The Laurel Walk

“We can’t blame Mr Littlewood for it,” said Betty eagerly; “we were walking almost all the time we were talking to him, so he can’t have delayed us!”

“Mr Littlewood?” repeated Lady Emma, in the high-pitched tone which with her was one of the signs of disturbed equanimity. “Mr Littlewood? What is she talking about? You don’t intend to say that you have been a walk with a – perfect stranger! Frances, what does this mean? I insist on your telling me.”

“I have not the very least objection to telling you, mamma,” said Frances. “In fact, I have a message for you from Mr Littlewood, which I was just going to deliver.”

Her tone was absolutely respectful, but there was a touch of coldness in it, not without its effect on her mother. In her heart Lady Emma not only trusted her eldest daughter entirely, but looked up to her in a way which showed her own involuntary consciousness of the superiority in many ways of the girl’s character to her own. But any approach to acknowledgment of this real underlying admiration and respect would have seemed to her so strange and paradoxical, considering their mutual relations, as to be almost equivalent to a reversal of the fifth commandment.

She contented herself with replying in a calmer tone, “Did you meet Mr Littlewood, then? Naturally I can’t understand things till you explain them.”

“Yes,” Frances replied, “we met him on our way home, not in the park, but in the little copse on the Massingham road.”

“I am glad you were not in the park,” said Lady Emma.

“But we did come through it after meeting him,” said Frances. “It would have been affected to do otherwise just because he is staying at the house, and I suppose, as he was walking our way, he could scarcely have avoided walking on beside us. He asked me if he might call to say good-bye to you, mamma, to-morrow afternoon?”

The last words, unfortunately as it turned out, were overheard by Mr Morion as he entered the room. His wife, taught by long experience, made no reply, so the message remained uncommented upon, unless a doubtful grunt from the depths of the arm-chair where the master of the house had settled himself could have been taken as referring to it.

Silence, not an unusual state of things at Fir Cottage, ensued, and as soon as the two younger girls could escape from the room they hastened to their own quarters, a small and in wintertime decidedly dreary little chamber, which in old days had been used as their schoolroom. It looked out to the side of the house and was ill lighted. But its propinquity to the kitchen was, practically speaking, in cold weather no small boon, preventing its ever becoming very chilly, for, though it boasted a fireplace, the restrictions as to fuel formed one of the most disagreeable economies in practice at Fir Cottage. In summer, on the other hand, the schoolroom was apt to become unbearably hot; but in summer, if it is anything like a normal season, and in the country, life usually presents itself under a very different aspect. Such things as fires and chilblains do not enter into one’s calculations; one’s own room, in nine cases out of ten, is a pleasant resort, and even if not so, are there not out-of-doors boudoirs by the dozen?

Dreary enough, though, the little room looked this evening, when by the light of one candle Betty and Eira established themselves as comfortably as circumstances allowed of, that is to say, on two little low basket-chairs, dismissed from the drawing-room long ago as too shabby, which had been one of their few luxuries in lessons days. Just now, also, the extraordinary possibilities which they were about to discuss so filled their imaginations that the uninviting surroundings over which they often groaned would have passed unnoticed had they been ten times worse. And worse they might have been most assuredly! For one fairy gift was shared alike by the three sisters – the gift of dainty orderliness; and where this reigns one may defy poverty to do its worst, for with such a background the tiniest attempt at prettiness or grace is trebled in pleasing effect.

“Eira,” said Betty in an almost awe-struck whisper, “do you really, really mean what you said? Do you think it possible? And – ” with a touch of hesitation, quaint and almost touching in its contrast to the outspoken treatment of such subjects by the typical maiden of to-day, “if – if he had – fallen in love with Frances, could she ever care for him, I wonder?”

A dreamy questioning came into her eyes as she spoke.

“I don’t see why she shouldn’t,” said Eira. “Of course neither you nor I can picture to ourselves any man being good enough for Frances, so we need not expect the impossible. But taking that for granted, I don’t see why she mightn’t get to care for this man. Indeed, she has liked him from the beginning, and stuck up for him against you. And as men go – of course we really don’t know any, but I suppose some books are more or less true to life? – as men go, I suppose any one would consider him very attractive.”

“Perhaps,” said Betty gently, for she was already beginning to see her bête noire through very different spectacles, “perhaps. And then,” she added, with an amusing little air of profound worldly wisdom, “he must be rich, and made a good deal of, and all that sort of thing, and for a man of that kind to find out what a girl really is, in spite of her plain simple life, and way of dressing, and all that – though, of course, nobody can say that Francie is not good-looking, far more than merely pretty – don’t you think, Eira, that that of itself shows that he must have a great deal of good in him?”

