There was no waiting for tea this afternoon; on the contrary, when the
three girls reached home, tea was waiting for them, and, beside the
table, their mother, with unmistakable annoyance in her face.
"Why have you stayed out so late?" she questioned. "You know how it
vexes your father; in fact, he has had tea and has gone back to the
study."
"I am very sorry, mamma," said Frances. "It was thoughtless of me. We
have been in the church with Mr Ferraby," and she went on to relate the
little incident of the lost brooch, and how cleverly Betty had found it,
thinking that it would distract Lady Emma's attention--in which hope she
was not disappointed; so well did she succeed in gaining her mother's
interest that, under cover of the little narrative, Betty was able to
steal from the room with the teapot and to obtain a fresh supply,
without risk of tannin poisoning, unobserved.
Tea over, Betty and Eira disappeared, as was their habit, leaving
Frances to entertain their mother, during what--in a very small country
house, above all, one in which the family party is but seldom unbroken--
is perhaps the dreariest hour of the twenty-four which make up a
winter's day and night.
Frances' spirits rose on finding that her mother's annoyance had been
but passing. For half a minute she felt tempted to relate to her their
conversation with the vicar, but on second thought she decided that it
was better to avoid the always sore subject of the Craig-Morion
inheritance. So she went on talking lightly and pleasantly on ordinary
topics.
"I told you of Mrs Ramsay's letter, did I not, mamma? She really seems
to have fallen on her feet, and to be quite happy as a colonist's wife."
"Yes," her mother agreed, with a little shudder, "though to me it is
perfectly incomprehensible how any one, any lady--and Miss O'Hara was
essentially a lady--can endure it."
"She was so brave," said Frances. "I often think, mamma, that I owe a
great deal to her--or rather, to go to the root of it, to you, for
choosing her so well."
Her mother looked gratified. To do her justice, in spite of her cold
reticence of manner, she was easily gratified, especially by any
expression of appreciation from her eldest daughter.
"Her coming to us," she said, "was really more good luck than good
management on my part, and I do believe she was happier with us than she
could have been in many other families. She knew that I understood her
position--in a sense," with a little sigh, "not unlike my own. We poor
Irish always sympathise with each other, whatever our faults are. I
often wish Miss O'Hara--no, I really must say Mrs Ramsay--could have
stayed longer, for the sake of the two younger ones, except, of course,
that had she not married it would have been too much of a sacrifice to
expect of her--the staying on, I mean, at a still smaller salary."
"Perhaps it was all for the best," said Frances cheerfully, if tritely.
"The teaching Betty and Eira was an immense interest to me; and I can
never be thankful enough that I had it. Indeed, sometimes, mamma,"--she
stopped, hesitating. "May I tell you something I have been thinking
about?" she went on, for it seemed just then one of the occasions on
which her mother and herself were drawn together in fuller sympathy than
often happened.
"Of course," replied Lady Emma. "Why need you hesitate? I am sure I am
always ready to give attention to anything you want to say."
"It is about Betty and Eira," said Frances. "Sometimes it does seem to
me that we look upon them still too much as children; that they haven't
enough interest--responsibility--I scarcely know what to call it, for
they are not idle exactly."
Lady Emma sighed.
"Oh, my dear Frances," she said, "I don't think there's any use in your
worrying yourself or me about that sort of thing. It is simply a bit of
the whole--inevitable, as we are placed. At their age, of course, girls
of our class are usually absorbed by amusement and society--too much so,
I dare say, in many cases. But still there it is, and I hope I should
have steered clear of letting them spend their lives in empty frivolity
in other circumstances. I think my mother did so; for, of course, poor
as we were, it was nothing to be compared with what my married life has
made me acquainted with. Each of us had one or two seasons in London,
and there was always a good deal going on at Castle Avone in the winter,
and yet we were taught to be good housekeepers and to look after our
poor people, and all that sort of thing."
