White Turrets

"Dear Miss Maryon--I have not forgotten your wish and my promise that we should meet again. But I have waited a few days in hopes of having something to tell you of which might make it more worth your while to come to see me. And to my great pleasure these hopes are to some extent fulfilled. By a lucky chance, just after you had spoken to me, I came across the very person the most able to help in such a case. Through his kindness, I have a proposal to make to you. I will tell you all particulars if you will call here to-morrow, Friday, at half-past four in the afternoon, when I shall be disengaged for a short time. The whole thing seems really a piece of good luck, for, as I told you, I have neither experience of, nor influence in, any line of life but my own.--Yours very truly,--

"Hertha Benedict Norreys."

Winifred's eyes gleamed. But she kept her delight to herself, merely dashing off a word of rapturous gratitude to her new friend, and eager acceptance of her invitation. She said nothing to either her sister or Mrs Balderson beyond announcing the fact that "to-morrow afternoon" she had an engagement which would prevent her going out with them.

Mrs Balderson was annoyed. She felt, with justice, that, having given herself so much trouble for her young guests, and to a great extent disorganised her usual arrangements in their behalf, she should at least have been consulted as to any independent engagements they wished to make.

"I do not understand Winifred," she said to her son. "Her manners, at least her ways, are certainly rather like those of an advanced or `emancipated' young woman of the day. Yet surely it is impossible that she can have got hold of any of those ideas in that quiet, sheltered, almost old-fashioned country life of theirs. And her mother is such a perfect model of good breeding."

Eric shrugged his shoulders.

"_Quien sabe_," he said. "Ideas are in the air, I suppose. You never can tell where they will crop up. Why, even Celia has her theories-- only she is very different from her sister, both in character and temperament. But I wouldn't worry about Winifred, my dear mother. You have been more than good to them both, and they know it--at any rate, Celia does--and they will be leaving very soon."

"Yes, I shall be sorry for Celia to go. She is very sweet. But I could not take the responsibility of Winifred for long. As I said, I do not understand her. Don't be afraid, however, of my making any fuss. I would not on any account spoil the last few days of their visit by beginning to find fault."

So Winifred set off, uninterfered with, to call on Miss Norreys, while Celia accompanied Mrs Balderson to the large annual meeting of a charitable society, in which the kind-hearted and liberal woman was much interested.

Celia was interested too. She had the happy power of throwing herself very thoroughly into the surroundings of the moment, and her mind in the last two or three weeks had begun to open in several new directions.

But all through the speeches and reports which followed each other in rapid succession, and which she would have liked to listen to with an un-preoccupied mind, there kept rising the half-uneasy thought: "I wonder where Winifred has gone, and why she did not tell me all about it. Can it be on account of what I said the other day? I hope she won't do anything rash."

For some things, Celia felt she would not be sorry to be home again--"with mother and Louise"--yet the sense of disappointment that she had made no way towards the realisation of her own ardent wish was keen to her. And Winifred did not seem to sympathise in this as she used to do.

"She called me selfish," thought Celia, "because I said that perhaps-- perhaps it might be different for her and me. I wonder why we don't seem quite as much at one as when we were at home."

CHAPTER SIX.

AN OPENING.

Miss Norreys had a tiny home of her own, at some considerable distance from the Balderson mansion, which was about as far west as it could be to be yet in a thoroughly good position. The house in question was tiny in some ways, but it scarcely gave one that impression, for it contained one very large room, originally, in all probability, intended for a studio, which Hertha had converted into a music-room, a small so-called drawing-room or boudoir leading into it, being her own private sanctum.

She lived alone now, save for an old servant, who had never left her-- who had solved the problem of out-staying the proverbial twenty-one years without degenerating from the "faithful friend" of the middle seven into the "unendurable tyrant" of the last term. But Miss Norreys had not been long alone. Only three short years ago, the mother, the adored mother, whose later life had been rendered peaceful and happy by the daughter's brave energy, the young brother, whose education and start in the world was all his sister's doing, had both been with her. Now the former was at rest in the unknown country, which yet, as life goes on, and we think of the sweet souls who have preceded us there, loses the dread sense of strangeness--seems almost to grow more familiar than this side of the river. And the other, Hertha's dearly-loved Jasper, was away in India, the right place for him as a poor man, and where he was already rewarding her for her devotion by his unexceptionable and promising life.