“Yes,” Eira agreed, “I do. Though it doesn’t do to be too humble, Betty, even about external things. Remember, however poor we are, that as far as family and ancestry go we could scarcely be better. No one need think it a condescension to marry a Morion.”

“Of course,” said Betty, speaking half absently. “Oh, Eira, how interesting it will be when he comes to-morrow! Do let us think what we can do to – to show everything to advantage. If we could persuade Francie to sing, for her voice is so lovely!”

“She never would,” said Eira, “not to any one like that, who is pretty sure to be a good judge, for she knows her voice is untrained. Why, she has never had a lesson in her life! Can’t we do anything about her dress, however? She always looks nice, perfectly nice, but almost too plain, too severe, as if she had retired from the world and was above such things as dress and looks.”

“Perhaps it’s just that that attracts him in her,” said Betty – “the difference, I mean, between her and the fashionable girls he is accustomed to.”

“Yes,” replied Eira, “up to a certain point that’s all very well, but no man would like to have a wife, however beautiful she was, who did not to some extent look like other people. Betty, how could we contrive to make her wear her own black silk blouse to-morrow? It is even more becoming to her than ours are, and a little handsomer. Don’t you remember her saying when we got them that hers mustn’t look too young? She is rather absurd about her age, for certainly she doesn’t look older than twenty-four at most.”

“I wonder how old Mr Littlewood is?” said Betty, thoughtfully: “I’m afraid not more than twenty-seven; and Frances is one of those people who would think it almost a crime to marry a man younger than herself.”

“We can easily keep off the subject,” said Eira. “Indeed, after he has left, I think we had better say very little about him, though we may go on planning all the time by ourselves, you know, how to help it on in every possible way, once he comes back again.

“Oh, Betty!” and she clasped her hands in excitement, “isn’t it nice to have something to make plans about?”

Somewhat to their surprise and still more to their satisfaction, the two girls found their sister, the next morning, much more amenable to their tactfully administered suggestions than they had anticipated.

“Yes,” she said simply, “I should like to make the room nice, and ourselves too, so that he may take as favourable an impression as possible back with him to his people and the other Morions, and you will be careful, Betty dear, won’t you, not to hoist your flag of war again?”

“Don’t be afraid,” said Betty, kissing her sister as she spoke. “I see now that I behaved idiotically, and I see too how kind he was to take it as he did.”

In their uncertainty as to the time at which their acquaintance might call, the sisters decided on taking their usual walk in the morning, and remaining about the premises after luncheon. There was not much fear of their mother’s not being at home, in the literal as well as conventional sense of the words, for Lady Emma was not given to constitutionals, or, except on the rarest occasions, to returning the formal calls of the few neighbours with whom she was on visiting terms, and in her heart she was rather gratified than otherwise at the stranger’s overtures, due, as she imagined, to some extent at least, to the impression made upon him by her own cold dignity of manner, seconded, however childishly, by Betty’s outburst of self or family assertion.

All, therefore, promised propitiously for the expected visit of farewell, though at luncheon a not unfamiliar gloom was to be discerned on the paternal countenance which sent a thrill through the hearts of the two younger girls, Betty’s especially, the most sensitive to such misgivings.

“Let us keep out of his way,” she whispered to Eira as they left the dining-room: “if he had the least, the very least, idea that we wanted to stay at home he would be sending us off on some message to that wretched chemist’s, as sure as fate!”

“But how about Frances?” said Eira, in alarm.

“I think it’s all right,” Betty replied. “Both she and mamma, though they don’t perhaps say so, want it all to be nice, I feel sure. I saw Frances giving some finishing touches to the drawing-room, which really looks its best, and I heard mamma saying something about tea cakes, and you know how in reality mamma depends on Frances: she won’t let her go out, even for papa.”

Mr Morion’s “den,” as in jocund moments he condescended to call it, opened unfortunately on to the hall, almost opposite the drawing-room. In some moods he had a curious and inconvenient habit of sitting with the door open, and though he sometimes complained of advancing years bringing loss of hearing, there were times at which his ears seemed really preternaturally acute, and this afternoon, thanks to this peculiarity, aided possibly by some occult intuition of anticipation in the air, he was somewhat on the qui-vive for – he knew not what. Suffice to say he was in a raw state of nervous irritability, ready to quarrel with his own shadow, could that meek and trodden-upon phantom have responded to his need.

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.