Chapter Twenty One.
Horace.
Yes, the church door was unlocked, as happened not unfrequently, though not of intention on the worthy vicar’s part, or on that of his subordinates.
Inside, though of course the sunny daylight out-of-doors was still at its full, thanks to the high pews, and narrow windows deep set in the massive walls, all was dusk and gloom. The more so at first from the sudden contrast.
But to Frances just now this was congenial. Half mechanically she made her way up to her usual place, for one act of courtesy on the part of the temporary occupants of the big house had been to beg that the Fir Cottage family would not think of vacating the spacious old pew, where indeed there was room enough and to spare for the united households.
With a sense of weariness, to which for the first time she ventured to yield, Frances leaned back in her old corner. Venerable as it was, the church was not one, under present conditions, which lent itself readily to devotion. And it was scarcely with any feeling in this direction that the girl had sought its shelter—only a vague yearning for quiet and solitude had brought her thither. But gradually as she sat alone thinking, though but dreamily, more than what she had sought seemed to creep into her spirit. A sense of world-wide sympathy, sympathy extending indeed into time as well as space, came to soften and yet strengthen her.
How much sorrow there was in the world! Sorrow and disappointment and perplexity, bravely borne in so many cases, unsuspected even. How much sorrow there had been, how much was yet to come! How many fatal mistakes, inexplicable shortcomings, whose results stretched far!
For it was almost impossible to sit there alone in the quiet dusk, without her thoughts reverting to the strange old story of her own ancestress’ lack of good faith, from which indirectly she and those dearest to her were even now suffering.
“Our lives would have been so different!” thought Frances, “our lives and characters and everything about us. So much more consistent if we had been less isolated, and in a sense less ignorant. At least it appears as if it would have been better for us, but it is not for us to judge. I really do not think that the best side of me is inclined to murmur for myself if things go right for the others.”
The last word at the present juncture being synonymous with “Betty.”
She half rose to go, but sat down again for a moment, as she heard the clock striking, in order to count its tale of time.
“I may stay five minutes longer,” she thought, but somehow the sense of repose and comfort had been disturbed; in spite of herself, a very slight sensation of eeriness began to creep over her. It was in the evening that Eira had been so frightened. Could that be the favourite time for her troubled, old, great-grand-aunt’s visit to the church? “I wish I could feel sure,” she went on thinking, “that it is not true, that she does not really wander about in that sad, lonely restlessness! I can’t bear to think of it! Poor soul! Perhaps, after all, she was not to blame.”
What was that? Frances started, as again the long-drawn, all but inaudible breath, rather than sigh—which she and Ryder Morion had been conscious of that evening several weeks ago when standing at the end of the Laurel Walk—made itself felt rather than heard.
“It must be the draught from the open door,” she thought. “But I am getting fanciful; I had better go,” and she rose to her feet with decision.
But—now came a shock, a real shock, which could not be put down to fancy or an accidental draught of air. For as she stood up, Frances felt herself caught back, jerked back almost, by a sharp sudden catch at the little mantle she wore; it was all she could do to suppress a scream—perhaps, indeed, she did scream. She could not afterwards say. The shock, under the circumstances and with her already overstrained nerves, was really dreadful; no one who had seen her just then, white to the very lips, shivering and breathless, would have recognised poor Frances.
But the terror was not for long: the strange incident was quickly explained. “Thank God!” murmured the girl, as she discovered its cause; “I could not have stood any supernatural experience. I believe it would have nearly killed me. I have been too self-confident,” with a rather piteous smile, as she disengaged the fold of her cloak from the crevice where it had caught.
For that was all that had happened. In the corner of the pew, the old panels, as Eira had already noticed, seemed to fit less well than elsewhere. Time, doubtless, had made the wood shrink; there was a line of interstice all but in the corner, giving the look of an intended opening—a small cupboard door, as it were, of which the narrow strip of space might be either the closing or the opening side. It was a little above this that a splinter had been partly broken off, the point of which had hooked, in the extraordinarily clever way in which, in similar cases, such things do hook or catch, the silk frill of her cape. It was freed in a moment; in fact, if the tiny accident had happened elsewhere, Frances would scarcely have perceived it, except, perhaps, for the sound of some slight fracture of stuff or stitches, though, as things were, the tug, apparently from invisible fingers, had caused her a sensation of real horror. And for a minute or two, anxious though she was to get out into the cheerful daylight again, she felt too shaken to move. But by degrees this feeling passed off, and with but small trace of her recent agitation she made her way home again, devoutly wishing that the evening were over and she herself free to rest and think in the solitude of her own room.
