Miss Norreys's mind, though a remarkably well-balanced one, was yet far
from phlegmatic or unimpressionable. So far, indeed, from such did she
know her inner self to be, that she had learned by experience to beware
of her own natural impulsiveness, to have profound belief in "second
thoughts."
But she was full of quick sympathy, and ever ready to feel keen interest
in her surroundings. It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that
on the night following the day we have been describing, she went up to
her own room greatly engrossed by all she had heard, anxiously eager to
prove herself a friend worthy of the name to the various members of the
Maryon family who had appealed to her for assistance or advice. It was
a beautiful night. Before Hertha got into bed she drew back the
curtains of one of the two windows--her room was a corner one--as was
her custom. For she loved the early morning light, and it never
disturbed her slumbers before her usual hour for waking.
A flood of moonlight lay on the terrace beneath. The night was
perfectly, peculiarly still, and not a leaf seemed to flutter. There
was something curiously dream-like about the whole scene--for the room
in which Hertha stood, and on which she threw a glance as she turned
again, was, like most of those in the old house, quaint and picturesque
in its very simplicity. White-panelled and wainscoted, with little
wreaths of carved flowers above the lintel of the door and over the two
old mirrors sunk in the walls; the bed in a sort of alcove; the ancient
fireplace, surmounted by a very high and narrow carved and moulded
mantel-piece, of the same dull, _matt_, white-painted wood, which was
the chief characteristic of the house, the whole effect was like nothing
that Miss Norreys remembered ever to have seen.
"It is very un-English, very un-nineteenth-century, very unlike all the
attempted reproductions of the past we have so many of," thought.
Hertha. "It is so exactly what it may have been, and probably was,
three or four hundred years ago. One can realise how the family life
has gone on unbrokenly, with all the changing actors in it, generation
after generation."
And again she glanced out. For the first time it struck her that this
window overlooked the lower terrace walk which Celia preferred to avoid.
With a sudden increase of interest, Hertha pushed up the sash, and
leaned out. Yes, that was the very place, the walk bare and open at the
end near the house, growing dim and shady as it was lost to view in the
shrubberies farther on.
"If it were worth the trouble," thought Hertha, "I should like to put on
a cloak and go right along to the end and back. I don't think I should
be afraid; the moonlight is so bright, and everything is so still. No
flopping branches or sighing wind to make one fanciful. Yes, I _think_
I should venture. And how proud I should be to tell them of it in the
morning."
But even as she gazed, a slight misgiving seized her. _Was_ the night
so perfectly still, or was the wind suddenly getting up? Something
_was_ moving at the far end of the walk--the "White Weeper's" walk.
What? The branch of a tree probably; there were aspens down there,
Hertha remembered, and a mere nothing would set _them_ quivering.
A slight shiver ran through her--it was growing chilly. With a
half-contemptuous smile at herself, she drew down the window, and in a
very few moments was safely ensconced in bed, though somewhat shivery
still.
"I hope I haven't caught cold through my own folly," was her last waking
thought.
For, notwithstanding her preoccupied mind and a certain amount of
excitement, of which she was conscious, Hertha fell asleep quickly, and
any one seeing her would have said that her slumbers were sound and
untroubled.
But, in point of fact, she was dreaming vividly--all the events of the
last few days seemed to be re-enacted before her, with the addition of
various fantastic accompaniments such as dreamers know well. Friends
and acquaintances she had not thought of for years suddenly appeared as
familiar guests among the members of the family at White Turrets. Her
own grandmother, whom as a child Hertha had been very fond of, seemed to
be there as an ancient chatelaine of the place, pointing out to her,
among the visitors, historical personages whom no living being could
have known outside a book.
"We are expecting the King--Louis XVI--of course, and Queen Marie
Antoinette, this evening. They have long wished to visit White Turrets,
and now," her grandmother was explaining to her, when, with a sudden
start, Hertha awoke.
She was not sorry, for though the dream had been of curiously
fascinating and fantastic interest, she had been conscious--and the
consciousness remained with her even after she was awake--of a strange
indescribable fear, that dream fear which, I fancy, at some time or
other, every one must have experienced: a fear as of fate, all-pervading
and irresistible, of perfectly unspeakable _strangeness_, as if we had
got on to another plane of existence altogether, where nothing was as we
had ever known it, where we feel ourselves alone in an isolation such as
real life has never, even faintly, figured to us. Through all the
familiar scenery of her dream--through the sound of her grandmother's
voice, and the perfect knowledge that she was here, at White Turrets,
among the friends she seemed now to know so well--through the laughter
and the smiles she knew to be around her, was this terrible ghastly
consciousness of _fear_. And it did not at once disappear when she
awoke. It seemed still to be clinging to her, haunting the air round
about her. Never had Hertha suffered in the same way to such an extent.
"What can be the matter with me?" she said to herself. "I feel poisoned
with fear. Dear me, if this sort of thing is the kind of sensation one
has in a haunted room, Heaven preserve me from such an experience! But
_can_ there be any thing uncanny in this room? I have never felt it
before. Oh no, it must all be fancy and nonsense. My nerves are upset,
I suppose. I have been taking my friends' troubles too much to heart."
