Chapter Four.A First Step.“Winifred,” said Mrs Balderson, the next morning but one, at the breakfast-table, “here is something that will please you, I think,” and she held out to Miss Maryon a letter she had just opened.It was from Lady Campion, asking them—the sisters and their hostess, or, if Mrs Balderson were otherwise engaged, the Maryon girls by themselves—to tea that same day, to meet Miss Norreys!Winifred’s eyes sparkled.“Oh, how delightful!” she said. “How kind of her to have remembered about it!”But Mrs Balderson’s face had clouded over with an expression of perplexity.“It is unlucky,” she said. “I had forgotten for the moment that we were engaged to go with my cousins, the Nestertons, to the Exhibition of Embroidery in Street, and to tea with them afterwards. Itisa pity. Mrs Nesterton took some trouble to arrange it, and it is the last day of the Exhibition.”“Oh, but it really doesn’t matter,” said Miss Maryon, and on Mrs Balderson’s looking up with some surprise—for she had supposed that Winifred was exceedingly anxious to meet the woman she had so admired—“I mean,” she went on calmly, “I don’t at all mind missing the Exhibition, and I really don’t know the Nestertons, you see, dear Mrs Balderson.”Mrs Balderson did not feel very “dear” at that moment.“There are other things to be considered,” she said, stiffly. “Youwerevery eager to see the Exhibition, and I cannot be rude to my cousins, whether you know them or not, my dear Winifred. Besides, there is your sister as well as yourself. What do you say, Celia?”It was new for Winifred to take in that Celia could have a voice of her own apart from hers; it was new for Celia to realise the fact. But she saw that Mrs Balderson was annoyed; she had infinitely greater power of putting herself in another’s place than was possessed by her elder sister.“I should be very sorry not to see the embroidery,” she replied, quickly, her face flushing a little, “besides it would never do to be so rude to Mrs Nesterton.”“I think Lady Campion deserves some consideration too,” said Winifred, unyieldingly. “She is a very busy person, and she has evidently planned this on purpose to please m— us. And Miss Norreys must be a still busier person. I don’t see that Mrs Nestertoncouldbe offended if it were all explained to her.”There was something in what she said as regarded Lady Campion and Miss Norreys. But Mrs Balderson, for once, was really vexed.“Engagements are engagements,” she said, in a dry tone not usual with her.Celia’s face was still flushed. If only she could give Winifred a hint to be more deferential! She was so used to taking the lead at home, thought Celia, she could not help that authoritative manner.Eric Balderson had watched the breakfast-table drama with slightly cynical interest. It gratified him to see Miss Maryon showing herself to disadvantage. He did not like her. But he loved his mother, and he liked Celia. He did not wish them to be worried. And he was of a kindlier nature than he allowed to himself. So he came to the rescue.“Can’t you make a compromise?” he said. “Supposing Miss Maryon goes to Lady Campion’s, and you, mother, and Miss Celia Maryon keep to the Nesterton engagement? You might call for Miss Maryon on your way back, which would give Ce— Miss Celia Maryon,” with a slight twinkle of amusement in his eyes at his own involuntary freedom, “a good chance of seeing Miss Norreys too. And,”—with an obtrusively ponderous sigh—“if it would smooth down Cousin Barbara, I certainly haven’t called there for an immense time. I might—there’s no saying to what lengths the spirit of self-sacrifice won’t carry me—Imightmeet you myself at the Exhibition, and go back to the Nestertons’ with you.”Mrs Balderson’s face cleared. She hated being vexed with anybody; it was quite against her nature, if not her principles; she was already regretting her cold words to Winifred, and was pleased to find a consistent way out of the difficulty.“That would beverynice,” she said, heartily. “The Nestertons would be so pleased to have you, Eric, that I daresay they would scarcely regret even Winifred.”It was hardly in human nature to have refrained from this little hit.“Exactly,” said Winifred, coolly. “They can’t miss me when they don’t know me. Very likely they will not even notice I am not there.”Her coolness struck Celia as it had never done before. She would have given worlds to hint to her sister that something in the way of thanks for falling in with her wishes, to both her hostess and her son, would not have been unbecoming. But the suggestion would have been thrown away upon Miss Maryon, who was a striking example of the possibility of not seeing what she did not want to see. A word timidly hazarded by Celia on the subject, when they found themselves alone for a moment a short time afterwards, showed the younger sister that any such effort was better unmade.The afternoon’s programme was adhered to, Celia setting off with Mrs Balderson to the “rendezvous” at the Exhibition, in apparently great content, for, if she were secretly disappointed at the small chance of her having more than a glimpse of Hertha Norreys, she was too unselfish and too sensible of what was due to her kind old friend to show it.And at about a quarter to five, Winifred, in happy independence, and blissfully unconscious of having in any way fallen short in consideration of others or deference to their wishes, found herself making her way into Lady Campion’s drawing-room.Her heart—for she was a girlish creature after all—beat considerably faster than usual: much faster, in all probability, than if she had been about to be introduced to some personage of exalted rank or social position. Her short-sightedness added somewhat also to her unusual embarrassment. For the room was fitfully, rather than dimly, lighted, after the fashion of drawing-rooms of the present day; and Winifred was used to old-fashioned lamps and white-panelled wainscoting, reflecting the clear, generally diffused radiance. And there seemed to her to be a whole crowd of people sitting or standing about, as somewhat awkwardly, only just avoiding a catastrophe of some kind, she threaded her way through the too abundant pretty things on every side to the lady of the house.She was not annoyed or ashamed of herself, however. She was too much in earnest about meeting Miss Norreys to think about herself. So there was real simplicity in her bearing, though, for once in her life, she looked decidedly timid. And the look added wonderfully to her charm—in some eyes at least.It is to be doubted if Hertha would ever have “taken to” the girl as she did, but for the gentleness and appeal about her, this first time they met.For Lady Campion had found time to whisper a word or two to her friend when Miss Maryon’s name was announced.“This is one of the little country girls—theone,” she said, “who fell so desperately in love with you the other day, as I was telling you. Be nice to her, poor dear, won’t you? Don’t be stuck-up and stand-off.”For both these dreadful things Miss Norreyscouldbe, said rumour—and rumour sometimes speaks truly, on occasion. But not when she was sorry for any one, not when her large, pitiful heart was touched; then no woman could be sweeter and gentler and less alarming than Hertha.And her first glance at Winifred made her sorry for her. Lady Campion’s “poor dear” had misled Miss Norreys. She had no idea that the girl was one of the prosperous of the earth, and Winifred was plainly dressed. She was neat, but that was about all. Her morning attire left more to be desired than her evening toilettes, which, though a trifle heavy, perhaps, and on the outside of simplicity, were yet, as I said, of rich material, whereas her country ideas had not risen far as regarded the tailor-made tweeds and black or blue serges which were her usual winter garments.And the room was imperfectly lighted. All that Miss Norreys saw was a girl of not more than average height and slightly square build, standing with perplexed eyes and an unmistakable air of strangeness, looking about for Lady Campion.The face was a good one, good in form and pleasant in colouring; the eyes, despite their bewilderment, were clear and sweet; the whole was sweeter than Winifred’s face was wont to be, thanks to the passing touch of wistfulness and perplexity.In a moment Lady Campion was greeting her, exerting the charm of manner on which she not unjustly prided herself, to make the girl feel at her ease.And soon Winifred found herself replying, with her usual readiness, to her hostess’s inquiries as to what had become of Mrs Balderson and “your sister.”“They are coming later,” said Miss Maryon. “They have gone first to the Lace Exhibition, in Street, and then to the Nestertons. It was an old engagement, but Mrs Balderson will certainly call here on her way home.”“It was very good ofyouto come,” said Lady Campion. “It would have been too bad if you had all failed us.”“I was only too delighted,” said Winifred. “I am so glad to see you again, and,”—with a not unbecoming hesitation and rising colour, as she glanced towards where she had, by this time, discovered Hertha—“you know I amsograteful to you for giving me the chance of meeting Miss Norreys. It was so very good of you to remember my wish.”That Lady Campion wasstillremembering it she felt doubtful, as other guests came crowding round her, and she showed signs of moving away.“I must say it right out, or she will forget to introduce me,” thought Winifred, with her customary determination.But Lady Campion was not quite so flighty and unreliable as she got the credit of being. And she was really good-natured; she rather liked Winifred’s downrightness. With a hand on her arm, she gently drew the girl forward towards the couch where sat Miss Norreys, a not uninterested spectator of the little drama.“Lady Campionisa kind woman,” she said to herself. For there had been times when she was inclined to judge the lady in question too severely. With all her gifts, Hertha did not possess the capricious power so often found where one could least expect it, so even more frequently absent where one would have made sure of it—of correct, almost unfailing discernment of character. She was often mistaken, and being by nature much more enthusiastic than she allowed to appear, she had often been disappointed. And this had resulted in a certain hardening of her sympathies, which one felt to be perplexing.Sometimes, too, she had found herself obliged to reverse an unfavourable impression—a demand of honesty which brings with it some sting of mortification, interfering with the softening effect of what should be a gratifying discovery.But hers was a character to mellow as she grew older. And with her a spark of pity was at all times, enough to ensure a glow of kindly interest.This was what happened just now. She rose from her seat as Lady Campion and Winifred approached, and held out her hand with ready graciousness to the—as she imagined—somewhat shrinking girl, who was feeling herself, no doubt, strange and out of her element.“It would have been kinder to have asked her by herself—or at least not among quite such a crowd,” she thought.And to any one knowing Winifred, there would have been something almost amusing in the half-protecting tone with which Miss Norreys at once addressed her. But if love is blind, so is youthful enthusiasm, and Winifred was truly enthusiastic about the young singer. More than this, that any one could by any possibility look uponheras an object of protection or pity had never dawned upon the girl, whose self-confidence and matter-of-fact preoccupation with her own ideas often dulled her perceptions. If she noticed any special warmth in Miss Norreys’ greeting, she put it down, though perhaps scarcely in so many words, to the favourable impression she herself made on her new acquaintance.“We took to each other from the first moment,” she said to Celia afterwards in describing the meeting.“Will you come and sit down by me for a little—there is plenty of room on the sofa?” said Hertha, and Winifred delightedly obeyed. “Lady Campion tells me,” she went on, “that this is, practically, almost your first visit to London. I think I envy you.”“Do you?” said Winifred, not quite sure of her meaning. “I—I really don’t know. We live quite,quitein the country, you see. It is, of course, very interesting to see London for the first time when one is old enough to take it in better, but—”“That is what I meant,” interrupted Miss Norreys, pleased at being understood. “I did not mean—at least I was not just then thinking of the other side—the delights of true country life, of ‘quite,quitein the country’ life,” with a little smile.“Oh!” said Winifred with a sigh. “If you knew what it was—all the year round—so monotonous, sonarrow. I feel, since coming here, as if all my time hitherto had been wasted.”“Poor child!” thought Miss Norreys, “a country parson’s daughter, I think Helena Campion said and,of course, poor. I can fancy the life must be rather terrible—grinding away to make both ends meet. Probably a lot of younger brothers and sisters. And she is evidently a clever girl—a girl of ideas.”“It is never too late to mend,” she said, cheerfully. “You will go home enriched by a store of new thoughts and knowledge. I doubt if you would have benefited in the same way had you seen more of this wonderful—yes, it is wonderful—modern London life when you were younger. Though you are very young still.”“No,” said Winifred, quaintly, with a little shake of her head, “I am not very young. And—I have come up to London with an object. I have waited so long, and I have tried to be patient! But now, at last, I do trust I am to find an opening. Imustget something to do—a career. It was surely a good omen that I should have seen you, Miss Norreys, the very first day, for I feel you will sympathise with me—you who have risen above the stupid old-fashioned trammels so grandly. Of course I know there can be no comparison—you are a genius,Ihave only very ordinary powers very imperfectly trained. But I have determination and courage. I feel it is in me to dosomething—not to be condemned to the terribly narrow life, which is all I have to look to unless I succeed.”She spoke so rapidly, and yet so earnestly, that Hertha could not attempt to stop her. Yet it was hardly the place or time for a personal discussion of the kind. Miss Norreys felt touched, and yet a trifle annoyed. It was scarcely fair of Lady Campion, who must have known all about this girl, to have encouraged her to thus appeal to her, a stranger, for advice and assistance. For, in plain English, these, no doubt, were what she was in want of.“And what can I do for her?” thought Hertha. “My world is the musical world. She does not speak of any special gifts in that direction. Yet, poor girl, evidently she is in the right about doingsomething. I do sympathise with that. If I had had no music in me, no voice, or no distinct talent, still I could have donesomething, rather than drag on, striving to make both ends meet, with no energy left for better things, as some poor women do.”These reflections passed through her mind, softening her momentary irritation. But for a few minutes she sat silent.Winifred watched her intently.