"If only it were not so far away," she would say to herself sometimes, as many another woman in England says to herself every day. And then she would let her thoughts revert to the time when they were all three together, to the struggles which, viewed in the tender light of the past, seemed to have been nothing but happiness, to the delight, doubled by being shared, with which she had realised the fact of her first success.

"How proud we were when we took this house!" she said to herself. "How hot Jasper made himself with hanging up all the curtains and things in the studio! How could I ever have murmured at _anything_ then!"

It was not often she allowed herself to indulge in these reminiscences. She was full of real sentiment, but she had a wholesome dread of anything approaching sentimentalism, of which, living alone as she did, she knew she must beware. Only sometimes, in the enforced pauses of her busy life, she would allow herself the "treat," as she called it, of going back to the past for a while, though there were other pages of her girl-life which, for the sake of her own peace of mind, she kept resolutely under lock and key.

She was sitting idle for once--her thoughts busied with the bright and peaceful memories of the two so dear to her--on the day that she was expecting Miss Maryon to call. It was not often that she could afford to spare an afternoon, and her doing so now was out of the purest and most disinterested kindness to the girl who had appealed to her so unexpectedly. And when Hertha made up her mind to a thing she did it thoroughly.

"To judge by her talk at Helena Campion's, that day," she said to herself, "she will not be content with half an hour or so. I had better arrange to be free for the rest of the afternoon. Besides, of course, there really will be a good deal to discuss, for I am sure she is quite extraordinarily inexperienced, despite her funny little assumptions of wisdom."

Almost on the stroke of the appointed hour, the bell rang.

"Come," thought Miss Norreys, as she heard Winifred's clear, decided tones, inquiring for herself, "she is punctual, and so much the better. So many of these would-be independent and self-reliant young women prejudice others almost from the first by their airy disregard of every one else's convenience."

No--to a certain extent Winifred was really practical and reliable. She was grateful, too, to Hertha, and so anxious to stand well with her that the last twenty minutes had been spent in walking up and down the street till within a minute or so of the appointed hour.

She came in, looking eager and yet a little shy. Her bright, short-sighted eyes glanced with evident interest round the pretty little room, opening at one end, "a deux battants," into the large studio, which was but dimly lighted, then returned to rest with unmistakable admiration upon her young hostess.

"Oh, how delightful, how charming it all is!" she exclaimed, impulsively. "Oh, Miss Norreys, thank you so much, so very much, for letting me come to see you."

"I am pleased to see you. I shall be very glad if I can be of any use to you," Hertha replied. It was not in her essentially generous nature to repress the girl, whose enthusiasm was plainly sincere. "Will you take your cloak off? My rooms are not cold. We shall have tea directly. In the meantime, before we begin to talk, would you like to see my little domain? I am very proud of my music-room."

She led the way into the larger room, turning up the light as she entered it. It was very tastefully arranged--some few good pictures, one or two pretty cabinets, and a respectable number of well-bound books filling glass-doored cases at one end, all relics of more prosperous times, giving a certain dignity to the whole. There were two pianos, and a harp stood in one corner.

Winifred stood entranced.

"It is quite charming," she said; "just the sort of nest one would long to have."

Hertha was amused at the expression. She considered her big room much more than a "nest."

"My young friend does not seem to realise how rare such quarters are in London," she thought. "I suppose she is used to a bare, but perhaps not very small, country vicarage."

"Yes, I am very lucky indeed," she replied. "A room like this is a great `find' in London."

"Is it really?" said Winifred, peering up at the ceiling. "Oh dear, it is _just_ what I should like."

Miss Norreys repressed the desire to tell her that, as things were with her, she might as well wish for Aladdin's palace at once.

"She will learn by experience," she said to herself.

