The Laurel Walk

"So fade our hopes," thought Frances, "many of them at least. But yet," for in another moment the happy bird was back again within hearing, "perhaps it only seems so to us. There must always be _real_ sources of joy and thankfulness, even if they are sometimes beyond our perception."

Yet she did not deceive herself. This sensation of almost exhilarating resolve and self-sacrifice would not, she knew, be lasting. There were hard struggles before her still, for the mere habit of thought into which she had almost insensibly glided during the last few weeks as to her own life and future was not to be shaken off all at once.

"The best I can do," she went on, "is to fill my mind, to the exclusion as far as possible of everything else, with Betty. Time enough, when I can feel at rest about her, for me to unlock it all again and decide to what extent I have been to blame."

A few yards before their own gate she caught sight of her sisters coming to meet her, and, as she watched them approaching, the listlessness and languor of Betty's movements struck her forcibly.

"How I wish I had gone with you, Francie," said Eira. "Betty is so tiresome! She wouldn't go for a walk, she wouldn't even sit out in the garden comfortably, and I only stayed at home to keep her company, because she seemed dull!"

"Are you dull, dear?" said Frances, turning to Betty. Her tone was very kind, indeed tender, and Betty, glancing up at her, read a confirmation of this in her sister's eyes.

Betty's cheeks grew pink, though the colour left them again as quickly as it had come.

"Spring often makes people feel rather tired," she said. "There is nothing the matter with me except that."

"But you mustn't be tired," said Frances. "It is so lovely now, so very lovely. We must be all quite well--and happy, so as to enjoy it. We can stay out a little longer. Let us sit down, and I am rather tired myself."

Betty's face expressed some self-reproach. "Eira," she said. "We should not have let her go alone to the village. She always does the disagreeable things."

Frances' hand was lying on her knee. Betty took it in hers as she spoke and stroked it. To the elder sister the little action said much. It seemed as if in some intuitive way the coldness or constraint which had been creeping in between them for the first time in their lives was melting away, though by no visible agency. Tears crept up very near to Frances' own eyes, but she resolutely kept them back, though a feeling of gratitude for this scarcely looked-for prompt encouragement on the path she saw before her warmed her heart.

"What a pity," exclaimed Eira, "that Madeleine couldn't have stayed two or three weeks longer, just to see how pretty this place can be. I don't think, however rich I were, that I could ever make up my mind to spend this part of the year in London."

"It is very pretty there, too, just now though," said Frances absently. "If it were a little nearer I dare say Madeleine would come down again for a few days--with her brother, perhaps," she went on more brightly. "I am sure Mr Morion would always be glad for them to use the big house."

Eira, who had been leaning back on the rustic bench in rather a depressed attitude, pricked up her ears at this.

"Oh, how nice that would be!" she said. "Better than my poor Indian summer which never came to pass. What made you think of it, Francie?" And as the only reply was a smile, "I do believe that you've heard something! Have you had a letter from Madeleine that you have not told us about?"

Frances shook her head.

"No, truly I have not," she said. "But Horace Littlewood did--does mean to come down again. He said so, definitely, and it just struck me how nice it would be if Madeleine could come with him."

Eira's face by this time was gleaming with excitement.

"Francie!" she exclaimed, "you never told us before! Betty, do you hear?"

But for all reply, Betty seemed to creep back further into her corner. Frances turned to her. "You don't dislike him?" she said. "We got to know him so well!"

"I never said I disliked him," said Betty. "But you know him far better than I do, and if--of course you know, Francie, if--if anybody liked you, or--or you liked anybody in a special sort of way, of _course_ I should like such a person too!"

Frances drew a deep breath, and gathered herself together. It had come--the supreme moment, sooner than she had expected, and she must meet it bravely. It had come--to Betty too, and the little creature had risen, in her own way, with heroism. But this state of things as yet Frances scarcely realised.

