Chapter XXVIII

It has snowed all day; an immense white monotony is over all the land. 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; so are the wayside stations; so are the houses in the smoky towns; so are the men, sparsely walking about on the country roads; so are the engine drivers and stokers; so are the sheep in the fields.

Miss Craven has been sitting all day long in the narrow _enceinte_ of a railway carriage, between the two close-shut, snow-blinded windows--sitting opposite a courteous warrior, who, travelling with all the luxuriousness which his sex think indispensable, is magnanimous enough to share his buffalo-robe and foot-warmer with her. A _tête-à-tête_ of so many consecutive hours with a man would, under any other circumstances than a railway journey, have produced an intimacy that would last a life-time; but now, all the result of it is a couple of bows on the platform at Paddington--a look of interested curiosity after his late companion's retreating figure, as she hurries herself and her small properties into a filthy four-wheeler, on the part of the warrior, and total oblivion on the part of Esther. Since that time she has traversed London in her dilapidated shambling _growler_, she has had awful misgiving that the "cabby," with the villany that all women ascribe to all "cabbies," is purposely taking her in a wrong direction--is bearing her away to some dark, policeless slum, there to be robbed and murdered. She has reflected, with cold shivers of terror, as to what would be the wisest course to pursue, supposing such to be the case. Should she look silently out of window till she caught sight of the friendly helmet and tight frock-coat of some delivering "Bobby," and then scream? Should she open the door and jump out on the snowy pavement?

While still undecided, her cab stops, and--all mean back-streets and sorry short-cuts being safely passed--deposits her and her box, bag, and umbrella, beneath the Shoreditch lamps and among the Shoreditch porters. Then an hour's waiting in the crowded general waiting-room, where all the chairs are occupied by fat men, none of whom make a movement towards vacating theirs in favour of the slender weary woman, who, with crape veil thrown back from her sad child-face, is holding her little numb hands over the fire, trying vainly to bring them back to life. Then more train; then a three-miles' drive in a fly, up hill and down dale, along snowy country lanes.

And now her journey is ended: the fly has stopped at the door of a great, vague, snow-whitened bulk, that she takes upon trust as Blessington Court. The driver, having rung the bell, now stands banging his arms, each one against the opposite shoulder, in the rough endeavour to restore circulation. The servants are too comfortable--the butler over his mulled port in the housekeeper's room, and the footmen over their mulled beer in the servants' hall--to be in any hurry to attend to the summons. At length, after five minutes' waiting, a sound of withdrawing bolts and turning keys makes itself heard; the heavy door swings inward, and a footman appears in the aperture, blinking disgustedly at the snow, which drives full into his eyes. Esther immediately descends, and enters with the abrupt haste characteristic of extreme nervousness.

"Will you pay him, please?" she says, with a certain flurry of manner, to the servant. "I--I don't know how much I ought to give him--how many miles it is."

While the man complies with her request, she stands in the huge stone-floored hall, lit only by firelight, shivering with cold and fear. She peers up at the ceiling--of which, by-the-bye, there is none, as the hall runs up to the top of the house; at the walls, from which great life-size figures, dimly naked, glimmer uncomfortably cold. Anxious doubts assail her as to whether there are any rules of which she is ignorant for a "companion's" behaviour and deportment; she is not aware that she has ever seen one of those curious animals hitherto in the course of her life. Ought they to make a reverence on entering a room? Ought they to say "Sir" or "Ma'am" to whoever they address? Ought they to laugh at everybody's jokes?--not sit down unless given leave so to do, and not speak unless spoken to? So wondering, she tremblingly follows the footman as he opens the door of an adjoining apartment, and, announcing "Miss Craven," retires joyfully to the society of his compeers and his beer.

The apartment in which Esther is thus left stranded is as large as the hall that she has just quitted. It seems to her oppressively immense--quite a long walk from the door to the inhabited portion. A very big roasting fire burns on the hearth: and right in front of it, in the very glare of its hot red eyes, sits a very old man, doubled together in an armchair--one hand in his breast, and his aged head sunk upon it, apparently fast asleep. An old lady, wrapped up in a shawl, reposes in another easy-chair, with her eyes likewise closed. A lamp with a green shade burns faintly on a centre table, and beyond lamp and table sits a third person, hidden by the lamp-shade from Esther's eyes.

"Are they all asleep?" thinks the poor girl, advancing with gentle, hesitating steps. "They seem to be. How can I wake them?--or would it be disrespectful?"

While she so speculates, the third person rises and comes forward. "How do you do, Miss Craven? You must have had a cold journey, I'm afraid?" says a bland, unforgotten voice.

It is Miss Blessington. In an instant, Esther seems to have jumped back over the past intervening months--to be just entering on her Felton visit. There is the same voice greeting her--the same tones of polite inquiry; the same words almost, except that _then_ it was, "How do you do, Miss Craven? You must have had a hot journey, I'm afraid?" and now it is, "How do you do, Miss Craven? You must have had a cold journey, I'm afraid?"--the same undulating walk; the same effect of lilac evening clouds. Involuntarily she turns her head and glances towards the window, half-expecting to see St. John's legs disappearing through it. Instead, an old woman's voice sounds quavering: "Are you Miss Craven, my dear? Come here!"

