Chapter Ten.
The Eyrie.
A tall girl was standing at the window of a drawing-room in a large house at the corner of a certain London square.
It was a good house, though with nothing very distinctive about it; one of the class that now, at the end of the nineteenth-century, people are beginning to look upon as somewhat old-fashioned. There was nothing “Queen Anne” about it, or its furniture; though, to make amends for this, it gave the impression of dignity and stateliness: perhaps, after all, the points that it is safest to aim at in a definitely town house, where light and height and air are the great desiderata. And there was nothing grim or gloomy in the colouring of the room, though a perhaps too studied avoidance of mere prettiness, which would, I fear, have been designated by its mistress as “tawdry frippery” or something analogous thereto.
And this was the home—since his father’s death, that is to say—of Horace Littlewood, who at this present moment was successfully accomplishing the afternoon call which, with Betty’s assistance, he had arranged to pay at Fir Cottage, primarily, of course, on the master of the house, whose favour he had gained to such an extent that, after a discussion of local matters in his study, his host had begged him to join the ladies of the family at tea in the drawing-room.
Madeleine Littlewood, his only unmarried sister, was the tall girl who stood gazing out into the gloom of the late winter afternoon. From the position of the house she could see more ways than one. In the square itself the lamps were now in process of being lighted. One by one she saw them twinkle out, though the result was but faint and dim in comparison with the brilliance of the adjoining street—a wide and important one, where the presence of shops made the contrast with the silent square the more striking.
The girl gave a little sigh.
“Dear me,” she said to herself, “how well I remember watching the lamplighter when we were children! We each used to try to catch sight of him first. There seemed something mysterious about him. I think it began the first winter we were ever in London; it was all so new, and then for so long we only came up in the summer, and everything was different. And now again it will be quite a new experience to be in the country for so long together in the winter. I wonder how we shall like it, and if mamma won’t find it dreadfully dull, after all.” She turned from the window as she spoke, partly because at that moment the front door bell rang sharply, and, as a rule, at this hour, she and her mother were supposed to be “at home.”
“I wonder who that is,” she thought.
She was not long left in doubt, for a minute later the door was thrown open, the butler announcing—“Mr Morion.”
“Bring the lamps,” she said, as she moved forward a little to greet the newcomer, “and let Mrs Littlewood know Mr Morion is here.”
“Horace is away, I suppose,” were the visitor’s first words.
“Yes,” she replied, “the day before yesterday; in such spirits too. He seems to be greatly taken with that eyrie of yours up in the North. He was quite disappointed when mamma gave up thought of it.”
“I hope you’ll all like it,” was the reply, though the tone was indifferent enough. “But you mustn’t blame me if you don’t.”
“Well, no!” she replied. “I can’t say that you painted it for us in very attractive colours; in fact, you have not praised it up at all.”
“I could scarcely have done so,” he said; “I know it so little. But hearing what you, or rather what your mother wanted—bracing northern air, with a touch of the sea, and to be left at peace, it would have been rather dog-in-the-manger of me not to suggest it.”
“Oh! it was very kind of you to think of us,” she replied, more cordially than she had yet spoken. “You must come down when we are there and learn to know your own home, or rather the home of your forefathers, for Horace tells me it was the cradle of your race. It is odd,” she went on, reflectively, “that you should never have cared to know it better.”
Something in her words or tone slightly jarred on the owner of Craig-Morion.
He pushed his chair back a little, and hesitated in his reply.
“A great many things seem odd to outsiders,” he said, dryly.
Madeleine smiled. Somehow, though she scarcely could have said why, for she had no real antipathy to her sister-in-law’s brother, she and Ryder Morion never “got on,” though underneath this surface antagonism each had for the other a solid foundation of respect and even liking.
“Yes,” she replied coolly, “it is not always the case that they see ‘the most of the game.’ I am afraid I am a born gossip,” she added, with a little laugh. “I like to know the ins and outs of my friends’ affairs. And oh, by-the-by, à propos of Craig-Morion, you have relations there of your own name, I hear! Do tell me something about them.”
