"NOT AT HOME."
"What in the world," said Betty, "what in the whole world, Frances, did
you get to talk about to him, all that long way across the park?"
"Really, Betty," said Frances, for _her_, almost crossly, "you are too
bad! Did I elect to have a _tete-a-tete_ with Mr Littlewood? If it
were worth while I might blame you and Eira seriously for the way you
behaved--like two--"
Betty was on the point of interrupting with some vehement repetition of
the dislike she had taken, and that not causelessly, to their uninvited
visitor, when a significative tug at her sleeve from Eira startled her
into silence, though thereby Frances' intended lecture made no further
way, as the interruption came from Eira instead.
"You are not to say `silly school-girls,'" she exclaimed. "I know
that's what you were going to say. We simply walked on because three
women and one man seem--are--so stupid. Why does it always seem as if
there were too many women?"
"In a family where there are no brothers it couldn't very well seem
anything else," replied Frances, rather shortly; but she did not resume
her remonstrances, for by this time they were by the front door, and she
hurried into the drawing-room, where, as she expected, tea, and a
somewhat ruffled Lady Emma, were awaiting them.
"You are very late, why--" were the words that greeted her; but before
hearing more, Eira softly closed the door, holding back Betty for a
moment's confabulation in the hall.
"What is it, Eira?" said Betty impatiently. "You tug my sleeve, and
then you pull me back when I'm tired and want some tea. What is it you
want to say?"
"We had better leave our cloaks outside," said Eira, rapidly unbuttoning
her own garment as she spoke. "What I want to say can't be said in a
moment, it is something too tremendous! I only felt that I must give
you a hint to be more careful in your way of speaking about Mr
Littlewood."
"Why?" asked Betty, opening her dark eyes to their widest.
"Because," said Eira, "I am not at all sure but what a most wonderful
thing is going to happen, or, for that matter, has happened. Betty,
suppose--just suppose--that _he_ has fallen in love with Frances."
Betty gasped, unable for a moment to articulate.
"That man!" she at last ejaculated.
"Well, why not?" returned Eira. "_You've_ taken a dislike to him of
some kind, or you fancy you have, and of course I don't mean to say that
I think he's good enough, but still--but I can't speak about it just
now, only take care!"
She had certainly succeeded in taking Betty's breath away. The girl
would scarcely have been capable of a coherent reply, but she was not
called upon for one. The drawing-room door opened, and their elder
sister's voice was heard.
"Do come in to tea," she said, "and, Eira, you run and tell papa it is
ready. I had no idea it was so late," she went on. "Poor mamma has
been wondering what was keeping us," she added, in a deprecatory tone,
as Betty followed her into the room.
"We can't blame Mr Littlewood for it," said Betty eagerly; "we were
walking almost all the time we were talking to him, so _he_ can't have
delayed us!"
"Mr Littlewood?" repeated Lady Emma, in the high-pitched tone which
with her was one of the signs of disturbed equanimity. "Mr Littlewood?
What is she talking about? You don't intend to say that you have been
a walk with a--perfect stranger! Frances, what does this mean? I
insist on your telling me."
"I have not the very _least_ objection to telling you, mamma," said
Frances. "In fact, I have a message for you from Mr Littlewood, which
I was just going to deliver."
Her tone was absolutely respectful, but there was a touch of coldness in
it, not without its effect on her mother. In her heart Lady Emma not
only trusted her eldest daughter entirely, but looked up to her in a way
which showed her own involuntary consciousness of the superiority in
many ways of the girl's character to her own. But any approach to
acknowledgment of this real underlying admiration and respect would have
seemed to her so strange and paradoxical, considering their mutual
relations, as to be almost equivalent to a reversal of the fifth
commandment.
She contented herself with replying in a calmer tone, "Did you meet Mr
Littlewood, then? Naturally I can't understand things till you explain
them."
"Yes," Frances replied, "we met him on our way home, not in the park,
but in the little copse on the Massingham road."
"I am glad you were not in the park," said Lady Emma.
