Hester · Chapter 24 (1/2)

XXIV

A New Competitor

Emma Ashton had brought Hester’s flowers, and though she was tired with her journey, had taken a great deal of interest in Hester’s dress. When she came in to show herself to the old people in her white robes before her ball, the stranger had surveyed her with much attention. She had kissed her slowly and deliberately when introduced to her.

“Roland told me a great deal about you,” she said. “I suppose we are cousins too. You look very nice. I hope you will enjoy yourself.” She was a very deliberate, measured talker, doing everything steadily. When Hester was gone, she resumed her seat beside her grandmother.

“Roland admires her very much. She is pretty, but I should think she had a great deal of temper,” Emma said.

“Temper is scarcely the word. She is a great favourite with your grandfather⁠—and with me too⁠—with me too.”

“Roland told me,” said Emma. “When I say temper I don’t mean any harm. She would do much better for Roland if she had a good deal of temper. That is what he wants to keep him straight; for a man ought not to flirt after he is married, and he will, unless she keeps him in order.”

“Married! but is he likely to marry? I did not hear anything of it.”

“When a man can keep a sister he can keep a wife,” said Emma, announcing this fact as if it were an oracle. “He has a house, and everything that is necessary. And of course I shall not stand in his way. I can go back to Elinor, where I am a sort of head nurse, and cheap enough at the money; or I can be a governess. That touches his pride⁠—he does not like that.”

Here the old captain came back, who had been putting his favourite carefully into the fly.

“Why has she not her mother with her?” he said. “I like a girl to have her mother with her. It is pretty, it is natural. I do not like those new-fashioned, independent ways.”

“But they are much more convenient, grandpapa,” said Emma. “Think how I should have been situated had a girl always wanted her mother with her. Elinor, with her family, cannot always be going out; and when she goes she likes to amuse herself, she does not go for me. A girl going out with her mother means a devoted sort of old lady like the mothers in books. Such nonsense, you know⁠—for a girl’s mother, when she is eighteen or so, is rarely more than forty, and people of forty like amusement just as much as we do. It is better, on the whole, I think, when everyone is for herself.”

“Well, that is not my opinion,” said the old captain, shortly.

He was accustomed to do most of the talking himself, and it startled him to have it thus taken out of his hand.

“I suppose an invitation will come for me,” said Emma calmly, “as soon as they know I am here; and then Hester and I can go together. Roland said there was no dancing, but I think it always safest to bring a ball-dress. It is not heavy, though it takes up a good deal of room; but then you can always take one box into the carriage, and the railway only charges by weight.”

“Roland is very busy, I suppose, my dear. You only see him in the evening?”

“I don’t always see him in the evening. He has his own friends, and I am getting a few acquaintances too. If he gives me my living and very little to do I ought to be grateful to him, but I would not let him give up his own amusements for me. That wouldn’t be fair. Oh yes, he is very busy. He has found so many new people to do business for down here.”

“I hope to goodness he won’t speculate with their money and ruin them,” Captain Morgan said.

“Ruin! oh, I hope not. But Roland says there is nothing so exciting as to be on the verge of ruin. He says it is better than a play: for instead of looking on at the acting, the acting is going on inside of you. But it is his trade to speculate, isn’t it, grandpapa? That is what he is there for, and he is very good at it they say. I suppose this girl has not any money? When they are pretty and nice they seldom have.”

“What girl?” said Captain Morgan, almost haughtily⁠—as haughtily and harshly as the old gentleman could persuade himself to speak.

“Doesn’t he know, grandmamma?” said Emma, “the girl Roland admired so much: and she would just do for him, if she had some money: but so nice looking as he is, and so well established in business, I don’t think, unless there is money, he should throw himself away.”

“Is it Hester Vernon that you mean?” asked the captain in an angry voice.

“She does not mean any harm, Rowley. Don’t you see Hester is just to her an abstract person, not the dear girl she is to you and me. And Emma,” said the old lady almost with timidity, “I fear your ball-dress will not be of much use. Mrs. Merridew will not think of inviting you⁠—she will not perhaps know you are here.”

“Roland met her, grandmamma,” said Emma calmly. “He told me; we are all cousins, I believe. She will be sure to invite me, or if not, you will be able to get me an invitation. People always exert themselves to get invitations for girls. It is like helping young men on in business. We cannot go and make acquaintances for ourselves as young men go and set up offices, but we must have our chance, you know, as well. Of course,” said Emma in her deliberate way, “it is for everybody’s advantage that we should have our chance as well as the men.”

