The Laurel Walk

"It's the old story," said Frances; "the delicate ones were killed off, and those who did survive must have been strong enough to be made really hardy. How are your chilblains, Eira dear?"

"Pretty bad," the girl replied cheerfully; "at least I feel some premonitory twinges of another fit coming on! I mustn't stay so near the fire. Talk of something else quick to make me forget them."

"Drink up this tea, in the first place," said Frances. "That kind of warmth is good for them."

"And, oh, I have something to tell you," said Betty, "something quite exciting! What do you think? _I_ believe something has happened or is going to happen at Craig-Morion. It was all lighted up as we passed. No, I mustn't exaggerate! There were lights moving about in several of the rooms, and the old Webbs were not at the lodge. It was all dark, and the gates locked, so they must have been up at the big house. That helped to make us late, you see."

"You poor things!" exclaimed Eira, though her pity was quickly drowned by this exciting news. "Can they be expecting some one? After all these years of nothing ever happening and nobody ever coming!"

"It looks like it," said Betty shortly. Then she gave herself a little shake, as if some unexpressed thought was irritating her. "Anything about Craig-Morion makes me cross," she went on in explanation, "even though there's something fascinating about it, too--tantalising rather. Just to think how different, how utterly different our lives would have been, if that stupid old woman had done what she meant to do, or at least what she promised. It wouldn't have been anything so wildly wonderful! We should scarcely have been rich even then, as riches go. But it would have been enough to make a starting-point, a centre, for all the interests that make life attractive. We could make it _so_ pretty!"

"And have lots of people to stay with us, and whom we could stay with in return," said Eira. "Just think what it would be to have really nice friends!"

"Yes," said Frances, in her quiet voice; "and as it is, the people it belongs to scarcely value it. It is so little in comparison to what they have besides. Yet," and she hesitated, for she was a scrupulously loyal daughter, "unless papa and mamma had been able to interest themselves in things as we three would, _perhaps_ it wouldn't have made much radical difference, after all?"

"Oh, yes, it would," said Betty quickly. "It would have made all the difference. Papa wouldn't have got into these nervous ways, if he had had things to look after and plenty of interests, and money, of course. And mamma would have been, oh! quite different."

"Perhaps so," Frances agreed, "but it isn't only circumstances that make lives. There are people, far poorer than we, I know, whose lives are ever so much _fuller_ and wider. It is that," she went on, speaking with unusual energy, "it is that that troubles me about you two! I want to see my way to helping you to make the best you can--in the very widest sense of the words--of your lives;" and her sweet eyes rested with almost maternal anxiety, pathetic to see in one still herself so young, on her two sisters.

"And you, you poor old darling!" said Eira, "what about your own life?"

"Oh!" said Frances, "I don't feel as if I had any, separate from yours. All my day-dreams and castles in the air and aspirations are for you;" and in the firelight it seemed as if tears were glistening in her eyes.

She was, as a rule, so self-contained and calm that this little outburst impressed her sisters almost painfully, and, with youthful shrinking from any expression of emotion, Eira answered half-jestingly:

"I'm ashamed to own it, but do you know really sometimes that life would be quite a different thing to me--twice or three times as interesting-- if I could have--"

"What?" said Betty.

"Heaps and heaps of lovely clothes?" said the girl. At which they all three laughed, though half-ruefully, for no doubt their present wardrobe left room for improvement.

CHAPTER TWO.

A BREAK IN THE CLOUDS.

Things, externally at least, had brightened up by the next morning. The rain had ceased during the night, and some rays of sunshine, doubly welcome after its late absence, though not without the touch of pathos often associated with it in late autumn, came peeping in at the dining-room window of Fir Cottage, when the family assembled there for breakfast. For Mr Morion, valetudinarian though he was, had not even the "qualites de ses defauts" in some respects. That is to say, he was exasperatingly punctual, and at all seasons and under almost all circumstances an exemplary early riser.

Naughty Eira groaned over this sometimes. "If he would but stay in bed, and enjoy his ill-health comfortably, and let us breakfast in peace, I could face the rest of the day ever so much more philosophically," she used to say. "Or at least if he wouldn't expect us to praise him for coming down in time when he hasn't closed an eye all night!"

