[1]A real Revivalist hymn.
[1]A real Revivalist hymn.
The rough winds and the spiteful rains have wellnigh stripped all their red-and-yellow clothing off the trees: upon the oaks alone some leaves still hang persistent, though withered and crackly. The apples and pears are all gathered and stored for the winter; even the dark-blue Orleans plums, that require the crisping frost to ripen them, are eaten and gone.
The sale at Glan-yr-Afon is over; it is enrolled among that countless array of unrecallable events, great and little, that is past. The new tenant, an ordinary Welsh farmer, with an overfull quiver of sprouting Welshmen and Welshwomen, has entered into possession. No one has taken the trouble to "redd up" the garden for the winter; flowers do not help to pay the rent—they give back nothing but their beauty and perfume; and so, over Esther's trim flower-beds, sheep-dogs gallop, and children, boisterous with health and spirits, run races. The rustic seat under the old cherry-tree—the seat that Jack fashioned in the summer evenings—has been broken up for firewood; and in Jack's chair in the dining-room, the father of the family reposes his plethoric bulk of an evening, when he does not happen to be getting drunk at the "Punch Bowl," and snores euphoniously.
And Bob, pursued by blessings, prayers, lamentations, and strong wishes for his safe back-coming, is gone—gone away in a smoky steamer, over the mist-mantled grey sea. Not a few of the tears that fell for him came from Esther's eyes—not love-tears, shed privily, secretly, dashed away with hasty care at the sound of any approaching footsteps, but poured out openly, publicly, in the presence of his mother and sisters—mingled with theirs, indeed, as of no different quality. Not more openly, not more publicly, had she wept for old Luath, when, on the day before the sale, the old dog, who had ailed and moped ever since his master's (to him) unaccountable disappearance, crawled weakly to her feet, and, looking up dimly wistful into her face for the last time, died licking her tender hand. On the day before his departure, Brandon came to say "Good-bye" to her.
"I have told mothernothing," he says, with some embarrassment, in allusion to their late engagement—"nothing, except that I was sure that I could not make you happy. I have given her no reason, Esther—give her none either! She will not ask you point-blank, and it is always easy to evade indirect questions; there are some things that it is of no use being confidential about."
"I see," she answers, with a faint smile. "I understand, neatly as you have gilded the pill, you are afraid that she would turn me out-of-doors if she knew what a treacherous, black-hearted wretch I have been; that I should have to take refuge even sooner than I must otherwise do in the workhouse, to which I always look forward as my final destination."
Then, bidding God bless her, he wrings her hand, strongly, and so takes his last farewell of her, nor ever sees her fair face and great gentle stag eyes again.
And now he is gone—gone with a difficult smile on his face, and very little money in his pocket. He never has much, but he has less than usual now; having spent his few last sovereigns on the erecting a plain white cross at the head of Jack's low grave, that, when this generation has passed, his place of sleeping may not be quite undistinguished from that of his neighbour dust. He has gone, with his heart's strongest longing balked, his prime hope death-smitten; but yet not despairing—not cursing his day, nor arraigning High God, saying, "Why do I, undeserving, thus suffer?" He carries away with him no heavy seething load of revenge, no man-slaying ardour of hatred against the woman that has wronged him, and the man for whose sake she did it. Life is full, interesting, complex—not all on one string, whatever morbid women and moody rhymers may say; not all sexual love—all of it, that is, that is not devoted to drinking, as Anacreon, Catullus, and Moore have dulcetly told us. And therefore, though poor, disappointed, and heart-wrung, Brandon is not all unhappy. He has been greatly sinned against, and has forgiven, thus exercising the function that raises us nearest to a level with the Godhead.
And meanwhile Esther, left behind in wintry Wales, takes his emptied place attristePlas Berwyn. Despite all her resolves, despite her high talk that a morsel of Mrs. Brandon's bread would choke her—that it would be better to starve than to be under any obligation to the family of the man she has betrayed—she is now eating that suffocating bread, now lying under those annihilating obligations.
Want makes us swallow our dignity—makes us do many mean things. Onemustlive; one must keep in that breath that perhaps is only spent in sighs: and Mr. James Greenwood has made us all out of love with the workhouse. So she sits down three times a day at Mrs. Brandon's table, the unwillingest guest that ever sat at any board, and eats the bread of charity, and the roast mutton and apple-tart of charity, when the conclusion of the long Puritan grace gives her permission to do so.
There is plenty of time for thinking at Plas Berwyn, for in that still household talk is not rife. When people never leave their own little one earth-nook, rarely see any one beyond their immediate family circle, and rarelier still read any reviews, papers, books, that treat of any subject but one, they have not much to talk about. There are few minds original enough, copious enough, to suffice to themselves—to be able to do without supplies derived from external objects. Our thoughts are generally our own, merely by right of immediate possession; mostly they are the thoughts of others, more or less digested, more or less amalgamated with thought-matter of our own.
They are not unkind to her, these chill faded women. Not loving her—for, as Bessy appositely quoted, "Can two walk together except they be agreed?"—and Esther and they are most surely in nothing agreed; mistrusting her, though not knowing, of having dealt falsely by their brother; sincerely, though bigotedly, looking upon her society as unprofitable—nay, almost contaminating; as being one of the unregenerate many—one standing in the cold, outside their little clique of elect, safe souls: despite all this, they are yet willing to give her food and shelter, to give them her for an indefinite number of years, to make her a part of their own dry sapless lives.
But she is not willing—oh, most unwilling! Let me not be mistaken, however: it is not with the dryness and saplessness of the offered life that she quarrels. Life must henceforth be to her, everywhere, dry and sapless; the duller it is, the less it contrasts with her own thoughts. It must be lived, somewhere: it can be lived pleasurably nowhere. Then, why not unpleasurably, greyly, negatively, at Plas Berwyn? Why not, supposing that she had been able to pay for her own cups of tea and slices of mutton, for her own iron bedstead and deal washhand-stand?
But, supposing that she was not able; supposing that she was so destitute as to be glad, even while weeping over his poor rough body, that her old dog had died because she was too poor to be able to keep him; supposing that this life entailed upon her the bitter pain of being daily, hourly grateful to people for whose society she had a strong repugnance, and upon whom, in the person of one of their nearest and dearest, she had inflicted a mortal injury? It is hard to live with people whose every idea runs counter to your own—whose whole tone of thought and conversation is diametrically opposed to what you have been used to all your life—and yet not be able to contradict, to argue with, or differ from them, because you are eating of their bread and drinking of their cup. The mere fact of feeling that you are too deeply indebted to people to be able, without flagrant ingratitude, to quarrel, makes you desire ardently to fall out with them.
"How much better to be a professed beggar at once!" thinks Esther, with a sort of grim humour. "How much better to whine and shuffle along the streets at people's elbows, swearing that you have a husband dying of consumption, and six children all under three years of age starving at home!"
It is only the very basest and the very noblest natures that can accept great favours and not be crushed by them. Esther's is neither. To her it is only the thought that her state of dependence is temporary that makes it supportable. She has lost no time in appealing to Mrs. Brandon for her aid in the search for work—work, that vague word, that conveys to her no distinct idea, that stands to her in the place of something to be done by her, in return for which she may be able to obtain food and drink, without saying "Thank you" to any one for them.
