The Laurel Walk

He looked gratified. Everybody likes to be credited with tact.

“I knew it wasn’t exactly a subject you cared to speak about – to strangers,” he replied.

“Less still,” said Betty, “to Mr Ryder Morion, who, besides being a perfect stranger to us himself, has to do with it, of course.”

“He doesn’t seem to have taken your fancy,” said Horace tentatively.

Betty closed her lips in a way she had which expressed more than words.

“Tell me,” persisted Horace, “I promise not to let him know. Is it a case of Dr Fell?”

“No,” said Betty, in a funny little tone of defiance, “for I do know. Besides the old reasons, just now I’m vexed with him for teasing Frances!”

Her remark, childish as it was, provoked no smile, but, on the contrary, an almost grave reply, as if the speaker were well considering his words.

“You are very, very fond of your elder sister, I see,” said he. “I suppose you have scarcely a thought apart from her?”

“Not a single one,” said Betty eagerly; then she stopped suddenly. “No, that isn’t quite true; just lately – well, for some little time, I have had a thought – some thoughts, that she doesn’t know about.” But no sooner had she uttered this sphinx-like speech than her cheeks grew crimson, painfully crimson. “Oh dear,” she exclaimed, “I wish I talked at all! I always say what I don’t mean to!”

Horace was regarding her with a very perplexed expression.

“Never mind,” he said. “Can’t you get into the way of thinking that it doesn’t matter what you say to me? I wish you would. I really am to be trusted, and – ”

“What?” said Betty, the distress in her face beginning to fade.

“You don’t know,” he went on, “how I like being treated quite – naturally, as you sometimes honour me by doing – as if, so to say, you were beginning to think of me as – as an old friend.”

Almost before he had finished speaking Betty’s expression had undergone one of the sudden transformations so characteristic of her. It was all but radiant.

“How nice of you!” she said. “How very nice of you to put it like that!”

But, strange to say, though he smiled indulgently, a shadow had crept across Horace Littlewood’s face at her eager words.

“Perhaps,” he said, “we had better go back to the drawing-room,” and he glanced round to see what the rest of the party was about. Three had already left the room, Lady Leila and Mr Charlemont escorted by Miss Littlewood, who had come to the rescue on finding them mutually boring each other, Mr Bryan following them with a couple of volumes under his arm, which he meant to study at leisure. There remained Frances and Mr Morion, who were staring out through the unshuttered door-window into the blackness of the Laurel Walk, as if fascinated. And when Horace suddenly addressed her, he was startled as Frances turned to see that her face had grown strangely pale. Or was this only his fancy?

“There is something uncanny about the place,” he thought to himself. “Can they have seen anything? I shall find out afterwards from Ryder.”

For evidently, if his suspicion were true, this was not the moment for satisfying it, as Ryder Morion hurried forward at once.

“Yes,” he said, “we had better return to the drawing-room.” And somewhat to his surprise, Betty started forward at his words.

“It is getting chilly,” she said, addressing him directly. “Do let us go,” on which he naturally accompanied her; thus leaving Horace and Frances for a moment or two in the rear.

“Wasn’t Madeleine saying something about a walk to Scaling Harbour to-morrow?” began the former in a low and rather hurried tone. “If so, may I join you in it, Miss Morion? I should be glad of the chance of a talk with you.”

Frances lifted her grave eyes to his face.

“Certainly,” she said, “we quite mean to go, if it is fine.”

The words and tone were matter-of-fact and commonplace enough. Not so the inward surmises which his words, still more his manner, suggested.

For the first time Frances allowed her thoughts to entertain a possibility which till this evening she had resolutely refrained from even considering.

Could it be that her fanciful little sisters had any ground for the castle they were busily constructing, of which the foundation hitherto she would have refused to believe more stable than “in the air?”

Chapter Fifteen

Breaking Ground

Mrs Littlewood glanced up quickly as Betty and Ryder Morion entered the room. She was seated not far from the door, showing some photographs of her grandchildren to Mrs Charlemont. A curious expression, half annoyance, half expectancy, stole into her face as she caught sight of the two, and between handing the portraits to her friend and listening: to her comments thereupon, she managed to keep a keen though unobtruded watch on the doorway.

