HESTER
A STORY OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
"A springy motion in her gait,
A rising step, did indicate
Of pride and joy no common rate
That flush'd her spirit:
I know not by what name beside
I shall it call: if 'twas not pride,
It was a joy to that allied
She did inherit.
* * * * *
She was trained in Nature's school,
Nature had blest her.
A waking eye, a prying mind,
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind:
A hawk's keen sight ye cannot blind,
Ye could not Hester."
Charles Lamb.
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. III
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1883
The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved
LONDON
R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor,
BREAD STREET HILL.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I. BUSINESS AND LOVE.
CHAPTER II. A SPECULATOR.
CHAPTER III. A LATE VISITOR.
CHAPTER IV. DOUBTS AND FEARS.
CHAPTER V. A DISCOVERY.
CHAPTER VI. IN THE LABYRINTH.
CHAPTER VII. ALARMS.
CHAPTER VIII. THE CRISIS.
CHAPTER IX. UNDER THE HOLLY.
CHAPTER X. THE HOUR OF NEED.
CHAPTER XI. A NIGHT'S VIGIL.
CHAPTER XII. AFTERWARDS.
CHAPTER XIII. AN INTERRUPTION.
CHAPTER XIV. THE SETTLEMENT.
CHAPTER XV. THE END.
HESTER.
HESTER.
CHAPTER I.
BUSINESS AND LOVE.
Roland had but a few days to spend at Redborough, where he came on the
footing of an intimate friend and relation, sought and courted on all
hands. His time was already portioned out among the Vernons before he
came to pay his respects to Mrs. John and her daughter, though that was
on the morning after his arrival. At a still earlier hour Emma had
rushed in very tearful and dejected to beg Hester to intercede for her
that she might not go away.
"If I go now _he_ may never speak at all," Emma said. "I am sure I did
everything I could last night to bring it on. I told him Roland had come
for me, that he couldn't do without me any longer; and if you could only
have seen him, Hester! he grew quite white, poor fellow, and his eyes as
big as saucers! I don't believe it is his fault. It must be his people;
so often, when things are going just as you wish, their people will
interfere. I am sure he is quite miserable. And if he doesn't speak now,
I dare say he will never speak."
"How can you talk as if it were a matter of business?" cried Hester; "if
he cares for you he is sure to 'speak,' as you call it. And as for
bringing it on----"
"But, of course, it is a matter of business," said Emma, "and very
important business too. What can be so important for a girl as settling?
It is all very well for you to talk, but I am the youngest, and I have
no fixed home, and I must think of myself. If he comes forward it makes
all the difference to me. Why, Roland and everybody will think twice as
much of me if I have an offer. Hester, there's a dear, do persuade
Roland to let me stay. He doesn't want me a bit, that's all talk; he is
just as happy without me. Perhaps he will tell you they have had enough
of me here; but they don't say so, and you're not bound to go and
inquire into people's feelings if they don't say so. I do believe
grandpapa is tired of having me, but he will never turn me out; and when
it is so essential to my best interests! Hester, I think you might have
a little fellow-feeling. There's Edward Vernon, I'm sure you would be
more comfortable if he were to----"
Hester turned upon her indiscreet companion with a blaze of indignation.
The fact that there was truth in it made it doubly odious. Her whole
frame trembled with angry shame. She threw up her hand with an impatient
gesture, which frightened and silenced Emma, but which Hester herself
afterwards felt to be a sort of appeal to her forbearance--the
establishment of a kind of confidence.
"What is that about Edward Vernon?" said Mrs. John, whose tranquil ear
had caught something, naturally of that part of the conversation which
it was most expedient she should not hear.
Emma paused, and consulted Hester with her eyes, who, however, averted
her countenance and would not ask forbearance. A rapid debate ensued in
Emma's mind. What is the use, she asked herself, of having a mother if
you cannot tell her everything, and get her to help you? But on the
other hand, if Hester did not wish it spoken of she did not dare to
oppose an auxiliary who might be of so much service to her. So she
answered carelessly--
"Oh, nothing! but don't you think, Mrs. Vernon, you who know the world,
that for a girl to go away just when a gentleman is coming to the point,
is a great pity? And just as likely as not nothing may ever come of it
if her people interfere like this and drag her away."
"My dear," said Mrs. John, astonished, though mollified by the
compliment to her knowledge of the world, "I cannot call to mind that I
have ever heard such a question discussed before."
