Esther Hill's Secret

Chapter I. Will

go home as soon as the new -*- year has come," Esther always said to herself, clinging to this resolve amidst all her mingled gladness and pain, and looking forward to that threshold of the new year as to a landmark up to which these sweet and bitter days of her present life would reach, and there cease. Until then, if she were weak to let her self — as she did — be tempted to drink of the delusive happiness that these days offered VOL. III. B her, perhaps, at least, she was not weaker than many another woman would have been. For it seemed to her as if here, during these weeks, was the short divine sum mer of her life ; what could she do — who had known till now so little of God's sunshine — what could she do but take it when it was offered her, and not only offered but pressed upon her, by the hands that had be come dearest to her in the world ?

Like many another humble-minded woman, she could not believe, except at rare moments, that such love as Guy Dunstan might have begun to feel for her could be an affection that it would cost him very much to resign : he cared for her — yes, she knew that, but he cared for her, she thought, as he might have done for other women before he knew her — as he might care for other women when she should have passed out of his sight: he was too strong — too much in ear nest in all he did — to love her lightly ; but also he was not a man to let love for any woman living spoil his life. It was too fall a life for that — too healthy, too masculine, she said. But she was only a woman, and out of this rough, but yet strong and tender nature, she had already made her hero — her idol, to love with the one complete love of her whole heart.

Nor did she ever during these weeks wish for one hour or one moment that it had been otherwise. Sometimes she tried to wish that he on his part had not cared for her, but she never wished that she could love him less. It seemed to her as if in loving him she had reached the one glory of her life — redeemed its barrenness — climbb ed her one hill, and lighted her solitary beacon on the top of it. All the rest of her life since she had been a woman had been so tied down to the lowest earth, trampled on, degraded, encumbered with sordid trouble ; and now out of the midst of the miserable ernbroglio this one light had sprung up. It had become her star in the darkness — her morsel of heaven — the one handful of the divine that God had let her grasp.

She knew that she could not marry him, and with a passionate sorrow that over whelmed her sometimes she used to look forward to the coming of the time when he should know her secret and would not wish her to marry him ; and it used to seem to her that she must go away then, out of his sight for ever, for that she could not bear to be near enough to where he was to see the change in him ; and always, through everv hour she spent with him, as time went on, almost her first thought came to be the thought of how, without telling the truth to him, she could make him understand that there could be no pledge between them — how she could best make him feel that she must refuse him if he ever spoke to her, and so keep him sflent, and keep the power of silence to herself, too ; so that (she thought) perhaps there might come to be never any need at all for a breaking off of all this bless ing ; but when she had once left his house, his love for her, convinced that it was useless, might only gradually grow a little less, till it settled into a quiet tenderness that should stay with her till she died.

She could bear this, she thought : she could almost bear presently, she used to think, even to sit alone and see another woman make him happy, if she could feel (as surely he could make her feel, without any spoken words at all !) that in one, let it be but the remotest, corner of his heart, he remained faithful — as he might have done if she had died — to the memory of the woman whom he would have married if he could. She used to think all t_iis, and plan how it might come to be ; but in reality it never came to be as she had fancied that it might. His will was stronger than hers, and she could not control it, nor bend it in her own way. One day he was angry with her, because he found that, in spite of his request that she would stay with them, she had gone to Mrs. Coulson, and fixed her return there for the 3rd of January.

"There is no more reason for your going on the 3rd of January than there is for your going to-day," he told her. " What in the world has made you choose that time ?" " Because I said that I would stay till the new year, and I never meant to stay any longer," she answered. " The 2nd of January is Sunday, so I cannot go then." " Or else you would, I suppose ?" he said. " Yes — if it were a week day I would," she replied. And then, for he was vexed with her, and asked no other question, there was a little silence, till she gained courage to say something else. They were in the drawing-room together, waiting for the others to join them before dinner. She said with an effort after a minute's silence — "Why are you angry with me? Is it so hard to understand why I go? You know how unwilling I was to come at first, and why I was unwilling ; the fact that you have all made me so happy does not in the least make me any more fit to be with you now than I was then.

As long as I am — what you know me to be, and what I shall remain all my life — I am only fit to live alone. I have yielded to a great tempta tion for these last two months : but I never meant, and I certainly do not mean now, to continue to yield to it." She spoke all this slowly, and trying hard to keep her voice from trembling; but, cold as the words were, it was almost more than she could do to utter them to the end. The speech was one that she had set herself to make, but it was very hard to her to make it, — and hard for her too that he made no answer to it. He laid down his book indeed, (for he had begun to read after his own first few words to her,) while she spoke, but when she had finished speaking, after a moment or two's pause, he took the volume up again in silence, and went on with it.

