The weekly clearance of mundane books has been made at Plas Berwyn; the
skimp drab gowns, and the ill-made frock coat, whose flaps lap over one
another so painfully behind, have been endured by the Misses Brandon
and their brother respectively. At church has been all the Brandon
household: son and daughters, man-servant and maid-servant, ox and
sheep, camel and ass. I need hardly say that the last quartette have
been introduced merely for the sake of euphony, and to give a fuller
rhythm to the close of the sentence. The Misses Brandon always stand
as stiff as pokers during the creed, with their backs to the altar. It
amuses them, and it does not do anybody else any harm, so why should
not they, poor women? Bob truckles to the Scarlet Woman; he bows, and
turns his honest, serious face to the east. The service is in Welsh,
of which he does not understand a word. He can pick his way pretty
well through the prayers, however, by the help of a Welsh and English
prayer book. There are several landmarks that he knows, whose friendly
faces beam upon him now and again when he is beginning to flounder
hopelessly among uncouth words of seven consonants and a vowel. These
are his chief finger-posts: "Gogoniant ir Tad, ac ir Mab, ac ir Yspryd
Glan;" that is, "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the
Holy Ghost." "Gwared ni, Arglywd daionus!" "Good Lord, deliver us!" "Na
Ladratta!" "Thou shalt not steal!"
Jack Craven has been to church too, and has, as he always does, been
reading the inscriptions on the coffin-plates, nailed up, Welsh
fashion, against the dilapidated, whitewashed walls, in lieu of
monumental tablets. Esther has also been to church; has been in state
in a great, close carriage, in company with Sir Thomas, Miladi, and
Miss Blessington. Sir Thomas has been storming the whole way about a
gap he detected in a hedge that they passed, through which some cattle
have broken, so that they all arrive at the church door in that calmly
devout state of quietude which is the fittest frame of mind for the
reception of Divine truth.
The Gerard pew in Felton church is as large as a moderate-sized room,
and is furnished with arm-chairs and a fire-place. In winter, Sir
Thomas spends fully half the service time in poking the fire noisily
and raking out the ashes. There is no fire now, and he misses it. A
high red curtain runs round the sacred enclosure, and through it the
farmers' wives and daughters strain their eyes to catch a glimpse of
Miladi's marabout feathers, and Miss Blessington's big, golden chignon,
and little green aerophane bonnet. St. John generally pulls the brass
rings of his bit of curtain aside along the brass rods, to make a
peep-hole for himself over the congregation. The shape and size of the
pew do away with the necessity for any wearisome conformity of attitude
among the inmates. During the prayers, Sir Thomas stands bolt upright,
with one bent knee resting on his chair; his bristling grey head,
shaggy brows, and fierce spectacles looming above the red curtain, to
the admiration and terror of the row of little charity girls beneath.
Constance kneels forward on a hassock, with a large, ivory prayer
book, gold-crossed, red-edged, in one hand, and a turquoise and
gold-topped double scent-bottle and cobweb cambric handkerchief in the
other. She confesses in confidence to her pale lavender gloves that she
has done that which she ought not to have done, and has left undone
that which she ought to have done; making graceful little salaams and
undulations of head and body every two minutes. Miladi confesses that
she has gone to sleep. St. John makes no pretence of kneeling at all:
he leans, elbow on knee and head on hand, and looks broken-hearted, as
men have a way of doing in church.
In the afternoon, no one at Felton thinks of attending Divine service.
It is a fiat of Sir Thomas's that no carriage, horses, or servants are
to be taken out more than once a day, and the two miles' walk is an
insuperable impediment to Lady Gerard, and hardly less so to Constance.
After luncheon the three ladies are sitting in the garden, with the
prospect of four unbroken hours of each other's companionship before
them. Masses of calceolarias, geraniums, lobelias, are flaring and
flaunting around them--masses in which the perverted eye of modern
horticulture sees its ideal of beauty. Nature, in her gardening, never
plants great, gaudy squares and ovals and rounds of red and blue and
yellow, without many shades of tenderest grey and green to soften and
relieve them. Across the grass St. John comes lounging; his Sunday
frock coat sitting creaseless to his spare, sinewy figure. Esther
hates the sight of that coat: it reminds her so painfully, by its very
unlikeness, of the singular garment that forms the head and crown of
her betrothed's scant wardrobe.
"Do you know, I have half a mind to go to Radley church this afternoon.
Will any one come with me?--will you, Conny?" turning, mindful of last
night, with a conciliatory smile to Miss Blessington.
"How far is it?" she asks, indolently, divided between her hatred
of walking and her desire to frustrate the _tête-à-tête_ she sees
impending between St. John and Esther.
"Three or four miles; four, I suppose."
She lifts her large blue eyes languidly, "Four miles there, and four
miles back! Are you mad, St. John? What do you suppose one is made of?"
"Will _you_ take pity on me then, Miss Craven?" turning eagerly to
Esther.
She tilts her hat low down over her little, straight, Greek nose, looks
up at him with shy coquetry under the brim, but answers not.
