined to be happy it takes very little to give things a merry turn. And tea at Mrs Silver’s proved a great success. There was not much time to spare after it was over, if they were to get home by a reasonable hour. A little détour by the shore, sufficient to give them some idea of the picturesqueness of the rugged coast, was all that could be attempted, and Gertrude Charlemont declared that by hook or by crook she must come back to the neighbourhood in the long-day season, for sketching purposes.
“Oh, I wish you would,” said Betty eagerly.—“Craig Bay is quite a nice place to stay at, isn’t it, Mr Littlewood?” she went on, as, happening to glance round, she caught sight of him at her side, “and we should so enjoy having friends there!”
“I should say you could get very comfortable quarters there,” he agreed heartily; “and I hear there is excellent fishing—river fishing—a little way inland. I mean to find out about it, and come down here again, later on, perhaps, before my leave is up. You won’t think me too much of a bad penny if I do, I hope, Miss Betty?”
Betty raised her eyes to his with a half-inquiry in them, which he did not understand.
“Of course not,” she said, the little flush in her cheeks which came with the words rendering her very charming at that moment. “Of course not; we should be only too pleased to think that you like the place, though it is so dull and out-of-the-way. Your all being here this winter will have quite spoilt us, I’m afraid,” with a little sigh. “It has been—it is—so—delightful.”
“You delight me by saying so,” was the quick answer, heard by no one but Betty herself, for somehow or other by this time she found that he and she had drifted a little apart from the others.
“If only I were Eira,” thought Betty, “what a good opportunity I could make of this for finding out a little more! but I get so shy and silly immediately,” and when she spoke again it was with a little effort.
“It is very pretty about here in the summer,” she said. “Up at Craig-Morion—I mean down here the seasons don’t make so much difference in the look of things. I’m glad,” she continued, “that we don’t live nearer the sea; it frightens me.”
“You have never been a voyage, I suppose?” said her companion. “You would soon get used to it, I dare say. Now-a-days, with the splendid boats there are, many people go backwards and forwards from India for the mere pleasure of the thing, you know.”
“Thank you,” said Betty, laughingly. “I’ve no ambition of the kind! Dull as it is here, I should rather stay safe on dry land.Franceslongs to travel, and I wish she had more chance of it! She is so clever, you know, she would find—”
“But you yourself,” persisted Horace, “you don’t intend surely to spend all your life in this little nest of a place? The Eyrie, as Madeleine calls it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Betty. “If I must, I must! Don’t make me discontented. I am afraid I am rather so already,” with a touch of penitence.
“And why shouldn’t you be?” he responded eagerly. “Think how young you are, and how—” here he checked himself—“how much there is to see in the world,” he added, rather lamely.
“But, you see,” said Betty, “I should scarcely be fit for it!—for making my way in society, or anything of that kind. I get frightened and stupid about nothing at all.”
She felt that he was looking at her with kindly sympathy, and, impressionable as she was, it encouraged her. Almost before she knew what she was about, she found herself giving him her innocent confidences to an extent which she had rarely, if ever, done to any one, certainly not to any man. And the way home seemed marvellously short that winter afternoon.
Long, it must be owned, it was not found by any of the little party. Gertrude and Eira were enjoying themselves under the escort of Horace’s friend, young French, who could make himself very entertaining; Mr Charlemont and Mr Darnley, on each side of Madeleine, were interesting her by a discussion on one of her pet hobbies in a philanthropic direction; and Frances, bringing up the rear with Mr Morion, found herself more nearly on common ground with him—thanks in part, no doubt, to the unexpected side-light Horace had thrown on his character—than a few hours previously she could have believed possible. And it was pleasant to her to feel that the young man’s influence bid fair to dissipate the prejudices she had half-unconsciously harboured. Once or twice even she glanced round with a half-formed wish that Horace should notice how well she and her far-off cousin were getting on. But he was some way ahead with Betty.
“I can tell him about it afterwards,” she thought, with a curious little thrill at the realisation of the confidence already existing between them. Though even without this new prepossession in his favour, Ryder Morion would probably have won his way towards her esteem and liking by the quiet, unassuming manner in which he told her of his increasing interest in, and sense of responsibility for, the till now almostterra incognitaof his northern possessions. It would have been affectation for him to avoid the subject after what the curate-in-charge had said, and the meeting himself on the very spot where help was most needed. And despite her own preoccupation of mind, Frances was too well trained in habitual unselfishness not to feel warmly delighted, almost indeed breathlessly so, at the projects as to which he consulted her, and the means which he proposed to lay at the disposal of herself and Mr Darnley.
Altogether the expedition seemed to have been eminently successful, and no one felt this more heartily than Eira, whose spirits were always ready to rise, and not easily depressed, save perhaps by chilblains, or the apprehension of them!
“Betty,” she said, when they were dressing rather hurriedly for dinner, “isn’t it all going on too beautifully?”
Betty was seated on the end of her bed looking somewhat fagged.
“Yes,” she agreed, “we have had a very nice day; but I must be quick!” starting up as she spoke.
“I thought it so considerate of him,” continued Eira, “to walk home withyou, not to make Frances, you see, too conspicuous, as it were. Was he talking of her all the way?”
“No—no, not all the way, I don’t think,” said Betty, in the intervals of coiling up her long black hair. “I—I don’t quite remember.”
“How tiresome you are!” said Eira; “you can’t have forgotten so quickly. I thought you’d have such a lot to tell me, and that you’d be in such high spirits.”
“I never feel in high spirits when I’m tired,” said Betty, “though no doubt it isn’t right.—I don’t know,” she added to herself, “why I don’t feel as happy about it as Eira does. He couldn’t have been nicer, but can it be that he’s only friendly about usall?”