The Laurel Walk

Four o’clock struck, the light was rapidly waning, when he issued an order to whatever daughter was within hearing to have tea hastened, as he wanted it earlier than usual.

It was Frances who heard him, and she at once rang the bell, though not without a silent regret as to this unusual precipitancy.

“For Mr Littlewood is pretty certain not to call before half-past,” she reflected, “and afternoon-tea looks so untidy when it has been up some time.”

Some little delay, however, ensued. It was between a quarter and twenty minutes past the hour when she summoned her sisters, hidden till then in their little sitting-room.

“Has he come?” whispered Betty.

Frances shook her head.

“No,” she replied, in the same voice, “but papa would have tea extra early. Help me to keep the table tidy.”

Mr Morion, by this time, had taken possession of an arm-chair by the drawing-room fire, which he pulled forward out of its place, as he was feeling chilly. As Frances was handing him his cup of tea the front door bell rang. A thrill of expectancy passed through Betty and Eira.

“Who can that be?” said their father, in a tone of annoyance.

“It is probably Mr Littlewood,” said Lady Emma quietly, “calling to say good-bye. I was expecting him.”

“Very strange, then, that you didn’t mention it to me,” replied her husband acridly. “Am I in a fit state of health to be troubled with visitors to-day? Not that it signifies: he need not be admitted.”

“Papa,” said Frances, in a tone of remonstrance, “it will seem very rude – he asked if he might call – we met him yesterday, and – ”

But the parlour-maid’s approaching footsteps were already to be heard in the hall, and, without taking the slightest notice of his daughters words, Mr Morion rose from his seat, and, opening the door, gave his orders in a decided voice.

“Parker,” he said, “if that is a visitor, say at once that her ladyship is not at home, and that I am not at home either.”

No one spoke. In the perfect silence the short colloquy which ensued at the front door was distinctly heard. Then came the sound of its shutting, and Parker appeared in the drawing-room with a card on a salver, which bore the name of Mr Horace Littlewood, an address, and added, in pencil in one corner, the letters, “p. p.c.”

Mr Morion threw it on to the table without comment; then turned sharply on Frances with a demand for a second cup of tea.

Frances handed it to him. Her face had grown scarlet – a most unusual occurrence with her. Lady Emma leaned back in her chair with an expressionless face. The younger girls, sitting together, clasped each other’s hand secretly in mute, inexpressible disappointment and indignation. Frances, crossing the room on the pretext of handing them their tea, glanced at them with such sympathy in her eyes as all but upset their outward composure. It is, indeed, to be questioned if in Eira’s case at least her tea was not mingled with unperceived tears; and as soon as they dared to do so all three sisters left the room.

Two or three days later came the climax to the episode which had broken the monotony of life at Fir Cottage, in anticipation even more than in actuality. For Frances, returning from one of the endless expeditions to the village from which as often as possible she saved the younger ones, came into their little sitting-room with a half-rueful, half-comical expression on her face.

“My dear pets,” she said, “I feel half-inclined to laugh at myself for minding what I have just heard, but for once I must own to absurd disappointment. Mr Webb has just told me that the Littlewoods have given up thoughts of taking Craig-Morion.”

Betty and Eira gazed at her speechless.

“I had hoped,” she went on, “that it would have brought some brightness, change, at least, and variety into your lives, you poor dears.” They glanced at each other.

“Dear Frances,” said Betty at last.

“But how little – oh! how little,” she said to Eira, when they were alone again, “Frances suspects why we mind so much!”

Eira was by this time quietly wiping her eyes.

“Betty,” she replied, “from this moment I give up castle-building for ever. Let us settle down to be three old maids – they always go in threes – the sooner the better.”

“Yes,” Betty agreed, “and some day, I suppose, Eira, we shall find out how to make some use of our lives.”

“I don’t know,” said Eira. “I’m not as good as you and Frances. Just now I don’t feel as if I cared!”

