White Turrets

Chapter One.

“Hertha.”

A dull afternoon in November. In London, too, where, though bright and beautiful November days are not utterly unknown, they are, it must be allowed, the exception.

A not very lively scene indoors either.

A large – too large for the present purpose at least – concert-room in a public building, very far from well filled, and somewhat dimly lighted; the dimness aggravated by a suspicion of fog.

“Rather an unlucky day, I fear,” said one lady to her next neighbour. “Still, at this season, what can one expect?”

“And after all,” was the reply, “the dull season is the best for charity things. People – such of them as are in town – are glad of something to do.”

For the concert was one for a benevolent object, not seemingly a very popular one, or possibly merely but little known. It had been difficult to collect the performers, more difficult to obtain the lady patronesses, most difficult of all to sell the tickets. And as a natural consequence, but few had been sold.

“The programme is a very fair one,” resumed the first speaker, glancing at it as she spoke.

“I’m glad you think so,” replied the other lady, who had had some hand in getting up the concert. “That last violin solo was a little too long.”

“Perhaps so – but still – the audience was very attentive; more than attentive indeed. Just look at those two girls – I have been watching their faces. They seem quite absorbed and delighted. Look at them now. What pretty girls they are, too!”

Mrs Balderson – for such was the name of the second speaker – smiled. Her companion’s remarks pleased her.

“They are two young friends of mine,” she replied in a lower tone. “I put them in front so as to see the performers well. They are full of interest in everything. They are staying with me for two or three weeks – their first real visit to London.”

“Indeed! how you must enjoy having them! Are they relations?” came next.

Mrs Balderson answered in a semi-whisper, till a slight rustle of expectancy warned her that the momentary interval between the long solo and a song which came next was over, and she relapsed into dutiful silence.

The sisters in front had been talking also, though in subdued tones.

“Celia,” said the elder of the two, a handsome, eager-faced girl, with brown hair and eyes – “Celia, are we not lucky? Do you see what the first song is?”

“I saw it ever so long ago, but I did not tell you. I thought it would be such a surprise. I wish you hadn’t seen it till you heard it,” said the younger girl.

“What an Irishism!” returned the other, laughing. “You mustn’t count on my short-sightedness, you see;” for Winifred, the elder girl, was a trifle short-sighted. “I am very glad I saw it; I like the pleasures of anticipation.”

She did not look her age, though she was fond of impressing upon her friends that she was “no longer very young.” Her complexion and the rounded outlines of her face might have been in keeping with seventeen or eighteen. Only a certain tone of decision, a slight, very slight touch of brusqueness, made her twenty-four years credible. Late hours and heated rooms, the wear and tear of over-amusement or over-excitement, had nothing to answer for in the case of these country girls – country girls, in a sense, of the old-fashioned kind.

Celia, who was not yet twenty, was prettier than her sister; taller and fairer – a more flowerlike creature – with an entire absence of self-consciousness, born to a certain extent, perhaps, of her absolute reliance upon Winifred, which added curiously to her charm.

“So do I,” she replied. “I like to know the name of the singer and to picture her to myself beforehand – especially when she is going to sing anything one loves so clearly as,” and she mentioned the song (an old ballad which I will not name, as I should like my readers to think of the old ballad they care for most). “If she is ugly or ungraceful, I shall just shut my eyes after the first glance and try to forget her. But her name is – pretty? no, not exactly, but nice, somehow, and rather queer. ‘Hertha Norreys.’ Did you ever hear it before, Winifred?”

”‘Norreys,’ spelt like that, is a very good name,” said Winifred the all-wise, “but ‘Hertha!’ What is it I know about ‘Hertha?’ We must look it out in our ‘Christian names,’ Celia, when – ”

But a touch on her arm from the quicker-eyed Celia silenced her, and like their chaperon and her friend, they grew mute, more than mute, motionless with interest which soon developed into an intenser feeling, as they watched the new-comer quietly making her way to the front of the platform. Saw her, and soon heard her. Yet the two perceptions seemed almost as one. From that first day, it was and ever remained to both – to Winifred especially, perhaps – impossible to think of Hertha Norreys in her absence except as singing, impossible to hear elsewhere the familiar notes of her favourite songs without seeing her.