“You will advise me?” she said at last, in a half-whisper. “You do sympathise with me?”Miss Norreys roused herself.“My dear Miss Maryon,” she said, “of course I sympathise with you; I understand the position only too well, and I feel for you very much. But what can I do? You have no marked musical talent, I suppose; the only advice of mine really worth anything, for it is backed by my own experience, would refer to a musical career.”Winifred shook her head.“No,” she said. “I am not musical. I wish I were—at least—no, I am not sure that that is the gift I covet most. Yet, do not misunderstand me,” she added hastily; “Ilovemusic. When listening to some music, when listening to your voice, I feel as if my soul were awakening, as if it had found itself.”She was in earnest—her eyes glowed, her really fine features seemed full of emotion; yet, was it her extreme, though unconscious, egotism that slightly repelled Miss Norreys?“I wish she were not so high-flown,” she thought. “Still, she is not affected: she does not mean to be so, at any rate. And she is candid. But I do love simplicity. I don’t think she would ever do to be a governess, but probably she has no thought of so commonplace a career.”“Then what—in what direction do you mean to turn?” she asked aloud. “You have thought too much about it not to have some definite ideas?”“I have several,” Winifred replied eagerly. “I ask nothing better than to tell you all. And what I thought you would advise me about was as to living in London: I must arrange that almost first of anything. Don’t you think I am quite old enough to live alone?”“Certainly not,” Miss Norreys replied, with a smile. “Besides, you would find it very expensive if you care about any sort of comfort.”“I don’t,” said Winifred, confidently. “But—well, yes, I suppose I must consider it to some extent, for the sake of my people, you see—and—if you really think I can’t live alone—”But at that moment Hertha saw approaching her a great friend of hers—a man to whom she was bound by long-standing ties of affection and gratitude, but whom, owing to his and her own busy lives, she met less frequently than she would have wished. She turned to Winifred—“I must speak to Mr—to the man who had just come in,” she said, half-rising from her seat.“Some other time, perhaps, Miss Maryon—”“How tiresome!” said Winifred. “Just when we were getting into a really nice talk. Cannot you just say a word or two to him, and come back again, Miss Norreys?”But Hertha was on her feet by this time.“We must arrange some other day. I will write to you,” she said, hurriedly, eager not to miss the pleasant chance before her.And Winifred remained alone on the sofa. She was satisfied on the whole; she had made a beginning. Miss Norreys was appreciative, and she felt sure of her ground with her.“If such a thing could be as my living withher!” thought Winifred. “That would be ideal. Whatever work I take up, I could manage to fit it in to such an arrangement. And if I decide on writing as my principal occupation, of course I shall be very independent—pen and ink can do their work anywhere.”She watched Miss Norreys and the tall stranger—a man of forty or thereabouts—slightly grey, and with a somewhat peculiar stoop.“How good she is!” thought Winifred; “I can see he is boring her. I wonder what they are talking about.”Better, perhaps, for her that she could not hear. “I did not interrupt you, I hope,” the new-comer was saying. “You seemed rather engrossed with that little person on the sofa. But I came here on purpose to see you.”“I hoped, too, I should seeyou,” she replied. “No, the girl over there is a stranger to me, Helena Campion introduced us—rather rashly, for the poor thing imagines I can help her, and I really can’t. She has to make her way in the world, and wants advice. I am sorry for her, but—I am really so busy.”“My dear, you must not take any more burdens upon you. You really mustnot,” said her old friend, decidedly. “What does the girl want? She is a lady, I suppose—well educated? I might introduce her to the ‘Reasonable Help Society.’ They are increasing their staff, and she might get a small salary.”Miss Norreys looked and felt grateful.“It would be most good of you,” she said. “Ishouldbe glad to help her, or, indeed, any one so placed, but the little I can do is in my own line, and I am overwhelmed with applications for assistance and advice in that direction.”Mr Montague nodded sympathisingly.“No one would believe it,” continued Hertha, with a half-rueful smile, “I could easily spend all my time in answering letters, trying songs, listening to would-be vocalists, and where would my own work be then? Yet the service which each asks—the individual service—seems so small. But how they mount up!”“It is the same in every department,” her friend replied. “Once your name gets before the world, people seem to think you are common property, and have no right to your own time and strength. Literary people are even more bothered than you, if that is any comfort to you. For it is not every one that can deceive him or herself into imagining they possess musical gifts, whereaseverybodynowadays has a try at authorship.”And if Hertha’s smile had been rueful, Mr Montague’s was grim.“This girl isnotmusical, Heaven be praised!” Miss Norreys replied.“I rejoice to hear it—for your sake,” he answered, fervently. “Tell me her name,” and he drew out a tiny note-book.“Maryon—Miss Maryon—that is all I know,” said Hertha.“Miss Marion,” he wrote, “Marionwhat?”“Oh, it is her surname—M-a-r-y, not ‘i’,” she corrected. “Lady Campion mentioned it in her note. A Miss Maryon who was dying to meet me, or some nonsense.”“It is too bad,” Mr Montague repeated. “But I will see what I can do, and she must call at the office to be examined as to her capabilities. ‘Maryon,’ an uncommon name. There are some rich people—a very old family—Maryons down in Brakeshire.”“Ah, she can’t belong to them, poor girl,” said Hertha.And then, feeling she had done her duty, she and Mr Montague turned to other things.
“Winifred,” said Mrs Balderson, the next morning but one, at the breakfast-table, “here is something that will please you, I think,” and she held out to Miss Maryon a letter she had just opened.
It was from Lady Campion, asking them—the sisters and their hostess, or, if Mrs Balderson were otherwise engaged, the Maryon girls by themselves—to tea that same day, to meet Miss Norreys!
Winifred’s eyes sparkled.
“Oh, how delightful!” she said. “How kind of her to have remembered about it!”
But Mrs Balderson’s face had clouded over with an expression of perplexity.
“It is unlucky,” she said. “I had forgotten for the moment that we were engaged to go with my cousins, the Nestertons, to the Exhibition of Embroidery in Street, and to tea with them afterwards. Itisa pity. Mrs Nesterton took some trouble to arrange it, and it is the last day of the Exhibition.”
“Oh, but it really doesn’t matter,” said Miss Maryon, and on Mrs Balderson’s looking up with some surprise—for she had supposed that Winifred was exceedingly anxious to meet the woman she had so admired—“I mean,” she went on calmly, “I don’t at all mind missing the Exhibition, and I really don’t know the Nestertons, you see, dear Mrs Balderson.”
Mrs Balderson did not feel very “dear” at that moment.
“There are other things to be considered,” she said, stiffly. “Youwerevery eager to see the Exhibition, and I cannot be rude to my cousins, whether you know them or not, my dear Winifred. Besides, there is your sister as well as yourself. What do you say, Celia?”
It was new for Winifred to take in that Celia could have a voice of her own apart from hers; it was new for Celia to realise the fact. But she saw that Mrs Balderson was annoyed; she had infinitely greater power of putting herself in another’s place than was possessed by her elder sister.
“I should be very sorry not to see the embroidery,” she replied, quickly, her face flushing a little, “besides it would never do to be so rude to Mrs Nesterton.”
“I think Lady Campion deserves some consideration too,” said Winifred, unyieldingly. “She is a very busy person, and she has evidently planned this on purpose to please m— us. And Miss Norreys must be a still busier person. I don’t see that Mrs Nestertoncouldbe offended if it were all explained to her.”
There was something in what she said as regarded Lady Campion and Miss Norreys. But Mrs Balderson, for once, was really vexed.
“Engagements are engagements,” she said, in a dry tone not usual with her.
Celia’s face was still flushed. If only she could give Winifred a hint to be more deferential! She was so used to taking the lead at home, thought Celia, she could not help that authoritative manner.
Eric Balderson had watched the breakfast-table drama with slightly cynical interest. It gratified him to see Miss Maryon showing herself to disadvantage. He did not like her. But he loved his mother, and he liked Celia. He did not wish them to be worried. And he was of a kindlier nature than he allowed to himself. So he came to the rescue.
“Can’t you make a compromise?” he said. “Supposing Miss Maryon goes to Lady Campion’s, and you, mother, and Miss Celia Maryon keep to the Nesterton engagement? You might call for Miss Maryon on your way back, which would give Ce— Miss Celia Maryon,” with a slight twinkle of amusement in his eyes at his own involuntary freedom, “a good chance of seeing Miss Norreys too. And,”—with an obtrusively ponderous sigh—“if it would smooth down Cousin Barbara, I certainly haven’t called there for an immense time. I might—there’s no saying to what lengths the spirit of self-sacrifice won’t carry me—Imightmeet you myself at the Exhibition, and go back to the Nestertons’ with you.”
Mrs Balderson’s face cleared. She hated being vexed with anybody; it was quite against her nature, if not her principles; she was already regretting her cold words to Winifred, and was pleased to find a consistent way out of the difficulty.
“That would beverynice,” she said, heartily. “The Nestertons would be so pleased to have you, Eric, that I daresay they would scarcely regret even Winifred.”
It was hardly in human nature to have refrained from this little hit.
“Exactly,” said Winifred, coolly. “They can’t miss me when they don’t know me. Very likely they will not even notice I am not there.”
Her coolness struck Celia as it had never done before. She would have given worlds to hint to her sister that something in the way of thanks for falling in with her wishes, to both her hostess and her son, would not have been unbecoming. But the suggestion would have been thrown away upon Miss Maryon, who was a striking example of the possibility of not seeing what she did not want to see. A word timidly hazarded by Celia on the subject, when they found themselves alone for a moment a short time afterwards, showed the younger sister that any such effort was better unmade.
The afternoon’s programme was adhered to, Celia setting off with Mrs Balderson to the “rendezvous” at the Exhibition, in apparently great content, for, if she were secretly disappointed at the small chance of her having more than a glimpse of Hertha Norreys, she was too unselfish and too sensible of what was due to her kind old friend to show it.
And at about a quarter to five, Winifred, in happy independence, and blissfully unconscious of having in any way fallen short in consideration of others or deference to their wishes, found herself making her way into Lady Campion’s drawing-room.
Her heart—for she was a girlish creature after all—beat considerably faster than usual: much faster, in all probability, than if she had been about to be introduced to some personage of exalted rank or social position. Her short-sightedness added somewhat also to her unusual embarrassment. For the room was fitfully, rather than dimly, lighted, after the fashion of drawing-rooms of the present day; and Winifred was used to old-fashioned lamps and white-panelled wainscoting, reflecting the clear, generally diffused radiance. And there seemed to her to be a whole crowd of people sitting or standing about, as somewhat awkwardly, only just avoiding a catastrophe of some kind, she threaded her way through the too abundant pretty things on every side to the lady of the house.
She was not annoyed or ashamed of herself, however. She was too much in earnest about meeting Miss Norreys to think about herself. So there was real simplicity in her bearing, though, for once in her life, she looked decidedly timid. And the look added wonderfully to her charm—in some eyes at least.
It is to be doubted if Hertha would ever have “taken to” the girl as she did, but for the gentleness and appeal about her, this first time they met.
For Lady Campion had found time to whisper a word or two to her friend when Miss Maryon’s name was announced.
“This is one of the little country girls—theone,” she said, “who fell so desperately in love with you the other day, as I was telling you. Be nice to her, poor dear, won’t you? Don’t be stuck-up and stand-off.”
For both these dreadful things Miss Norreyscouldbe, said rumour—and rumour sometimes speaks truly, on occasion. But not when she was sorry for any one, not when her large, pitiful heart was touched; then no woman could be sweeter and gentler and less alarming than Hertha.
And her first glance at Winifred made her sorry for her. Lady Campion’s “poor dear” had misled Miss Norreys. She had no idea that the girl was one of the prosperous of the earth, and Winifred was plainly dressed. She was neat, but that was about all. Her morning attire left more to be desired than her evening toilettes, which, though a trifle heavy, perhaps, and on the outside of simplicity, were yet, as I said, of rich material, whereas her country ideas had not risen far as regarded the tailor-made tweeds and black or blue serges which were her usual winter garments.
And the room was imperfectly lighted. All that Miss Norreys saw was a girl of not more than average height and slightly square build, standing with perplexed eyes and an unmistakable air of strangeness, looking about for Lady Campion.
The face was a good one, good in form and pleasant in colouring; the eyes, despite their bewilderment, were clear and sweet; the whole was sweeter than Winifred’s face was wont to be, thanks to the passing touch of wistfulness and perplexity.
In a moment Lady Campion was greeting her, exerting the charm of manner on which she not unjustly prided herself, to make the girl feel at her ease.
And soon Winifred found herself replying, with her usual readiness, to her hostess’s inquiries as to what had become of Mrs Balderson and “your sister.”
“They are coming later,” said Miss Maryon. “They have gone first to the Lace Exhibition, in Street, and then to the Nestertons. It was an old engagement, but Mrs Balderson will certainly call here on her way home.”
“It was very good ofyouto come,” said Lady Campion. “It would have been too bad if you had all failed us.”
“I was only too delighted,” said Winifred. “I am so glad to see you again, and,”—with a not unbecoming hesitation and rising colour, as she glanced towards where she had, by this time, discovered Hertha—“you know I amsograteful to you for giving me the chance of meeting Miss Norreys. It was so very good of you to remember my wish.”
