CHAPTER XXV.
The rough winds and the spiteful rains have wellnigh stripped all theirred-and-yellow clothing off the trees: upon the oaks alone some leavesstill hang persistent, though withered and crackly. The apples andpears are all gathered and stored for the winter; even the dark-blueOrleans plums, that require the crisping frost to ripen them, are eatenand gone.
The sale at Glan-yr-Afon is over; it is enrolled among that countlessarray of unrecallable events, great and little, that is past. The newtenant, an ordinary Welsh farmer, with an overfull quiver of sproutingWelshmen and Welshwomen, has entered into possession. No one has takenthe trouble to "redd up" the garden for the winter; flowers do nothelp to pay the rent--they give back nothing but their beauty andperfume; and so, over Esther's trim flower-beds, sheep-dogs gallop, andchildren, boisterous with health and spirits, run races. The rusticseat under the old cherry-tree--the seat that Jack fashioned in thesummer evenings--has been broken up for firewood; and in Jack's chairin the dining-room, the father of the family reposes his plethoricbulk 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 wishesfor 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 forhim 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 andsisters--mingled with theirs, indeed, as of no different quality. Notmore openly, not more publicly, had she wept for old Luath, when, onthe day before the sale, the old dog, who had ailed and moped eversince his master's (to him) unaccountable disappearance, crawled weaklyto her feet, and, looking up dimly wistful into her face for the lasttime, died licking her tender hand. On the day before his departure,Brandon came to say "Good-bye" to her.
"I have told mother _nothing_," he says, with some embarrassment,in allusion to their late engagement--"nothing, except that I wassure 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 itis always easy to evade indirect questions; there are some things thatit is of no use being confidential about."
"I see," she answers, with a faint smile. "I understand, neatly asyou have gilded the pill, you are afraid that she would turn meout-of-doors if she knew what a treacherous, black-hearted wretch Ihave been; that I should have to take refuge even sooner than I mustotherwise do in the workhouse, to which I always look forward as myfinal destination."
Then, bidding God bless her, he wrings her hand, strongly, and so takeshis last farewell of her, nor ever sees her fair face and great gentlestag eyes again.
And now he is gone--gone with a difficult smile on his face, and verylittle money in his pocket. He never has much, but he has less thanusual now; having spent his few last sovereigns on the erecting a plainwhite cross at the head of Jack's low grave, that, when this generationhas passed, his place of sleeping may not be quite undistinguishedfrom that of his neighbour dust. He has gone, with his heart'sstrongest longing balked, his prime hope death-smitten; but yet notdespairing--not cursing his day, nor arraigning High God, saying, "Whydo I, undeserving, thus suffer?" He carries away with him no heavyseething load of revenge, no man-slaying ardour of hatred against thewoman that has wronged him, and the man for whose sake she did it. Lifeis full, interesting, complex--not all on one string, whatever morbidwomen and moody rhymers may say; not all sexual love--all of it, thatis, that is not devoted to drinking, as Anacreon, Catullus, and Moorehave dulcetly told us. And therefore, though poor, disappointed, andheart-wrung, Brandon is not all unhappy. He has been greatly sinnedagainst, and has forgiven, thus exercising the function that raises usnearest to a level with the Godhead.
And meanwhile Esther, left behind in wintry Wales, takes his emptiedplace at _triste_ Plas Berwyn. Despite all her resolves, despite herhigh talk that a morsel of Mrs. Brandon's bread would choke her--thatit would be better to starve than to be under any obligation to thefamily of the man she has betrayed--she is now eating that suffocatingbread, now lying under those annihilating obligations.
Want makes us swallow our dignity--makes us do many mean things. One_must_ live; one must keep in that breath that perhaps is only spentin sighs: and Mr. James Greenwood has made us all out of love with theworkhouse. 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 breadof charity, and the roast mutton and apple-tart of charity, when theconclusion of the long Puritan grace gives her permission to do so.
There is plenty of time for thinking at Plas Berwyn, for in that stillhousehold talk is not rife. When people never leave their own littleone earth-nook, rarely see any one beyond their immediate familycircle, and rarelier still read any reviews, papers, books, that treatof any subject but one, they have not much to talk about. There are fewminds original enough, copious enough, to suffice to themselves--to beable to do without supplies derived from external objects. Our thoughtsare generally our own, merely by right of immediate possession; mostlythey are the thoughts of others, more or less digested, more or lessamalgamated with thought-matter of our own.