“You could not apply in a worse quarter,” he said. “I know literally nothing of them, except that the father is a peculiar, and, as far as any personal experience of him goes, a very disagreeable man. There was an old—complication. He believes his grandfather should have inherited the place, instead of my people, though really, as it all happened ages before I was born, I don’t see why he visits it on me.”
“And does he?” inquired Madeleine.
“Well, yes, I fancy so. He was very rude to me once, at all events, and naturally that didn’t add to the attractions of Craig-Morion, for these people live almost on my own ground. But really,” he went on frankly, “there are no reasons for my avoidance of the place, except negative ones. I get into grooves, I fear, and feel lazy about things that I have not always done.”
There was silence for a moment or two, then Miss Littlewood spoke again.
“Horace has interested me in those relations of yours,” she said, “from what he has told me of them. Let me see, cousins, are they not? But not at all near? Or is the father a sort of great-uncle to you?”
“Oh, dear, no,” replied Mr Morion, speaking more briskly than he had yet done. “The father is actually of my own generation, though old enough almost to be my father. I have never counted the cousinship—it must be of the third or fourth degree by this time—in fact, as I said before, I have had little or nothing to do with them.”
Madeleine did not reply. A certain occult suspicion of unexpressed disapproval in her mind made itself felt by her companion. He glanced at her rapidly.
“They are very poor, from what Horace says,” she remarked.
“Are they?” Mr Morion answered indifferently. “I really can’t say. I don’t suppose they are rich, but there is no son, and little girls are easily educated.”
“Little girls!” repeated Madeleine, with a slight laugh. “Why, you are ignorant about them. The eldest certainly, if not the middle one, is as old as I, four or five and twenty.”
“Really?” he said, in the same tone. “I thought their father married late in life, and I am getting to an age when youth at any stage seems some distance from me. Poor girls! their life must be dull enough up there with that old bear. You may be able to show them some kindness, Madeleine. I know you are one of those people whose benevolence is somewhat abnormally developed.”
“I should like to be kind to them,” she said, simply, and Mr Morion believed her and admired her, as he often did. But yet something in her very downrightness had a slightly irritant effect upon him, and of this in return Madeleine was not unconscious.
“I wonder,” she thought to herself, “why Mr Morion and I always rub each other the wrong way? I never feel sure if he is talking in good faith or sarcastically. I suppose one must put down a good deal to the change in him caused by his wife’s death. And yet that is long ago now, and she was so very young, and the marriage only lasted a year or so. Still—” Her train of thought was interrupted by the door opening to admit her mother, who came forward with an expression of pleasure as her eyes fell on their visitor, for Mr Morion was decidedly a favourite of hers, and on the whole he preferred her society to that of her daughter, though by no means unaware of the latter’s great intellectual superiority.
Mrs Littlewood was still very pretty, though she by no means obtruded this fact, for her taste was good, and her tact excellent. As a rule, she was a very gentle woman, but a strong will underlay the gentleness, genuine though it was. She liked to be liked, and disliked making herself disagreeable, in consequence of which perhaps, when her disapproval or opposition was once aroused, it was not easily resisted.
“We have, of course, been talking about Craig-Morion,” said Madeleine, when she had provided her mother with tea. “But I can’t get much information about it.”
“I really know it so little,” repeated Mr Morion. “My chief feeling about it now is the hope that you will like it, and not be disappointed.”
“That is not likely,” said his hostess. “To begin with, I am one of those philosophical people who never expect perfection, and what we do want I think we are sure to find there: fresh, bracing air, quiet, and some amount of amusement for Horace.”
“I hope it won’t be too bracing for him,” said Mr Morion, “or too cold rather, though they do say that the first winter home from India one never feels the cold so much—still, there was his illness.”
