Part 1 (2/2)

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 companions.h.i.+p.

But just at this moment she was enjoying a certain sense of freedom which the s.h.i.+fting 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 fis.h.i.+ng village a few years ago, was now metamorphosed with surprising rapidity, by the enterprise of its newly formed Parish Council, into a fas.h.i.+onable 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!”

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