"And the whole thing--your life, yourself," Winifred went on--"it is like the realisation of a dream to me. Your splendid independence and freedom. Just think of the contrast between you and an ordinary girl living at home in slavery, or at least in a sort of prolonged childhood, with no personal standing, no liberty to follow her own intuitions."

A shadow crossed Hertha's beautiful forehead.

"I have not always lived alone like this," she said. "Not, indeed, for very long. This house is endeared to me by having spent several years in it with my two,"--her voice faltered a little--"my mother and my brother. I have never wished for what you call `independence.' I was too happy while I had one or two who cared to direct me. I loved being treated like a child."

"You must have been _most_ fortunately placed," said Winifred.

"I was," replied Hertha. "My parents were just _perfect_. It was circumstances and,"--she hesitated, for she was touching on uncertain ground--"a good deal, perhaps, the fact of my having a voice, a talent, which led me to leave the beaten path. No desire to throw off the dear home ties. I have often wondered what I should have done with my voice had I not _needed_ to utilise it; how far it would have been right to give up time to cultivating it; how far, so to say, the possession of a voice means `a vocation.' That sounds like a poor attempt at a pun," she ended off with a smile.

But Winifred did not notice her little piece of fun.

"You would have done just what you have done," she burst out. "You would never have been content in the beaten track--in the narrow, hedged-in life, which is what most women lead."

"I'm afraid I should have been very content," said Hertha. "I am not at all sure that I am not by nature very lazy. The energy of many--I think I might say of most women now-a-days--appals me. I don't agree with you that the `narrow, hedged-in lives' are the lot of the `most,' not in London, anyhow."

"Well, no, perhaps not in London," Winifred agreed. "That is why I want to come here."

"And, oh dear!" said Miss Norreys with again a little smile that seemed more of the nature of a sigh, "you don't know how I long sometimes for that sort of life. Fancy, with parents and sisters and an old-fashioned home in the country--the sort of place that has not changed much for hundreds of years, where you can distil your own lavender-water and make great jars full of pot-pourri, where there is a lady's walk and a ghost, and where you know every saint's face in the windows at church--oh, what a lovely life it might be! If my lot had fallen in such lines, I hope I should have had the energy to cultivate my voice and to use it to give pleasure to others, to poor folk above all; but oh, how joyfully I should have hurried home from my enforced visits to London! I used to dream of such a life," she added. "Now it is different. I am alone. No place could be much `home' to me."

A curious expression flickered over Winifred's face.

"How--how strange!" she said, vaguely. "I did not think you were like that, Miss Norreys. I suppose it is poetry," she went on. "I suppose you are poetical in a way I don't understand. Have you ever seen the sort of place you describe? If you had such a home, it would pretty certainly not have the charm you imagine."

"Oh yes, it would," said Hertha. "It _would_ have had, I mean. I am not high-flown. There must be such a beautiful content in feeling there you are, in a centre where God has put you--where you can be of use to many, `hedged-in' to clear and distinct duties and responsibilities. I suppose I needed the other side or it would not have come to me. I might have been lazy."

She took a certain satisfaction in repeating this, for, though she really meant all she said, there was something about Winifred's half dogmatic, half matter-of-fact insistance on her own views and opinions that provoked Hertha to a kind of contradiction--almost to wish to shock her!

Just then the entrance of tea caused a momentary diversion. There was nothing of the Bohemian about Hertha. The little table was set out with scrupulous though simple care. There was a touch of genuine "old-fashionedness," very distinct from the modern affectations and imitations of picturesque quaintness, about her, which added to her charm by its unexpectedness. But Winifred Maryon, for reasons which will explain themselves, was not specially struck by it. She accepted all she saw, in her inexperience, as a matter of course.

"Have I ever seen such a house as I have been talking about?" Miss Norreys went on, as she poured out the tea into two _really_ old willow-pattern cups, adding sugar and cream from a small silver bowl and jug, worn thin with many years of daily use. "No, not _exactly_. There was a place which we once had reason to think would have been ours, which could have been made perfectly beautiful--but it never came into our hands, and now it is pulled down and the land built over. As things are, I do not regret it. Will you have another cup of tea, Miss Maryon? Yes; that's right. And now we must get to business, and talk about you, not me."