Esther does not hear. "It _was_ rather cold," she says, answering Constance, in half bewilderment between past and present, her eyes dazed with the light after her long, dark journey.

"Mrs. Blessington is speaking to you," says Constance, in mild reminder.

Esther turns round quickly. "Oh! I beg your pardon--I did not hear--I hope I was not rude," she cries, forgetting the "Ma'am" she had half-purposed employing.

"Who's there?--who's talking?" asks the old man, lifting up his head, and speaking in a voice tremulous indeed, but with a remnant of the power and fire that "youth gone out had left in ashes."

No one answers.

"Who's there, Mrs. Blessington?" he repeats, with querulous anger.

"Miss Craven, uncle--the young lady that we expected to-day--don't you know?" replies Constance, stooping gracefully over him, and putting her lips as close as possible to his withered ear.

"H'm! Tell her to come and speak to me. I want to see what she is like," he rejoins, much as if she had not been in the room.

"Go to him, my dear," says the old lady.

"And speak as loud as you can; he is as deaf as a post," adds Constance, not in the least lowering her voice at the announcement, in perfect confidence of the truth of her assertion, shrugging her handsome shoulders as she speaks.

Esther goes trembling, and lays her small cold hand in the long bony wreck of muscle, vein, and flesh that is stretched out to her. He gazes at her face with the eager intentness of the purblind.

"What is your name?" he asks abruptly.

"Esther," she answers, faltering.

"Cannot hear a word you say--you mumble so," he says, pettishly.

"Go round to the other side; the other ear is the best," suggests Constance, calmly.

Esther obeys. "_Esther_," she repeats, speaking unnecessarily loud this time--at the top of her voice, in fact, out of sheer nervousness.

"You need not scream at me, my dear, as if I were stone deaf. _Esther_ or _Hester_, did you say?"

"Esther."

"And who gave it you, pray?"

"My father and mother, I suppose."

"H'm! Well, you may tell them, with my compliments," he says, with a senile laugh, "that I think they might have found a prettier name to give a young lady, and that the old squire says so. The old squire says so," he repeats, chuckling a little to himself.

"I cannot tell them," answers Esther, half-crying. "They are dead."

"Oh, indeed!"

There his interest in the new comer seems to cease. His white head sinks back on his breast again, and he relapses into slumber.

Esther has had neither luncheon, dinner, nor tea--a fact which none of her companions appear to contemplate as possible. _One_ bun has been her sole support throughout the long bitter day--only _one_, because all such buns must be bought with Mrs. Brandon's money.

"I daresay you would like to go to bed, dear, you look tired," says Mrs. Blessington, scanning rather curiously Esther's fagged, woebegone little face. "Travelling is so much more fatiguing than it used to be in former days, when one travelled in one's own carriage, whatever they may say. I remember," she continues, with an old woman's garrulity, "Mr. Blessington and I travelling from London to York by easy stages of twenty miles a day, in our own curricle, with outriders. One never sees a curricle nowadays."

"I _am_ rather tired," the girl answers, with a faint smile, "and cravingly hungry," she might have added, but does not.

"Ring the bell for James to light the candles."

Weak from inanition, and with limbs cramped by long remaining in one position, Esther follows Miss Blessington up low flights of uncarpeted stone stairs, through draughty twisting passages, along a broad bare gallery, down more passages, and then into a huge gloomy, mouldy room--frosty, yet cold, despite the fire burning briskly on the old-fashioned-hobbed grate; a vast dark four-poster, hung with ginger-coloured moreen; a couch that looks highly suitable for lying-in-state on; an old-fashioned screen, covered with caricatures of Fox, Burke, the Regent, and Queen Caroline; and on the walls a highly valuable and curious tapestry, which waves pleasantly in the bitter wind that enters freely beneath the ill-fitting old door, giving an air of galvanic motion and false life to the ill-looking Cupids, green with age, that play hide-and-seek amongst vases, broken pillars and wormy blue trees.

"You have plenty of room, you see," says Miss Blessington, with a curve of her suave lips, as she lights the candles on the dressing-table, which, instead of being pink petticoated, white-muslined deal, is bare sturdy oak, with millions of little useless drawers and pigeon-holes in it.

"Plenty," echoes Esther, rather aghast, surveying her premises with some dismay.

"You must not be frightened if you hear odd noises; it's only rats," says her companion, putting one small white-booted foot on the fender.

"I wish that--that stuff would not sway and shake about so," says the young girl, pointing nervously with one timid fore-finger to the tapestry. "Might not some one get behind it very easily and hide, as it does not seem to be fastened down?"

"Possibly," replies Miss Blessington, indifferently. "I never heard of such a thing having happened."

"Am I near any one else--tolerably near, I mean?" asks Esther, her heart sinking.

"Not very."

"Would no one hear me if I screamed?" she inquires, laying her hand unconsciously on the marble round of her companion's firm white arm, while her frightened eyes burn upon Constance's impassive face.

"We will hope that you will not make the experiment," she answers, with a cold smile, and so goes.