Kitabı oku: «The Laurel Walk», sayfa 10
Chapter Thirteen
Growing Interests
Pleasant bits in life’s journey are in reality not unfrequently monotonous, though this fact may not be realised at the time. This much indeed is certain: that they often leave little for their chronicler to record.
With the coming of the Littlewoods to Craig-Morion, things in general took almost at once an aspect of new and unwonted interest for Frances and her sisters. There was no longer the dreary waking in the morning to the often reiterated question: “What shall we do with ourselves to-day?” For once its few “musts” and “oughts” had been attended to, and that dutifully, there yet always remained a doleful stretch of hours to fill up as best might be, and Frances’ anxious invention was taxed to the uttermost, in winter especially, to employ this enforced leisure, healthily as well as pleasantly, for the two younger ones, whose welfare was seldom if ever absent from her mind.
Now all seemed different. For even if meetings or expeditions of some kind were not planned for every day, and even if these same little plans were of the simplest and least exciting nature, there was always the consciousness of outside interest and sociability at hand, hitherto so peculiarly absent from the young lives at Fir Cottage.
Ten to one, before Frances had left her father’s study, where most mornings she wrote to his dictation business letters, more often than not entirely works of supererogation, or while Betty and Eira were doing their best to brighten up the drawing-room with such wintry spoils as were to be had, the parlour-maid would appear with a note from the big house, asking: “If one of you would care to drive with me this afternoon, and the others meet us at tea-time in my own room?”
This of course from Madeleine.
Or Horace would make his appearance with unacknowledged calculations as to its being an hour when the great bear was not to the fore, with a proposal, were the weather specially promising, for a good walk, not seldom in the direction of Scaling Harbour; as to the increasing attractions of which unique spot more hereafter.
On these occasions the two younger sisters always found it impossible to give an answer without an appeal to their senior, and Mr Littlewood waited with exemplary patience while Eira made some excuse for penetrating into her father’s sanctum, and there conveying by means of some “family masonic” sign a hint to Frances that she was wanted.
Things fitted themselves in marvellously well and apparently without effort. The three elders of the two groups scarcely realised how much the young people were together. Horace’s utmost tact was employed to propitiate Mr Morion in various ways. Now and then he made a special call upon him, during which the ladies of the family were not alluded to, or he would ask his advice on some matter on which the elder man’s opinion was really worth having, as he himself knew. And, if her husband was content, Lady Emma, who had thoroughly learnt the lesson, not perhaps uncongenial to her temperament, of letting well alone, was not likely to make or notice rocks ahead of any description.
But there remained Mrs Littlewood, as a matter of fact the most acute and the most powerful of those concerned. She knew much more than the parents of her young neighbours, whose worldly experience through disuse had grown rusty, the possible complications that this familiar daily intercourse might initiate. But it was a rule of life with her to refrain from acting till she was pretty sure of being able to do so effectually. She contented herself negatively with reflections that “Horace knew what he was about” – “All young men were the same” – “Conrad,” naturally far more inflammable than his younger brother, “could not have done better for himself than he had done, and even Madeleine – well, Madeleine might be Quixotic and romantic in certain ways” – for Mrs Littlewood gauged the impulsive side of her daughter’s character more accurately than that daughter suspected – “but au fond she had her brother’s real interest at heart.” And, positively, Mrs Littlewood now and then exerted herself to bring a fresh element into the group. It was she who suggested Horace’s inviting his old friend, Mark Brandon, to give them a day or two on his way south from Scotland; though as far as Madeleine was concerned such a visit could result in nothing, Sir Mark Brandon not being in the very least to her taste. It was also by a hint from Mrs Littlewood as to the kindliness of such an attention that the curate-in-charge at Craig Bay was more than once invited to join their expeditions, and on the one or two occasions when Frances or her sisters were at luncheon at the big house, to make one of the party.
“For that now,” said Mrs Littlewood to herself, with the comfortable ignoring of ways and means below a certain level, peculiar to the rich, “is the sort of marriage that a sensible girl like Frances Morion should make. She would have nothing new to face considering her present life.”