"A man who delights in solitude must be either a wild beast or a god,
don't you know? I have no pretence to be either: I hate my own society
cordially. Come" (with a persuasive ring in his pleasant voice); "you
had much better."
"Don't be so absurd, St. John!" cries Miss Blessington, pettishly.
"Miss Craven would far rather be left in peace."
"Would you?" (appealing to her.)
"No--o; that is--I mean--I think I should like the walk, if I may. May
I, Lady Gerard? do you mind?" (turning sweet red cheeks and quick eyes
towards her hostess.)
"I, my dear! Why should I mind?" responds Miladi, leaning back and
fanning herself with a large fan (I believe that fat women often suffer
a foretaste of the torments of the damned in the matter of heat)--"so
as you don't ask me to go with you (with a fat smile). And, St. John,
be sure that you are back in time for dinner, there's a good boy! You
know what a fuss Sir Thomas is always in on Sunday evening?"
"I know that Sir Thomas is digging his grave with his teeth as fast as
he can," answers St. John disrespectfully.
"Shall not we be rather late for church if we have four miles to go?"
asks Esther, as she steps out briskly beside her companion, while heart
and conscience keep up a quarrelsome dialogue within her.
"It is not four miles; it is only three."
"You told Miss Blessington four?"
"So I did; but I drew for the extra mile upon the rich stores of my
imagination."
"Why did you?" she asks, turning a wondering rosy face set in the frame
of a minute white bonnet towards him.
"Did you ever hear of the invitations that the Chinese give one
another?" he asks, laughing, and switching off a fern-head with a baby
umbrella--"which, however pressing they may be, are always expected
by the giver to be declined. My invitation to Conny was a Chinese
one: I was not quite sure that she would understand it as such, and I
was so afraid that she would yield to my importunities, that I had to
embroider a little in the matter of distance; do you see?"
There has been rain in the morning; now the clouds have rent themselves
asunder, and broken up into great glistering rocks, peaks, and spires,
such as no fuller on earth could white:
"Blue isles of heaven laugh between."
The breeze comes more freshly over the wet grasses and flowers, and
blows in little fickle puffs against St. John's bronzed cheeks and
Esther's carnation ones. The girl's heart is pulsing with a keen, sharp
joy; all the keener, as the heaven's blue is deeper for the clouds that
hover about it.
"I shall have him all to myself for three hours," she is saying
inwardly; "he will speak to no one but me; he will hear no one else's
voice (she forgets the parson and the clerk). Surely Bob may spare me
these three hours, and just a few more, out of the great long life
during which I shall tramp-tramp at his side! Three hours:
"Then let come what come may
No matter if I go mad,
I shall have had my day."
"Let me carry your prayer book?"
"No, thanks; it is not heavy" (retaining it, mindful of a certain
inscription in the fly-leaf).
"I am like a retriever; I like to have something to carry" (taking it
from her with gentle violence).
"'_Esther Craven_ from _Robert Brandon_.' Who _is_ Robert Brandon when
he is at home?" (speaking rather shortly.)
Esther's heart leaps into her mouth. Shall she tell him _now_, this
minute, without giving herself time for second thoughts, which are
not by any means always best? Shall she lift off the weight of
compunction, anxiety, shame, that has been pressing upon her for the
last fortnight?--let it fall down, as the dead albatross fell from the
Ancient Mariner's neck--
"Like lead into the sea?"
The subject has introduced itself naturally, easily, without any of the
dragging in by the head and shoulders of the officiously-volunteered
confessions that she had salved her conscience by deprecating.
Shall she, with strong, brave hand, push away all hope of the fine
house and the broad lands, of the carriages and horses, the roses
and pine-apples, the down pillows and fragrances of life? Shall she
courageously, nobly, and yet in mere bare duty, turn away from the
fairy prince and return to her hovel and scullionship? Shall she, or
shall she not?
"Who _is_ Robert Brandon?" repeats St. John, rather crossly.
In the second that follows Esther's life destiny is settled. She
refuses the good and chooses the evil. ("He is the man I am engaged
to," that is what she ought to have said.)
"He is in the ----th foot." This is what she does say, blushing till
the tears come into her eyes, turning away her head, and feeling
stabbed through and through with shame.
"An ally of yours?" (quickly.)
"I have known him all my life," she answers, evasively.
"I thought he was a very young child, from this specimen of his
caligraphy," remarks Gerard, superciliously, examining Bob's sprawly,
slanty characters. "He would be none the worse for a few writing
lessons."
Esther is a mean young woman: she feels ashamed of her poor lover, and
his pothooks and hangers, and yet vexed with St. John for sneering at
them.
"It was a fact worth inscribing, I must say," continues he,
ironically--"the making of such a very handsome present," holding the
poor little volume between his lavender kid finger and thumb, and
surveying it with a disparaging smile. "He must have had a great deal
of change out of sixpence, I should think."
"If you have nothing better to do than abuse my property," cries
Esther, impulsively, snatching it out of his hand, "you may give it me
back," looking half disposed to whimper.
"I apologise," responds St. John, gravely. "I did not mean to offend
you; I give you _carte blanche_ to insult mine" (holding out a very
minute Russia leather one). "But may I ask, is Mr. Robert Blandon, or
Brandon, or what's his name, your godfather?"
