OF THE LOVE OF ESTHER AND MIKE, AND
THE MESURIER LAW IN REGARD TO
"SWEETHEARTS"
I'm afraid Esther was little more than fourteen when she had first seen
and fallen in love with Mike. She had heard much of him from her
brother; but, for one reason or another, he had never been to the house.
One evening, however, at a concert, Henry had told her to look in a
certain direction and she would see Mike.
"I don't suppose you'll call him good looking," he said.
So Esther had looked round, and seen the pretty curly red hair and the
eager little wistful humorous face for the first time.
"Why, he's got a lovely little face!" she said, blushing deeply for no
reason at all,--except perhaps that there had seemed something pleading
and shelter-seeking in that little face, something that cried out to be
"mothered," and that instantly there had welled up in her heart a great
warm wish that some day she might be that for it and more.
And at the same instant it had occurred to the boy, that the face thus
turned to him for a moment was the loveliest face he had ever seen, the
only lovely face he would ever care to see. But with that thought, too,
had come a curious pang of hopelessness into his heart. For Esther
Mesurier was one of those girls who are the prizes of men. With all
those pretty tall fellows about her, it was unlikely indeed that she
would care for a little red-headed, face-pulling ragamuffin like him!
And yet if she never could care for him,--never, never at all, what a
lonely place the world would be!
When, after the concert, Henry looked round to introduce Mike to his
sister, he had somehow slipped away and was nowhere to be seen.
However, it was not long after this that Mike paid a visit to Henry's
study one evening, and, coming ostensibly to look at his books, once
more saw his sister, and spoke to her a brief introductory word. His
interest in literature became positively remarkable from this time; and
the enthusiasm with which his actor's mind reflected, and, no doubt in
all good faith, mimicked the various philosophical and literary
enthusiasms of his friend, was, though neither realised it, a sure
earnest of his future. More and more frequent visits to that study
became necessary for its gratification; and, in the course of one of
them, Mike confessed to Henry that he loved his sister, previously
piling upon himself many anticipatory terms of ignominy for daring to do
so presumptuous a thing. Henry, however, was so taken with the idea
that, in his singleness of mind, he suffered no pang of retrospective
suspicion of his friend's love for himself. Pending Esther's
decision,--and of her mind in the matter, he had something more than a
glimmering,--he welcomed Mike with gladness as a prospective
brother-in-law, and, as soon as he found an opportunity, left them alone
together, returning quite a long time afterwards--to find them
extraordinarily happy, it would appear, at his safe return.
Esther and Mike had thus been fortunate enough to get that important
question of a mate settled quite early in life, and to be saved from
those arduous and desolating experiments in being fitted with a heart
which so many less happy people have to go through. But this happy fact
was as yet a secret beyond this strict circle of three; for, strange as
it may sound, the beautiful attraction of a girl for a boy, the
beautiful worship of a boy for a girl, were matters not even mentionable
as yet in the Mesurier household. For a child, particularly a girl,
under twenty to speak of having a "sweetheart" was an offence which had
a strong savour of disgust in it, even for Mrs. Mesurier, broad-minded
as in most matters she was.
So far as the only decent theory of the relations of the sexes was
involuntarily explicit, by virtue of certain explosions on the subject,
it was something like this: That, at a certain age, say twenty-one, or,
for leniency, twenty, as it were on the striking of a clock, the young
girl, who previously had been profoundly and inexpressibly unconscious
that the male being existed, would suddenly sit up wide awake in an
attitude of attention to offers of marriage; and that, similarly, the
young man, who had meanwhile lived with his eyes shut and his senses
asleep, would jump up also at the striking of a clock, and, as it were,
with hilarity, say, "It is high time I chose a wife," and thereupon
begin to look about, among the streets and tennis-parties known to him,
for that impossible paragon,--a wife to satisfy both his parents.
One or two of Henry's earliest troubles and most drastic punishments had
come of a propensity to "sweethearts," developed at an indecorously
early age, and in fact at the time of which I write he could barely
recall the name of Miss This or Miss The Other by the association of
ancient physical pangs suffered for their sake. The greatest danger to
such contraband passions was undoubtedly the post; for, in the Mesurier
household, a more than Russian censorship was exercised over the
incoming and--as far as it could be controlled--the outgoing mail. One
old morning, at family breakfast, which the subsequent events of the
evening were to fix on his mind, Henry Mesurier had grown white with
fear, as the stupid maid had handed him a fat letter addressed in a
sprawling school-girl's hand.
"Who is your letter from, Henry?" asked the father.
Henry blushed and boggled.
"Pass it over to me."
Resistance was worse than useless. As in war-time a woman will see her
husband set up against a wall and shot before her face, as a
conspirator sees the hands of the police close upon papers of the most
terrible secrecy, so did Henry watch that scented little package pass
with a sense of irrevocable loss into the cold hands of his father. The
father opened it, placed a little white enclosure by the side of his
coffee-cup for further inspection, and then read the letter--full of
"darlings" and "for evers"--with the severe attention he would have
given a business letter. Then he handed it across to the mother without
a word, but with the look one doctor gives another in discovering a new
and terrible symptom in a patient on whom they are consulting. While the
mother read, the father opened the little packet, and out rolled a tiny
plait of silky brown hair tied into a loop with a blue ribbon.
"Disgusting!" exclaimed the father and mother, simultaneously, to each
other, as though the boy was not there.
"I am shocked at you, Henry," said the mother.
"I shall certainly write to the forward little girl's parents," said the
father.
"Oh, don't do that, father," exclaimed the boy, in terror, and half
wondering if so sweet a thing could really be so criminal.
"Don't dare to speak to me," said the father. "Leave the
breakfast-table. I will see you again this evening."
Henry knew too well what the verb "to see" signified under the
circumstances, and the day passed in such apprehensive gloom that it was
a positive relief, when evening had at last come, to feel a walking-cane
about him, at once more snaky and more notched than any previously
applied to his stubborn young frame. Not to cry was, of course, a point
of honour; and as the infuriating absence of tears inflamed the
righteous anger of the parent, the stick splintered and broke with a
crash, in which accident Henry learned he was responsible for a
double offence.
"I wouldn't have broken that stick for five pounds," said the father,
his interest suddenly withdrawn from his son; "it was given to me by my
old friend Tarporley," which, as can be imagined, was a mighty
satisfaction to the sad small soul, smarting, not merely from the stick,
but from the sense that life held something stupid in its injustice, in
that he was thus being mauled for the most beautiful exalted feeling
that had ever visited his young heart.
Those dark ages of oppression were long since passed for Henry and
Esther, when Mike began to steal in of an evening to see Esther, and
they were only referred to now and again, anecdotally, as the nineteenth
century looks back at the days of the Holy Inquisition; but still it was
wise to be cautious, for an interdict against Mike's coming to the house
was quite within possibility, even in this comparatively enlightened
epoch; and that would have been even more effective than James
Mesurier's old friend Tarporley's stick of sacred memory.