Esther Helps was certainly neither a prudent nor a careful young woman.
She meant no harm, she would have shuddered at the thought of actual
sin, but she was reckless, a little defiant of all authority, even her
father's most gentle and loving control, and very discontented with her
position in life.
Morning, noon, and night, Esther's dream of dreams, longing of
longings, was to be a lady. She had some little foundation for this
desire. The mother who had died at her birth had been a poor
half-educated little governess, whose mother before her had been a
clergyman's daughter. Esther quickly discovered that she was beautiful,
and her dream of dreams was to marry a gentleman, and so go back to
that station in life where her mother had moved.
Esther had no real instincts of ladyhood. She spoke loudly, her
education had been of a very flashy and superficial order. From the
time she left the fourth-rate boarding-school where her father alone
had the means to place her, she had stayed at home and idled. Idling
was very bad for a character like hers; she was naturally active and
energetic--she had plenty of ability, and would have made a capital
shopwoman or dressmaker. But Esther thought it quite beneath her to
work, and her father, who could support her at home, was only too
delighted to have her there. He was inordinately proud of her--she was
the one sunbeam in his dull, clouded timorous life. He adored her
beauty, he found no fault with her Cockney twang, and he gave her in
double measure the love which had lain buried for many years with his
young wife.
Esther, therefore, when she left school, sat at home, and made her own
dresses, and chatted with her cousin Cherry, who was an orphan, and
belonged to Helps' side of the house. Cherry was a very capable,
matter-of-fact hearty little girl, and Esther thought it an excellent
arrangement that she should live with them, and take the drudgery and
the cooking, and in short all the household work off her hands. Esther
was very fond of Cherry, and Cherry, in her turn, thought there was
never anyone quite so grand and magnificent as her tall, stately
cousin.
"Well, Cherry," said Esther, as the two were going to bed on the night
after Wyndham's visit, "what do you think of him? Oh, I needn't ask,
there's but one thing to be thought of him."
"Elegant, I say," interrupted Cherry. She was looking particularly
round and dumpy herself, and her broad face with her light grey eyes
was all one smile. "An elegant young man, Essie--a sort of chevalier,
now, wouldn't you say so?"
"It's just like you, Cherry, you take up all your odd moments with
those poetry books. Mr. Wyndham ain't a chevalier--he's just a
gentleman, neither more nor less--a real gentleman, oh dear. I call it
a cruel disappointment. Cherry," and she heaved a profound sigh.
"What's a disappointment?" asked unsuspicious Cherry, as she tumbled
into bed.
"Why, that he's married, my dear. He'd have suited me fine. Well,
there's an end of that."
Cherry thought there was sufficiently an end to allow her to drop off
to sleep, and Esther, after lying awake for a little, presently
followed her example.
The next day she was more restless than ever, once or twice even openly
complaining to Cherry of the dullness of her lot, and loudly
proclaiming her determination to become a lady in spite of everybody.
"You can't, Essie," said her father, in his meek, though somewhat
high-pitched voice, when he overheard some of her words that evening.
"It ain't your lot, child--you warn't born in the genteel line; there's
all lines and all grooves, and yours is the narrowing one of the
poverty-struck clerk's child."
"I think it's mean of you to talk like that, father," said Esther, her
eyes flashing. "It's mean of you, and unkind to my poor mother, who was
a lady born."
"I don't know much about that," replied Helps, looking more despondent
than ever. "She was the best of little wives, and if she was born a
lady, which I ain't going to deny, for I don't know she warn't a lady
bred, I mind me she thought it a fine bit of a rise to leave off
teaching the baker's children, and come home to me. Poor little
Essie--poor, dear little Essie. You don't take much after her, Esther,
my girl."
"If she was spiritless, and had no mind for her duties, which were in
my opinion to uphold her station in life, I don't want to take after
her," answered Esther, and she flounced out of the room.
Helps looked round in an appealing way at Cherry.
"I don't want to part with her," he said, "but it will be a good thing
for us all when Essie is wed. I must try and find some decent young
fellow who will be likely to take a fancy to her. Her words fret me on
account of their ambition. Cherry, child."