"No; why?"
"Because I never heard of any one being given a prayer book except
as a wedding present, or by their godfathers and godmothers at their
baptism. As you are not married, I know it could not have been the
first case, and so I concluded it must be the last."
"Robert is not old enough to be my godfather," says Essie, overcoming
by a great effort the repugnance to pronouncing the fateful name:
"he is quite young; a great deal younger than you," she ends, rather
spitefully.
"He might easily be that," replies St. John, coldly. "Once, not so very
many years ago, in whatever company I was, I always was the youngest
present; now, on the contrary, in whatever company I am, I always feel
the eldest present. I don't suppose I always am, but I always feel as
if I were."
"I believe old people have the best of it, after all," says Esther,
recovering a little of her equanimity: "they have certainly fewer
troubles than young ones. I should say that Sir Thomas was decidedly a
happier man than you are."
"A man's happiness is proportioned to the simplicity of his tastes, I
suppose," answers St. John, sardonically. "Sir Thomas's happiness lies
in a nutshell: he has two ruling passions--eating and bullying; he has
a very fair cook to satisfy the one, and my mother always at hand for
the gratification of the other."
"We have all our ruling passions," rejoins Esther, with a light laugh,
"only very often we will not own them. Mine is burnt almonds; what is
yours?"
"Going to church," he replies, in the same tone; "as you may perceive
by the strenuous efforts I have made to get there this afternoon."
Radley church stands on a knoll. Radley parishioners have to go upwards
to be buried--a happy omen, it is to be hoped, for the destination of
their souls. The church has a little grey tower, pretty, old, and
squat, and a peal of bells--these are its claim to distinction--a merry
peal, as people say; but to me it seems that in all the gamut of sad
sounds there is nothing sadder, sorrowfuller, than bells chiming out
sweetly and solemnly across the summer air.
Rung in by the grave music of their invitation, St. John and Esther
enter. Verger or pew-opener is there none, so they slip into the first
of the open sittings that presents itself. The clergyman is young and
energetic: he has rooted up the tall, worm-eaten, oak pews--disfiguring
compromises between cattle-pen and witness-box--has clothed several
"Dear little souls
In nice white stoles,--"
and is trying to teach himself intoning. He produces at present only
prolonged whining groans, but it is a step in the right direction.
Rest is good after exertion, and so Essie thinks. The south wind has
been playing tricks with the dusk riches of her hair. Nature has been
laying on her bistre under the great liquid eyes, and emptying a whole
potful of her rouge on the rose velvet round of her cheeks. She is not
in apple-pie order at all, and yet
"She was most beautiful to see,
Like a lady from a far countree."
If Esther were to murder any one, and her guilt were to be brought home
to her as plainly as the eye of day shines in the sky at noon, judge
and jury would combine to acquit her.
"Blessed be God, who has made beautiful women!" says the Bedouin, and
Gerard echoes the benediction, as he stands with his big lavender thumb
on one side of the hymn book, and her small, lavender thumb on the
other, while the "dear little souls" are singing sweetly and quickly:
"There God for ever sitteth,
Himself of all the Crown;
The Lamb, the Light that shineth,
And goeth never down."
Grand words, that make one feel almost good and almost happy merely to
say them!
There is only one hymn-book in the pew, and St. John is glad of it.
There is something pleasant in the sense of union and partnership,
though it be only a three minutes' partnership in a dog's-eared psalter.
"Is not there some different way of going home?" asks Essie, as they
stand side by side, after service, in the high churchyard, looking
down on the straggling damson trees, the grey smoke spiring northwards
under the south wind's faint blowing, the dark-blue green of the turnip
fields. "I hate going back the same way one came; it shows such a want
of invention!"
"There is another way," answers St. John, scooping out a little plump
green moss from a chink in the wall with the point of his umbrella,
while the parson and the parson's sister, on their homeward way, turn
their heads to look at them--the parson at Esther, the parson's sister
at St. John--Jack at Jill, and Jill at Jack as is the way of the world;
"but it is a good deal longer and a great deal muddier than the one we
came by."
"I like mud," says Essie, gaily, stooping and picking a daisy from a
little child's grave at her feet; "it is my native element; at home we
are up to our knees in mud in winter, and over our ankles in summer."
So they chose the longer and the muddier way. It is its length that is
its recommendation to them both, I think.
Down the village street, past the Loggerheads and the Forge, and along
a long country lane, paved unevenly with round stones after a way
our forefathers in some of the northern counties had of paving, in
imperfect prophetic vision of MacAdam. To-day no broad waggon-wheel
groans, nor hoofed foot clatters along; only a few cottagers
and smart-bonneted servant girls trudge along to the Primitive
Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, built A.D. 1789, that stands in simple,
dissenting ugliness at the hill-foot, while over its newly-painted,
gingerbread-coloured door stands this modest announcement: "This is the
Gate of Heaven."
