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 reassur
ngly. "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 _in_human 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.