White Turrets

Then they withdrew. Something made her at last able to close her own, and she half fell back on her chair. And when she looked again there was nothing--nothing whatever but the trees and the garden in the moonlight, utterly still, as if in an enchanted sleep.

And Hertha went back to bed, and fell almost at once into sound and perfectly dreamless slumber.

She woke at her usual hour, to sunshine and the sound of the birds' joyous carolling this time. She lay still, thinking deeply, as she went over in her mind the strange experiences of the night. The question--"Was it all a dream?"--never for one moment occurred to her. Neither then nor at any future time did any doubt of the objective reality of what she had seen shake the intensity of the impression that had been made upon her.

Yet the _fear_ was all gone--in fact, ever since she had thrown off the nightmare-like oppression of her fantastic dream, it had been no longer there. She felt no reluctance to stay on at White Turrets, no repulsion to the room, no shrinking even from the long terrace walk, up and down which had paced those ghostly steps--the pitiful, shadowy form of the White Weeper. But still there was much for Hertha to consider. Why had the weird family guardian appeared to _her_?

"She may be there every night--always, for aught I know," thought Miss Norreys, "but why were _my_ eyes opened to perceive her? Why did she appeal to me, as I feel convinced she did? Why not to self-willed Winifred, the cause of all the trouble and anxiety? Possibly she could not: perhaps Winifred is so constituted that no spirit could make its presence known to her. It must be that, I suppose. But what can I do? Winifred must know by this time that I do not sympathise with her mania for `a career,' and that she has involved me in her folly in a far from pleasant way. However, I suppose I must speak to her more plainly and strongly than I have done--that is the only response I can make to you, poor troubled spirit!"

And before she began to dress she stood for a moment at the window, gazing along the path, now gleaming and brilliant in the clear morning sunshine, and while she did so, a sudden idea struck her. She would tell, in the first place at least, _no one_, except Winifred, of what she had seen.

"It shall be a confidence between her and me," she decided, "and as such it may impress her the more--far more than if I told them all, and she heard every one cross-questioning me about it." And no sooner had she thus resolved than she was conscious of a curious sensation of satisfaction, as if for the first time she had fully grasped the nature of the commission entrusted to her to perform.

She did not look quite like herself that morning when she went down-stairs. Her beautiful eyes were less clear and open; she seemed tired and slightly preoccupied, though she did her best to hide any signs of disturbance.

But Mrs Maryon and her two younger daughters were keen sighted, much more so than Winifred, and Hertha was assailed with affectionate inquiries as to whether she had a headache, or had she not slept well, etc, which she parried as best she could.

There were two or three letters for her--one, a large, rather thick one, in Mr Montague's handwriting, she looked at irresolutely, then put it into her pocket unopened.

"It must be in reply to the long letter I sent him two days after I got here," she said to herself. "I am glad he is back in England, but I think I would rather _not_ know what he says till after I have spoken to Winifred."

A special and uninterrupted talk with one member of a fairly large party, even if that party be a family one, is not always easy to achieve unobserved, though in a country-house it would seem a simple enough matter. But of late Winifred had rather avoided than sought Miss Norreys's society. Some idea of the possible causes of complaint Hertha might believe herself to have against her for the conduct which Winifred was beginning to realise as not being, in appearance at least, candid, made the girl less at ease than heretofore in her friend's society. She did not as yet allow this to herself: she would not own, even in thought, that she had been to blame. She "put it all down" to this visit of Miss Norreys to White Turrets, where, though on one side the favourable impression her friend had made on Mrs Maryon and the others was gratifying to Winifred, on the other it was somewhat irritating.

"I must wait till we are back in London again," she said to herself. "Of course she _must_ be civil and pleasant to them all, and they certainly have been very kind and nice. But she is more impressionable than I thought her. Seeing things here as she has done, I am afraid she will never sympathise thoroughly in the monotony and dullness of this narrow home-life. Still, after all, it can't be helped. I must do without sympathy, I suppose. But--I do wish it had never come into mother's head to invite Hertha down here."

