Rhoda Broughton

“ No one bullies Esther; no one oppresses her; no one troubles their head much about her. So as she performs her monotonous, easy, tiresome little duties towards them, the old people have no sort of objection to her enjoying life, if she can. With the aged, comfort and happiness are interchangeable terms: continuous warmth of body, pleasant-tasted meats, a profound stagnant quiet around their arm-chairs, much sleep—these are their summum bonum. They have had love, and have outlived it—excitement also, and grief: they have outlived all but the elemental instincts that refuse to be outlived. ”

“ The autumn winds are piping bleakly, singing an ugly peevish dirge for the gone summer, bending the frost-seared brake-fern all one way, and with rough hands pushing back Robert and Esther, saying, "This is our territory; what brings you here?"
Esther shivers.
"You are cold, I'm afraid," says Brandon, anxiously, putting his head on one side, not out of sentimentality, but in the endeavour to keep his hat on.
"Yes," she answers, rapidly; "and I'm glad of it. I should hate to feel warm and comfortable; I want to be cold, and faint, and miserable always. ”

“ Esther's mare, frightened at the sudden apparition (many horses are afraid of deer) , swerves violently to the left; then gets her head down, and sets to kicking as if she would kick herself out of her skin.
"Mind! Take care! Hold tight! Keep her head up!" shouts St. John, in an agony.
Next moment the chesnut, with head in the air, nostrils extended, and bridle swinging to and fro against her fore legs, tears riderless past him. In a second he is off, and at the side of the heap of blue cloth that is lying motionless among the buttercups. ”

“ There is upon her the shyness of a young woman with an old one; the shyness of one against three. She feels, too, that it seems ungracious, churlish, when they are so glad to take her in to themselves, to adopt her as their own, not to be very glad too. When a person says to one, if not in words, yet with looks and gestures, "Our people shall be thy people, and our God thy God," it is not easy for a plastic, gracious nature to say "No, they shall not!" however little they may relish the arrangement. So, in her muteness, Esther accepts the Brandon God and people as hers. ”

“ Shall she, with strong, brave hand, push away all hope of the fine house and the broad lands, of the carriages and horses, the roses and pine-apples, the down pillows and fragrances of life? Shall she courageously, nobly, and yet in mere bare duty, turn away from the fairy prince and return to her hovel and scullionship? Shall she, or shall she not?
"Who is Robert Brandon?" repeats St. John, rather crossly.
In the second that follows Esther's life destiny is settled. She refuses the good and chooses the evil. ("He is the man I am engaged to," that is what she ought to have said.) ”

“ John's dogs, forbidden by Sir Thomas on pain of death, to set paw within the house, are rolling over one another, making abortive bites at each other's hind legs, and waggishly, with much growling and mumbling, taking each other's heads into their mouths.
"That is the whole," continues Constance. "These are the proofs; a woman, a wise man, a king, a poet, a beauty!"
Silence.
"A woman!" says Miss Blessington, cogitatively, resting her smooth chin on her hand, and looking vaguely round at the cabinets and busts for inspiration.
Esther makes no suggestion. ”

“ Esther complies, and then resumes her occupation of holding a skein of wool for Miss Blessington to wind. As often as she can do so without positive rudeness, she takes long looks at her companion's face—immovably polished, like a monumental angel's: looks at her, half out of that sheer love of beauty in any form, from a man's to a beetle's, which is innate in some sensuous natures; partly, and much more, because each frosty-fair feature of her face, each trinket almost upon her person, is linked indissolubly in her mind with some look or word of St. John. ”

“ It is hard to live with people whose every idea runs counter to your own—whose whole tone of thought and conversation is diametrically opposed to what you have been used to all your life—and yet not be able to contradict, to argue with, or differ from them, because you are eating of their bread and drinking of their cup. The mere fact of feeling that you are too deeply indebted to people to be able, without flagrant ingratitude, to quarrel, makes you desire ardently to fall out with them.
"How much better to be a professed beggar at once!" thinks Esther, with a sort of grim humour. ”

