East of the Shadows. Mrs. Hubert Barclay
and thoughtfulness. "Most women are frivolous and empty-headed fools," he would assert hotly, "with no strength of mind, and no notion of playing the game;" and yet, by one of those inexplicable contradictions with which men of his type so frequently give the lie to their expressed opinions, he had married a woman in whom the attributes he professed to admire were conspicuously lacking.
Graceful, charming, and extraordinarily attractive, but with no thought beyond the pleasures of the moment, Mrs. Harford fluttered through life like a butterfly.
Mr. Harford's diplomatic appointments had necessitated their living abroad, and for a surprising number of years his wife had been one of the acknowledged beauties of Europe. No one could have been prouder of her than was her husband, who was always her foremost and most devoted admirer. For him, her beauty and her charm never waned, and to the day of his death, which occurred some three years before my story opens, he had regarded her as a most precious possession, to be gazed at, caressed and guarded, if hardly to be depended on. For her part she returned him all the affection of which she was capable.
At the age of fourteen Philippa had been sent to school in England, and when she returned to her parents, who were then living in Berlin, the tender intimacy which had existed between father and daughter had lost nothing by absence, and their mutual devotion increased day by day.
It was soon after that a certain episode happened which, slight as it was, must be recorded, as it was not without effect on Philippa's development.
A man, attracted by the freshness and originality of the young girl, and possibly piqued by the fact that she gave him no encouragement, declared his affection and set himself deliberately to gain hers in return.
This was not to be done in a day, and presently his fickle fancy found a new attraction and he wearied of the game. His marriage with another woman came as a surprise to the community, who had been watching the affair with the usual interest evinced in such matters, and much indignation was expressed at his behaviour. There had been no engagement—it is doubtful if Philippa's heart had really been touched—but his protestations of devotion had been fervent and she had believed him, and her trust in her fellow-creatures suffered a shock.
It was unfortunate that Mr. Harford, with all his love for his child, had been unable to guard her from the experience, which could not fail to be hurtful to one of her over-sensitive nature, but he had been absent on a special mission at the time. Philippa's attitude towards the world in general, and towards men in particular, was changed; it became one of amused toleration. Men were interesting, certainly, and pleasant companions, but were not to be taken seriously or to be believed in.
Since then several eligible suitors had presented themselves, but they had never succeeded in convincing Philippa of their sincerity, and Mrs. Harford, whose idea of a good mother was one who successfully married off her daughter in her first, or at least her second, season, was doomed to disappointment.
Since her father's death Philippa had been with her mother, living in Paris, or Dresden, or on the Riviera, as the elder lady's wayward mind directed. Mrs. Harford, who had mourned her husband with all sincerity for longer than her friends anticipated, had recently married again. Philippa had just bade good-bye to the bridal pair, and seen them start off on their journey to St. Petersburg, where her stepfather, who was, as her father had been, in the Diplomatic Service, was attached to the Embassy as First Secretary.
She had no anxiety with regard to her mother's choice, nor fortunately did she feel any resentment that her beloved father should have been so easily replaced in her mother's affections. She realised clearly that Mrs. Harford, or, as we should call her now, Lady Lawson, having all her life depended absolutely on a man's care, was lost and unhappy without it, and she could only feel grateful that her choice had fallen on a man entirely able to give her all she wanted, and, so far as the future could be foretold, to make her life happy.
At all events her mother would continue in the same surroundings that she had enjoyed for many years, and in a position which she would undoubtedly fill to her own and every one else's satisfaction.
To be honest, Philippa, although fond of her mother, had found the last year or two very trying. For some time after her father's death their mutual grief and loss had drawn the two near together, but as Mrs. Harford's powers of enjoyment and her love of excitement reasserted themselves, Philippa had discovered that she was quite uninterested in her mother's pleasures, and that they had very little in common.
A constant round of gaiety such as the older woman revelled in was quite unsatisfying to her daughter. In consequence the girl was really lonely. She had not yet found an outlet for her desire to be of some use in the world, or to fill the void left by the loss of her father's constant companionship.
But just at this moment she was enjoying a certain sense of freedom which the shifting of the responsibility of her mother on to stronger shoulders had given her. She had, owing to the circumstances I have related, seen very little of her native country, although she had travelled widely on the Continent and in more distant lands, and she anticipated with keen enjoyment the visit she was about to pay to a friend who lived in the east of England.
This friend had been a school-fellow—that is to say, she had been one of the older girls when Philippa, a shy child of fourteen, had arrived, unhappy and awkward, among a crowd of new faces in an unknown land. Marion Wells, as she then was, was one of those people in whom the motherly instinct is strong, even in youth. She had taken Philippa under her wing, and being by no means daunted by an apparent want of response which she rightly attributed to its proper cause, a strong friendship had grown up between them, which had continued, in spite of meetings few and far between, until the present day.
Marion had married, very soon after leaving school, a man who, while invalided home from South Africa, had excited her first to pity and then to love. She mothered her big soldier regardless of his stalwart size and now perfect physique much in the same way in which she had mothered Philippa in her childhood, and her loving heart was still further satisfied by the possession of a son, now eight years old.
Bill Heathcote had retired from the army, and was living on a property to which he had succeeded on the death of his grandmother some three years ago.
Lady Lawson's last words returned to Philippa's memory: "Good-bye, my darling child. I do hope you will have a good time!"
She smiled at the recollection. A good time! It was an expression which had been very frequently on her mother's lips, as it is on the lips of so many people now-a-days. It may mean so many things. To Lady Lawson it meant a succession of social gaieties. Well, she thought with thankfulness, these were hardly to be expected at Bessacre.
Marion had expressly stated that Philippa must not look forward to anything of the kind. Their only excitements at this season of the year were a few garden parties which could hardly be called amusing, but that she might have plenty of golf if she cared for the game. Also, if time hung too heavily, they might indulge in the frantic dissipation of motoring over to Renwick and listening to the band on the pier.
Renwick, which had been a quiet fishing village a few years ago, was now metamorphosed with surprising rapidity, by the enterprise of its newly formed Parish Council, into a fashionable watering-place, with pier, concert-hall, esplanade and palatial hotels all complete, for the pleasure and comfort of the summer visitors, and also incidentally for the personal profit of the members of the aforesaid Council: a state of things much regretted by the residents in the neighbourhood, whose peace was disturbed during the holiday season by char-à-bancs and picnic parties. So much Marion Heathcote had explained in her last letter.
Philippa sat enthralled by the beauty of the country through which she passed. The wide-spreading cornfields, the cosy flint farm-houses, with their red roofs, the byres and orchards, the glitter of the placid Broads lying calm and serene under the summer sun, reeds and rushes reflected as in a mirror on the water, which was so still that hardly a ripple disturbed its even surface.
It was so utterly unlike anything she had ever seen that it possessed for her an intense fascination. Later, as she was approaching the end of her journey, her first view of the low heather-crowned hills made her heart