"Oh, perhaps not--not in general society; but when we are all women
together, and a kind of relations, I am sure it is only charity to wish
that a girl like me might get settled. And when you have had an offer
you take such a different position, even with your own people. I want
Hester to ask Roland to let me stay."
"Hester! but why Hester? If you wish it I will speak to Mr. Ashton--or
your grandparents would be more suitable," Mrs. John said.
And it was at this moment that Roland himself came in to pay his
respects. When he had said everything that was polite--nay, more than
polite, ingratiating and devoted, as if in a subdued and reverential way
he was paying his court to the mother rather than the daughter--he
contrived to make his way to where Hester sat apart, working with great
but spasmodic energy, and not yet recovered from the ferment into which
Emma had plunged her. "I scarcely saw you last night," he said.
"There were so many people to see," Hester replied, with a cloudy smile,
without lifting her eyes.
"Yes, there were a great many people. And to-morrow night, I hear, at
the Merridews----"
"I am not going."
"No? I thought I should have been able to see a little of you there. A
ball-room is good for that, that one--I mean, two--may be alone in it
now and then--and there were many things I wanted to say. But I thought
you did go."
"Yes, often; but I am tired of it!" cried Hester. "It is too much; one
wants something more than folly in one's life."
"This is not folly," he said, looking round at the quiet little room,
the tranquil lady by the fire, the work at which Hester's hands were so
busy. She was seated near the side window which looked out upon the
road.
"No; this is dulness--this is nothing," she said; "not living at all,
but only going on because one cannot help it."
"I suppose, on the whole, the greater part of life is that; but you,
with the power to make others happy, with so much before you----"
"I am sure the life that I know is all that," cried Hester; "we are
here, we don't know why, we cannot get out of it, we must go on with it.
It is a necessity to live, and prepare your dinner every day and mend
your clothes, not because you wish to do so, but because you can't help
yourself. And then the only relief to it is folly."
"Don't call an innocent little dance folly, with all its opportunities.
If it gave me the chance of a long quiet talk--with you."
"If that is not folly, it is nonsense," Hester said, with a laugh, not
unmoved by the tone, not unsubdued by the eyes.
"You may think so, but I don't. I have looked forward to it for so long.
If life is nothing to you here, fancy what it is to me in the Stock
Exchange."
"I have no doubt it is very interesting to you. It is something to do:
it is change, and thought, and risk, and all that one wants."
"That is what Edward Vernon says," said Roland. "He, too, finds life
monotonous--I suppose because he has everything he wishes for."
"Has he everything he wishes for?" said Hester, with a catch of her
breath, and a sudden glance up with keen, questioning eyes. The next
moment she bent her head again over her work. "What I want is not
dancing," she said.
"It is work, according to the fashion of young ladies. You don't know
when you are well off. You have always wanted work," said Roland, "and
barbarous parents will not let you. You want to go and teach wretched
little children, and earn a little miserable money. You to be wasted on
that! Ah! you have something a great deal better to do."
"What?" said Hester, raising her eyes and fixing them upon him. "I
should like, not that, but to do as Catherine Vernon did," she cried,
lighting up in every line of her animated countenance. "I should like to
step in when ruin was coming and prop it up on my shoulders as she did,
and meet the danger, and overcome it----"
"I thought you hated Catherine Vernon," Roland cried.
"I never said so," cried Hester; and then, after a pause, "but if I did,
what does that matter? I should like to do what she did. Something of
one's own free will--something that no one can tell you or require you
to do--which is not even your duty bound down upon you. Something
voluntary, even dangerous----" She paused again, with a smile and a
blush at her own vehemence, and shook her head. "That is exactly what I
shall never have it in my power to do."
"I hope not, indeed, if it is dangerous," said Roland, with all that
eyes could say to make the words eloquent. "Pardon me; but don't you
think that is far less than what you have in your power? You can make
others do: you can inspire (isn't that what Lord Lytton says?) and
reward. That is a little highflown, perhaps. But there is nothing a man
might not do, with you to encourage him. You make me wish to be a hero."
He laughed, but Hester did not laugh. She gave him a keen look, in which
there was a touch of disdain. "Do you really think," she said, "that the
charm of inspiring, as you call it, is what any reasonable creature
would prefer to doing? To make somebody else a hero rather than be a
hero yourself? Women would need to be disinterested indeed if they like
that best. I don't see it. Besides, we are not in the days of chivalry.
