The Laurel Walk

Chapter One

A Rainy Evening

There was a chemist’s shop at Craig Bay, quite a smart chemist’s shop, with plate-glass windows and the orthodox “purple” and other coloured jars of Rosamund fame. It was one of the inconsistencies of the place, of which there were several. For Craig Bay was far from being a town; it was not even a big village, and the two or three shops of its early days were of the simplest and quaintest description, emporiums of a little of everything, into which you made your way by descending two or three steps below the level of the rough pavement outside. The chemist’s shop was the first established, I think, of the new order of things, when the place and neighbourhood suddenly rose into repute as peculiarly bracing and healthy from the mingling of sea and hill air with which they were favoured. It was kept in countenance now by several others, a draper’s, a stationer’s, a photographer’s, of course, besides the imperative butcher’s, fishmonger’s, and so on, some of which subsided into closed shutters and vacancy after the “season” was over and the visitors had departed. For endeavours which had been made to introduce a winter season had not been crowned with success. The place was too out-of-the-way, the boasted mildness of climate not altogether to be depended upon. But the chemist’s shop stood faithfully open all the year round, doing a little business in wares not, strictly speaking, belonging to it, such as note-paper and even books, when the library-and-stationer’s in one had gone to sleep for the time.

On a cold raw evening in late November, Betty Morion stood waiting for her sister Frances on the door-step of the shop. It would have been warmer inside, but Betty had her fancies, like many other people, and one of them was a dislike to the smell of drugs, with which “inside,” naturally, was impregnated. And she was thickly clad and fairly well used to cold and to damp – even to rain – for to-night it was drizzling depressingly.

“I wish Francie would be quick,” thought the girl more than once during the first few moments of her waiting, though she knew it was certainly not poor Frances’ fault. Their father’s prescriptions had always some very special and peculiar directions accompanying them, and Betty knew of old that the waiting for them was apt to be a long affair.

And she was not of an impatient nature. After a while she forgot about the tiresomeness, and fell to watching the reflections of the brilliant colours of the jars in the puddles and on the surface of the wet pavement just below her, as she had often watched them before. They were pretty – in a sense – and yet somehow they made the surrounding dreariness drearier.

“I wonder if it does rain more here than anywhere else,” she said to herself dreamily. “What a splashing walk home we shall have! I wish we did not live up a hill – at least I think I wish we didn’t, though perhaps if our house was down here I should wish it was higher up! Perhaps it doesn’t really rain more at Craig Bay than at other places, but we notice it more. For nearly everything pleasant that ever comes to us depends on the weather.” And Betty sighed. “I could fancy,” she went on, “living in a way that would make one scarcely care what it was like out of doors. A beautiful big house with ferneries and conservatories, and lovely rooms to wander about in, and a library full of delightful books, and lots of people to stay with us and – well, yes, of course, it would be nice to go drives and rides and walks too, and to have exquisite gardens. But still life might be very pleasant even when it did rain,” and again Betty sighed. “It needn’t be anything so very tremendous, after all,” she added to herself. “Craig-Morion might be – ” but a gentle touch on her shoulder made her turn. It was her sister, packages in hand, and rather embarrassed by her umbrella.

“Can you open it for me, dear?” she said, and Betty hastened to do so. “I am so afraid,” Frances went on, when Betty’s own umbrella was ready for business too, and they were both under way, “I am so afraid of dropping any of these things. Papa is so anxious to have them at once. Do you remember the day that Eira dropped the bottle of red ink – wasn’t it dreadful?” and Frances laughed a little at the recollection.

Her laugh was very sweet, but scarcely merry. There are laughs which tell of sadness more quickly almost than tears. But it was not that kind either; it was the laugh of one who is resolutely cheerful, who has learnt by experience the wisdom of making the best of things – a lesson not often learnt by the young while young, though by some it is acquired so gradually and unconsciously that on looking back from the table-land of later years they do not realise it had ever been a lesson to be learnt at all.

For its roots lie deeper than philosophy. They are to be found in unselfishness, in self-forgetting, and earnest longing to carry the burdens of others, or at least to share them.