All passed off, however, more easily than she had feared. She thought it best to own to being a little tired, and was pleased to find Betty coming about her more in the old caressing way than had been the case for long; and there was a look in the girl’s face which Frances was glad to see, not so much of actual happiness as of freedom from constraint—of hopefulness.
“It will be all right,” thought Frances. “I can see already that it is going to be all right. I shall have nothing to reproach myself with as regards the effect on them of my deplorable mistake. It is only I—and how thankful I should be for this—that will have any suffering to bear, and I shall be able to hide it. And as for Betty, perhaps the child needed the training of what I now feel convinced she has gone through.”
Nevertheless, it was a relief, and a great one to Frances, as the days went on, to perceive that Betty sought, and intended to seek, no further confidence or explanation of her elder sister’s undisguised hints. More than this, Eira had evidently been tutored to take the same line, though in both instances it was done with affectionate delicacy, so as to give rise to no misgiving on Frances’ part that for any reason she was less trusted than heretofore.
Just one word in allusion to what had passed between the sisters that afternoon when they were sitting on the garden bench came from Eira:
“Francie dear,” it was, “we are not to speak about it, not even when you and I are alone. Betty begs us not to, and I have promised. I think—she is perhaps afraid of letting herself get too sure, so many, many things might come in the way.”
“Wise little Betty,” was Frances’ reply, but the smile which accompanied it went far to raise Eira’s spirits, at any rate, whether or no she ventured to insinuate a greater degree of confidence into Betty’s own views.
After this, which occurred within a short time of the receipt of her letter from Horace, Frances felt that she might write to him with less caution. He had not asked her to reply—not directly so, at least; but her own intuition told her that he would be very grateful for even a few words. But, as is sometimes the case where lives or circumstances have droned along with but the minimum of movement, once the turn comes events seem to precipitate themselves far beyond reasonable anticipation.
“We may have to wait some time,” Frances had said to herself, “in spite of Horace’s ‘few weeks.’ He will scarcely dare to take any very decided step till he is a little more settled.” And this not improbable space of waiting was what for herself she had dreaded almost more than anything.
She was not called upon to face it. Before she had written, before she had even framed in her mind an answer to his letter, all doubts were set at rest.
“What’s this?” said her father one morning, as he scrutinised his scanty correspondence. “I should know the handwriting, surely. Oh, yes, of course,” as he opened the envelope, and ran his eyes over its contents. “It’s from Littlewood—Horace Littlewood. He is coming: down again for a day or two. One or two things Ryder wants him to see to.” This to Lady Emma, as if by no possibility the news could in any way interest his daughters. “Matters as to which he would like my advice—naturally. Oh, I remember now, by-the-by, that he said something about it before he left, and hoped I should be at home.”
“When is he likely to come?” asked his wife with mild interest.
“Let me see,” Mr Morion went on, reverting to the letter. “He doesn’t say definitely. In the course of a day or two. Ah, well,” and he pushed his spectacles up on to his forehead, “remember to tell that stupid parlour-maid—Frances, or one of you girls—to let him in whenever he calls, into my study at once. I see he will depend a good deal on my opinion.”
“Will he, indeed?” muttered Eira, making a little face behind the shelter of her breakfast cup.
And two or three times at least in the course of the next twenty-four hours the somewhat querulous voice of the master of the house was heard inquiring if they, or she, or “one of you” had seen to it that Brown understood clearly about “when young Littlewood calls,” though a couple of words to the servant herself might have set his own mind at rest, and saved his family the irritation of having on each occasion meekly to reply, “Yes, papa; she quite understands.”
No steps or precautions were taken by Frances towards securing for Horace any private interviews with Betty.
“It would only annoy her inexpressibly if I did so,” she said to herself, “and he has scarcely empowered me to act for him in any more definite direction than I have done. He is well able to manage matters for himself and will prefer doing it.”
But while cheerful and practical in her ordinary intercourse with her sisters, she was specially tender to Betty, in small, almost indescribable ways, which the younger girl’s quick instincts were at no loss to appreciate. On her side too, and consistently with her own character, Betty comported herself after a manner which won for her not only her elder sister’s admiration but increased respect.
“There is no lack of real strength about her,” thought Frances. “She will enter into nothing rashly or childishly, nor without grave consideration. And—at best it is not likely to be all roses for her: Mrs Littlewood may be attracted by Betty herself, but ‘the connection,’ as people call it, will not, most assuredly, find favour in her eyes. All I can possibly do to help my little sister, I am very distinctly bound to do, and gladly will I lend myself to it.”