But curates-in-charge, like more important people, may be led with facility to the water’s edge, and arrived there refuse all attempt to drink thereof. Mr Darnley had eyes and ears for no one except Miss Littlewood, whose growing concern as to Scaling Harbour and the grave questions of what could be done for it made her always ready to respond to the young man’s gratification in her interest in his work.
There came a day on which some self-invited guests for a couple of nights at Craig-Morion opened the way, naturally enough, to asking Mr Morion, his wife and eldest daughter to join the party there at dinner in a quite unceremonious way.
It was Horace who undertook the negotiation, for his mother hesitated not a little as to the propriety of such a step.
“The poorer people are, the prouder they are, of course,” she reminded him, “and, old-fashioned as Lady Emma is in her ideas, I should greatly dread offending her.”
“Put it upon your own health, my dear mother, and make a favour of it – a great favour of it on their side. Say how kind it would be of them to help us to entertain the Charlemonts coming to us so unexpectedly, or something of that kind. No one is cleverer than you, mother, at saying the right thing. And I’ll take the note this afternoon and see what I can do.”
“After all,” said Mrs Littlewood quietly, “we are not at all obliged to have them, and it does not matter whether they come or not except – ”
Her son glanced up with a shade of disappointment on his face.
“Except what?” he said quickly. “Though not of course that you need do it unless you thoroughly like it.”
“It is really of too little consequence to talk so much about,” said his mother languidly. “I was only going to say, except that I think it might please Madeleine. She has taken to these girls a good deal, and they really are quite unobjectionable. I fancy, too, she would like to show Ryder Morion, if he comes down while we are here, that the sympathy she expressed for them has led to friendly relations.”
Horace gave a slight laugh.
“I am by no means sure,” he replied, “that Morion would look upon it in that way. It would be tacit reproach to him for his neglect of them!”
“He would not be so foolish,” replied Mrs Littlewood calmly. “He is not a small-minded man, and very likely he has been thinking over what Madeleine said” – “and,” she added in her own mind, “likes her all the better for the interest she has taken in them. Furthermore, if there were any fear of Horace’s being seriously attracted by that eldest girl, nothing would be so fatal as for me to appear to oppose it.” No more was said on the subject, at least by or to Mrs Littlewood, till the next day, and even then not till the evening, when, after the servants had left the dining-room, she looked up suddenly, with an inquiry:
“By-the-by, Horace, what about the invitation to Fir Cottage? I have had no answer.” Horace started to his feet with an exclamation of annoyance.
“Really,” he said, “I am not to be trusted. The answer was written there and then by Miss Morion and given to me, and is at the present moment, I have no doubt, in my overcoat pocket. Excuse me an instant, mother,” and he left the room to return immediately with the letter in his hand. Madeleine, as it happened, had not seen her friends that day, though she had known of her mother’s invitation.
“Oh! I hope they are coming,” she said. “You are talking about next week, I suppose, when the Charlemonts will be here?”
Mrs Littlewood did not reply till she had opened and read the note.
“Yes,” she said, “they accept. Not that I had much doubt of it. Pretty handwriting,” she went on. “I wonder how those girls got educated?” Her daughter’s face grew rather red.
“They are very well educated,” she said. “Frances undoubtedly is, and she is naturally the cleverest. Whatever the other two are, and they would certainly pass muster to say the least, they owe greatly to her. She is a model elder sister.”
“She would be a model in any relation of life, it seems to me,” said Horace, for the slight irritation which his mother’s tone had caused his sister was not unshared by him.
Mrs Littlewood’s underlying, though usually well-controlled spirit of perversity, here slightly got the better of her.
“For my part,” she said, “I confess to being very much more attracted by the younger sister. I don’t mean Eira – what a fantastic name! – she is too much of a hoyden still to please me, but by that dark-eyed Betty. There is something quite unique about her.”
Madeleine said nothing, but glanced at her brother with a certain anxiety.
