“How little, how very little,” she thought to herself, “did we ever imagine that Ryder Morion was the sort of man—would be the sort of friend he is!” And though she did not as yet feel free to tell Betty of the somewhat clearing horizon, her new hopefulness made itself instinctively felt.
“Things will come right somehow, I feel convinced!” she did say to her sisters, for poor Eira stood in need of cheering almost as much as Horace’s fiancée herself.
Frances’ sleep that night was disturbed, to an extent which rarely occurred with her, by strange and fantastic dreams. Her common-sense explained them, partially at least, by the unusually anxious and almost overstrained condition of her mind and nerves. Yet, as she lay awake the next morning in the early summer daylight, she could not altogether account for them in this way.
“I wonder if there really are occult influences of which we are only conscious when the more material part of us is inactive,” she said to herself. “It would seem so, though it would be dangerous to give too much thought to such a possibility. It would interfere with ordinary life and duties.”
Yet, despite this practical view of the matter, she could not succeed in throwing off what had been the predominant impression of her visions, even though these in themselves had grown vague and confused. She was haunted by a feeling that there was something for her to do, something that some one—who or where she knew not—was wishing her to do. Now and then in the stillness, broken but by the voices of the little birds outside, she could almost have believed that whispers, like a far-off murmur of the sea, were growing all but audible to some interior faculty of hearing which under normal conditions she was unconscious of possessing. The dreams themselves had been a fantastic mingling of fact and fancy, as indeed dreams commonly are. It had seemed to her that she was again on the sea-shore near the Harbour, but late at night instead of in the balmy sunshine. Cries of distress reached her, apparently from a boat some little way out at sea, and her first thought was of Jack Silver, who, she imagined, must be in danger. She turned to run homewards in search of help, when suddenly she found herself in the Laurel Walk, at the other extremity of which—the farther end from the house—she saw a light gleaming more distinctly and brightly than the faint reflection which it had puzzled both herself and Ryder Morion to account for that night when they were standing at the library window. She tried to follow the light, but found to her distress that she could not overtake it, her feet seeming too tired and heavy to move, though she was conscious that the beacon was intended to direct her towards the church. Then came another sudden change of scene and of time. She was a little girl again, playing in their own garden with her two still smaller sisters, Eira rolling on the lawn, Betty clinging to her as if asking to be carried. But with the effort to lift the child came again the painful sensation of powerlessness, till, glancing up, she saw a white figure standing beside them, whose sweet, pale face bent gently over the child, while a voice whispered softly: “Forgive me, and let me lift her!” At the words a shudder, not so much of fear as of awe, went through Frances, and the relief was great when, on her endeavouring to interpose, she saw that where the weird figure had been standing there was now in its stead that of Ryder Morion with a reassuring smile on his face. But before she quite awoke she seemed again to hear the pleading voice, though from a greater distance, and to feel, rather than hear, the words “Forgive me, and try—” and with the unfinished sentence the dream broke off, and she awoke with the sense, as has been said, of some task having been laid upon her to accomplish.
Nor did this leave her during the next few days, though from time to time the impression somewhat faded. Rather to her disappointment and surprise, she heard nothing of any note or letter to her father from Ryder Morion. No one but herself seemed to have known of his being in the neighbourhood! She could almost have fancied that her walk and talk with him had been a curiously rational episode in the strange dream which had visited her that same night. But all doubt of the reality of his material presence was put to flight by a letter which she received on the fourth morning after having met him. A letter which fortunately did not attract her father’s attention, as the Fir Cottage bag was rather unusually full that day, and which she was able to read without any one noticing it. It contained but a few lines:
“Dear Miss Morion,—
“I am afraid you will scarcely feel inclined to trust me any more, when you see that I have left Craig-Morion without seeing you again or writing to you,”—for the letter was dated from the writer’s club in London. “I was summoned quite unexpectedly up to town. I think, however, the matter which we were talking about will not suffer from this; on the contrary, it may turn out for the better. I will write again before long,—
“Yours very sincerely,—
“Ryder Morion.”
This explained the silence, and Frances was fain to take refuge again in the patience of not wholly unhopeful waiting. More than this, she succeeded in cheering poor Betty, and that not groundlessly, for her confidence in Ryder Morion suffered no diminution.
Still those were trying days, at best.
Late one afternoon, just as tea was over, Frances was told that a young woman was asking to speak to her, waiting at the back door.