And then the next minute Aunt Susan came into the room, — and for a couple of hours after that Esther was miserable and peni tent, knowing that she had said nothing but what it was right to sa}r, and yet wishing that every word had been unspoken, — feeling in her weak heart that she could bear anything except to have him angry with her. For a couple of hours she had to bear his anger, or at least the suspicion of it. It was often his custom still to call her to come and write for him in the evenings ; he did not do it always, but he did it often enough for his summons to arouse no comment from the others. This evening after dinner he sat reading for an hour or more in the drawing-room, and she thought that he was going to punish her by keeping silent to her all night : but a punishment of that sort was hardly, perhaps, much in Guy Dunstan's way ; at any rate it was not the one that he adopted now.

He was not the kind of man ever likely to break a woman's heart by leaving her alone. He rose up from his chair at last when he had put a mark into his book, and met her eyes for a moment as he passed her by, with a look as if he did not see the pathos and the pleading in them. Then he paused for a moment at Helen's side to say some affectionate word or two to her, and, going on to the door, stopped there suddenly and turned. " Mrs. Hill, can you come to me for half an hour ? " he said in his most business-like tone ; and she answered quickly " Yes," — and rose up with her heart beating, and, like the passionate foolish woman that she was, blessing him in her heart. For she had been in the right in what she had said and done, and he had been in the wrong to be angry with her for saying and doing it, — and yet it seemed to her now — for this moment at least — as if all she wanted was to be forgiven by him.

She followed him to the library, and he said to her at once — " I have a couple of letters that I want you to write ;" and then she took her place, and he dictated them to her. Neither of them said a word about any thing else to the other, till both letters were finished : then, at the end of them — " Thank you ; that will do for to-night," he said ; and it seemed as though after that, if she chose, she was free to go. But she did not go. After two or three moments she went towards him instead, as he sat over the fire, and said to him suddenly — "You must not be angry with me !" " I am not angry with you," he an swered quietly. " You were vexed, because I would not do what you asked me, — and I cannot bear to vex you!" " Then why do you do it ?" he said — ap positely enough. " I have told you why."

She said this very sadly. " Yes — you have told me why you want to go away ; but when I ask you to give up your own wishes in the matter, why don't you give them up?" " I cannot give up my feeling of what is right." " But suppose it isn't right but wrong?" " I cannot suppose that — when I know it is right." " Well, but, you see, we judge about that differently. — Now, sit down, if you are going to have an argument with me," he said suddenly. " Sit there" — pointing to another chair by the fire, — " and make your case out. I deny altogether that it is wrong to stay." He had been speaking coldly hitherto, but the thought of a fight was like fresh air to Mr. Dunstan, and his tone had warmed and quickened with his last words. " You have been about as frank with me, I suppose, as you are likely to be with any one ; and if I, knowing all about you that I do, still ask you to remain, what wrong can there be in your doing what I ask ?" he said.

" But you do not know all about me." She made this answer rather faintly. " No, — I know you have a secret that you will not tell me, — but if I know that, and trust you in spite of it — what then ? I wish you would tell me your secret — (God knows," he exclaimed quickly, " I don't say that to you out of mere curiosity !) — but still if, without knowing it, I choose to take the risk upon me of what it may be, I say again to you — what then ? What ground have you left to stand upon ?" " I cannot let you take the risk," she said. " You have been kinder and more generous to me than any friend I ever had, — than any other creature in all this world," she said almost with a break in her voice ; " but that is only the greater reason why I should struggle to do what I feel is right. Oh, Mr. Dunstan," she cried suddenly, — " I can not argue about it, but do not make it hard er for me than it must be at any rate : let me go !"

He made no answer to her for a little while ; then all at once — "Well, you shall go," he said. "You are wrong to be so anxious to do it, but if you cannot be happy with us any longer you shall go. And then — who is to write my letters for me afterwards ? " he asked quickly. He turned his face to her, but she would not answer him. "Will you never want to be with us again through the rest of the winter evenings ? Will you never regret what you have done? We have been happy enough together, have we not ? At least 1 have been happy, I know. Come," he said all at once, "there are a few days before us yet. Take a little longer to make up your mind." " Oh no, no !" she said beseechingly, half aloud. " But suppose I won't take your answer to-night ? And, now I think of it, I won't. You don't even propose to go for a week yet.