“Horace is by no means a diplomatist,” she thought to herself, “if what I more than half suspect is the case,” for her glance revealed to her a slight deepening of colour through the sunburn of his face. “He is annoyed,” she went on in her own mind, “but he should not show it.” And anxious to change the subject to some extent, and at the same time to please her mother, she turned towards Mrs Littlewood quickly.
“Yes,” she said, “Betty has something very uncommon about her. I should like to see her in the evening. I wonder how she ‘lights up.’”
Her success was greater than she had expected, greater than she had dreamed of, for though her mother’s next words contained a suggestion in every way congenial to Madeleine, it was one she would never herself have ventured upon making.
“I don’t see why she should not give you an opportunity of satisfying your curiosity,” said Mrs Littlewood pleasantly. “Supposing we ask the two younger girls to come in after dinner? Gertrude Charlemont would make friends with them – she must be about the same age.” Gertrude Charlemont was only eighteen or nineteen at most, as Madeleine knew. But she did not correct her mother’s impression as to Betty or Eira’s age. “She is all the more likely to judge them leniently if she thinks of them as so young,” said the Morion sisters’ warmhearted champion to herself, with some pardonable calculation, as she turned to her mother and replied quietly – Madeleine was always afraid of laying herself open to any charge of “gushing” or exaggeration —
“What a good idea, mamma! I am sure they would be very pleased to come. Shall I ask them when I see them? It is scarcely worth while to write another note about it.”
Horace said nothing.
“Do just as you like, my dear,” Mrs Littlewood replied. “I leave it in your hands.”
And she could not have done better.
To describe the excitement caused at Fir Cottage by Madeleine’s message, delivered in a kindly, matter-of-fact tone, as if it were a suggestion of but slight importance, would expose the chronicler of these simple annals, deservedly enough, to a strong suspicion of exaggeration. So no attempt to do so will be made. All the more that the expression of this excitement had to be confined to the sisters’ own quarters, and private confabulations. For in their different ways both parents would have resented any appearance of treating the invitation as anything out of the common – Mr Morion, when by any chance such a subject as his now grown-up family’s isolation from ordinary social life came on the tapis, always speaking as if it were entirely a question of “choice” on his part; Lady Emma, though more practical, also taking for granted that only material difficulties as to ways and means were to be thanked for the exceptional state of things. And in this she was probably correct. For her husband’s eccentricities would undoubtedly have never become so marked had he been a rich man, or, even had he all the same deserved Horace’s sobriquet of “the bear,” bears are tolerated when their trappings are of gold – sometimes with really astonishing leniency.
There was from the first no opposition to the invitation of which Madeleine’s brother was the bearer. Lady Emma thanked him – or rather requested him to thank his mother – with calm equanimity.
Yes, Betty and Eira would be pleased to come, she had no doubt. That is to say, if there were no very appalling change in the weather, which would make it scarcely desirable to go out so late.
“You know,” she added, with a smile, “we are terribly rustic in our habits, Mr Littlewood. It is so seldom that anything in the way of evening engagements tempts us to leave our own fireside.”
“I suppose you have any amount of garden parties and that sort of thing in the fine season,” he said; “though you probably find them a great bore?” he added, turning to Betty.
The girl opened her eyes very wide.
“A great bore,” she repeated; “oh dear, no. I think they are delightful. But there are not many here. The Ferrabys have one on the vicar’s birthday if it is fine – that is the end of July, so it suits very well, as it is just about the time for the school feasts, and – ”
A glance from Eira arrested her confidences, and Horace was left to wonder why the two entertainments coming together should be so desirable, Betty meekly accepting the reproof from her younger sister administered in privacy that she really need not say things “like that.”
“Mrs Ferraby would not like it,” she explained; “for of course I know what you were going to say – that the cakes and buns and things over came in so usefully.”
Her interruption in Mr Littlewood’s presence had been, she flattered herself, skilfully managed.
“The Ferrabys’ garden party is the dullest of any; I don’t think you need give it as an example, Betty,” she had said, and Horace listened with some amusement to her graphic description of the few neighbours within hail, who blossomed out into entertaining of even this mildest description.
