White Turrets

“Ah, of course I can’t pretend to judge,” he repeated, and the modesty of his tone encouraged her to say a little more, to stifle her own misgivings as much as to keep up her sister’s dignity.

“Winifred is intended for a larger life altogether,” she said. “And there are three of us at home. People are beginning to see the facts about women’s lives differently. Why should we be condemned to trivial idleness? Look how some have thrown off the trammels! There is Miss Norreys, for instance. Could you imagine her spending her life in ordering legs of mutton and darning stockings?”

“No,” said Eric simply, “I couldn’t. And I don’t think any woman’s life need be, or should be, so dull and narrow. But still, Hertha Norreys is not a fair example. She has a gift, an undoubted gift. I think its greatness is scarcely yet recognised by herself or others; perhaps it never will be. But still she has not ignored it. She felt she had a talent and she was bound to cultivate it, and she has done so. In her case there was no choice.”

Celia looked interested.

“I am glad you allow that, at any rate,” she said, and glancing at her, the young man almost fancied that she blushed a little. “Of course I think cleverness like Winifred’s a gift, but I can understand ordinary people not looking upon it as if she had a great talent for music, or – or painting. It is easier when you have the one distinct power. Now there is Lady Campion. Your mother seems to think her so talented, but she has not concentrated her talents.”

“No,” said Eric, drily, “she certainly has not.”

“And,” pursued Celia, “she is married. She shouldn’t have married if she wanted to be something.”

“But perhaps she didn’t, or, at least, not what you call ‘something.’ She thinks herself very much ‘something’ or ‘somebody,’ and her marriage has certainly not stood in her light.” Celia hesitated.

“You don’t like Lady Campion?” she said, abruptly.

“Oh yes, I do,” he replied, lightly. “She’s by no means a bad sort of woman,” he went on, hastily. Celia was not the kind of girl to whom it seemed natural to talk slang. “But she wouldn’t have been half what she is if she hadn’t married. The best of her, in my humble opinion, comes out as a wife. I like to see her with her husband. She recognises his superiority.”

“Oh dear,” thought Celia, “what a man’s way of putting it!”

“For he really is a first-rate fellow in his own line. And she is not a genius, though she is – oh yes! she is – clever, though sometimes she makes herself just a little ridiculous.”

Celia did not speak. This was again a new light to her. She felt confused. She had pictured Lady Campion quite differently, somehow, and she felt sure Winifred had done the same, pitying her for having married and thus rashly clipped her wings.

“She – Lady Campion – admires Miss Norreys exceedingly,” said Celia, after a little silence. “That should be a bond between you, for I can see you admire her exceedingly too.”

Eric looked somewhat surprised. The young girl had more perception than he had given her credit for.

“Yes,” he said, “I do. I admire her very much indeed. As an artist, I place her more highly than might be generally thought reasonable, and, as a woman, yes, I admire her too, and respect her, except for – ”

“What?” asked Celia, eagerly.

“I cannot tell you,” he answered. “I was going to say that, as a woman, there is one direction in which I cannot admire her. But I cannot explain more fully, and perhaps I may have misjudged her. She is one in whom it would be difficult to believe there existed any of the weaknesses that one finds in smaller characters.”

This was high praise. Celia’s interest in Hertha grew with every word.

“I wish I knew her,” she said, earnestly. “I should so like to meet her.”

Her words reached the ears of her companion on the other side. Mr Fancourt was beginning to feel as if he had had about enough of the neighbour – a talkative woman of forty or thereabouts, well up in the topics of the day, and of his own small section of the world in particular – on his left, whom hitherto he had deliberately chosen in preference to the pretty young creature on his right. And now, with the calm insouciance of an experienced diner-out, he turned to Celia.

“There must be more in her than I suspected,” he said to himself. “She seems to have succeeded in making Balderson talk, and he can be pretty heavy in hand when it doesn’t suit him to be lively.”

“You are speaking of Miss Norreys, are you not?” he asked. The name had caught his attention, and, when Celia bowed in response – “Yes, she is charming,” he went on. “It is curious: I have found myself thinking of her two or three times during dinner. There is a certain something which I cannot define, which reminds me of her in that girl on the other side of the table – nearer our host – yes,” as he followed Celia’s eyes, “the girl next but one to my wife. You know her, Mrs Fancourt, by sight – in pale green? No?” (He thought everybody knew his wife.) “Ah, well, you know her now.”

“She is very pretty,” said Celia, simply.

“I cannot contradict you,” he said, with a well-pleased smile, which made Celia think that, after all, he must be rather a nice man – she liked husbands who thought their wives very pretty – and disposed her to question the truth of Winifred’s sweeping assertion that conjugal affection was never to be found among “smart” people. “But,” continued Mr Fancourt, “look at the girl I mentioned – the girl in black. Do you see the slight something – scarcely resemblance – about her, which recalls Miss Norreys?”

