Five minutes more, and three large brown parasols, a large black poke
bonnet and two little dirt-coloured ones, are seen slowly pacing
down the hill to the House of Prayer. The lovers have Plas Berwyn to
themselves. Bob has gained his point, despite a parting fleer from
Bessy as to the undesirability of neglecting the Creator for the
creature.
"Tim Dowler! Tim Dowler! Tim Dowler!" cries Esther, joyously, jumping
about the room like a child, and mimicking the one church bell which
is heard clearly tinkling through the valley. "Listen, Bob! Does it
not say 'Tim Dowler' just exactly as if it were speaking it? Oh! look
here: I'll lose all their places for them in their good books, and I
bet anything they'll never find them again." So saying, she proceeds
to remove the paper-knife from the "Saturday Night of the World," and
carefully closes "Stop the Leak."
"What spirits you are in to-day, Essie!" says Bob, balancing himself
on the window-sill, with his long legs dangling lugubriously, and
following her about the room with his eyes, as a child does a
butterfly. "I believe it is because you are going to be rid of me for a
fortnight."
"Partly, I think," replies Esther, nonchalantly. "It seems as if all
my life I had seen and heard of nothing but Glan-yr-Afon and Plas
Berwyn, Plas Berwyn and Glan-yr-Afon, and now I'm going to see and hear
something fresh; it may be better and it may be worse; but, at all
events, it will be something different. Perhaps I shall come back as
the country mouse did, more in love than ever with my own cheeseparings
and tallow-candle ends; perhaps"--swinging her Sunday bonnet by the
strings and looking up maliciously--"perhaps I shall see some one I
like better than you, and not come back at all."
"Hush!" he cries, hurriedly, putting up his hand before her mouth.
"Don't say that; it is bad luck. I should not mind your saying it if it
were not so horribly probable."
Esther subsides into gravity.
"I wish to Heaven you were not so fond of me!" she says, hastily;
"please do try not to be: it makes me feel as if I were cheating all
the time--having things and not paying for them."
"I could have given you up _at first_, if you had told me it must be
so positively; I'm sure I could have made shift to do without you, as I
have made shift to do without many a thing that other fellows consider
necessaries of life; but now----"
He has seized her two hands, and now holds her standing there before
him. To hold her hand is the one familiarity Robert is permitted; not
once in all his life has he kissed his betrothed.
"It was a foolish, silly custom," she said one day, pettishly--"no
sensibler than rubbing noses together, as the Feejee islanders did; for
her part, she hated it, &c."
"But now, what? finish your sentence, please," says the little captive,
gaily.
"Esther, I wish these people had not got a son."
"What people?"
"These Gerards."
"Why so? Do you think that they would have left you their money if they
had not?"
"No, not that," smiling against his will. "But, Essie, you'll promise
to write and tell me what he is like?"
"Yes."
"What sort of age?"
"Yes."
"Whether you see much of him?"
"Yes."
"What he says to you?"
"Come, I cannot promise that," says Esther, bursting out laughing. "Oh
you dear old goose! are you jealous of a name, a shade, an imagination?"
"I _am_ jealous," he answers, reddening. "I can no more help it than
a man in the gout can help having twinges. I shall always be jealous
until you are really mine past stealing or taking back again: after
that I never shall."
"I should hope not," retorts she, with levity: "if you were, I should
think it my duty to try and give you some cause."
The church bell has ceased; there is no sound in the quiet room but
that of one fat-bodied bluebottle, labouring and buzzing up the pane,
and then tumbling back again. Robert has abandoned the window-sill,
finding it a painful and not luxurious seat: he is walking up and down,
up and down; one stride and a half of his long legs taking him from end
to end of the little room. Esther has thrown herself into an American
rocking chair, and is rocking violently backwards and forwards, trying
her best to tip herself over.