For her songs, as a rule, were well known and simple; ballads familiar to most of us – the kind of thing which is, in great measure, “made” by the artist; which may be “marred” into utter nonentity.

And she was not – no, certainly not – “pretty,” and by no means “to the multitude” beautiful, though the word describes less inadequately than a poorer one the impression she made on the “some;” an impression which after knowledge of her, never lessened or effaced. She was not very tall, though of what used to be considered more than average height for a woman: nothing in or about her was startling or even striking. Her features, though in almost perfect proportion – perhaps for that very reason – never provoked admiration of their individual merits; her eyes, clear and sweet, could light up with affection or with occasionally a flash of consciousness almost approaching the inspiration of genius, into rare beauty; her whole face, her whole personality, spoke above all of simple yet powerful goodness, the true, large-hearted, thoughtful goodness of a noble woman.

At this time Hertha Norreys was twenty-eight.

The Maryon sisters – for Maryon was their surname – sat, as I said, in more than silence, while the wonderful – yes, wonderful I must call them in their perfect purity and sweetness – notes floated over them; now in joyousness, now in pathos, to die away at last in unutterable regret, as dies the wind on an autumn evening.

She was encored, of course. Though not in the first ranks of vocalists, for her voice was of no astounding compass, Miss Norreys was allowed on all hands to be “very good, very good indeed in her way,” and in herself she was a favourite with many, though not with all; so it was the proper thing, especially on an occasion like the present, when she gave her services gratuitously, to applaud her heartily.

And till she had reappeared and sung again the last verse of the ballad, neither Winifred nor Celia spoke or moved.

Then came – from Celia – the first half-timid words.

“I am so glad she sang the last verse over again,” she whispered. “Anything else would have spoilt it.”

“Of course,” said Winifred, and her tone was a little impatient. But in a moment, ashamed of her hastiness, she spoke again. “Oh, Celia,” she said, “I am not cross. But I seem so – so worked up. Isn’t she wonderful? Not her singing only – and after all, I know you understand music better than I do – but the whole of her, her face, her way of moving, even her dress! It was just perfect.”

“Blue-grey bengaline – that lovely shade,” said Celia, in whom there was now and then a queer, sudden matter-of-fact-ness which a superficial observer would rather have expected to find in Winifred. “And it fitted so well – so naturally, you know.”

“Everything about her is natural – that’s the beauty of it,” Winifred replied, repressing her indignation at hearing the texture of her divinity’s garments put into vulgar words. (“I wonder Celia does not tell me how many yards of stuff there must be in the dress,” she said to herself.) “Everything about her is natural – at least in perfect harmony,” she repeated, and then she gave a deep sigh. “Celia, is she to sing again?” she inquired in a low voice.

“Yes,” Celia replied, consulting the programme she held, “once – no, twice – once alone and another time in a trio, or quartette rather. I daresay it is some kind of glee: the name sounds like that.”

“I shall not care for that,” said Winifred, “but oh, I am so glad she is to sing again alone.”

She did care for the quartette when it came, for Miss Norreys’ voice was far ahead of the others, and then there was the pleasure of seeing her! And the third time she sang, the impression of the first was intensified, for though the song itself was a gayer one, the indescribable pathos of her voice was there too – it was as if a spirit were singing of joys which had once been his, long ago, in some golden age of childhood.

After that, Winifred, though she sat silent and apparently attentive, heard but little of the music.

Then came the little bustle of collecting discarded cloaks and furs, and the interchange of remarks upon the performance, as the “assistants,” in the French sense, most of whom were women, made their way to the door.

“Winifred, my dear, Celia,” said their hostess, when they were waiting with her for the carriage at the entrance, “I want to introduce you to my friend, Lady Campion.”

“You have enjoyed the concert, I think,” said the stranger – the same whose remarks about the Maryon girls had pleased Mrs Balderson.

“Very much, oh, very, very much,” both sisters replied.

Their chaperon gave a little smile of satisfaction as she glanced at Lady Campion.

“There’s some pleasure in having girls like these to take about, isn’t there?” the smile and glance seemed to say, and the answering expression in Lady Campion’s bright eyes showed that she understood.

“It is cold, isn’t it?” said Mrs Balderson, drawing her fur-lined cloak more closely round her, with a slight shiver.