That Lady Campion wasstillremembering it she felt doubtful, as other guests came crowding round her, and she showed signs of moving away.
“I must say it right out, or she will forget to introduce me,” thought Winifred, with her customary determination.
But Lady Campion was not quite so flighty and unreliable as she got the credit of being. And she was really good-natured; she rather liked Winifred’s downrightness. With a hand on her arm, she gently drew the girl forward towards the couch where sat Miss Norreys, a not uninterested spectator of the little drama.
“Lady Campionisa kind woman,” she said to herself. For there had been times when she was inclined to judge the lady in question too severely. With all her gifts, Hertha did not possess the capricious power so often found where one could least expect it, so even more frequently absent where one would have made sure of it—of correct, almost unfailing discernment of character. She was often mistaken, and being by nature much more enthusiastic than she allowed to appear, she had often been disappointed. And this had resulted in a certain hardening of her sympathies, which one felt to be perplexing.Sometimes, too, she had found herself obliged to reverse an unfavourable impression—a demand of honesty which brings with it some sting of mortification, interfering with the softening effect of what should be a gratifying discovery.
But hers was a character to mellow as she grew older. And with her a spark of pity was at all times, enough to ensure a glow of kindly interest.
This was what happened just now. She rose from her seat as Lady Campion and Winifred approached, and held out her hand with ready graciousness to the—as she imagined—somewhat shrinking girl, who was feeling herself, no doubt, strange and out of her element.
“It would have been kinder to have asked her by herself—or at least not among quite such a crowd,” she thought.
And to any one knowing Winifred, there would have been something almost amusing in the half-protecting tone with which Miss Norreys at once addressed her. But if love is blind, so is youthful enthusiasm, and Winifred was truly enthusiastic about the young singer. More than this, that any one could by any possibility look uponheras an object of protection or pity had never dawned upon the girl, whose self-confidence and matter-of-fact preoccupation with her own ideas often dulled her perceptions. If she noticed any special warmth in Miss Norreys’ greeting, she put it down, though perhaps scarcely in so many words, to the favourable impression she herself made on her new acquaintance.
“We took to each other from the first moment,” she said to Celia afterwards in describing the meeting.
“Will you come and sit down by me for a little—there is plenty of room on the sofa?” said Hertha, and Winifred delightedly obeyed. “Lady Campion tells me,” she went on, “that this is, practically, almost your first visit to London. I think I envy you.”
“Do you?” said Winifred, not quite sure of her meaning. “I—I really don’t know. We live quite,quitein the country, you see. It is, of course, very interesting to see London for the first time when one is old enough to take it in better, but—”
“That is what I meant,” interrupted Miss Norreys, pleased at being understood. “I did not mean—at least I was not just then thinking of the other side—the delights of true country life, of ‘quite,quitein the country’ life,” with a little smile.
“Oh!” said Winifred with a sigh. “If you knew what it was—all the year round—so monotonous, sonarrow. I feel, since coming here, as if all my time hitherto had been wasted.”
“Poor child!” thought Miss Norreys, “a country parson’s daughter, I think Helena Campion said and,of course, poor. I can fancy the life must be rather terrible—grinding away to make both ends meet. Probably a lot of younger brothers and sisters. And she is evidently a clever girl—a girl of ideas.”
“It is never too late to mend,” she said, cheerfully. “You will go home enriched by a store of new thoughts and knowledge. I doubt if you would have benefited in the same way had you seen more of this wonderful—yes, it is wonderful—modern London life when you were younger. Though you are very young still.”
“No,” said Winifred, quaintly, with a little shake of her head, “I am not very young. And—I have come up to London with an object. I have waited so long, and I have tried to be patient! But now, at last, I do trust I am to find an opening. Imustget something to do—a career. It was surely a good omen that I should have seen you, Miss Norreys, the very first day, for I feel you will sympathise with me—you who have risen above the stupid old-fashioned trammels so grandly. Of course I know there can be no comparison—you are a genius,Ihave only very ordinary powers very imperfectly trained. But I have determination and courage. I feel it is in me to dosomething—not to be condemned to the terribly narrow life, which is all I have to look to unless I succeed.”
She spoke so rapidly, and yet so earnestly, that Hertha could not attempt to stop her. Yet it was hardly the place or time for a personal discussion of the kind. Miss Norreys felt touched, and yet a trifle annoyed. It was scarcely fair of Lady Campion, who must have known all about this girl, to have encouraged her to thus appeal to her, a stranger, for advice and assistance. For, in plain English, these, no doubt, were what she was in want of.
“And what can I do for her?” thought Hertha. “My world is the musical world. She does not speak of any special gifts in that direction. Yet, poor girl, evidently she is in the right about doingsomething. I do sympathise with that. If I had had no music in me, no voice, or no distinct talent, still I could have donesomething, rather than drag on, striving to make both ends meet, with no energy left for better things, as some poor women do.”
These reflections passed through her mind, softening her momentary irritation. But for a few minutes she sat silent.
Winifred watched her intently.
“You will advise me?” she said at last, in a half-whisper. “You do sympathise with me?”
Miss Norreys roused herself.
“My dear Miss Maryon,” she said, “of course I sympathise with you; I understand the position only too well, and I feel for you very much. But what can I do? You have no marked musical talent, I suppose; the only advice of mine really worth anything, for it is backed by my own experience, would refer to a musical career.”
Winifred shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I am not musical. I wish I were—at least—no, I am not sure that that is the gift I covet most. Yet, do not misunderstand me,” she added hastily; “Ilovemusic. When listening to some music, when listening to your voice, I feel as if my soul were awakening, as if it had found itself.”
She was in earnest—her eyes glowed, her really fine features seemed full of emotion; yet, was it her extreme, though unconscious, egotism that slightly repelled Miss Norreys?
“I wish she were not so high-flown,” she thought. “Still, she is not affected: she does not mean to be so, at any rate. And she is candid. But I do love simplicity. I don’t think she would ever do to be a governess, but probably she has no thought of so commonplace a career.”
“Then what—in what direction do you mean to turn?” she asked aloud. “You have thought too much about it not to have some definite ideas?”
“I have several,” Winifred replied eagerly. “I ask nothing better than to tell you all. And what I thought you would advise me about was as to living in London: I must arrange that almost first of anything. Don’t you think I am quite old enough to live alone?”
“Certainly not,” Miss Norreys replied, with a smile. “Besides, you would find it very expensive if you care about any sort of comfort.”
“I don’t,” said Winifred, confidently. “But—well, yes, I suppose I must consider it to some extent, for the sake of my people, you see—and—if you really think I can’t live alone—”
But at that moment Hertha saw approaching her a great friend of hers—a man to whom she was bound by long-standing ties of affection and gratitude, but whom, owing to his and her own busy lives, she met less frequently than she would have wished. She turned to Winifred—
“I must speak to Mr—to the man who had just come in,” she said, half-rising from her seat.
“Some other time, perhaps, Miss Maryon—”
“How tiresome!” said Winifred. “Just when we were getting into a really nice talk. Cannot you just say a word or two to him, and come back again, Miss Norreys?”
But Hertha was on her feet by this time.
“We must arrange some other day. I will write to you,” she said, hurriedly, eager not to miss the pleasant chance before her.
And Winifred remained alone on the sofa. She was satisfied on the whole; she had made a beginning. Miss Norreys was appreciative, and she felt sure of her ground with her.
“If such a thing could be as my living withher!” thought Winifred. “That would be ideal. Whatever work I take up, I could manage to fit it in to such an arrangement. And if I decide on writing as my principal occupation, of course I shall be very independent—pen and ink can do their work anywhere.”
She watched Miss Norreys and the tall stranger—a man of forty or thereabouts—slightly grey, and with a somewhat peculiar stoop.
“How good she is!” thought Winifred; “I can see he is boring her. I wonder what they are talking about.”
Better, perhaps, for her that she could not hear. “I did not interrupt you, I hope,” the new-comer was saying. “You seemed rather engrossed with that little person on the sofa. But I came here on purpose to see you.”
“I hoped, too, I should seeyou,” she replied. “No, the girl over there is a stranger to me, Helena Campion introduced us—rather rashly, for the poor thing imagines I can help her, and I really can’t. She has to make her way in the world, and wants advice. I am sorry for her, but—I am really so busy.”
“My dear, you must not take any more burdens upon you. You really mustnot,” said her old friend, decidedly. “What does the girl want? She is a lady, I suppose—well educated? I might introduce her to the ‘Reasonable Help Society.’ They are increasing their staff, and she might get a small salary.”
Miss Norreys looked and felt grateful.
“It would be most good of you,” she said. “Ishouldbe glad to help her, or, indeed, any one so placed, but the little I can do is in my own line, and I am overwhelmed with applications for assistance and advice in that direction.”
Mr Montague nodded sympathisingly.
“No one would believe it,” continued Hertha, with a half-rueful smile, “I could easily spend all my time in answering letters, trying songs, listening to would-be vocalists, and where would my own work be then? Yet the service which each asks—the individual service—seems so small. But how they mount up!”
“It is the same in every department,” her friend replied. “Once your name gets before the world, people seem to think you are common property, and have no right to your own time and strength. Literary people are even more bothered than you, if that is any comfort to you. For it is not every one that can deceive him or herself into imagining they possess musical gifts, whereaseverybodynowadays has a try at authorship.”
And if Hertha’s smile had been rueful, Mr Montague’s was grim.
“This girl isnotmusical, Heaven be praised!” Miss Norreys replied.
“I rejoice to hear it—for your sake,” he answered, fervently. “Tell me her name,” and he drew out a tiny note-book.
“Maryon—Miss Maryon—that is all I know,” said Hertha.
“Miss Marion,” he wrote, “Marionwhat?”
“Oh, it is her surname—M-a-r-y, not ‘i’,” she corrected. “Lady Campion mentioned it in her note. A Miss Maryon who was dying to meet me, or some nonsense.”
“It is too bad,” Mr Montague repeated. “But I will see what I can do, and she must call at the office to be examined as to her capabilities. ‘Maryon,’ an uncommon name. There are some rich people—a very old family—Maryons down in Brakeshire.”
“Ah, she can’t belong to them, poor girl,” said Hertha.
And then, feeling she had done her duty, she and Mr Montague turned to other things.
