White Turrets. Molesworth Mrs.
are not at all cold, thank you. This part of the room is delightfully out of any draught.”
“And,” continued Eric, “fixed your eyes upon the flowers in front of you, and let your thoughts wander to – No! that I can’t guess. I wonder where they were wandering to.”
Chapter Three.
At the Dinner-Table
“Not very far,” said Celia, smiling, and colouring a little. “I was very much entertained by watching all the people round the table, and perhaps I was thinking mostly of poor old Len.”
Eric looked across in young Maryon’s direction.
“Why do you say ‘poor old Len’?” he inquired. “I think he’s quite happy. Mrs Fancourt seems to be drawing him out beautifully.”
Celia glanced at her companion doubtfully.
“Do you really think so?” she asked, “or are you saying it to – to draw me out?”
“I really think so, and I don’t need to draw you out,” he replied. “I know exactly what you mean about Lennox, and – you needn’t pity him. It will be all right.”
“Oh, I am afraid not,” said Celia. “I’m afraid it will never come right. I didn’t know you knew about it, but as you do – no,” and her voice dropped almost to a whisper, “Winifred will never care for him. I see it more and more, and now she is thinking all sorts of things – quite differently, you know.”
“Indeed,” said Eric, raising his eyebrows in inquiry, “do you mean – is there – some other more fortunate person in the field?”
“No, no, not that at all,” said Celia. “Winifred has much higher ideas than most girls. She wants to make a path for herself – to feel that she is doing something with her life – and she must be right. Why should girls be condemned to do and be nothing? A young man without a profession is always considered the greatest mistake. Why should women be forced into leading idle and useless lives?”
“They never should be,” said Eric, “I quite agree with you. But there are considerations: if a girl does marry, you will allow that she finds her work cut out for her – her vocation or profession, or whatever you like to call it. And I do not think any woman has a right to cast herself adrift from the chances of marrying, so to say; she should allow herself fair-play.”
Celia gave her head the tiniest of tosses. “Winifred does not want to marry, and she is old enough to judge,” she said. “I don’t deny – well, honestly, I should have been very happy if she had married Lennox, that is to say; if she could have cared for him. It would have pleased a good many people, and – did you ever hear the legend of White Turrets?” she went on, dropping her voice, and looking half-frightened at herself.
“No,” said Eric, with interest. “I’ve heard something about its being haunted, like nearly all very old houses, but I never heard of any legend.”
“Ah, well, there is one. It and the ghost are mixed up together,” said Celia, still in a slightly awe-struck tone. “It —she is supposed to be the spirit of an ancestress of ours, who was cruelly treated because she had no son. She had two or three daughters, and she died soon after the last was born, and she left a sort of a curse. No,” with a little shudder, “I don’t like to call it that. It was more like a – ”
“A prophecy,” suggested Eric.
“Yes,” said Celia, her face clearing, “it was more like that. It was to warn her descendants that the luck, so to say, should run in the female line, and that whenever a man was the owner of the place, the Maryons might – ”
“Look out for squalls,” Eric could not resist adding.
Celia glanced at him half indignantly.
“If you’re laughing at me,” she said, “I won’t tell it you.”
“I beg your pardon, I do really,” he said, penitently. “It was only that I did not like to see you looking so solemn about it.”
“I can’t help it,” said the girl, simply. “It always makes me a little frightened, though I know it’s silly. Winifred gets quite vexed if it is mentioned. She says it is contemptible nonsense. Louise believes it, but she is so good, it doesn’t frighten her. Still, for other reasons, we seldom allude to it. It has come so true, over and over again: I could tell you lots of things. Papa, you know, has had heaps of trouble. Poor papa, just think what a life of endurance his is! So you see if – if Winifred could have married Lennox (he is our second-cousin, you know), it would have done so well – keeping the old name, and she being the owner of the place.”
“I see,” said young Balderson.
“Or even if she could have been a more ordinary sort of girl, content to settle down at home,” Celia went on, “for – ” and here the frightened look came over her face again – “there’s more in the legend: the worst luck of all is to come if a woman of the family deserts her post. And once a rather flighty great-grand-aunt of ours did– she couldn’t live at home, because she thought it was a dull part of the country, and she came up to London, and travelled about to amuse herself, and all sorts of things happened.”
“Did burglars break in, or was the house burnt down, or – ?” began Eric, but Celia interrupted him.
“You are laughing at me again,” she said reproachfully. “No, it was worse than that. Her son turned out very badly, and was killed in a duel, and her daughter died, and they lost a lot of money, and in the end it came to our grandmother, you see, whose husband took the name Maryon. But the family has never been so well off since.”
“And in the face of all those warnings, your sister persists – no, what is it she wants to do or not to do?” said the young man, looking rather perplexed. “The ghost can’t bully her for not marrying a man she doesn’t care for, surely? I thought better of ghosts than that!”
“No, it’s not that. It is that she wants to leave home and make a career for herself. And I admire her for it. That’s why we were so pleased to come here: we want to find out about a lot of things.”
Eric looked really grave.
“Why is your sister not content to stay at home?” he inquired. “Even if she were a man, there are men whose vocation it is not to have a profession, whose work and duties are there, all ready for them. Is it not much the same with Miss Maryon, considering your father’s illness, and all there must be to look after?”
His hearer seemed surprised and almost startled. There are aspects of our daily life, ways of looking at our surroundings, with which we might long have been familiar – commonplace, matter-of-fact reflections, requiring no special genius of discrimination to call them forth – which, nevertheless when put into words by an outsider, strike us with extraordinary effect. Almost do they come upon us with the force of a revelation.
So was it just now with Celia Maryon. As she took in the full bearing of young Balderson’s observations, she felt more and more struck by them. She looked up in his face with a strange cloud in her eyes, and Eric himself felt surprised. He imagined that he had somehow or other hurt or offended her.
“I beg your pardon,” he began, “if – Of course I would not be so presumptuous as to suppose I could judge of the circumstances.”
Celia smiled. She would be true to her colours at any cost, and her colours meant her sister Winifred. The truth was that she was at a loss how to reply; she had never looked at things in this light before. She wanted to think it all over quietly by herself, but she was not going to allow this to any one else.
“No,” she said, “of course you can’t judge. You don’t know Winifred, or what there is in her. My other sister, Louise, is the home one. She is not nearly so clever as Winifred, but she does pretty well. The bailiff isn’t bad, though I’m afraid he’s going to leave, and old Mr Peckerton, the lawyer, comes over if he’s wanted. Things go on in a groovy, old-fashioned way, but, oh, no! Winifred could never