She had not long to wait. Scarcely a minute had elapsed before her son and Frances made their appearance. Mrs Littlewood’s perceptions and instincts were very quick: something told her that the two had been talking more or less confidentially, for Horace looked eager and slightly nervous; his companion, on the other hand, grave and almost absent, with a dreamy look in her eyes, which her hostess – little as, comparatively speaking, she knew her – felt intuitively was not Frances’ habitual expression.

“It cannot surely have come to anything serious as yet,” with a sudden rush of alarm which almost startled herself. “He would never dream of it without consulting me, dependent on me as he is, and surely I have more hold on his affection and respect than that would show!”

But the misgiving was there. Had she been a woman of less breeding and self-control she could scarcely have hidden her uneasiness. Even as it was, she did so less completely than she imagined, or else Frances herself was all but morbidly acute to-night, for as Mrs Littlewood moved to her with some polite commonplace, the girl felt that the courtesy but overlay increasing coldness and disapproval.

“She has never really liked me,” thought she, “and now she is on the way to less negative sentiments, I fear.” Nor was this belief in any way softened by the hostess’ manner when the time came for saying good-night – the difference between her kindly, all but affectionate tone to Betty and the chilly though irreproachably courteous farewell to herself was so marked.

And it deepened the impression of Horace’s words. “His mother is afraid of it,” said Frances to herself; “I can feel that she is.”

She was glad that he had kept away from her during the rest of the evening, talking more to the two younger girls, Eira and Miss Charlemont, with whom Betty had taken refuge.

Altogether, the sister’s well-balanced mind had good need of its practised self-restraint that evening. And during the drive home, short as it was, it was all she could do to reply in an ordinary way to the comments on her family’s unwonted piece of dissipation, which not unnaturally came to be expressed.

It had left a favourable impression on her father and mother; thus much Frances was satisfied to see. Beyond this she felt incapable of further discussion.

“I am a little tired, dears,” she said to her sisters as they were making their way upstairs. “Don’t let us talk over anything till the morning.” And, though with a little disappointment, Betty and Eira yielded at once to her wish.

“Frances is, don’t you think, a little strange, not quite like herself?” said Betty, when she and Eira were alone in their room. “She might have told us a little about the dinner, who took her in, and all that. We were so pleased to make her look so nice,” and she gave a little sigh.

“You are rather stupid, Betty,” was the reply. “Things couldn’t be better. Even her wanting not to talk to-night.”

“Talking” was easy to avoid, not so thinking. Frances felt, with a strange sensation of excitement, as if she were on the verge of some great change or changes in life; almost, as it were, on the brink of some discovery. And this was not solely owing to her scarcely avowed anticipation of distinct intention as regarded herself on the part of Horace Littlewood. He had not been mistaken as to the startled, strange expression on Miss Morion’s face at the moment of his suggestion that they should leave the library, which had caused her to turn somewhat suddenly from the window overlooking the Laurel Walk. She had seen, or at least believed that she had seen, something mysterious and inexplicable, and, what was more, she knew that her companion, Ryder Morion, had seen it too.

“What was that?” were the words which had escaped her in a low tone, with an involuntary appeal to him; and his reply, “Some curious reflection of the light in here, I suppose,” though intended as reassuring, had not achieved its object, not even so far as to make her feel that he was expressing his own conviction.

For what they had both perceived was no stationary gleam such as is often thrown on glass with a dark background in such circumstances: it was a faintly luminous something, slowly moving down the path towards the church, gradually fading into nothingness as it neared the little gate.

“What can it have been?” Frances now asked herself, with a shiver of sympathy for Eira, as she recalled the girl’s impressive words about the effect of “really having heard something.”