“It looks cold,” replied Lady Campion, as she glanced up and down the street where the incipient fog veiling the dim red still lingering in the sky, and the yellow glare of the just-lighted lamps, gave a curious, half-mysterious effect, not without its charm. “It looks cold,” she repeated, “but I don’t think that it really is so.”

“It was beautifully warm in the concert-room,” said Winifred. “London is so much less chilly than the country just now. It is so delightful to be here.”

“Yet the country is often charming in November: there are days when one longs to sit out sketching,” said Lady Campion, who tried her hand at painting as well as at several other accomplishments. “The hazy colouring is so wonderful sometimes.”

“If I were an artist,” said Celia, who had not yet spoken, “I should like nothing better than to try London effects on a day like this. I never saw anything more curious than the lights just now.”

Lady Campion glanced at her in some surprise. There was a touch of originality in the remark which she had not expected, for she had already in her own mind put down Celia as “the pretty sister,” and Winifred as “the clever one.”

Just then Mrs Balderson’s footman hurried up to announce the carriage.

“Good-bye, so glad to have met you,” said his mistress, as she began to shake hands with her friend. “But – how are you going home?” she added suddenly. “You are driving, of course?”

“No, that is to say I have no carriage here. I am going to get a hansom,” replied the younger woman.

“Then do come with us, and let us drop you. It will not be out of our way at all,” said Mrs Balderson, cordially. “There is plenty of room for us all.”

“Thank you very much. Well, yes, it would be very nice,” replied Lady Campion, who felt rather pleased to see a little more of the two girls. They interested her, and she liked to be interested.

So in another moment or two the four found themselves comfortably ensconced in the landau, which, like everything belonging to Mrs Balderson, gave one a not unpleasing impression of space and plenty – of a rather old-fashioned kind.

“You are not tired, my dear Winifred? You have not got a headache, I hope?” said her hostess. For Miss Maryon was sitting silent with an absent look.

The girl started, then she smiled brightly. Her smile was very pleasant, relieving her face from the heaviness which in repose was its possible defect. And she had beautiful teeth!

“Oh dear, no,” she replied. “I never have headaches. None of us do, except Louise, and that very, very seldom. I was – only thinking.”

“I know,” said Celia. “Mrs Balderson, shall I tell you what it is? Winifred has fallen in love, and at first sight.”

“My dear!” exclaimed Mrs Balderson, rather taken aback, while Lady Campion listened with a quiet smile, her interest and amusement increasing.

“Yes,” Celia went on, unabashed, “and so have I, though not quite so badly, perhaps. It is Miss Norreys – Miss Hertha Norreys, the singer.”

Mrs Balderson’s face cleared.

“She is so – I can’t find a word for her,” said Winifred, half apologetically, but tacitly pleading guilty to her sister’s impeachment. “Isn’t she wonderful, Mrs Balderson? —you think her so, I am sure; don’t you?” she went on, turning to Lady Campion, in whose face she fancied she read quicker sympathy.

“I think she sings charmingly, in her own way,” began the elder woman, who was by no means ignorant of music; “and in herself she is, of course, most – ”

“No, no; I agree with Miss Maryon,” interrupted Lady Campion, but in a pretty eager way peculiar to her, which took away all shadow of offensiveness from the solecism. “Hertha Norreys, take her all together, is wonderful. I know no one the least, the very least like her.”

“You know her, then?” exclaimed Winifred, her eyes sparkling. “You know her privately?”

“Is it her real name?” added Celia, “I thought actors and singers always changed their names, or at least altered them somehow.”

“Not always – more often indeed not now-a-days, when they are of her class and position,” Lady Campion replied. “She is an ‘artist,’ so to say, of the modern school, retaining all the privileges that are hers by birth, except – and that ‘except,’ I fear, means a great deal – that she is, or would be if she did nothing, very poor.”

“If she did nothing?” repeated Winifred, musingly. “What a different,” – then she broke off hurriedly, asking again – “You know her? Privately – personally, I mean?”

Lady Campion nodded her head.

“I have that honour,” she said quaintly. “And an honour it is. But here we are at my own door. A thousand thanks, dear Mrs Balderson; but – now, won’t you do me another kindness? Come in and have tea with me, and I shall be able to tell our young friends a little more about my dear Hertha.”

