CHAPTER III.
Sothe days passed—the cold, wretched days. Esther was sewing diligently, making both sleeves for one arm, blundering on everything she undertook, until it exhausted her teacher’s patience. For some time she was less a help than a hindrance—yet she was sewing.
One evening she dropped her work and went out to meet her cousin John. She often met him when he came home. This time she was unusually anxious. He had been to mill.
“Well, you are back; we’ve missed you,” she said.
Mixed with her love for him was a big proportion of pity. He had such a hard, stupid kind of life and had never been appreciated.
“Hello, youngster!” he greeted her, with his stout, strident voice. “What’ll you give me for a letter—a two-pounder?”
“It depends on where it’s from.”
“Paris, France.”
“No? Really?”
Holding a package just above her head, he read: “Mademoiselle Esther Powel, Etats Unis d’Amerique. He’s sending back all your old letters. This looks as if it might hold a dozen or two.”
“They are not mine,” she cried, as, laughing, she leaped and snatched it from his hand.
“Glenn Andrews,” she repeated, breathlessly, holding the writing before her eyes. Without a word she stole away, to read it alone. He loved her, this cousin of hers, this practical, unimaginative man, but he had never understood her. Her ideas were not his ideas, nor her hopes his hopes, but he was proud of her in an uncomprehending manner and he smiled at her aspirations as at his boy baby’s ambition to drive themules. A thrill crept down to her heart. It was a book exquisitely bound, bearing Glenn Andrew’s name. She fondled its pages, ran her hand lovingly over their smooth surface. The book opened to a folded paper, on which were some notes jotted down for the violin, an accompaniment to a song that he had written.
Turning the leaves, she came to a card; a line on the back of it read: “You can learn this. Let me hear at New York address after April.” It was dropped by a poem, “My Little Love of Long Ago.”
This girl, gifted with all the subtlety of rare natures, understood. Her face quivered with tenderness as she gazed at it. The world was full of light—somebody in it took an interest in her. This had fallen like some faint, soft fragrance in her life. Between laughter and tears she read the poem:
“My little love of long ago,(How swiftly fly the tired years!)She told me solemnly and lowOf all her hopes and all her fears.She feared the dangers of the way,The striving and the work-a-dayThat waited far across the sea—The loneliness of missing me.She never doubted me—ah, no!My little love of long ago.“For she had faith in everything,(How swiftly fly the tired hours!)A heart that could not help but sing,And blossomed out amid the flowers.My loving was its best refrain,My leaving was its saddest rain.She sobbed it all upon my knee—The loneliness of missing me.I kissed and comforted her so—My little love of long ago.“My little love of long ago,(How swiftly fly the tired days!)Such little feet to stumble slowAlong the darkest of life’s ways,While time and distance and the sea,Or my poor, careless heart, maybe,Could not have told from spring to spring,Why we so long went wandering!Saddest of all is not to know!My little love of long ago.”
“My little love of long ago,(How swiftly fly the tired years!)She told me solemnly and lowOf all her hopes and all her fears.She feared the dangers of the way,The striving and the work-a-dayThat waited far across the sea—The loneliness of missing me.She never doubted me—ah, no!My little love of long ago.“For she had faith in everything,(How swiftly fly the tired hours!)A heart that could not help but sing,And blossomed out amid the flowers.My loving was its best refrain,My leaving was its saddest rain.She sobbed it all upon my knee—The loneliness of missing me.I kissed and comforted her so—My little love of long ago.“My little love of long ago,(How swiftly fly the tired days!)Such little feet to stumble slowAlong the darkest of life’s ways,While time and distance and the sea,Or my poor, careless heart, maybe,Could not have told from spring to spring,Why we so long went wandering!Saddest of all is not to know!My little love of long ago.”
“My little love of long ago,(How swiftly fly the tired years!)She told me solemnly and lowOf all her hopes and all her fears.She feared the dangers of the way,The striving and the work-a-dayThat waited far across the sea—The loneliness of missing me.She never doubted me—ah, no!My little love of long ago.
“My little love of long ago,
(How swiftly fly the tired years!)
She told me solemnly and low
Of all her hopes and all her fears.
She feared the dangers of the way,
The striving and the work-a-day
That waited far across the sea—
The loneliness of missing me.
She never doubted me—ah, no!
My little love of long ago.
“For she had faith in everything,(How swiftly fly the tired hours!)A heart that could not help but sing,And blossomed out amid the flowers.My loving was its best refrain,My leaving was its saddest rain.She sobbed it all upon my knee—The loneliness of missing me.I kissed and comforted her so—My little love of long ago.
“For she had faith in everything,
(How swiftly fly the tired hours!)