"I always think that rather an absurd expression," said Frances, "begging poor papa's pardon; for when one can't sleep, one both opens and shuts one's eyes a great deal oftener than when you go straight off the moment your head touches the pillow." At which her sisters laughed. The spirit of mischief latent in both the younger ones enjoyed decoying their sister into the tiniest approach to criticism of their elders. But this morning the rise in the barometer seemed to have affected Mr Morion's nerves favourably; he even went the unusual length of congratulating himself openly on the promptitude with which the impending attack had been warded off, thanks to Frances.

"Yes, indeed," Lady Emma agreed, "it was a very good thing that the girls went themselves. If we had sent the boy he would have come back with some ridiculous nonsense about its being too late to make up the prescriptions last night. What are you fidgeting about so, Eira?" she went on; "you make me quite nervous."

"It's only my chilblains, mamma," the girl replied, holding up a pair of small and naturally pretty, but for the moment sadly disfigured hands, while a gleam, half of amusement, half of reproach, came into her bright blue eyes.

"Really," said her mother, "it is very provoking! I don't know how you manage to get them, and you so strong. If it were Betty now, I shouldn't be so surprised."

And certainly her youngest daughter, little hands excepted, looked the picture of health. She had the thoroughly satisfactory and charming complexion, a tinge of brown underlying its clearness, which is found with that beautiful shade of hair which some people would describe as red, though in reality it is but a rich nut-brown. Betty, on the contrary, was pale, and looked paler than she actually was from the contrast with darker eyes and dusky hair. The family legend had it that she "took after" her mother, whose still remaining good looks told of Irish ancestry. And for this reason, possibly, it was taken for granted that the second girl was her mother's favourite, though, even if so, the favouritism was not of a nature or an amount to rouse violent jealousy on the part of her sisters, had they been capable of it, for Lady Emma Morion had certainly never erred on the side of over-indulgence of her children. She was a good woman, and meant to be and believed herself to be an excellent mother, but under no circumstances in life could she have fulfilled more than one _role_, and the _role_ which she had adopted since early womanhood had been that of wife. It simply never occurred to her that her daughters could have any possible cause of complaint, beyond that of the very restricted condition in which the family were placed by the prosaic fact of limited means.

That she or her husband could have done aught to soften or improve these for their children would have been a suggestion utterly impossible for her to digest. The privations, such as they were, she looked upon as falling far more hardly on herself and their father than on the daughters, who, when all was said and done, had youth and health and absence of cares.

That their youth was passing; that absence of cares may on the other side mean absence of interest; that the due supply of mere physical necessities can or does ensure health in the fullest sense of the word to eager, capable natures longing for work and "object" as well as enjoyment, never struck her. Nor, had such considerations been put before her in the plainest language, could she have understood them, for she was not a woman of much intellect or, what matters more in a mother, of any width of sympathy.

Greater blame, had he realised the position, would have lain at her husband's door. He was a cultivated, almost a scholarly man, but the disappointments of life had narrowed as well as soured him. His was a sad instance of the dwarfing and stunting effects of self-pity, yielded to and indulged in till it comes to pervade the whole atmosphere of a life.

The brighter morning had cheered the sisters half-unconsciously, and Frances felt sorry at any friction beginning again between her mother and Eira. For though Lady Emma was not sympathising by temperament, she was not indifferent to annoyances, and that chilblains should be described by any stronger term she would have thought an exaggeration. Yet the fact of them worried her, and Frances felt about in her usual way for something to smooth the lines of irritation on her mother's face.

"I have often heard, mamma," she said, "that strong people suffer quite as much from chilblains as delicate ones, and they sometimes are worse the first cold weather than afterwards."

"I believe they come from want of exercise," said Lady Emma, in a somewhat softened tone. "If this bright dry weather lasts, you must go some good long walks, Eira."

Eira made a wry face.

