CHAPTER XXIII

.

ESTHER.

I was welcomed at Brandon as rapturously as if I had come out of a long exile, and delightful it was to see the dear faces after even a short absence. It seemed to me as if I had been ages away, and I was rather surprised that the ducklings which had come out just before I left appeared much the same black-eyed balls of yellow fluff, and that the year had advanced so little during my memorable eight days of absence.

I had so much to tell them that though I had travelled all night I did not feel inclined to go to bed. I spent the morning over my unpacking and distributing the little gifts I had brought for each one. I kept till the afternoon,--when the young ones should have dispersed and left me with Aline,--the wonderful discovery I had made about Freda.

Well, Aline didn't know whether to cry or be vexed or glad over the knowledge that our Freda--about whom we had built so many golden dreams--was after all in the ranks of the workers. Yet I think, on the whole, the relief of knowing that she was the same dear, generous girl, only empty-handed now, outweighed all the rest.

Then my stories about Magnolia Cottage and Mrs. Vincent and Jacky were so pleasant that Aline, after a bit, grew reconciled to Freda's change of fortune. I gave her an imploring little note which Freda had intrusted me with, asking her to forgive the deception, which was never seriously meant, and had somehow grown up of itself. The humility of it brought the tears into Aline's eyes.

"I will write to her at once, dear girl," she said, going to her writing-table.

As she looked for a pen a sound caught our ears.

"Ah," she said, "it is Esther! We have not seen her all the week. Entertain them, dear Hilda, while I scribble a few words."

But when I went downstairs I found the pony and phaeton with Dobson, and a note from Lady O'Brien, saying that Esther had a sick headache and was being kept in bed, but longed to see me; and would I drive over and stay for dinner, or the night if I would?

"Yes, go," said Aline, "but you had better stay the night, dear. It would be too much to drive back here after your journey last night."

So I put one or two necessary things into a hand-bag, and drove off to Annagower.

When I went into the drawing-room I found Lady O'Brien alone, but no Esther.

"Your sister is asleep, Hilda," she said; "and I won't waken her, for I want a good long chat with you. Just take off your hat and cloak and come to the fire, and we'll have tea in, and be comfortable. Have you a pair of slippers in your bag? Well, just put them on,--don't mind going upstairs. You look rather fagged already."

I found the low chair and the footstool before the fire very comfortable indeed, for I was tired, but by no means sleepy. I felt that Lady O'Brien wanted to say something, and feeling sure that it was about Esther's trouble, I was too interested to be sleepy.

When we had each our cup of tea in our hands, and the fat page-boy had gone out, closing the door behind him, Lady O'Brien opened the matter which I had seen all the time trembling on her lips.

"Your sister has told me everything, child."

"Ah!" said I. "I wished she would. Has anything new happened?"

"Nothing; but Esther is in trouble. We have heard nothing of young De Lacy, though I have written twice to ask him to come."

"That is curious."

"It is, because the boy is a gentleman, and because he is head over ears in love with your sister. I have seen that all along, but I pick the locks of no confidences. I knew that presently my dear girl would tell me of her own accord."

"He may be ill."

"That is what she says. She keeps saying over and over that she can never undo the silence of the last few months, during which he may have been ill and dying. She has fretted herself into a fever."

"I am afraid he is not very strong."

"He is not strong enough for ill-usage. He would be all right in the life he was brought up to. I'm afraid Rivers was right when he was anxious about the boy leaving Brandon. Where there is internal injury it is so hard to know whether healing or hurt is going on."

"What are we to do, Lady O'Brien?"

"That's what I wanted to consult you about. You have a clear head and a still tongue. Of one thing I am certain. My girl is not going to have her tender heart broken if I can help it, the Lord helping me."

She got up and paced about the room, all her little frame tense with a nervous energy I had not suspected in her.

"You think it has gone deep with Esther, Lady O'Brien?"

"What do you think, you who have been her dearest companion from babyhood?"

"I think it is once and for ever."

"I am sure of it. She is very innocent and very romantic. She feels that she has been waiting for him all those years, and about him all the dreams and the poetry of her innocent and ardent heart have gathered."

"You know as much of her as I do, whose dearer self she has been all our lives."

The old lady nodded a queer, triumphant little nod.

"Ah, Hilda!" she said, "love is a wonderful teacher, and I love her like my own child. I would do everything within the law of God to make her happy."

"You don't think it hopeless?"

Lady O'Brien snapped her fingers.

"Hopeless! I see no obstacle that other people can raise. The only obstacle I would acknowledge would be the lad's coldness or unworthiness or--"

She broke off abruptly.