What could you be inspired to do--make better bargains on your Stock
Exchange? and reward---- Oh, that is not the way it is looked at
nowadays. You think it is you who----" Here Hester paused, with a rising
colour, "I will not say what I was going to say," she said.
"What you were going to say was cruel. Besides, it was not true. I must
know best, being on the side of the slandered. A man who is worth
calling a man can have but one opinion on that subject."
Hester looked at him again with a serious criticism, which embarrassed
Roland. She was not regarding the question lightly, as a mere subject of
provocative talk, but was surveying him as if to read how far he was
true and how far fictitious. Before he could say anything she shook her
head with a little sigh.
"Besides," she said, "it was not a hero I was thinking of. If anybody,
it was Catherine Vernon."
"Whom you don't like. These women, who step out of their sphere, they
may do much to be respected, they may be of great use; but----"
"You mean that men don't like them," said Hester, with a smile; "but
then women do; and, after all, we are the half of creation--or more."
"Women do! Oh, no; that is a mistake. Let us ask the company
present--your mother and my sister."
Hester put out her hand to stop him. "That goes far deeper," she said,
with a rising blush. What did she mean? Roland was sufficiently versed
in all the questions of this kind, which are discussed in idleness to
promote flirtation. But he did not know why she should blush so deeply,
or why her forehead should contract when he claimed his sister and her
mother together as representatives of women. They were so, better than
Hester herself was. Mrs. John represented all the timid opinions and
obstinate prejudices of weakness; all that is gently conventional and
stereotyped in that creature conventionally talked about as Woman from
the beginning of time; while the other represented that other, vulgarer
type of feminine character which, without being either strong enough or
generous enough to strike out a new belief, makes a practical and
cynical commentary upon the old one, and considers man as the natural
provider of woman's comfort, and, therefore, indispensable, to be
secured as any other source of income and ease ought to be secured.
Hester was wounded and ashamed that her mother should be classed with
Emma, but could say nothing against it; and she was moved with a high
indignation to think that Roland was right. But he had not the least
idea what she could mean, and she had no mind to enlighten him. Their
conversation came to an end accordingly; and the sound of the others
came in.
"I don't see why I should go away," said Emma. "For, whatever he may
choose to say, Roland doesn't want me, not a bit. Elizabeth is a very
good cook, and that's all a man thinks of. I couldn't do him any good at
home, and he doesn't like my acquaintances. A girl can't live without
friends, can she, Mrs. John? If you are to have any amusement at all,
you must be getting it when you're about twenty, that is the time. But
men never care: they go out, and they have their own friends separate,
and they never think of you. But here, without bothering him a bit, I
have lots of nice people, and grandmamma has never said she was tired of
me. Then why should he take me away?"
"There is no reason for talking of that just now at all," said Mrs. John
politely, "for Mr. Roland is not going away himself as yet."
"Oh, he cannot stay long," cried Emma, "he oughtn't to stay; he has got
his business--not like me that have nothing to call me. Edward Vernon
wouldn't like it a bit if Roland stayed away from his business."
"I am always hearing the name of Edward Vernon," said Mrs. John; "you
mentioned it to Hester just now. What has he to do with Hester or with
Mr. Roland's business? Though Catherine Vernon thinks so much of him, he
is not one of my favourites. I like his cousin Harry better."
"And so do I," Roland said.
They all looked at him with surprise, and Hester with a sudden increase
of colour. She was angry, though she could not have told why.
"He is very hot and eager in business," Roland said. "I suppose I ought
to like him the better for that. And he has a keen eye too; but it goes
to his head, and that is what one never should allow one's business to
do."
"Ah!" cried Mrs. John, "if it can be prevented, Mr. Roland. That was
what happened to my dear husband. He could not be cool, as, I suppose,
it is right to be. But sometimes, don't you think one likes a person
better for not calculating too much, for letting himself be carried
away?"
Roland looked more dark than he had ever been seen to look before, and
responded vaguely, "Perhaps," with a face that had no doubtfulness in
it.
"Why should he not be hot and eager?" cried Hester; "I understand that
very well. Everything is quiet here. A man, when he gets out of this
still atmosphere, wants a little excitement, and to fling himself into
it."
"Ah!" said Mrs. John, "that is what your poor father always said."
