It has snowed all day; an immense white monotony is over all the land.
The clouds that piled themselves in sulky threatening last night behind
the Welsh hills, and many others like them, have to-day fulfilled their
threats, and have been, through all the daylight hours, emptying their
flaky load on the patient earth. It is as if a huge white bird had
been shaking his pinions somewhere, high up in the air--shaking down
millions of little down feathers. Rain always seems in earnest, snow
in play--with such delicate leisureliness does it saunter down. The
rushing train, that bears Esther to her new distant life, is topped
like any twelfth-night cake; so are the wayside stations; so are the
houses in the smoky towns; so are the men, sparsely walking about on
the country roads; so are the engine drivers and stokers; so are the
sheep in the fields.
Miss Craven has been sitting all day long in the narrow _enceinte_
of a railway carriage, between the two close-shut, snow-blinded
windows--sitting opposite a courteous warrior, who, travelling with all
the luxuriousness which his sex think indispensable, is magnanimous
enough to share his buffalo-robe and foot-warmer with her. A
_tête-à-tête_ of so many consecutive hours with a man would, under any
other circumstances than a railway journey, have produced an intimacy
that would last a life-time; but now, all the result of it is a couple
of bows on the platform at Paddington--a look of interested curiosity
after his late companion's retreating figure, as she hurries herself
and her small properties into a filthy four-wheeler, on the part of
the warrior, and total oblivion on the part of Esther. Since that time
she has traversed London in her dilapidated shambling _growler_, she
has had awful misgiving that the "cabby," with the villany that all
women ascribe to all "cabbies," is purposely taking her in a wrong
direction--is bearing her away to some dark, policeless slum, there to
be robbed and murdered. She has reflected, with cold shivers of terror,
as to what would be the wisest course to pursue, supposing such to be
the case. Should she look silently out of window till she caught sight
of the friendly helmet and tight frock-coat of some delivering "Bobby,"
and then scream? Should she open the door and jump out on the snowy
pavement?
While still undecided, her cab stops, and--all mean back-streets and
sorry short-cuts being safely passed--deposits her and her box, bag,
and umbrella, beneath the Shoreditch lamps and among the Shoreditch
porters. Then an hour's waiting in the crowded general waiting-room,
where all the chairs are occupied by fat men, none of whom make a
movement towards vacating theirs in favour of the slender weary woman,
who, with crape veil thrown back from her sad child-face, is holding
her little numb hands over the fire, trying vainly to bring them back
to life. Then more train; then a three-miles' drive in a fly, up hill
and down dale, along snowy country lanes.
And now her journey is ended: the fly has stopped at the door of
a great, vague, snow-whitened bulk, that she takes upon trust as
Blessington Court. The driver, having rung the bell, now stands
banging his arms, each one against the opposite shoulder, in the rough
endeavour to restore circulation. The servants are too comfortable--the
butler over his mulled port in the housekeeper's room, and the footmen
over their mulled beer in the servants' hall--to be in any hurry to
attend to the summons. At length, after five minutes' waiting, a sound
of withdrawing bolts and turning keys makes itself heard; the heavy
door swings inward, and a footman appears in the aperture, blinking
disgustedly at the snow, which drives full into his eyes. Esther
immediately descends, and enters with the abrupt haste characteristic
of extreme nervousness.
"Will you pay him, please?" she says, with a certain flurry of manner,
to the servant. "I--I don't know how much I ought to give him--how many
miles it is."
While the man complies with her request, she stands in the huge
stone-floored hall, lit only by firelight, shivering with cold and
fear. She peers up at the ceiling--of which, by-the-bye, there is none,
as the hall runs up to the top of the house; at the walls, from which
great life-size figures, dimly naked, glimmer uncomfortably cold.
Anxious doubts assail her as to whether there are any rules of which
she is ignorant for a "companion's" behaviour and deportment; she is
not aware that she has ever seen one of those curious animals hitherto
in the course of her life. Ought they to make a reverence on entering a
room? Ought they to say "Sir" or "Ma'am" to whoever they address? Ought
they to laugh at everybody's jokes?--not sit down unless given leave so
to do, and not speak unless spoken to? So wondering, she tremblingly
follows the footman as he opens the door of an adjoining apartment,
and, announcing "Miss Craven," retires joyfully to the society of his
compeers and his beer.
The apartment in which Esther is thus left stranded is as large as
the hall that she has just quitted. It seems to her oppressively
immense--quite a long walk from the door to the inhabited portion. A
very big roasting fire burns on the hearth: and right in front of it,
in the very glare of its hot red eyes, sits a very old man, doubled
together in an armchair--one hand in his breast, and his aged head sunk
upon it, apparently fast asleep. An old lady, wrapped up in a shawl,
reposes in another easy-chair, with her eyes likewise closed. A lamp
with a green shade burns faintly on a centre table, and beyond lamp and
table sits a third person, hidden by the lamp-shade from Esther's eyes.
"Are they all asleep?" thinks the poor girl, advancing with gentle,
hesitating steps. "They seem to be. How can I wake them?--or would it
be disrespectful?"
While she so speculates, the third person rises and comes forward. "How
do you do, Miss Craven? You must have had a cold journey, I'm afraid?"
says a bland, unforgotten voice.