“He” did not delay. The very next morning but one after his letter had arrived at Fir Cottage, there came the ring at the front door bell which in their hearts the three sisters had been on the alert to hear. Frances and Eira were together, sorting some of the now rapidly increasing and important Scaling Harbour papers—notices of lectures, evening classes, magazines for distribution, and all the paraphernalia connected with well-organised parish work—in their own little sitting-room, a pleasant enough den in the warm bright weather. Betty was out of doors, “somewhere about,” a frequent resort of the least practical of the three!
Eira stopped short in the midst of making up a packet; she grew a little pale, though her eyes were bright with expectancy.
“Francie,” she exclaimed breathlessly, “there he is, I do believe.”
“Well,” said Frances smiling, “I dare say it is, as we know he is coming. Don’t look so startled, Eira. There is nothing for us to do just now.”
“But I don’t know where Betty is,” said Eira uneasily. “She may be in the garden, and may have gone up to the church or anywhere.”
“We must leave it to chance, and to Horace,” answered Frances. “Remember, he will be going straight into papa’s room, as he has come ostensibly to see him. It would never do for us to look for Betty: it would only annoy her.” So, in deference to her elder sister’s opinion, Eira went on as best she could with her sorting and folding, though little gasps, which from time to time escaped her, betrayed that she was in anything but a philosophical mood. At last Frances could stand it no longer. With a laugh, born, to tell the truth, in great part of the nervousness she herself was so resolutely repressing, she turned to her sister.
“You had much better tell me what you have got on your mind, Eira,” she said. “I can feel that you are working yourself up, though really unnecessarily, about it all.”
With this encouragement Eira flung her papers on the table and herself into a chair.
“It has just struck me, Francie,” she ejaculated, “that, supposing—supposing, you know, for he must have seen how peculiar papa is, that he went first to him in the old-fashioned way, and that he—you know how astonished he’d be—on the first shock of such a thing—negatived it before he had given himself time to think it over, and take in that nobody could object to him, that he is quite un—exceptional—no, unexceptionable I mean! Wouldn’t it be awful? For, once he had committed himself, there is no moving him. Don’t laugh at me, I am really frightened.”
“I am quite sure,” said Frances, “that you need not dread anything of the kind. Even at the risk of any possible difficulty with papa, he—Horace, I mean—your personal pronouns are really too chaotic, Eira!—would not set about things in that way. But if you are feeling so worried, leave these Scaling Harbour papers just now, and go out. You may very likely meet Betty, and as you don’t know that there is any one in the library, you can do no harm.”
Off flew Eira, delighted to be free, and full of excellent resolutions as to the discretion with which she would act should need arise.
There was no Betty in the garden, nor, without asking a direct question, which under the circumstances she thought it best to avoid, could Eira satisfy herself that Mr Littlewood had really come. So she strolled along the road towards the church, her perseverance being rewarded before long by the sight of Betty seated calmly on a very ancient moss-covered tombstone, meditating apparently, with somewhat eccentric inappropriateness, present circumstances considered, rather on the end of life than on the changes which it was on the point of bringing to her.
“Oh, Betty!” exclaimed Eira, “what are you doing there? You might have stayed in the garden, or at least told me if you meant to come up here.” For by this time the younger sister’s excitement was in danger of lapsing into the cross stage. And it was very hot!
“I am thinking,” replied Betty coolly. “There’s no place like a churchyard for it, and this is a very comfortable seat. And it is nice to remember about all the people that have once been alive and have now got out of it all!”
“Tastes differ,” said Eira, rather sharply. “I shouldn’t call this exactly the time for a new edition of Young’s ‘Night Thoughts’ or Grey’s ‘Elegy,’ whichever suits you best, just when—when other people,” with marked emphasis, “are feeling very anxious about you, and wondering—”
Betty looked up at her with irritating composedness in her eyes.
“What are you talking about, and who has asked you or any one else to feel anxious about me, or to worry about me in any way?” she asked calmly.
Eira felt that she had made a mistake.
“How vexed Frances would be with me!” she thought. And “I did not say ‘worry,’” she replied meekly; “I said,” but she stopped in time. “Wondering” would have been even worse. She felt herself growing very red, with the consciousness of Betty’s steady, calmly inquiring gaze upon her. “Oh, never mind,” she broke off petulantly, “never mind what I was going to say; I’m a fool, I know. It is much better not to care about anybody or anything. I don’t pretend to be wise and well-balanced and superior and all the rest of it, like you and Frances,” but all she got in return was a quiet little rejoinder.
“I don’t know what is the matter with you this morning, Eira. You are very cross.”
It was too bad, she thought, this “pose” on Betty’s part, when only a few days ago she had burst into tears and not attempted to hide the fact from Eira.