Chapter Five.Misapprehension and Misgiving.Lady Campion’s drawing-room continued to fill—to fill and to empty—for as some went out, others came in. And everywhere and at all moments, Hertha Norreys was surrounded and eagerly greeted.“It is wonderful how much she is made of,” thought Winifred from her corner. “Not, of course, that she does not deserve it, but I have so often been told that the best people are not the most appreciated by the common herd.”The expression would scarcely have been deemed appropriate. If there was one thing Lady Campion prided herself on, it was that her “habitués” formed a veryuncommon herd indeed.Herlions and lionesses must be well dressed and charming—perfectly well-bred and unexceptionable. And as Winifred heard the names—now and then mentioned to her in passing by her good-natured hostess, or by some of the friends she introduced the girl to, with the excuse that she was “a perfect stranger, never been in London before”—of men and women she had hitherto reverenced from afar, she began to allow to herself that if she had known it was to be so much of a party, she would have dressed better. “Though I never imagined people like ‘so-and-so’ cared about dressing at all,” she added to herself.The rooms were thinning—indeed they had never been what to more experienced eyes would have seemed very full, when Mrs Balderson—followed by Celia, Eric bringing up the rear—came in.“What a lovely girl!” said a voice beside Winifred; and turning with quick pleasure, she saw that the speaker was Miss Norreys’s Mr Montague. And close beside him, though Winifred had not been aware of her proximity, stood Hertha herself.“Yes, indeed,” she replied, warmly. “She is like a beautiful lily.”Celia was better—at least more becomingly—dressed than her sister, and her taller, more graceful figure showed whatever she wore to advantage.Mrs Balderson had reviewed her before they went out, and Winifred had taken her usual interest in Celia’s appearance, attiring herself, later in the afternoon, with her customary indifference to everything but neatness.A flush of gratification rose to her face at the words she overheard, and moving forward so as to approach Hertha a little more nearly, she said in a low voice:“I am so glad you admire her: she is my sister, my younger sister.”Miss Norreys turned. For a moment she half doubted if she herself was addressed. In the interest of meetings and talk she had almost forgotten Winifred’s existence. But now the face, looking up at her so brightly and eagerly, attracted her much more than before.“Your sister, Miss Maryon!” she said, with a sunny smile on her face; “well, I need not repeat what I said, as you heard it. But it is certainly true.”And she felt drawn to the girl as she had not hitherto done.“May I, oh, may I introduce her to you?” Winifred went on, and encouraged by Miss Norreys’ “By all means, if you like.”“Celia, Celia!” she said anxiously—for Celia at that moment was being monopolised by some friends of Mrs Balderson’s—“Celia,” when the girl at last heard her, “do come here. I want to introduce you to Miss Norreys.”Celia was feeling profoundly shy, and her shyness, as usual, veiled itself by excessive stiffness. The impression she made upon Hertha was not of the most favourable.“She is very pretty,verypretty,” thought Miss Norreys, “but evidently nothing more, and very spoilt. This poor dear elder sister denies herself, no doubt, to do all she can for her. Their very dress shows it. I must not be prejudiced. I daresay this girl is a noble character. I must be kind to her.”And it was with increased cordiality she bade Winifred good-bye, having already got her address and promised to write to her.“Is she nottoodelightful?” said Winifred, ecstatically, to her sister.“She has evidently taken a great fancy toyou,” replied Celia, evasively. “And that isthething.” In her heart she felt a touch of disappointment. “Why did Miss Norreys look at me with a kind of disapproval?” she asked herself. “She surely can’t be stuck-up or capricious—she has such agoodface.”“Do you think she will really be able to help us—you?” she went on.“I am sure of it. I had not time to tell her aboutyou, Celia, but you see onceIget an independent footing it will be all right for you. I managed to tell her a good deal. I am certain she sympathises with the position, the longing for emancipation—oh, yes, I feel that I have got my foot on the first rung of the ladder,” she concluded, enthusiastically.Some days passed, nevertheless, without any more of the ladder appearing through the haze. Miss Norreys made no sign. The days passed pleasantly, however, so pleasantly that Winifred sometimes felt half guilty for enjoying them and making no further effort towards the realisation of those schemes for the future which had been the underlying “but” of her own and, indeed, of Celia’s visit to London. It was difficult to do anything, or to know what to do. Mrs Balderson, in her innocence of these girls having any thoughts or aspirations other than those she remembered in her own girlhood, exhausted herself in the endeavour to make them enjoy themselves, to “have a good time,” and she succeeded. They had never had a better—never, indeed, half so good!They were scarcely free, however, to do anything but what was planned for them. Morning, noon, and night for the first two weeks of their stay, engagements of all kinds were the order of the day. Shoppings, exhibitions, concerts, plays, afternoon teas, occasional dinner-parties at home, or, more rarely, an invitation for one girl to accompany her host and hostess to dine elsewhere, one or two very mild winter dances even—what, in the old and less sophisticated days, would have been called “carpet-dances”—all these things followed each other in such quick rotation as to make life in London, even in November, seem to these country girls a sort of kaleidoscope.“I suppose we are learning a good deal, even unconsciously. I suppose it is all a sort of experience it is well to go through,” said Winifred, dubiously. “But it is not what I expected. I see what it is, Celia; I shall have to come up again on my own account, really, to go into things and arrange something. Father and mother cannot object now that I have got friends here, and some one to advise me.”“Do you mean Miss Norreys?” said Celia.“Yes—and—I should not be very surprised if Lady Campion asked me to stay with her, do you know? She was quite interested the other day when I said a little to her—just a very little—of my wish todo something. She seemed quite struck by it, and said she would like to talk more about it.”“Are you sure she understood what you mean? She may have thought you would like to help in her Decoration Guilds, or Shakespeare Recitals, or some of those things she has so many of,” said Celia. “There are heaps of those half-play, half-work things for girls who don’t need to work really, you know.”Celia had guessed rightly. Lady Campion, though she had inadvertently conveyed to Miss Norreys a wrong impression of Miss Maryon’s position, had no thought of suggesting to the girl any work of the kind Winifred had set before herself.Her face clouded over a little at Celia’s words.“But I don’t want to be thought that sort of girl,” she said. “I don’t want to be thought rich, and I amnotrich. I am dependent on papa. Besides, if I were—if I had been a son, I should not have been debarred from a profession because I was the heir to ‘White Turrets’ and Busheyreeds, and all the property. Why should a woman be treated differently in such a case? Why shouldherwings be clipped and she be restricted to a narrow, monotonous life any more than a man?”Celia scented danger. She saw that Winifred was lashing herself up to one of her “revolts,” as she called them herself sometimes, and she knew that any, even the slightest suspicion of less full sympathy than she had hitherto been able to give would be sharply resented. Yet she was too honest to evade the possible discordance, painful though the smallest disagreement with her sister would be to her. For a moment or two she sat silent. Then she said boldly:“I am not sure of that ground, Winifred. I have been seeing things a little differently lately. If you had been a son—placed as you are—I doubt if it would have been thought right for you to have a profession—outside work, so to say—when there is so much to do at home.”“What nonsense!” said Winifred. “Do you mean to say that because a man had property to look after he would be debarred from cultivating his special gifts? Why, some, perhaps not many, but some of our greatest men—artists as well as statesmen and writers—have been rich men, men of property. No, it is onlywomenwho are always hedged-in with one excuse or another.”“But you haven’t any special gifts,” said Celia, “at least you always say so. Your wish is to be of use, and—to be independent;” and in her heart she felt the latter should have been placed first. “You can’t be a statesman, and I don’t think even you would regret that for a woman. But you can be of any amount ofuseat home. And you could study all sorts of things about the management of property that would help you to be still more so.”She felt half-frightened at her own daring, and her fears were not without foundation. Winifred stared at her, not quite sure if she were going to let herself get angry or not.“What has come over you, Celia?” she said at last. “You are worse than Louise. Who has been talking to you and putting all these ideas into your head? Do you apply them to yourself too? What about your longing to paint—to have really good instruction?”“I still long for it,” said Celia, “and IthinkI still believe it would be right for me to have it. I think I should test myself so as to find out if, I have a gift, a decided gift. For if so, I should cultivate it. In my case no definite responsibilities are before me in life, as is the case with you, yet—”“Rubbish!” said Winifred, crossly. “There are just as many before you and Louise as before me. I shall never marry, and you and she will be just as much concerned in the management of things some day as I.”“Perhaps,” said Celia, “but not just yet, in any case. And yet—as I was going to say—I don’t quite see at present what is right for me to do. If there are many difficulties in the way, if it would cause unhappiness at home, perhaps it would be my duty to wait—to wait even for the testing myself,” and she sighed. “I don’t want to leave home for the sake of leaving home, but I do want to know if I am deceiving myself in thinking Ihavea gift. And father and mother are so kind and reasonable. I don’t think I need give up the idea.”“You are very selfish, dreadfully selfish, though perhaps you don’t know it,” said Winifred. “You would make out that whatyouwant is right just because you want it. But I, many years older than you, who have thought over these questions for the last ten years—”“You are not many years older than I, and ten years ago you wereeverso much younger than I am now. You were a child,” interrupted Celia.”—Who have thought about these questions ever since I could think at all,” Winifred resumed calmly—for, to do her justice, she was by no means bad-tempered, and seldom lost her self-control—“am to give up my deepest and most cherished hopes, because—no, I really can’t say why! Because I want to leave the beaten track, I suppose.”“You won’t see things any other way,” said Celia, “so it’s no use talking about it. Perhaps it may be best for you to try the experiment, though in a different way from me. Anyway, don’t let us quarrel about it, whatever we do, dearest Winifred. Of course your coming to live in London would make it all infinitely nicer for me, if,” and a troubled expression crossed her face, “if it is really right for us both to leave home.”“There is Louise at home. She asks nothing better than to jog-trot along for ever in the same monotonous way. She is an anachronism. She would have been perfectly happy a hundred years ago, or even longer ago than that, when it never occurred to any one that a womancouldwant anything more exciting than her spinning-wheel and her tapestry-frame.”“Or her napery press and pot-pourri jars,” added Celia, with a smile. “Well, after all, there is to me a wonderful charm about those days; there must have been a great deal of tenderness and delicacy about a lady’s life, which get rubbed off nowadays. And there is a good deal of sense in what Louise says. Monotony is not the worst evil. Why, lots of married women have monotonous lives.”“If they have, it has been of their own choice,” said Winifred. “What I complain of is the being condemned to narrowness and dullness if you don’t marry. Short of marriage, a girl is allowed no other possibility of outlet.”“But,” protested Celia, “though that may be the case for some, or many even, when thereareduties that you are born into, surely it is different? And even beyond that—is it not possible that what you call dull, narrow lives, filled with stupid little odds and ends of usefulness, that don’t seem usefulness at all, may be the very discipline needed by some—may bemeantfor them?”“Oh,” said Winifred impatiently, “if you are going off to the very highest grounds of all, I suppose the being an old maid in an attic may be the best discipline for old maids in attics, but it is thesystemof narrowing down women’s lives that is wrong. And if in their girlhood some of the old maids had rebelled, and insisted on taking their stand as men do, things would have been better by now. There must be individual resistance. Think what Hertha Norreys’s life would have been if she had simply accepted things!”“Ah, but it was different for her. She had a great talent, and she needed to work,” said Celia. “In a case like hers there could be no doubt. I really don’t pity girls whoneedto work so much as others in some ways. Not the rich—they can always, if they wish, find ways of being useful: the very conditions of their lives bring opportunities. But girls whose lives are very uninteresting, and yet not poor exactly, I pitythem—girls who even can scarcely afford to get books to read.”“They should throw nonsensical dignity to the winds, and work,” said Winifred.“Yes, I think so too,” said Celia.She had been thinking a great deal lately—more really and thoroughly and dispassionately than ever before in her life. She was coming to realise that, even to questions of apparently purely personal interest, there may be—there is—more than one side. And the starting-point of all these meditations had been the half-unconscious remarks of Eric Balderson the day he sat beside her at dinner and endeavoured to make amends for Mr Fancourt’s neglect.The mention of Miss Norreys made Winifred determine to remain inactive no longer.“I must write to her,” she decided. “I must beg her to let me see her once before I leave. We shall certainly not stay more than a week longer,”—their original three weeks had already expired—“and I must have some plan for the future before I go home, otherwise I shall really feel that the golden opportunity of this visit has been wasted. I must arrange something about where to stay when I come up again, to go into things more definitely. There is no chance now of Lady Campion’s asking me, unluckily.”For Sir Hugh Campion had had a return of bronchitis, and was ordered abroad for the winter, his wife, of course, accompanying him. This had happened so suddenly that Lady Campion and Hertha had not met since the afternoon of Winifred’s introduction to the latter. No opportunity, therefore, had arisen of rectifying the mistaken impression Lady Campion had unintentionally conveyed to her friend of Miss Maryon’s position and circumstances.And all these days the remembrance of the eager, bright-eyed girl, who had so abruptly appealed to her for advice and assistance, had clung to Hertha with almost annoying pertinacity. Winifred—though she did not think of her by that name, never having heard it—would be expecting to hear from her, she felt sure. Yet what could she say? She herself had heard nothing more from Mr Montague; there was no use in making appointments, or inviting the girl to come to see her, when she had absolutely nothing to tell her. And an appointment, or a “told-off” afternoon, in Hertha’s busy life, meant a great deal more than some people would find it easy to believe.But, as often happens, the very first post after Winifred had despatched her own note to Miss Norreys, brought a letter to herself from Hertha—a letter that filled her with excitement and sanguine anticipations. It ran:“Dear Miss Maryon—I have not forgotten your wish and my promise that we should meet again. But I have waited a few days in hopes of having something to tell you of which might make it more worth your while to come to see me. And to my great pleasure these hopes are to some extent fulfilled. By a lucky chance, just after you had spoken to me, I came across the very person the most able to help in such a case. Through his kindness, I have a proposal to make to you. I will tell you all particulars if you will call here to-morrow, Friday, at half-past four in the afternoon, when I shall be disengaged for a short time. The whole thing seems really a piece of good luck, for, as I told you, I have neither experience of, nor influence in, any line of life but my own.—Yours very truly,—“Hertha Benedict Norreys.”Winifred’s eyes gleamed. But she kept her delight to herself, merely dashing off a word of rapturous gratitude to her new friend, and eager acceptance of her invitation. She said nothing to either her sister or Mrs Balderson beyond announcing the fact that “to-morrow afternoon” she had an engagement which would prevent her going out with them.Mrs Balderson was annoyed. She felt, with justice, that, having given herself so much trouble for her young guests, and to a great extent disorganised her usual arrangements in their behalf, she should at least have been consulted as to any independent engagements they wished to make.“I do not understand Winifred,” she said to her son. “Her manners, at least her ways, are certainly rather like those of an advanced or ‘emancipated’ young woman of the day. Yet surely it is impossible that she can have got hold of any of those ideas in that quiet, sheltered, almost old-fashioned country life of theirs. And her mother is such a perfect model of good breeding.”Eric shrugged his shoulders.“Quien sabe,” he said. “Ideas are in the air, I suppose. You never can tell where they will crop up. Why, even Celia has her theories—only she is very different from her sister, both in character and temperament. But I wouldn’t worry about Winifred, my dear mother. You have been more than good to them both, and they know it—at any rate, Celia does—and they will be leaving very soon.”“Yes, I shall be sorry for Celia to go. She is very sweet. But I could not take the responsibility of Winifred for long. As I said, I do not understand her. Don’t be afraid, however, of my making any fuss. I would not on any account spoil the last few days of their visit by beginning to find fault.”So Winifred set off, uninterfered with, to call on Miss Norreys, while Celia accompanied Mrs Balderson to the large annual meeting of a charitable society, in which the kind-hearted and liberal woman was much interested.Celia was interested too. She had the happy power of throwing herself very thoroughly into the surroundings of the moment, and her mind in the last two or three weeks had begun to open in several new directions.But all through the speeches and reports which followed each other in rapid succession, and which she would have liked to listen to with an un-preoccupied mind, there kept rising the half-uneasy thought: “I wonder where Winifred has gone, and why she did not tell me all about it. Can it be on account of what I said the other day? I hope she won’t do anything rash.”For some things, Celia felt she would not be sorry to be home again—“with mother and Louise”—yet the sense of disappointment that she had made no way towards the realisation of her own ardent wish was keen to her. And Winifred did not seem to sympathise in this as she used to do.“She called me selfish,” thought Celia, “because I said that perhaps—perhaps it might be different for her and me. I wonder why we don’t seem quite as much at one as when we were at home.”