For Horace Littlewood had but recently returned home from his regiment in the East, in consequence of an accident at polo, complicated by a sharp attack of fever, and at present his future career was, to some extent, in abeyance. His mother, whose favourite son he was, was most anxious for him to settle down in England, to which, however, the very fact of his dependence upon her—for Mrs Littlewood had been more or less of an heiress—caused him to hesitate in his consent. He hated the thought of an idle life, and was not, moreover, without experience of the love of power, but little suspected by many who imagined that they knew her well, latent in Mrs Littlewood.
“I think he will be all right,” Horace’s mother replied, “with us—Madeleine and me—to look after him, and he is very pleased with the shooting. Oh, yes, Mr Morion, I am sure we shall be quite satisfied, and, if you won’t take it on hearsay, the only thing to do will be for you to come down and judge for yourself.”
“Thank you very much,” he replied, adding, somewhat to Madeleine’s surprise, if not to that of her mother, “Yes, I think I should like to come down for a little while you are there.” For, as a rule, any invitation to Mr Morion was either politely put aside or accepted on such general terms as to leave but vague probability of his ever availing himself of it.
Mrs Littlewood glanced at him as she responded cordially that she was delighted to hear it. And across her own mind there flashed again a reviving hope—a hope which she had once cherished eagerly, though for some time past it had all but faded.
“Can it be,” she thought, “that, after all, he does care for Madeleine? They say that such things often begin by a kind of antagonism. And in many ways, au fond, they would be so well suited.”
Madeleine’s unspoken reflections ran in a very different direction.
“I wonder,” she said to herself, “if it has possibly struck him that he should know something of those poor relations of his. He is not the sort of man to shirk a duty, or even a piece of kindness, once he recognises it; but he has got into a curiously indifferent sort of way of looking at things. Lives and circumstances are oddly arranged. He is just the type of man who would have been quite happy and content, and probably more useful in his generation, had he had moderate means and been able to devote himself to study—as, indeed, I suppose he does; but then comes the question, Has he a right to do so, considering that he is a large landed proprietor, with so many, in a sense, dependent upon him?”
She looked at him, as the thoughts, as they had often done before, passed through her mind. He felt conscious of her involuntary scrutinising expression, and again he grew slightly irritated.
“That girl lives upon criticising other people,” he said to himself. “I wonder what she is inwardly arraigning me for now.”
To some extent he did her injustice; to a greater extent she was guilty of the same offence towards him. But there are people who, in obeying the command of concealing from the one hand the good deeds of the other, lose sight of the equally authoritative warning against hiding our light, humble as we may and should esteem it, “under a bushel.” And such people must often be misjudged.
“When do you think of going down?” Mr Morion went on. “I believe Horace mentioned a date, but I have forgotten it.”
“The end of next week probably,” replied Mrs Littlewood promptly, for she still kept the reins of family plans and arrangements well in her own grasp, her daughter being often in ignorance of them till the eve of their accomplishment. “Horace does not come south again—or at least only part of the way. He has an invitation to the Scoresbys for the next few days; then he will return to Craig-Morion and be there to welcome us—some of the servants go on Monday.”
“And how do you propose to employ—nowadays one is frightened to say ‘amuse’ to young women—yourself in my eyrie (I rather like the name), as you call it, Madeleine?” inquired their visitor. “Horace has his shooting, and a little hunting for a change if he thinks it worth a short journey for, and your mother quiet, and, I trust, the consciousness of invigoration. But what are you going to do?”
“Oh,” said she, “I have given no very special thought to it as yet. Of course we shall have books, as usual—by-the-by, have you a library there? And driving—we are taking down a little cart on purpose for me, and Horace is looking out for a stout pony, not afraid of hills. And—walking—I have a great idea that exploring a new country is better done on foot than any other way, and I love exploring. I expect I shall be able to make a guide-book for you of your unknown part of the country before we leave it.”
“But you cannot explore all by yourself,” said Mr Morion, “and I don’t suppose Horace will be always at your command.”
A very slight twinkle of amusement might have been discerned in Madeleine’s eyes by a close observer. She guessed that almost in spite of himself Mr Morion was leading back again to the rather delicate subject of his ignored relations, which seemed to have a kind of fascination for him. And she was not unwilling to play into his hands.