But she could not get to sleep again. Indeed, she felt almost afraid of
doing so for fear of a repetition of her dream terrors. They grew
fainter after a while, but she became increasingly wakeful. And at last
she got out of bed, and throwing her dressing-gown round her, she went
towards the window, of which the blind was drawn up.
It was the same window where she had sat looking out on the moonlight
late the night before. Why did she go back there? Afterwards she could
not tell. It seemed as if some invisible power had drawn her thither,
and for the moment she had forgotten the slight shiver she had felt at
believing she saw something moving in the shrubbery. But no sooner was
she seated again at her old post than the remembrance returned to her;
she would have liked to move away, but a sort of fascination, partly
curiosity, partly a feeling she could not describe, retained her.
The moonlight was much less brilliant now. There seemed a slight haze,
scarcely amounting to clouds, over the sky. But the night--for dawn was
still some way off--was very calm, and there was no wind at all.
"There is literally _nothing_ moving," thought Hertha. "The stillness
almost frightens me. How quite absurdly fanciful I am becoming!" and,
as if in a kind of anticipation of something, she knew not what, she
held her breath in an intensity of listening. Then came over her the
feeling of being no longer under her own control. She could not have
moved had she wished to do so. But she did not wish it. With this new
sensation her fears had all disappeared.
It came--the something she was watching for. Far off, at the extreme
end of the walk already described, a faint flutter, between light and
shadow--a _movement_--grew perceptible. A presence of some kind was
there. It came on and on, slowly but steadily, and the moon came out
again more clearly, its rays reflected on the vaguely defined figure, of
which the most Hertha could for some moments have said was that it
moved, and that it was white.
She sat as if turned to stone, yet _she_ was no longer afraid. Not even
when, by degrees, she became aware that the form was undoubtedly that of
a woman--a woman, young, graceful, but in dire distress, for as it
advanced, with its slow, cadenced step, till within a few yards of the
terrace just below her, she saw it lift its pallid arms in their shadowy
white drapery, as if in piteous appeal, then wringing its hands, for one
fleeting moment its face was raised to her as if her presence were known
and realised, and she saw that it was that of a beautiful woman,
weeping, weeping sorely, as if her very heart would break, for woe she
was powerless to avert.
And a whisper ran through Hertha's overwrought brain: "It is she--the
White Weeper--she is appealing to _me_."
But there was no sound, only the intense gaze of the exquisite though
death-like and mournful face--and while she felt those eyes upon her,
Hertha could have felt nothing beside.
Then they withdrew. Something made her at last able to close her own,
and she half fell back on her chair. And when she looked again there
was nothing--nothing whatever but the trees and the garden in the
moonlight, utterly still, as if in an enchanted sleep.
And Hertha went back to bed, and fell almost at once into sound and
perfectly dreamless slumber.
She woke at her usual hour, to sunshine and the sound of the birds'
joyous carolling this time. She lay still, thinking deeply, as she went
over in her mind the strange experiences of the night. The
question--"Was it all a dream?"--never for one moment occurred to her.
Neither then nor at any future time did any doubt of the objective
reality of what she had seen shake the intensity of the impression that
had been made upon her.
Yet the _fear_ was all gone--in fact, ever since she had thrown off the
nightmare-like oppression of her fantastic dream, it had been no longer
there. She felt no reluctance to stay on at White Turrets, no repulsion
to the room, no shrinking even from the long terrace walk, up and down
which had paced those ghostly steps--the pitiful, shadowy form of the
White Weeper. But still there was much for Hertha to consider. Why had
the weird family guardian appeared to _her_?
"She may be there every night--always, for aught I know," thought Miss
Norreys, "but why were _my_ eyes opened to perceive her? Why did she
appeal to me, as I feel convinced she did? Why not to self-willed
Winifred, the cause of all the trouble and anxiety? Possibly she could
not: perhaps Winifred is so constituted that no spirit could make its
presence known to her. It must be that, I suppose. But what can I do?
Winifred must know by this time that I do not sympathise with her mania
for `a career,' and that she has involved me in her folly in a far from
pleasant way. However, I suppose I must speak to her more plainly and
strongly than I have done--that is the only response I can make to you,
poor troubled spirit!"
And before she began to dress she stood for a moment at the window,
gazing along the path, now gleaming and brilliant in the clear morning
sunshine, and while she did so, a sudden idea struck her. She would
tell, in the first place at least, _no one_, except Winifred, of what
she had seen.
"It shall be a confidence between her and me," she decided, "and as such
it may impress her the more--far more than if I told them all, and she
heard every one cross-questioning me about it." And no sooner had she
thus resolved than she was conscious of a curious sensation of
satisfaction, as if for the first time she had fully grasped the nature
of the commission entrusted to her to perform.