She was standing by herself in front of one of the windows of a long corridor, on to which opened several of the principal rooms on the first floor, when these reflections crossed her mind. This window overlooked the entrance to the walk so carefully eschewed by Celia--though not so much of it could be seen as from Miss Norreys's room, situated in an angle of the house.

The association of the White Weeper's reputed preference for this walk was always an irritation to Winifred, as was, in fact, everything real or imaginary which had to do with the old story.

She gave herself a little shake when she took in whither her gaze was absently directed.

"Ridiculous nonsense!" she half murmured, as she turned to go, and why she should have started violently, as at that moment a hand was laid upon her shoulder, she could not have told. It was not the sign of a guilty conscience, for, in all good faith, Winifred as yet had barely taken in that she had been at all to blame. "Misunderstood," "narrowly judged," she had told herself she had been, and she allowed that to others her conduct might have _seemed_ disingenuous. But she was essentially honest, and it is sometimes as difficult for naturally candid persons to take in that they have put themselves into a crooked position, as for a crafty and calculating character to believe in straightforwardness in itself or others.

Still she started. And she was assuredly not nervous.

It was Hertha's face she looked up into as she turned: Hertha's eyes, searching--and what more? Was it reproach or anxiety, or a mingling of both, that Winifred read in their clear depths? And in spite of herself the girl looked away, while her colour deepened a little.

"Did I startle you?" said Miss Norreys. "I am sorry, but--I wanted to speak to you quietly. I have been looking for you."

"I am only too ready and delighted to have a chance of you," said Winifred, trying to carry the war into the enemy's country. "But you know I scarcely see you; mamma and the others monopolise you so."

There was a touch of truth in the reproach, but Hertha did not feel guilty. She had avoided _tete-a-tete_ conversation with Winifred out of consideration for the girl herself as much as for others.

"It is true that I have not sought for opportunities of being alone with you," she said. "I am now quite ready to explain why, though I think you must have some idea of what I felt." Winifred did not at once reply. She was again staring out of the window, and again a feeling of irritation came over her. Did _every_ side of the house look out on that detestable lower terrace?

"I am quite ready for as long a talk as you like," she said. "I daresay you have felt a little shaken in me, but--I think I can make you understand me."

And she looked up in Hertha's face so frankly, that again--and she was glad of it--the conviction of Winifred's honesty of intention and absence of cunning or calculation returned to Miss Norreys almost as at first.

"Shall we go out for our talk?" Hertha said. "It is a lovely fresh morning, and I have just a little--headache of a kind. At least, I did not sleep well."

"No, I remember: you did not look like yourself when you came down to breakfast," said Winifred, with sudden compunction. "And I am keeping you standing about. Are you sure it won't tire you? After all, we shall have plenty of time for talking in the future, I hope."

Hertha shook her head.

"I don't want to put it off," she said. "Indeed, I cannot. If there were no other reason, you know how seldom I have a free half-day even at home. And there are other reasons. Can you get your hat? The air will do me good. I will wait for you by the sun-dial," and she moved away as she spoke.

"I will be with you in two minutes," said Winifred.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

A VICTORY.

The sun-dial stood on the grass in front of, though at some little distance from, the principal entrance. For at White Turrets the ground immediately round the house was too much intersected by terraces, and on too many levels, to have any great unbroken expanse of lawn. And there, as she had said, Hertha was standing when, a few minutes later, Winifred joined her.

Even Miss Maryon's short-sighted eyes were struck by her friend's general look and bearing, Hertha was leaning against the old stone, in a tired attitude. She was pale, too, and as Winifred drew near she gave a slight shiver.

"Are you cold?" said the girl anxiously. "If you are, we can go indoors again at once."

"No, thank you, I am not really cold," Miss Norreys replied; "it is only the creeping-together feeling one has after a bad night. When I did fall asleep, I slept, I think, _too_ heavily. I daresay it is a sort of nervousness. The air and moving about will do me good."

She turned as she spoke, and followed by Winifred, walked quickly towards the side of the house.

"It is nicest on the terraces," she said; "we can walk up and down, and talk quite undisturbed, and always find a seat if we want one."