“Perhaps,” she replied, “once I have made acquaintance with them, your cousins may be good enough to accompany me in my rambles. Doubtless they know their own neighbourhood well.”
“Mr Morion’s cousins?” said her mother, before he had time to say anything. “Whom are you talking about, Madeleine? Oh, yes, I remember; Horace said something about a family of your own name, I think,” turning to her visitor, “who are living up near there. But they are scarcely within countable relationship, are they?”
“I’m afraid I have got into the way of thinking of them as not so, or rather of not thinking of them at all,” he replied. “But Madeleine has been obliging enough to remind me, at least tacitly so, that blood is thicker than water. Horace, too, has discovered that these cousins of mine, many times removed, are very poor, so on the whole I am beginning to feel rather guilty.”
Mrs Littlewood turned to her daughter with something in her manner which to Madeleine revealed a sense of annoyance, though her tone and words were gentle.
“My dear child,” she said, ignoring the latter part of Mr Morion’s speech, “you should be getting old enough by this time to realise that few of us have a mission for correcting other people. In very early youth such ideas are more excusable.”
Madeleine’s rather pale face flushed all over. She looked reproachfully at their guest.
“Mr Morion,” she exclaimed, “I really don’t think you are—” and then she stopped.
“Mamma,” with considerable appeal in her tone, “truly I don’t think that I was so impertinent as—as it sounds.”
Mr Morion felt sorry for her, and again vexed with himself.
“I was more than half joking,” he said apologetically. “Forgive me. I must be becoming more bearish than I realise. You will have to take me in hand, Mrs Littlewood.”
The elder woman smiled pleasantly.
“On my side,” she replied, “I fear I am growing very matter-of-fact in my old age. But no harm is done. Of course you have only to tell us if you wish us to make friends with the family in question. Did not, by-the-by, one of the Avone family marry a Mr Morion? The Avones, as every one knows, are terribly poor for their position, so it sounds as if it might be the same.”
“It is the same family,” answered Mr Morion. “The mother was Lady Emma Marne.”
Then the subject of the Fir Cottage people dropped, and was not again reverted to. Still the illusion to them had left its mark, in a decided amount of curiosity as regarded them, in Madeleine’s mind; some self-reproach and a touch of interest in Mr Morion’s; and a quick questioning, which darted across Mrs Littlewood’s, in connection with Horace’s name.
“I do hope,” she was already saying to herself, “that there are no pretty daughters among them. It would never do for Horace to entangle himself in any stupid way, when even Conrad, who had so much less reason to consider ways and means, made such a wise choice. But I need not be afraid. Horace is far too difficult to please to be attracted by any girl who has laboured under the enormous disadvantages of these poor Miss Morions.”
And she dismissed the unknown sisters from her mind, nor was the Fir Cottage family again alluded to, even between Madeleine and herself, when Mr Morion had taken his leave.
Madeleine thought about them, nevertheless, a good deal. She had extracted a certain amount of information from her brother—more than she had mentioned to the owner of Craig-Morion, more than she thought it expedient to retail to Mrs Littlewood. For while she thoroughly, and with reason, trusted her mother and greatly admired her, she had learnt by long experience that even with those nearest and dearest “least said is” not unfrequently “soonest mended.” There were directions of thought in which she felt intuitively that their two minds would not run together. For Madeleine, beneath her calm, occasionally, in appearance, almost too composed and self-contained manner, was at heart enthusiastic, eager, and impetuous. She knew this well, however; she was on her guard, and thus the very fact of her impressionable nature made her appear cold and even “stand-off,” while Mrs Littlewood’s though not unreal or insincere of its kind, often misled others into stigmatising the daughter as hard and dictatorial—“laying down the law” to the mother, with whom, in point of fact, she very rarely ventured to disagree, whose slightest wish or opinion was weighted for her with authority, but rarely, nowadays, existent in such a relationship.