Lady Campion’s drawing-room continued to fill—to fill and to empty—for as some went out, others came in. And everywhere and at all moments, Hertha Norreys was surrounded and eagerly greeted.
“It is wonderful how much she is made of,” thought Winifred from her corner. “Not, of course, that she does not deserve it, but I have so often been told that the best people are not the most appreciated by the common herd.”
The expression would scarcely have been deemed appropriate. If there was one thing Lady Campion prided herself on, it was that her “habitués” formed a veryuncommon herd indeed.Herlions and lionesses must be well dressed and charming—perfectly well-bred and unexceptionable. And as Winifred heard the names—now and then mentioned to her in passing by her good-natured hostess, or by some of the friends she introduced the girl to, with the excuse that she was “a perfect stranger, never been in London before”—of men and women she had hitherto reverenced from afar, she began to allow to herself that if she had known it was to be so much of a party, she would have dressed better. “Though I never imagined people like ‘so-and-so’ cared about dressing at all,” she added to herself.
The rooms were thinning—indeed they had never been what to more experienced eyes would have seemed very full, when Mrs Balderson—followed by Celia, Eric bringing up the rear—came in.
“What a lovely girl!” said a voice beside Winifred; and turning with quick pleasure, she saw that the speaker was Miss Norreys’s Mr Montague. And close beside him, though Winifred had not been aware of her proximity, stood Hertha herself.
“Yes, indeed,” she replied, warmly. “She is like a beautiful lily.”
Celia was better—at least more becomingly—dressed than her sister, and her taller, more graceful figure showed whatever she wore to advantage.
Mrs Balderson had reviewed her before they went out, and Winifred had taken her usual interest in Celia’s appearance, attiring herself, later in the afternoon, with her customary indifference to everything but neatness.
A flush of gratification rose to her face at the words she overheard, and moving forward so as to approach Hertha a little more nearly, she said in a low voice:
“I am so glad you admire her: she is my sister, my younger sister.”
Miss Norreys turned. For a moment she half doubted if she herself was addressed. In the interest of meetings and talk she had almost forgotten Winifred’s existence. But now the face, looking up at her so brightly and eagerly, attracted her much more than before.
“Your sister, Miss Maryon!” she said, with a sunny smile on her face; “well, I need not repeat what I said, as you heard it. But it is certainly true.”
And she felt drawn to the girl as she had not hitherto done.
“May I, oh, may I introduce her to you?” Winifred went on, and encouraged by Miss Norreys’ “By all means, if you like.”
“Celia, Celia!” she said anxiously—for Celia at that moment was being monopolised by some friends of Mrs Balderson’s—“Celia,” when the girl at last heard her, “do come here. I want to introduce you to Miss Norreys.”
Celia was feeling profoundly shy, and her shyness, as usual, veiled itself by excessive stiffness. The impression she made upon Hertha was not of the most favourable.
“She is very pretty,verypretty,” thought Miss Norreys, “but evidently nothing more, and very spoilt. This poor dear elder sister denies herself, no doubt, to do all she can for her. Their very dress shows it. I must not be prejudiced. I daresay this girl is a noble character. I must be kind to her.”
And it was with increased cordiality she bade Winifred good-bye, having already got her address and promised to write to her.
“Is she nottoodelightful?” said Winifred, ecstatically, to her sister.
“She has evidently taken a great fancy toyou,” replied Celia, evasively. “And that isthething.” In her heart she felt a touch of disappointment. “Why did Miss Norreys look at me with a kind of disapproval?” she asked herself. “She surely can’t be stuck-up or capricious—she has such agoodface.”
“Do you think she will really be able to help us—you?” she went on.
“I am sure of it. I had not time to tell her aboutyou, Celia, but you see onceIget an independent footing it will be all right for you. I managed to tell her a good deal. I am certain she sympathises with the position, the longing for emancipation—oh, yes, I feel that I have got my foot on the first rung of the ladder,” she concluded, enthusiastically.
Some days passed, nevertheless, without any more of the ladder appearing through the haze. Miss Norreys made no sign. The days passed pleasantly, however, so pleasantly that Winifred sometimes felt half guilty for enjoying them and making no further effort towards the realisation of those schemes for the future which had been the underlying “but” of her own and, indeed, of Celia’s visit to London. It was difficult to do anything, or to know what to do. Mrs Balderson, in her innocence of these girls having any thoughts or aspirations other than those she remembered in her own girlhood, exhausted herself in the endeavour to make them enjoy themselves, to “have a good time,” and she succeeded. They had never had a better—never, indeed, half so good!
They were scarcely free, however, to do anything but what was planned for them. Morning, noon, and night for the first two weeks of their stay, engagements of all kinds were the order of the day. Shoppings, exhibitions, concerts, plays, afternoon teas, occasional dinner-parties at home, or, more rarely, an invitation for one girl to accompany her host and hostess to dine elsewhere, one or two very mild winter dances even—what, in the old and less sophisticated days, would have been called “carpet-dances”—all these things followed each other in such quick rotation as to make life in London, even in November, seem to these country girls a sort of kaleidoscope.
“I suppose we are learning a good deal, even unconsciously. I suppose it is all a sort of experience it is well to go through,” said Winifred, dubiously. “But it is not what I expected. I see what it is, Celia; I shall have to come up again on my own account, really, to go into things and arrange something. Father and mother cannot object now that I have got friends here, and some one to advise me.”
“Do you mean Miss Norreys?” said Celia.
“Yes—and—I should not be very surprised if Lady Campion asked me to stay with her, do you know? She was quite interested the other day when I said a little to her—just a very little—of my wish todo something. She seemed quite struck by it, and said she would like to talk more about it.”
“Are you sure she understood what you mean? She may have thought you would like to help in her Decoration Guilds, or Shakespeare Recitals, or some of those things she has so many of,” said Celia. “There are heaps of those half-play, half-work things for girls who don’t need to work really, you know.”
Celia had guessed rightly. Lady Campion, though she had inadvertently conveyed to Miss Norreys a wrong impression of Miss Maryon’s position, had no thought of suggesting to the girl any work of the kind Winifred had set before herself.
Her face clouded over a little at Celia’s words.
“But I don’t want to be thought that sort of girl,” she said. “I don’t want to be thought rich, and I amnotrich. I am dependent on papa. Besides, if I were—if I had been a son, I should not have been debarred from a profession because I was the heir to ‘White Turrets’ and Busheyreeds, and all the property. Why should a woman be treated differently in such a case? Why shouldherwings be clipped and she be restricted to a narrow, monotonous life any more than a man?”
Celia scented danger. She saw that Winifred was lashing herself up to one of her “revolts,” as she called them herself sometimes, and she knew that any, even the slightest suspicion of less full sympathy than she had hitherto been able to give would be sharply resented. Yet she was too honest to evade the possible discordance, painful though the smallest disagreement with her sister would be to her. For a moment or two she sat silent. Then she said boldly:
“I am not sure of that ground, Winifred. I have been seeing things a little differently lately. If you had been a son—placed as you are—I doubt if it would have been thought right for you to have a profession—outside work, so to say—when there is so much to do at home.”
“What nonsense!” said Winifred. “Do you mean to say that because a man had property to look after he would be debarred from cultivating his special gifts? Why, some, perhaps not many, but some of our greatest men—artists as well as statesmen and writers—have been rich men, men of property. No, it is onlywomenwho are always hedged-in with one excuse or another.”
“But you haven’t any special gifts,” said Celia, “at least you always say so. Your wish is to be of use, and—to be independent;” and in her heart she felt the latter should have been placed first. “You can’t be a statesman, and I don’t think even you would regret that for a woman. But you can be of any amount ofuseat home. And you could study all sorts of things about the management of property that would help you to be still more so.”
She felt half-frightened at her own daring, and her fears were not without foundation. Winifred stared at her, not quite sure if she were going to let herself get angry or not.
“What has come over you, Celia?” she said at last. “You are worse than Louise. Who has been talking to you and putting all these ideas into your head? Do you apply them to yourself too? What about your longing to paint—to have really good instruction?”
“I still long for it,” said Celia, “and IthinkI still believe it would be right for me to have it. I think I should test myself so as to find out if, I have a gift, a decided gift. For if so, I should cultivate it. In my case no definite responsibilities are before me in life, as is the case with you, yet—”
“Rubbish!” said Winifred, crossly. “There are just as many before you and Louise as before me. I shall never marry, and you and she will be just as much concerned in the management of things some day as I.”
“Perhaps,” said Celia, “but not just yet, in any case. And yet—as I was going to say—I don’t quite see at present what is right for me to do. If there are many difficulties in the way, if it would cause unhappiness at home, perhaps it would be my duty to wait—to wait even for the testing myself,” and she sighed. “I don’t want to leave home for the sake of leaving home, but I do want to know if I am deceiving myself in thinking Ihavea gift. And father and mother are so kind and reasonable. I don’t think I need give up the idea.”
“You are very selfish, dreadfully selfish, though perhaps you don’t know it,” said Winifred. “You would make out that whatyouwant is right just because you want it. But I, many years older than you, who have thought over these questions for the last ten years—”
“You are not many years older than I, and ten years ago you wereeverso much younger than I am now. You were a child,” interrupted Celia.
”—Who have thought about these questions ever since I could think at all,” Winifred resumed calmly—for, to do her justice, she was by no means bad-tempered, and seldom lost her self-control—“am to give up my deepest and most cherished hopes, because—no, I really can’t say why! Because I want to leave the beaten track, I suppose.”
“You won’t see things any other way,” said Celia, “so it’s no use talking about it. Perhaps it may be best for you to try the experiment, though in a different way from me. Anyway, don’t let us quarrel about it, whatever we do, dearest Winifred. Of course your coming to live in London would make it all infinitely nicer for me, if,” and a troubled expression crossed her face, “if it is really right for us both to leave home.”
“There is Louise at home. She asks nothing better than to jog-trot along for ever in the same monotonous way. She is an anachronism. She would have been perfectly happy a hundred years ago, or even longer ago than that, when it never occurred to any one that a womancouldwant anything more exciting than her spinning-wheel and her tapestry-frame.”
“Or her napery press and pot-pourri jars,” added Celia, with a smile. “Well, after all, there is to me a wonderful charm about those days; there must have been a great deal of tenderness and delicacy about a lady’s life, which get rubbed off nowadays. And there is a good deal of sense in what Louise says. Monotony is not the worst evil. Why, lots of married women have monotonous lives.”
“If they have, it has been of their own choice,” said Winifred. “What I complain of is the being condemned to narrowness and dullness if you don’t marry. Short of marriage, a girl is allowed no other possibility of outlet.”
“But,” protested Celia, “though that may be the case for some, or many even, when thereareduties that you are born into, surely it is different? And even beyond that—is it not possible that what you call dull, narrow lives, filled with stupid little odds and ends of usefulness, that don’t seem usefulness at all, may be the very discipline needed by some—may bemeantfor them?”
“Oh,” said Winifred impatiently, “if you are going off to the very highest grounds of all, I suppose the being an old maid in an attic may be the best discipline for old maids in attics, but it is thesystemof narrowing down women’s lives that is wrong. And if in their girlhood some of the old maids had rebelled, and insisted on taking their stand as men do, things would have been better by now. There must be individual resistance. Think what Hertha Norreys’s life would have been if she had simply accepted things!”
“Ah, but it was different for her. She had a great talent, and she needed to work,” said Celia. “In a case like hers there could be no doubt. I really don’t pity girls whoneedto work so much as others in some ways. Not the rich—they can always, if they wish, find ways of being useful: the very conditions of their lives bring opportunities. But girls whose lives are very uninteresting, and yet not poor exactly, I pitythem—girls who even can scarcely afford to get books to read.”
“They should throw nonsensical dignity to the winds, and work,” said Winifred.
“Yes, I think so too,” said Celia.
