East of the Shadows.

by Mrs. Hubert Barclay.

CHAPTER I

"PHILIPPA"

"Her air, her manners, all who saw admired, Courteous though coy, and gentle, though retired: The joy of youth and health her eyes displayed, And ease of heart her every look conveyed."--CRABBE.

The porter slammed the door with all the unnecessary vehemence usual to his cla.s.s and touched his hat, a shrill whistle sounded, the great engine gave several vehement not to say petulant snorts, and the long train glided slowly out of the terminus. Gaining speed with every second, it whirled along through the maze of buildings which form the ramparts of London--on past rows of dingy backyards where stunted bushes show no brighter colour than that of the family washing which they support every week--on through the suburbs where the backyards give place to gardens trim or otherwise, and beds of gay flowers supplant the variegated garments--on until at last it reached the open country, spreading fields and shady woodlands, where it seemed to settle to a steady pace that threw the miles behind it, as it rushed forward with mighty throb and roar.

Philippa Harford breathed a sigh of relief at finding herself alone in her compartment, and arranging her belongings round her with the method of an experienced traveller, she settled herself in a corner seat and took up her book. She did not read for long, however, for in a few moments her eyes wandered to the window and there fixed themselves on the swiftly pa.s.sing landscape. She let her hands fall into her lap and sat thinking.

Some of her friends (or perhaps acquaintance would be the truer word) had been known to describe Philippa Harford as an "odd girl," and if this indefinite adjective meant that she was somewhat different from the majority of young women of her generation, there was truth in the description. For while freedom of action and of speech are notably characteristic of the young of the present day, there was about her a reserve, one might almost say a dignity, beyond her years. Where the modern girl will cheerfully collect friends haphazard by the roadside, Philippa allowed very few to pa.s.s the line which divides the stream of acquaintanceship from the deep waters of friendship.

There are, and always will be, some people who display to the world a formidable aspect, as it were a stone wall with a bristling row of broken bottles on the top, or an ugly notice board with injunctions, such as "Strictly Private," or "Keep off the Gra.s.s," but Philippa was not one of these. You might wander in her company along paths of pleasant conversation, through a garden where bloomed bright flowers of intelligence and humour, and it was only afterwards that you realised what in the enjoyment of the moment you had failed to notice, namely, that inside the garden a high hedge, which had appeared merely a pleasing background for the flowers, had completely hidden the part you most particularly wished to see, and that the paths had brought you out at the exact spot where you entered.

It was just because this hedge of gentle reticence denied to a curious mob admission to the inner sanctuary of her thoughts, that they designated her as "odd." They found it impossible to know just what she meant and felt and thought. In their own parlance "they got no further." But it must be added that no one attempted to deny the existence of the inner sanctuary.

In spite of this rather tantalising trait in her character she was popular--every one liked her, for her natural kindness of heart, combined with great charm of manner and more than ordinary good looks, made her gladly welcome wherever she went.

She was an excellent person to confide in, for she accepted the confidences of other women with sympathetic and frequently helpful interest; but when it came to returning those confidences--well, that was quite a different matter.

In her life Philippa had possessed few intimate friends, and the chief of them had been her father. From him she had inherited, with her dark hair and straight eyebrows, a certain direct outlook on life. It was not an att.i.tude of superiority or even of conscious criticism, but more an instinct for the people and things which were, as she expressed it, "worth while," a keen desire for the very best, and a preference for doing without should that best be un.o.btainable.

Mr. Harford understood as did no one else the depth of pity and the enormous capacity for affection in the heart of his child, and had from her earliest youth striven to inculcate self-reliance and thoughtfulness. "Most women are frivolous and empty-headed fools," he would a.s.sert 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 b.u.t.terfly.

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 att.i.tude 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 antic.i.p.ated, 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 Emba.s.sy 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 rea.s.serted 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 circ.u.mstances 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 antic.i.p.ated 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-a-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 pa.s.sed. 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 thrill.

A freshness in the air, and the curious one-sided appearance of the wind-swept trees, made her aware of the nearness of the sea--then presently she saw it--just a line of deeper blue against the azure of the sky, with the square tower of Renwick Church girdled with cl.u.s.tering red roofs clearly visible in the middle distance.

In a few moments the train stopped, and she alighted at the station to find a carriage drawn by a fine pair of horses awaiting her.

The long drive in the cool of the waning sunlight was to her pure delight. The road led first through beautiful beechwoods, out into the open country where low banks, bright with wild flowers--scabious, willow-herb and yellow ragwort--divided the corn-fields, now golden and ready for harvest; up on to a wide heath where the bell heather flooded the landscape with glowing purple light--through pine-woods dim and fragrant--and so on until the carriage turned through a gateway, past a low lodge of mellow ancient brickwork, and entered a well-kept carriage drive.

A few minutes more and Philippa was being a.s.sisted out by her host, and warmly welcomed by Marion, to the accompaniment of the cheerful if noisy greetings of two West Highland terriers who squirmed and yapped in exuberant hospitality.

"At last," said Marion, embracing her fondly. "I expect you are very tired."

"Oh no," replied Philippa quickly, "I thoroughly enjoyed the journey--every moment of it."

"Come in and have some tea," said Major Heathcote.

"Isn't it too late for tea?"

"Never too late for tea with your s.e.x, is it?" he returned, laughing.

"I thought ladies always wanted tea!"