On the afternoon of the day of Bob's departure Esther has been sitting for an hour or more, in listless sadness, on the fender-stool before the fire, her eyes staring vacantly at the battered Michaelmas daisies and discoloured chrysanthemums in the wintry, darkening garden outside. Mrs. Brandon's steel knitting-pins click gently, as she knits round and round, round and round, in the monotonous eternity of a long-ribbed knickerbocker stocking. The fire-gleams flicker dully red on the sombre, large-patterned flock-paper, which makes the room look twice as small and twice as dark as it need otherwise do. Esther is roused from her reverie by the entrance of the servant with the moderator lamp.
"Mrs. Brandon!" she says, addressing her hostess.
"Yes, my dear!" The "my dear" is a concession to Bob's memory.
"Bob told me," says the young girl, with some diffidence, "that you were good enough to say that you would help me in looking for—for—something to do!"
The old lady looks scrutinizingly at her over the tops of her spectacles. "My dear son expressed such great, suchsurprisinganxiety, considering that your connection with him is at an end, about your future, that Ididpromise."
"And you will?" asks the other, timidly.
"Ialways keepmypromises, Esther, I hope" (with a slight expressive accent on theIandmy).
"When will you begin?—soon?—at once? to-morrow?" cries the girl, eagerly.
Mrs. Brandon hesitates: "I must first know for what sort of employment you wish—for what sort you are best suited?"
"I am suited for nothing," she answers, despondently; "but that must not deter me. If nobody did any work but what they were fitted for, three quarters of the world would be idle."
"Would you be inclined to take a situation as governess, if one could be found for you in a respectable pious family?"
She shakes her head. "I don't know enough, and I have no accomplishments. I can read a few pages of 'Racine' or 'Télémaque' without applyingveryoften to the dictionary; modern French, with its colloquialisms and slang, baffles me; and I can play a few 'Etudes' and 'Morceaux de Salon' in a slipshod, boarding-school fashion; but these extensive requirements would hardly be enough."
Mrs. Brandon pauses in consideration. "There are so few occupations open toladies," she remarks, with an emphasis on the word. "Most professions are closed up by our sex, and alltradesby our birth and breeding."
"When one is a pauper, one must endeavour to forget that one ever was a lady," answers Esther, rather grimly; "my gentility would not stand in the way of my being a shoeblack, if women ever were shoeblacks, and if they paid one tolerably for it."
"Would you like to trydressmaking?" inquires her companion, rather doubtfully.
Esther gives an involuntary gasp. It is not a pleasant sensation when the consciousness that one is about to descend from the station that one has been born and has grown up in is first brought stingingly home to one. Happiness, they say, is to be found equally in all ranks, but no one ever yet started the idea that it was sweet to go down. Quick as lightning there flashed before her mind the recollection of a slighting remark made by Miss Blessington,à proposof two very second-rate young ladies, who had come to call at Felton one day during her visit there, that "they looked like little milliners!" Was she going to be a "little milliner?"
"I'm afraid I don't sew well enough," she answers, gently, wondering meanwhile that the idea has never before struck her what a singularly inefficient, incapable member of society she is. "I cannot cut out: I can make a bonnet, and I can mend stockings in a boggling, amateur kind of way, and that is all!"
Recollecting whose stockings it was that she had been used to mend in the boggling way she speaks of, a knife passes through her quivering heart.
"The same objection would apply to your attempting a lady's-maid's place, I suppose?"
"Yes, of course" (bending down her long white neck in a despondent attitude); "but" (with regathered animation in eye and tone)—"but that objection would not apply to any other branch of domestic service—a housemaid, for instance; it cannot require much native genius, or a very long apprenticeship, to know how to empty baths, and make beds, and clean grates: I ought to be able to learn how in a week."
Mrs. Brandon's eyes travel involuntarily to the small, idle, white hands that lie on Esther's lap—the blue-veined, patrician hands that she is so calmly destining to spend their existence in trundling mops and scouring floors.
"My dear child," she says, with compelled compassion in her voice, "you talk very lightly of these things; but you can have no conception, till you make the experiment, of what the trial would be of being thrown on terms of equality among a class of persons so immensely your inferiors in education and refinement."
"I believe it is a well-authenticated fact," answers Esther, firmly, "that in some town in one of the midland counties a baronet's wife is, or was, earning her living by going out charing. What right have I to be more squeamish than she?"
"It is unchristian," pursues Mrs. Brandon—unconvinced by Esther's anecdote, which indeed she treats as apocryphal—"to call anyone common or unclean, and God forbid that I should ever do so! But imagine a lady, born and bred like yourself, exposed to the coarse witticisms of the footman and the intimate friendship of the cook!"
Esther's little face seems to catch some of the deep fire-glow—her breast heaves up and down in angry, quick pants.
"Mrs. Brandon, do you suppose that they would be soimpertinent——?" she begins, fiercely; then breaks off, ashamed. "I forgot; it would be no impertinence then! Well!" (with a long low sigh) "I am tough: I have borne worse things! This is but a little thing, after all; I can bear this!"
"I think, Esther, that if, as I fear, you are leaning on your own strength, and not on anUnseen Arm, you are overrating your powers of endurance."
"Perhaps; I can but try."
"Impossible!" answers Mrs. Brandon, with cool, common sense. "Who would hire you? Ridiculous!—childish! No, Esther; we must try and find something more eligible for you, if you are still foolishly bent on declining thehappy, and respectable, and (I humbly hope I may say)pioushome that I am so willing—that we are all so willing—to offer you."
"Oh yes! yes! yes!" cries the child, passionately. "Iambent on it! It is less degrading even to be exposed, as you say, to the witticisms of the footman and the friendship of the cook, than to live upon people on whom you have no claim beyond that of having been already most ungrateful to them—than to impose on their generosity, to sponge upon them!"
"As you will, Esther," answers Mrs. Brandon, loving her too little, and respecting her independence of spirit too much, to reason further with her.
There is a pause—a pause broken presently by Esther, who speaks diffidently: "Mrs. Brandon, don't you think that if I could get into one of those large shops in London, or one of our great towns, I could try on cloaks, and measure yards of ribbon, without requiring any great amount of knowledge of any kind, theoretical or practical?"
Mrs. Brandon looks doubtful. "It is not so easy as you may imagine, my dear, to obtain admission into one of those shops: a friend of mine made great efforts to get a situation for aprotégéeof hers at Marshal & Snelgrove's, or Lewis & Allenby's, and after waiting a long time, was obliged to give it up as hopeless."
"Perhaps she was not tall?" suggests Esther, rather timidly.
"I really never inquired."
"They like them tall!" says the girl, involuntarily drawing up her slightélancéfigure; "and I'm tall, am I not?"
"I should imagine that that qualification alone would hardly suffice," answers the old lady, drily; "and indeed," she continues, pursing up her mouth rather primly, "even if it would, I should hardly think a situation in a shop, or other place of public resort, desirable for a girl so young, and of so—so—sopeculiaran appearance as you."
"Peculiar!" repeats Esther, rather resentfully, raising her great eyes in unfeigned, displeased surprise to her companion's face. "Am I so veryodd-looking, Mrs. Brandon? I don't think I can be, for no one ever told me so before!"
"I did not sayodd-looking, my dear," returns Mrs. Brandon, sharply; "please don't put words into my mouth."
