Hester · Chapter 5 (1/2)

V

Next Morning

When Mrs. John awoke, confused and not knowing where she was, very early on the next morning, she was dismayed by the story which was instantly poured into her half-awakened ears. Hester, it is to be feared, had not shown that respect for her mother’s slumbers which she had enforced upon Miss Vernon. The girl was too impatient, too eager to tell all that had happened. “Of course I was not going to let her come in and disturb you,” she cried. “Is that how people behave in England? She had not even a bonnet on. No. I did not ask her to come in. It was so late: and besides, I never heard of people making calls at night; people you don’t know.”

“Oh, my dear!” said Mrs. John, in dismay. “Oh, Hester! what have you done? Catherine Vernon turned away from the door! She will never forgive you, never, as long as she lives.”

“I don’t care,” said Hester, almost sullenly. “How was I to know? Even if I had been quite sure it was Cousin Catherine, I should not have let the Queen come in, to disturb you.”

“The Queen of course would never want to come,” said Mrs. John, who was very literal, “but Catherine Vernon! she is more than the Queen; the house belongs to her, and the furniture, and everything. It is all warmed with hot-water pipes, and servants kept, and every comfort. I shouldn’t wonder if she turned us out after what you have done.”

“If she does, mother, I will be your servant. I will keep good fires and keep you warm, never fear,” cried Hester, paling and reddening in panic, yet courage.

“Good fires!” said Mrs. John; “do you think fires can be got for nothing? and we have so little money.” She looked very pale and worn, supported among her pillows in the early morning light so penetrating and so clear; and at this she began to cry. “Oh, why was I so foolish as to leave you to mismanage everything? I might have known! Whatever Catherine Vernon wanted, you ought to have let her have it. She can turn us out in a moment if she pleases, and she will never forgive you, never. And just when we were going to be so comfortable!” the poor woman cried.

“Don’t cry, don’t cry, mamma. You know I always said I should give lessons. We will get two nice little rooms somewhere, much nicer than these. If she is such a hard woman, I don’t want to be obliged to her. Oh, mother, mother, don’t cry! I can take care of you.”

“Oh, hold your tongue, hold your tongue, child! what do you know about it? Let me get up. I must go to her at once and tell her you are only a child, and constantly doing silly things.”

This to Hester, who was so conscious of being not only her mother’s prop and support, but her real guide in life. She was so utterly aghast, that she did not know how to reply.

“Put me out my best crape,” said her mother. “Catherine will like to see that even in a foreign place, where it is so difficult to get things as one ought, proper respect was paid. Everybody said that she meant to marry your poor papa when she was young; but he saw me⁠—Oh, dear, dear, when I think of all that has happened since then⁠—and she never has liked me. I think that was quite natural: and now that you have gone and made everything worse⁠—Put me out my best dress with the crape.”

“It is only five o’clock,” said Hester, half penitent, half irritated, “there is nobody up. The people in England must be very lazy in the morning. Does no one go to early mass?”

“Five o’clock!” said Mrs. John, fretfully. “I think you must be going out of your senses, Hester. Is that an hour to wake me, when I have not had my first sleep out? Draw down the blinds and close the shutters, and let me get a proper rest. And for goodness’ sake,” she cried, raising her head before she settled down comfortably among the pillows, “for goodness’ sake! don’t go about talking of early mass here.”