“One’s sister’s love affairs are best left alone,” was the resolution she at last arrived at. All the same, she was restless and uneasy; it was almost unbearable to think of Horace Littlewood at that very moment “cooped up with papa—thinking, perhaps, that Betty is keeping out of his way on purpose, for he must have meant us to know that he was coming, and I feel almost sure there is some understanding between him and Frances about it. And a really nice man, so at least I have always read in novels, is so easily discouraged.” At last she could stand it no longer. She got up from the old stone, where for the last few minutes she had been sitting in silence beside her sister.
“Betty,” she said, “I am going home. Won’t you come too? I don’t want to stay here thinking about dead and gone people, as you do. I am too interested in the living,” though the moment she had blurted out the words she regretted them again.
Betty looked up.
“There is no hurry,” she said, “but you need not stay. I will come soon, and—oh, there is Mr Ferraby,” and she rose from her seat and went towards the old vicar, emerging from his own garden by the little gate between it and the churchyard, while Eira, in a fever of irritation and impatience, made her way home again. Nor was her mood any calmer by the time she had reached her own door, for she had stopped a moment at the gate leading into the Laurel Walk, with a sudden instinct that here might be something to be seen. Nor was she mistaken. Half-way down the path she descried a figure—a familiar figure—that of Horace Littlewood, wending his way, and that—or so it seemed to her—with a dejected air, towards the house. He was too far off for her to have accosted him, nor would she have known what to give as an excuse for so doing.
“It is too bad of Betty,” she said to herself, “playing with a man’s feelings in this way. I do believe she has managed it on purpose, and Frances seems to be aiding and abetting her. I dare say we shall hear that he has gone back to London to-night, and is off to India in disgust.”
There was no one to be seen when she got to the cottage. It was still fully an hour till luncheon-time. Eira went up to her room and occupied herself resolutely with certain “tidyings-up,” which she reserved as a species of tonic when feeling herself unusually discomposed. And as she possessed one of those healthy natures which have the power of throwing themselves heartily into whatever is the occupation of the moment, the time passed more quickly than she realised.
It was within a few minutes, a very few minutes, of the luncheon hour, when the door opened softly and some one came in.
“Who is there?” said Eira, without looking round. “Is it you, Frances? The luncheon bell hasn’t sounded yet, I’m sure.”
“It isn’t Frances,” was the reply, in a voice which she knew to be Betty’s, though with something—what was it?—in it which had never been there before, and, turning round quickly, with a curious thrill of eager anticipation in her warm, sisterly little heart, she faced the newcomer.
Yes, Betty it was, but what a Betty! Whence had come this wonderful glow, almost radiance, which seemed to transfigure and illumine her whole personality? Were there tears trembling on her eyelashes? It may have been so, or it may have been the reflection of the new light within the dark eyes themselves.
“Eira,” she exclaimed tremulously, “dear little Eira! I know you thought me horrible this morning, but I didn’t mean it really. I was only—frightened to—to let myself believe about it. I had no certain reason, you see, and I thought it might be just a mistake of dear Francie’s. Please forgive me. I thought I must tell you first—even before her, for we have been almost like one, haven’t we? And—oh, I am so happy now!”
She threw her arms round her sister; for a moment or two neither spoke. Then Eira looked up.
“Betty, dear,” she whispered, “have you seen him then? did you meet him?”
“Yes,” was the reply, while Betty’s face grew rosy all over. “He was waiting for me, watching for me to pass back home. He had found out somehow—perhaps he met Frances—where I was, and we strolled up and down the Laurel Walk. I am rather glad it was there—aren’t you? Perhaps somehow poor old great-grand-aunt, whose namesake I am, will know it and be glad. He is coming this afternoon to see you all, and—” with an irrepressible smile—“to speak to papa.”
The smile of amusement developed into a laugh of mingled delight and mischief in Eira’s case.
“To speak to papa,” she repeated, “how lovely! He is perfectly satisfied that Horace came down on purpose to consult him about the new gamekeeper’s cottage, or something of that sort, that Ryder Morion is settling about. What will papa say? He will never be able to believe that one of us could be more interesting to talk to under any circumstances than he himself. Oh, it will be fun!”
But a tiny shadow had crept over Betty’s face. “You don’t think papa will be angry, do you, Eira?” she said, “or set himself in any way against it? Of course it won’t be all perfection, nothing ever is; we shall have to go to India, I’m afraid.”
“I don’t see why,” said Eira, “when the Littlewoods are so rich. But even if you have to, think what hundreds do so! Papa couldn’t be so unreasonable. And you may trust Horace to have thought everything well out.”
“Oh dear, yes,” said Betty, all the brightness returning. “He is only too anxious, too careful for me. No, I must not spoil it by being afraid about papa.”