"It strikes me," says St. John, rousing himself out of a reverie which
has lasted a quarter of an hour--"it strikes me as one of the few
instances in which one's experience tallies with what one reads in
novels, the awkward knack people have of interrupting one at the wrong
moment."
"How do you mean?" asks Essie, coming out of a reverie, too.
"I never," pursues he, taking off his hat, and passing his hand over
the broad red mark it has made on his forehead--"I never read aloud to
any one in my life--I was rather fond of reading poetry at one period
of my history, I leave you to guess which--not that she cared about
it--she did not know Milton from Tommy Moore; but I never read to her
in the course of my life without the footman coming in to put coals on
at the most affecting passages--Arthur's parting from Guinevere, say,
or Medora's death--and clattering down the tongs and shovel, making the
devil's own row."
Esther laughs.
"These reflections are _à propos_ of--what?"
"Of Conny's most ill-timed entry last night," he answers, with energy.
"I don't suppose she makes such a midnight raid once in five years, and
she certainly could not have found you and me _tête-à-tête_ at two
in the morning more than once in fifty years. Why could not she leave
us in peace that once? We did not grudge her any amount of pleasant
dreams; why need she grudge us our pleasant wakefulness?"
"Do you think she came on purpose, then?" asks Essie, her eyes opening
as round in alarmed surprise as a baby's when a grown-up person makes
ugly faces at it.
He shrugs his shoulders slightly. "Cannot say, I'm sure. Conny is
not much in the habit of burning the midnight oil in the pursuit of
knowledge generally. If it _was_ accident, she came in at a wonderfully
_à propos_, or rather _mal à propos_, moment. Tell me," he says,
crossing over to her side of the road, and fixing frankly-asking eyes
upon her; "I may be mistaken--it is a misfortune to which I am often
incident--but I could not help thinking that, just as that unlucky
candle appeared round the corner last night, you were going to tell me
something--something about yourself? I thought I saw it in your face. I
think I deserved some little reward for raking up for your behoof the
ashes of that old fire that I burnt my fingers at so badly once."
Esther still remains silent, but turns her long neck from one side to
the other with a restless, uneasy motion.
"Are lamplight and the small hours indispensable accessories?" he asks,
with gentle pleading in look and words--"or could not you tell me as
well now?"
"Tell you what?" she says, turning round sharp upon him, and snapping,
as a little cross dog snaps at the heels of the passer-by--"must I
invent something?"
"Are you sure that it is _necessary_ to invent?" he asks, scanning the
fair, troubled face with searching gaze.
She pulls a bunch of nuts out of the hedge from among their
rough-ribbed green leaves, and begins to pick them out of their
sheath. "What am I to tell you?" she says, petulantly, a suspicion that
he may have heard a rumour of her engagement crossing her mind: "that
I live in an old farmhouse with my brother Jack, and that we are very
hard up--you know already; that 'Su dry da chi' is Welsh for 'How do
you do?' and that our asparagus has answered very badly this year?"
"Of course, I cannot force your confidence," he answers, rather coldly.
"Why do you insist upon my having something to confide? What reason
have you for supposing that I have?" she cries, with increased
irritation.
"None whatever, but what you yourself have given me!"
"_I!_"
"Yes, _you;_ not your words, but your face now and then. Don't think me
impertinent. You know what unhappy reason I have had to be suspicious.
But tell me" (trying his best to get a look round the corner into the
averted, perturbed face of his companion)--"tell me whether there is
not something between you and--and--that fellow that gave you the
prayer-book?"
Esther's heart gives one great bounding throb; the thin muslin of her
dress but poorly conceals its hard, quick pulsings.
One more chance for her! Fate generally gives us two or three chances
before it allows us to consign ourselves irrecoverably to the dogs. One
more choice between loyalty and disloyalty--a plain question, to be
answered plainly, unequivocally--Yes or No; Robert or St. John. The man
whose conversation bores her, whose proximity and whose gaze leave her
colder than snow on an alp's high top an hour before sunrise, and with
whom she has promised to live till death do them part; or the man, no
whit better or handsomer, whose coming, felt, though unseen, makes her
whole frame vibrate, as a harp's strings vibrate under the player's
hands--beneath whose eyes hers sink down bashful, yet passionate--the
man whom, after this week, she must see never again until death do them
unite. Woman-like, she tries to avoid the alternative.
"What is that to you?" she retorts, abruptly, endeavouring to be
playful, and succeeding only in being rude.
"Nothing whatever," he replies, flushing angrily; and then they walk on
for some distance in silence.
"Are you angry?" asks Esther, presently, with a smile, half saucy, half
frightened.
"_I?_ not in the least," he replies, with an air of ostentatious
indifference, but with a complexion undoubtedly florider than nature
made his.
"You look excessively cross, and have not uttered a word for the last
half mile," she says, pouting out her full red under-lip, and then
looking (a little alarmed at her own audacity) to see in what spirit he
takes her impertinence.
"When I do not get civil answers to civil questions, I think it best to
hold my tongue," he says, stalking along with his head up, and hitting
viciously with his umbrella at the tall, yellow mulleins in the hedge.
"People's ideas differ as to what _are_ civil questions," says Essie,
trying to stalk too, and to elevate nose and chin in emulation of his.