"Or death," I said for her.

"That is in the hands of God," she replied, "but I pray that He may will this girl, the joy of my old age, to be happy."

"What do you propose to do?"

"Propose, child? Well, first we have to find out what's the matter with the boy. I've written to Sir Rupert."

"What?" I cried.

"Written to his old villain of a grandfather, who, I expect, is at the bottom of the mischief. I sent a boy with it on one of your wild mountain ponies. He ought to be nearly back by this time."

"You didn't tell him--"

"I merely asked for an interview. I had thought of driving over there, but I was afraid the rapscallion would bar his gates against me."

"The country people would tell you it wasn't safe."

"Pooh! What a mass of superstition has grown up about the place! Just because it stands in a dark spot and is surrounded by unwholesome weeds. Why, if I could have hoped to get past the gates, I'd have gone like a shot. Dobson would come and fetch me out after a certain time. He's as brave as a lion, though you wouldn't believe it."

"There are those horrible dogs."

"Poor, lumbering, unhappy brutes! I should never be afraid of them."

"All the same, I'm glad you didn't go, you intrepid little fairy godmother."

"You'll see that I can be intrepid where it's a question of fighting for my girl's happiness."

"Sir Rupert will never consent to the marriage, Lady O'Brien."

"A fig for the man's consent! I only want to find out where the boy is. If he cuts up rusty I'll tell him to go and be hanged. I've a roof to cover them, and enough for a young couple to live on, even with the old woman in the chimney-corner."

"How good you are, Lady O'Brien! No wonder Esther loves you."

"It is she who is good to come here and brighten my old life with her youth and freshness."

"You are very young in heart," I could not help saying.

"Ah! my dear, perhaps I keep my heart a little green. I remember when I was young myself--long before ever I thought of my good Peter--and how I loved somebody, and thought I should die of losing him."

"But why did you lose him?" I whispered.

"He never thought of me, my dear, not in that way. He never even suspected that I thought of him."

I looked at her in wondering sympathy.

"It was your grandfather, Hilda," she said. "He's a saint in heaven to-day, dear fellow, but, upon my word, I half wish he'd been less saintly, and had called out De Lacy and put a bullet through him."

The transition was so sudden and characteristic that I burst out laughing. Just then the page-boy came to the door.

"Your ladyship's messenger has returned and brought a note."

Lady O'Brien snatched the note from the salver.

"There, that will do. Never mind the fire. We'll attend to it ourselves. Go out, and shut the door after you."

She tore open the note, glanced at it, and then handed it to me. It was written on a half-sheet of paper, evidently torn from a letter, and with ink so pale as to suggest an application of water to the ink-pot.

_Sir Rupert De Lacy presents his compliments to Lady O'Brien, and will do himself the honour of calling on her to-morrow at five._

"Now, that's the letter of an ordinary human being," said Lady O'Brien, "barring an eccentricity in the ink and paper. Maybe the devil's not so black as he's painted."

"It's very polite," said I, "but I wouldn't trust him. I'd distrust him all the more when he was by way of being civil."

"Well, we'll see, we'll see. It won't be long till to-morrow at five."

"I'll wait and hear what he has to say," I said.

"I'll tell you what. I'd better see him alone. But if you'd care to be present at the interview you can just sit inside the alcove there and pull the reed curtains. He'll never see your black frock in the dark, and if he does, why, it's no business of his."

"Esther is not to know, I suppose."

"Better not. It would only agitate her. Wait till it is over. Perhaps she is awake now and longing to see you."

She rang the bell and asked if Miss Brandon was awake, and the reply was in the affirmative, so I went upstairs to Esther's pretty room.

The dusk was beginning to gather, but I could see that she looked ill, though she had a bright colour. Her eyes were heavy and her aspect listless.

"I'm afraid I'm in for a feverish cold, Hilda," she said, when we had greeted each other. "My throat is sore and my hands very hot. Feel them."

I took her hands in mine and felt them dry and burning.

"What is it, Essie?" I said tenderly; "worry?"

"Not altogether that. The day before yesterday, when my godmother had driven to Iniscrone on business, and I was supposed to be nursing a little cold I brought from Kilkee, I slipped out and ran all the way to Brandon Abbey, thinking there might be a word or a flower for me in the old place. But there was nothing, and it rained hard coming back, and I got very wet, and said nothing about it."

"Oh, Esther, that was foolish!"

"I know; but you don't know how I am driven to do something. It seems as if I was lying here and letting all my life slip through my fingers."

"Can't you trust other people to do for you just for the present?"

"Ah! my godmother has been talking to you. You know I have told her everything."