“And what do you call your chance?” said Captain Morgan. He planted himself in the front of the fireplace with his legs very wide apart, which, as his wife well understood, meant war.

“My old man,” she said, “what do you know about the talk of girls? They have one way of thinking, and we have another. They are young, and we are old.”

“Hester is younger than she is,” said the captain, “let her alone. She is as ready to talk as there is any need to be.”

“My chance, grandpapa?” said Emma with a slow little laugh. “It is not necessary, is it, to explain? a girl’s chance is in making⁠—friends. If one goes for a governess one’s family does not like it. They would rather you were your sister’s head nurse with all the trouble, and without any pay. Roland has taken me now⁠—and I do not require to work for my living; but it is not so very cheerful with Roland that I should not wish⁠—if I could⁠—to make a change. We must all think of ourselves you know.”

“My dear,” said the old lady in her soft voice, “in one way that is very true.”

“It is very true, I think, in every way. It might be cheerful for me if Roland were to spend his evenings at home as Tom Pinch in Dickens did with his sister. But then Roland is not a bit like Tom Pinch, and I said to him when I came, ‘You are not to change your life for me.’ So that sometimes, you know, I am in the house all alone all day, and then if he is out to dinner, or if he has any evening engagement, I am alone all the night. And if he were to marry, why there would be an end of me altogether. So you see, grandmamma, wherever I am, it is very natural that I should wish to have my chance.”

“How old are you?” said the captain abruptly.

“I shall be twenty-three at Christmas,” said Emma, raising her eyes to his face. She was curious to know why he asked⁠—whether he thought her older, or younger than her age, whether he thought it was strange she should still be unmarried. “I was kept very much out of sight when I was with Elinor,” she said half apologetically. She had not had her “chance” as she had always wished to have. She had not been very well treated she felt in this life, the youngest of seven. She had been passed on from one to another of her married sisters to make herself useful. All of them had said that Emma must “come out,” but no one had taken any trouble about it. She had to scramble for a dress, a very cheap one, and to coax Elinor into taking her to some little local merrymaking, and so opening, as it were, the gates of society. As soon as she could say that she was “out” Emma had kept the idea of having “her chance” of making friends and getting invitations always before her. But her opportunities had not been great, and Elinor had not devoted herself to her younger sister. She was still young enough to amuse herself, and it had not occurred to her to put so unimportant a person as Emma in the foreground. So that she had never been allowed to have much of a “chance.” Emma had not much experience of the world. Of the many novels she had read, and which were her guides to life, a great many devoted themselves to the history and description of young ladies at whose entrance into a ballroom every man present fell metaphorically on his knees. She was acquainted with many evening parties in fiction at which the fate of countless young men and women was decided. The smallest dance would be represented there as bringing people together who were never more to be sundered. Emma herself had not produced any such sensation at the small parties she had hitherto gone to, but she felt that this glory must be awaiting her, and especially that in a new place like this Redborough, in some waltz or other, among some unknown assembly she should meet her fate.

This being the case, it is not to be wondered at that she should lose no time in announcing her certainty of an invitation to anything so likely to conduce to such an object as Ellen Merridew’s dancing teas. She had come down to Redborough prepared to be cousin to all the world. Roland, indeed, had taken pains to explain that Catherine Vernon’s cousins were not actually her cousins, but she had thought it better in many ways to ignore this, and to descend upon the new scene with the most amiable disposition to embrace as a near relative every Vernon presented to her. Among them all, what could be more likely than that her fate should be found? She meant no harm to anybody. It would be doing no harm, certainly, if any young man fell in love with her, to make him happy by marrying him. She felt most strongly the supreme necessity of marrying for her own part. She had no disguise with herself on this subject, and with her grandparents she did not think it necessary to have any disguise. Everything was involved in it. Roland had taken the responsibility of her upon himself and given her a home, with very little to do, and enough to make her sufficiently comfortable. Emma had always been brought up to consider everything from a strictly practical point of view. She had been taught to believe that she had no right to anything, that it was out of their bounty and charity that her brothers and sisters, now one, now another, afforded her a temporary home. And she was very comfortable with Roland⁠—but if he were to marry, what then? The comfort of having a home of her own, a husband of her own with a settled income, was to Emma in prospect the crown of all good things. She would not have been ashamed to say so if necessary; and it was in balls and parties and picnics and social meetings generally, that a young woman had her chance of suddenly obtaining, by looking pretty, by making herself agreeable, all these good things at a stroke. She made up her mind at once that heaven and earth must be moved to get her an invitation to Mrs. Algernon Merridew’s Thés Dansantes. She would not take, she said to herself, any denial. She would see all the Redborough people there, among whom there must certainly be some individuals of the class upon which depended Emma’s fate. As she sat unfolding so much of this as was needful with a calm confidence in being understood, her grandparents, with a sort of stupefaction, listened and looked on. Emma was knitting all the time in the German way, with a very slight swift movement of her fingers and without looking at her work. She spoke slowly, with an air of such undoubted fact and practical commonplace about her, that those two old people, who each in their several ways indulged in fancy and sentiment, were daunted and silenced. Emma spoke in a sort of saintly simplicity, as not knowing that anything beyond those solid primitive foundations, anything like sentiment or fancy, was in the world.

