Chapter XXVI

"Wanted, by a young person, aged 17, a situation as companion to an invalid or elderly lady. Salary not so much an object as a comfortable home in a pious family. Address, A. B., Post Office, Naullan, N.W."

This is the modest form in which Miss Craven's desire for work comes before the public. She had begged earnestly for the expunging of the "pious family."

"It is not true, Mrs. Brandon," she says, with vexed tears in her eyes; "it is nothing to me whether they are pious or not--the salary is far the greatest object."

"If it is, my dear, it ought not to be," answers promptly Mrs. Brandon, who, having paid for the insertion of the advertisement, thinks that she has a right to word it as she wishes.

And now it has gone forth through the length and breadth of the civilized world, from the Arctic to the Antarctic Poles--has found its way into clubs and cafés, hotels and private houses, numerous as the sea-sand grains, in the overgrown advertisement sheet of the _Times_. To not one in ten thousand of that journal's millions of readers is it more interesting than any other announcement in the long columns of--

"Wanted, a cook."

"Wanted, a cook."

"Wanted, a good plain cook."

"Wanted, a footman."

"Wanted, a footman."

A companionship, then, is what has been decided upon as the vocation to which Esther is best suited: it requires neither French nor German, neither astronomy nor the use of the globes: it demands only a patience out-Jobing Job, a meekness out-Mosesing Moses, a capacity for eating dirt greater than that of any _parvenu_ struggling into society, health and spirits more aggressively strong than a schoolboy's, and a pliability greater than an osier's. These qualities being supposed to be more quickly acquirable than music, drawing, and languages, Esther has decided upon entering on the office that will call for the exercise of them all.

Besides the printed advertisement above quoted, Mrs. Brandon has been advertising largely in private, by means of many long-winded epistles; has been seeking far and wide among the circle of her acquaintance for some grey maid, wife, or widow, in the tending of whose haggard, peevish age Esther may waste her sweet, ripe youth, unassailed by wicked men, in safe, respectable misery. And meanwhile Esther waits--waits through the fog-shrouded, sun-forgotten November days, through the eternal black November nights,--waits, straying lonely along the steaming tree-caverned wood-paths--the solemn charnels of the dead summer nations of leaves and flowers.

Preachers are fond of drawing a parallel between us and those forest leaves; telling us that, as in the autumn they fall, rot, are dissolved, and mingle together, stamped down and shapeless, in brown confusion, and yet in the spring come forth again, fresh as ever; so shall we--who, in our autumn, die, rot, and are not--come forth again in our distant spring, in lordly beauty and gladness. So speaking, whether thinkingly or unthinkingly, they equivocate--they lie! It is not the _same_ leaves that reappear; others _like_ them burst from their sappy buds, and burgeon in the "green-haired woods;" but _not_ they--_not_ they! They stir not, nor is there any movement among the sodden earth-mass that was _them_. If the parallel be complete, others like us--others as good, as fair, as we! but yet _not we_--other than us, shall break forth in lusty youth, in their strong May-time; _but we_ shall rot on!

"Oh touching, patient earth,
That weepest in thy glee;
Whom God created very good,
And very mournful we!"

how much longer can you bear the weight of all your dead children, that lie so heavy on your mother breast!

* * * * *

One morning, on joining the Brandon family before prayers, Esther finds Mrs. Brandon reading aloud a letter; but on Esther's entrance she desists. Hearing her voice stop, the young girl comes forward eagerly.

"Is it about me?" she asks, panting, forgetting her morning salutations.

"Yes, Esther," replies Mrs. Brandon, laconically, continuing to read, but this time to herself.

Esther walks to the window, drums on the rain-beaten pane, returns to the table; takes up the bread-knife, and begins to chip bits of crust off the loaf; sits down, gets up again; then, unable to contain herself any longer, cries out, hastily, "Will it do?--will it do?"

"If you will give me time, my dear, to finish this letter in peace, I shall have a better chance of being able to tell you," answers the old lady, drily.

Esther sits down again, snubbed; and then the door opens, and the three middle-aged, quakerish maid-servants make their sober entry, each with bible and hymnal in her hand; and the long exposition, the eight-versed hymn, and extempore prayer set in. To Esther's ears, all the words of exposition, hymn, and prayer seem to be, "Will it do?--will it do?"

"I have received a letter," begins Mrs. Brandon, slowly addressing Esther, when the "exercise" is ended, "from a valued Christian friend of mine, who has lately met with a lady and gentleman considerably advanced in life, who are on the look-out for a----"

"Companion?" interrupted Esther, breathlessly.

"For a young person who may supply the place of their failing sight, by reading to them, writing letters for them--may arrange the old lady's work, and make herself a generally useful, agreeable, and ladylike companion."