"Yes, I am glad of it. She is a stout friend, although only a frail little old fairy godmother. Trust her, Esther. She will do all that love and courage can."

"I know. She is wonderful. But what are we against Sir Rupert? If we had only a man with us! If Pierce had lived and been strong!"

"God's in his heaven, Esther."

"Yes, I try to pray and have faith, but I am afraid of the Cross. What if it were His will to take my Harry?"

"He would give you courage, and would bear your Cross with you. But His will for you may be just as well your heart's desire."

"Yes. I went into a church one day at Kilkee. The door was open, and someone was singing at the organ:

'O rest in the Lord, wait patiently for Him, And He will give thee thy heart's desire'.

I thought it was a message for me, and have said it so often to myself. Oh, my heart's desire, my heart's desire!" she cried, and then covered her face with her hands.

"Why are you so full of fears, Esther?" I asked.

"My Harry is delicate," she whispered, "and Sir Rupert is wicked and strong."

"God is stronger than Sir Rupert."

"Oh, Hilda, can you imagine the unnaturalness of the man that makes him hate his own flesh and blood? No one knows how much my Harry has been made to suffer in that house. He says it is his grandfather's way of trying to drive him out of it. I wonder if he is right in staying?"

"He has only his own light to go by, as each of us has, Essie. We must leave him to its guidance."

"He says his presence is in some sort a check on the orgies of those two wretched men. But if he dies under it? Has he no duty to me and to his own life?"

"You exaggerate, darling, I am sure. One need not die even of such an unholy place as Angry."

"Not if one were strong. But he has never yet recovered of his hurt, and he is not likely to at Castle Angry."

She broke off suddenly and began to cry.

"I am forgetting that for four months I have had no word of him, and that now the letters that ought to have brought him so eagerly to my side remain unanswered. Where is he, Hilda? Where? How do I know but that he is already dead, and so escaped his enemies? If he were living and well he would surely have come."

"Be quiet, darling. You are letting your fear run wild. People are not made away with like that in the nineteenth century. Perhaps the letters have not reached him. Perhaps they have been kept from him, or he is not there. He may have sickened of Angry and gone back to Warwickshire."

"No, he might have gone, but he would have returned. He would not stay long away from where I am."

She lifted her head for a moment in proud confidence. Then it drooped again as a flower droops heavy with rain.

"You would never think, Esther, that he could be silent because he had forgotten you?"

"Never that. Nothing could separate us but death."

"Well, Esther," said I, "be quiet and keep your heart calm. We shall know something to-morrow, for Sir Rupert is to come here at five o'clock."

"Sir Rupert!"

"Yes. We had not meant to tell you, but now I think it is better. Lady O'Brien wrote that she wanted to see him, and he has written saying he will come."

She looked at me with distended eyes.

"Under this roof!" she muttered to herself.

"At least we shall find out where his grandson is."

"Yes, we surely shall. He will have to answer a plain question, won't he, Hilda? To think of the godmother drawing him like that."

"If he had not come she would have invaded him in his den."

"Dear, brave little soul! I have not deserved such love, Hilda."

"For an undeserving person, you seem to receive quite a large share," I said drily.

"Yes, don't I?" she answered in her simple way. Then she went on:

"I am so glad you told me about Sir Rupert, Hilda. It is the doing something that helps me, and I should hardly have had enterprise for that. The penny post has awful possibilities of cruelty. Think of launching those letters into the dark, and then waiting for an answer--the horrible strain of it--and feeling in your cold heart all the time that no answer will come."

"Poor penny post!" I said, laughing; "but think of all the happiness it brings as well!"

"I can only think of the letters that never come, or the cruel and cold letters. But they are easier to bear than the silence."

"Well, darling," I said soothingly, "the cruel and cold letters will never come to you, and the silence is only a pause before good news."

"You think so, Hilda? I was always so afraid of Sir Rupert. I know it is silly, but the shadows out of one's childhood dominate one in a time of trouble."

"Now, fret no more, Essie," I said; "I shall be with you to-night, and to-morrow will bring news. Think of yourself as a rich girl with a lover, and pity all the poor unloved ones like Hilda."

"Ah! time was," she smiled, "in my romantic youth, when I thought the lover stage the one most desirable. Now I think it is cruel and full of fear. But I am going to be strong, Hilda, and hope for to-morrow. You will tell me everything?"

"Everything; and be sure all will be well."

When I went up to bed that night I found Esther sleeping placidly. The finger-tips were turned towards her palms, like a child's in sleep, and the long lashes made a shadow on her richly-coloured cheeks. I prayed hard that night that the morrow might not betray our confidence.

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