“ The clouds that piled themselves in sulky threatening last night behind the Welsh hills, and many others like them, have to-day fulfilled their threats, and have been, through all the daylight hours, emptying their flaky load on the patient earth. It is as if a huge white bird had been shaking his pinions somewhere, high up in the air—shaking down millions of little down feathers. Rain always seems in earnest, snow in play—with such delicate leisureliness does it saunter down. The rushing train, that bears Esther to her new distant life, is topped like any twelfth-night cake ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gerard is reduced to the ignominy of picking up the disjecta membra and hammering them together again.
"You must make a sensation when you go to a croquet party," remarks Esther, sarcastically.
"Do you think so badly of me as to suppose I ever do? is thy servant a curate that he should do this thing?" he answers, coming over and standing close to her.
"Please attend to the game, St. John! It is you to play!" exclaims Constance, with suppressed, lady-like irritation, from the other end of the ground, where she stands in majestic solitude.
It is the penalty of greatness to be lonely. ”

“ Esther is an odd one. Her road has come to a blank wall, and there stopped. Is there no ladder that can overclimb this wall?—no gap in all the thickness of its brick-and-mortar?—no outlet?
She rises and stands by the fire; her eyes down-dropped on the blue-and-white Dutch tiles—on the hobs, and queer brass-inlaid dogs: involuntarily she raises them, and they rest upon the little laudanum-bottle on the chimneypiece. Quick as lightning, an answer to her thought-question seems flashed across her mind. There is a ladder that can overclimb any wall ”

“ When one is on the verge of a burst of crying, a harsh word may avert the catastrophe, but a kind one inevitably precipitates it. With how unjust, unreasonable a hatred does one often regard the person who ill-advisedly speaks that kind word! As for Esther, she buries her face on his shoulder and begins to sob hysterically. Her hat falls off, and her bare, defenceless head leans on his breast, while the autumn wind wafts one long lock of her scented hair against his face. She has forgotten that he was her lover, has forgotten that he is a man ”

“ A shadow darkens the French window, causing Miss Craven to give one of those starts that make one feel as if one literally jumped out of one's skin, and fill one with ungodly wrath against the occasion of them.
"I rang several times," says Robert Brandon, apologetically, "but nobody came."
"Oh! it's you, is it?" she says, with a tone not exactly of rapture in her voice; "our servants always manage to be out of the way on the rare occasions when any one calls. They are all in the garden, picking currants; one would have been plenty, but they prefer working, like convicts or navvies, in gangs." ”

“ Would you please to show me which is your maid and luggage?"
"I have no maid, and there's my luggage," responds Esther, pointing with one grimy kid finger to a small trunk standing on its head, and looking half inclined to burst asunder in the midst. She is ashamed of her destitute condition, and ashamed of herself for being ashamed of it.
"Will it change into a pumpkin?" thinks Miss Craven, as she steps into a large yellow barouche, with two fidgety, showy greys, that is waiting for her at the station gate. After the yammering of the baby, the dull rumble-rumble of the train, how delicious! ”

“ Jack Craven, too, is beginning to wonder a little when Esther is going to return to the old farmhouse—beginning to feel rather lonely as he sits by himself on the window-ledge of an evening, smoking his pipe, with no one to take it out of his mouth now, and thinking on his unpaid for steam ploughs and sterile mountain-fields, with no one to speak comfortably to him, or console him with sweet illogical logic.
"All is not gold that glitters." Care gets up behind the man, however fine a horse he may be riding. Care is sitting en croupe behind Miss Craven, and she cannot unseat him. ”