"If people came to buy cloaks, they would surely be thinking of howtheywere looking, not howIlooked," says Esther, not yet quite recovered from her annoyed astonishment; "myappearance, beyond the mere fact of my being tall, could not be of much consequence one way or another."
Mrs. Brandon takes off and lays down her spectacles the better to point the rebuke she is about to administer.
"Esther," she says, severely, "since you insist on my explaining myself more clearly, I must tell you that I think a girl should be steadier in conduct, and more decidedly imbued with religious principles than I have any reason for supposing you to be, before she is exposed to the temptations to which a young and handsome woman is liable in one of those sinks of iniquity, our great towns."
Esther flings up her head with an angry gesture. "I really don't see what temptations a person even as unsteady and irreligious as I am," she says, contemptuously, "could be exposed to in a haberdasher's shop. Temptation, in a woman's mouth, always implies something aboutmen;and in a place specially devoted to woman's dress, one would be less likely to see them than in any other spot on the face of the earth."
"If you are so much better informed on the subject than a person oftrebleyour years and experience," says Mrs. Brandon, resuming her spectacles, and beginning to knit faster than ever, "I have, of course, no more to say."
An apposite retort rises prompt and saucy to Esther's lips, clamouring for egress through those sweet red gates; but the recollection of Mrs. Brandon's weak tea and legs of mutton, and the obligations thereto hanging, drives it back again. She leans her elbow on her knee, and elevates her straight dark brows.
"The question is," she says, gravely, "can you suggest anything better? When one has no money, and none of the acquirements that command money, one must take what one can get, and be thankful."
But Mrs. Brandon is silent, counting her stitches, buried in calculations as to whether her stocking-leg has attained the length and breadth suited to the dimensions of one of her son's large limbs.
The wind shakes the shutter as if, in its lonely coldness outside, it coveted the fire and lamp-light. The old grey cat sits on the fender-stool beside Esther, yawning prodigiously every now and then; her round fore-paws gathered trimly under her, and the sleepy benignity of her face half-contradicting the fierce stiffness of her whiskers, and the tigerish upward curve of her lips.
"What is done in haste is always ill-done, my dear!" says Mrs. Brandon, presently, having satisfactorily calculated that five more rows will conduct her to Bob's large heel—giving utterance to her little trite saw with a certain air of complacency. Original remarks come forth doubtfully, questioningly, feeling their way: it is only a well aired platitude that can strut and swagger forwards in the certainty of a good reception. "We will think over the subject seriously and prayerfully: we will take it with us to the Throne of Grace, and make it the subject ofspecialintercession of worship this evening."
"Oh no, no! please not!—pleasenot!" cries Esther, the lilies in her fair cheek turning quickly to deepest, angriest carnations. "I should not like it: I could not come to prayers if you did. Why cannot we talk it overnow, this instant? There's no time like the present."
"I see no hurry, Esther," answers Mrs. Brandon, coldly.
"But there is a hurry!—everyhurry!" exclaims the girl, passionately, throwing herself on the floor beside Mrs. Brandon, too much in earnest to be chilled by the frosty cold of her manner; her whole soul thrown, in bright entreaty, into the great clear pupils of her superb, up-looking eyes. "I don't think I ever knew what the words meant till now. I don't believe I ever could have been in a real hurry in my life before! Put yourself in my position, Mrs. Brandon," she says, laying her little eager hand on her companion's rusty-black-coburg knee; "imagine how you would like to be wholly dependent, not only for luxuries and comforts—one might well do without them—but for bare bread and water, on people that are neither kith nor kin to you, and that have taken you in out of Christian charity, and because they think it right—not in the least because they love you!"
"If I were exposed to such a trial, Esther," replied Mrs. Brandon, deliberately rubbing her spectacles gently with her pocket-handkerchief, "I hope that I should bear it meekly; that I should kiss the rod, knowing that it was an Allwise Hand that brandished it, and that I was so chastened in order to lower the pride of a too carnal heart."
"Then God forbid that my carnal heart may ever be so lowered!" cries the other, springing impetuously to her feet, and drawing up her head haughtily. "Why," she continues, beginning to walk up and down the little room with agitated steps and fingers hotly interlaced—"why did God implant such an instinct as self-respect in us, if supinely submitting to what destroys all self-respect is a passport to heaven? Who would bow beneath any rod if they could get from under it? It is a metaphor that always reminds me of a naughty child, or a broken-spirited cur."
Mrs. Brandon deposits her knitting on the table; rises slowly—old people's joints, like wooden dolls, decline to bend on short notice (it is a pity, is it not, that our machinery is not calculated to remain in a state of efficiency, even through our paltry seventy years?)—dismounts from the footstool, on which her feet have been perched, walks to the door, there stands, and, shaking her stiff, grey curls, speaks with trembling severity:
"Esther, until you can discuss this subject with less irreverent violence, I must beg to decline any further conversation upon it."
"Wanted, by a young person, aged 17, a situation as companion to an invalid or elderly lady. Salary not so much an object as a comfortable home in a pious family. Address, A. B., Post Office, Naullan, N.W."
This is the modest form in which Miss Craven's desire for work comes before the public. She had begged earnestly for the expunging of the "pious family."
"It is not true, Mrs. Brandon," she says, with vexed tears in her eyes; "it is nothing to me whether they are pious or not—the salary is far the greatest object."
"If it is, my dear, it ought not to be," answers promptly Mrs. Brandon, who, having paid for the insertion of the advertisement, thinks that she has a right to word it as she wishes.
And now it has gone forth through the length and breadth of the civilized world, from the Arctic to the Antarctic Poles—has found its way into clubs and cafés, hotels and private houses, numerous as the sea-sand grains, in the overgrown advertisement sheet of theTimes. To not one in ten thousand of that journal's millions of readers is it more interesting than any other announcement in the long columns of—
"Wanted, a cook."
"Wanted, a cook."
"Wanted, a good plain cook."
"Wanted, a footman."
"Wanted, a footman."
A companionship, then, is what has been decided upon as the vocation to which Esther is best suited: it requires neither French nor German, neither astronomy nor the use of the globes: it demands only a patience out-Jobing Job, a meekness out-Mosesing Moses, a capacity for eating dirt greater than that of anyparvenustruggling into society, health and spirits more aggressively strong than a schoolboy's, and a pliability greater than an osier's. These qualities being supposed to be more quickly acquirable than music, drawing, and languages, Esther has decided upon entering on the office that will call for the exercise of them all.
Besides the printed advertisement above quoted, Mrs. Brandon has been advertising largely in private, by means of many long-winded epistles; has been seeking far and wide among the circle of her acquaintance for some grey maid, wife, or widow, in the tending of whose haggard, peevish age Esther may waste her sweet, ripe youth, unassailed by wicked men, in safe, respectable misery. And meanwhile Esther waits—waits through the fog-shrouded, sun-forgotten November days, through the eternal black November nights,—waits, straying lonely along the steaming tree-caverned wood-paths—the solemn charnels of the dead summer nations of leaves and flowers.