A heart that could not help but sing,
And blossomed out amid the flowers.
My loving was its best refrain,
My leaving was its saddest rain.
She sobbed it all upon my knee—
The loneliness of missing me.
I kissed and comforted her so—
My little love of long ago.
“My little love of long ago,(How swiftly fly the tired days!)Such little feet to stumble slowAlong the darkest of life’s ways,While time and distance and the sea,Or my poor, careless heart, maybe,Could not have told from spring to spring,Why we so long went wandering!Saddest of all is not to know!My little love of long ago.”
“My little love of long ago,
(How swiftly fly the tired days!)
Such little feet to stumble slow
Along the darkest of life’s ways,
While time and distance and the sea,
Or my poor, careless heart, maybe,
Could not have told from spring to spring,
Why we so long went wandering!
Saddest of all is not to know!
My little love of long ago.”
Esther was radiant with joy. She sped over the ground like a wild young deer, running tothe house for her long-forsaken violin. She carried it to the back of the orchard. She propped the music up in the low fork of an apple tree, and wrestled with the opening bars. It was written in a minor key and was the most difficult accompaniment she had ever seen. Over and over again she tried to bring out the plaintive harmony that was there. She had to give it up at last—it was beyond her reach—it challenged her. This caused her flickering ambition to flash up anew.
A new resolve glowed in her eyes. To be thwarted in a thing was touching upon an acutely sensitive nerve. She would not rest until she had beaten down every obstacle between her and her hope of attainment. She would free herself of these maddeningly narrow surroundings.
Glenn Andrews immediately answered her letter, found upon his arrival in New York. He said:
“You have lived among the flowers, had great grief, and now the flowers do not console you. And yet, if you only knew it, nature is a thousand times better at consolation than human beings. I long ago gave up looking for consolation from people—I can get it from flowers. Maybe it is because I don’t live among them. In lieu of flowers, I take work, and the grind I go through takes the edge off griefs, joys and ambitions. It reduces one to the dead level of passiveness, which is not ecstatic, but which does not hurt. So I might say to you: ‘If the flowers do not console you, try work’—but, doubtless, you have been working. I know that you are capable of it. Perhaps time has worn off the brunt of your sorrow and you are feeling the after pain of loneliness—which is even worse to bear, because less vivid and more constant.“You ought to do something some day with your art. If you only know it, you are not unfortunately situated as regards your future. Try and look at it that way. Lift up your head and throw your shoulders back. Go and look in thelooking-glass and make a face at yourself, and remember you are not an editor, that your nose is not on the grind-stone and that you have, after all, something to thank God for.”
“You have lived among the flowers, had great grief, and now the flowers do not console you. And yet, if you only knew it, nature is a thousand times better at consolation than human beings. I long ago gave up looking for consolation from people—I can get it from flowers. Maybe it is because I don’t live among them. In lieu of flowers, I take work, and the grind I go through takes the edge off griefs, joys and ambitions. It reduces one to the dead level of passiveness, which is not ecstatic, but which does not hurt. So I might say to you: ‘If the flowers do not console you, try work’—but, doubtless, you have been working. I know that you are capable of it. Perhaps time has worn off the brunt of your sorrow and you are feeling the after pain of loneliness—which is even worse to bear, because less vivid and more constant.
“You ought to do something some day with your art. If you only know it, you are not unfortunately situated as regards your future. Try and look at it that way. Lift up your head and throw your shoulders back. Go and look in thelooking-glass and make a face at yourself, and remember you are not an editor, that your nose is not on the grind-stone and that you have, after all, something to thank God for.”
Esther had been faithful to the impulse of that day. She slaved with a resolution painful to see. In that year she had changed, developed greatly. The kindly old professor regarded her with pride as he sat listening to her, after she had conquered the music Glenn Andrews had sent to her. There was a sweep of magnificence in it.
At the last of the year there came a change. The old professor was leaving for a broader field. He encouraged her to make an effort for the highest mark; her next step, in his opinion, should be New York. Of course, it would take self-sacrifice, he told her; “but what is sacrifice when one is at the center of the world?”
New York, which she had feared, and which had always seemed to her so great and so far. New York that now stood for all the hope inher life. After the professor had gone she began turning his advice over in her mind. She could go no further here. She might there. But the struggle to keep up the pace in New York while she was doing it, would probably throttle all the ambition and freshness she had as capital to begin with. She thought of people she loved who had gone. She could not turn out ill after all their care. She might accomplish something in spite of the difficulties. Lots of people had. Her impulse was to dare until, under the heat of its spell, she wrote a line to Glenn Andrews.
“What do you think of New York for me?”