“It is certainly rather an unusually isolated part of the world,” said he. “We shall be all the more grateful to you next week for helping us to amuse these good people – the Charlemonts. The daughter, by-the-by, Gertrude, is quite a nice little girl, about your own standing – eighteen or nineteen.”
This time it was Eira who was interrupted. She was just beginning a protest against being defrauded of the three or four years of seniority to the “nice little girl,” of which she was young enough to be rather proud, when Frances crossed the room with a note she had been writing to Miss Littlewood, which she wished her friend’s brother to take charge of.
“You won’t forget it?” she added, with a touch of playfulness rather new to her. Of late Frances had seemed younger; her manner to Horace was decidedly cordial and friendly – increasingly so, as they got to know each other better – and as he replied with an earnest disclaimer of any such possibility as his omitting to execute her commission, Eira’s slipper toe touched Betty’s significantly.
“Isn’t it lovely?” she said five minutes later, when their visitor had left and they were alone in her own quarters, “isn’t it delightful to see how well they are getting on?”
“Yes,” Betty replied, though there was a half-absent, almost dreamy tone in her voice. “Yes,” she repeated, rousing herself a little, “that is if – you are sure they are getting on all right, Eira?”
“Of course,” said Eira, “nothing could be better, and I really think, though I’m younger than you, Betty, that I understand some things more quickly! Indeed, more than Frances herself does! She has lived so for other people, so entirely putting herself in the background, that I dare say it will be difficult for her to realise such a thing. It will come to her,” she went on sagely, “through friendship, so to say, and anyone can see how Mr Littlewood respects her opinion, and tries to get it on all subjects. He loves talking to her, of that I am certain.”
“And Madeleine is devoted to her,” said Betty, “and she and her brother are firm friends. That must be a good thing. But, O Eira, we must make her look very, very nice the night she dines there.”
“I’m sure she will,” said Eira. “I really think I’ve got everything about her dress quite settled in my head, though there are a few points we had better not come upon to her till the last minute. The thing for her hair that we’ve ordered, she won’t be able to refuse it when she sees that we’ve actually got it. O Betty, what should we have done with all this happening but for Mrs Ramsay’s present, for you see now that we are going too, or half going anyway, we couldn’t have done without our new shoes and gloves and sashes.”
Betty looked up anxiously.
“You’ve been thinking it all over already, I see,” she said. “You do think our best evening dresses – the new white nun’s veiling ones, I mean – will do? Of course they are perfectly clean, we’ve never worn them since we’ve turned them into evening dresses, and we took such care of them last summer!”
“Oh dear, yes, they’ll be all right,” said Eira reassuringly. “Thanks, of course, to the blue sashes.” Then, with a little laugh – “Especially,” she added, “as Mrs Littlewood thinks we are only eighteen and nineteen.”
The eventful day arrived. Fortunately on all accounts, looks included, the weather was mild, and Lady Emma, with unwonted maternal solicitude, had told her daughters they were not to think of dressing without fires in their rooms. And Frances’ appearance, thanks to her two devoted tire-women, when she joined her parents in the drawing-room – where Mr Morion was already fuming, ten minutes before the time, at the anticipated unpunctuality of the fly-driver – was in itself a reward to her mother for this same unusual amount of motherly concern.
“You do look very nice, indeed,” she exclaimed, with a little rush of surprise at her own enthusiasm. “Look at her, George,” on which Mr Morion condescended to turn in his daughter’s direction.
“Very nice,” he murmured, as without entering into detail he took in the general impression of her tall, well-proportioned figure, which it would have been difficult to disguise by even the least “well-cut” of draperies. As it was, the prettily shimmering black gauze, broken only by a large bunch of violets at her waist, was unexceptionable in the almost classic of its long, straight folds, and the lovely fair hair in which glistened the little coronal of fairy plumes, which Eira’s quick eyes had picked out in a fashion plate and ordered forthwith, made up a whole which a father would have been almost inhuman not to feel proud of.
“Good-night, dears,” whispered Frances to her sisters, as she followed her mother to the fly, which, after all, had appeared to the moment. “Good-night for the time being, I mean. If you only take half as much pains about yourselves as you have done about me, papa will have reason to be pleased.”