"I am sure I've no objection, mamma," she said; "there's nothing I like better than walking, but it's a vicious circle, don't you see? I dare say my not walking makes my circulation worse, but then again the chilblains make walking, for the time being, simply impossible." Perhaps it was lucky that at this juncture Betty's voice made a sudden interruption. Betty, though the quietest of the three, was rather given to sudden remarks.

"Papa," she said, "have you possibly heard any sort of news about Craig-Morion?"

Her father glanced at her sharply over his eyeglasses.

"What do you mean, child?" he said. "News about Craig-Morion! What sort of news?"

"Oh, that it's going to be sold or let, or something of that kind," replied Betty calmly.

"Going to be _sold_, Craig-Morion!" exclaimed her father, his voice rising to a thin, high pitch. "What on earth has put such a thing in your head? Of course not." But the very excitement of his tones testified to a certain unacknowledged uneasiness.

"Oh, well," said Betty, "I didn't really suppose it was going to be _sold_. But none of its present owners ever care to come there, so I thought perhaps there was to be a change of some kind."

"And why should you suppose there was to be a change of any kind?" repeated Mr Morion, with a sort of grim repetition of her words, decidedly irritating, if his daughters had not been inured to it.

Betty flushed slightly.

"It was only something we noticed last night," she replied, going on to relate the incidents that had attracted their attention. Her father would not condescend to comment on her information, but Lady Emma did not conceal her interest, and cross-questioned both her daughters. And from behind his newspaper her husband listened, attentively enough.

"It is curious," she said. "If you pass that way to-day, girls, try to see old Webb and find out if anything has happened. Can any of the Morions possibly be coming down, Charles, do you suppose?"

Mr Morion grunted.

"Any of the Morions! How many of them do you think there are?" he said ironically. "You know very well that the present man was an only son, and his father before him the same."

"Yes," replied Lady Emma meekly, "but there were sisters in both cases. When I spoke of the Morions I meant any members of the family. Though I suppose it is very unlikely that any of them would suddenly come down here, when they care nothing about the place, and have got homes of their own."

"That to me," said Betty, speaking again abruptly, "is the aggravating part of the whole affair. If people lived at the big house who enjoyed it and appreciated it, it would be quite different. One couldn't grudge it to them, but to see it empty and deserted year in and year out, when--" she stopped short, a touch on her foot from Frances', under the table, warning her that it would scarcely be wise to dwell further on what was a sore subject.

Mr Morion rose, pushing back his chair with a rasping sound on the thin, hard carpet, and left the room.

"I hope the fire in his study is all right," said Lady Emma anxiously.

"Yes," said Frances; "I glanced in on my way. Is there anything you want us to do this morning, mamma?" she added.

"I cannot possibly say till I have seen the cook," her mother replied. "There is pretty sure to be something forgotten--servants are so stupid--if you are going to the village."

"It's my morning for reading to old Gillybrand," said Frances rather drearily, "so while I am there Betty can do any messages there are-- that's to say if you care to come with me, Betty."

"Tell me before you start, then," said their mother, as she, in her turn, left the room for her kitchen interview. Poor woman! Housekeeping at the Firs was no sinecure, for Mr Morion was, like all hypochondriacs, difficult to please in the matter of food, firmly believing that his life depended on a special dietary. And such a state of things, when there is no financial margin, taxes invention and ingenuity sorely enough.

"What are you going to do to-day, Eira?" asked Frances. "You can't possibly go out, I'm afraid."

For all reply Eira extended first one foot and then the other, both encased in woolly slippers, each of which was large enough to have held two inmates at once, under ordinary circumstances.

"You poor child," said her elder sister. "But those slippers are a comfort to you, I hope."

"My dearest Frances," Eira replied, "but for them I really don't think I should be alive at the present moment. But I _must_ pay you for them with the first money I can lay hands on. You don't suppose I didn't notice your shabby gloves last Sunday?"

"Oh, what does it matter in winter?" said Frances indifferently. "One can always use a muff."

"When you've got one to use," said Eira. "Mine looks more fit to be a mouse's nest than anything else."