"Promise me, Essie," says the young man, coming to a sudden standstill
beside her--"promise me that you'll talk seriously of--you know
what--when you come home; I give you till then? Good heavens! what
sort of stuff could Jacob have been made of to have held out all those
fourteen years!"
"'The little maid replied,
Some say a little sighed,
And what shall we have for to eat, eat, eat?
Will the love that you're so rich in
Make a fire in the kitchen,
Or the little god of love turn the spit, spit, spit?'"
answers Esther, evading her lover's urgency by a quotation.
"If I could get an Adjutancy of Volunteers," pursues he, resuming
his walk, with his eyes bent on the ground, and frowning away in the
intensity of his thinking, "or, better still, a Militia one, or a Chief
Constableship, or the Governorship of a gaol: there are always some of
those sort of things going about. Why should I not come in for one as
well as another fellow? We want so little----"
"Want so little?" interrupts Esther, briskly. "Speak for yourself,
please: I want a great deal; only, as far as I can see, want is likely
to be my master."
"You are no fine lady," pursues he, talking more to himself than to
her, "that requires to be waited on; you can make your own bonnets and
gowns, cannot you? My sisters always do."
"So I should imagine," says Esther, drily.
"What do you mean? Are not they all right? is there anything the matter
with them?" inquires he, stopping short and looking surprised, as if
the idea of there being any deficiency in his sisters' costumes was an
entirely new light to him. But Miss Craven purses up her pretty mouth
in a silence more damnatory of the Misses Brandon's toilettes than any
words could be.
"If we had not a large enough income to live by ourselves," says he,
beginning again his tramp, tramp, "we might join housekeeping with
mother and the girls; they would not object, I'm sure."
"But I should, _strongly_," cries Esther, springing up, and getting
crimson with vexation. "Why, we should all be by the ears in a week.
Robert, how many times will you make me tell you that I like you well
enough to go sailing along beside you on the sea of life as long as it
is nice and smooth, but I really do not love you enough to go bumping
over rocks and into breakers with you? I would do it for Jack, and
welcome, but for no other human being on the face of the earth."
"Will you never like me as well as you do Jack?" he inquires, sadly,
looking at her with eyes so loving, that one would think her own must
catch the infection. But, no; they remain coldly bright, with the cold
brightness of friendship.
"Never."
"Not after ten years?"
"No."
"Nor twenty?"
"No."
"Nor thirty?"
"No, nor a thousand. Cannot you see what a different thing it is? If
one loses a lover one can get a hundred more just as good as, if not
better than, the one lost; but if I were to lose Jack--oh, God! how can
I suggest anything so awful--who could give me another brother?"
"So be it, then, since it must be that I am to play second fiddle all
my life (sighing); but, Essie, you'll promise to write to me every day,
won't you?"
"Certainly not."
"Every second day, then?"
"Certainly not."
"Twice a week, then?"
"Per--haps; if I have anything to say."
"And you'll be sure not to stay beyond the fortnight?"
"That depends. If they are _fine_, and inclined to 'country cousin' me,
I shall probably be back the day after to-morrow: if they make a great
fuss with me, and if Mr. Gerard is young and handsome and civil-spoken,
I dare say you will not see me again under two months."
He looks so sincerely pained that her conscience smites her.
"There," she says, "I have teased you enough for one day; let us kiss
and make friends,--that is, figuratively. Come," putting out her hand
to draw him along with her, "let us go to the kitchen garden and see if
the wasps have left us any apricots. If Bessy were here, she would tell
us some pleasing anecdote of how some people went and picked apricots
on the Sabbath, and got stung in the throat and swelled, and died in
great agonies; but I'm willing to run the risk if you are."
* * * * *
Nine o'clock! The maid-servants are at evening church, combining the
double advantage of _making their souls_ and meeting their sweethearts.