Mrs Balderson hesitated. Her first impulse was always to do whatever she was asked to do, if such doing, that is to say, promised to give pleasure to the asker or any one else concerned. But, as often happened – for she had learned by experience – there came second thoughts.

“I fear I must not,” she said. “Mr Balderson and Eric are coming home early. Eric has some accompaniments he wants me to try over before dinner. But I should be very glad for you girls to stay half an hour or so with Lady Campion,” she went on, turning to the Maryons. “I cannot send the carriage back again, I fear, for I have had it out so much to-day, but your footman could see them into a hansom; they would be all right?” she added, reverting to Lady Campion.

“Oh, perfectly. I shall be delighted,” she replied; and the “delight,” without any polite figure of speech, shone in Winifred’s eyes, as she eagerly repeated the word “perfectly,” adding – “That will be charming. Celia and I want very much to go about a little alone in hansoms – to learn to manage for ourselves.”

But Celia hesitated.

“Winifred,” she said, “I think one of us should write home. We only sent a postcard of our arrival last night, and they will be so looking forward to a letter to-morrow morning. I had planned to write just now as soon as we go in. Might I – could I go home with you, dear Mrs Balderson, and – and Winifred stay with – ”

She spoke nervously, for she felt her sister’s disapproval.

“Certainly not,” said Miss Maryon, decidedly. “Of course, if any one writes, it must be me. Not that I think it necessary – in fact, you are absurd, Celia. But still, as you have got it into your head. Thank you a thousand times,” she went on, turning to Lady Campion with a frank heartiness which was one of her attractions. “I am ashamed to make such a fuss. Perhaps Celia is right, but – you will ask us again to come to see you, I hope? I should so enjoy it, and I long to hear about Miss Norreys.”

“I like the elder girl best,” thought Lady Campion, as she entered her own house. “She is so entirely unaffected: the other, it strikes me, is a bit of a prig.”

But it is not the mark of a prig to look guilty; and poor Celia looked decidedly guilty as they drove off again. Mrs Balderson, gifted with the kind of tact which comes from an extremely warm heart, exerted herself to disperse the little cloud which had arisen, by giving her young friends a few details about Lady Campion.

“She is so clever,” she said; “she can do almost anything she sets herself to. But I think she takes up too many things. She has no children, and few responsibilities; for they are not very rich – just comfortably off – and her husband is much older than she, and manages everything, so her time is greatly in her own hands.”

“What a pity she married!” exclaimed Winifred, with extreme conviction. “She might have been really great at something, if she had not thrown herself into trammels.”

Mrs Balderson smiled, but there was some perplexity in her smile.

“My dear!” she exclaimed, “you don’t mean to say that that is how you look upon marriage – a happy marriage, too, for Sir Hugh Campion is devoted to his wife and she to him, only he spoils her a little.”

“Ah, yes,” said Winifred, “a plaything when not a slave! I have my own ideas, dear Mrs Balderson, but you mustn’t be shocked at me. You must allow that happy marriages are rare.”

“If you mean perfect marriages, perhaps so. But happy marriages – no, I can’t agree with you. I know as many happy-together husbands and wives as mothers and daughters, or brothers and sisters, or any other relations,” said Mrs Balderson.

“I am using the word ‘happy’ in a wider and deeper sense than yours,” said Winifred, a little loftily. “But we must talk about it some other time. I flatter myself I have thought it out pretty thoroughly.”

“At one – no, two-and-twenty?” said her hostess, with a good-humoured smile.

“I am four-and-twenty – past,” said Winifred. They had reached Mrs Balderson’s house by this time.

“Come and have some tea before you take off your things,” she said. “It is sure to be ready. And then you can write your letters up-stairs if you like. I hope the servants keep up a good fire in your room, Winifred?”

“Oh dear yes,” said Winifred. “Not that we really need one. London houses are so much warmer than country ones, you know.”

“Yes – we have a few advantages over you, I allow,” said Mrs Balderson. “This house is very warm though it is commonplace. But even that must be a change to you after your wonderful old home, with its quaint nooks and crannies and odd-shaped rooms, inexplicable staircases, and – oh, that reminds me. You must tell Lady Campion all about your ghost when we see her again. Ghosts are one of her manias.”