Preachers are fond of drawing a parallel between us and those forest leaves; telling us that, as in the autumn they fall, rot, are dissolved, and mingle together, stamped down and shapeless, in brown confusion, and yet in the spring come forth again, fresh as ever; so shall we—who, in our autumn, die, rot, and are not—come forth again in our distant spring, in lordly beauty and gladness. So speaking, whether thinkingly or unthinkingly, they equivocate—they lie! It is not thesameleaves that reappear; otherslikethem burst from their sappy buds, and burgeon in the "green-haired woods;" butnotthey—notthey! They stir not, nor is there any movement among the sodden earth-mass that wasthem. If the parallel be complete, others like us—others as good, as fair, as we! but yetnot we—other than us, shall break forth in lusty youth, in their strong May-time;but weshall rot on!
"Oh touching, patient earth,That weepest in thy glee;Whom God created very good,And very mournful we!"
how much longer can you bear the weight of all your dead children, that lie so heavy on your mother breast!
One morning, on joining the Brandon family before prayers, Esther finds Mrs. Brandon reading aloud a letter; but on Esther's entrance she desists. Hearing her voice stop, the young girl comes forward eagerly.
"Is it about me?" she asks, panting, forgetting her morning salutations.
"Yes, Esther," replies Mrs. Brandon, laconically, continuing to read, but this time to herself.
Esther walks to the window, drums on the rain-beaten pane, returns to the table; takes up the bread-knife, and begins to chip bits of crust off the loaf; sits down, gets up again; then, unable to contain herself any longer, cries out, hastily, "Will it do?—will it do?"
"If you will give me time, my dear, to finish this letter in peace, I shall have a better chance of being able to tell you," answers the old lady, drily.
Esther sits down again, snubbed; and then the door opens, and the three middle-aged, quakerish maid-servants make their sober entry, each with bible and hymnal in her hand; and the long exposition, the eight-versed hymn, and extempore prayer set in. To Esther's ears, all the words of exposition, hymn, and prayer seem to be, "Will it do?—will it do?"
"I have received a letter," begins Mrs. Brandon, slowly addressing Esther, when the "exercise" is ended, "from a valued Christian friend of mine, who has lately met with a lady and gentleman considerably advanced in life, who are on the look-out for a——"
"Companion?" interrupted Esther, breathlessly.
"For a young person who may supply the place of their failing sight, by reading to them, writing letters for them—may arrange the old lady's work, and make herself a generally useful, agreeable, and ladylike companion."
"That does not sound hard, does it?" says Esther, with a nearer approach to hopefulness in her face than has been seen there since her brother's death. "Neither reading, writing, nor being ladylike are very difficult accomplishments, are they? Oh, Mrs. Brandon, I hope they'll take me, don't you? What is their name?"
"Blessington!"
"Blessington!" repeats Essie, her lips parting in some dismay. "I wonder are they—can they be—any relation to Miss Blessington, Sir Thomas Gerard's ward?"
"I really cannot tell you, my dear. You have given us so very little information as to your visit to the Gerards, that I was not even aware that Blessington was the name of Sir Thomas's ward."
Esther passes by the small reproach in silence.
"Perhaps they may be her father and mother," suggests Bessy.
"She has no father nor mother."
"Her grandfather and grandmother?"
"She has no grandfather nor grandmother."
"Her great-uncle and great-aunt?"
"Possibly."
"Very likely the same family," remarks Mrs. Brandon, intending to say something rather agreeable than otherwise. "Blessington is not a common name."
"I recollect," Esther says, contracting her forehead in the effort to recall all that was said upon a subject which at the time interested her too little to have made much impression—"I recollect her mentioning one day having some old relations in ——shire, whom it was a great bore to have to go and visit."
"These people live in ——shire."
"Then it must be the same," cries Essie, a look of acute chagrin passing over her features. "Oh, Mrs. Brandon, what a disappointment! I'm afraid we shall have to look out again! I'm afraid this won't do!"
"And why not, pray?" inquires the other, staring in displeased astonishment from under her thick white eyebrows at her youngprotégée.
Silence.
"Did you," inquires the old lady, looking rather suspiciously at her, "have any quarrel or disagreement with the Gerards during your visit which could render you unwilling to meet any one in any way connected with their family?"
"Oh no! no!—certainly not!" answers Essie, vehemently, blushing scarlet as any June poppy.
The elder woman's sharp ancient eyes pass like a gimlet through and through the younger one. They fasten with the pitiless fixedness of one who has passed the age for blushing, and has consequently no compassion for that infirmity upon the betraying red of her sweet bright cheeks.
"Are youquitesure, Esther?"
"Quite," replies Esther, with steady slowness. "I don't like them, as a family. In fact, Ihatethem all; but I have had no quarrel with them."
"I wonder that you cared to spend a whole month and more with people that you hated," says Miss Bessy, with a sprightly smile.
"So do I, Bessy," answers Esther, bitterly, turning away her head; "but that's neither here nor there."
"Am I to understand, then," says Mrs. Brandon, with an inquisitorial elevation of nose and spectacles, "that an apparentlygroundlessand, as far as I can judge,ungratefulfeeling of dislike towards people who, from the little you have told us of them, seem always to have treated you with indulgent kindness, is your sole motive for wishing to decline this very desirable situation?"
"When one has seen better days," answered the poor proud child, sighing, "one wishes to keep as far as possible from any of those who have known one formerly."
"Tut!" answers Mrs. Brandon, chidingly; "it can be a matter of very little consequence to people in the position of the Gerards whether you have a few pounds a year more or less. They can afford to be kind to you, whatever your circumstances may be!"
"I don'twantthem to be kind to me," cries the girl, fiercely, stung into swift anger. "I know nothing I should dislike more. The only wish I have, with regard to the whole family, is that I should never hear their names mentioned again!"
Mrs. Brandon seats herself at the table, and begins to pour out the tea out of a huge, deep-bodied family tea-pot. Miss Bessy divides the small curling rashers of fat bacon into four exactly equal portions. At Plas Berwyn it is generally a case of "Cynegan's Feast; or enough and no waste." That is to say, at the first onslaughteverythingvanishes; and if any one, with fruitless gluttony, craves a second help, he must console himself with the idea that many medical men agree in the opinion that, in order to preserve ourselves in perfect health, we should always rise from table feeling hungry.
"If," says Mrs. Brandon, resuming the conversation, and setting her words to the music of a peculiarly crisp piece of toast, which she eats with a rather infuriating sound of crunching—"If, Esther, you can be deterred by so trivial an obstacle from availing yourself of an opportunity, humanly speaking, so promising—a door, I may say, opened for you in aspecialandremarkablemanner, in answer to prayer—you cannot expect me to exert myself a second time on your behalf."
Esther stoops her head in silence over her fat bacon, which she has not the heart to eat.
"Esther is more difficult to please than we expected, is not she, mamma," says Bessy, smiling slightly—"considering that she told us yesterday she envied the man who brought the coals, because he earned his own living?"
"And so I did," answers Esther, gloomily.
"I'm afraid, Esther," says Mrs. Brandon, taking another piece of toast, and shaking her head prophetically, "that you will have to pass through aburning fiery furnacebefore the stubborn pride of the unregenerate heart is brought low!"
"Perhaps so," answers the young girl, calmly; but to her own heart she says that she defies any earthly furnace to burn hotlier than the one she has already passed through.
In another week letters have passed, references been asked and given; Esther proved unimpeachably respectable; the amount of her salary agreed upon; the day of her journey into ——shire fixed, and all preliminaries settled previous to her undertaking the agreeable, free, and independent office of companion to John Blessington, Esq., of Blessington Court, in the county of ——, aged eighty-nine, and to Harriet Blessington his wife, aged eighty.