And Frances Morion was still young, though twenty-seven. She by no means looked her age. Her life in many ways had been a healthy one in its material surroundings, and she herself had made it so in other ways.

Betty scarcely laughed in return. It is doubtful if she heard what her sister said.

“Isn’t it horribly wet?” she said. “I was really wondering just now if it rains more here than anywhere else, or if – ” and after a moment’s hesitation – “if we notice it more, Francie, because, you see, there is so little else to notice.”

Miss Morion turned quickly and glanced at her sister, forgetting that it was far too dark to discern the girl’s features. She always felt troubled when Betty spoke in that way, when her voice took that particular tone. She could be philosophical for herself far more easily than for her younger sisters.

“Well, on the other hand,” she said cheerfully, “doesn’t it show that we have no very great troubles to bear if we have leisure to think so much about small ones?”

“I don’t say we have any very big troubles to bear,” said Betty. “I – I almost sometimes find myself wishing we had – ”

“Oh, Betty, don’t,” said her sister quickly, “don’t wish anything like that!”

“No,” said Betty, “I wasn’t going to say quite what you thought. I mean I wish anything big would come into our lives! Anything really interesting, and – well, yes! I may as well own it – anything exciting! It is all on such a dull, dead level, and has always been the same, and always will be, it seems to me. And when one is no longer very young the spring and buoyancy seem to go. When I was seventeen or eighteen I’d all sorts of happy fancies and expectations, but now – why, Francie, I’m twenty-four, and nothing has come.”

For a moment or two Frances walked on in silence.

“I dare say,” she said at last, “if we knew more of other lives, we should find a good many something like ours. And after all, Betty, one’s real life is what one is oneself.”

Betty laughed slightly. Her laugh was not bitter, but without any ring of joyousness.

“I know that,” she said. “But it doesn’t do me any good. It’s just myself that depresses me. I’m not big enough, nor brave enough, nor anything enough, to rise above circumstances, as people talk about. I want circumstances to help me a little! And I don’t ask anything very extravagant, I know.

“No, Frances,” she added, “you’re not – not quite right. I think I could bear things better and feel more spirit if you would allow that our lives are exceptional in some ways.”

“Perhaps so,” the elder sister agreed.

“You know,” continued Betty, “it isn’t fallings in love or marriage that I’m talking about. I really and truly very seldom think of anything of that kind, though of course, in the abstract, I can see that a home of one’s own, and the feeling oneself a centre, is the ideal life; but heaps of girls don’t marry, and there are plenty, lots of other interests and objects to live for, which we are unusually without!”

Frances opened her mouth with an intention of remonstrating, but the words died away before she gave them utterance. There was so much truth in what Betty said, and Frances was too thorough-going to believe in the efficacy of any consolation without a genuine root, so she said nothing.

“And I’m afraid,” pursued Betty, who certainly could not be accused this evening of having donned rose-coloured spectacles, “I’m afraid,” she repeated, “that it’s coming over Eira too, though she has kept her youngness marvellously, so far.”

In her turn Frances gave a little laugh which could scarcely be called mirthful.

“Betty dear,” she said, “you are rather unmerciful to-night, piling on the agony! You think me very philosophical, but I must confess I am not proof against our present depressing circumstances. I don’t think I’ve ever come up the hill in such rain and darkness, and so horribly cold too.” And in spite of herself she shivered a little.

In a moment Betty’s mood had changed to penitence.

“Oh, Frances, I’m a brute,” she exclaimed, “for I know you were tired before we came out; reading aloud to papa for so long together is really exhausting. I know what I’ll do,” she went on, with a tone of defiance; “if I have to carry the coals and wood myself upstairs, you shall have a fire in your room as soon as we go in, you shall!”

Frances laughed again, this time with real amusement. She was always happier about Betty when the younger girl’s latent energy asserted itself.

“I’m all right, dear,” she said, “and we’re getting near home now. We must be near the lodge gates. I thought I saw a light a moment ago.”

In spite of the drenching rain, Betty stood still an instant to reconnoitre.