A slight frown showed itself on Winifred’s face at the words.

“You know I don’t believe in it,” she said. “It is so silly.”

“Oh, Winifred, don’t say that,” exclaimed Celia, with sudden anxiety. “It always frightens me a little when you speak so.”

Chapter Two.

Black and Pink

Eric Balderson was awaiting his mother – not impatiently, he was never impatient about anything – in the drawing-room, as she had foreseen when they went in. And so was tea, thanks to Eric. He was one of those people in whose case it is not difficult to take the bad with the good, for the latter so decidedly predominated. If slow, tiresomely slow sometimes, he was so considerate; if in a certain sense heavy, he was so entirely to be relied upon, and in unselfish thoughtfulness for others, above all in small matters – for in important ones I cannot endorse the popular axiom that “the best of men are selfish” – he was almost like a woman.

“Now, isn’t that nice?” said his mother, appreciatively. “Tea just ready. You are clever, Eric. Isn’t he a good boy, Winifred? Of course it’s all due to my splendid bringing up, but still he does me credit, doesn’t he?”

Winifred smiled, but did not speak. She knew he was excellent, but she did not care much for Eric Balderson. Celia liked him better.

“I suppose you have learned to be daughter as well as son to your mother,” she said quietly, as she stood by the table, while this very “tame-cat” young man, as Winifred contemptuously called him, poured out the tea for his mother and her young friends.

“Yes, that’s to say she has had to put up with my feeble efforts in that direction, failing better,” he said. “Now then, I think I have got hers – my mother’s – tea just as she likes it; will you be so good as to tell me of any peculiarities of taste of yours, or your sister’s – cream, sugar, both or neither, or which?”

“Winifred takes no cream – I take both. Yes, I will hand Mrs Balderson hers, and you can look after Winifred. This is mine? Thank you,” and Celia seated herself near the tea-table.

“Did you enjoy the concert this afternoon?” young Mr Balderson inquired. “It was a concert you were at, wasn’t it?”

“Oh yes, very much, very much indeed,” said Celia. “It was a very nice concert. But the thing that we cared for most was Miss Norreys’ singing.”

“Miss Norreys – Hertha Norreys, do you mean?”

“Yes,” said Mrs Balderson, “these girls have both fallen in love with her, Eric.”

“With her as well as with her singing,” said Winifred.

Eric looked up with a comical expression.

“She is very charming, I am told,” he said. “I cannot testify to the fact from personal experience, for you can’t exactly call a person charming who deliberately snubs you.”

“How do you mean?” said his mother. “I didn’t know you had ever met Miss Norreys, and if you have, why should you think she snubbed you?”

“Because she did,” Eric replied simply.

Winifred’s eyes sparkled. Her admiration for Hertha rose still higher.

“Just what I should have expected of her,” she thought to herself.

“My dear Eric,” said his mother, with a very slight touch of annoyance in her tone, “I think you talk nonsense sometimes.”

He smiled.

“Sometimes, perhaps, but not always,” he said.

But he rose from his seat as he spoke, for he was more than quick at reading his mother’s feelings, and went towards the piano.

“I’ll look out the songs, mother, that I want to try over,” he remarked. “That’s to say, if you are still good for a little practising before dinner.”

“Certainly I am. Indeed, we hurried home partly on that account,” Mrs Balderson replied. “I will run up-stairs and take off my things in a moment. And you, dears, will have a little quiet time for your letters, and for resting, if you are tired.”

“I shall be glad to write my letters, but I am not the least tired, thank you,” said Winifred, in her clear, slightly incisive tone, almost as if resenting the kindly imputation.

“I am, rather,” said Celia gently.

“I scarcely see how you could help it, after such a busy day,” agreed Mrs Balderson. “You have been on the go since early this morning. Such a contrast from your regular restful life at home. Not that we Londoners can stand so much fatigue as country people often imagine we can, fancying that a rush is our usual existence.” She was leaving the room as she spoke, but stopped to add, “Remember I want you to be fresh this evening, though it is only a small party. Your cousin is coming, for one.”

“Oh dear,” said Winifred, in a half-complaining voice, when her hostess had gone, “I forgot about Lennox being in London just now. Mrs Balderson really need not have troubled to ask him. We have quite enough of him at home.”