Miss Craven has but one good-bye to say, and on the afternoon of the day before her departure she stands in the churchyard ready to say it. It is only to a grave. Huge cloud headlands, great leaden capes and promontories, mournful and heavy with unwept snow-tears, heap and pile themselves up behind the dim mirk hills; it snowed last night, but the snow has nearly all melted; only enough remains to make the old dirty church-tower, from which great patches of whitewash have fallen, look dirtier than ever. Upon the broken headstones, all awry and askew with age and negligence, the lichens flourish dankly. Wet nettles and faded bents overlie, overcross each cold hillock. No one cares to weed in the garden of the dead. Each hillock is the last chapter in some forgotten history.
Oh! why must all stories that are told truly end amongst the worms? Why must death be always at theendof life? Oh! if we could but get it over, like some cruelest operation, in the middle or early part of our little day; so that we might have some half a life, some quarter or twentieth part even of one, to live merrily in, to breathe and laugh and be gay in, without, in our cheerfullest moments, experiencing the chilly fear of feeling the black-cloaked skeleton-headed phantom lay his bony finger on us, saying, "Thou art mine!"
Upon the grey flat tombstone near the church-gate the great grave yew has been dropping her scarlet berries, one by one—berries that shine, like little lights, amid the night of her changeless foliage: there they lie like a forgotten rosary, that some holy man, having prayed amongst the unpraying dead, going, has left behind him. Evening is closing in fast; the air is raw and chill; no one that can avoid it is outside a house's sheltering walls: there is no one to disturb Esther's meeting with her brother. What cares she for the cold, or for the six feet of miry earth that part them. She flings herself upon the sodden mound; stretching herself all along upon it, as the prophet stretched himself on the young dead child—hand to hand, heart to heart, mouth to mouth. She lays her lips upon the soaked soil, and whispers moaningly, "Good-bye, Jack—good-bye! Oh! why won't they let you answer me? Why have they buried you so deep that you cannot hear me?"
Lord God! of what stuff can Mary and Martha have been made, to have overlived the awful ecstasy of seeing their dead come forth in warm supple life out of the four-days-holding grave! Their hearts must have been made of tougher fibre than ours, or, in the agony of that terrible rapture, soul and body must have sundered suddenly, and they fallen down into the arms of that tomb whence their brother had just issued in his ghastly cerements, in dazed, astonished gladness!
As Esther lifts her streaming eyes, they fall upon the inscription on the cross at the grave-head:
"HERE LIETH THE BODYOFJOHN CRAVEN,WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFESEPT. 24TH, 186-. AGED 21 YEARS.""Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner!"
She casts her arms about the base of the holy symbol; she presses her panting breast against the stone. "Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner!" she cries too; and surely the live sinner needs mercy as much as the dead one? And as she so lies prostrate, with her forehead leant against the white damp marble, a hideous doubt flashes into her heart—sits there, like a little bitter serpent, gnawing it: "What if there benoLord! What if I am praying and weeping to and calling upon nothing!
"............... Let me not go mad!Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should beNo God, no heaven, no earth in the void world—The wide, grave, lampless, deep, unpeopled world."
They tell us—don't they?—in our childhood, that wickedness makes people unhappy: I think the converse is full as often true—that unhappiness makes people wicked.
A little icy wind creeps coldly amongst the strong nettles and weak sapless bents, blowing them all one way—creeps, too, through Esther's mourning weeds, and makes a numbness about her shivering breast. For a moment an angry defiant despair masters her.
"What if this great distant being, who, without any foregone sin of ours, has laid upon us the punishment oflife—in the hollow of whose hand we lie!—what if He be laughing at us all this while! What if the sight of our writhings, of our unlovely tears and grotesque agonies, be to Him, in His high prosperity, a pleasant diversion!"
So thinking, against her will she involuntarily clasps closer the cross in her straining arms—involuntarily moans a second time, "Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner!" No—no! it cannot be so! it is one of those things that are too horrible to be believed! There is no justicehere!none! but it existssomewhere!How else could we ever have conceived the idea of it? It is, then, in some other world: we shall find it on the other side of these drenched, nettly charnels—on the other side of corruption's disgrace and abasement:
".............If this be all,And other life await us not, for oneI say, 'tis a poor cheat, a stupid bungle,A wretched failure! I, for one, protestAgainst it—and I hurl it back with scorn!"
Despair never stays long with any one, unless it is specially invited. Struck with sudden horror at the daring blasphemy of her thoughts, wretched Esther, with clasped hands and a flood of penitential tears, sinks upon her trembling knees. God grant that the thoughts that come to us, we know not whence, that stab us in the dark, that we welcome not, neither cherish at all—yea, rather, drive them away rudely, hatingly—may not be counted to us for crimes in His great Day of Reckoning, any more than the sudden-smiting disease that makes the strong man flag in his noonday is counted to him! With a sudden revulsion of feeling, with a paroxysm of devotion, powerfuller than the former one of doubt had been, the desolate child, prone on the grave of her one treasure, lifts quivering lips and emptied arms to Him who
"............For mankynde's sakeJusted in Jerusalem, a joye to us all!"—
to Him of whom
"..........They who loved Him said 'He wept,'None ever said 'He smiled!'"
Perhaps the good Lord, who was sorry for Mary and Martha, may be sorry for her too. Perhaps, after all, her boy is well rid of troublesome breath—well rid of his cares, and his farm, and his useless loving sister! Perhaps she is falsely fond to desire him again—to be so famished for one sight more of his grey laughing eyes, of his smooth stripling face! Beyond her sight, he may be in the fruition of extremest good—in the sweet shade, beneath pleasant-fruited trees, beside great cool rivers. Would she tear him back again thence to toil in the broiling sun, because, so toiling, he would be in her sight?
"If love were kind, why should we doubtThat holy death were kinder?"
The night falls fast; she can scarcely any longer distinguish the clear, new black letters on the cross. Lights are twinkling from the village alehouse; the forge shines like a great dull-red jewel in the surrounding grey; laughing voices of boisterous men are wafted unseemly amongst the graves. Shuddering at the sound, she raises herself up quickly; then, stooping again, kisses yet once more the wet red earth that is now closest neighbour to her brother, and sobbing "Good-bye, my boy, good-bye!—God bless you, Jack!" gathers her dusky cloak about her slight shivering figure, and passes away through the darkness.
It has snowed all day; an immense white monotony is over all the land. The clouds that piled themselves in sulky threatening last night behind the Welsh hills, and many others like them, have to-day fulfilled their threats, and have been, through all the daylight hours, emptying their flaky load on the patient earth. It is as if a huge white bird had been shaking his pinions somewhere, high up in the air—shaking down millions of little down feathers. Rain always seems in earnest, snow in play—with such delicate leisureliness does it saunter down. The rushing train, that bears Esther to her new distant life, is topped like any twelfth-night cake; so are the wayside stations; so are the houses in the smoky towns; so are the men, sparsely walking about on the country roads; so are the engine drivers and stokers; so are the sheep in the fields.