"Yes," said Frances, "I know." For in her more effusive moments her
mother had sometimes entertained the three girls with reminiscences of
the happy, careless Irish home-life, in which, to see her now, it was
difficult to believe that poor Lady Emma Morion had ever had the heart
or spirit to join. "Yes, I know," Frances repeated, "it always sounds
to me delightful. But it was not so much amusement that I was thinking
about for Betty and Eira. That kind of thing is literally and
practically out of our power. But I have been wondering if we couldn't
help them to have some more definite occupation or interest--they are
both, though with such perfectly different temperaments, in danger of
becoming very desultory, I fear--if not, what is even worse,
discontented, and every one knows there is nothing so invigorating as
feeling oneself of use to other people," and with that she proceeded
with great care and tact to unfold to her mother her simple little
scheme in connection with the fisher-people at Scaling Harbour.
Lady Emma listened with attention, and not without interest, but with no
brightening of expression or respondent gleam, such as had sprung out of
Eira's eyes when the plan was first mentioned. Not that Frances had
expected this--even Betty, unselfish and tender-hearted as she was, had
none of the latent enthusiasm which Frances often found so invigorating
in her youngest sister, and which went far to balance her greater amount
of self-will. And Betty had not welcomed the suggestion with any
eagerness; so how could she expect anything of the kind from her mother,
tired and in a sense worn out by the incessant small worries of her
restricted home-life?
No, it was not to be wondered at that Lady Emma could not rise to any
very great interest in philanthropic work.
"Poor mamma," thought Frances, always ready to judge the deficiencies of
others in the gentlest and most generous spirit, "she has reason enough
to be absorbed by home things." But she watched her mother's face
anxiously, nevertheless, hoping for at least conditional consent, and
what furtherance of the scheme should be possible for her to promise.
And the disappointment was extreme when Lady Emma slowly shook her head.
"That's been put into your mind by Mrs Ramsay's writing to you on the
subject," she began, and immediately poor Frances' hopes faded. "I
can't say that it's the sort of thing I should at all care for you to
do, though what ever I feel about it really does not signify, as your
father would never allow it. Then there is the expense of it--
everything of that kind costs money."
"Very little, as I tried to explain," said Frances; "some of the books I
got for Mrs Ramsay were most inexpensive."
"I dare say," said her mother, touched a little, in spite of herself, at
the girl's evident disappointment. "Of course, if I had any money to
spare, I should have no objection to your all acquiring a little good
practical knowledge of the kind. We, my sisters and I, were by no means
ignorant about household remedies. The poor people used to come to the
Castle as a matter of course when they were at a loss what to do. But
it was so different! The people at Scaling Harbour can send for a
doctor. There is a parish doctor, I suppose?"
Frances said no more. She knew by experience that it was a mistake to
enter into an argument which would only end by emphasising opposition.
She had learnt for so long the philosophy of thankfulness for small
mercies that she was even glad of the inferred permission to get the
books, should the chance of so doing ever present itself--but for the
present, yes, the outlook was dreary enough. Frances could not but own
it to herself.
"It does seem hard," she thought, "very hard, not even to be allowed to
use what little talent one may have in some good, sensible direction."
She was on her way to join her sisters when she made these reflections,
though with no intention of repeating to them the conversation that had
just passed. She found them in the dining-room, kneeling on the rug
before the fire--at this hour of the day a safe resort, as Mr Morion,
though nothing would have made him acknowledge it, indulged in a
before-dinner nap, apt to be somewhat prolonged, between tea and
dinner-time. Considerably to her surprise, even more to her relief, the
two girls were talking eagerly, almost indeed excitedly, though their
voices were low.
"Oh, Francie, I'm so glad you've come!" said Betty. "Do you know what
Eira has been telling me? She didn't want to frighten me, but I made
her tell. Do you know she really did hear something in the church?" and
she proceeded to repeat Eira's strange experience of the sound of
rustling garments in the big pew.
Frances was inclined to be sceptical; sensible people usually are when
first confronted with anything of the kind. It was easily to be
accounted for, she thought, considering that Mr Ferraby had just been
telling that the squire's pew was, by repute, the haunted spot.
"I dare say it was one of the stiff moreen curtains dropping back into
its place again, after you had been pushing them aside," she said. But
Eira shook her head.
"No," she maintained, with conviction in her voice, "it wasn't the least
like that. It was a slow, rising sort of sound, and it was the rustle
of silk, of stiff silk--of that I am certain; at least, I mean to say I
am certain that that was the impression produced on my senses."
