Mrs. Molesworth

“ I only wish I could give to poor Winifred some of the quite indescribable charm it has for me. I suppose it is just that she has grown up in it; but yet Celia, and even Louise, feel it almost as I do. Well, Winifred may awake in many ways yet. She will probably love her home better when there is no stifled consciousness of self-reproach mixed up with it. How glad I am she gave in before she—or I—knew the contents of Mr Montague’s letter. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ She was feeling too happy for that.
“If I could only get up and down to London for painting lessons every day by magic,” she said, “I should never want to leave home at all—never.”
“Nonsense, Celia,” said Winifred. “You would never do anything worth doing if you tied yourself to the out-of-the-world sort of life we have here. You need to imbibe the spirit of the day. You need friction, a hundred inspiring and inspiriting influences, even if you are a genius.”
“Winifred,” said the younger girl reproachfully, “how can you speak so? Heaven knows I have never thought myself a genius. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Think what Hertha Norreys’s life would have been if she had simply accepted things!”
“Ah, but it was different for her. She had a great talent, and she needed to work,” said Celia. “In a case like hers there could be no doubt. I really don’t pity girls who need to work so much as others in some ways. Not the rich—they can always, if they wish, find ways of being useful: the very conditions of their lives bring opportunities. But girls whose lives are very uninteresting, and yet not poor exactly, I pity them—girls who even can scarcely afford to get books to read.” ”

“ Winifred flung herself upon it and burst into uncontrollable girlish sobs. She seemed to Hertha to have grown ten years younger, and never had Miss Norreys’ heart gone out to her so much as now.
For a minute or two she let her cry undisturbed, then she said very gently:
“My dear child, I think I understand you and the whole story. You have not sought their love in the past as you might have done, but you have it. You do not know how much they all love you. And—you are very fortunate—see how duty and affection are pointing the same way in your case. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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! ”

“ Whatever he is not, he is certainly not a mean hypocrite. You can’t think that for—for any selfish or interested motives, he would pretend to care for you? He couldn’t.”
“No, no, I don’t think him the least of a hypocrite,” said Winifred, eagerly. “You don’t understand, Celia. He thinks he does, quite honestly. He’s always been put in the position—not told he must care for me, for, of course, with a man of any spirit or principle that would only drive him the other way. And Lennox has plenty of principle and spirit too, of a kind. ”

“ Louise’s face fell a little, more, perhaps, out of sympathy with her mother’s disappointment than from any keen sense of it herself. She had not expected otherwise.
“Celia seems to me to be in a most reasonable frame of mind,” she said. “Nothing could be sweeter and nicer than all she says.”
“Celia is different,” said the mother. “There is sense and reason in her wish to cultivate the talent she believes she has, or at least to find out how much she has. She would never have been unreasonable if Winifred had not put it into her head;” and Mrs Maryon sighed again. ”

“ She has quite decided, Louise. It is all settled. She is going to London in January, for good.”
Louise drew a deep breath.
“I cannot believe it,” she said. “Leaving all she might do here, when every day I see more and more how valuable her strong brain and clear judgment would be. For papa, though not worse, is not better, Celia. He is so quickly exhausted. I do my best, but I am not the clever one of the family. I can’t understand it. Going out to seek for work when it is at her very feet, crying to be done.”
“It is not work Winifred wants; it is a career,” said Celia, laconically. ”

“ Her heart—for she was a girlish creature after all—beat considerably faster than usual: much faster, in all probability, than if she had been about to be introduced to some personage of exalted rank or social position. Her short-sightedness added somewhat also to her unusual embarrassment. For the room was fitfully, rather than dimly, lighted, after the fashion of drawing-rooms of the present day; and Winifred was used to old-fashioned lamps and white-panelled wainscoting, reflecting the clear, generally diffused radiance. ”

“ And to any one knowing Winifred, there would have been something almost amusing in the half-protecting tone with which Miss Norreys at once addressed her. But if love is blind, so is youthful enthusiasm, and Winifred was truly enthusiastic about the young singer. More than this, that any one could by any possibility look upon her as an object of protection or pity had never dawned upon the girl, whose self-confidence and matter-of-fact preoccupation with her own ideas often dulled her perceptions. ”