"But we did come through it after meeting him," said Frances. "It would
have been affected to do otherwise just because he is staying at the
house, and I suppose, as he was walking our way, he could scarcely have
avoided walking on beside us. He asked me if he might call to say
good-bye to you, mamma, to-morrow afternoon?"
The last words, unfortunately as it turned out, were overheard by Mr
Morion as he entered the room. His wife, taught by long experience,
made no reply, so the message remained uncommented upon, unless a
doubtful grunt from the depths of the arm-chair where the master of the
house had settled himself could have been taken as referring to it.
Silence, not an unusual state of things at Fir Cottage, ensued, and as
soon as the two younger girls could escape from the room they hastened
to their own quarters, a small and in wintertime decidedly dreary little
chamber, which in old days had been used as their schoolroom. It looked
out to the side of the house and was ill lighted. But its propinquity
to the kitchen was, practically speaking, in cold weather no small boon,
preventing its ever becoming very chilly, for, though it boasted a
fireplace, the restrictions as to fuel formed one of the most
disagreeable economies in practice at Fir Cottage. In summer, on the
other hand, the schoolroom was apt to become unbearably hot; but in
summer, if it is anything like a normal season, and in the country, life
usually presents itself under a very different aspect. Such things as
fires and chilblains do not enter into one's calculations; one's own
room, in nine cases out of ten, is a pleasant resort, and even if not
so, are there not out-of-doors boudoirs by the dozen?
Dreary enough, though, the little room looked this evening, when by the
light of one candle Betty and Eira established themselves as comfortably
as circumstances allowed of, that is to say, on two little low
basket-chairs, dismissed from the drawing-room long ago as too shabby,
which had been one of their few luxuries in lessons days. Just now,
also, the extraordinary possibilities which they were about to discuss
so filled their imaginations that the uninviting surroundings over which
they often groaned would have passed unnoticed had they been ten times
worse. And worse they might have been most assuredly! For one fairy
gift was shared alike by the three sisters--the gift of dainty
orderliness; and where this reigns one may defy poverty to do its worst,
for with such a background the tiniest attempt at prettiness or grace is
trebled in pleasing effect.
"Eira," said Betty in an almost awe-struck whisper, "do you really,
really mean what you said? Do you think it _possible_? And--" with a
touch of hesitation, quaint and almost touching in its contrast to the
outspoken treatment of such subjects by the typical maiden of to-day,
"if--if he had--fallen in love with Frances, _could_ she ever care for
him, I wonder?"
A dreamy questioning came into her eyes as she spoke.
"I don't see why she shouldn't," said Eira. "Of course neither you nor
I can picture to ourselves _any_ man being good enough for Frances, so
we need not expect the impossible. But taking that for granted, I don't
see why she mightn't get to care for this man. Indeed, she has liked
him from the beginning, and stuck up for him against you. And as men
go--of course we really don't know any, but I suppose _some_ books are
more or less true to life?--as men go, I suppose any one would consider
him very attractive."
"Perhaps," said Betty gently, for she was already beginning to see her
_bete noire_ through very different spectacles, "perhaps. And then,"
she added, with an amusing little air of profound worldly wisdom, "he
must be rich, and made a good deal of, and all that sort of thing, and
for a man of that kind to find out what a girl really _is_, in spite of
her plain simple life, and way of dressing, and all that--though, of
course, nobody can say that Francie is not good-looking, far more than
merely pretty--don't you think, Eira, that that of itself shows that he
must have a great deal of good in him?"
"Yes," Eira agreed, "I do. Though it doesn't do to be too humble,
Betty, even about external things. Remember, however poor we are, that
as far as family and ancestry go we could scarcely be better. No one
need think it a condescension to marry a Morion."
"Of course," said Betty, speaking half absently. "Oh, Eira, how
interesting it will be when he comes to-morrow! Do let us think what we
can do to--to show everything to advantage. If we _could_ persuade
Francie to sing, for her voice is so lovely!"
