The Laurel Walk

“Yes? I hope the results were satisfactory. About Christmas-time, in the country, one seems always to have so many wants.”

Betty laughed. Her laugh was extremely pretty, and it seemed to set both her and her companion more at their ease.

“Wants!” she said, with, for the first time, some of her own natural manner. “I don’t think our wants are confined to Christmas! They go on all the year round, but – ” then with a little flush again, and a mental “she looks so kind” – “I don’t see why I mayn’t tell you,” she went on aloud, though with a slightly lowered voice. “This Christmas we were so lucky. A friend – an old friend – sent us a present to spend as we liked, and you don’t know how delightful it has been! We have so enjoyed ordering things! The only fear was that mamma wouldn’t like it, but it has come all right. Frances explained it so nicely to her!”

“How nice!” said Madeleine. “That kind of present often gives far more pleasure than anything else. I remember when I was about – I suppose about your age – the intense delight of my father’s giving me money one birthday, when he had not been able to choose a gift as usual.” – “She is a dear little thing, after all,” she thought to herself: “she cannot be more than eighteen or nineteen: she is surely the youngest!”

“How interesting it must be,” she went on again aloud, “to have sisters to consult with about such things. My two sisters were the eldest of us all, and I am the youngest. They married before I grew up, so I almost feel like an only daughter at home. And you are like me, are you not? the youngest, though you still have your sisters with you.”

Betty shook her little head sagely.

“No,” she said, “I am not the youngest. Eira is nearly two years younger, just twenty-two.”

“Just twenty-two!” repeated Madeleine, “and you two years older! You don’t mean to say you are twenty-four! I can’t believe it.”

“But it’s true,” said Betty, with a smile; then, a sudden misgiving seizing her that by her way of speaking Miss Littlewood might infer that Frances’ age was more mature than it was in reality, she went on quickly: “We are all three near in age, though Frances is so much better and wiser than Eira and I – especially than I – that it often seems as if she were a second mother to us!”

“I see,” said Madeleine thoughtfully, her eyes straying in Frances’ direction. Then a smile irradiated her whole face, adding greatly to its charm. “I dare say you wouldn’t suspect me of such a thing,” she said, “but do you know, if I let myself go, I should really be afraid of getting too enthusiastic about your sister? She is so – beautiful, in the best way; beautiful with goodness as well as literally!”

Betty’s heart was now completely won.

“Yes,” she said simply, “what you say is true.”

Just then there came a little break in the conversation between Frances and her host, which had hitherto been progressing most propitiously. Horace glanced in Betty’s direction.

“Madeleine is greatly interested in this house,” he observed. “I suppose you all know it well?” and, as he addressed himself directly to the younger sister, she had no choice but to reply, and at the same moment, Frances moved to a chair nearer Madeleine’s, and the two went on with their interrupted talk.

“No,” said Betty, “not so very well, though of course we have been all over it.”

“My sister was much struck by the library,” he resumed, in his turn changing his seat for one nearer hers.

Betty’s shy eyes glanced at him questioningly with latent reproach. She knew that he knew the association that the room must have for her with the dreaded Laurel Walk, and she looked upon his avoidance of the other evening’s adventure as tacitly promised, till an opportunity presented itself of her explaining more to him.

“I don’t like the library,” she said, in a lower tone. “I don’t like that side of the house at all.”

He understood her.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, dropping his voice also. “I am not going to tease you about it, though I should like to know more of the story.”

A grateful glance out of those same eyes was his reward, and at that moment Lady Emma rose from her seat.

“Dear me!” she exclaimed, with unwonted affability. “I had no idea it was so late. Frances, my dear, Betty, we shall be benighted if we don’t make haste!”

“I hope you have plenty of wraps,” said Mrs Littlewood. “Are you driving?”

“Oh no,” Lady Emma replied, though the inquiry did not displease her, “it is nothing of a walk. Mr Morion hopes to find you at home some day soon, I was nearly forgetting to say.”

“I shall be delighted,” murmured Mrs Littlewood, not sorry, however, that the farewells to Frances and her sister obviated the need of saying more. Her eyes rested a moment somewhat coldly on Frances as they shook hands, then glanced off with more cordiality to Betty’s solemn little face.

“Good-by, my dear,” the last two words escaping her almost involuntarily. Then, to everybody’s surprise, her own possibly included, she gently touched the girl’s soft slightly flushed cheek, with a little gesture of caress in her pretty fingers. “You will come to see us again soon, I hope?”

And Betty, lifting her eyes, realised for the first time the delicate charm of “Mr Littlewood’s mother,” as she smiled in response.

“What a lot I shall have to tell Eira!” thought Betty, as she followed her mother and sister out of the room. “After all, it has gone off capitally, and I thought everything at first was turning out wrong.”

Their host accompanied them to the hall door. “You are sure you don’t mind crossing the park alone, now it is so nearly dark?” he said, with some little hesitation.

“Oh, not in the least,” replied Lady Emma, with decision; for, truth to tell, she had had enough and to spare of “society” for the time being, though on the whole it had been less antipathetic than she had expected.

“Oh dear, no, we are so accustomed to it,” Frances repeated, though as her mother walked on she was obliged to delay a moment to listen to Horace’s last words.

“There is a pony in the yard,” he said, “waiting for Madeleine to see. Otherwise I hope you would have allowed me to escort you home.”

Betty had already run on.

“Oh, we are quite right, I assure you,” said Frances. “I hope the pony will please your sister.”

Horace stood for a moment looking after them, then turned into the house again to summon Madeleine.

“Well?” he began, when they were on their way to the stable-yard. “What do you think of the Fir Cottagers?”

“I like the daughters extremely,” said Madeleine heartily, “both of them, though they are so different; and mamma and Lady Emma took to each other quite satisfactorily – quite as much as is necessary.”

“I’m glad of that,” her brother replied simply.

On their side the three wending their way homewards were discussing their new acquaintances in greater detail.

“I think them charming,” said Betty eagerly, “even the mother, and somehow I didn’t expect to like her. But didn’t she speak kindly at the end? And, oh! how pretty she must have been, Frances.”

“Yes,” agreed Lady Emma, one of whose good qualities, negatively speaking, was an absence of any spirit of small feminine jealousy. “Her daughter is not nearly so pretty.”

“But she, Miss Littlewood, has a very nice face,” said Frances. “On the whole, I am sure we shall find them pleasant neighbours.”

Lady Emma gave a sigh.

“I am glad to have got the call over, any way,” she said, in a tone of relief, adding, reflectively, “and I daresay if your father has no objection you may enjoy seeing something of the girl. It might be mutually pleasant,” mentally resolving to put things in this light to her husband, whose terror of being patronised was a mania.

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.”