But Roland had never looked so unsympathetic. "A man may lose his head
in love or in war, or in adventure, or in pleasure, but he must not lose
it on the Stock Exchange," he said; then, looking up, with an uneasy
laugh, "I need not warn you, ladies, need I? for you will never lose
your heads about shares and premiums. I am glad to think I am a very
steady fellow myself."
"Oh, steady!" cried Mrs. John, alarmed. "I hope, I am sure, they are all
_quite_ steady. I never heard a word to the contrary. It would be
dreadful for poor Catherine; after all, though we are not very good
friends--not such good friends as I should wish to be--it would be
dreadful; for if Edward was not steady---- Oh, I hope, Mr. Roland, you
are mistaken. I hope that it is not so."
"He means a steady head, mother; there is no question of anything else,"
said Hester, very red and troubled. Her secret consciousness in respect
to Edward made life and conversation very difficult for her: she could
not bear any animadversion upon him, though in her own heart she made
many; and at the same time she could not defend him openly. What was he
to her more than Harry was? The same far-off cousin--old friend: not so
much, indeed, as Harry, for all the world knew that Harry would fain
have established another relationship had it seemed good in Hester's
eyes.
"I meant nothing against his morals," Roland said.
"That is a great relief to my mind," said Mrs. John, "for Catherine
Vernon is a good woman, though she and I have never been great friends;
and it is a terrible thing to set your heart upon a child and have him
turn out badly. There is nothing so heartrending as that. One of my
mother's sisters, Aunt Eliza, of whom you have heard me talk, Hester,
had a son----"
"Oh, mamma, I don't think we want to hear about that."
"And you were coming out for a walk," said Emma, who saw that her own
affairs were slipping out of notice. "Didn't she say she would come out
for a walk? And if we are going we had better not be long about it, for
the days are so short at this time of the year."
"Put on your hat, Hester; it will do you good. You change colour so I do
not know what to make of it," her mother said.
"And so do I now," cried Emma; "they always tell me it is indigestion,
but that is not a nice reason to give when people think you are blushing
about something. It is very disagreeable. Mine comes on often after
dinner when we dine early, and all the afternoon I am just a fright! It
is a blessing it goes off towards evening when one is seeing people.
Roland, you must take Hester and me into Redborough. I want to buy some
gloves, and I dare say so does she, for the Merridews to-night."
"She is not going to the Merridews," said Mrs. John, with a plaintive
sound in her voice.
"Oh, she told us something about that, but I didn't believe it was true.
Why shouldn't she go to the Merridews?--she that is always made so much
of, just like the sister of the house. If I had that position I never
should miss one evening; and, indeed, I never have since I had my first
invitation. Grandpapa did not like it at first, but of course he got
reconciled. Oh, here you are, Hester; how quickly you do dress! To be
sure, you never put on anything but that pea-coat of yours. But I don't
like drawing on my gloves as I go out, as you do; I like to put them on
carefully, and smooth them, and button them up."
"You are always so tidy," said Mrs. John, with a faint sigh. She could
not but feel it would be an advantage if Hester, though so much
superior, would get some of Emma's ways. She was so neat: never a hair
out of order, or a shoe-tie loose. Whereas, now and then, in her own
child, there were imperfections. But she smiled as she looked after
them, going out to the door to see them go. Hester, with her varying
complexion (which had nothing to do with her digestion), threw up her
head to meet the wind with a movement so vigorous, so full of grace and
life, that it was a pleasure to see. The mother thought that it was
pretty to watch her drawing on her gloves, though, perhaps, it would
have been tidier to button them carefully as Emma did, before she came
down stairs; but then in those days gloves had few buttons and were
easily managed. As soon as they had gone out of the gate of the
Vernonry, Emma gave Hester a significant look, and even a nudge, if it
must be told, and begged them to walk on while she ran in for an
umbrella which she had forgotten. "For it always rains when one hasn't
an umbrella," she said. It cost Hester an effort to remember what the
look and the nudge meant. Then she laughed as she watched the schemer
down to Captain Morgan's door.
"Why do you want to take Emma away?" she said. "She seems to be happy
here."
"Do you think she makes the old people happier? They don't say anything,
but she seems to me to worry my old grandfather. I don't want to take
her away. She has her little schemes on hand, no doubt, and means to
settle or something; but I cannot let her tire out the old people. They
are part of my religion," Roland said. This, too, was meant as
provocation to draw Hester on to discuss the question of religion,
perhaps to an attempt to convert him to sounder views, which is a very
fruitful method. He looked at her with a pleased defiance in his eyes.