“ For this one night, she would fain look like her old self—would fain be pretty plump Esther Craven, whose face, dimpled and débonnaire, men used to turn round in the street to look after—instead of the thin depressed "companion," whom if men looked at at all, it was only to pity her sunken white cheeks and sombre mourning weeds. Her Sunday frock is a lugubrious combination of cheap black silk and crape, against which her artistic eye has been revolting ever since she heard of St. John's coming. A little white tucker will not make her any the less mindful of Jack. ”

“ John? What do you suppose one is made of?"
"Will you take pity on me then, Miss Craven?" turning eagerly to Esther.
She tilts her hat low down over her little, straight, Greek nose, looks up at him with shy coquetry under the brim, but answers not.
"A man who delights in solitude must be either a wild beast or a god, don't you know? I have no pretence to be either: I hate my own society cordially. Come" (with a persuasive ring in his pleasant voice) ; "you had much better."
"Don't be so absurd, St. John!" cries Miss Blessington, pettishly. "Miss Craven would far rather be left in peace." ”

“ From Sir Thomas's description one would imagine that the Cancan was habitually danced at the balls he frequents.
The door opens, and Miss Blessington makes her appearance; looking, not vain or conscious, but calmly defiant of any one to make a better—a triumph of lace and tulle and flowers, and milk-white flesh, and grand, cold curves and contours.
"Oh, how beautiful!" cries Essie, clasping her little hands, with the unaffected admiration of one handsome woman for another. "I know it is rude to make personal remarks; but is not she, Lady Gerard?" ”

“ Upon the grey flat tombstone near the church-gate the great grave yew has been dropping her scarlet berries, one by one—berries that shine, like little lights, amid the night of her changeless foliage: there they lie like a forgotten rosary, that some holy man, having prayed amongst the unpraying dead, going, has left behind him. Evening is closing in fast; the air is raw and chill; no one that can avoid it is outside a house's sheltering walls: there is no one to disturb Esther's meeting with her brother. ”

“ Night's black sheet drawn off the other half of the world is thrown over us; the dark side of the lantern is turned towards us. Esther has fallen asleep, with almost a happy smile upon her soft, parted lips. She is forgiven; and is there any sweetness like the sweetness of being pardoned, having sinned? He no longer hates her! That was not hate that looked out of his quick, keen eyes to-day, as he leant over her while she sat, dizzy and faint, on that churchyard slab, or as he knelt in strong emotion at her knees. ”

“ In this life of Esther's there are no hardships to be borne—none of those sufferings, the enduring of which with self-conscious complacent heroism almost compensates them. It has none of the elements of tragedy: there is nothing very noble in bearing with respectable patience the trifling annoyance of making yourself hoarse roaring the price of wheat, and the pros and cons of disendowment, into an old man's ear; there is nothing grand in picking up the countless dropped stitches in an old woman's knitting. ”

“ Nature has been laying on her bistre under the great liquid eyes, and emptying a whole potful of her rouge on the rose velvet round of her cheeks. She is not in apple-pie order at all, and yet
"She was most beautiful to see,
Like a lady from a far countree."
If Esther were to murder any one, and her guilt were to be brought home to her as plainly as the eye of day shines in the sky at noon, judge and jury would combine to acquit her.
"Blessed be God, who has made beautiful women!" ”

“ Add to which, in the summer time most women like to have a lover; it is almost as necessary to them as warm clothes at Christmas. In winter the fire is lover enough for any one. The frosty splendour of the stars and the chill flashing of the northern lights provoke no yearning in any one human soul towards any other; we peep at them through our icy casements, then drop the curtain shivering, and leave them alone to their high cold play in the sky. But who can look at a July moon alone?
You will say that Esther was not alone, that she had her brother to look at it with her ”

“ Esther has been fully dressed for the first time, and has been moved into an adjoining dressing-room. In the small change of scene, there is, to her, intense delight—delight even in the changed pattern on the walls, in the different shape of the chairs—even in the brass handles of the old oak chest of drawers. Every power seems new and fresh—every sensation exquisitely keen; in every exercise of sight and sound and touch there is conscious joy. ”