"Suppose that I had asked you how many times you had been refused,
would you have answered me?"
"Undoubtedly I should," he replies, gravely.
"How many times have you?" she asks, coming down from her elevation of
offended dignity with a jump, and looking up at him with naïve, eager
curiosity.
"Questions should be answered in the order of priority in which they
are asked," he replies, with a smile of amusement at her simplicity,
but with a good deal of dissatisfied doubt underlying the smile.
"Answer my question, and I'll answer yours."
Esther turns away, and passes her hand along the hedge, catching idly
at any grasses or flowers that come in her way, to the great detriment
of her Sunday gloves. His anxiety overcomes his hurt pride.
"Give me an answer one way or another," he says, breathing rather
short. "Is there not something between you and him?"
Esther is silent. "No" is a plain downright lie, at which conscience
demurs, and "Yes" a cannon-ball that will knock her away from St.
John's side out into the drear, great world for ever.
"For God's sake answer me!" he says again, in great agitation at a
dumbness that seems to him ominous.
Hearing the sharp pain and angry fear in his voice, she hesitates no
longer. Lie or no lie, she takes the plunge.
"Nothing!" she says, faintly, turning first milk-white, then red as a
rose in her burning prime.
"Why do you turn away your face? Are you quite certain?" he asks,
quickly, only half convinced by her weak negation.
"Certain," she replies, indistinctly, as if just able to echo his
words, but not to frame any of her own.
"Why do you stammer and blush, then, whenever his name is mentioned?"
he asks, with jealous impatience.
"I won't stand being catechised in this way," she cries, blazing out
angrily, and stopping short, while sparks of fire, half quenched in
tears of vexation, dart from the splendid night of her eyes. "I have
answered a question which you ought never to have asked; you must be
a person of very little observation," she continues, sharply, "not to
have discovered during the three weeks that I have been with you that I
blush at everything and nothing; I should be as likely as not to blush
when Sir Thomas's name was mentioned, or--or----"
"Or mine," suggests St. John, ironically; "put it as strongly as you
can."
"Or yours, if you like," she answers, hardily, but crimsoning painfully
meanwhile in confirmation of her words.
At a little distance farther on, their path forsakes the road and leads
across a line of grass fields. St. John crosses the first stile, and
waits politely on the other side to help Esther over.
"No, no!" she cries, petulantly, withdrawing her foot from the first
rung--"I hate being helped over stiles. Go on, please."
He obeys, and walks on. Her dignity does not allow her to hurry her
pace to overtake him, nor does his permit him to slacken his steps till
she come up with him; and they walk on in single file, goose-fashion,
through two fields and a half.
Dividing and watering the third field, as the four ancient rivers
divided and watered the rose gardens and asphodel fields of Paradise, a
little beck, with many turns and bends and doublings back upon itself,
strays babbling, like a silver ribbon twisted among the meadow's green
hair. It is not like the Welsh brooks, fretful and brawling, making
little waterfalls and whirlpools and eddies over and about every
water-worn stone; smoothly it flows on, as a holy, eventless life
flows towards the broad sea whose tides wash the shores of Time. In
dry weather it is slow-paced enough, and crystal clear; now the late
heavy rains have quickened its current, and rolled it along, turbid and
muddy. Even though swollen, however, it is still but a narrow thread,
and St. John clears it at a jump.
"Shall I go on still?" he asks, with a malicious smile from the other
side, addressing Esther, who stands looking down rather ruefully at
the quick, brown water at her feet.
"I believe you knew of this, and brought me here on purpose to make a
fool of me," she cries, reproachfully.
"I did nothing of the kind," he answers, quietly. "Last time I was here
there was a plank thrown across; but you see the stream has been higher
than it is now" (pointing to the drenched grass and little deposit of
sticks and leaves on the bank), "and has probably carried it away."
"How _am_ I to get over?" she asks, hopelessly, with a look of childish
distress on her face.
"I'll carry you," he answers, springing back to her side; "the brook
is shallower farther down; I can lift you over with the greatest ease
imaginable."
"_That_ you shan't!" answers Esther, civilly turning her back upon him.
"May I ask why?" he asks, coolly. "After the number of times I have
carried you up and down stairs at Felton, you can hardly be afraid of
my letting you fall?"
"The very fact of my having already had so many obligations to you
makes me resolved not to add to their number," she replies, stiffly,
with an effort to look dignified, which her laughing, _débonnaire_,
seductive style of beauty renders peculiarly unsuccessful.
"If you can suggest any better plan, I shall be delighted to assist you
in carrying it out," rejoins he, smothering a smile.
"I'll jump!" she says, desperately, eyeing meanwhile the hurrying
stream and space between bank and bank with calculating look.
"You cannot," he cries, hastily; "you'll get a ducking as sure as I
stand here. Don't be so silly!"
The word "silly" acts as a whip and spur to Essie's flagging courage.
She retreats a few yards from the edge, in order to get a little run
to give her a better spring.
"As headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile!" remarks
Gerard, resignedly, quoting Mrs. Malaprop and folding his arms.