They are not unkind to her, these chill faded women. Not lovingher--for, as Bessy appositely quoted, "Can two walk together exceptthey be agreed?"--and Esther and they are most surely in nothingagreed; mistrusting her, though not knowing, of having dealt falselyby their brother; sincerely, though bigotedly, looking upon hersociety as unprofitable--nay, almost contaminating; as being one ofthe unregenerate many--one standing in the cold, outside their littleclique of elect, safe souls: despite all this, they are yet willing togive her food and shelter, to give them her for an indefinite number ofyears, 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 lifethat she quarrels. Life must henceforth be to her, everywhere, dry andsapless; 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 andslices of mutton, for her own iron bedstead and deal washhand-stand?
But, supposing that she was not able; supposing that she was sodestitute 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 keephim; supposing that this life entailed upon her the bitter pain ofbeing daily, hourly grateful to people for whose society she had astrong repugnance, and upon whom, in the person of one of their nearestand dearest, she had inflicted a mortal injury? It is hard to livewith people whose every idea runs counter to your own--whose wholetone of thought and conversation is diametrically opposed to what youhave been used to all your life--and yet not be able to contradict, toargue with, or differ from them, because you are eating of their breadand drinking of their cup. The mere fact of feeling that you are toodeeply indebted to people to be able, without flagrant ingratitude, toquarrel, makes you desire ardently to fall out with them.
"How much better to be a professed beggar at once!" thinks Esther, witha sort of grim humour. "How much better to whine and shuffle along thestreets at people's elbows, swearing that you have a husband dying ofconsumption, and six children all under three years of age starving athome!"
It is only the very basest and the very noblest natures that can acceptgreat favours and not be crushed by them. Esther's is neither. Toher it is only the thought that her state of dependence is temporarythat 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 placeof something to be done by her, in return for which she may be able toobtain food and drink, without saying "Thank you" to any one f
or them.
On the afternoon of the day of Bob's departure Esther has been sittingfor an hour or more, in listless sadness, on the fender-stool beforethe fire, her eyes staring vacantly at the battered Michaelmas daisiesand discoloured chrysanthemums in the wintry, darkening garden outside.Mrs. Brandon's steel knitting-pins click gently, as she knits round andround, round and round, in the monotonous eternity of a long-ribbedknickerbocker stocking. The fire-gleams flicker dully red on thesombre, large-patterned flock-paper, which makes the room look twice assmall and twice as dark as it need otherwise do. Esther is roused fromher 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, "thatyou were good enough to say that you would help me in lookingfor--for--something to do!"
The old lady looks scrutinizingly at her over the tops of herspectacles. "My dear son expressed such great, such _surprising_anxiety, considering that your connection with him is at an end, aboutyour future, that I _did_ promise."
"And you will?" asks the other, timidly.
"_I_ always keep _my_ promises, Esther, I hope" (with a slightexpressive accent on the _I_ and _my_).
"When will you begin?--soon?--at once? to-morrow?" cries the girl,eagerly.
Mrs. Brandon hesitates: "I must first know for what sort of employmentyou wish--for what sort you are best suited?"
"I am suited for nothing," she answers, despondently; "but that mustnot 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 couldbe found for you in a respectable pious family?"
She shakes her head. "I don't know enough, and I have noaccomplishments. I can read a few pages of 'Racine' or 'Telemaque'without applying _very_ often to the dictionary; modern French, withits colloquialisms and slang, baffles me; and I can play a few 'Etudes'and 'Morceaux de Salon' in a slipshod, boarding-school fashion; butthese extensive requirements would hardly be enough."
Mrs. Brandon pauses in consideration. "There are so few occupationsopen to _ladies_," she remarks, with an emphasis on the word. "Mostprofessions are closed up by our sex, and all _trades_ by our birth andbreeding."
"When one is a pauper, one must endeavour to forget that one ever was alady," answers Esther, rather grimly; "my gentility would not stand inthe way of my being a shoeblack, if women ever were shoeblacks, and ifthey paid one tolerably for it."