Betty had been standing at the window, gazing out at the oval grass plot, not imposing enough to be dignified by the name of lawn, and at the shrubberies enclosing it.

"Do you see those berries?" she said, wheeling round as she spoke. "If only all the bushes were not so dreadfully wet still, I could make up some lovely bunches and trails for the drawing-room vases, if mamma would let me."

"It will be dry enough by the afternoon," said Frances, "or we may find some treasures on our way through the grounds, without having to paddle over wet grass to reach them."

"The best plan," said Eira, "is to arrange the vases first, and then let mamma see the effect. It doesn't do to ask leave beforehand, for if we do we are sure to be told not to fill the house with rubbish and weeds. Bring in the prettiest things you can find, Betty, and we'll do them after luncheon. It will help to pass the afternoon for poor me. Oh dear! things are never so bad but they might be worse. I'm beginning to feel now as if life would be worth having if only I could go a good long walk! And before my chilblains got bad, I didn't think anything could be duller or drearier than the way we were going on."

"We'll try to bring you in some lovely berries and tinted leaves to cheer you," said Frances, but Betty's next remark did not follow up her elder sister's determined effort to make the best of things.

"What's the good?" she said lugubriously, "what's the good of trying to make the drawing-room look better? It's hopelessly ugly, and even if we could make it pretty, who would care? There's nobody to see it."

"Come now, Betty," said Frances, "don't be untrue to your own belief. Beauty of any kind is always worth having. Let us be thankful that, living in the country, we never can be without the possibility of some, even in our indoor life. What would you do, Betty, if we lived in a grey--no, drab-coloured--street in some terrible town?"

"Do? I should die!" replied Betty.

"I shouldn't," said Eira. "I'd get to know some people, and that, after all, is more interesting than still life. But the present question is what shall I do with myself all this long morning?"

"You must stay in a warm room, whatever you do, if you want to cure those poor hands and feet. The only thing you can do is to read, and oh! by-the-by, I was forgetting--I got one or two books at the lending library yesterday that I want to look through before I read them aloud. I think they seem rather interesting. So if you can glance at one of them for me this morning it would really be a help."

Eira brightened up a little at this, and before her sisters left her, they had the satisfaction of seeing her comfortably established on the old sofa.

"Yes," she said, as they nodded good-bye from the doorway, "I repeat, things never are so bad but that they might be worse. We might have a dining-room without a sofa."

Frances and Betty, despite their curiosity to spy the state of the land--that is to say, of the big house--at close quarters, had to make their way to the village this morning by the road, as one of their mother's messages took them to the laundress' cottage which stood at some little distance from the Craig-Morion grounds. Further on, however, they passed the lodge, and there for a moment they halted, on the chance of a word with the old gate-keeper. But she was evidently not there and the gates were still locked.

"What a good thing we didn't come through the grounds," said Betty. "But what can have become of old Webb and his wife? There must be something agog, Francie."

"We shall see on our way back," her sister replied; "they're sure to come home for their dinner."

"If they don't," said Betty, "I shall try to climb the gates, and invent some excuse for going up to the house to see what they are about."

But fate was not so cruel; for assuredly, with all the good-will in the world and disregard of appearances, Miss Elizabeth Morion could never have succeeded in scaling the entrance.

An hour or two later, when Frances had dutifully accomplished her self-imposed task of reading to Gillybrand, a pitifully uncomplaining, almost entirely blind old man, and had picked up Betty at the village reading-room, which the sisters often found a convenient _rendezvous_, the two made their way back to the lodge, where their misgivings were agreeably dispersed.

For not only were the gates unlocked--they stood hospitably open, while traces of the wheels of some tradesman's cart were clearly to be seen on the still damp gravel; and standing at the door of her little abode was old Mrs Webb, her wrinkled face aglow with excitement, and lighting up with increased satisfaction as she caught sight of the young ladies-- newcomers on whom she might bestow some of the news which was evidently too important to be suppressed.

But it was Betty who began the colloquy.

"What have you been about, Mrs Webb," she said, teasingly, "locking the gates so early last night, and opening them so late this morning? You must have been asleep half the day as well as the night!"