“I do feel,” thought the elder sister, though with a little smile at her own weakness, “as if I had really seen something! It looked about the height of a small woman moving slowly. Can such things be? Shall I speak of it again to Mr Morion? I have such a shrinking from any allusion to him, to that old story. No, I would rather leave it. Possibly he may tell Mr Littlewood about it, and in that way I may hear if it made any impression on him.” And with the reference to Horace, her thought grew again absorbed by the still vague surmises which his manner, even more than his words, had given rise to.

“To-morrow will give me more grounds for real consideration,” she thought. “It isn’t as if I were a mere girl who could be excused for beginning fancying things which after all may have no existence. It isn’t even as if I were one of the younger ones. I am rather ashamed of myself. After all, I doubt if I am not older than he, and in any case I probably seem so to him,” with a little sigh. “It all comes, I suppose, from this strangely isolated life of ours – things of no importance in the eyes of others seem to us so wonderful.”

Yet in spite of herself the impression was made, and deepened undoubtedly – much as this would have been regretted by the lady herself – through the unmistakable change to increasing coldness and formality in Mrs Littlewood’s bearing to her that evening.

Considerably to Frances’ relief, somewhat too to her surprise, though the former feeling prevented her dwelling on the latter, she was not subjected the next morning to any cross-examination on the part of her sisters as to her experiences the night before, previous to their own appearance on the scene. On the contrary, Betty and Eira seemed fully absorbed by the plans for that day. They had arranged more definitely than Frances knew with Madeleine and her young guest for the expedition to the fishing village which Horace had alluded to.

“They are to call for us,” said Betty, “or we for them. That is to say, we are both to start from our own doors at half-past one; most likely we shall meet in the park. You must manage, Francie, to get us some sort of luncheon before we go. We’ve asked mamma, and she doesn’t mind, if you can arrange it with the cook.”

Betty’s prevision came true. The sisters had just entered the Craig-Morion grounds when they caught sight of a little group coming to meet them.

“Dear me! what a lot of people they seem,” said Eira. “Whom has Madeleine brought? Oh, I see,” she went on, “it is only Miss Charlemont and her father and one of those other men: do you know his name, Frances?”

But Frances did not reply; indeed, she scarcely heard her sister’s remarks. For perhaps the first time in her life, she was feeling self-conscious and constrained. He was there of course, Horace, that is to say, looking his best in his rough tweed suit and brown leather gaiters, bright and eager and evidently in excellent spirits as he shook hands with his fair neighbours. Though underneath this, one who knew him intimately – his sister, had she been on the lookout for it – might have discerned a certain nervousness, of which a superficial judgment would little have suspected this very smart young man of the day of being capable.

The air was exhilarating; with one exception they were all young, and as they walked on together, the sound of their voices in lively talk, broken now and then by Betty’s silvery laugh in response to some merry speech, told their own tale, and that a pleasant one.

Frances glanced at her little sister with satisfaction.

“Betty is looking ever so much better than last night,” thought she; “perhaps she is one of those people – they are often really the loveliest – who are at their best by daylight, though as far as dress goes she and Eira are almost more at a disadvantage than in the evening,” as her eyes strayed from her sister’s neat but unmistakably “home-made” country attire to the perfect finish and cut of Madeleine’s and Gertrude’s short-skirted “tailor” costumes.

For the days are past, if indeed they ever existed, in which “anything,” however dowdy or shabbily fine, was considered “good enough” for country wear. Partly, perhaps, owing to the fact, ignored or scarcely realised, that our ancestresses at no very remote period – those who figured, and deservedly, in books of beauty or on immortal canvases – knew not what country life in our modern sense of the word really is or should be. They never walked; for who would call a stroll up and down a terrace or across a park in clinging draperies and lace “fichus” worthy of the name?

As they emerged from the lodge gates, the party fell naturally into twos and threes. Madeleine, with her usual unselfishness undertaking the entertainment of Mr Charlemont, led the way. And soon Frances, though, needless to say, by no connivance of her own, found herself to all intents and purposes tête-à-tête with Horace.

“What has become of Mr Morion?” she asked, more for the sake of saying something than from any real interest in that personage’s movements.

