_WANT OF COMFORT_.
The months were many and long before there came another break in the
monotony of Esther's life. The little girl was thrown upon her own
ressources, and that is too hard a position for her years, or perhaps
for any years. She had literally no companion but her father, and it is
a stretch of courtesy to give the name to him. Another child would have
fled to the kitchen for society, at least to hear human voices. Esther
did not. The instincts of a natural high breeding restrained her, as
well as the habits in which she had been brought up. Mrs. Barker waited
upon her at night and in the morning, at her dressing and undressing:
sometimes Esther went for a walk, attended by Christopher; the rest of
the time she was either alone, or in the large, orderly room where
Colonel Gainsborough lay upon the sofa, and there Esther was rather
more alone than anywhere else. The colonel was reading; reverence
obliged her to keep quiet; he drew long breaths of weariness or sadness
every now and then, which every time came like a cloud over such
sunshine as she had been able to conjure up; and besides all that,
notwithstanding the sighs and the reading, her father always noticed
and knew what she was doing. Now it is needless to say that Colonel
Gainsborough had forgotten what it was to be a child; he was therefore
an incompetent critic of a child's doings or judge of a child's wants.
He had an impatience for what he called a 'waste of time;' but Esther
was hardly old enough to busy herself exclusively with history and
geography; and the little innocent amusements to which she had recourse
stood but a poor chance under his censorship. 'A waste of time, my
daughter,' he would say, when he saw Esther busy perhaps with some
childish fancy work, or reading something from which she promised
herself entertainment, but which the colonel knew promised nothing
more. A word from him was enough. Esther would lay down her work or put
away the book, and then sit in forlorn uncertainty what she should do
to make the long hours drag less heavily. History and geography and
arithmetic she studied, in a sort, with her father; and Colonel
Gainsborough was not a bad teacher, so far as the progress of his
scholar was concerned. So far as her pleasure went, the lessons were
very far behind those she used to have with Pitt. And the recitations
were short. Colonel Gainsborough gave his orders, as if he were on a
campaign, and expected to see them fulfilled. Seeing them fulfilled, he
turned his attention at once to something else.
Esther longed for her former friend and instructor with a longing which
cannot be put into words. Yet longing is hardly the expression for it;
she was not a child to sit and wish for the unattainable; it was rather
a deep and aching sense of want. She never forgot him. If Pitt's own
mother thought of him more constantly, she was the only person in the
world of whom that was true. Pitt sometimes wrote to Colonel
Gainsborough, and then Esther treasured up every revelation and detail
of the letter and added them to what she knew already, so as to piece
out as full an image as possible of Pitt's life and doings. But how the
child wanted him, missed him, and wept for him! Though of the latter
not much; she was not a child given to crying. The harder for her,
perhaps.
The Dallases, husband and wife, were not much seen at this time in the
colonel's quiet house. Mr. Dallas did come sometimes of an evening and
sat and talked with its master; and he was not refreshing to Esther,
not even when the talk ran upon his absent son; for the question had
begun to be mooted publicly, whether Pitt should go to England to
finish his education. It began to be spoken of in Pitt's letters too;
he supposed it would come to that, he said; his mother and father had
set their hearts on Oxford or Cambridge. Colonel Gainsborough heartily
approved. It was like a knell of fate to Esther.
They were alone together one day, as usual, the father and daughter;
and silence had reigned a long while in the room, when Esther broke it.
She had been sitting poring over a book; now she looked up with a very
burdened brow and put her question.
'Papa, how do people get comfort out of the Bible?'
'Eh--what, my dear?' said the colonel, rousing his attention.
'What must one do, to get comfort out of the Bible?'
'Comfort?' repeated the colonel, now looking round at her. 'Are you in
want of comfort, Esther?'
'I would like to know how to find it, papa, if it is here.'
'Here? What have you got there? Come where I can see you.'
Esther drew near, unwillingly. 'It is the Bible, papa.'
'And _what_ is it you want from the Bible?--Comfort?'
'Mamma used to say one could get comfort in the Bible, and I wanted to
know how.'