Miss Craven has been sitting all day long in the narrowenceinteof a railway carriage, between the two close-shut, snow-blinded windows—sitting opposite a courteous warrior, who, travelling with all the luxuriousness which his sex think indispensable, is magnanimous enough to share his buffalo-robe and foot-warmer with her. Atête-à-têteof so many consecutive hours with a man would, under any other circumstances than a railway journey, have produced an intimacy that would last a life-time; but now, all the result of it is a couple of bows on the platform at Paddington—a look of interested curiosity after his late companion's retreating figure, as she hurries herself and her small properties into a filthy four-wheeler, on the part of the warrior, and total oblivion on the part of Esther. Since that time she has traversed London in her dilapidated shamblinggrowler, she has had awful misgiving that the "cabby," with the villany that all women ascribe to all "cabbies," is purposely taking her in a wrong direction—is bearing her away to some dark, policeless slum, there to be robbed and murdered. She has reflected, with cold shivers of terror, as to what would be the wisest course to pursue, supposing such to be the case. Should she look silently out of window till she caught sight of the friendly helmet and tight frock-coat of some delivering "Bobby," and then scream? Should she open the door and jump out on the snowy pavement?
While still undecided, her cab stops, and—all mean back-streets and sorry short-cuts being safely passed—deposits her and her box, bag, and umbrella, beneath the Shoreditch lamps and among the Shoreditch porters. Then an hour's waiting in the crowded general waiting-room, where all the chairs are occupied by fat men, none of whom make a movement towards vacating theirs in favour of the slender weary woman, who, with crape veil thrown back from her sad child-face, is holding her little numb hands over the fire, trying vainly to bring them back to life. Then more train; then a three-miles' drive in a fly, up hill and down dale, along snowy country lanes.
And now her journey is ended: the fly has stopped at the door of a great, vague, snow-whitened bulk, that she takes upon trust as Blessington Court. The driver, having rung the bell, now stands banging his arms, each one against the opposite shoulder, in the rough endeavour to restore circulation. The servants are too comfortable—the butler over his mulled port in the housekeeper's room, and the footmen over their mulled beer in the servants' hall—to be in any hurry to attend to the summons. At length, after five minutes' waiting, a sound of withdrawing bolts and turning keys makes itself heard; the heavy door swings inward, and a footman appears in the aperture, blinking disgustedly at the snow, which drives full into his eyes. Esther immediately descends, and enters with the abrupt haste characteristic of extreme nervousness.
"Will you pay him, please?" she says, with a certain flurry of manner, to the servant. "I—I don't know how much I ought to give him—how many miles it is."
While the man complies with her request, she stands in the huge stone-floored hall, lit only by firelight, shivering with cold and fear. She peers up at the ceiling—of which, by-the-bye, there is none, as the hall runs up to the top of the house; at the walls, from which great life-size figures, dimly naked, glimmer uncomfortably cold. Anxious doubts assail her as to whether there are any rules of which she is ignorant for a "companion's" behaviour and deportment; she is not aware that she has ever seen one of those curious animals hitherto in the course of her life. Ought they to make a reverence on entering a room? Ought they to say "Sir" or "Ma'am" to whoever they address? Ought they to laugh at everybody's jokes?—not sit down unless given leave so to do, and not speak unless spoken to? So wondering, she tremblingly follows the footman as he opens the door of an adjoining apartment, and, announcing "Miss Craven," retires joyfully to the society of his compeers and his beer.
The apartment in which Esther is thus left stranded is as large as the hall that she has just quitted. It seems to her oppressively immense—quite a long walk from the door to the inhabited portion. A very big roasting fire burns on the hearth: and right in front of it, in the very glare of its hot red eyes, sits a very old man, doubled together in an armchair—one hand in his breast, and his aged head sunk upon it, apparently fast asleep. An old lady, wrapped up in a shawl, reposes in another easy-chair, with her eyes likewise closed. A lamp with a green shade burns faintly on a centre table, and beyond lamp and table sits a third person, hidden by the lamp-shade from Esther's eyes.
"Are they all asleep?" thinks the poor girl, advancing with gentle, hesitating steps. "They seem to be. How can I wake them?—or would it be disrespectful?"
While she so speculates, the third person rises and comes forward. "How do you do, Miss Craven? You must have had a cold journey, I'm afraid?" says a bland, unforgotten voice.
It is Miss Blessington. In an instant, Esther seems to have jumped back over the past intervening months—to be just entering on her Felton visit. There is the same voice greeting her—the same tones of polite inquiry; the same words almost, except thatthenit was, "How do you do, Miss Craven? You must have had a hot journey, I'm afraid?" and now it is, "How do you do, Miss Craven? You must have had a cold journey, I'm afraid?"—the same undulating walk; the same effect of lilac evening clouds. Involuntarily she turns her head and glances towards the window, half-expecting to see St. John's legs disappearing through it. Instead, an old woman's voice sounds quavering: "Are you Miss Craven, my dear? Come here!"
Esther does not hear. "Itwasrather cold," she says, answering Constance, in half bewilderment between past and present, her eyes dazed with the light after her long, dark journey.
"Mrs. Blessington is speaking to you," says Constance, in mild reminder.
Esther turns round quickly. "Oh! I beg your pardon—I did not hear—I hope I was not rude," she cries, forgetting the "Ma'am" she had half-purposed employing.
"Who's there?—who's talking?" asks the old man, lifting up his head, and speaking in a voice tremulous indeed, but with a remnant of the power and fire that "youth gone out had left in ashes."
No one answers.
"Who's there, Mrs. Blessington?" he repeats, with querulous anger.
"Miss Craven, uncle—the young lady that we expected to-day—don't you know?" replies Constance, stooping gracefully over him, and putting her lips as close as possible to his withered ear.
"H'm! Tell her to come and speak to me. I want to see what she is like," he rejoins, much as if she had not been in the room.
"Go to him, my dear," says the old lady.
"And speak as loud as you can; he is as deaf as a post," adds Constance, not in the least lowering her voice at the announcement, in perfect confidence of the truth of her assertion, shrugging her handsome shoulders as she speaks.
Esther goes trembling, and lays her small cold hand in the long bony wreck of muscle, vein, and flesh that is stretched out to her. He gazes at her face with the eager intentness of the purblind.
"What is your name?" he asks abruptly.
"Esther," she answers, faltering.
"Cannot hear a word you say—you mumble so," he says, pettishly.
"Go round to the other side; the other ear is the best," suggests Constance, calmly.
Esther obeys. "Esther," she repeats, speaking unnecessarily loud this time—at the top of her voice, in fact, out of sheer nervousness.
"You need not scream at me, my dear, as if I were stone deaf.EstherorHester, did you say?"
"Esther."
"And who gave it you, pray?"
"My father and mother, I suppose."
"H'm! Well, you may tell them, with my compliments," he says, with a senile laugh, "that I think they might have found a prettier name to give a young lady, and that the old squire says so. The old squire says so," he repeats, chuckling a little to himself.
"I cannot tell them," answers Esther, half-crying. "They are dead."
"Oh, indeed!"
There his interest in the new comer seems to cease. His white head sinks back on his breast again, and he relapses into slumber.
Esther has had neither luncheon, dinner, nor tea—a fact which none of her companions appear to contemplate as possible.Onebun has been her sole support throughout the long bitter day—onlyone, because all such buns must be bought with Mrs. Brandon's money.
"I daresay you would like to go to bed, dear, you look tired," says Mrs. Blessington, scanning rather curiously Esther's fagged, woebegone little face. "Travelling is so much more fatiguing than it used to be in former days, when one travelled in one's own carriage, whatever they may say. I remember," she continues, with an old woman's garrulity, "Mr. Blessington and I travelling from London to York by easy stages of twenty miles a day, in our own curricle, with outriders. One never sees a curricle nowadays."