“I really don’t know,” Horace replied, half absently. “He’s a queer fish. He went off this morning early somewhere; that’s rather his way. When you’re staying at Witham-Meldon you never see your host till late in the day. He doesn’t mind how many people he has to stay so long as they look after themselves or each other till late afternoon or dinner-time. I have even known him stroll into the drawing-room when everybody was assembled as if he had nothing to do with it all, and greet people here and there with an offhand ‘good-morning.’”

“It must be rather uncomfortable,” said Frances, “rather as if you were all staying at a hotel?”

Horace laughed.

“Wait till you see it,” he said. “It’s splendidly managed, even though for the greater part of the year he lives in a corner of it shut up with his books. No,” warming to enthusiasm as he went on, “it is simply perfection to stay at. Besides his huge wealth, which he knows how to use, he is far cleverer than you would think in some ways. I don’t mean his learning, but socially speaking, as the string-puller, so to say. He knows how to get the right people together, and you’re always sure of somebody interesting there; and he very often has my sister-in-law – his sister, you know – to act hostess, and she is quite charming, though almost plain.”

Frances had grown interested by this time, and forgetful for the moment of her own preoccupation.

“You put Mr Morion in rather a new light to me,” she said. “Somehow I have always thought of him, if indeed I have thought of him at all, as a sort of bookworm and recluse, with no sympathy or geniality about him – indifferent to the rest of the world. That is why I have sometimes almost – ” She stopped short.

“Do go on,” said Horace, with the persuasive charm of manner, sometimes quite irresistible, about him. “You know surely by this time that you can trust me perfectly?”

“It was more,” she replied, “that I felt ashamed of what I was going to say. It was that I have almost grudged him his wealth, thinking him one of those people that did not know how really to use it – for others.”

“There you wrong him,” said Horace quickly: “he is by no means selfish, or even self-absorbed – as I have good cause to know,” he added, in a lower voice, as if thinking aloud. “His manner is certainly against him,” he went on; “he gives one the impression of being much more indifferent – cynical – than he really is. In point of fact I know few men, if any, that would have been what he is in the same position; quite unspoilt by coming into all that money and property – Witham-Meldon is really princely – so young as he did.”

Frances was one of those people who instinctively respond to expressions of generous appreciation or admiration of others. There was real pleasure in her face as she turned to Horace, quite unrestrainedly now, for as the conversation went on its increasing: interest had tended more and more to make her for get her perplexing thoughts of the preceding night.

“You and he must be really friends,” she said. “He must be quite different from what I thought.”

Horace smiled, but without speaking. Then half nervously he began to flick at some withered leaves at the side of the path where they were walking, with the stick he held. And almost instantaneously Frances again became self-conscious, or conscious, rather, that her companion was feeling so.

She was right: the young man’s first words confirmed her suspicion.

“Miss Morion,” he began, “do you remember my saying last night that I should be so glad of the chance of a quiet talk with you? I hope it won’t bore you, if – if I try to make you realise a little how I am placed. I have never minded it, or thought much about it till lately, and now everything seems coming upon me at once. Not that for worlds I – I would be without these – new experiences – I would almost say, whatever the end may be! I have never in my life, I don’t think, felt really alive till now. Never so happy, and yet – the other thing too, so terribly anxious – oh! I can’t express it! I have always been a duffer at putting feelings into words. Most men are, don’t you think so?”

“Perhaps,” Frances replied, forcing herself to speak in an ordinary matter-of-fact tone, as her instinct of dignity demanded; but that was all.

“But I may explain a little to you, may I not?” he went on eagerly. “You see, I am the younger son, and entirely, or as good as entirely, dependent on my mother. And she has been a very kind mother, for I have cost her more than I should have done, and she has never reproached me. Now she wants me to leave the army, and – as she expresses it – ‘settle down,’ as my brother Con has done. But, then, think of the huge difference between his position and mine. I couldn’t – I really couldn’t think of marrying for money; indeed, if I was inclined to care for a rich girl I think the fact of her being so would destroy her attraction! I am not hitting at my brother in saying this: he had plenty on his side too to offer, and he did care for Elise. The only way out of it I can see is for me to stay where I am, to stick to my profession. Then, if the worst came to the worst – it’s horribly difficult for me to say it – but if it were against my mother’s wishes, there would still be something to fall back upon. That is to say, if I was fortunate enough to find I might hope. What do you think?”

