Part 25 (1/2)

'Are you going to let me hear it?'

Esther would a little rather have kept it to herself, simply because it was so precious to her. However, this question was a command, and she read the letter aloud to her father. With that the matter was disposed of, in all but her own mind. For the final result of the letter was to stir up all the pain the writer's absence had caused, and to add to it some new elements of aggravation. Esther had not realized, till those letters came, how entirely the writer of them had gone out of her world. In love and memory she had in a sort still kept him near; without vision she had yet been not fully separated from him. Now these pictures of the other world and of Pitt's life in it came like a bright, sheer blade severing the connection which had until then subsisted between her life and his. Yes, he was in another world! and there was no connection any longer. He had not forgotten her yet, but he would forget; how should he not? how could he help it? In the rich sweep of variety and change and eager action which filled his experience, what thought could he have any more for that quiet figure on the sofa, or this lonely little child, whose life contained no interest whatever! or how could his thoughts return at all to this dull room, where everything remained with no change from morning to night and from one week to another? Always Colonel Gainsborough there on the sofa; always that same green cloth covering the table in the middle of the floor, and the view of the snow-covered garden and road and fields outside the windows, with those everlasting pollard poplars along the fence. While Europe was in commotion, and armies rolling their ma.s.ses over it, and Napoleon fleeing and Lord Wellington chasing, and every breath was full of eagerness and hope and triumph and purpose in that world without.

Esther fell back into a kind of despair. Pitt was gone from her; now she realized that fact thoroughly; not only gone in person, but moved far off in mind. Maybe he might write again, once or twice; very likely he would, for he was kind; but his life was henceforth separated from Seaforth and from all the other life that had its home there. The old cry for comfort began to sound in Esther's heart with a terrible urgency. Where was it to come from? And as the child had only one possible outlook for comfort, she began to set her face that way in a kind of resolute determination. That is, she began to shut herself up with her Bible and search it as a man who is poor searches for a hid treasure, or as one who is starving looks for something to eat. n.o.body knew. She shut herself up and carried on her search alone, and troubled n.o.body with questions. n.o.body ever noticed the air of the child; the grave, far-away look of her eyes; the pale face; the unnaturally quiet demeanour. At least n.o.body noticed it to any purpose. Mrs. Barker did communicate to Christopher her belief that that child was 'mopin'

herself into ninety years old;' and they were both agreed that she ought to be sent to school. 'A girl don't grow just like one o' my cabbages,' said Mr. Bounder; '_that_'ll make a head for itself.'

'Miss Esther's got a head,' put in Mrs. Barker.

''Twon't be solid and that, if it ain't looked after,' retorted her brother. 'I don't s'pose you understand the natural world, though.

What's the colonel thinkin' about?'

'That ain't your and my business, Christopher. But I do worrit myself about Miss Esther's face, the way I sees it sometimes.'

The colonel, it is true, did not see it as Mrs. Barker saw it. Not but that he might, if he had ever watched her. But he did not watch. It never occurred to him but that everything went right with Esther. When she made him his tea, she was attentive and womanly; when she read aloud to him, she read intelligently; and in the reciting of the few lessons she did with her father, there was always no fault to find. How could the colonel suppose anything was wrong? Life had become a dull, sad story to him; why should it be different to anybody else? Nay, the colonel would not have said that in words; it was rather the supine condition into which he had lapsed, than any conclusion of his intelligence; but the fact was, he had no realization of the fact that a child's life ought to be bright and gay. He accepted Esther's sedate unvarying tone and manner as quite the right thing, and found it suit him perfectly. n.o.body else saw the girl, except at church. The family had not cultivated the society of their neighbours in the place, and Esther had no friends among them.

There was a long succession of months during which things went on after this fas.h.i.+on. Very weary months to Esther; indeed, months covered by so thick a gloom that part of the child's life consisted in the struggle to break it. Letters did not come frequently from Pitt, even to his father and mother; he wrote that it was difficult to get a vessel to take American letters at all, and that the chances were ten to one, if accepted, that they would never get to the hands they were intended for. American letters or American pa.s.sengers were sometimes held to vitiate the neutrality of a vessel; and if chased she would be likely to throw them, that is, the former, overboard. Pitt was detained still in Lisbon by the difficulty of getting pa.s.sports, as late as the middle of March, but expected then soon to sail for England. His pa.s.sage was taken. So Mr. and Mrs. Dallas reported on one of their evening visits.

They talked a great deal of politics at these visits, which sometimes interested Esther and sometimes bored her excessively; but this last bit of private news was brought one evening about the end of April.

'He has not gained much by his winter's work,' remarked the colonel.

'He might as well have studied this term at Yale.'

'He will not have lost his time,' said Mr. Dallas comfortably. 'He is there, that is one thing; and he is looking about him; and now he will have time to feel a little at home in England and make all his arrangements before his studies begin. It is very well as it is.'

'If you think so, it is,' said the colonel drily.

The next news was that Pitt had landed at Falmouth, and was going by post-chaise to London in a day or two. He reported having just got Lord Byron's two last poems,--'The Corsair' and 'The Bride of Abydos'; wished he could send them home, but that was not so easy.

'He had better send them home, or send them anywhere,' said the colonel; 'and give his attention to Sophocles and Euclid. Light poetry does not amount to anything; it is worse than waste of time.'

'I don't want a man to be made of Greek and Latin,' said Mrs. Dallas.

'Do you think, only the Ancients wrote what is worthy to be read, colonel?'

'They didn't write nonsense, my dear madam; and Byron does.'

'Nonsense!'

'Worse than nonsense.'

'Won't do to enquire too strictly into what the old Greeks and Romans wrote, if folks say true,' remarked Mr. Dallas slyly.

'In the dead languages it won't do a young man so much harm,' said the colonel. 'I hope William will give himself now to his Greek, since you have afforded him such opportunity.'

Mrs. Dallas's air, as she rose to take leave, was inimitably expressive of proud confidence and rejection of the question. Mr. Dallas laughed carelessly and said, as he shook the colonel's hand, 'No fear!'

The next news they had came direct. Another letter from Pitt to the colonel; and, as before, it enclosed one for Esther. Esther ran away again to have the first reading and indulge herself in the first impressions of it alone and free from question or observation. She even locked her door. This letter was written from London, and dated May 1814.

'MY DEAR QUEEN ESTHER,--I wish you were here, for we certainly would have some famous walks together. Do you know, I am in London? and that means, in one of the most wonderful places in the world. You can have no idea what sort of a place it is, and no words I can write will tell you. I have not got over my own sense of astonishment and admiration yet; indeed it is growing, not lessening; and every time I go out I come home more bewildered with what I have seen. Do you ask me why? In the first place, because it is so big. Next, because of the unimaginable throng of human beings of every grade and variety. Such a mult.i.tude of human lives crossing each other in an intraceable and interminable network; intraceable to the human eye, but what a sight it must be to the eye that sees all! All these people, so many hundreds of thousands, acting and reacting upon one another's happiness, prosperity, goodness, and badness. Now at such a place as Seaforth people are left a good deal to their individuality, and are comparatively independent of one another; but here I feel what a pressure and bondage men's lives draw round each other. It makes me catch my breath. You will not care about this, however, nor be able to understand me.