"Ye-es," said Winifred, lagging a little. "But would you mind coming round to the other side? it is so much more cheerful and sunny."

She was unusually deferential and subdued. "No," said Hertha, with a touch of obstinacy, "I like the shady side best; I am not cold now. That walk with the aspens at the farther end is charming. And the others don't like it--it is the haunted walk, isn't it? So I may as well enjoy it while with you, who don't mind nonsense of that kind."

"But I do mind it, though in a different way," said Winifred; "it irritates me more than I can express. I really can hardly tell you how I detest any allusion to that old story."

"Really?" said Hertha, airily. "I think you should be above such feelings. It is inconsistent with your--well--your attitude to things in general. Here we are--let us show our defiance of such old wives' tales by marching boldly up and down in the White Weeper's own hunting-ground while we have our talk out."

Winifred laughed a little, but constrainedly. Matter-of-fact as she was, she did not quite understand her friend this morning.

"Of course, I don't _really_ mind," she said, "if you truly like this side best. And now will you tell me exactly what you have been vexed with me for, and in what way you have come to think less well of me than you used to do?"

Hertha felt somewhat surprised. After all, Winifred was not so dense as appeared. And "to be quite fair on her," thought Miss Norreys, "she _might_ have resented my changing to her without giving her my reasons and a chance of justifying herself to some extent."

This reflection came at a good moment. It softened her tone to Winifred.

"Yes," she said, "I will be entirely frank with you, and put before you the whole story of our acquaintance, and what I did to help you, from my point of view, which is likely, I much fear, to be that of others; and I certainly will not exaggerate things. For,"--and here a generous impulse made her add warmly--"I _do_ trust you, Winifred. I trust your good intentions and your honesty of purpose, though I believe you deceive yourself; and self-deception is terribly insidious."

She paused a moment, but the girl did not speak. Hertha glanced round her as if to gather strength and breath for what she had to say. How fair and charming a prospect it was! There was something almost _unreal_ in the vivid clearness of the spring beauty all about-- unreconcilable with the troubles and anxieties which yet one knew must be there behind it all.

But as Hertha's gaze wandered farther, over to where, on the other side of some rising ground, the old church spire rose up into the blue, and the lazily curling smoke of the surrounding homesteads told of the human lives and interests close at hand, different thoughts arose in her mind. What infatuation was over the girl, or woman, beside her? Who could desire a more distinct field of usefulness than Winifred Maryon was deliberately rejecting? The awful problems relating to the poor of our overcrowded great cities must not be shirked by such as are wise enough to grasp them, but how thankful should be those whose duties in smaller spheres are clear and defined, lying among more normal conditions and along less conflicting paths!

She turned to her companion abruptly.

"Winifred, my dear child--my dear friend, if you don't like to be called a child--I _wish_ I understood you; that is at the root of it all. I _cannot_ get at your motives, your way of looking at things."

Winifred looked up--a frown, not of annoyance but of perplexity, lining her usually unruffled forehead; her blue eyes fixed on Hertha's face with a touch of appeal which was almost piteous.

"Tell me," she said, "tell me everything; I do want to know."

And Miss Norreys did as she asked. She went back to the beginning of their acquaintance, and told her all, as it had affected her herself, as it had taken shape and colour, from her point of view. She spoke as simply as she could, and tried her best to be practical and matter-of-fact. For talking to Winifred was not like talking to Celia, who, young as she was, could take in the sense of a sentence before it was half expressed, who felt the _spirit_ underlying and surrounding even the "commonest" commonplaces of life.

Winifred did not interrupt her. Now and then her colour rose a little; once or twice, as Hertha was not sorry to see, she winced, and seemed on the point of bursting out with some exclamation. And then, when Miss Norreys had come to the end of the first part of her story and stopped, the girl looked up.

"Yes," she said, "I see how it must have looked to you, and I see, as I certainly did not before, that I was _not_ perfectly ingenuous. To a certain extent I deceived you; at least, I allowed circumstances to deceive you and others, and I was glad of it, because it suited my purpose. But remember I did not start with any intention of deceiving you, and I thought I had a right to take advantage of the mistake when it arose; because, from _my_ point of view, if my work was worth paying for, I had a right to the payment, don't you see?" and she looked up anxiously.