Neither the preparatory run, nor the tremendous bound she takes,
avail to save Miss Craven from the fate which her obstinacy and the
comparative shortness of her legs render unavoidable. She jumps short,
and falls forward on the wet bank; her lavender kid gloves digging
convulsively into it, and her legs disporting themselves fish-like in
the brook.
He is at her side in an instant, raises gently and lifts her on to
the grass, unmindful of the pollution caused to his coat by the muddy
contact.
"What a fool I was!" she cries, passionately, sinking down among a
grove of huge burdock leaves, smothered in shame and angry blushes.
St. John thinks it rude to disagree with her, so holds his peace.
"Why don't you laugh at me? why don't you jeer me?" she continues,
vehemently; "why don't you tell me you are very glad of it, and that I
richly deserve it, as I see you are longing to do? Anything would be
better than standing there like a stock or a stone!"
"It is not of much consequence how I stand or how I look," he replies,
coldly. "It would be more to the purpose to know how you are to get
home!"
"I will walk as I am," she cries impulsively, springing to her feet;
"it will be a fit penance for my idiocy, and you shall go on ahead. I
don't want you to be disgraced by being seen in company with such an
object."
"That is very probable, isn't it?" he answers, laughing
good-humouredly. "No, I have a better proposition than that, I think.
It has just occurred to me that an old servant of ours lives at no
great distance from here, her cottage is not more than three or four
fields off. If you can manage to get there she would dry your clothes
for you in a minute."
Rendered docile by her late disaster, feeling very small, and hanging
her head, Esther acquiesces. Her gown, from which every particle of
starch or stiffness has fled, clings to her limbs and defines their
form; the water drips down from her in a thousand little spouts and
rivulets: bang, bang, go her soaked petticoats against her ankles at
every step she takes.
"You have had almost enough of taking me out to walk, I expect," she
remarks presently, rather grimly.
"You have had almost enough of jumping brooks, I expect," he retorts,
drily; and then they walk on in silence till they reach a little
whitewashed cottage, with its slip of potato ground and plot of pinks
and marigolds and lark-spurs--an oasis of tilled ground among the
wilderness of pasturage.
St. John knocks at the half-open door and puts his head in. "Are you at
home, Mrs. Brown? How are you?" says he, in that frank, friendly voice
that goes far to make the Felton tenants wish that Sir St. John reigned
in Sir Thomas's stead.
"Quite well, thank you, Mr. St. John; I hope I see you the same,"
replies the person addressed, coming to the door with a jolly red face
and a voluminous widow's cap that contradict one another; "it's a long
time since we've seen you come our way."
"So it is, Mrs. Brown; but, you see, I have been after the partridges."
"And Sir Thomas, I hope he keeps pretty well, Mr. St. John?"
"Yes, thanks."
"And Miladi, I hope she has her health."
"Yes, thanks."
"And Miss Bl----?"
"Yes, thanks," interrupts St. John, rather impatiently, breaking
through the thread of her interrogatories. "Do you see, Mrs. Brown,
that this young lady has met with an accident: she has tumbled into the
brook. Do you think you could let her dry herself at your fire a bit?"
"Eh dear, Miss, you _are_ in a mess!" ejaculates Mrs. Brown, walking
round Esther, and surveying her curiously, as she stands close behind
Gerard, dripping still, with a hang-dog air and chattering teeth. "Why,
you have not a dry stitch upon you; you are one _mask_ of mud! Would
you please to step in?"
Mrs. Brown and Essie retire into an inner chamber for the purpose of
removing the wet clothes and replacing them temporarily with some of
the contents of Mrs. Brown's wardrobe.
St. John remains in the outer room, looks at the clock, behind whose
dial-plate a round china-moon-face peeps out; takes up the mugs on the
dresser: "For a Good Boy," "A Keepsake from Melford," "A Present from
Manchester," hiding amongst numberless gilt flourishes; chivies the
tabby cat; counts the flitches of bacon hanging from the rafters; walks
to the door, and watches the bees crawling in and out of the low door
of their straw houses, and the maroon velvet nasturtiums trailing along
the borders, and lifting their round leaves and dark faces up to the
knees of the standard rose.
As he so stands, whistling softly and musing, some one joins him
in the doorway. He turns and beholds Esther, bashful, shame-faced,
metamorphosed. To Mrs. Brown's surprise, she has declined the
magnanimous offer of her best black silk. There is nothing coquettish
or picturesque, as she is aware, about an ill-made dress that tries
to follow the fashion and fails--destined, too, for a woman treble her
size. She has chosen in preference, a short, dark, linsey petticoat
and lilac cotton bedgown, which, by its looseness, can adapt itself to
the round slenderness of her tall, lissom figure. Her bonnet was not
included in the ruin of her other garments, but she has taken it off,
as destructive to the harmony of her costume.
St. John surveys her for some moments: looks upward from petticoat
to bedgown, and downward from bedgown to petticoat, but observes a
discreet silence.
"Does it become me?" she asks at last, with shy vanity. "Why do not you
say something?"