Chapter Seven

The Curtained Pew

There is a commonplace saying that old people love best the springtime of the year, as it brings back the brighter memories of their youth, and to a certain extent the sense of buoyancy which fades with increasing age; while the young, on the other hand, love the autumn with its tender sadness in contrast to their own joyous anticipations. But generalities are, after all, but generalities; there was little in the lives of the three Morion daughters this autumn to induce them to turn with any sentimentality or even sentiment to outside nature in its fall; there was too much real greyness, too much real endurance of daily, hourly depressing circumstances for them to long for anything but change.

“It wouldn’t be so bad, it really wouldn’t,” said Eira, “if it were the spring, but another long, long winter, when we can be so much less out of doors; and to have had the glimpse of a chance of a break in it all only seems to have made it worse. Surely, Frances, without wrong complaining and grumbling, isn’t it the case that we are peculiarly unlucky in some ways – that our lives are, I mean? Now, supposing we had had to work for our living, we should probably have been far happier, don’t you think?”

Frances hesitated in her reply, and a shadow clouded her face. Unwittingly enough, Eira had touched on perplexing ground, all too familiar to the eldest sister’s thoughtful mind. Had she done wrong or unwisely in regard to her younger sisters? Not very much, perhaps, had been practically in her power, but, still, had she given too much consideration to the right of their all too quickly passing youth, the right of happiness, of enjoyment, of the many things that only during youth can normally exist, and too little to the actual formation of character, to the development of their individual capacities? Had she been too sorry for them, or shown it too much? Strange reflections, more maternal than sisterly, when the actual small amount of difference in their ages was remembered. But since little girlhood Frances Morion had felt herself more mother than sister to the two younger ones.

“That’s a big question, Eira,” she said, trying to speak lightly. “We must believe that the circumstances of every life are, to a certain point at least, meant – intended.” And her voice changed as she went on, more slowly and seriously: “The puzzle is to find out the point at which we should resist them, and not carry resignation or submission too far.”

“There’s not much puzzle about it for us,” said Betty. “We are pretty clearly hedged in! Papa and mamma would never allow us to take any sort of line of our own.”

“Then, for the present at least,” said Frances, “the line is drawn, and I suppose if by the end of life one had learnt perfect patience one would have learnt a good deal; but still – ”

“Still what?” said Eira.

“I am not quite ready to say what is in my mind,” replied her sister. “Perhaps it will come when I have thought more about it. Roughly speaking, I was considering if there is nothing that we can do – nothing that I can help you two to do, in the way of extending your interest a little, even as things are. And, of course, the best way to do that is to look out for what we can reach of helping others.”

“We do do what we can, I think, Francie,” said Eira, in a tone of some disappointment. “We have our Sunday-school classes, and Betty’s blind old man and my bedridden old woman that we go to read to; but beyond that there are always the old difficulties: papa’s opposition and – want of money. I’m sure now we could do a lot at Scaling Harbour, among the fisher-children – such a terribly rough set —if we had money and a little more freedom.”

“I know,” said Frances quietly; but, though for the moment the subject dropped, she thought the more.

And the next few weeks gave her both leisure and cause for ever-deepening reflection.

The weather was unusually and monotonously disagreeable. Raw, grey, and as cold as weather can be when it just falls short of the stimulus and exhilaration which, to the young and strong at least, usually accompany frost. Letters, rare at all times, dwindled down to almost none. Even a family chronicle from their ex-governess, now a settler’s wife in the Far West, was hailed almost enthusiastically as a welcome distraction.

“There is only one thing in the world that I have to be thankful for,” said Eira one day, when, defiant of wind and threatening rain, they started for their afternoon walk, “and that is, that, thanks to you, Francie, and all the wonderful things you’ve done for me and made me do, my chilblains haven’t got bad again – not since – oh, yes! do you remember? – not since the time Mr Littlewood was here.”

“That’s one good thing,” said Frances, “one very good thing. I sometimes think I wouldn’t have made a bad woman-doctor.”

“What a horrible idea!” said Betty, with a shudder. “I hope it doesn’t mean that you ever think of becoming a hospital nurse. If you did, I should just simply drown myself, and make Eira do the same!”

“Hush!” said Frances. “Don’t say such things, even in fun. No, I’ve no ambition of the kind – not while I’ve got my own place at home, any way. But it’s rather curious you should have said that, Betty, for an idea has come into my head of something we could do for the people at Scaling Harbour, which really would cost us nothing, or next to nothing. It struck me when Mrs Ramsay” – (the ex-governess) – “sent me that commission for a few simple surgical books, to teach her to know what to do out there in case of accidents, which she says are always happening.”