Horace had not said much, after all. He had not seemed inclined to discuss the family whose acquaintance he had made the first time he went down to Craig Bay with “Old Milne.” And this of itself struck Madeleine as unlike him, and prepared the ground with her for greater curiosity concerning them. She had satisfied herself that one, at least, of the sisters was “pretty”—“very pretty, indeed, if she were decently dressed,” but beyond that, and replying to some of her questions as to the manner of living, etc, of the Fir Cottage Morions, she had found her brother more reticent than usual. Of this, the principal reason had been his own annoyance with himself for his clumsy blunder, as he styled it, to which he could not but attribute the “not at home” with which he had been met the second time he called, and which somehow he had not felt inclined to relate to his sister.
Had it been possible for Madeleine to have seen him this evening, she would have found his mood greatly changed, for, thanks to Betty’s inspiration, and the good tact of Frances and her mother, this third bearding of the lion in his den was crowned with success.
Horace left the cottage after a somewhat prolonged visit in the best of spirits, full of projects for introducing his sister and his new friends to each other—inclined, as he had never before been in his life, to see everything through very rosy-coloured spectacles.
The next few days passed monotonously enough for Madeleine. She missed her brother; the weather was wretchedly dull and gloomy; there was no interest in looking up such friends as were winter residents in London, and likely to be returning there after spending Christmas in the country, seeing that she herself was on the verge of leaving; there was no interesting shopping to do, as Craig-Morion was not likely to make great demands on her wardrobe. In short, everything seemed very flat and unexciting: an impression increased by the more or less dismantled aspect of the house in preparation for a long absence. Nothing seemed worth while, and Madeleine felt half ashamed of herself.
It was with feelings very much the reverse of those of one anticipating an “exile”—as some of their friends had chosen to call their voluntary banishment to an out-of-the-way part of the country—that both Madeleine and her mother found themselves at last fairly started on their journey.
“I don’t know how it is,” said the former, when they were comfortably seated in the railway carriage, “that I have never felt better pleased to leave London than just now; not even after a hot summer. Don’t you feel a little the same, mamma? Somehow I fancy you do.”
“Yes,” Mrs Littlewood replied, “I am glad to get away. I have a sort of longing to feel myself farther north, and, above all, free to do just as we like, and to see no one if we are not inclined for it. I suppose Conrad and Elizabeth will be coming to us, but not just yet, I hope. They are sure to prefer waiting till the days are a little longer,” and she turned to the book with which she was provided, with an evident and wise determination not to tire herself by talking in the train.
Madeleine did not regret this, for she was not inclined to talk either. After a certain point on the journey, the country was new to her, and therefore interesting, and she regretted the early falling darkness which soon hid the outside world from view.
It was quite dark when they reached Craig Bay, quite dark and very cold when they stepped out on to the platform, where her brother had no difficulty in at once distinguishing them, as they were almost the only arrivals.
It was cheering to hear his voice in welcome.
“Come on quickly,” he said, as he gave his arm to his mother, “the carriage is waiting for you, and I have made everything as comfortable as I could. You must expect a tiresome bit of hill, though at first the road is on the level; it takes more than half an hour to get to the house.”
“I am glad of it,” said Madeleine; “I want to forget everything about trains and stations, and everything civilised and modern.”
Horace laughed.
“I don’t think the absence of civilisation will be as pleasant as you think,” he said; “but it isn’t as bad as that; it is really a place where comfort and antiquity might be excellently blended.”
And when at last they turned in at the lodge gates, and a few minutes later found themselves in front of the somewhat rugged granite steps leading up to the door, and then, in another moment, inside the lofty arched hall, of which the walls were hung round with trophies of the chase interspersed with old—and, it must be confessed, rusty—armour, a great wood fire burning in the vast stone hearth, an indescribable feeling of isolation and yet homelikeness pervading all—Madeleine drew a deep breath of satisfaction.
“It is delightful,” she said, turning to her brother. “I am sure we are going to love being here.”