It is Miss Blessington. In an instant, Esther seems to have jumped back
over the past intervening months--to be just entering on her Felton
visit. There is the same voice greeting her--the same tones of polite
inquiry; the same words almost, except that _then_ it was, "How do you
do, Miss Craven? You must have had a hot journey, I'm afraid?" and now
it is, "How do you do, Miss Craven? You must have had a cold journey,
I'm afraid?"--the same undulating walk; the same effect of lilac
evening clouds. Involuntarily she turns her head and glances towards
the window, half-expecting to see St. John's legs disappearing through
it. Instead, an old woman's voice sounds quavering: "Are you Miss
Craven, my dear? Come here!"
Esther does not hear. "It _was_ rather cold," she says, answering
Constance, in half bewilderment between past and present, her eyes
dazed with the light after her long, dark journey.
"Mrs. Blessington is speaking to you," says Constance, in mild reminder.
Esther turns round quickly. "Oh! I beg your pardon--I did not hear--I
hope I was not rude," she cries, forgetting the "Ma'am" she had
half-purposed employing.
"Who's there?--who's talking?" asks the old man, lifting up his head,
and speaking in a voice tremulous indeed, but with a remnant of the
power and fire that "youth gone out had left in ashes."
No one answers.
"Who's there, Mrs. Blessington?" he repeats, with querulous anger.
"Miss Craven, uncle--the young lady that we expected to-day--don't you
know?" replies Constance, stooping gracefully over him, and putting her
lips as close as possible to his withered ear.
"H'm! Tell her to come and speak to me. I want to see what she is
like," he rejoins, much as if she had not been in the room.
"Go to him, my dear," says the old lady.
"And speak as loud as you can; he is as deaf as a post," adds
Constance, not in the least lowering her voice at the announcement,
in perfect confidence of the truth of her assertion, shrugging her
handsome shoulders as she speaks.
Esther goes trembling, and lays her small cold hand in the long bony
wreck of muscle, vein, and flesh that is stretched out to her. He gazes
at her face with the eager intentness of the purblind.
"What is your name?" he asks abruptly.
"Esther," she answers, faltering.
"Cannot hear a word you say--you mumble so," he says, pettishly.
"Go round to the other side; the other ear is the best," suggests
Constance, calmly.
Esther obeys. "_Esther_," she repeats, speaking unnecessarily loud this
time--at the top of her voice, in fact, out of sheer nervousness.
"You need not scream at me, my dear, as if I were stone deaf. _Esther_
or _Hester_, did you say?"
"Esther."
"And who gave it you, pray?"
"My father and mother, I suppose."
"H'm! Well, you may tell them, with my compliments," he says, with a
senile laugh, "that I think they might have found a prettier name to
give a young lady, and that the old squire says so. The old squire says
so," he repeats, chuckling a little to himself.
"I cannot tell them," answers Esther, half-crying. "They are dead."
"Oh, indeed!"
There his interest in the new comer seems to cease. His white head
sinks back on his breast again, and he relapses into slumber.
Esther has had neither luncheon, dinner, nor tea--a fact which none of
her companions appear to contemplate as possible. _One_ bun has been
her sole support throughout the long bitter day--only _one_, because
all such buns must be bought with Mrs. Brandon's money.
"I daresay you would like to go to bed, dear, you look tired," says
Mrs. Blessington, scanning rather curiously Esther's fagged, woebegone
little face. "Travelling is so much more fatiguing than it used to be
in former days, when one travelled in one's own carriage, whatever they
may say. I remember," she continues, with an old woman's garrulity,
"Mr. Blessington and I travelling from London to York by easy stages of
twenty miles a day, in our own curricle, with outriders. One never sees
a curricle nowadays."
"I _am_ rather tired," the girl answers, with a faint smile, "and
cravingly hungry," she might have added, but does not.
"Ring the bell for James to light the candles."
Weak from inanition, and with limbs cramped by long remaining in
one position, Esther follows Miss Blessington up low flights of
uncarpeted stone stairs, through draughty twisting passages, along a
broad bare gallery, down more passages, and then into a huge gloomy,
mouldy room--frosty, yet cold, despite the fire burning briskly
on the old-fashioned-hobbed grate; a vast dark four-poster, hung
with ginger-coloured moreen; a couch that looks highly suitable for
lying-in-state on; an old-fashioned screen, covered with caricatures of
Fox, Burke, the Regent, and Queen Caroline; and on the walls a highly
valuable and curious tapestry, which waves pleasantly in the bitter
wind that enters freely beneath the ill-fitting old door, giving an air
of galvanic motion and false life to the ill-looking Cupids, green with
age, that play hide-and-seek amongst vases, broken pillars and wormy
blue trees.
"You have plenty of room, you see," says Miss Blessington, with a curve
of her suave lips, as she lights the candles on the dressing-table,
which, instead of being pink petticoated, white-muslined deal, is bare
sturdy oak, with millions of little useless drawers and pigeon-holes in
it.
"Plenty," echoes Esther, rather aghast, surveying her premises with
some dismay.
"You must not be frightened if you hear odd noises; it's only rats,"
says her companion, putting one small white-booted foot on the fender.
"I wish that--that stuff would not sway and shake about so," says
the young girl, pointing nervously with one timid fore-finger to the
tapestry. "Might not some one get behind it very easily and hide, as it
does not seem to be fastened down?"
"Possibly," replies Miss Blessington, indifferently. "I never heard of
such a thing having happened."
"Am I near any one else--tolerably near, I mean?" asks Esther, her
heart sinking.
"Not very."
"Would no one hear me if I screamed?" she inquires, laying her hand
unconsciously on the marble round of her companion's firm white arm,
while her frightened eyes burn upon Constance's impassive face.
"We will hope that you will not make the experiment," she answers, with
a cold smile, and so goes.