Hester did as her mother ordered, but with an impatient heart. It was bitter to have thus put into the hands of the poor lady who was her kingdom, and for whom she had legislated for years, the means of shaking off her sway⁠—a sway which Hester was firmly persuaded was for her good. John Vernon had not been much of a guide for either mother or child. He had not cared very much about them. His wife’s monotonous feebleness which might have been well enough in the tranquillity of the luxurious sheltered life at home to which she was born, was nothing but tiresome in circumstances where an energetic woman might have been of some use; and his daughter was a creature he did not understand⁠—a child, a chit, who ventured to look disapproval at him, to his indignation and wonder. What you are used to from your birth does not affect you much, and Hester had not suffered any heartache from her father’s neglect. She accepted it as the order of nature, but the result had been that from her earliest consciousness almost, she had taken upon herself the charge of her mother; and to be thus threatened with deposition, and criticised by her helpless subject, appalled her. So active and young as she was, and full of superfluous strength, it was impossible for her to return to her pillow as her mother had done. When she had closed the shutters and drawn the curtains, she stole softly out on tiptoe down the old oak staircase which creaked at every footfall. In the glory of the early morning the house was not dark. In rooms which the sun had reached, the black old wainscot was glimmering full of reflections, and all the world out of doors lay resplendent in that early gladness. Hester had heard all her life from many a discontented mouth, of the gloomy skies and dark days of England, of a climate always obscured with fog, and a sky where there was no blue. Accordingly it was with a kind of indignant ecstasy that she stepped out into the intense delicious radiance, so soft and fresh, yet so all-powerful. The birds had got their early morning twitterings over, and were in full outburst of song. The flowers were all in intensest dewy bloom, and everything taking the good of that sweet prime of the morning in which they bloomed and sang for themselves, and not officially on behalf of the world. The girl forgot her vexation as she came out to the incense-breathing garden, to the trees no longer standing out black upon the sunset, but in all their sweet natural variations of colour, basking in the morning light. The pond even, that had looked so black, was like a basin of pure gold, rimmed with rich browns and greens. She opened the gate and looked out upon the road which was all silent, not a shadow upon it, swept by the broad early blaze of the morning sun. Not a sound except the chorus of the birds, the crackle of the furze bushes in the stillness, the hum of insects. She had all the world to herself, as the poet had on that immortal morning when the houses of quiet London all lay asleep, and the Thames flowed onward at his own sweet will. Standing apart from the road, among its shrubberies, was the Grange with its red gables and its eyelids closed⁠—farther off the light rebounded softly from the roofs of the town, and behind the town, revealed in partial shadow, rose the white distant front of the house in which her mother had told Hester her early married life had been passed. She had it all to herself, nobody to disturb or interrupt. And what in human form could have given a more complete impersonation of the morning than this girl, fresh, fair, and strong, with such a world of latent possibilities in her? The cloud of last night’s perversity blew away. She met the eye of the day with a gaze as open and as confident. Neither Nature nor Hester had any fear. She was like her namesake in the poem, whom the “gentle-hearted Charles” beloved of all men, could not, though she was dead, give up the expectation of meeting as heretofore, “some summer morning.”

“When from thy cheerful eyes a ray

Had struck a bliss upon the day,

A bliss that would not go away,

A sweet forewarning.”

And this glorified world, this land of light and dews, this quiet sweetness and silence and ecstatic life, was the dull England of which all the shabby exiles spoke with scorn! Hester felt a delightful indignation flood her soul. She went out all by herself with a little awe, and walked round the Common which was all agleam with blobs of moisture shining like diamonds in the sun:⁠—

“A springy motion in her gait

A rising step did indicate,

Of pride and joy no common rate

That flushed her spirit.

“I know not by what name beside

I shall it call: if ’twas not pride

It was a joy to that allied

She did inherit.”

Hester was a great deal too young for a heroine, but as it chances there could not be a better portrait of her than that of Lamb’s “sprightly neighbour.” She went out with that springing motion, stepping on air, with the pride of life and youth and conscious energy in every vein. A certain youthful contempt for the inferior beings who lay stupid behind those closed shutters, losing all this bloom and glory, was in her heart. She was very black in the midst of the bright landscape in her mourning frock, with a white kerchief tied round her throat like a French girl, but her curly locks shining like everything else in the sun. She did not mind the sun. She had not yet learned that she had a complexion to care for; besides, the sun could do nothing to the creamy-white of her tint. Perhaps she was not very sensitive, not thin-skinned at all, either in body or soul.

Now it happened, curiously enough, that as Hester passed the gate of the Grange, at which she gazed very anxiously with a half-formed intention of making her way in, in face of every obstacle, and making her peace with Cousin Catherine⁠—a project which only the early hour prevented her from carrying out⁠—the said gate opened softly and a man appeared. Hester was more startled than she could explain to herself. Why should she be startled? It was not so early now⁠—six o’clock or later. He was a young man of middle height, with a very dark beard and bright eyes. Hester felt that he was somewhat unsuitable to the scene, not English in her opinion⁠—Englishmen had fair hair, rosy complexions, blue eyes⁠—they were all blonds: now this man looked like those to whom she was accustomed. Was he, she wondered, going to early mass? He had a portfolio in his hand, a small box strapped to his shoulders. The first Englishman she had seen; what was he going to do? What he did first was to look at her with considerable curiosity. She had hastily put on her hat on seeing him, that there might be no impropriety in her appearance, an action which put out, so to speak, one of the lights in the landscape, for her hair was shining almost as brightly as the blobs of dew. He crossed the road to the Common, and then he paused a moment on the edge of it and looked at her again.