“Yes,” she said, “I see a light, more than one, two or three, but they’re not from the lodge. Francie!” with a sudden excitement in her voice, “they’re up at the house. We’ll see them more clearly as we go on. Who can be there? It’s not likely Mrs Webb would have chosen an evening like this to be making the rounds, or lighting fires in the big house.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Frances, half indifferently. “They may have been doing some extra cleaning or something of that kind earlier in the day, and not have finished yet. There’s nobody at the lodge itself, anyway,” as at this moment they approached the gates. “There’s no light in the windows except from the kitchen fire and – oh dear! I’m sorely afraid that the gates are locked, and neither of the Webbs there to let us through;” and she sighed ruefully, for this meant a quarter of a mile’s further walk – there being an understanding that the Morion family should have a right of way through the grounds of the deserted home of their far-away relatives, to their own little house which stood just beyond the enclosure. “It is unlucky,” she added, “to-night of all nights, when every step of the way is an aggravation of our miseries!”

Strangely enough, Betty’s depression seemed, for the time being, to have vanished. For some passing moments, the sisters might almost have changed characters. Frances was honestly, physically tired. She had had a trying, fatiguing day at home, and the walk to the village, which had in a sense invigorated Betty (who, to confess the truth, had spent the day in doing little or nothing), had really been too much for the elder sister.

“Never mind,” said Betty briskly; “we’ll soon be there now. I shall keep a sharp lookout when we turn the corner to see if there are lights at the back of the big house too.”

Frances, for once, was feeling too tired to rise to her sister’s little fit of excitement, though she smiled to herself in the darkness with pleasure, as she realised that if Betty’s spirits were apt to sink very much below par, they were ready enough to rise again on very small provocation.

“She is still so young,” thought the elder sister; “so much younger than most girls of her age. If only I had a little more in my power for her and Eira!” And the smile gave way, all too quickly, to a sigh, which in its turn was intercepted by an eager exclamation from Betty, for they had turned the corner of the road by this time.

“Look, Francie!” she said, in an involuntary whisper, as if by some extraordinary possibility her remarks could have been overheard at the still distant big house; “look, Francie, it is something out of the common! The offices are lighted up – some of them, anyway; and don’t you see lights moving about too, as if there were several people there? What can be going to happen?”

“Your curiosity will soon be satisfied,” returned Frances; “that’s one good thing of living in a little world like this. By to-morrow at latest, any news there is will be all over the place.” And then she relapsed into silence; and Betty, always quick of perception, seeing that her sister was really tired, said no more, though her little head kept turning round from under the shelter of her umbrella as long as the back precincts of Craig-Morion remained visible.

This was not for long, however. A few moments more, and their path skirted a thickly-planted belt of Scotch firs, which here bordered the park. They had almost to feel their way now, so dark had it become.

“Oh dear,” said Betty, when there was no longer anything to distract her attention from the woes of the present moment. “Oh dear, Francie, did the way home ever seem quite so long before? I do hope the next time papa wants his medicine in a hurry that he’ll choose a fine evening.”

“Dear,” said Frances regretfully, “I shouldn’t have let you come with me.”

“Rubbish! nonsense!” cried Betty, “as if Eira and I would have let you go alone. I do believe in my heart that we’re both quite as strong as you, though you won’t allow it. Poor little Eira, she would have come too, except for her chilblains. It is unlucky that she has got them so early this year. And they spoil her pretty hands so.”

“It’s only from the unusual cold,” said Frances, “and – ” she hesitated. “I am sure I could cure them,” she resumed, “if I had my own way, or if I had had it when you were both growing up. What makes me really stronger is, I am sure, that I had so much better a time as a child than either of you, before papa gave up his appointment and we were better off.”

“I wish you’d leave off repeating that old story,” said Betty. “After all, I’m not four years younger than you, and whatever Eira and I have not had, we’ve had you, darling – a second mother as people say, a great, great deal better than a second mother I say, and oh joy! here we are at last; I see the white gate-posts.” And in another moment they were plodding the short, badly kept gravel path, not to be dignified by the name of a drive, which led to their own door.