"Would you like to try _dressmaking?_" inquires her companion, ratherdoubtfully.
Esther gives an involuntary gasp. It is not a pleasant sensation whenthe consciousness that one is about to descend from the station thatone has been born and has grown up in is first brought stingingly hometo 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 ofa slighting remark made by Miss Blessington, _a propos_ of two verysecond-rate young ladies, who had come to call at Felton one day duringher visit there, that "they looked like little milliners!" Was shegoing to be a "_little milliner?_"
"I'm afraid I don't sew well enough," she answers, gently, wonderingmeanwhile that the idea has never before struck her what a singularlyinefficient, incapable member of society she is. "I cannot cut out: Ican make a bonnet, and I can mend stockings in a boggling, amateur kindof way, and that is all!"
Recollecting whose stockings it was that she had been used to mend inthe boggling way she speaks of, a knife passes through her quiveringheart.
"The same objection would apply to your attempting a lady's-maid'splace, I suppose?"
"Yes, of course" (bending down her long white neck in a despondentattitude); "but" (with regathered animation in eye and tone)--"but thatobjection would not apply to any other branch of domestic service--ahousemaid, for instance; it cannot require much native genius, or avery 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, whitehands that lie on Esther's lap--the blue-veined, patrician hands thatshe is so calmly destining to spend their existence in trundling mopsand scouring floors.
"My dear child," she says, with compelled compassion in her voice, "youtalk very lightly of these things; but you can have no conception, tillyou make the experiment, of what the trial would be of being thrown onterms of equality among a class of persons so immensely your inferiorsin 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 tobe more squeamish than she?"
"It is unchristian," pursues Mrs. Brandon--unconvinced by Esther'sanecdote, which indeed she treats as apocryphal--"to call anyone commonor unclean, and God forbid that I should ever do so! But imagine alady, born and bred like yourself, exposed to the coarse witticisms ofthe footman and the intimate friendship of the cook!"
Esther's little face seems to catch some of the deep fire-glow--herbreast heaves up and down in angry, quick pants.
"Mrs. Brandon, do you suppose that they would be so _impertinent_----?"she begins, fiercely; then breaks off, ashamed. "I forgot; it would beno impertinence then! Well!" (with a long low sigh) "I am tough: I haveborne worse things! This is but a little thing, after all; I can bearthis!"
"I think, Esther, that if, as I fear, you are leaning on your ownstrength, and not on an _Unseen Arm_, you are overrating your powers ofendurance."
"Perhaps; I can but try."
"Impossible!" answers Mrs. Brandon, with cool, common sense. "Who wouldhire you? Ridiculous!--childish! No, Esther; we must try and findsomething more eligible for you, if you are still foolishly bent ondeclining the _happy_, and respectable, and (I humbly hope I may say)_pious_ home that I am so willing--that we are all so willing--to offeryou."
"Oh yes! yes! yes!" cries the child, passionately. "I _am_ bent on it!It is less degrading even to be exposed, as you say, to the witticismsof the footman and the friendship of the cook, than to live uponpeople on whom you have no claim beyond that of having been alreadymost ungrateful to them--than to impose on their generosity, to spongeupon them!"
"As you will, Esther," answers Mrs. Brandon, loving her too little, andrespecting her independence of spirit too much, to reason further withher.
There is a pause--a pause broken presently by Esther, who speaksdiffidently: "Mrs. Brandon, don't you think that if I could get intoone of those large shops in London, or one of our great towns, I couldtry on cloaks, and measure yards of ribbon, without requiring any greatamount of knowledge of any kind, theoretical or practical?"
Mrs. Brandon looks doubtful. "It is not so easy as you may imagine, mydear, to obtain admission into one of those shops: a friend of minemade great efforts to get a situation for a _protegee_ of hers atMarshal & Snelgrove's, or Lewis & Allenby's, and after waiting a longtime, 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 herslight _elance_ figure; "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 upher mouth rather primly, "even if it would, I should hardly think asituation in a shop, or other place of public resort, desirable for agirl so young, and of so--so--so _peculiar_ an appearance as you."