Frances was silent. She seemed to be reflecting deeply, though no one would have guessed from her quiet manner the internal tumult which his half-disjointed speech had aroused.

“Is there any necessity,” she at last managed to say, “for you to decide anything – as to your plans – just yet? It all seems to me so – so sudden.”

Her voice was low and somewhat tremulous. He glanced with a quick shade of apprehension in his honest blue eyes.

“You don’t mean to say,” he asked anxiously, “that I had better not build upon – what it all hangs on, after all?”

“I – I don’t mean to say anything,” she replied, her tone growing firmer as she went on, “to influence you one way or the other. I – naturally it is rather bewildering – it is difficult for me to take it in – all at once.”

“But you can’t but have known it was coming, that it must come?” he said questioningly. “At least I feel as if you must have known it, as if every one must! I suppose when one is so absorbed by a thing like this, it feels as if it were written on one’s very forehead. Ever since that first afternoon at your house when I was so stupid – you remember? – and thought none of you would ever look at me again – I understand now why I minded so much – ever since then, I see how it has been with me.”

Frances felt strangely touched, and the real feeling which his straightforward words evoked somehow made it easier for her to reply. She even looked up at him with a touch almost of tenderness in her eyes.

“Don’t you see,” she said, “how very difficult it is, how wrong it would be, for me to risk misleading you? I must think it over; besides the personal questions, there is the fear, the reluctance, to risk disturbing your happy relations with your mother. Indeed, they would be more than risked – she would not like it.”

His face fell.

“To some extent I am afraid you are right,” he answered. “But two people, if I may dare think of it as concerning two, are more than one, and that one not a principal in the matter. Little as you have said, Miss Morion, I thank you for that little – more even than if you had said more – for I trust your every word. The question of returning to India,” he went on, “seems to me almost decided, and for myself I don’t mind. But I have always shrunk from it for – for a wife. There is so much that goes against the grain for a girl – a woman – of refinement and all that sort of thing.”

“But,” said Frances, more timidly than she had yet spoken, “if two people really care for each other, must not that make all the difference in the world?”

Though scarcely had the words passed her lips before she regretted them; she would indeed have given worlds to recall them. Had she any right to say as much? Was it not distinctly wrong to do so, uncertain of herself and of the possibilities of her own feelings as she was? A sort of cold misgiving seemed to creep over her, which in her peculiar inexperience she was unable to explain. Was this what all girls felt or went through, she asked herself, on first actual realisation of a man’s devotion? She was gratified, touched; but was that enough? Were her motives entirely pure as regarded him– what he deserved? – or was she influenced by secondary ones, laudable enough in themselves, but to a woman of her character no longer so if allowed to interfere with the plan of the one great question – could she love him?

All this surged through her mind far more quickly than it takes to tell it. She looked up with the intention of some attempt at modifying her last speech, but what she saw in Horace’s face told her it was too late. It was illumined with pleasure.

“Of course,” he replied, “that is everything – everything. Thank you a thousand times, Miss Morion; it is more by far than I was daring to hope for at present.”

Something, an impalpable something, struck her in his words: was it his still addressing her by her formal name? All things considered, this seemed scarcely natural, scarcely consistent. A quick terror seized her that her inferred encouragement, grateful as he was for it, might have seemed premature!

“Don’t put more into my words than I meant,” she forced herself to say; “remember it was an ‘if.’”

But the radiance did not fade from his face.

“Do not deprive me of the little I have got,” he said, “and do trust me. I shall do nothing further without your full knowledge and approval.”

And again, as at that moment a summons from others of the party interrupted them, Frances felt a touch of perplexity.

Chapter Sixteen