“And certainly, by all accounts,” said Eira, with interest, “they are always happening at Scaling Harbour. But what is your idea?”

“It is not very definite yet,” said Frances. “Only the first steps towards it. What I am thinking of is, if we could use part of this winter, when we have so much time on our hands, for teaching ourselves the elements of surgical aid, and then when we have, to some extent, mastered it, to give simple little lectures – lessons, rather – to the fisher-women down there once a week or once a fortnight.”

Eira’s eyes brightened.

“Yes,” she said, “I would like that! There is something, I think, very attractive about those people; something a trifle wild, almost foreign. They do say, you know,” she went on, “that there’s a strain of Spanish descent among them; and, in any case, they are quite unlike the inland people about here, who are peculiarly dull and phlegmatic.”

“I should be frightened to go much among them,” said Betty.

“Possibly,” went on Frances, “we might persuade mamma to let two or three of them come up to us a few times. We could teach them a little of the practical part in the first place, and get to know them, and then they might talk about it to their neighbours. To begin with, all we want is one or two sensible books, or possibly, a set of ambulance lessons by correspondence. I think I have heard of such things.”

“They would be sure to cost a lot of money,” said Betty, who was evidently not inclined to take an optimistic view of the scheme.

“Don’t be such a wet blanket, Betty,” said Eira. “We can but try.”

“And even if we couldn’t manage it just now,” said Frances, “something might make it feasible after a time. It might prove the getting in the thin end of the wedge; you know papa and mamma sometimes come round to things if we wait long enough for – for them to get accustomed to the idea, as it were.”

“And when that time comes,” said Betty dolorously, “all the interest of the thing we wanted has gone.”

“O Betty, do not croak so,” said Eira; “it’ll depend on ourselves to keep up the interest by talking about it.”

“Yes,” said Frances, “you are quite right, though I have noticed that pleasant things seldom come quickly, and troubles and disappointments do. It isn’t often that one has some quite delightful surprise! Nice things either come in bits, so that you scarcely realise the niceness, or else they are pulled back when you feel sure of them, so that, even if they come after all, the bloom seems taken off.”

“Dear me, Frances,” said Eira, glancing up at her with a smile, “you are quite a pessimist for once.”

“No – no,” returned Frances. “I don’t mean to be. I was really thinking about it to myself and wondering why it is so. When there appears to be a sort of rule about anything, you can’t help beginning to hunt for the reason of it.”

“The rule with us,” said Betty, still in the same plaintive tone, “according to the old saying, is no rule, for the exceptions never appear.”

Both Frances and Eira laughed.

“Why, Betty, you are becoming quite paradoxical, inspired by melancholy,” exclaimed the latter; but not the ghost of a smile was to be raised this afternoon on Betty’s pretty little face.

“I suppose it’s very wrong of me,” she said, “but I do feel cross and dull. Even these horrid, dirty roads, and this detestable wind, add to it all. It’s scarcely worth while coming out, except that there’s nothing to do indoors.”

“I really think it’s no use attempting a long walk,” said Frances. “Let us turn here, and get home by the other road, past the church; it will be a little more sheltered.”

“If the church were open and decently warm,” said Eira, “like the little new one in the village, it would be rather nice to go in there sometimes. I’m not imaginative, but I can fancy things in there. Even the mustiness, the very old smell, carries one back in a fascinating way. I always begin thinking of great-grand-aunt Elizabeth, though I’ve no love for her! But she must have been young once upon a time, and pretty and lovable perhaps.”

“Perhaps she was,” agreed Frances, “though her position – put in her brother’s place – makes one feel as if she may have been unsisterly and designing. But then, no one knows the rights of the story, or what her brother had done for his father to disinherit him.”

They were nearing the church by this time; as the old porch came within view, Eira gave a little cry of satisfaction.

“It is open, I declare,” she said. “Do let us go in, Francie. I hate going home before there is a prospect of tea, and it’s too early for that yet.”