She did not look quite like herself that morning when she went
down-stairs. Her beautiful eyes were less clear and open; she seemed
tired and slightly preoccupied, though she did her best to hide any
signs of disturbance.
But Mrs Maryon and her two younger daughters were keen sighted, much
more so than Winifred, and Hertha was assailed with affectionate
inquiries as to whether she had a headache, or had she not slept well,
etc, which she parried as best she could.
There were two or three letters for her--one, a large, rather thick one,
in Mr Montague's handwriting, she looked at irresolutely, then put it
into her pocket unopened.
"It must be in reply to the long letter I sent him two days after I got
here," she said to herself. "I am glad he is back in England, but I
think I would rather _not_ know what he says till after I have spoken to
Winifred."
A special and uninterrupted talk with one member of a fairly large
party, even if that party be a family one, is not always easy to achieve
unobserved, though in a country-house it would seem a simple enough
matter. But of late Winifred had rather avoided than sought Miss
Norreys's society. Some idea of the possible causes of complaint Hertha
might believe herself to have against her for the conduct which Winifred
was beginning to realise as not being, in appearance at least, candid,
made the girl less at ease than heretofore in her friend's society. She
did not as yet allow this to herself: she would not own, even in
thought, that she had been to blame. She "put it all down" to this
visit of Miss Norreys to White Turrets, where, though on one side the
favourable impression her friend had made on Mrs Maryon and the others
was gratifying to Winifred, on the other it was somewhat irritating.
"I must wait till we are back in London again," she said to herself.
"Of course she _must_ be civil and pleasant to them all, and they
certainly have been very kind and nice. But she is more impressionable
than I thought her. Seeing things here as she has done, I am afraid she
will never sympathise thoroughly in the monotony and dullness of this
narrow home-life. Still, after all, it can't be helped. I must do
without sympathy, I suppose. But--I do wish it had never come into
mother's head to invite Hertha down here."
She was standing by herself in front of one of the windows of a long
corridor, on to which opened several of the principal rooms on the first
floor, when these reflections crossed her mind. This window overlooked
the entrance to the walk so carefully eschewed by Celia--though not so
much of it could be seen as from Miss Norreys's room, situated in an
angle of the house.
The association of the White Weeper's reputed preference for this walk
was always an irritation to Winifred, as was, in fact, everything real
or imaginary which had to do with the old story.
She gave herself a little shake when she took in whither her gaze was
absently directed.
"Ridiculous nonsense!" she half murmured, as she turned to go, and why
she should have started violently, as at that moment a hand was laid
upon her shoulder, she could not have told. It was not the sign of a
guilty conscience, for, in all good faith, Winifred as yet had barely
taken in that she had been at all to blame. "Misunderstood," "narrowly
judged," she had told herself she had been, and she allowed that to
others her conduct might have _seemed_ disingenuous. But she was
essentially honest, and it is sometimes as difficult for naturally
candid persons to take in that they have put themselves into a crooked
position, as for a crafty and calculating character to believe in
straightforwardness in itself or others.
Still she started. And she was assuredly not nervous.
It was Hertha's face she looked up into as she turned: Hertha's eyes,
searching--and what more? Was it reproach or anxiety, or a mingling of
both, that Winifred read in their clear depths? And in spite of herself
the girl looked away, while her colour deepened a little.
"Did I startle you?" said Miss Norreys. "I am sorry, but--I wanted to
speak to you quietly. I have been looking for you."
"I am only too ready and delighted to have a chance of you," said
Winifred, trying to carry the war into the enemy's country. "But you
know I scarcely see you; mamma and the others monopolise you so."
There was a touch of truth in the reproach, but Hertha did not feel
guilty. She had avoided _tete-a-tete_ conversation with Winifred out of
consideration for the girl herself as much as for others.
"It is true that I have not sought for opportunities of being alone with
you," she said. "I am now quite ready to explain why, though I think
you must have some idea of what I felt." Winifred did not at once
reply. She was again staring out of the window, and again a feeling of
irritation came over her. Did _every_ side of the house look out on
that detestable lower terrace?
"I am quite ready for as long a talk as you like," she said. "I daresay
you have felt a little shaken in me, but--I think I can make you
understand me."
And she looked up in Hertha's face so frankly, that again--and she was
glad of it--the conviction of Winifred's honesty of intention and
absence of cunning or calculation returned to Miss Norreys almost as at
first.
"Shall we go out for our talk?" Hertha said. "It is a lovely fresh
morning, and I have just a little--headache of a kind. At least, I did
not sleep well."
"No, I remember: you did not look like yourself when you came down to
breakfast," said Winifred, with sudden compunction. "And I am keeping
you standing about. Are you sure it won't tire you? After all, we
shall have plenty of time for talking in the future, I hope."
Hertha shook her head.
"I don't want to put it off," she said. "Indeed, I cannot. If there
were no other reason, you know how seldom I have a free half-day even at
home. And there are other reasons. Can you get your hat? The air will
do me good. I will wait for you by the sun-dial," and she moved away as
she spoke.
"I will be with you in two minutes," said Winifred.