"Iamrather tired," the girl answers, with a faint smile, "and cravingly hungry," she might have added, but does not.
"Ring the bell for James to light the candles."
Weak from inanition, and with limbs cramped by long remaining in one position, Esther follows Miss Blessington up low flights of uncarpeted stone stairs, through draughty twisting passages, along a broad bare gallery, down more passages, and then into a huge gloomy, mouldy room—frosty, yet cold, despite the fire burning briskly on the old-fashioned-hobbed grate; a vast dark four-poster, hung with ginger-coloured moreen; a couch that looks highly suitable for lying-in-state on; an old-fashioned screen, covered with caricatures of Fox, Burke, the Regent, and Queen Caroline; and on the walls a highly valuable and curious tapestry, which waves pleasantly in the bitter wind that enters freely beneath the ill-fitting old door, giving an air of galvanic motion and false life to the ill-looking Cupids, green with age, that play hide-and-seek amongst vases, broken pillars and wormy blue trees.
"You have plenty of room, you see," says Miss Blessington, with a curve of her suave lips, as she lights the candles on the dressing-table, which, instead of being pink petticoated, white-muslined deal, is bare sturdy oak, with millions of little useless drawers and pigeon-holes in it.
"Plenty," echoes Esther, rather aghast, surveying her premises with some dismay.
"You must not be frightened if you hear odd noises; it's only rats," says her companion, putting one small white-booted foot on the fender.
"I wish that—that stuff would not sway and shake about so," says the young girl, pointing nervously with one timid fore-finger to the tapestry. "Might not some one get behind it very easily and hide, as it does not seem to be fastened down?"
"Possibly," replies Miss Blessington, indifferently. "I never heard of such a thing having happened."
"Am I near any one else—tolerably near, I mean?" asks Esther, her heart sinking.
"Not very."
"Would no one hear me if I screamed?" she inquires, laying her hand unconsciously on the marble round of her companion's firm white arm, while her frightened eyes burn upon Constance's impassive face.
"We will hope that you will not make the experiment," she answers, with a cold smile, and so goes.
I think that people's value, or want of value, is seldom their own: it belongs rather to the circumstances that surround them—to attributes foreign to themselves—outside of them. Had Robinson Crusoe, while walking down Bond Street in flowing wig and lace ruffles, first met his man Friday, he might have tossed him sixpence to avoid his importunities; but would hardly have taken him into intimate friendship—would hardly even have admitted him as a man and a brother. Among the blind the one-eyed is king, and among a crowd of total strangers an acquaintance rises into a friend.
Lonely Esther is half-inclined to effect this metamorphosis in the case of Miss Blessington. The mere fact of having eaten, drank, and slept for a considerable period under the same roof with her—the bare fact of having lived with and disliked her during a whole month and more—was enough recommendation in a house not one of whose inmates had she ever beheld before. Almost as a friend has she greeted her this morning. With admiration most unfeigned, though made a little bitter by mental comparison with her own dimmed, grief-blighted beauty, has she regarded the stately woman, the splendid animal, sleek and white as a sacred Egyptian cow; the brilliancy of whose pale, bright hair, and the perfect smoothness of her great satin throat, are heightened by the sober richness of her creaseless black velvet dress. Voluptuous, yet cold, the passions that her splendid physique provoke are chilled to death by the passionless stupor of her soul. I am not at all sure that impassioned ugliness—supposing the ugliness to be moderate, and the passion immoderate—has not more attraction for the generality of men than iced beauty.
Esther's warmth is thrown away; she might as well expect that the "Venus de Medici" would return the pressure of warm clinging fingers with her freezing, sculptured hand.
"I was so glad to find you here last night: it was so pleasant to see a face one knew," Miss Craven says, with the rash credulity of youth unexpectant of snubs.
Miss Blessington looks slightly surprised. "Tha—anks; it is very good of you to say so, I am sure," she answers, rather drawlingly, and with a small, cold smile that would repress demonstrations much more violent than any that Esther had meditated. It is difficultalwaysto remember that one is a "companion."
The Blessington dining-room is, like the other reception-rooms, huge and very nobly proportioned. Did we not know that our seventeenth and eighteenth century ancestors were not giants, we should be prone to imagine that it must have been a race of Anakims that required such great wide spaces to sup, and sip chocolate, and play at ombre in. The furniture is in its dotage; it has, figuratively speaking, like its owners, lost hair and teeth, and all unnecessary etceteras; it is reduced to the bare elements of existence. Three tall windows look out upon a flat lawn, and in the middle of this lawn, exactly opposite Esther's eyes, as she sits at breakfast, is an unique and chaste piece of statuary, entitled "The Rape of the Sabines." The space afforded by the stone pediment is necessarily limited, and consequently Roman and Sabines, gentlemen and lady, are all piled one a-top of another in such inextricable confusion as to demand a good quarter of an hour's close observation to determine which of the muscular writhing legs belong to the Roman ravisher and which to the injured Sabine husband. As the sculptor has given none of hisprotégéesany clothing, the snow has been kind enough to throw a modest white mantle over them all.
"Mr. and Mrs. Blessington do not come down to breakfast?" says Esther, interrogatively, as the two girls seat themselves at table.
"No; they breakfast in their own rooms."
"I suppose," says Esther, with some embarrassment, "that they will send for me if they want me for anything, won't they? Perhaps" (with diffidence)—"perhaps you will kindly tell me the sort of things they will want me to do?"
"My uncle will be down presently," answered Miss Blessington, "and he will then expect you to read to him until luncheon."
"To read what? The Bible?" inquired Esther, who has a vague idea that the Bible is the only form in which literature should employ the attention of the aged.
"The Bible? Oh, dear, no!" (with a little laugh). "The papers: theTimes,Saturday, andJustice of the Peace, are his favourites; he takes a great, aremarkableinterest, considering his age, in politics."
"I like reading aloud," says Esther, resolute to look on the bright side.
"Reading aloud to my uncle is very fatiguing," replies Constance, cheeringly: "one has to sustain one's voice at a pitch several octaves higher than the natural one. I attempted reading to him once or twice, but it affected my throat so much that I had to leave off," she ends, with a little lackadaisical cough.
"I daresay it won't affect mine," rejoins the other rather drily.
There is a pause. Talking is a vice to which Miss Blessington is nowise addicted—more especially objectless talking to a little person of the feminine gender who is not one ofnous autres.
"I hope," says Esther, presently, trusting to the obtuseness of her companion's perceptions not to discover the flagrant hypocrisy of the question—"I hope that Sir Thomas was quite well when you left Felton?"
"Quite—thanks."
"And Lady Gerard?"
"Yes—thanks."
"And—and" (bending down her head in the vain endeavour to screen the red blush that the frosty sun, flaming in through the window opposite, makes obtrusively evident)—"and Mr. Gerard?"
"He isverywell—thanks," replies Miss Blessington, with the conscious smile that had formerly exasperated Esther, and with an emphasis not common with her.
Miss Blessington does not usually employ emphasis: it ismezzoceto, as is enthusiasm of which it is the exponent.