She had been thinking a great deal lately—more really and thoroughly and dispassionately than ever before in her life. She was coming to realise that, even to questions of apparently purely personal interest, there may be—there is—more than one side. And the starting-point of all these meditations had been the half-unconscious remarks of Eric Balderson the day he sat beside her at dinner and endeavoured to make amends for Mr Fancourt’s neglect.
The mention of Miss Norreys made Winifred determine to remain inactive no longer.
“I must write to her,” she decided. “I must beg her to let me see her once before I leave. We shall certainly not stay more than a week longer,”—their original three weeks had already expired—“and I must have some plan for the future before I go home, otherwise I shall really feel that the golden opportunity of this visit has been wasted. I must arrange something about where to stay when I come up again, to go into things more definitely. There is no chance now of Lady Campion’s asking me, unluckily.”
For Sir Hugh Campion had had a return of bronchitis, and was ordered abroad for the winter, his wife, of course, accompanying him. This had happened so suddenly that Lady Campion and Hertha had not met since the afternoon of Winifred’s introduction to the latter. No opportunity, therefore, had arisen of rectifying the mistaken impression Lady Campion had unintentionally conveyed to her friend of Miss Maryon’s position and circumstances.
And all these days the remembrance of the eager, bright-eyed girl, who had so abruptly appealed to her for advice and assistance, had clung to Hertha with almost annoying pertinacity. Winifred—though she did not think of her by that name, never having heard it—would be expecting to hear from her, she felt sure. Yet what could she say? She herself had heard nothing more from Mr Montague; there was no use in making appointments, or inviting the girl to come to see her, when she had absolutely nothing to tell her. And an appointment, or a “told-off” afternoon, in Hertha’s busy life, meant a great deal more than some people would find it easy to believe.
But, as often happens, the very first post after Winifred had despatched her own note to Miss Norreys, brought a letter to herself from Hertha—a letter that filled her with excitement and sanguine anticipations. It ran:
“Dear Miss Maryon—I have not forgotten your wish and my promise that we should meet again. But I have waited a few days in hopes of having something to tell you of which might make it more worth your while to come to see me. And to my great pleasure these hopes are to some extent fulfilled. By a lucky chance, just after you had spoken to me, I came across the very person the most able to help in such a case. Through his kindness, I have a proposal to make to you. I will tell you all particulars if you will call here to-morrow, Friday, at half-past four in the afternoon, when I shall be disengaged for a short time. The whole thing seems really a piece of good luck, for, as I told you, I have neither experience of, nor influence in, any line of life but my own.—Yours very truly,—“Hertha Benedict Norreys.”
“Dear Miss Maryon—I have not forgotten your wish and my promise that we should meet again. But I have waited a few days in hopes of having something to tell you of which might make it more worth your while to come to see me. And to my great pleasure these hopes are to some extent fulfilled. By a lucky chance, just after you had spoken to me, I came across the very person the most able to help in such a case. Through his kindness, I have a proposal to make to you. I will tell you all particulars if you will call here to-morrow, Friday, at half-past four in the afternoon, when I shall be disengaged for a short time. The whole thing seems really a piece of good luck, for, as I told you, I have neither experience of, nor influence in, any line of life but my own.—Yours very truly,—“Hertha Benedict Norreys.”
Winifred’s eyes gleamed. But she kept her delight to herself, merely dashing off a word of rapturous gratitude to her new friend, and eager acceptance of her invitation. She said nothing to either her sister or Mrs Balderson beyond announcing the fact that “to-morrow afternoon” she had an engagement which would prevent her going out with them.
Mrs Balderson was annoyed. She felt, with justice, that, having given herself so much trouble for her young guests, and to a great extent disorganised her usual arrangements in their behalf, she should at least have been consulted as to any independent engagements they wished to make.
“I do not understand Winifred,” she said to her son. “Her manners, at least her ways, are certainly rather like those of an advanced or ‘emancipated’ young woman of the day. Yet surely it is impossible that she can have got hold of any of those ideas in that quiet, sheltered, almost old-fashioned country life of theirs. And her mother is such a perfect model of good breeding.”
Eric shrugged his shoulders.
“Quien sabe,” he said. “Ideas are in the air, I suppose. You never can tell where they will crop up. Why, even Celia has her theories—only she is very different from her sister, both in character and temperament. But I wouldn’t worry about Winifred, my dear mother. You have been more than good to them both, and they know it—at any rate, Celia does—and they will be leaving very soon.”
“Yes, I shall be sorry for Celia to go. She is very sweet. But I could not take the responsibility of Winifred for long. As I said, I do not understand her. Don’t be afraid, however, of my making any fuss. I would not on any account spoil the last few days of their visit by beginning to find fault.”
So Winifred set off, uninterfered with, to call on Miss Norreys, while Celia accompanied Mrs Balderson to the large annual meeting of a charitable society, in which the kind-hearted and liberal woman was much interested.
Celia was interested too. She had the happy power of throwing herself very thoroughly into the surroundings of the moment, and her mind in the last two or three weeks had begun to open in several new directions.
But all through the speeches and reports which followed each other in rapid succession, and which she would have liked to listen to with an un-preoccupied mind, there kept rising the half-uneasy thought: “I wonder where Winifred has gone, and why she did not tell me all about it. Can it be on account of what I said the other day? I hope she won’t do anything rash.”
For some things, Celia felt she would not be sorry to be home again—“with mother and Louise”—yet the sense of disappointment that she had made no way towards the realisation of her own ardent wish was keen to her. And Winifred did not seem to sympathise in this as she used to do.
“She called me selfish,” thought Celia, “because I said that perhaps—perhaps it might be different for her and me. I wonder why we don’t seem quite as much at one as when we were at home.”
Chapter Six.An Opening.Miss Norreys had a tiny home of her own, at some considerable distance from the Balderson mansion, which was about as far west as it could be to be yet in a thoroughly good position. The house in question was tiny in some ways, but it scarcely gave one that impression, for it contained one very large room, originally, in all probability, intended for a studio, which Hertha had converted into a music-room, a small so-called drawing-room or boudoir leading into it, being her own private sanctum.She lived alone now, save for an old servant, who had never left her—who had solved the problem of out-staying the proverbial twenty-one years without degenerating from the “faithful friend” of the middle seven into the “unendurable tyrant” of the last term. But Miss Norreys had not been long alone. Only three short years ago, the mother, the adored mother, whose later life had been rendered peaceful and happy by the daughter’s brave energy, the young brother, whose education and start in the world was all his sister’s doing, had both been with her. Now the former was at rest in the unknown country, which yet, as life goes on, and we think of the sweet souls who have preceded us there, loses the dread sense of strangeness—seems almost to grow more familiar than this side of the river. And the other, Hertha’s dearly-loved Jasper, was away in India, the right place for him as a poor man, and where he was already rewarding her for her devotion by his unexceptionable and promising life.“If only it were not so far away,” she would say to herself sometimes, as many another woman in England says to herself every day. And then she would let her thoughts revert to the time when they were all three together, to the struggles which, viewed in the tender light of the past, seemed to have been nothing but happiness, to the delight, doubled by being shared, with which she had realised the fact of her first success.“How proud we were when we took this house!” she said to herself. “How hot Jasper made himself with hanging up all the curtains and things in the studio! How could I ever have murmured atanythingthen!”It was not often she allowed herself to indulge in these reminiscences. She was full of real sentiment, but she had a wholesome dread of anything approaching sentimentalism, of which, living alone as she did, she knew she must beware. Only sometimes, in the enforced pauses of her busy life, she would allow herself the “treat,” as she called it, of going back to the past for a while, though there were other pages of her girl-life which, for the sake of her own peace of mind, she kept resolutely under lock and key.She was sitting idle for once—her thoughts busied with the bright and peaceful memories of the two so dear to her—on the day that she was expecting Miss Maryon to call. It was not often that she could afford to spare an afternoon, and her doing so now was out of the purest and most disinterested kindness to the girl who had appealed to her so unexpectedly. And when Hertha made up her mind to a thing she did it thoroughly.“To judge by her talk at Helena Campion’s, that day,” she said to herself, “she will not be content with half an hour or so. I had better arrange to be free for the rest of the afternoon. Besides, of course, there really will be a good deal to discuss, for I am sure she is quite extraordinarily inexperienced, despite her funny little assumptions of wisdom.”Almost on the stroke of the appointed hour, the bell rang.“Come,” thought Miss Norreys, as she heard Winifred’s clear, decided tones, inquiring for herself, “she is punctual, and so much the better. So many of these would-be independent and self-reliant young women prejudice others almost from the first by their airy disregard of every one else’s convenience.”No—to a certain extent Winifred was really practical and reliable. She was grateful, too, to Hertha, and so anxious to stand well with her that the last twenty minutes had been spent in walking up and down the street till within a minute or so of the appointed hour.She came in, looking eager and yet a little shy. Her bright, short-sighted eyes glanced with evident interest round the pretty little room, opening at one end, “à deux battants,” into the large studio, which was but dimly lighted, then returned to rest with unmistakable admiration upon her young hostess.“Oh, how delightful, how charming it all is!” she exclaimed, impulsively. “Oh, Miss Norreys, thank you so much, so very much, for letting me come to see you.”“I am pleased to see you. I shall be very glad if I can be of any use to you,” Hertha replied. It was not in her essentially generous nature to repress the girl, whose enthusiasm was plainly sincere. “Will you take your cloak off? My rooms are not cold. We shall have tea directly. In the meantime, before we begin to talk, would you like to see my little domain? I am very proud of my music-room.”She led the way into the larger room, turning up the light as she entered it. It was very tastefully arranged—some few good pictures, one or two pretty cabinets, and a respectable number of well-bound books filling glass-doored cases at one end, all relics of more prosperous times, giving a certain dignity to the whole. There were two pianos, and a harp stood in one corner.Winifred stood entranced.“It is quite charming,” she said; “just the sort of nest one would long to have.”Hertha was amused at the expression. She considered her big room much more than a “nest.”“My young friend does not seem to realise how rare such quarters are in London,” she thought. “I suppose she is used to a bare, but perhaps not very small, country vicarage.”“Yes, I am very lucky indeed,” she replied. “A room like this is a great ‘find’ in London.”“Is it really?” said Winifred, peering up at the ceiling. “Oh dear, it isjustwhat I should like.”Miss Norreys repressed the desire to tell her that, as things were with her, she might as well wish for Aladdin’s palace at once.“She will learn by experience,” she said to herself.“And the whole thing—your life, yourself,” Winifred went on—“it is like the realisation of a dream to me. Your splendid independence and freedom. Just think of the contrast between you and an ordinary girl living at home in slavery, or at least in a sort of prolonged childhood, with no personal standing, no liberty to follow her own intuitions.”A shadow crossed Hertha’s beautiful forehead.“I have not always lived alone like this,” she said. “Not, indeed, for very long. This house is endeared to me by having spent several years in it with my two,”—her voice faltered a little—“my mother and my brother. I have never wished for what you call ‘independence.’ I was too happy while I had one or two who cared to direct me. I loved being treated like a child.”“You must have beenmostfortunately placed,” said Winifred.“I was,” replied Hertha. “My parents were justperfect. It was circumstances and,”—she hesitated, for she was touching on uncertain ground—“a good deal, perhaps, the fact of my having a voice, a talent, which led me to leave the beaten path. No desire to throw off the dear home ties. I have often wondered what I should have done with my voice had I notneededto utilise it; how far it would have been right to give up time to cultivating it; how far, so to say, the possession of a voice means ‘a vocation.’ That sounds like a poor attempt at a pun,” she ended off with a smile.But Winifred did not notice her little piece of fun.“You would have done just what you have done,” she burst out. “You would never have been content in the beaten track—in the narrow, hedged-in life, which is what most women lead.”“I’m afraid I should have been very content,” said Hertha. “I am not at all sure that I am not by nature very lazy. The energy of many—I think I might say of most women now-a-days—appals me. I don’t agree with you that the ‘narrow, hedged-in lives’ are the lot of the ‘most,’ not in London, anyhow.”“Well, no, perhaps not in London,” Winifred agreed. “That is why I want to come here.”“And, oh dear!” said Miss Norreys with again a little smile that seemed more of the nature of a sigh, “you don’t know how I long sometimes for that sort of life. Fancy, with parents and sisters and an old-fashioned home in the country—the sort of place that has not changed much for hundreds of years, where you can distil your own lavender-water and make great jars full of pot-pourri, where there is a lady’s walk and a ghost, and where you know every saint’s face in the windows at church—oh, what a lovely life it might be! If my lot had fallen in such lines, I hope I should have had the energy to cultivate my voice and to use it to give pleasure to others, to poor folk above all; but oh, how joyfully I should have hurried home from my enforced visits to London! I used to dream of such a life,” she added. “Now it is different. I am alone. No place could be much ‘home’ to me.”A curious expression flickered over Winifred’s face.