"You'd better write it out for the Psychical Society, it has made you so
eloquent," said Frances laughingly, though in the depths of her heart
she was not a little impressed. Then came an exclamation from Betty,
which, accustomed as they were to the startling suggestions she was apt
to burst out with, for once really took their breath away.
"Frances," she said, "I've thought of something. I'm getting nearly
desperate for a change of some kind, and I feel as if I could be brave
enough to do _anything_, especially if you and Eira will back me up.
Supposing we three manage to get into the church some evening and wait
for the ghost, and try to get something out of her? Would you have the
nerve for it?" Her eyes gleamed with excitement, and her whole face was
lighted up in a way that for the moment transformed it.
"Betty!" exclaimed her sisters, together, in amazement.
"You must be joking," Frances added. "You, of all people, to dream of
such a thing!"
"I am not joking," Betty replied. "Just fancy, if we _did_ find out
anything. It would be worth while having one's hair turned grey with
fright to begin with."
"Betty," said Eira solemnly, "you don't know what you're talking about.
If you had said such a thing this time yesterday, I should have felt
quite different about it. But I can't put into words the impression
left upon me by what I heard--little as it seems. No, indeed," and she
shook her head, "I should never be able to attempt anything of the
kind."
"If you both work yourselves up about it so," said Frances, "you will
make me sorry that it has ever been alluded to. Don't talk about it any
more to-night, or neither of you will sleep. Promise me you won't?"
"Very well," Betty replied reluctantly, though her face fell as she gave
the promise; for, although it only bound her to the avoidance of the
subject for that evening, she felt pretty sure that there would be no
chance of enlisting either of her sisters in her scheme. "And," she
thought to herself, "I'm _afraid_ I should never have courage to try it
alone, and without courage it would be no use, as everybody knows that
unless you speak first to a ghost, he, or she, or _it_--why does `it'
seem so much more terrible?--will never speak to you!"
If it is true, as is often said, that happy times require no chronicler,
it is certainly also the case in life that one has to traverse dreary,
monotonous stretches of which there is literally nothing to record.
This, certainly, was no new experience to the Morion sisters, but it is
to be questioned if they had ever before been so painfully conscious of
the almost unendurable dreariness of their general circumstances.
Nature, even, seemed maliciously inclined just now to make things worse
for them. No winter sprightliness came to relieve the autumn gloom
which, in this country, we have come to look upon as more or less
inevitable. It was the dullest of dull weather; the very thought of
Christmas seemed out of place.
"It is as if the sun had really said `good-bye' to us for ever,"
remarked Betty one day. "I am growing so stupefied that I think the
only living creatures I now envy are dormice. Don't you think, Eira,
that Providence, if that isn't irreverent, might have arranged for human
beings to have a good long sleep of several months together, if, or
when, they have absolutely nothing to do which it would in the least
matter to themselves or any one else if they left undone?"
Eira's only answer was a sigh, and even Frances, from the low chair
where, for once in a way, she was sitting idle, said nothing. For poor
Frances' spirits were, at the present moment, really depressed by
physical causes; she had had a wretched cold, which, though not very
severe, had been sufficiently so to lower her vitality uncomfortably and
disturb her usually well-balanced mental and moral condition.
She glanced at the window.
"Who would think it was Christmas week?" she said. "Actually, it comes
next Friday, and this is Tuesday."
"I had almost forgotten it," said Eira. "What about those little
things, Frances, that you said you had still to get in the village?
Cards, wasn't it?"
"Yes," Frances replied, "and one or two trifles; literal trifles they'll
have to be this year, for the servants and our two or three poor people.
Which of you will come with me this afternoon to help me to choose
them?"
Eira looked at her doubtfully.
"Are you _sure_, Francie dear," she said, "that you are fit to go out
to-day? Your cold has pulled you down so."
"Oh, it's over now," said Frances. "A walk will do me good. Are you
coming too, Betty?"
"Would you mind if I didn't?" said Betty; "for once I've got some sewing
that I'm rather in a hurry about, but I will come to meet you--you won't
be very long?"
"As quick as possible, you may be sure," replied Frances. "But, any
way," she added, with a smile, "if possibly we are later than I mean to
be, we won't expect to see you, Betty, as I know you've no love for
being out alone when it's getting dark."