"I have been so unlucky in two or three of my remarks lately," replies
he, with a concluding glance at the round, bare arms that emerge
whitely from the short cotton sleeves, "that I have become chary of
making any more."
"You need not be afraid of offending me by telling me that it is
unbecoming," she says, gravely--"quite the contrary!"--she continues
rather discontentedly--"think that it suits me _too well_, as if it
were a dress that I ought to have been born to. Upon Miss Blessington
now such a costume would look utterly incongruous."
St. John bursts out laughing. "A goddess in a bedgown! Diana of the
Ephesians in a linsey petticoat! Perish the thought!"
Esther looks mortified, and turns away.
The cleansing of Miss Craven's garments is a lengthy operation. Mrs.
Brown retreats into her back kitchen, draws forward a washtub, kneels
down beside it, turns up her sleeves, and with much splashing of hot
water and s lathering of soap, rubs and scrubs, wrings out, dries, and
irons the luckless gown and petticoat.
It is latish and duskish by the time that St. John and his companion
set out on their homeward way. Two or three starflowers have already
stolen out, and are blossoming, infinitely distant, in the meadows of
the sky. They are not loquacious: it is the little shallow rivulet that
brawls; the great deep river runs still. Silently they walk along; her
little feet trip softly through the rustling grass beside him: the
evening wind blows her light garments against him. He has taken her
little gloveless hand as he helps her over a stile (adversity has made
her abject, and she no longer spurns his assistance), and now retains
it, half absently. Bare palm to bare palm, they saunter through the
rich, dim land. It is dusk, but not so dusk but that they can see their
dark eyes flashing into one another: sharp, stinging pleasure shoots
along their young, full veins. The vocabularies of pain and of delight
are so meagre, that each has to borrow from the other to express its
own highest height and deepest depth. As they pass along a lane, whose
high grass banks and overgrown hawthorn hedges make the coming night
already come, Esther's foot stumbles over a stone. The next moment she
is in his arms, and he is kissing her repeatedly.
"Esther, will you marry me?" he asks, in a passionate whisper,
forgetting to make any graceful periphrasis to explain his meaning,
using the plain words as they rise in his heart.
No answer. Emotions as complicated as intense check the passage of
her voice. Even here, on this highest pinnacle of bliss--pinnacle so
high that she had hardly dared hope ever to climb there--the thought
of Bob and his despair flashes before her: her own remarks about the
senselessness of kissing--about its being a custom suited only to
savages, and her own great aversion to it--recur to her with a stab of
remorse.
"You won't?" cries St. John, mistaking the cause of her silence, in a
voice in which extreme surprise and profound alarm and pain are mixed
in equal quantities.
Still no answer.
"If you have been making a fool of me all this time, you might, at
least, have the civility to tell me so," he says, in a voice so sternly
cold that remorse, coyness, and all other feelings merge into womanish
fear.
"Don't blame me before I deserve it," she says, with a faint smile. "I
will mar----"
She finishes her sentence on his breast.
Perfect happiness never lasts more than two seconds in this world; at
the end of that time St. John's doubts return. He puts her a little way
from him, that she may be a freer agent. "Esther," he says, "I half
believe that you said 'yes' out of sheer fright; you thought I was
going to upbraid you; and I am aware" (with a half smile) "that there
are few things you would not do or leave undone to avoid a scolding;
you did not say it readily, as if you were glad of it. I know that you
have only known me three weeks, that I am not particularly likeable,
especially by women, and that I always show to the worst possible
advantage at home. All I beg of you is, tell me the truth: Do you like
me, or do you not?"
"I do like you."
"Like is such a comprehensive word," he says, with a slight, impatient
contracting of his straight brows. "You _like_ Mrs. Brown, I suppose,
for washing your clothes?"
"I like you better than Mrs. Brown."
"I did not doubt that," he answers, laughing; "probably you like me
better than Sir Thomas, than my mother, than Constance, perhaps; but
such liking as that I would not stoop to pick off the ground. I must be
first or nowhere. Am I first?"
"No, you are not," she answers firmly.
His countenance falls, as Cain's did.
"I am not!" he repeats, in a constrained voice. "Who is then, may I
ask?"
"Jack, my brother--he is, and always will be!"
"Bah!" cries Gerard, laughing, and looking immensely relieved. "How you
frightened me! I believe you did it on purpose, as you said to me about
the brook this afternoon. After him, am I first?"
"Yes."
"Before----what's his name?--the fellow that writes such a remarkably
good hand--before Brandon?"
"Why do you always worry me about him?" she exclaims, angrily, turning
away.
"Why do you so strongly resent being worried about him?" retorts St.
John suspiciously.
"It is wearisome to hear a person always harping on one string," she
answers coldly. "Believe me or not, as you choose; but please spare me
the trouble of these repeated and useless asseverations."