Her sisters made no objection, and they entered. Inside it felt comparatively warm, and, though at first almost dark, as their eyes got accustomed to the gloom they caught sight of the old vicar, standing in a pew near the chancel, apparently looking for something.

He turned as he heard their steps, and greeted them kindly:

“Good-day, young ladies,” he said. “If I may venture to trouble you, Miss Eira – your young eyes are keener than mine. Mrs Ferraby has lost a little brooch, not a thing of much value except to herself, and it struck her that it may have dropped off her in church, as that was the last time she remembered wearing it. Of course it would be better to look for it by a clearer light.”

As he spoke he drew still further aside the red moreen curtain which separated the vicarage pew from the larger square one belonging to the big house, permission to occupy which was one of the very few advantages enjoyed by the Fir Cottage family, as representatives of the Morions. Betty and Eira came forward eagerly.

“Do let us look,” they said, both together; Eira, who was the old vicar’s favourite, adding, playfully, “But you must come out yourself, Mr Ferraby, please. If it is anywhere, it is pretty sure to be on the floor.”

“I don’t know that,” said Betty, who had no special wish to grope on her hands and knees. “You may feel on the floor if you like, Eira; I shall look on the seats and the book-rail.” And, strange to say, she had scarcely begun to do so when she gave a little cry of pleasure. “Here it is,” she exclaimed, “wedged into a crack in the woodwork between the pews, ever so neatly; but no doubt it would have dropped down the first time the pew was dusted,” and with deft fingers she withdrew the little trinket from its temporary resting-place. “It is queer,” she added; “there must be a hollow space between this and the panel on our side. Perhaps it’s the place with a little door where we leave our prayer-books,” and, standing on a hassock, she peered over into their own pew, adding, “No, our book-cupboard is farther along.”

No one paid any attention, however, to her researches. Mr Ferraby was too delighted to have recovered the brooch to care much about where it had been concealed. He thanked Betty with effusion.

“My good wife will not have come home yet; she is in the village,” he said. “So I am not in a hurry, and quite at your service, young ladies. Were you looking for me?”

For, in his mild, unenergetic, though kindly way, the old vicar was always ready to be consulted as to the few poor people under his wing, or indeed on any other subject as to which the Morion sisters could apply for his advice or sympathy.

For half an instant an impulse came over Frances to confide in him her little scheme for benefiting the fisher-folk at Scaling Harbour, but a glance at the bent and fragile figure of their old friend made her dismiss the idea.

“He wouldn’t understand it,” she thought; “it would seem to him new-fangled and unnecessary; and then he is so poor and so generous,” – for it was well known that out of his tiny stipend Mr Ferraby was far too ready to give more than he could really afford – “he would be writing for books for us, even if he thought it would only be an amusement. No, I had better not speak of it.”

And – “Thank you,” Frances went on aloud, “no, we had no idea you were in the church; seeing it open, we just strolled in, with no better motive than to kill a little time, I’m afraid. It is not tempting weather for walking.”

“No, indeed,” the vicar agreed. “The season is peculiarly dull and depressing this year, even to one who should be well accustomed to this climate and to everything about the place. I have been here over fifty years, half a century,” and he gave a little sigh.

“And we have been here,” said Eira, “nearly all of our lives that we can remember; so we should be accustomed to it, too, shouldn’t we, Mr Ferraby?”

He shook his head.

“Scarcely so,” he replied, “at least not necessarily. The sort of ‘getting accustomed’ to things – in reality I was thinking of more than the climate – that I had in my mind – is not of a piece with youth and its natural distaste for monotony. My wife and I often think it must be dreary for you three, and we wish we had it in our power to help you to a little variety. If things had been different with us – if that poor boy of ours had been spared – we should not now be the dull old couple I fear we are.”

His hearers were touched by his simple self-depreciation.

“Dear Mr Ferraby,” said Frances, “you mustn’t speak like that. It is very nice for us to feel that we are always sure of two such kind friends at hand.”

There was more pathos in his allusion than a stranger would have understood, for this same “boy,” of whom he spoke, would by this time have been not far off fifty himself, though to his parents he ever remained the bright, promising young fellow suddenly cut off in his early manhood.