'Did she?' said the colonel with grave thoughtfulness. But he said no
more. Esther waited. Her father's tone had changed; he seemed to have
gone back into regions of the past, and to have forgotten her. The
minutes ran on, without her daring to remind him that her question was
still unanswered. The colonel at last, with a long sigh, took up his
book again; then seemed to bethink him, and turned to Esther.
'I do not know, my dear,' he said. 'I never could get it there myself,
except in a very modified way. Perhaps it is my fault.'
The subject was disposed of, as far as the colonel was concerned.
Esther could ask him no more. But that evening, when Mrs. Barker was
attending upon her, she made one more trial.
'Barker, do you know the Bible much?'
'The Bible, Miss Esther!'
'Yes. Have you read it a great deal? do you know what is in it?'
'Well, Miss Esther, I ain't a heathen. I do read my Bible, to be sure,
more or less, all my life, so to speak; which is to say, ever since I
could read at all.'
'Did you ever find comfort in it?'
'Comfort, Miss Esther? Did I ever find _comfort_ in it, did ye ask?'
the housekeeper repeated, very much puzzled. 'Well, I can't just say.
Mebbe I never was just particlarly lookin' for that article when I went
to my Bible. I don't remember as I never was in no special want o'
comfort--sich as should set me to lookin' for it; 'thout it was when
missus died.'
'_She_ said, one could find comfort in the Bible,' Esther went on, with
a tender thrill in the voice that uttered the beloved pronoun.
'Most likely it's so, Miss Esther. What my mistress said was sure and
certain true; but myself, it is something which I have no knowledge of.'
'How do you suppose one could find comfort in the Bible, Barker? How
should one look for it?'
''Deed, Miss Esther, your questions is too hard for me. I'd ask the
colonel, if I was you.'
'But I ask you, if you can tell me.'
'And that's just which I ain't wise enough for. But when I don't know
where a thing is, Miss Esther, I allays begins at one end and goes
clean through to the other end; and then, if the thing ain't there, why
I knows it, and if it is there, I gets it.'
'It would take a good while,' said Esther musingly, 'to go through the
whole Bible from one end to the other.'
'That's which I am thinkin', Miss Esther. I'm thinkin' one might forget
what one started to look for, before one found it. But there! the Bible
ain't just like a store closet, neither, with all the things ticketed
on shelves. I'm thinkin' a body must do summat besides look in it.'
'What?'
'I don't know, Miss Esther; I ain't wise, no sort o' way, in sich
matters; but I was thinkin' the folks I've seen, as took comfort in
their Bibles, they was allays saints.'
'Saints! What do you mean by that?'
'That's what they was,' said Barker decidedly. 'They was saints. I
never was no saint myself, but I've seen 'em. You see, mum, I've allays
had summat else on my mind, and my hands, I may say; and one can't
attend to more'n one thing at once in this world. I've allays had my
bread to get and my mistress to serve; and I've attended to my business
and done it. That's which I've done.'
'Couldn't you do that and be a saint too?'
'There's no one can't be two different people at one and the same time,
Miss Esther. Which I would say, if there is, it ain't me.'
If this was not conclusive, at least it was unanswerable by Esther, and
the subject was dropped. Whether Esther pursued the search after
comfort, no one knew; indeed, no one knew she wanted it. The colonel
certainly not; he had taken her question to be merely a speculative
one. It did sometimes occur to Barker that her young charge moped; or,
as she expressed it to Mr. Bounder, 'didn't live as a child had a right
to;' but it was not her business, and she had spoken truly: her
business was the thing Mrs. Barker minded exclusively.
So Esther went on living alone, and working her way, as she could,
alone, out of all the problems that suggested themselves to her
childish mind. What sort of a character would grow up in this way, in
such a close mental atmosphere and such absence of all training or
guiding influences, was an interesting question, which, however, never
presented itself before Colonel Gainsborough's mind. That his child was
all right, he was sure; indeed how could she go wrong? She was her
mother's daughter, in the first place; and in the next place, his own;
_noblesse oblige_, in more ways than one; and then--she saw nobody!