So they set off, and Betty, exhilarated a little by the work she hoped
to finish in their absence, which had to do with her Christmas presents
for her sisters, spent the first part of the afternoon cheerily enough,
though by herself.
"I do feel brighter to-day somehow," she thought, "and, after all, it's
terribly pagan not to cheer up at Christmas-time. Then, too, though
it's such a platitude, things are never so bad but they might be worse.
Supposing Francie's cold had turned into bronchitis, or something
dreadful like that, and she had been very, very ill, how miserable we
might have been just now! What would Eira and I do without her? Even
if she married, how dreadfully dull it would be--but no, it wouldn't,
she would have a charming home of her own, and we would go and stay with
her and--oh, yes! it would change everything. But I must remember I had
made up my mind to give up building castles in the air!"
By four o'clock she was ready to go out to meet her sisters, her work
completed and laid safely away. It was dusk, almost more than dusk,
when she opened the gate and passed out into the road. But a little
further on it grew lighter again, as here the trees were less thickly
planted. Betty went into the park through the usual entrance, and,
crossing through the shrubbery quickly, stood for a moment on a little
knoll which commanded a view of the open drive from the lodge, by which
her sisters would make their way.
It was light enough still to have perceived them, had they been within
the park walls; but they were not to be seen.
"I don't care to go all the way to the gates," she said to herself.
"I'm not in the humour for gossiping with the old Webbs. I'll just walk
up and down about here till I see them, or till I hear the gates clang.
It is so very, very still to-day, and the ground feels harder, as if
frost were coming; I could almost hear their steps before I saw them."
But, though clear and still, it was not a bright evening. Walking up
and down soon palls, and Betty stood still, half hesitating as to
whether she should change her mind and go farther to meet the others.
Suddenly--most things were sudden with Betty--an idea struck her.
"I have a great mind," she thought, "to run up to the church end of the
Laurel Walk, and peep along it, just to see if possibly--oh! of course
there could be nothing to see, or even to hear; but it would be rather
fun to be able to tell Eira that I had done it. She couldn't but think
it brave of me, and I can certainly be back in time to meet them, before
they're half across."
But she had reckoned without her host--that is to say, in ignorance of
her own uncertainty as to the nearest way to the aforesaid Laurel Walk,
for it was in a part of the grounds she seldom frequented, as it led
straight from the church to a side-entrance of the big house, nowadays
rarely used. Betty made two or three wrong _detours_--not to be
wondered at, for, once in among the shrubs again, it was really almost
dark; and when at last she came out at the point she was in search of
she began to repent what now seemed to her foolhardiness, for the
thickly bordered path in question did look from her end of its long,
narrow course extremely eerie and forbidding.
"I can't risk losing my way in those shrubberies again," she thought.
"I remember now that there is a side-path a little farther along, which
will take me by a short cut out into the open again. I'll run along as
fast as I can till I come to it."
But alas! for poor Betty. There was more than one side-path, and the
first she tried, after pursuing it for some yards, only landed her more
confusingly than ever in the thickest part of the plantation.
"This isn't the right one," she thought. "I must go back again, and
rather than risk remaining hereabouts I'll go straight to the church."
Running just here was not an easy matter. The nervous fears which were
beginning, in spite of herself, to overcome her, were once or twice
dispersed for a moment by a bang against some obtruding tree or branch.
"Oh, how silly I have been!" thought Betty. "But here's the opening
into the Laurel Walk. Yes, I'd better make straight for the church."
Something--she could not have said what--made her stop for a moment, as
she turned into the path of uncanny reputation. She started--what was
that? A rustle of some kind in the direction of the house, a falling
branch or leaf, no doubt--all was so still! She turned towards the
churchyard, walking fast, her heart beating quickly enough already,
when--oh, horrors!--she heard all too distinctly the sound of a tread
behind her. For half an instant she stopped in vain hope that she might
have been mistaken.
It stopped.
"Shall I have strength to get out of this horrible place?" thought
Betty, for she felt her limbs already all but failing her, from her now
excessive trembling. But desperation gives courage. She hurried on
again; again, too, the footsteps behind became audible.
"Oh," thought Betty, "if it tries to overtake me, I shall die. If I can
but keep up for half a minute more, I shall be at the little gate into
the churchyard, if only--oh, if only it's not padlocked!"