Esther, happily rid of hers, is sitting on the ground at the French
window of the study, beside her brother. The rooks that blackened the
meadow awhile ago have flapped heavily home to the mile-off rookery. It
is such a great, still world; who would fancy that there were so many
noisy men, barking dogs, snorting steam-engines in it? It seems a world
of stars and flowers, as one would imagine it after reading one of Mrs.
Heman's poems.
Jack is smoking; now and then Esther takes the pipe out of his mouth,
gives a little puff, coughs and chokes, and puts it back again. Oh,
blessed state of intimacy, when you may sit by a person for hours and
never utter to them! Esther is thinking what a pretty, pleasant Idyllic
life hers is; like an Arcadian shepherdess's in this lovely valley,
far away from smoky towns and vulgar cares and sordid toils. Young and
beautiful (what pretty woman is mock-modest to her own thoughts?),
living with a brother who is to her what father, mother, brothers,
sisters, husband, children, are to other women; a brother who is only
three years older than herself, consequently not likely to die much
before her. She is thinking, a little regretfully, that, fair and
poetic as this life is, it is passing, and that as it passes she does
not feel its beauty as acutely as she ought--does not suck out all its
sweetness, as a man swallows a delicious draught hastily, carelessly,
without tasting and dwelling upon its rare flavour. It is the same
_sort_ of thought (only much weaker) as those that torment us as we sit
alone by the hearth mourning our dead, and reproach ourselves, with a
yearning pain, that while they were yet with us we did not draw our
chairs half close enough to theirs--did not take hold of their hands
and kiss their faces half often enough--did not half often enough tell
them, with eager lips, how preciouser than life they were to us.
"What will you be doing this time to-morrow, Essie?" asks Jack,
breaking in upon her reverie; and has not he a right, for is not he
king and hero of it?
"Wishing myself back again, to a dead certainty," answers Essie,
emphatically. "Jack" (rubbing her cheek up and down softly against his
shoulder--Jack is but a young, slight stripling), "I do believe that if
I were in heaven, and saw you sitting all alone here smoking your pipe,
I should have to throw away my harp and crown, and come down to keep
you company."
"If you were in heaven," returns Jack, gravely, "I think you would be
so surprised and pleased to find yourself there that you would be in no
hurry to come out again for me or anybody else."
"Perhaps so, but I think not," she answers, sighing, and thrusting her
arm gently through his.
"Have you got any money, Essie?"
"Plenty."
"How much?"
"Plenty."
"But how much?"
"Never you mind."
"But I do mind."
"Enough to take me there and bring me back again, and I don't suppose
they'll charge me for board and lodging."
"Servants at those sort of swell places expect such a lot of tipping,"
says Jack, pensively, knocking the ash out of his pipe.
"They may expect, then; a little disappointment is very wholesome for
us all. They are much better able to tip me than I them."
"There are sure to be charity sermons, too," continues the boy, with a
forethought worthy of riper years. "I don't know how it is, but I never
went to a strange place in my life without there being a collection for
the Kaffirs or the Jews or the Additional Curates or something the very
first Sunday after I got there."
"I would pretend I had forgotten my purse."
Jack puts his pipe in his pocket, rises, retires into his sanctum,
lights a candle, rummages in a drawer, and presently returns with a
five-pound note. Bank notes grew but in scanty crops at Glan-yr-Afon.
"Here, Essie."
"No! _no!_ NO!" cries Essie, volubly, jumping up and clasping her hands
behind her back.
"Yes! _yes!_ YES!"
"No! no! You won't have enough money to pay the men on Saturday night."
"Talk about what you understand," says Jack, gruffly. "Do you think I'm
going to let my sister go about like a beggar and whine for halfpence?"
"Oh, Jack, Jack!" throwing herself about his neck, and burying her face
in his sunburnt throat. "How bitter it is always to take, and never to
give! Oh! if I had but something to give you; but you know I have got
nothing in the world."
"You have got Bob."
"Ah! so I have" (making a little grimace); "and if he would do you any
good, you might have him, and welcome, to make mincemeat of, if you
liked."