“How—how strange!” she said, vaguely. “I did not think you were like that, Miss Norreys. I suppose it is poetry,” she went on. “I suppose you are poetical in a way I don’t understand. Have you ever seen the sort of place you describe? If you had such a home, it would pretty certainly not have the charm you imagine.”“Oh yes, it would,” said Hertha. “Itwouldhave had, I mean. I am not high-flown. There must be such a beautiful content in feeling there you are, in a centre where God has put you—where you can be of use to many, ‘hedged-in’ to clear and distinct duties and responsibilities. I suppose I needed the other side or it would not have come to me. I might have been lazy.”She took a certain satisfaction in repeating this, for, though she really meant all she said, there was something about Winifred’s half dogmatic, half matter-of-fact insistance on her own views and opinions that provoked Hertha to a kind of contradiction—almost to wish to shock her!Just then the entrance of tea caused a momentary diversion. There was nothing of the Bohemian about Hertha. The little table was set out with scrupulous though simple care. There was a touch of genuine “old-fashionedness,” very distinct from the modern affectations and imitations of picturesque quaintness, about her, which added to her charm by its unexpectedness. But Winifred Maryon, for reasons which will explain themselves, was not specially struck by it. She accepted all she saw, in her inexperience, as a matter of course.“Have I ever seen such a house as I have been talking about?” Miss Norreys went on, as she poured out the tea into tworeallyold willow-pattern cups, adding sugar and cream from a small silver bowl and jug, worn thin with many years of daily use. “No, notexactly. There was a place which we once had reason to think would have been ours, which could have been made perfectly beautiful—but it never came into our hands, and now it is pulled down and the land built over. As things are, I do not regret it. Will you have another cup of tea, Miss Maryon? Yes; that’s right. And now we must get to business, and talk about you, not me.”But Winifred’s enthusiasm for her new friend was so great that even the absorbing interest of her own affairs paled before it.“I love so to hear about yourself and what you think and feel,” she said. “I cannot believe we really differ about anything. You have beautified your life so, unconsciously, that you can scarcely realise the dullness and monotony of some women’s lives.”“Oh yes, indeed I do,” replied Miss Norreys.“If I did not, do you think you would now be sitting here with me? I could never pretend sympathy I did not feel. Lady Campion told me a little, very little, about you, but, of course, I understand you far better from yourself. I sympathise with all my heart in your wish to do something—to strike out a career for yourself.”“Oh yes,” said Winifred, breathlessly.“No one could sympathise in it more heartily than I,” Hertha went on. “For years, you know, I worked hard for my mother and brother, and—though I don’t need you to tell me about it—I am sure that some similar motive inspires you, as well as the wish to feel yourselfsome one, something, which an energetic woman, placed as you are, must feel.”The colour rose a little in Winifred’s face. Hertha, with instinctive delicacy, glanced away. She knew that direct owning to poverty was painful to some people.“Ye-es,” said Miss Maryon, at last. “It is—there are—more than one motive. I want to help my sister, too, the one you saw. I am positively certain she has great talent for painting if she had a chance of cultivating it.“Indeed?” said Hertha, “that simplifiesherline of action. What she has to do is to test herself. Then you want to help her to get good teaching, and, I suppose, to make a home for her in London? Yes, she is too young and too beautiful to attempt anything of the kind without some one to take care of her. And—can you both be spared at home?”“We have another sister at home, and, though my father is in delicate health, my mother is well and active. We have thought about it for a long time—Celia and I.”“Poor souls! Two fewer to provide for, no doubt, is a consideration,” thought Hertha.“Does Mrs Balderson know about it? Is she likely to help you in any way?” she asked aloud. “I do not know her personally, but I have heard she is truly kind.”“She has been very kind in having us here. But she would not sympathise in our plans. She is—old-fashioned, I suppose. She thinks girls should stay quietly at home.”“Ah, indeed,” said Hertha, her mind rapidly picturing to itself what, in such a case, the “staying quietly at home” must mean: the poor, unbeautiful surroundings, the colourless lives, the pain and almost degradation of the terrible “genteel poverty.”“But sheisvery kind,” repeated Winifred, her conscience smiting her; “she asked us out of kindness. She would like us to marry,” with a little smile. “But, of course, I never shall. She likes Celia the best, I think.”Again Hertha’s imagination jumped to hasty conclusions. “I see it all,” she thought. “She wants to show the pretty one to advantage, to give her a chance, as people say.”“And is there any prospect of Celia’s marrying?” she asked.Winifred shook her head.“Oh no!” she replied, with a touch of something like indignation, which Miss Norreys could not understand. “Celia would never change so—she would not desert me.”“But, my dear Miss Maryon, it might be a very good thing, if and always supposing, of course, that it was some one she cared for,” said Hertha.“Placed as—”“There is no use discussing remote contingencies,” interrupted Winifred, and Miss Norreys, imagining that her pride in her sister made it bitter to realise that the possibility was remote, beautiful though Celia was, said no more.“Well, then, to be practical,” she replied, “what you have told me makes me feel that the proposal I have to lay before you may suit you even better than I had expected. For you cannot have Celia with you, or—or afford good teaching for her until you have made a beginning yourself, and got a home ready.”“I must certainly have somewhere to bring her to,” said Winifred, evasively, “and somewhere for myself too,” with a smile. “I should like to get things a little in order, as it were, so far settled, for, you see, I am old enough to decide for myself, before I tell my people at home about it. It would make my mother so much less anxious if I could tell her itwassettled.”“But,” exclaimed Hertha, rather taken aback, “your people do know what you are intending? You are not acting against their wishes?”“Oh no—that is to say, they do know, thoroughly,” said Winifred, with evident candour. “As for theirwishes—why, no, mother does notwishus to leave home. Mothers never do—do they? She would like us all to stay near her always, I suppose. But sheunderstands, and—she is very kind.”“Kind” struck Hertha as a somewhat curious word to use of a mother in such a case.“She should be very proud of you both,” she said quickly, while her mind’s eye pictured the overworked parson’s wife reluctant to let her girls go forth to make their way, even though the relief and satisfaction of seeing them in the path of success could not but be great. “If you get on well, it cannot but be a comfort to her, I should think.”“She knows Celia has great talent, and she does think it should be cultivated,” replied Winifred, and again something in her tone slightly perplexed Miss Norreys. “I don’t think she feels the same about me, for, you see, I have no very special line. But there are quantities ofmenwho have no very special line, and yet do well, and are of use in their generation. So why not women?”And she looked up inquiringly at Hertha.“Why not? There is no reason against it when the motives are sound and good, as in your case I think it must be,” Miss Norreys replied, half hoping that this would lead to further confidence. But Winifred did not speak, so she went on: “The chance I have to tell you of reallyisa chance, though it may not sound very splendid. Through an old friend of mine, Mr Montague, you can have the offer of a post in the Reasonable Help Society, provided, of course, you can pass a certain examination. It is a very well-managed society: they try to kill two birds with one stone by engaging to do the work—charitable work, of course—girls like yourself, who—who feel they should do something for themselves, to be independent, and in many cases, with the hope of eventually helping their friends.“It is right they should be paid,” said Miss Maryon, quickly. “I have thought a good deal about that. I don’t believe in unpaid work.”“I should be very sorry to make such a sweeping assertion,” said Hertha, with a smile. “However, in this case, the question is not raised. Youwillbe paid—fifty pounds a year to begin, and the prospect of an increase, if all goes well. But remember,” as she caught sight of a bright gleam of satisfaction lighting up Winifred’s face, “fifty pounds are not a fortune. You are very inexperienced. I daresay it seems a great deal to you, but it won’t go very far.”“I am not so inexperienced as you think, dear Miss Norreys,” said Winifred, quietly. “I shall be able to manage, and to have Celia with me before long. It is not the money, but the feeling that it is abeginning, something really to do, and that I shall take the greatest interest in. There is nothing I have more at heart than the problem of how to help without pauperising our lower classes I may be of more use to the Reasonable Help Society than would be thought likely,” she concluded, with a funny little touch of self-assertion.“I hope so, I am sure—and with all my heart I hope the Reasonable Help Society will be of use to you. Then you decide on accepting it?—that is to say, on offering yourself as a candidate for the post?”“Oh dear, yes. Most certainly I do,” said Winifred. “And I thank you a thousand times.”“It was much more Mr Montague’s doing than mine,” said Hertha. “And, indeed, the whole thing was a chance—a lucky one, I trust.”“And can you tell me when I must call at the office, or must I write, or what?” asked Winifred.“Yes,” Miss Norreys replied. “Mr Montague sent full particulars. You must call any morning, but the sooner the better, at this address;” and she held out a paper.“I will go to-morrow,” said Winifred.“And if you say that you have no home in London, the secretary will give you a list of lodgings where some of their employees live. Nothing very grand, of course, plain, but not uncomfortable, with thoroughly respectable people.”“Oh that will be all right,” said Winifred. “I will find something to begin with, I daresay, and if I don’t like it, I can easily move.”Her tone made Hertha rather uneasy again.“But all moves are expensive,” she said. “Try to settle down if possible.”“Ah, well, yes, if I can get rooms for Celia too.”“Rooms!” thought Hertha. “What does she expect? But she must buy experience, I suppose.” So after detailing to her some more of the information received from Mr Montague, she let her go, without volunteering further advice.And Winifred, feeling that she had taken the first plunge into independence and “a career,” bade her new friend good-bye for the present, with many times repeated expressions of gratitude.
Miss Norreys had a tiny home of her own, at some considerable distance from the Balderson mansion, which was about as far west as it could be to be yet in a thoroughly good position. The house in question was tiny in some ways, but it scarcely gave one that impression, for it contained one very large room, originally, in all probability, intended for a studio, which Hertha had converted into a music-room, a small so-called drawing-room or boudoir leading into it, being her own private sanctum.
She lived alone now, save for an old servant, who had never left her—who had solved the problem of out-staying the proverbial twenty-one years without degenerating from the “faithful friend” of the middle seven into the “unendurable tyrant” of the last term. But Miss Norreys had not been long alone. Only three short years ago, the mother, the adored mother, whose later life had been rendered peaceful and happy by the daughter’s brave energy, the young brother, whose education and start in the world was all his sister’s doing, had both been with her. Now the former was at rest in the unknown country, which yet, as life goes on, and we think of the sweet souls who have preceded us there, loses the dread sense of strangeness—seems almost to grow more familiar than this side of the river. And the other, Hertha’s dearly-loved Jasper, was away in India, the right place for him as a poor man, and where he was already rewarding her for her devotion by his unexceptionable and promising life.
“If only it were not so far away,” she would say to herself sometimes, as many another woman in England says to herself every day. And then she would let her thoughts revert to the time when they were all three together, to the struggles which, viewed in the tender light of the past, seemed to have been nothing but happiness, to the delight, doubled by being shared, with which she had realised the fact of her first success.
“How proud we were when we took this house!” she said to herself. “How hot Jasper made himself with hanging up all the curtains and things in the studio! How could I ever have murmured atanythingthen!”
It was not often she allowed herself to indulge in these reminiscences. She was full of real sentiment, but she had a wholesome dread of anything approaching sentimentalism, of which, living alone as she did, she knew she must beware. Only sometimes, in the enforced pauses of her busy life, she would allow herself the “treat,” as she called it, of going back to the past for a while, though there were other pages of her girl-life which, for the sake of her own peace of mind, she kept resolutely under lock and key.
She was sitting idle for once—her thoughts busied with the bright and peaceful memories of the two so dear to her—on the day that she was expecting Miss Maryon to call. It was not often that she could afford to spare an afternoon, and her doing so now was out of the purest and most disinterested kindness to the girl who had appealed to her so unexpectedly. And when Hertha made up her mind to a thing she did it thoroughly.
“To judge by her talk at Helena Campion’s, that day,” she said to herself, “she will not be content with half an hour or so. I had better arrange to be free for the rest of the afternoon. Besides, of course, there really will be a good deal to discuss, for I am sure she is quite extraordinarily inexperienced, despite her funny little assumptions of wisdom.”
Almost on the stroke of the appointed hour, the bell rang.
“Come,” thought Miss Norreys, as she heard Winifred’s clear, decided tones, inquiring for herself, “she is punctual, and so much the better. So many of these would-be independent and self-reliant young women prejudice others almost from the first by their airy disregard of every one else’s convenience.”
No—to a certain extent Winifred was really practical and reliable. She was grateful, too, to Hertha, and so anxious to stand well with her that the last twenty minutes had been spent in walking up and down the street till within a minute or so of the appointed hour.
She came in, looking eager and yet a little shy. Her bright, short-sighted eyes glanced with evident interest round the pretty little room, opening at one end, “à deux battants,” into the large studio, which was but dimly lighted, then returned to rest with unmistakable admiration upon her young hostess.
“Oh, how delightful, how charming it all is!” she exclaimed, impulsively. “Oh, Miss Norreys, thank you so much, so very much, for letting me come to see you.”
“I am pleased to see you. I shall be very glad if I can be of any use to you,” Hertha replied. It was not in her essentially generous nature to repress the girl, whose enthusiasm was plainly sincere. “Will you take your cloak off? My rooms are not cold. We shall have tea directly. In the meantime, before we begin to talk, would you like to see my little domain? I am very proud of my music-room.”
