Mrs. Molesworth - White Turrets

“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.”

Eric glanced at her.

“I fear we can scarcely put him off now, except with grave discourtesy,” he said. And Winifred could not tell if he was laughing at her or not. “Besides,” he went on, “though I cannot hope the fact would carry any weight with it, I am very fond of Lennox. I do my best to see something of him whenever I get a chance.”

“Oh yes,” said Winifred, coolly, “I know you and he are chums. Well, as long as he does not sit beside me at dinner and entertain me with questions about the cows and the pigs and the old women at home, whom I am more than thankful to forget for a week or two – ”

“He shall not sit beside you at dinner; so much I can guarantee,” said Eric. And though Winifred thanked him laughingly, as if all that had been said was a joke, she did not entirely disagree with Celia’s first observation when they found themselves alone in their own room.

“Winifred,” said Celia, “I think Mr Eric Balderson was really rather angry at your tone about Lennox. I heard it in his voice, though he has that dry way of speaking that makes it difficult to know whether he is in fun or earnest.”

She was standing in front of the fire – a brightly glowing one – in the large room, which, with a dressing-room out of it, the two girls shared together. And as she spoke she turned round slowly, and looked at her sister half timidly.

“Well, and what if he were?” said Winifred. “After all, Lennox is our cousin, not his. He does not need to take up the cudgels in the poor dear’s defence. It would be very impertinent.”

“He would not mean it that way,” said Celia, “and though you are so much cleverer and wiser than I, you know, Winifred, onlookers sometimes see the most. Don’t you think, considering how things are with Lennox, it would be better always to speak very nicely of him? After all, his caring for you is no crime – you need not despise him for it.”

“Oh, bother!” said Winifred, throwing herself back into a comfortable chintz-covered arm-chair, “perhaps it would be better. 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.”

For a moment or two there was silence.

Then said Winifred, raising herself, “I must write to mamma.”

A shadow of disappointment flitted across Celia’s face, but there was no trace of it in her voice.

“To mamma?” she said. “Oh, then, I will write to Louise.”

“Of course,” said Winifred, majestically. “It would never do for me not to write first to mamma. Indeed, I don’t see that there is any hurry for your writing at all.”

She got out her paper and pens as she spoke. Then with the queer mixture of candid self-deprecation which existed in her, side by side with unusual self-assertion, she startled Celia by an unexpected speech.

“About what you were saying of Lennox just now, Celia,” she began, her fingers toying idly with the pen she had already dipped into the ink, “do you know, at the bottom of my heart, I don’t think I believe that he does care for me?”

Celia gasped.

“Winifred,” she exclaimed, “that is going too far. 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. But he has been tacitly told he does , and so he has come to believe it.”

Celia looked extremely perplexed. This was a new light indeed upon the subject, but a light which seemed, at first at any rate, only to increase the already existing perplexity.

“If – if you think that ,” she said at last, “I don’t wonder at what you always say about him. I mean about it all. Not that I don’t sympathise with you – I do, as you know. I couldn’t imagine being in love with Lennox;” and she smiled to herself, as it were, at the very thought. “But I always thought it must make a great difference if a girl knows a man is very devoted to her , you know.”

“Oh,” said Winifred, in her very off-hand way, “as far as that goes, I think I could stand Lennox better if I knew he did not care much for me,” which paradoxical speech gave her younger sister considerable food for reflection. And before Celia spoke again, Winifred dismissed the subject in her high-handed fashion, quite ignoring the fact that it was she herself, and she alone, who had started the conversation.

“You really must not chatter or let me chatter any more, Celia,” she said. “I must get my letter written.”

And for the best part of an hour there was no sound to be heard but the scratching of their pens – of Winifred’s pen alone after a while, for Celia’s correspondence was confined to her sister Louise, while Miss Maryon, once she had got her hand in, so to say, went on writing long after her rather short and not very graphic letter to her mother was finished. For she was a young woman of great energy and almost perfect physical condition. It was quite true, as she had declared to Mrs Balderson, that she was not “the very least tired.”

She looked up suddenly, when she had closed and addressed her fourth envelope.

“It must be getting rather late,” she said.

“Shall I ring for our letters to be taken down, do you think, Celia? They are not in time for to-night’s mail, but still, if posted now, they will get to Barleyfield for the afternoon delivery to-morrow.”