But Winifred's enthusiasm for her new friend was so great that even the absorbing interest of her own affairs paled before it.

"I love so to hear about yourself and what you think and feel," she said. "I cannot believe we really differ about anything. You have beautified your life so, unconsciously, that you can scarcely realise the dullness and monotony of some women's lives."

"Oh yes, indeed I do," replied Miss Norreys.

"If I did not, do you think you would now be sitting here with me? I could never pretend sympathy I did not feel. Lady Campion told me a little, very little, about you, but, of course, I understand you far better from yourself. I sympathise with all my heart in your wish to do something--to strike out a career for yourself."

"Oh yes," said Winifred, breathlessly.

"No one could sympathise in it more heartily than I," Hertha went on. "For years, you know, I worked hard for my mother and brother, and-- though I don't need you to tell me about it--I am sure that some similar motive inspires you, as well as the wish to feel yourself _some one, something_, which an energetic woman, placed as you are, must feel."

The colour rose a little in Winifred's face. Hertha, with instinctive delicacy, glanced away. She knew that direct owning to poverty was painful to some people.

"Ye-es," said Miss Maryon, at last. "It is--there are--more than one motive. I want to help my sister, too, the one you saw. I am positively certain she has great talent for painting if she had a chance of cultivating it.

"Indeed?" said Hertha, "that simplifies _her_ line of action. What she has to do is to test herself. Then you want to help her to get good teaching, and, I suppose, to make a home for her in London? Yes, she is too young and too beautiful to attempt anything of the kind without some one to take care of her. And--can you both be spared at home?"

"We have another sister at home, and, though my father is in delicate health, my mother is well and active. We have thought about it for a long time--Celia and I."

"Poor souls! Two fewer to provide for, no doubt, is a consideration," thought Hertha.

"Does Mrs Balderson know about it? Is she likely to help you in any way?" she asked aloud. "I do not know her personally, but I have heard she is truly kind."

"She has been very kind in having us here. But she would not sympathise in our plans. She is--old-fashioned, I suppose. She thinks girls should stay quietly at home."

"Ah, indeed," said Hertha, her mind rapidly picturing to itself what, in such a case, the "staying quietly at home" must mean: the poor, unbeautiful surroundings, the colourless lives, the pain and almost degradation of the terrible "genteel poverty."

"But she _is_ very kind," repeated Winifred, her conscience smiting her; "she asked us out of kindness. She would like us to marry," with a little smile. "But, of course, I never shall. She likes Celia the best, I think."

Again Hertha's imagination jumped to hasty conclusions. "I see it all," she thought. "She wants to show the pretty one to advantage, to give her a chance, as people say."

"And is there any prospect of Celia's marrying?" she asked.

Winifred shook her head.

"Oh no!" she replied, with a touch of something like indignation, which Miss Norreys could not understand. "Celia would never change so--she would not desert me."

"But, my dear Miss Maryon, it might be a very good thing, if and always supposing, of course, that it was some one she cared for," said Hertha.

"Placed as--"

"There is no use discussing remote contingencies," interrupted Winifred, and Miss Norreys, imagining that her pride in her sister made it bitter to realise that the possibility was remote, beautiful though Celia was, said no more.

"Well, then, to be practical," she replied, "what you have told me makes me feel that the proposal I have to lay before you may suit you even better than I had expected. For you cannot have Celia with you, or--or afford good teaching for her until you have made a beginning yourself, and got a home ready."

"I must certainly have somewhere to bring her to," said Winifred, evasively, "and somewhere for myself too," with a smile. "I should like to get things a little in order, as it were, so far settled, for, you see, I am old enough to decide for myself, before I tell my people at home about it. It would make my mother so much less anxious if I could tell her it _was_ settled."

"But," exclaimed Hertha, rather taken aback, "your people do know what you are intending? You are not acting against their wishes?"

"Oh no--that is to say, they do know, thoroughly," said Winifred, with evident candour. "As for their _wishes_--why, no, mother does not _wish_ us to leave home. Mothers never do--do they? She would like us all to stay near her always, I suppose. But she _understands_, and--she is very kind."