"Perhaps so, but you had no right to the _position_, which alone made your earning payment possible. At least, you have no right to obtain it without explaining your circumstances," said Hertha.

Winifred was silent.

"And," Hertha went on, though sorry for the mortification she felt that her words must cause, "to tell the truth, I don't think your work has been exactly worth paying for till now. Everything requires an apprenticeship; part of the idea of this society is to give girls who need to earn their livelihood a chance of fitting themselves to do so, by giving them the necessary apprenticeship gratis, and, more than that, by paying them from the first."

Winifred grew crimson.

"I never thought of that," she said. "I am perfectly ready, indeed I would much rather pay back what they have given me up to this. For I believe my work _is_, or will be from now, worth paying for."

"Very likely," said Hertha, but then she went on to lay the situation in two aspects before Winifred--her own clear home duties, so peculiar and unmistakable; and the wrong of taking advantage of the society to the prejudice of some other girl in real need of it.

The first of these Winifred began by disposing of glibly enough. The work of home was better done by Louise than by herself--better, well, not literally better--she knew she had a clearer head for figures, and a more ready grasp of things than her sister. But she was not nearly so patient and sweet tempered as Louise, she decided complacently: "Oh no, not nearly. I should try papa awfully."

Hertha stared at her.

"And you would make your own shortcomings an excuse for neglecting duties?" she exclaimed. "What sophistry! What a vicious circle you are involving yourself in! Patience and self-control can be acquired. You speak as if your besetting sins belonged to you, like the colour of your eyes or the shape of your nose."

Winifred did not reply.

"And my second point--that of taking what is not meant for you?" Hertha went on.

"That," said Winifred, "is, I think, for the society to decide. Of course I am now quite ready to tell anything about my circumstances."

In her turn Hertha was silent. She agreed with Winifred that the society should decide, and she felt considerably inclined to believe that the society _had_ decided. For Mr Montague's thick letter, though unopened, was in her pocket.

But the conversation was by no means at an end.

"Winifred," said Miss Norreys again, "I have a great deal more to say to you--to tell you. But it would be such a satisfaction to me, and what matters infinitely more, to yourself afterwards, always--if you could now, without any further reason, try to see where your real duties lie."

"I _will_ try," said Winifred, "but," and at last the tears rose in her eyes, "I did so long for a wider, a fuller life."

"You cannot have found the petty detail and often wearisome round of work at ---Street very widening or inspiriting surely."

"No, but I thought that would come. I was beginning to feel that something _depended_ on me, that I had a post--a place. And I like the feeling of `London,'" she added naively.

Hertha smiled.

"Yes," she said, "I know that, and you may still have it. I think you should be more in London than you have been."

"There is Celia, too," exclaimed Winifred.

"I am not forgetting her. But about yourself--you have put it in words. It is _the sense of responsibility_ about home duties that has been wanting, and has made them unattractive and irksome. That will come, if you set your shoulder to the wheel. You will soon see that, as I do believe is the case, you will be able to do the work better than it has ever been done, and new developments and possibilities would open out. Why, with the experience you have acquired, you might work into the society's hands down here--you might have a convalescent home, or a children's holiday home."

Winifred's melancholy face brightened a little.

"I will think about it all," she repeated, "and I will write anything you like to the society, or--but I hate troubling you--would not the best thing be for you to write to Mr Montague? And now, have you told me everything?"

"No," said Hertha. They were now approaching the end where the aspens stood. Hitherto in their pacing up and down they had not gone so far, but this time Miss Norreys had purposely prolonged their walk a little. "No," she said, stopping short and looking round her with a strange kind of curiosity, "I have something more to tell you--where does this path go to, or end, Winifred?" she broke off suddenly.

"Oh, I don't know exactly. We never come this way," the girl replied impatiently. "It goes along among the aspens, and then gets into a tangle. And some way further on there's a brook that runs into a pond. It's a wilderness sort of a place, and I hate it."