"That does not sound hard, does it?" says Esther, with a nearer approach to hopefulness in her face than has been seen there since her brother's death. "Neither reading, writing, nor being ladylike are very difficult accomplishments, are they? Oh, Mrs. Brandon, I hope they'll take me, don't you? What is their name?"

"Blessington!"

"Blessington!" repeats Essie, her lips parting in some dismay. "I wonder are they--can they be--any relation to Miss Blessington, Sir Thomas Gerard's ward?"

"I really cannot tell you, my dear. You have given us so very little information as to your visit to the Gerards, that I was not even aware that Blessington was the name of Sir Thomas's ward."

Esther passes by the small reproach in silence.

"Perhaps they may be her father and mother," suggests Bessy.

"She has no father nor mother."

"Her grandfather and grandmother?"

"She has no grandfather nor grandmother."

"Her great-uncle and great-aunt?"

"Possibly."

"Very likely the same family," remarks Mrs. Brandon, intending to say something rather agreeable than otherwise. "Blessington is not a common name."

"I recollect," Esther says, contracting her forehead in the effort to recall all that was said upon a subject which at the time interested her too little to have made much impression--"I recollect her mentioning one day having some old relations in ----shire, whom it was a great bore to have to go and visit."

"These people live in ----shire."

"Then it must be the same," cries Essie, a look of acute chagrin passing over her features. "Oh, Mrs. Brandon, what a disappointment! I'm afraid we shall have to look out again! I'm afraid this won't do!"

"And why not, pray?" inquires the other, staring in displeased astonishment from under her thick white eyebrows at her young _protégée_.

Silence.

"Did you," inquires the old lady, looking rather suspiciously at her, "have any quarrel or disagreement with the Gerards during your visit which could render you unwilling to meet any one in any way connected with their family?"

"Oh no! no!--certainly not!" answers Essie, vehemently, blushing scarlet as any June poppy.

The elder woman's sharp ancient eyes pass like a gimlet through and through the younger one. They fasten with the pitiless fixedness of one who has passed the age for blushing, and has consequently no compassion for that infirmity upon the betraying red of her sweet bright cheeks.

"Are you _quite_ sure, Esther?"

"Quite," replies Esther, with steady slowness. "I don't like them, as a family. In fact, I _hate_ them all; but I have had no quarrel with them."

"I wonder that you cared to spend a whole month and more with people that you hated," says Miss Bessy, with a sprightly smile.

"So do I, Bessy," answers Esther, bitterly, turning away her head; "but that's neither here nor there."

"Am I to understand, then," says Mrs. Brandon, with an inquisitorial elevation of nose and spectacles, "that an apparently _groundless_ and, as far as I can judge, _ungrateful_ feeling of dislike towards people who, from the little you have told us of them, seem always to have treated you with indulgent kindness, is your sole motive for wishing to decline this very desirable situation?"

"When one has seen better days," answered the poor proud child, sighing, "one wishes to keep as far as possible from any of those who have known one formerly."

"Tut!" answers Mrs. Brandon, chidingly; "it can be a matter of very little consequence to people in the position of the Gerards whether you have a few pounds a year more or less. They can afford to be kind to you, whatever your circumstances may be!"

"I don't _want_ them to be kind to me," cries the girl, fiercely, stung into swift anger. "I know nothing I should dislike more. The only wish I have, with regard to the whole family, is that I should never hear their names mentioned again!"

Mrs. Brandon seats herself at the table, and begins to pour out the tea out of a huge, deep-bodied family tea-pot. Miss Bessy divides the small curling rashers of fat bacon into four exactly equal portions. At Plas Berwyn it is generally a case of "Cynegan's Feast; or enough and no waste." That is to say, at the first onslaught _everything_ vanishes; and if any one, with fruitless gluttony, craves a second help, he must console himself with the idea that many medical men agree in the opinion that, in order to preserve ourselves in perfect health, we should always rise from table feeling hungry.

"If," says Mrs. Brandon, resuming the conversation, and setting her words to the music of a peculiarly crisp piece of toast, which she eats with a rather infuriating sound of crunching--"If, Esther, you can be deterred by so trivial an obstacle from availing yourself of an opportunity, humanly speaking, so promising--a door, I may say, opened for you in a _special_ and _remarkable_ manner, in answer to prayer--you cannot expect me to exert myself a second time on your behalf."

Esther stoops her head in silence over her fat bacon, which she has not the heart to eat.

"Esther is more difficult to please than we expected, is not she, mamma," says Bessy, smiling slightly--"considering that she told us yesterday she envied the man who brought the coals, because he earned his own living?"

"And so I did," answers Esther, gloomily.

"I'm afraid, Esther," says Mrs. Brandon, taking another piece of toast, and shaking her head prophetically, "that you will have to pass through a _burning fiery furnace_ before the stubborn pride of the unregenerate heart is brought low!"

"Perhaps so," answers the young girl, calmly; but to her own heart she says that she defies any earthly furnace to burn hotlier than the one she has already passed through.