But Hester was not to be drawn out on this subject. She had no dogmatic
teaching in her, and did not feel qualified to discuss a man's religion.
Instead, she returned to the subject of their previous discussion,
herself abandoning Emma's cause.
"What do you do on the Stock Exchange?" she said.
"That is a tremendous question. I don't know how to answer it. I should
have to give you a lecture upon shares, and companies, and all the
vicissitudes of the Funds."
"These, I suppose, are your material, just as written things are the
material of a newspaper editor. I understand that," said Hester, "what I
want to know is what you do."
"We buy and we sell," he said, with a laugh. "We are no better than any
shopkeeper. We buy a thing when it is cheap, and hold it till it becomes
dear, and then we sell it again."
"But who," said Hester, with a little scorn, "is so silly as to buy
things _when they are dear_? Is it to oblige you? I thought that was
against political economy--and everything of that kind," she added
vaguely. It was not the subject Roland would have chosen, but out of
that, too, he could draw the thread of talk.
"Political economy is not infallible," he said. "We praise our wares so,
and represent their excellence so warmly, that there comes a moment when
everybody wishes to buy them. Sometimes they deserve the commendations
we bestow, sometimes they--don't. But in either case people buy. And
then political economy comes in, and the demand being great increases
the value; so that sometimes we make a nice little bit of profit without
spending a penny."
Hester looked at him with a blank face. She knew nothing about these
mysteries. She shook her head.
"I don't understand business," she said; "but how can you buy without
spending a penny? I wish I knew how to do that."
"I should like to do it for you," said Roland, with a look that said
still more; for even stockbroking will do as a vehicle for flirtation.
"I should like to buy you a quantity of Circassians, for instance,
exactly at the right moment, neither too soon nor too late, and sell
them next day, perhaps, when the market had turned, and hand you over a
thousand pounds or two which you should have made without, as I said,
spending a penny. That would make the profession romantic, poetic, if
one could conduct such operations for _you_. Probably I shall put that
money into the pocket of some bilious city person who does not want it,
instead of into your fair hands----"
"Which do. I don't know if they are fair hands, but they want it
certainly. A thousand or two! enough to make people comfortable for
life. And what are Circassians?" Hester asked.
"They are stock. You must accept certain words as symbols, or we shall
never make it clear. And my business is to watch the market for you, to
catch the moment when the tide is turning. There is a great deal of
excitement in it."
"And is that how Edward loses his head?"
She spoke in a low tone, and Roland stopped suddenly in what he was
about to say, and turned upon her with real surprise. After this he put
on an air of mock mortification--mock, yet not without a mixture of the
true.
"Is it for this," he said, "that I have been devising delicate
operations for you, and explaining all my mysteries? to find you at the
end not in the least interested in my work or in your possible fortune,
but considering everything in the light of Edward Vernon? Acknowledge
that this is hard upon me."
"I was thinking only," said Hester, with again that sudden flush of
colour, "of what you said, that Edward lost his head. It is not much
wonder if what you say can be. He would like to be rich; he would like
to be free. He would prefer to get a fortune of his own, especially if
it can be done that way, rather than to wait for years and years, till
he has made money, or till Catherine dies. That is generous, you know.
He does not want to wait till she dies, as if he grudged her life. It
would be terrible for her to think that he did not wish her to live as
long as she could. But at the same time he wants, and so do we all, to
be free."
"I am so much obliged to you for explaining Edward Vernon's motives,"
said Roland, much piqued. It was an experience he was not familiar with,
to have himself forgotten and his rival expounded to him. His rival! was
he his rival? In the sting of this sudden revelation of preference,
Roland all but vowed that he would enter the lists in earnest and chase
this Edward, this country-fellow whom she thought so much of, from the
field.
Hester was confused, too, when her investigation into her cousin's mind
was thus received. It was true enough; it was the problem which had
interested her in the first place--not directly Edward in person who was
the subject of it. She had tried to explain his position to herself. Now
that her interest was found out, and she discovered it to be an offence
to her companion, she threw herself back instinctively on a less
alarming question.
"I think a great deal about Catherine," she said.
"About Catherine--Cousin Catherine--whom I thought you disliked with all
your heart?"
"You may be astonished, but it is true. I think a great deal about her.