"She never would," said Eira, "not to any one like that, who is pretty
sure to be a good judge, for she knows her voice is untrained. Why, she
has never had a lesson in her life! Can't we do anything about her
_dress_, however? She always looks nice, perfectly nice, but almost too
plain, too severe, as if she had retired from the world and was above
such things as dress and looks."
"Perhaps it's just that that attracts him in her," said Betty--"the
difference, I mean, between her and the fashionable girls he is
accustomed to."
"Yes," replied Eira, "up to a certain point that's all very well, but no
man would like to have a wife, however beautiful she was, who did not to
some extent look like other people. Betty, how could we contrive to
make her wear her own black silk blouse to-morrow? It is even more
becoming to her than ours are, and a little handsomer. Don't you
remember her saying when we got them that hers mustn't look too young?
She is rather absurd about her age, for certainly she doesn't look older
than twenty-four at most."
"I wonder how old Mr Littlewood is?" said Betty, thoughtfully: "I'm
_afraid_ not more than twenty-seven; and Frances is one of those people
who would think it almost a crime to marry a man younger than herself."
"We can easily keep off the subject," said Eira. "Indeed, after he has
left, I think we had better say very little about him, though we may go
on planning all the time by ourselves, you know, how to help it on in
every possible way, once he comes back again.
"Oh, Betty!" and she clasped her hands in excitement, "isn't it nice to
have something to make plans about?"
Somewhat to their surprise and still more to their satisfaction, the two
girls found their sister, the next morning, much more amenable to their
tactfully administered suggestions than they had anticipated.
"Yes," she said simply, "I should like to make the room nice, and
ourselves too, so that he may take as favourable an impression as
possible back with him to his people and the other Morions, and you will
be careful, Betty dear, won't you, not to hoist your flag of war again?"
"Don't be afraid," said Betty, kissing her sister as she spoke. "I see
now that I behaved idiotically, and I see too how kind he was to take it
as he did."
In their uncertainty as to the time at which their acquaintance might
call, the sisters decided on taking their usual walk in the morning, and
remaining about the premises after luncheon. There was not much fear of
their mother's not being at home, in the literal as well as conventional
sense of the words, for Lady Emma was not given to constitutionals, or,
except on the rarest occasions, to returning the formal calls of the few
neighbours with whom she was on visiting terms, and in her heart she was
rather gratified than otherwise at the stranger's overtures, due, as she
imagined, to some extent at least, to the impression made upon him by
her own cold dignity of manner, seconded, however childishly, by Betty's
outburst of self or family assertion.
All, therefore, promised propitiously for the expected visit of
farewell, though at luncheon a not unfamiliar gloom was to be discerned
on the paternal countenance which sent a thrill through the hearts of
the two younger girls, Betty's especially, the most sensitive to such
misgivings.
"Let us keep out of his way," she whispered to Eira as they left the
dining-room: "if he had the least, the very least, idea that we wanted
to stay at home he would be sending us off on some message to that
wretched chemist's, as sure as fate!"
"But how about Frances?" said Eira, in alarm.
"I think it's all right," Betty replied. "Both she and mamma, though
they don't perhaps say so, want it all to be nice, I feel sure. I saw
Frances giving some finishing touches to the drawing-room, which really
looks its best, and I heard mamma saying something about tea cakes, and
you know how in reality mamma depends on Frances: _she_ won't let her go
out, even for papa."
Mr Morion's "den," as in jocund moments he condescended to call it,
opened unfortunately on to the hall, almost opposite the drawing-room.
In some moods he had a curious and inconvenient habit of sitting with
the door open, and though he sometimes complained of advancing years
bringing loss of hearing, there were times at which his ears seemed
really preternaturally acute, and this afternoon, thanks to this
peculiarity, aided possibly by some occult intuition of anticipation in
the air, he was somewhat on the _qui-vive_ for--he knew not what.
Suffice to say he was in a raw state of nervous irritability, ready to
quarrel with his own shadow, could that meek and trodden-upon phantom
have responded to his need.