"I wouldn't be put out if I was you, uncle," responded Cherry in her
even, matter-of-fact voice. "Esther is took up with a whim, and it will
pass. It's all on account of the chevalier."
"The what, child?"
"The chevalier. Oh, my sakes alive, there's the milk boiling all over
the place, and my hearth done up so beautiful. Here, catch hold of this
saucepan, uncle, while I fetch a cloth to wipe up. My word, ain't this
provoking. I thought to get time to learn a verse or two out of the
poetry book to-night; but no such luck--I'll be brushing and blacking
till bed-time."
In the confusion which ensued, Helps forgot to ask Cherry whom she
meant by the chevalier.
A few days after this, as Helps was coming home late, he was rather
dismayed to find his daughter returning also, accompanied by a young
man who was no better dressed than half the young men with whom she
walked, but who had a certain air and a certain manner which smote upon
the father's heart with a dull sense of apprehension.
"Essie, my girl," he said, when she had bidden her swain good-bye, and
had come into the house, with her eyes sparkling and her whole face
looking so bright and beautiful, that even Cherry dropped her poetry
book to gaze in admiration. "Essie," said Helps, all the tenderness of
the love he bore her trembling in his voice, "come here. Kiss your old
father. You love him, don't you?"
"Why, dad, what a question. I should rather think I did."
"You wouldn't hurt him now, Essie? You wouldn't break his heart, for
instance?"
"I break your heart, dad? Is it likely? Now, what can the old man be
driving at?" she said, looking across at Cherry.
"It's this," responded Helps, "I want to know the name of the
fellow--yes, the--the fellow, who saw you home just now?"
"Now, father, mightn't he be Mr. Gray, or Mr. Jones, or Mr. Abbott;
some of those nice young men you bring up now and then from the city?
Why mightn't he be one of them, father?"
"But he wasn't, my dear. The young men you speak of are honest lads,
every one of them. I wouldn't have no sort of objection to your
walking with them, Esther. It wasn't none of my friends from the city I
saw you with to-night. Essie."
"And why shouldn't this be an honest fellow, too?" answered Esther, her
eyes sparkling dangerously.
"I don't know, my dear. I didn't like the looks of him. What's his
name, Essie, my love?"
"Captain Herriot, of the ---- Hussars."
"There! Esther, you're not to walk with Captain Herriot any more.
You're not to know him. I won't have it--so now."
"Highty-tighty!" said Esther. "There are two to say a word to that
bargain, father. And pray, why may I walk with Mr. Jones and not with
Captain Herriot? Captain Herriot's a real gentleman, and Mr. Jones
ain't."
"And that's the reason, my child. If Jones walked with you, he'd
maybe--yes, I'm sure of it--he'd want all his heart and soul to make
you his honest wife some day. Do you suppose Captain Herriot wants to
make you his wife. Essie?"
"I don't say. I won't be questioned like that." Her whole pale face was
in a flame. "Maybe we never thought of such a thing, but just to be
friends, and to have a pleasant time. It's cruel of you to talk like
that, father."
"Well, then, I won't, my darling, I won't. Just promise you'll have
nothing more to say to the fellow. I'd believe your word against the
world, Essie."
"Against the world? Would you really, dad? I wouldn't, though, if I
were you. No, I ain't going to make a promise I might break." She went
out of the room, she was crying.
A short time after this, indeed the very day after Lilias Wyndham's
visit to London, Gerald noticed that Helps followed his every movement
as he came rather languidly in and out of the office, with dull
imploring eyes. The old clerk was particularly busy that morning, he
was kept going here, there, and everywhere. Work of all kinds, work of
the most unexpected and unlooked for nature seemed to descend to-day
with the force of a sledge hammer on his devoted head.
Gerald saw that he was dying to speak to him, and at the first
opportunity he took him aside, and asked him if there was anything he
could do for him.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Wyndham, you can, you can. Oh, thank the good Lord for
bringing you over to speak to me when no one was looking. You can save
Esther for me--that's what you can do, Mr. Wyndham. No one can save her
but you. So you will, sir; oh, you will. She's my only child, Mr.
Wyndham."