Half an hour later Esther is sitting beside the old squire, as close as possible to his best ear, brandishing theTimes'giant squares in her unaccustomed hand. The old squire is a superb wreck. Spiteful Time is fond of removing the landmarks that youth sets upon our faces; is fond of changing great, clear, almond eyes into little damp jellies—sweet moist pursemouths into dry bags of wrinkles; but it is a task beyond evenhispower to destroy the shape of that grand old bent head—to deface the outlines of that thin-nostriled, patrician nose.
"What shall I read first?" asks the young girl, timidly, but enunciating each syllable with painstaking slowness and clearness.
"The State of the Funds," replies the old gentleman, promptly, thrusting his hand into his breast, and closing his eyes, in his favourite attitude.
Esther has not the most distant idea where the "State of the Funds" lives: she turns the huge sheets topsy-turvy—inside out, outside in—in the vain search for their habitat, making, meanwhile, the most unjustifiable aggressive rustling and crackling, which she presumptuously trusts to his deafness not to hear.
"Don't make such an infernal crackling, my dear!" he says presently, with some pettishness.
"I thought you could not hear," she unwisely answers, trembling.
"God bless my soul, child! The dead would have heard the noise you were making," he rejoins, snappishly.
Having at length mastered the fact that the "State of the Funds" comes under the head of "Money Market and City Intelligence," Esther gives the desired information. Then follows a leader:
"The position of American politics is at this moment peculiarly perplexing and anomalous; so perplexing that even those English observers who, like ourselves, have given a careful and constant attention to the course of the Transatlantic movement since the first appearance of Secession, can hardly pretend clearly to understand——"
"Pretend clearly towhat?For God's sake don't gabble so!"
"Can—hardly—pretend—clearly—to—understand—the—full—meaning—of—the—situation,—and—must—feel—that—it—would—be——"
"Is there no medium, may I ask, between gabbling and drawling?"
"And must feel that it would be rash to express a confident opinion thereupon."
Esther now proceeds for a considerable period unchecked—gradually and unconsciously relapsing into the brisk gallop so dear to youth when engaged upon a subject that does not interest it. Suddenly a deep slumberous breath, drawn close to her ear, makes her aware that her hearer has lapsed into sleep.
"I have read him to sleep," she says to herself, with a sort of triumphant feeling at her own prowess, taking furtive glances at the wrinkled profile, sunk, in perfect imbecility of slumber, on his breast.
Not feeling any particular personal interest in the effect of Secession upon American politics, she stops, and gazes vacantly out of window at the "Rape of the Sabines." But the cessation of the sweet monotony that lulled him, arouses the old man.
"Go on—go on!" he cries, fussily, lifting his head and opening his dim eyes. "What are you stopping for? Read that paragraph over again; you read it so fast that I could not quite follow the meaning of it."
She complies, and so, with dozing and waking, waking and dozing, on one side, reading and stopping, stopping and reading on the other, the little drama plays itself out till nearly luncheon-time.
"We are going to drive into Shelford this afternoon; do you feel inclined to come with us, Constance, my dear?" asks the old lady, as they quit the luncheon-table—Esther dutifully bringing up the rear, with air-cushion, footstool, andcouvre-pied.
"Not to-day, aunt, I think—thanks," answers Constance, with the utmost sweetness; the "Not to-day" seeming to imply that on some future morrow she will gladly avail herself of the invitation to join her elderly relatives in theirtristeairing; but Miss Blessington being in her generation a wise woman, that morrow never comes.
The old family-coach rolls round the frosty sweep to the door; two large horses, sleek and fat with over-many oats and over-little work, draw it.
"The tails of both hung down behind,Their shoes were on their feet."
"Give me your arm, Miss Craven; one is very apt to fall this frosty weather," says the old lady, appearing at the door, transformed, by the aid of numberless cloaks and shawls, and a huge velvet bonnet, date anno domini, into a large and perfectly shapeless bundle.
Supported on one side by Esther's slender arm, and on the other by the florid and plethoric butler, she is hoisted up the three steps into the body of the ancient machine, which is painted invisible green, and hung marvellous high in air. The same course is pursued with the old gentleman, who, muffled, comfortered, and scarved up to the tip of his venerable nose, follows. Lastly, the young prop steps in, and sits down humbly with her back to the horses—a process which usually ends in making her sick. The windows are shut tight up; a great hot skin of some wild beast is thrown over their knees; in that confined atmosphere it emits a strong furry odour, more powerful than agreeable; striving emulously with it—sometimes mastering it, sometimes mastered by it—is the fusty smell of the cloth lining. The old people do not seem to perceive either; old noses have less keen scent, old lungs require less air to feed on, than young ones.
"Trit-trot, trit-trot, trit-trot," goes the old vehicle along the beaten snow of the broad turnpike-road. As they are jogging a little brisklier than usual down averyslight decline, the old gentleman speaks—his strong, shaky old voice loudly audible above the "rumble—rumble—rumble," which, joined to the want of air, is fast making Esther faint and headachy:
"What the deuce does Ruggles mean going at such a pace down these steep hills? Does he think he is to knock my horses' legs all to pieces for his own amusement?"
"I'm sure I don't know, Mr. Blessington," answers the old lady, nervously laying hold of the side of the carriage; "it is not at all safe this slippery weather; I'm sure I hope the horses are roughed."
"Miss Craven, tell him to mind what he is about; tell him to go slower—muchslower," says the old gentleman, in some excitement.
Miss Craven, having with some difficulty lowered the front window, thrusts her head out of it, and, having taken the opportunity to open mouth and nose and eyes as wide as they will go, to inhale as large a quantity as possible of crisp fresh air, cries: "Ruggles! Ruggles! go slower!muchslower!"
Ruggles grins, but complies, and subsides into a solemn walk, which continues until they reach Shelford. There smug bareheaded shop-keepers, violet-nosed, scarlet-fingered, standing out in the cold street at the carriage-door, executing with pleased alacrity extensive commissions of half a yard of elastic for Miss Blessington—three ounces of red wool for Mrs. Blessington's knitting—half a dozen blue envelopes for Mr. Blessington. Then, "trit-trot, jig-jog," home again.
Dinner at six: a later hour would be fatal to his digestion, the old gentleman thinks, then, a nice long evening—long as one of thoseVeillées du Château, when Madame la Baronne read aloud some enthralling yet severely moral tale, and Cæsar and Caroline and Pulchérie all sat entranced, unheeding the flight of time, as ticked away by the château clocks. There is only one small lamp in the whole of the grand old room, and that, in deference to the old man's failing eyes, is hung with so large and deep a green shade, that it is impossible to see to do anything by its light. There is nothing for it but to gape, from seven till ten, at the great battle-pieces hung round the walls—to endeavour to make out, by the aid of the fitful firelight, the singularly clean dead bodies, free apparently from the slightest speck of dust, or stain of blood; at the red-nostriled chargers, snorting away their ebbing lives with all four legs in the air. At ten o'clock, James rung for, to light the candles: then Mrs. Blessington, her air-cushion, work-basket, and Shetland shawl, escorted to her room; two long chapters and several psalms read to her; then a frightened rush along dark passages and draughty galleries to the great distant bedroom—to the rats' multifarious noises; to the ingenious tunes played by the wind upon the rattling window-frames; to the ginger-curtained bed and many-folded screen; topossiblesleep, andcertainterrors—terrors none the less awful for being totally unreasonable.