Up The Hill And Over Part 43

Esther slipped quietly from the room. In the hall outside she paused, breathless. She felt as if she had run a long way. Shame enveloped her, a shame whose cause she could not put into words. She only knew that she had, in the few seconds of that cold greeting, been profoundly humiliated. She quivered with the sting of unwarranted expectancy. But if this had been all, it would have been well. There was something else, some deeper pain surging through the smart of wounded pride, something which led her with blind steps into a dark corner of the stairs where she sat very quiet and still.

Through the open front door, she could see the bars of lamplight on the deserted veranda, and hear from the open windows of the living-room a hum of conversation in which Jane seemed to be taking a leading part.

Then came the tinkle of the old piano and Mary's voice, singing, or attempting to sing, for it was soon apparent that her voice sagged pitifully on the high notes.

Presently Jane came out, banging the door. Jane's manners, Esther thought, were really very bad. She had probably banged the door because she had been sent to bed and she had probably been sent to bed because she had been saucy. Esther wondered what particular form her sauciness had taken, but when Jane called softly, "Esther!" she did not answer.

She did not want to put Jane to bed to-night. The child flashed past her up the stairs and soon could be heard from an upstair window calling imperatively for Aunt Amy. But Aunt Amy, flitting through the dim garden wringing her hands, did not hear. Jane, much injured, went to bed by herself that night.

In the lamp-lit room there was no more music. The murmur of voices grew less distinct. There were intervals of silence. (Only very old friends can support a silence gracefully--but of course these two were very old friends.) Esther wondered, idly, how it would be best to explain her absence to her mother. Toothache, perhaps? Not that the excuse mattered.

Mary never listened to excuses. She would be cross and fretful anyway and complain that Esther never treated her friends with proper courtesy.

The best thing she could do would be to go to bed. But she made no movement to go; the moments ticked by on the hall clock unnoticed.

After a time, which might have been long or short, there was a stir in the room and her mother's voice called "Esther! Esther!"

The girl stood up, smoothed her white dress, slipped out on to the veranda and into the garden. From there she answered the call.

"Yes, Mother?"

"Where are you? You sound as if you had been asleep. Doctor Callandar is going."

Esther came lightly up the steps.

"So soon?"

"It is early," agreed Mrs. Coombe playfully, "but I can't keep him."

Esther, herself in shadow, could see the doctor's face as he stood quietly beside his hostess. It was full of an endless weariness. Her pride melted. Impulsively she put out a warm hand--

"Good night, Miss Esther. How very sweet your garden is at night. But it feels as if our fine weather were over. The wind begins to blow like rain."

Esther's hand dropped to her side. Perhaps he had not seen it in the dusk.

CHAPTER XXV

We all know that strange remoteness into which one wakes from out deep sleep. Though the eye be open, the Ego is not there to use it. For an immeasurable second, the awakener knows not who he is, nor why, nor where. Only there is, faintly perceptible, a reminiscent consciousness whether of joy or sorrow, a certain flavour of the soul, sweet or bitter, into which the Ego, slipping back, announces, "I am happy" or "I am miserable."

Esther had not hoped to sleep that night but she did sleep and heavily.

When she awoke it was to blankness, a cold throbbing blankness of undefined ill being. Then her Ego, with a sigh, came back from far places; the busy brain shot into focus; all the memories, fears, humiliation of the night before stood forth clear and poignant. She buried her face in the pillow.

Yet, after the first rush of consciousness, there came a difference.

There always is a difference between night and day thoughts. Fresh from its wonder-journey, the soul is braver in the morning, the brain is calmer, the spirit more hopeful. After a half-hour's self-examination with her face in the pillow Esther began to wonder if she had not been foolishly apprehensive and whether it were not possible that half her fears were bogies. The weight began to lighten, she breathed more freely. Looking over the rim of the sheltering pillow the morning seemed no longer hateful.

Foremost of all comforting thoughts was the conviction that instinct must still be trusted against evidence. Through all her speculations as to the unexplained happenings of the previous day, she found that instinct held firmly to its former belief regarding the doctor's feelings toward herself. There are some things which one knows absolutely and Esther knew that Henry Callandar had looked upon her as a man looks upon the woman he loves. He had loved her that night when they paddled through the moonlight; he had loved her when he watched for her coming along the road, but most of all he had loved her when, under the eye of Aunt Amy, they had said good-bye at the garden gate. This much was sure, else all her instincts were foresworn.

After this came chaos. She could not in any way read the riddle of his manner of last night. Had the sudden resumption of his old friendship with her mother absorbed his mind to the exclusion of everything else?

Impossible, if he loved her. Had purely physical weariness or mental worry blotted her out completely for the time being? Impossible, if he loved her. Then what had happened?