Four o'clock struck, the light was rapidly waning, when he issued an
order to whatever daughter was within hearing to have tea hastened, as
he wanted it earlier than usual.
It was Frances who heard him, and she at once rang the bell, though not
without a silent regret as to this unusual precipitancy.
"For Mr Littlewood is pretty certain not to call before half-past," she
reflected, "and afternoon-tea looks so untidy when it has been up some
time."
Some little delay, however, ensued. It was between a quarter and twenty
minutes past the hour when she summoned her sisters, hidden till then in
their little sitting-room.
"Has he come?" whispered Betty.
Frances shook her head.
"No," she replied, in the same voice, "but papa would have tea extra
early. Help me to keep the table tidy."
Mr Morion, by this time, had taken possession of an arm-chair by the
drawing-room fire, which he pulled forward out of its place, as he was
feeling chilly. As Frances was handing him his cup of tea the front
door bell rang. A thrill of expectancy passed through Betty and Eira.
"Who can that be?" said their father, in a tone of annoyance.
"It is probably Mr Littlewood," said Lady Emma quietly, "calling to say
good-bye. I was expecting him."
"Very strange, then, that you didn't mention it to me," replied her
husband acridly. "Am I in a fit state of health to be troubled with
visitors to-day? Not that it signifies: he need not be admitted."
"Papa," said Frances, in a tone of remonstrance, "it will seem very
rude--he asked if he might call--we met him yesterday, and--"
But the parlour-maid's approaching footsteps were already to be heard in
the hall, and, without taking the slightest notice of his daughters
words, Mr Morion rose from his seat, and, opening the door, gave his
orders in a decided voice.
"Parker," he said, "if that is a visitor, say at once that her ladyship
is not at home, and that I am not at home either."
No one spoke. In the perfect silence the short colloquy which ensued at
the front door was distinctly heard. Then came the sound of its
shutting, and Parker appeared in the drawing-room with a card on a
salver, which bore the name of Mr Horace Littlewood, an address, and
added, in pencil in one corner, the letters, "_p.p.c_."
Mr Morion threw it on to the table without comment; then turned sharply
on Frances with a demand for a second cup of tea.
Frances handed it to him. Her face had grown scarlet--a most unusual
occurrence with her. Lady Emma leaned back in her chair with an
expressionless face. The younger girls, sitting together, clasped each
other's hand secretly in mute, inexpressible disappointment and
indignation. Frances, crossing the room on the pretext of handing them
their tea, glanced at them with such sympathy in her eyes as all but
upset their outward composure. It is, indeed, to be questioned if in
Eira's case at least her tea was not mingled with unperceived tears; and
as soon as they dared to do so all three sisters left the room.
Two or three days later came the climax to the episode which had broken
the monotony of life at Fir Cottage, in anticipation even more than in
actuality. For Frances, returning from one of the endless expeditions
to the village from which as often as possible she saved the younger
ones, came into their little sitting-room with a half-rueful,
half-comical expression on her face.
"My dear pets," she said, "I feel half-inclined to laugh at myself for
minding what I have just heard, but for once I must own to absurd
disappointment. Mr Webb has just told me that the Littlewoods have
given up thoughts of taking Craig-Morion."
Betty and Eira gazed at her speechless.
"I had hoped," she went on, "that it would have brought some brightness,
change, at least, and variety into your lives, you poor dears." They
glanced at each other.
"Dear Frances," said Betty at last.
"But how little--oh! how little," she said to Eira, when they were alone
again, "Frances suspects why we mind so much!"
Eira was by this time quietly wiping her eyes.
"Betty," she replied, "from this moment I give up castle-building for
ever. Let us settle down to be three old maids--they always go in
threes--the sooner the better."
"Yes," Betty agreed, "and _some_ day, I suppose, Eira, we shall find out
how to make some use of our lives."
"I don't know," said Eira. "I'm not as good as you and Frances. Just
now I don't feel as if I cared!"