“Take care of the big puddle just in front of the steps; it must be a perfect lake to-night,” Betty was saying, when, before they had quite reached it, the door was cautiously opened, and a girl’s face peered out, illumined by the light, faint though it was, of the small hall behind her. It was Eira, the third and youngest of the Morion sisters.

“It’s you at last,” she said in a low voice; “come in quickly, and I’ll take the medicine to papa, he’s been fussing like a – I don’t know what, and if he gets hold of you he’ll keep you waiting in your soaking things for half-an-hour while he goes on about your having been so long! Now go straight upstairs,” she continued, when she had got her sisters inside, and extricated them from their dripping umbrellas and waterproofs. “I’ll see to these things as soon as I’ve been to papa. Go straight up to your room, Frances; there’s a surprise for you there. Go up quickly and keep the door closed till I come.”

She took the parcel from her elder sister’s hands as she spoke, and, without wasting time in more words, gave her a gentle little push toward the staircase. Frances and Betty went up softly, but as quickly as their feet, tired and stiffened with cold and wet, would allow. The staircase, like everything in the house, was meagre and dingy, the steps steep and the balusters rickety. At the top a little landing gave access to the best rooms, and a long narrow passage at one side led to the sisters’ own quarters.

Betty ran on in front and threw open the door of her elder sister’s room eagerly. She had hard work to repress an exclamation of delight at what met her eyes. It was a fair-sized, bare-looking room, though scrupulously neat and not without some simple and tasteful attempts at ornamentation, and to-night it really looked more attractive than was often the case, for a bright glowing fire sent out its pleasant rays of welcome, and on a little table beside it stood, neatly arranged, everything requisite for a good, hot cup of tea.

“How angelic of Eira!” exclaimed Betty. “How has she managed it? Just when I was planning how I could possibly get you a fire, Francie.”

The eldest sister sat down with a smile of satisfaction in front of the warm blaze.

“Run into your own room, Betty, and take off your wet things as quickly as possible, and then come back here for tea. We have still over an hour till dinner-time.”

Betty hurried across the room and threw open the door, almost running into Eira as she did so.

“Oh! this is lovely,” she exclaimed, “especially as you’ve got away too, Eira. Do tell us how you managed it.”

“No, no,” remonstrated Frances, “tell her nothing. Don’t answer her till she has taken off her wet things. She will be all the quicker if you don’t begin speaking.”

So Betty ran off and Eira joined her elder sister at the fireside.

“Wasn’t it a good idea?” she said, smiling at the cheering glow.

“Yes, indeed,” said Frances. “Betty was meditating something of the kind as we were coming home, but I doubt if she could have managed it. Anyway it wouldn’t have been ready to welcome us in this comfortable way. Oh dear! it was wet and dreary coming home, and we were kept waiting such a long time for papa’s medicine! By-the-by, is it all right?”

Before Eira could answer, the door reopened to admit Betty.

“Haven’t I been quick?” she exclaimed brightly. “Do pour out the tea, Frances. And tell me, Eira, I am dying to hear what good fairy aided and abetted you in this unheard-of extravagance.”

“Nobody,” said Eira. “I simply did it. After all, I think it’s the best way sometimes to go straight at a thing. And if papa had met me carrying up the tea-tray I should have reminded him that it was better to have some hot tea ready for you, than to risk you both getting rheumatic fever. I didn’t meet him, as it happened, but just now when I gave him the medicines I took care, by way of precaution, to dilate on the drenched state you had arrived in and the long time you had been kept waiting at the chemist’s. The latter fact I made a shot at.”

Frances drew a breath of relief.

“Then we may hope for a fairly comfortable evening,” she said.

“Yes,” said Betty; “to give the – no, Frances, you needn’t look shocked, I won’t finish it. I must allow that papa is more sympathising about physical ills than about some other things.”

“And so he should be,” said Eira, “considering that he says he never knows what it is to feel well himself. Mamma is worse than he about being hardy and all that sort of thing. I often wonder how children grew up at all in the old days if they really were so severely treated as we’re told.”

“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 “qualités de ses défauts” 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!”