“ There was the still-room as it might have been in the days of the great-great-grandmothers of the present inhabitants; the white-shelved “napery” room with its snowy piles, which one knew by instinct must be lavender-scented; even the girls’ own sitting-room, which she passed on one of the first-floor landings, in spite of the very nineteenth-century piano and easel and wealth of books and book-cases, might, at the first rapid glance, have been the legendary tabby-lady’s own boudoir, with its lattice-paned windows and polished floor. ”

“ When home has to be given up, it should be done regretfully, as a sad necessity, whereas the wish to escape from it is, I fear, in many cases nowadays, the great motive.”
“But girls are not alone to blame for that,” said Winifred. “Think what some parents are: tyrannical and selfish, scarcely allowing a daughter to have a mind or a soul of her own.”
“I know that some are like that,” said Hertha.
“If a girl does not marry, she is treated as if she had no right to have a self at all! But, where parents are reasonable, I doubt if any home-life need be narrow and stifling, and all the rest of it. ”

“ Why should a woman be treated differently in such a case? Why should her wings be clipped and she be restricted to a narrow, monotonous life any more than a man?”
Celia scented danger. She saw that Winifred was lashing herself up to one of her “revolts,” as she called them herself sometimes, and she knew that any, even the slightest suspicion of less full sympathy than she had hitherto been able to give would be sharply resented. Yet she was too honest to evade the possible discordance, painful though the smallest disagreement with her sister would be to 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.” ”

“ But I hate beating about the bush and always thinking such a lot about what to say and not to say. I do like to be natural. However, I’ll be more careful. But I am so tired of Lennox and all that dull, humdrum country life that Mrs Balderson calls restful and delightful. And so are you, Celia; we are at one on these subjects.”
“Of course we are,” said the younger girl, “though my feeling is not that I want to leave home, but simply to have—you know what—my chance, my test, which I cannot have at home. But you are very good, dear Winifred, not to think me impertinent for warning you.” ”

“ Not even when, by degrees, she became aware that the form was undoubtedly that of a woman—a woman, young, graceful, but in dire distress, for as it advanced, with its slow, cadenced step, till within a few yards of the terrace just below her, she saw it lift its pallid arms in their shadowy white drapery, as if in piteous appeal, then wringing its hands, for one fleeting moment its face was raised to her as if her presence were known and realised, and she saw that it was that of a beautiful woman, weeping, weeping sorely, as if her very heart would break, for woe she was powerless to avert. ”

“ He’s just the sort of man that would have got on splendidly if he had had a clever wife. It is such a pity,” and she sighed a little. “I daresay you have noticed—he is so devoted to Winifred, and she doesn’t care for him in the least.”
“To Winifred!” said Miss Norreys. “No, I certainly should not have thought so. Are you sure—it is not one of Winifred’s freaks to think so?” she was going to add, but stopped in time.
“Oh, quite sure,” said Celia, with the slightest possible inflection of annoyance. “Winifred is not at all the sort of girl to flirt, or anything like that. ”

“ Cheerful acceptance of evils, irremediable for us, though in the long run they may be set right again, is, after all, a very big part of our life’s work, is it not? And as to actual, practical work, ‘usefulness’ in the noblest sense, I have great faith in its coming to those who take at once whatever comes in their way. It is like capital. Money makes money, we are told. Well, I believe that doing work brings work to do. But I did not mean to preach like this.”
“I am glad of it. I will think about it,” said Winifred, gently. ”

“ I would so like it.”
“I will try,” said Hertha, smiling. “I may forget sometimes, but as you wish it, I will try.”
“Thank you,” replied Winifred. “Oh, there is Louise. Poor dear old Louise! She loves coming to meet arrivals. She is not very ‘interesting,’ you know—just a girl of the old type, but as good as gold. You need not be more with her than you like, if she bores you.” ”

“ 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! ”

“ And Winifred Maryon was certainly intelligent enough to be a good listener, all of which explains the two having “got on so well.” It was not, to do her justice, till towards the end of dinner that Winifred ventured to allude to her aspirations. And the great man, gratified, as even great men can be, by the enthusiastic admiration—or veneration—in the girl’s bright eyes, listened—how could he have done less?—to her confidences, with here and there a word or smile of kindly, half-amused encouragement. ”