“Who was here before you came, Mr Ferraby?” Eira inquired abruptly.

The little group was seated by this time in the large, square pew, which almost looked like a cosy little room, and even to-day it felt fairly warm.

“Who was here before me?” the old man repeated. “Broadhurst was the last vicar, and before him there was a private chaplain resident at Craig-Morion. That was in its palmy days, when the family spent most of the year here – quite early in this century, that is to say – for I remember Broadhurst telling me that things had been quiet enough during his time, and he was here for nearly twenty years.”

“And you never saw our great-grand-aunt Elizabeth, did you?” Betty inquired. “I think we’ve asked you before.”

“No,” the vicar replied. “Strangely enough, her funeral was one of the first ceremonies at which I officiated – that was in the year forty. She was very ill when I came, and refused to see me, and indeed, for several years before that, she had led a life of utter seclusion. I remember hoping for brighter days coming, for I was young then, and no misanthrope, but they never did, as the elder of her two nephews took a dislike to the place, which his son – a grandson now – seems to have inherited!”

“I wonder how it would have been if our grandfather – her younger nephew – had come in for it, as she led him to expect,” said Frances. “Of course, you know all about that, Mr Ferraby?”

“Very different, I expect,” said the vicar. “I often wish there was a law against pluralists of estates, as well as of livings. When a man has only one place, you see, it is his home, and that insures his interest in it. Putting aside my natural wish that the big house here were your home, I really do feel it a terrible loss that its owner should be such a complete absentee.”

“It is very wrong,” said Frances, “wrong of Mr Morion, I mean, never to come here, even though there are not many tenants. I should be glad to have an opportunity of saying so to him. You heard of the talk there was a little while ago of some of his connections coming here for a time, I suppose, Mr Ferraby?”

“Yes,” the vicar replied, “and I began to build some hopes on it, and was disappointed to hear it had ended in nothing.”

He glanced round the whole building as he spoke.

“I should like to see this church in better condition,” he went on. “Not that I go in for new-fangled ways, but a good deal could be done without trenching on such ground. I can’t say that it is substantially out of repair, but Mr Milne only advises what is absolutely necessary, and unless Mr Morion came down here enough to get to care for the place, I can hope for nothing more.”

“Is it any prejudice against the place?” said Betty, in her abrupt way. Then a curious gleam came into her eyes. “You know what the people about here say, Mr Ferraby?” she asked; “that great-grand-aunt Elizabeth ‘walks.’ I wonder if possibly, when Mr Littlewood was here, anything – of that kind, like seeing her – happened to him. For he told us his people’s coming was all but decided upon.”

The old vicar looked at her as if he scarcely understood, and Frances turned rather sharply.

“Don’t talk nonsense, Betty,” she said. “Somehow things of that kind – about a place being haunted and so on – ooze out, if one isn’t very careful, and I can’t see but what they may do mischief.”

Mr Ferraby looked at her approvingly.

“I quite agree with you, Frances,” he said: “though certainly nobody would accuse the good folk about here of too much imagination or nerves. Hard work have I to impress them in any way, yet it is an undoubted fact that stolid souls of this kind are often absurdly superstitious. They are too conservative, perhaps, or too stupid, to invent new ideas. If they would hark back a little further still, one would have better ground to work upon.”

“Mr Ferraby,” said Betty, “you’re becoming quite a Radical.”

“No, no, my dear,” he replied, “have I not just said that I wish they would retain some of the belief in the supernatural, even if mingled with some superstition, which the last century did so much to destroy? That is what I meant to imply, though I did not express it clearly. Yes,” he went on, replying to her former remark, “I have of course heard the talk about old Miss Morion’s unrestful condition. But,” – and, had it been light enough to see his faded blue eyes more clearly, a gleam of mischief, akin somewhat to the recent sparkle in Betty’s own orbs, might have been discovered – “you are not quite on the right tack. It is not the house, but this church which the poor lady is said to frequent. Indeed, the very spot where we are seated is said to be her favourite resort.”

Betty almost screamed, and even Frances and Eira involuntarily drew closer together, for there was no denying the creepiness of their old friend’s information under present circumstances.