I think of her, after being kind to everybody--for now that I am grown
up I begin to understand, she has been very kind to everybody; not
loving them, which takes the grace out of it--but yet kind, after being
so kind, to be left alone with nobody caring for her, and perhaps the
one she loves best expecting when she will die. No," said Hester, "I am
glad Edward loses his head--that is what he is thinking of. Not to wait
or feel as if he would like by an hour to shorten her life, but only for
himself, like a man, to get free. I am very glad of it," she added
hotly, with another overwhelming blush, "for Catherine's sake."
Roland was bewildered and doubtful what to think, for truth was so
strong in Hester that it was hard to believe she was sheltering herself
behind a fiction. But he was very much mortified too.
"I don't think," he said, plaintively, "that I want to talk either of
Cousin Catherine or of Mr. Edward, whom she thinks a great deal more of
than he deserves--as, perhaps others do, too."
"And we have come on so fast and forgotten Emma!" cried Hester, with a
sense of guilt. "We ought to go back and meet her. She has been a long
time getting that umbrella. Don't you think you had better leave her
with Mrs. Morgan a little longer since she likes to be here?"
"I shall not disturb her if--you wish her to stay," he meant to say if
she wishes to stay, but changed his phrase and gave it emphasis, with a
look of devotion. "If I thought you had any regard for my poor little
sister how glad it would make me. It would do her so much good; it would
alter her way of looking at things."
"Oh, you must not think," cried Hester, meaning, like him, to say one
thing and saying another, "that Emma is likely to be influenced by me.
She knows what she thinks much better than I do---- Mr. Ashton, would it
not turn one's head and make one unfit for one's other business if one
was trying to make money in _that_ way?"
"Perhaps," Roland said.
"Has it not that effect upon you?"
"But it is my business. I don't act for myself. I am tempted sometimes
to do things I ought not to do, and sometimes I fall. Even you, if you
were tempted, would sometimes fall. You would dabble in Circassians, you
would find a new company too much for your virtue; shares going to-day
for next to nothing but sure to be at a premium next week--if the bubble
doesn't burst in the meantime."
"And does it always happen that the bubbles burst?"
"Oh, not always; but after you have done with them you don't care what
becomes of them. I never thought I should have had you for half an hour
all to myself, and talked of business the whole time. It is incredible;
and there is that little Emma running this way as if she thought we were
inconsolable for the loss of her. I wanted to tell you how much I have
been thinking of all our talks since I have been in my little house
alone. Did you never think of coming to London? The very feeling of
being in a place so full of life and action, and thinking, makes your
veins thrill. I think you would like to be there. There is so much going
on. And then I might have the hope of seeing you sometimes. That is one
for you and two for myself."
"We could not afford it," said Hester, colouring again. "I think I
should like it. I am not sure. To look on and see everybody doing a
great deal would be intolerable if one had nothing to do."
"What are you talking of?" cried Emma coming up breathless. "I couldn't
find that umbrella. I went up and down into every room in the house, and
then I found I had left it in your drawing-room, Hester, and your mamma
looked up when I went in, and said, 'Back already!' I think she must
have been dozing, for we could not possibly have gone to Redborough and
back in this time, could we, Roland? You two looked so comfortable by
yourselves I had half a mind not to come at all: for you know two's
company but three's none. And then I thought you didn't know my number,
and Roland would never have had the thought to bring me my gloves. But
don't be afraid, I dare say I shall pick up some one on the way."
They walked into the town after this, and bought Emma's gloves. Hester
could not be tempted into a similar purchase, nor could she be persuaded
to go to the Merridews. And she resisted all Roland's attempts to make
himself agreeable, even after Emma encountered young Reginald Merridew,
who was glad enough to help her to buy her gloves. Though it was not
many months since she had seen him, Hester felt that she had outgrown
Roland. His eyes were very fine, but they did not affect her any more.
He brought no light with him into the problems of life, but only another
difficulty, which it was more and more hard to solve. A sort of
instinctive consciousness that something was going to happen seemed in
the air about her. All was still, and everything going on in its calm
habitual way. There were not even any heavings and groanings, like those
that warn the surrounding country before a volcano bursts forth.
Nevertheless, this girl, who had been so long a spectator, pushed aside
from the action about her, but with the keen sight of injured pride and
wounded feeling, seeing the secret thread of meaning that ran through
everything, felt premonitions, she could not tell how, in the heated
air, and through the domestic calm.