"I beg your pardon!" he says, his countenance clearing, and passing his
arm round her half-shrinking, half-yielding form. "I will never dig him
up as long as I live. Peace to his ashes! Oh darling!" he continues,
his voice changing to an emphatic, eager, impassioned key--"I have been
so little used to having things go as I wish, that I can hardly believe
it is I that am standing here. Pinch me, that I may be sure that I am
awake! Oh Esther! is it really true? Can you possibly be fond of me? So
few people are! Not a soul in the wide world, I do believe, except my
old mother. The girl that I told you about last night lay in my arms,
and let me kiss her as you are doing; she kissed me back again, as
you do not do; I looked into her eyes, and they seemed true as truth
itself, and all the while she was _lying_ to me: my very touch must
have been hateful to her, as it is to you, perhaps?"
"You are always referring to that--that _person_," says Esther, lifting
great jealous eyes, and a mouth like a ripe cleft cherry, through the
misty twilight towards him. "I perceive that I am only a _pis aller_
after all. If you had ceased to care for her, you would have forgiven
her long ago, and have given up measuring everybody else by her
standard."
"I have forgiven her fully and freely," he answers, magnanimously, and
standing heart to heart with a woman
".........fairer than the evening air,
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky,
In wanton Arethusa's azured arms."
He may afford to be magnanimous. "I not only forgive her, but hale down
blessings on her own and her plunger's ugly head. To be candid," he
ends, laughing, "I forgave her a year ago, when I met her at Brainton
Station, grown fat, with a red nose, and a tribe of squinting children,
who, but for the finger of Providence interposing, might have been
mine."
Speaking, he lays his lips upon the blossom of her sweet red mouth; but
she, pricked with the sudden smart of recollected treachery, draws away
from him.
"Come," she says, with a slight shiver, "let us go home. We shall get
into dreadful disgrace as it is; what will Sir Thomas say?"
"I can tell you beforehand," says St. John, gaily; "he will say,
with his usual charming candour, that, if we ask his opinion, we are
a couple of fools to go gadding about to strange churches just to
see a parcel of lighted candles and squeaking little boys and popish
mummeries; that, for his part, he has stuck to his parish church for
the last fifty years, and means to do so to the end of the chapter; and
that, if we don't choose to conform to the rules of his house, &c."
"Does he always say the same?" asks Esther, smiling.
"Always. A long and affectionate study of his character has enabled
me to predicate with exactness what he will say on any great subject,
Esther."
"How do you know that my name is Esther?" she asks naïvely. "You have
never heard any one call me so."
"Do you forget the flyleaf of the Prayer-book that----Hang it! I was on
the point of uttering the forbidden name!"
Smiling, he looks for an answering smile from her, but finds none.
"I have heard of you as Esther Craven from my youth up," he continues.
"Before you came we speculated as to what 'Esther' Craven would be
like; it was only when you arrived _in propriá personâ_ that you rose
into the dignity of 'Miss' Craven."
"I hate being called Esther," she says, plaintively, with eyes
down-drooped to the lush-green grasses that bow and make obeisance
beneath her quick feet; "it always makes me feel as if I were in
disgrace. Jack never calls me Esther unless he is vexed with me. Call
me _Essie_, please."
"Essie, then."
"Well?"
"I think it right to warn you" (putting an arm of resolute possession,
bolder than ever poor Brandon's had been, round her supple figure--for
who is there in these grey evening fields to witness the embrace?)--"I
think it right to warn you that I may very possibly grow like Sir
Thomas in time; they tell me that I have a look of him already. I
do not see that myself; but, even if that does come to pass, can you
promise to like me even then?"
"Even then."
"I may very probably d--n the servants, and be upset for a whole
evening if there are lumps in the melted butter; I may very probably
insist on your playing backgammon with me every evening, and insist,
likewise, on your being invariably beaten. Can you bear even that?"
"Even that."
They both laugh; but in Esther's laugh there is a ring of bitterness,
which she herself hears, and wonders that he does not.
As they near the house, they see thin slits of crimson light through
the dining-room shutters. Esther involuntarily quickens her pace.
"Why are you in such a hurry?" he asks, his eyes shining eager with
reproachful passion in the passionless white starlight. "Who knows?
to-morrow we may be dead; to-day we are as gods, knowing good and evil.
This walk has not been to you what it has to me, or you would be in no
haste to end it."
"I don't suppose it has," she answers, half-absently, with a sigh.
He had expected an eager disclaimer, and is disappointed.
"There can be but one explanation of that," he says, angrily.
"If you only knew----," begins Esther, with an uncertain
half-inclination to confess, though late.
"If you are going to tell me anything disagreeable," he says, quickly
putting his hand before her mouth, "stop! Tell me to-morrow, or the day
after, but not now--not now! Let there be one day of my life on which
I may look back and say, as God said when he looked back upon His new
world, 'Behold, it is very good!'"
She is silent.
"And yet, perhaps, it would be better if I knew the end of your
sentence; if I only knew--what?--how little you care about me?"
"You are mistaken," she answers, roused into vehemence. "I love you
so well, that I have grown hateful to myself!" and having spoken thus
oracularly, she raises herself on tiptoe, lifts two shy burning lips
to his, and kisses him voluntarily. Then, amazed at her own audacity,
clothed with shame as with a garment, she tears herself out of his
arms, as in delightful surprise he catches her to his heart, and flies
with frenzied haste into the house.