She was feeling deeply touched by her “little sisters’” evident devotion. And for almost the first time a faint suspicion dawned upon her that their ultra concern about her appearance might have a special cause. Her fair face flushed at the mere suggestion, though it was too dark in the fly for either of her companions to notice it.
“They are dear, good little things,” she thought to herself, “but they mustn’t fancying that other people see me with their eyes. And as for me, at my age it would be too absurd to begin thinking of anything of that kind for the first time.”
But the half-unconscious confession to herself that such a warning might be salutary was significant.
As the mother and daughter, followed by Mr Morion, made their way into Mrs Littlewood’s drawing-room – the larger of the two, well lighted and beautified by hot-house flowers, so that the impression was a brilliant one – more than one pair of eyes turned in their direction, to rest for the moment with pleasure on the stately girl whose dignity of bearing was scarcely perceived ere it was tempered by the charm of her sweet expression.
“She is beautiful,” thought Horace, while Mrs Littlewood thought to herself, “I had no idea she would light up so well – I am glad that Horace must take in her mother, and not herself;” while Madeleine turned with frank delight in her eyes to a dark, grave-eyed man who was, at the moment of the Morions’ entrance, standing near the fireplace talking to her.
“Do you know who that is?” she said, with a smile, dropping her voice.
“There are three ‘thats,’” he replied dryly, smiling too. “Yes, I think I can guess, for I knew whom you were expecting – your mother, by-the-by, seemed rather taken back on my unlooked-for appearance, and I was glad to find that her only reason was the fact of my cousins dining with you to-night.”
“Then you don’t mind?” said Madeleine quickly.
“Of course not,” he said, “why should I? No, I set your mother’s mind quite at rest by undertaking to smooth down the other side also – Mr George Morion, I mean. I should have known him anywhere, though it’s years since we met. I had better go over and speak to him at once.”
“He is still taken up with mamma,” said Madeleine hurriedly. “Do wait one instant. I want to know what you think of my special friend, Frances? I have been longing for you to see her.”
Mr Morion’s eyes strayed half carelessly again in the direction of the little group where stood the newcomers.
“That is surely rather unreasonable,” he said. “I have not even heard the tone of her voice,” and he crossed the room as he spoke.
“You are contradiction personified,” was Madeleine’s mental ejaculation. “All men are contradictory, but you are the quintessence of it! I wish I hadn’t asked him what he thought of her!”
By this time Ryder Morion was gravely shaking hands with his kinsfolk – a word from Mrs Littlewood having already explained the situation to some extent.
“Yes,” he went on to Lady Emma, cleverly including her husband in what he said. “I arrived more than unexpectedly, for my letter, which should have preceded me, has not yet appeared. I am specially fortunate in finding you here this evening.”
Mr Morion the elder eyed him somewhat grimly; Lady Emma replying more graciously, though with a touch of nervousness as she caught her husband’s expression.
“You have not been here for a good many years, I suppose?” she said.
“No,” he replied candidly, “I am beginning to think it has been wrong of me, and I cannot really give any reason for it, except multifarious occupations elsewhere. And – I don’t think I have realised,” he went on, turning to Horace’s bear, “that it would have been better to give things up here more personal attention. I must not begin about private matters just now, but I am hoping,” with some slight hesitation, “I should be grateful if while I am here you would allow me to consult you a little.”
No one but Lady Emma detected the slight softening in her husband’s face at this speech.
“Are you making some stay?” was his rather abrupt reply.
“It depends on two or three things,” Ryder answered. “I scarcely know what may suit Mrs Littlewood yet, and I am always busy in my own, perhaps useless, way. But a few days, yes, I must stay a few days if possible, and I hope I may take my chance of finding you at home?”
He glanced round with the half intention of asking to be introduced to the tall fair girl, whose appearance, to tell the truth, had considerably surprised him, but he gave up the idea. Frances was seated at some little distance, and bending over her, as he stood beside her chair, was Horace Littlewood, talking eagerly.