"Betty, my dear child," she began, "don't get any mistaken ideas into your head about me--your second mother, as I always feel myself. I won't pretend to misunderstand you, and I am glad you have spoken about it. No, no, don't dream of anything of that sort about _me_, the time for it has passed. Why, I must be a year or two older than Horace! He and I are excellent friends, and I do believe he looks upon me almost as an elder sister. I should be glad," here she spoke with hesitation that she did not attempt to conceal, "I should be glad to feel sure that as regards you yourself no shadow of the old prejudice about him remains. He deserves to be thoroughly liked and trusted."

There was no answer from either of the other two, though Frances felt Eira's eyes fixed on her in half-dazed amazement. She felt, too, that at Betty it was better not to glance! And after a moment or two she got up slowly, saying it must be near tea-time and that she would like to take off her outdoor things, and steadily, though with inward tremulousness, little suspected by the two others, she made her way to the house.

"Betty," said Eira, when sure that Frances was beyond earshot. "Betty, do you hear me, what does she mean?"

But for all answer Betty turned her head away, so that her face was quite hidden from her sister, and only by the convulsive movement of her shoulders did Eira know that she had burst into uncontrollable tears.

"Never again," thought Eira to herself, "will I meddle with or even think of other people's affairs of this kind! There have I been for months past wearing myself out with hopes and anxieties about Frances and Horace Littlewood. And for all I know now, torturing Betty! Who would have dreamt of such a thing? It is rather too bad of Frances not to have given me _some_ idea of how the land lay, for from her very superior well-informed manner, it is evidently not new to her. As to Betty, I don't know what I feel. She might have--no, I don't see that she could have acted differently, but I won't call her cross or depressed any more. Poor little Betty! Still, on the whole, for the present, I think I had better leave her alone."

And Eira, feeling considerably discomposed and "out of it," not yet able to realise that this new turn of affairs might bring as much cause for congratulation as the fulfilment of the hopes on which she told herself she had wasted so much care and thought--Eira, swinging her garden-hat on her arm with a great air of "nonchalance," followed her elder sister into the house, though not upstairs. But a moment or two after she entered the drawing-room the door reopened to admit Frances. Gladly would the elder sister have remained upstairs in the quiet of her own room if but for half an hour, but this she felt she must not do. For the moment the privilege of solitude and reflection must be renounced.

"It is only a bit, a very little bit, of the whole," she thought to herself. "Just at first, of all times, it is most important that I should seem quite like myself, and not give the very slightest opening for suspicion that things are turning out differently from what I expected. And it will not be difficult to do so, if I keep my thoughts centred at this crisis on my poor little Betty."

And her mother's first words as she caught sight of her brought a little glow of gratitude to her heart--not so much of gratitude to Lady Emma herself, but of thankfulness in the abstract for this first little touch of encouragement in the road she had marked out for herself.

"You look as if you had enjoyed your walk, Frances," was her mother's remark. "You have got such a nice colour," mentally adding to herself, "really Frances grows handsomer and handsomer as she gets older. Her eyes have such a bright expression,"--little suspecting the tears those eyes had so recently shed, still less those which had been repressed with so much resolution. "I have never thought them as fine as Betty's, but somehow Betty doesn't look like herself now-a-days," and she gave a little sigh. "Where is Betty?" she asked aloud.

Frances glanced at Lady Emma quickly. Now and then there seemed a curious tacit sympathy between the mother and daughter, just now this struck the latter, for she herself was feeling anxious about her younger sister.

"She is coming in a moment," said Eira, with a slight nervousness unusual to her. "Shall I run and tell her that tea is ready?"

There was no need for a reply. Betty herself came in. She was looking pale, but to a superficial observer the traces of tears had already disappeared. Her dark eyes with their even darker fringes were not easily disfigured. Tea-time passed quietly and more quickly than when Mr Morion was present. For this Frances was grateful, as it left her the sooner at liberty.

"I am going up to the vicarage," she said, as she left the room. "I had a little commission for Mrs Ferraby in the village."

Ten minutes later she rang at the vicarage bell, and handed in the small parcel she had brought. When she got back to the gate again, she stood still for a moment in hesitation.

"I wonder if by chance the church is open," she thought. "I should like to go in there for a few minutes. I don't think I have ever been there alone since the afternoon Eira was so startled;" and with a rather sad smile, "I don't think anything would startle me to-day."

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."