That was a great safeguard. But the one person whom Esther did see, out
of her family, or I should say the two persons, sometimes speculated
about her; for to them the subject had a disagreeable practical
interest. Mr. Dallas came now and then to sit and have a chat with the
colonel; and more rarely Mrs. Dallas called for a civil visit of
enquiry; impelled thereto partly by her son's instances and reminders.
She communicated her views to her husband.
'She is living a dreadful life, for a child. She will be everything
that is unnatural and premature.'
Mr. Dallas made no answer.
'And I wish she was out of Seaforth; for as we cannot get rid of her,
we must send away our own boy.'
'Humph!' said her husband. 'Are you sure? Is that a certain necessity?'
'Hildebrand, you would like to have him finish his studies at Oxford?'
said his wife appealingly.
'Yes, to be sure; but what has that to do with the other thing? You
started from that little girl over there.'
'Do you want Pitt to make her his wife?'
'No!' with quiet decision.
'He'll do it; if you do not take all the better care.'
'I don't see that it follows.'
'You do not see it, Hildebrand, but I do. Trust me.'
'What do you reason from?'
'You won't trust me? Well, the girl will be very handsome; she'll be
_very_ handsome, and that always turns a young man's head; and then,
you see, she is a forlorn child, and Pitt has taken it in to his head
to replace father and mother, and be her good genius. I leave you to
judge if that is not a dangerous part for him to play. He writes to me
every now and then about her.'
Not very often; but Mrs. Dallas wanted to scare her husband. And so
there came to be more and more talk about Pitt's going abroad; and
Esther felt as if the one spot of brightness in her sky were closing up
for ever. If Pitt did go,--what would be left?
It was a token of the real strength and fine properties of her mental
nature, that the girl did not, in any true sense, _mope_. In want of
comfort she was; in sad want of social diversion and cheer, and of
variety in her course of thought and occupation; she suffered from the
want; but Esther did not sink into idleness and stagnation. She worked
like a beaver; that is, so far as diligence and purpose characterize
those singular animals' working. She studied resolutely and eagerly the
things she had studied with Pitt, and which he had charged her to go on
with. His influence was a spur to her constantly; for he had wished it,
and he would be coming home by and by for the long vacation, and then
he would want to see what she had done. Esther was not quite alone, so
long as she had the thought of Pitt and of that long vacation with her.
If he should go to England,--then indeed it would be loneliness. Now
she studied, at any rate, having that spur; and she studied things also
with which Pitt had had no connection; her Bible, for instance. The
girl busied herself with fancy work too, every kind which Mrs. Barker
could teach her, and her father did not forbid. And in one other
pleasure her father was helpful to her. Esther had been trying to draw
some little things, working eagerly with her pencil and a copy,
absorbed in her endeavours and in the delight of partial success; when
one day her father came and looked over her shoulder. That was enough.
Colonel Gainsborough was a great draughtsman; the old instinct of his
art stirred in him; he took Esther's pencil from her hand and showed
her how she ought to use it, and then went on to make several little
studies for her to work at. From that beginning, the lessons went
forward, to the mutual benefit of father and daughter. Esther developed
a great aptitude for the art, and an enormous zeal. Whatever her father
told her it would be good for her to do, in that connection, Esther did
untiringly--ungrudgingly. It was the one exquisite pleasure which each
day contained for her; and into it she gathered and poured her whole
natural, honest, childlike desire for pleasure. No matter if all the
rest of the day were work, the flower of delight that blossomed on this
one stem was sweet enough to take the place of a whole nosegay, and it
beautified Esther's whole life. It hardly made the child less sober
outwardly, but it did much to keep her inner life fresh and sound.
Pitt this time did not allow it to be supposed that he had forgotten
his friends. Once in a while he wrote to Colonel Gainsborough, and sent
a message or maybe included a little note for Esther herself. These
messages and notes regarded often her studies; but toward the end of
term there began to be mention made of England also in them; and
Esther's heart sank very low. What would be left when Pitt was gone to
England?