“I wonder if you are my little cousin,” he said.

It was on Hester’s lips to protest that she was not little at all, but quite as tall as he was, but she waived this point on second thoughts.

“Are you a Vernon⁠—too?” she said.

“Yes, I am a Vernon⁠—too. Edward, at your service. I am glad to see you keep such early hours.”

“Why?” she asked, but did not wait for any reply. “What are you going to do?”

“I am going,” he said, “out upon the Common to look for a rare flower that grows here, only I have never been able to find it. Will you come and help me?”

“A flower!” said Hester, confounded. “Do Englishmen look for flowers?”

“Englishmen as well as others⁠—when they happen to be botanists. Does that surprise you? I am obliged to get up early, for I have no time in the day.”

“What do you do in the day?” the girl asked.

“I am at the bank. Have you never heard of Vernon’s Bank? the business from which we all take our importance here. The Vernons are great or they are small, don’t you know? according to their connection with the bank.”

“Then you are one of the great ones,” said Hester with decision. “Do any of the Vernons live in that great white house⁠—that one, do you see?⁠—on the other side of the red roofs?”

“The White House? Oh yes, Harry lives there, another cousin, and his sister.”

“Are they in the bank too?”

“Harry is; he and I do the work between us. Ladies in this country have nothing to do with business⁠—by the way, I am forgetting Aunt Catherine.”

“That is a pity,” said Hester, not noticing his exclamation. “Then I suppose my father must have had something to do with it, for do you know, though we are poor now, he once lived there?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Then why did he go away?” said Hester musingly; “that is what I should like to find out. Do you know Cousin Catherine? you must, if you live in her house.”

“I call her Aunt Catherine,” said the young man.

“Why? Is she your aunt? And I call her cousin; but she cannot be my cousin. She is so much older. Was she angry⁠—do you know⁠—last night? I did not know who she was⁠—and I was⁠—rude.”

He laughed, and she, after a doubtful glance, laughed too.

“Oh yes, I am afraid I did know who she was⁠—that she was Cousin Catherine; but then, who is Cousin Catherine? I had never seen her before. Mother thinks she will be very angry. Could I let her come in and disturb my mother after she was in bed? Mother thinks she will not let us stay.”

“Should you be sorry to go?”

Hester cast a long look all round from east to west, taking in the breadth of the Common glistening in the morning dew, the dark roofs of the Heronry against the trees, the glittering vanes and windows of the town on the other side.

“It is very pretty,” she said with a little sigh. “And to think what they say of England! They say it is always fog, and the sun never shines. How can people tell such lies? We should not go, we should take some small rooms in the town, and I would teach.”

“What could you teach?”

Hester looked at him with half resentment.

“Do you know many languages?” she said.

“Many languages? no!⁠—a smattering of Greek and Latin.”

“I don’t call them languages. I mean French and Italian and German: for I know them all. I know them as well as English. I haven’t a bit of the accent Britannique: Madame Alphonse said so, and I hope she is a good authority. I will give cours, as many as they please: French one day and the others the next. Not only should I be able to help mother, but I should make a fortune, they all said. Three cours always going: I should make a great deal of money, and then in ten years or so I could retire, you know. In ten years I should only be”⁠—here she paused in the fervour of conversation and eyed him a little with doubt in her face. Then she said quite calmly, “I forget the rest.”

Edward Vernon listened with great edification; he forgot the flower which he was going to search for.

“I am very sorry to discourage you in your plans: but I don’t think Aunt Catherine will turn you out.”

“Don’t you think so?”

Hester, after her brag, which was perfectly sincere, and of which she believed every word, felt a little disappointed to be thus brought down again.

“No, I don’t think so. She told me that you were rude, but she was not angry; she only laughed.”

At this Hester grew wildly red, and stamped her foot. “She shall not⁠—she shall not⁠—nobody shall laugh at me!” she cried. “I will tell mother we must go away.”

“Don’t go away. You must consider that your mother will be a great deal more comfortable here than in lodgings in town. And you know you are very young. You had better be a little older before you begin to give cours. Don’t be angry: but if you were to mount up to the desk with your short frock” (here Hester looked down at her feet, and in a sudden agony perceived the difference between her broad, old-fashioned shoes, and the pointed toes of her companion) “and short hair⁠—” But this was more than she could bear.

“You are laughing at me! You too!” she said, with a poignant tone of mortification.