Doubtless it would all be simple enough when she understood. She sighed and raised her head from the pillow. At any rate it was morning. The day must be faced and lived through. Any one of its hours might bring happiness again.

The rainstorm which had swept up during the night had pa.s.sed, leaving the morning clean. She needed no recollection to tell her that it was Sunday. The Sabbath hush was on everything; no milkman's cans jingled down the street; no playing children called or shouted; there was a bell ringing somewhere for early service. Esther sighed again. She was sorry it was Sunday. Work-a-day times are easiest.

A rich odour of coffee, insinuating itself through the half open door, testified mutely to the fact that Aunt Amy was getting breakfast. It was later than usual. After breakfast it would be time to dress for church.

Every one in Coombe dressed for church. It was a sacred rite. One and all, they had clothes which were strictly Sabbatarian, known indeed by the name of Sunday Best.

Esther's Sunday best was a blue, voile, a lovely blue, the colour of her eyes when in soft shadow. It was made with a long straight skirt slightly high at the waist, round neck and elbow sleeves and with it went soft, wrinkly gloves and a wide hat trimmed with cornflowers. She knew that she looked well in it--and the doctor would be in church.

On this thought which flew into her mind like a swift swallow through an open window, her lethargy fled and in its place came nervous haste; a feverish impatience which brought her with a bound out of bed, flushed and eager. Philosophy is all very well but it never yet stilled the heart-beat of the young.

Aunt Amy looked up in mild surprise as she hurried into the kitchen in time to b.u.t.ter toast and poach the eggs.

"Why, Esther!" she said in her bewildered way. "I thought--I didn't think that you would get up this morning."

"Why? I am perfectly well, Auntie. Where is mother?"

"Oh, she's up! Picking flowers."

Esther looked slightly surprised. It was not Mrs. Coombe's habit to rise early or to pick flowers, but before she had time to comment, Mary herself entered the kitchen with an armful of roses.

"Hurry with your breakfast, Jane," she said, "I want you to take these over to the doctor's office. I wonder you have not sent some to the poor man before this, Esther. Mrs. Sykes' roses never amount to anything.

Shall I pour the coffee? I suppose you felt that you did not know him well enough. But flowers sent in a neighbourly way would have been quite all right. If you weren't always so stiff, people would like you better.

I felt quite ashamed of your behaviour last night. Of course it wasn't necessary for you to stay in the room _all_ the evening, but it was simply rude to run away as you did. You needn't make Jane an excuse.

Jane could put herself to bed, for once."

"I did--" began Jane, but catching sight of her sister's face, went no further. And Mrs. Coombe, who was always talkative when airing a grievance, paid no attention.

"If you are feeling huffy about the motor breaking down, you'll just have to get over it," she went on. "It couldn't possibly have been Dr.

Callandar's fault anyway."

"I am quite sure that it wasn't."

"Then don't sulk. He is rather fine looking, don't you think? Though as a boy he was almost ugly. It doesn't seem to matter in men--ugliness, I mean. And of course in those days he could not afford to dress; dress makes such a difference. I shouldn't be a bit surprised if his clothes are English made. That baggy look that isn't really baggy, you know.

When I knew him his people were quite poor. Only a mother and sister.

The father shot himself. People said suicide ran in that family. But Harry--Henry said that if it did, it was going to stop running. He said such odd things. I was staying with friends when I met him, at a church social. One meets all kinds at an affair like that. My friends didn't ask him to the party they gave for me. For although they were a very good family, the Chedridges, Henry was almost a hired man at that time, working for old Dr. Inglis, to put himself through college. His mother and sister never went out."

"Were they both invalids?"

"Don't be clever, Esther! I mean socially, of course. Jane, run up to my dresser and look in the second drawer on the right hand side and bring down my small photo case. I think I have a photo somewhere, not a very good one, but enough to show how homely he was.... Amy, aren't you going to eat any breakfast this morning?"

Aunt Amy, who had been following her niece's unusual flow of talk with fascinated attention, returned with a start to her untasted egg. Esther tried to eat some toast and choked. In spite of all her resolutions she felt coldly and bitterly angry. That her mother should dare to gossip about him like that! That she should call him "ugly," that she should speak with that air of almost insolent proprietorship of those wonderful early years long, long before she, Esther, had come into his life at all, it was unendurable!

Do not smile, sophisticated young person. When you are in love you will know, only too well, this jealousy of youless years; this tenderness for photos and trifling remembrances of the youth of the one you love. You will envy his very mother, who, presumably, knew him fairly well in the nursery, and that first dreadful picture of him in plaid dress and plastered hair will seem a sacred relic.

In the meantime you may take my word for it, and try to understand how Esther felt as she bent, perforce, over the photo of a dark-browed lad whose very expression was in itself a valid protest against photography.

"Ugly, wasn't he?" asked Mrs. Coombe.

"Very," said Esther.