She was not handsome like her brother, and yet there was something remarkable about her appearance which some people admired. Her hair was dark, her features sufficiently good. The strange thing in her was her eyes, which were very light in colour⁠—so light, that sometimes there seemed no colour at all in them. This was not beautiful, but it was bizarre and unusual, and as such Emma had her admirers. But it was only in this particular, not in mind or thoughts, that there was anything in her out of the way.

“Well?” said the old captain to his wife, when, after having yawned softly over her work as a signal and preparation for bed-going, Emma rose with a smile at half-past ten, and kissed them both, and asked if she might have her candle. “I must not keep you out of bed,” she said, with that look of complacent consideration which, notwithstanding, was quite innocent and referred to her own circumscribed horizon, in which everything connected with herself was well in the foreground. Mrs. Morgan did not meet her husband’s eye as she had met it when Roland was the visitor.

“She has not been well brought up, poor thing!” the old lady said. “She has had no one to care for her⁠—and, Rowley, she is our own flesh and blood.”

“That’s the wonderful thing,” the captain said, “Katie’s child! My dear, I give it up; there seems no reason and no sense in it. I cannot think what the Lord can mean.”

“Oh, hush, Rowley⁠—nothing, nothing that is not good.”

“One would say⁠—that there must be just a crowd of souls ready to put into the new little bodies, and that one must slip down before the other that ought to come;⁠—like that vile cad, you know, that slipped into the pool of Siloam before the poor fellow that had no servant could shuffle down.”

“And that was all the better for your poor fellow as it turned out, Rowley, for he got his healing more sweetly out of the very hand⁠—And, poor little spirit, if it was not intended for this body, I can’t think it has got very much by its deceit,” Mrs. Morgan said, with a little laugh.

But the captain did not laugh. There was consternation in his soul.

“A girl,” he said, “with her eyes open to all chances, looking out for a husband, and seriously thinking that is the right thing to do⁠—to come from you and me, Mary⁠—to come from you and me!”

The old lady gave him her hands that he might help her out of her chair, and when she stood upright, tottering a little⁠—for she was not strong upon her legs⁠—she gave him a little playful tap with her finger upon his old cheek.

“You are just a high-flown old sentimentalist,” she said. “There is no harm in her. She is only prose to your poetry⁠—which I’ve always been all our lives, and you’ve said so many a day.”

“Don’t blaspheme, old woman, don’t blaspheme,” the captain said.

But next day, when Hester came in to give them the account⁠—which she knew the old people would expect⁠—of all that had happened, Emma lost no time in making her desires known.

“It must have been a very pretty party,” she said; “a conservatory lighted like that is always so nice. It is cool to sit in after you have got heated with dancing. I wish I could have seen you all enjoying yourselves. I am so fond of dancing, and I don’t get much; for Roland does not care for dancing parties, and at Waltham Elinor never had time. I suppose you had an invitation, grandmamma, though you are too old to go?”

Here Hester explained, wondering, that there were very few chaperons, and nobody asked but people who were known to dance.

“Ellen says it only tires the others, and what is the use?” Hester said.

“That is very true; she must be judicious⁠—she must have right notions. When do you think my invitation will come, grandmamma? I suppose people will call when they know I am here?”

Here there was a little pause, for even Mrs. Morgan was taken aback by this question, and did not know what to say.