She led the way into the larger room, turning up the light as she entered it. It was very tastefully arranged—some few good pictures, one or two pretty cabinets, and a respectable number of well-bound books filling glass-doored cases at one end, all relics of more prosperous times, giving a certain dignity to the whole. There were two pianos, and a harp stood in one corner.
Winifred stood entranced.
“It is quite charming,” she said; “just the sort of nest one would long to have.”
Hertha was amused at the expression. She considered her big room much more than a “nest.”
“My young friend does not seem to realise how rare such quarters are in London,” she thought. “I suppose she is used to a bare, but perhaps not very small, country vicarage.”
“Yes, I am very lucky indeed,” she replied. “A room like this is a great ‘find’ in London.”
“Is it really?” said Winifred, peering up at the ceiling. “Oh dear, it isjustwhat I should like.”
Miss Norreys repressed the desire to tell her that, as things were with her, she might as well wish for Aladdin’s palace at once.
“She will learn by experience,” she said to herself.
“And the whole thing—your life, yourself,” Winifred went on—“it is like the realisation of a dream to me. Your splendid independence and freedom. Just think of the contrast between you and an ordinary girl living at home in slavery, or at least in a sort of prolonged childhood, with no personal standing, no liberty to follow her own intuitions.”
A shadow crossed Hertha’s beautiful forehead.
“I have not always lived alone like this,” she said. “Not, indeed, for very long. This house is endeared to me by having spent several years in it with my two,”—her voice faltered a little—“my mother and my brother. I have never wished for what you call ‘independence.’ I was too happy while I had one or two who cared to direct me. I loved being treated like a child.”
“You must have beenmostfortunately placed,” said Winifred.
“I was,” replied Hertha. “My parents were justperfect. It was circumstances and,”—she hesitated, for she was touching on uncertain ground—“a good deal, perhaps, the fact of my having a voice, a talent, which led me to leave the beaten path. No desire to throw off the dear home ties. I have often wondered what I should have done with my voice had I notneededto utilise it; how far it would have been right to give up time to cultivating it; how far, so to say, the possession of a voice means ‘a vocation.’ That sounds like a poor attempt at a pun,” she ended off with a smile.
But Winifred did not notice her little piece of fun.
“You would have done just what you have done,” she burst out. “You would never have been content in the beaten track—in the narrow, hedged-in life, which is what most women lead.”
“I’m afraid I should have been very content,” said Hertha. “I am not at all sure that I am not by nature very lazy. The energy of many—I think I might say of most women now-a-days—appals me. I don’t agree with you that the ‘narrow, hedged-in lives’ are the lot of the ‘most,’ not in London, anyhow.”
“Well, no, perhaps not in London,” Winifred agreed. “That is why I want to come here.”
“And, oh dear!” said Miss Norreys with again a little smile that seemed more of the nature of a sigh, “you don’t know how I long sometimes for that sort of life. Fancy, with parents and sisters and an old-fashioned home in the country—the sort of place that has not changed much for hundreds of years, where you can distil your own lavender-water and make great jars full of pot-pourri, where there is a lady’s walk and a ghost, and where you know every saint’s face in the windows at church—oh, what a lovely life it might be! If my lot had fallen in such lines, I hope I should have had the energy to cultivate my voice and to use it to give pleasure to others, to poor folk above all; but oh, how joyfully I should have hurried home from my enforced visits to London! I used to dream of such a life,” she added. “Now it is different. I am alone. No place could be much ‘home’ to me.”
A curious expression flickered over Winifred’s face.
“How—how strange!” she said, vaguely. “I did not think you were like that, Miss Norreys. I suppose it is poetry,” she went on. “I suppose you are poetical in a way I don’t understand. Have you ever seen the sort of place you describe? If you had such a home, it would pretty certainly not have the charm you imagine.”
“Oh yes, it would,” said Hertha. “Itwouldhave had, I mean. I am not high-flown. There must be such a beautiful content in feeling there you are, in a centre where God has put you—where you can be of use to many, ‘hedged-in’ to clear and distinct duties and responsibilities. I suppose I needed the other side or it would not have come to me. I might have been lazy.”
She took a certain satisfaction in repeating this, for, though she really meant all she said, there was something about Winifred’s half dogmatic, half matter-of-fact insistance on her own views and opinions that provoked Hertha to a kind of contradiction—almost to wish to shock her!
Just then the entrance of tea caused a momentary diversion. There was nothing of the Bohemian about Hertha. The little table was set out with scrupulous though simple care. There was a touch of genuine “old-fashionedness,” very distinct from the modern affectations and imitations of picturesque quaintness, about her, which added to her charm by its unexpectedness. But Winifred Maryon, for reasons which will explain themselves, was not specially struck by it. She accepted all she saw, in her inexperience, as a matter of course.
“Have I ever seen such a house as I have been talking about?” Miss Norreys went on, as she poured out the tea into tworeallyold willow-pattern cups, adding sugar and cream from a small silver bowl and jug, worn thin with many years of daily use. “No, notexactly. There was a place which we once had reason to think would have been ours, which could have been made perfectly beautiful—but it never came into our hands, and now it is pulled down and the land built over. As things are, I do not regret it. Will you have another cup of tea, Miss Maryon? Yes; that’s right. And now we must get to business, and talk about you, not me.”
But Winifred’s enthusiasm for her new friend was so great that even the absorbing interest of her own affairs paled before it.
“I love so to hear about yourself and what you think and feel,” she said. “I cannot believe we really differ about anything. You have beautified your life so, unconsciously, that you can scarcely realise the dullness and monotony of some women’s lives.”
“Oh yes, indeed I do,” replied Miss Norreys.
“If I did not, do you think you would now be sitting here with me? I could never pretend sympathy I did not feel. Lady Campion told me a little, very little, about you, but, of course, I understand you far better from yourself. I sympathise with all my heart in your wish to do something—to strike out a career for yourself.”
“Oh yes,” said Winifred, breathlessly.
“No one could sympathise in it more heartily than I,” Hertha went on. “For years, you know, I worked hard for my mother and brother, and—though I don’t need you to tell me about it—I am sure that some similar motive inspires you, as well as the wish to feel yourselfsome one, something, which an energetic woman, placed as you are, must feel.”
The colour rose a little in Winifred’s face. Hertha, with instinctive delicacy, glanced away. She knew that direct owning to poverty was painful to some people.
“Ye-es,” said Miss Maryon, at last. “It is—there are—more than one motive. I want to help my sister, too, the one you saw. I am positively certain she has great talent for painting if she had a chance of cultivating it.
“Indeed?” said Hertha, “that simplifiesherline of action. What she has to do is to test herself. Then you want to help her to get good teaching, and, I suppose, to make a home for her in London? Yes, she is too young and too beautiful to attempt anything of the kind without some one to take care of her. And—can you both be spared at home?”
“We have another sister at home, and, though my father is in delicate health, my mother is well and active. We have thought about it for a long time—Celia and I.”
“Poor souls! Two fewer to provide for, no doubt, is a consideration,” thought Hertha.
“Does Mrs Balderson know about it? Is she likely to help you in any way?” she asked aloud. “I do not know her personally, but I have heard she is truly kind.”
“She has been very kind in having us here. But she would not sympathise in our plans. She is—old-fashioned, I suppose. She thinks girls should stay quietly at home.”
“Ah, indeed,” said Hertha, her mind rapidly picturing to itself what, in such a case, the “staying quietly at home” must mean: the poor, unbeautiful surroundings, the colourless lives, the pain and almost degradation of the terrible “genteel poverty.”
“But sheisvery kind,” repeated Winifred, her conscience smiting her; “she asked us out of kindness. She would like us to marry,” with a little smile. “But, of course, I never shall. She likes Celia the best, I think.”
Again Hertha’s imagination jumped to hasty conclusions. “I see it all,” she thought. “She wants to show the pretty one to advantage, to give her a chance, as people say.”
“And is there any prospect of Celia’s marrying?” she asked.
Winifred shook her head.
“Oh no!” she replied, with a touch of something like indignation, which Miss Norreys could not understand. “Celia would never change so—she would not desert me.”
“But, my dear Miss Maryon, it might be a very good thing, if and always supposing, of course, that it was some one she cared for,” said Hertha.
“Placed as—”
“There is no use discussing remote contingencies,” interrupted Winifred, and Miss Norreys, imagining that her pride in her sister made it bitter to realise that the possibility was remote, beautiful though Celia was, said no more.
“Well, then, to be practical,” she replied, “what you have told me makes me feel that the proposal I have to lay before you may suit you even better than I had expected. For you cannot have Celia with you, or—or afford good teaching for her until you have made a beginning yourself, and got a home ready.”
“I must certainly have somewhere to bring her to,” said Winifred, evasively, “and somewhere for myself too,” with a smile. “I should like to get things a little in order, as it were, so far settled, for, you see, I am old enough to decide for myself, before I tell my people at home about it. It would make my mother so much less anxious if I could tell her itwassettled.”
“But,” exclaimed Hertha, rather taken aback, “your people do know what you are intending? You are not acting against their wishes?”
“Oh no—that is to say, they do know, thoroughly,” said Winifred, with evident candour. “As for theirwishes—why, no, mother does notwishus to leave home. Mothers never do—do they? She would like us all to stay near her always, I suppose. But sheunderstands, and—she is very kind.”
“Kind” struck Hertha as a somewhat curious word to use of a mother in such a case.
“She should be very proud of you both,” she said quickly, while her mind’s eye pictured the overworked parson’s wife reluctant to let her girls go forth to make their way, even though the relief and satisfaction of seeing them in the path of success could not but be great. “If you get on well, it cannot but be a comfort to her, I should think.”
“She knows Celia has great talent, and she does think it should be cultivated,” replied Winifred, and again something in her tone slightly perplexed Miss Norreys. “I don’t think she feels the same about me, for, you see, I have no very special line. But there are quantities ofmenwho have no very special line, and yet do well, and are of use in their generation. So why not women?”
And she looked up inquiringly at Hertha.
“Why not? There is no reason against it when the motives are sound and good, as in your case I think it must be,” Miss Norreys replied, half hoping that this would lead to further confidence. But Winifred did not speak, so she went on: “The chance I have to tell you of reallyisa chance, though it may not sound very splendid. Through an old friend of mine, Mr Montague, you can have the offer of a post in the Reasonable Help Society, provided, of course, you can pass a certain examination. It is a very well-managed society: they try to kill two birds with one stone by engaging to do the work—charitable work, of course—girls like yourself, who—who feel they should do something for themselves, to be independent, and in many cases, with the hope of eventually helping their friends.
“It is right they should be paid,” said Miss Maryon, quickly. “I have thought a good deal about that. I don’t believe in unpaid work.”
“I should be very sorry to make such a sweeping assertion,” said Hertha, with a smile. “However, in this case, the question is not raised. Youwillbe paid—fifty pounds a year to begin, and the prospect of an increase, if all goes well. But remember,” as she caught sight of a bright gleam of satisfaction lighting up Winifred’s face, “fifty pounds are not a fortune. You are very inexperienced. I daresay it seems a great deal to you, but it won’t go very far.”
“I am not so inexperienced as you think, dear Miss Norreys,” said Winifred, quietly. “I shall be able to manage, and to have Celia with me before long. It is not the money, but the feeling that it is abeginning, something really to do, and that I shall take the greatest interest in. There is nothing I have more at heart than the problem of how to help without pauperising our lower classes I may be of more use to the Reasonable Help Society than would be thought likely,” she concluded, with a funny little touch of self-assertion.
“I hope so, I am sure—and with all my heart I hope the Reasonable Help Society will be of use to you. Then you decide on accepting it?—that is to say, on offering yourself as a candidate for the post?”
“Oh dear, yes. Most certainly I do,” said Winifred. “And I thank you a thousand times.”
“It was much more Mr Montague’s doing than mine,” said Hertha. “And, indeed, the whole thing was a chance—a lucky one, I trust.”
“And can you tell me when I must call at the office, or must I write, or what?” asked Winifred.
“Yes,” Miss Norreys replied. “Mr Montague sent full particulars. You must call any morning, but the sooner the better, at this address;” and she held out a paper.
“I will go to-morrow,” said Winifred.
“And if you say that you have no home in London, the secretary will give you a list of lodgings where some of their employees live. Nothing very grand, of course, plain, but not uncomfortable, with thoroughly respectable people.”
“Oh that will be all right,” said Winifred. “I will find something to begin with, I daresay, and if I don’t like it, I can easily move.”
Her tone made Hertha rather uneasy again.
“But all moves are expensive,” she said. “Try to settle down if possible.”
“Ah, well, yes, if I can get rooms for Celia too.”
“Rooms!” thought Hertha. “What does she expect? But she must buy experience, I suppose.” So after detailing to her some more of the information received from Mr Montague, she let her go, without volunteering further advice.
And Winifred, feeling that she had taken the first plunge into independence and “a career,” bade her new friend good-bye for the present, with many times repeated expressions of gratitude.