Mrs. Molesworth - White Turrets

“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.

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