"Peculiar!" repeats Esther, rather resentfully, raising her great eyesin unfeigned, displeased surprise to her companion's face. "Am I sovery _odd-looking_, Mrs. Brandon? I don't think I can be, for no oneever told me so before!"
"I did not say _odd-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 how_they_ were looking, not how _I_ looked," says Esther, not yet quiterecovered from her annoyed astonishment; "_my_ appearance, beyond themere fact of my being tall, could not be of much consequence one way oranother."
Mrs. Brandon takes off and lays down her spectacles the better to pointthe rebuke she is about to administer.
"Esther," she says, severely, "since you insist on my explaining myselfmore clearly, I must tell you that I think a girl should be steadierin conduct, and more decidedly imbued with religious principles than Ihave any reason for supposing you to be, before she is exposed to thetemptations to which a young and handsome woman is liable in one ofthose sinks of iniquity, our great towns."
Esther flings up her head with an angry gesture. "I really don't seewhat 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 about _men;_and in a place specially devoted to woman's dress, one would be lesslikely 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 of_treble_ your years and experience," says Mrs. Brandon, resuming herspectacles, 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, clamouringfor egress through those sweet red gates; but the recollection of Mrs.Brandon's weak tea and legs of mutton, and the obligations theretohanging, drives it back again. She leans her elbow on her knee, andelevates 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 incalculations as to whether her stocking-leg has attained the length andbreadth 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 thefender-stool beside Esther, yawning prodigiously every now and then;her round fore-paws gathered trimly under her, and the sleepy benignityof 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 willconduct her to Bob's large heel--giving utterance to her little tritesaw with a certain air of complacency. Original remarks come forthdoubtfully, questioningly, feeling their way: it is only a wellaired platitude that can strut and swagger forwards in the certaintyof a good reception. "We will think over the subject seriously andprayerfully: we will take it with us to the Throne of Grace, and makeit the subject of _special_ intercession of worship this evening."
"Oh no, no! please not!--_please_ not!" cries Esther, the lilies in herfair cheek turning quickly to deepest, angriest carnations. "I shouldnot like it: I could not come to prayers if you did. Why cannot we talkit over _now_, this instant? There's no time like the present."
"I see no hurry, Esther," answers Mrs. Brandon, coldly.
"But there is a hurry!--_every_ hurry!" exclaims the girl,passionately, throwing herself on the floor beside Mrs. Brandon, toomuch in earnest to be chilled by the frosty cold of her manner; herwhole soul thrown, in bright entreaty, into the great clear pupilsof her superb, up-looking eyes. "I don't think I ever knew what thewords meant till now. I don't believe I ever could have been in areal hurry in my life before! Put yourself in my position, Mrs.Brandon," she says, laying her little eager hand on her companion'srusty-black-coburg knee; "imagine how you would like to be whollydependent, not only for luxuries and comforts--one might well dowithout them--but for bare bread and water, on people that are neitherkith nor kin to you, and that have taken you in out of Christiancharity, and because they think it right--not in the least because theylove you!"
"If I were exposed to such a trial, Esther," replied Mrs.Brandon, deliberately rubbing her spectacles gently with herpocket-handkerchief, "I hope that I should bear it meekly; thatI should kiss the rod, knowing that it was an Allwise Hand thatbrandished it, and that I was so chastened in order to lower the prideof a too carnal heart."
"Then God forbid that my carnal heart may ever be so lowered!" criesthe other, springing impetuously to her feet, and drawing up her headhaughtily. "Why," she continues, beginning to walk up and down thelittle room with agitated steps and fingers hotly interlaced--"whydid God implant such an instinct as self-respect in us, if supinelysubmitting 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 abroken-spirited cur."
Mrs. Brandon deposits her knitting on the table; rises slowly--oldpeople's joints, like wooden dolls, decline to bend on short notice(it is a pity, is it not, that our machinery is not calculated toremain in a state of efficiency, even through our paltry seventyyears?)--dismounts from the footstool, on which her feet have beenperched, walks to the door, there stands, and, shaking her stiff, greycurls, speaks with trembling severity:
"Esther, until you can discuss this subject with less irreverentviolence, I must beg to decline any further conversation upon it."
Red as a Rose is She: A Novel Page 25