In her turn Celia now smiled with pleasure.

“She is my sister,” she replied. “She will be delighted when she hears what you say. No, I don’t think it would have struck me that there was any likeness. But I daresay there is some likeness in character. My sister is very self-reliant and – and – dauntless. And I should think there is something of that about Miss Norreys.”

Having found a topic of interest, the rest of the dinner passed pleasantly enough, and Mr Fancourt felt that doing his duty had not been the arduous task he had anticipated.

But it was her conversation with Eric Balderson which left its mark on Celia’s mind.

“Oh, Celia,” said Winifred, when she managed to get her sister to herself for a moment in the drawing-room, “I feel in a new world. Mr Sunningdale has been talking to me so delightfully, so perfectly. All my intuitions about the larger, wider life I should find in London are being realised. How narrow our small home-world seems in comparison! I told Mr Sunningdale something of what I am hoping to do, and I can see he sympathised in my longing to throw off the narrow trammels we have been brought up in. People here have much wider ideas!”

“You must have made friends very quickly,” said Celia.

In her tone there was not the complete and responsive sympathy which she was, as a rule, eagerly ready to give to her sister. She could not help it. A slight chill of doubt, of questioning of the perfect wisdom of Winifred’s theories, had been, though unintentionally, cast over her. But the elder Miss Maryon was too excited and enthusiastic to perceive it, and this Celia was glad to see. For, after all, the faintest idea of disagreement with Winifred’s opinions or judgment was extraordinary and unnatural to her.

“Yes,” said Winifred, “we did. But it does not need time to make friends when people are sympathetic. Mr Sunningdale has evidently thought out all the great questions of the day about women most thoroughly.”

She looked so bright and happy, so handsome and almost brilliant, that her younger sister gazed in loving admiration.

“Dear Winifred,” she said to herself. “No wonder Mr Sunningdale or Mr Anybody admires her when she looks like that. I do feel sorry for dear old Lennox though.”

Poor Mr Sunningdale! Much had been credited to him which he would have been greatly astonished to hear of. He was, as has been said, a kind-hearted and eminently good-natured man; a man, too, who not only had a special line of distinction, but was above the smallness of being ashamed of talking about what he really understood. 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. Though, truth to tell, the subject matter of these same confidences, if it did not go in at one ear to come out at the other, left but the vaguest and most fleeting impression behind it.

“Pretty girl – handsome rather than pretty – intelligent, too, but rather bitten by the advanced ideas of the day. She’ll settle down when she’s married,” was his commentary upon her to his hostess. “An heiress, did you say? All the better, if she falls into good hands.”

And if Mrs Balderson had begun to build air-castles as to the possible consequences of her introduction – Winifred being, as she expressed it, “just the sort of girl to prefer a man a good deal older than herself” – they speedily fell to the ground. Mr Sunningdale had a history: the not uncommon one of an adored girl-wife dead almost before he had realised she was his. And, despite the cynicism which many declared lay beneath his surface good-nature, there was something deeper down still. He was not the man to dream of a second marriage.

Nor, as we know, were Miss Maryon’s ideas likely to turn the least in such “commonplace” directions.

The results of this first taste of London society were, however, to all appearance, eminently satisfactory. Winifred, as she bade her kind hostess good-night, was profuse in her thanks for the delightful evening she had spent. And if Celia’s pretty eyes had a slight shadow over them, it could only have been that she was a little tired, thought the good woman.

“You took care of her at dinner, I hope, Eric?” she said to her son, who had been known to be afflicted with fits of absence on social occasions of the kind.

“Oh dear, yes. We got on capitally, like a house on fire,” he replied, cordially. “I was so much obliged to you for giving me Celia to look after instead of her sister. I can’t stand that other girl, and I think Lennox a lucky fellow to be out of it.”

“It is to be hoped he will come to see it in that light himself,” said Mrs Balderson. “Not that I agree with you about Winifred. I like and admire her extremely, and I can understand her feeling that poor Lennox is not enough for her. With her talents and strength of character she may aspire higher, not to speak of her – well – material advantages.”

Eric gave a little grunt.

Mrs Balderson sometimes found her son’s grunts irritating.

“Celia, of course, is a sweet little thing,” she proceeded; “but nothing in her.”

Mrs Balderson was not a worldly mother. Still she did not much want Eric to fall in love with Celia.

He grunted again.

“You are very uncivil, Eric,” she said, with a touch of asperity. “Can’t you say out what you mean? When you are like that, you make me feel you are influenced by nothing but commonplace, masculine contradiction.”

“Perhaps so,” he replied.

Chapter Four.

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