What is the use of saying positively to-night what you will do?" " But I have made up my mind long ago. I have told Mrs. Coulson," she said. " Still, you may unmake your mind. Never consider that a thing must be done simply because you have said that you will do it, — especially if it is a foolish thing. You shall go next Monday, if when Monday comes you are still resolved to go, but don't determine anything yet about it. Now, that is only a little thing to ask you, isn't it ? You won't refuse to promise that ?" And then — she did not promise, but she did not at least refuse to promise. What was the use of refusing ? she thought. She might yield him this one request ; it would all come to the same in the end, — for in another week she would be gone away. As Esther Hill sat to-night by that study fire, she hardly looked like the same wo man who had begun to take up her abode in the house scarcely two months ago.

Sad though the face often was still, it had softened so, and grown so young since then. _^ J" VOL. III. C You could hardly see the old hard lines about her mouth now ; the extreme pale ness of a few months ago had gone, — all the old stony look had gone ; she had looked of late as if she had come back to a new natural life. And then, besides all this, the last few days had brought another change. Just before Christmas, Mr. Dunstan, com ing one morning into Helen's room, had found Esther sitting there without her widow's cap. She had been bending over a table cutting out some work, and, as she sat, the strings of the cap had come in her way, and she had taken it off and put it aside, ln the mornings in Helen's room she had often done the same thing before, and of late both the girls had assailed her more than once to leave it off entirelv.

"Why should you wear it — you, with your beautiful hair ? It is a perfect shame to cover such hair !" Gabrielle would exclaim to her: and one day they had made her loosen all those luxuriant tresses of hers, and let them down upon her shoulders; and then Gabrielle, who had a natural gift for doing that sort of thing, had wound and coiled them up for her till she became en thusiastic over the effect of her own handi work. " You don't know how lovely you are," she said to her. " Oh Esther, don't put on your cap again : leave yourself so for the others to see you." But she would not leave herself so, and Mr. Dunstan had never seen her head uncovered until this morning when he came unexpectedly into Helen's room, and found her cutting out her work. He naturally noticed the change in her at c once, but though he noticed it he said no thing.

He had come in to ask some question of Helen, and he asked it, and then stood for some two or three minutes talking to her ; while as for Esther, for the first moment after he entered she forgot that she had put her cap aside, and then remembered it, and coloured, and with a mingled feeling of shame and vexation sat bending over her table without speaking to him. He was looking at her, she knew ; he was making his own comments on her, she felt too. But he said nothing, and in a few moments went away, leaving her with a feeling of annoy ance and anger at herself that was greater (seeing that the matter altogether was of such slight importance) than seemed reasonable. That same evening, after she had been writing a little for him in the study, he made her come to the fire — for the nidit was cold O — to warm her hands ; and as they stood there, after a minute or two, he said to her suddenly — " So you have put on this head-dress of yours again ?" — and he looked at her as he spoke, and brought the blood hotly to her face.

" I had only taken it off this morning for a little while because I was bus}r. I often take it off for a little while when the strings come in my way," she said quickly. " And why don't you keep it off?" he coolly asked her. And then she made no answer, for how could she tell him any good reason why she did not keep it off, or give him any good reason why she should continue to wear it ? ESTHER HILL'S SECRET. She said nothing, and after a few moments he went on speaking. " You are not in any trouble about your husband's death ; why should you wear that sign of special mourning for him, — as if your life was being spent in hourly distress for his loss ? It ought to mean that if it means anything, — but it does not mean that in your case, I suppose, so why should you wear it ? As long as you wear it you go about making a false profession."

" I do not mean to make any false pro fession," she said nervously. " Then why do you do it ? Why don't you throw your cap away ? I say nothing against your black gown, for you might wear that without any meaning at any time, — but your cap means only one thing, and you won't be honest until you cease to wear it." " But if I only wear it to assert the fact of my widowhood ? — as 1 do," she said. " What necessity is there for you to be always asserting the fact of your widow hood ? If your husband had been as much to you as some women's husbands are to them, I could understand your anxiety to assert it ; but, as it is, why need you be proclaiming it perpetually to all the world ? Would the world be doing you any wrong if it did not always remember it ? Or does it not rather do you wrong as it is (for to think a false thing is always to do you a wrong), when you leave it to suppose that your cap is not only a sign of your widowhood, but that it is a sign that you are mourning because you are a widow ?

When the truth is that you are not mourn ing for that — are you ?" he said suddenly, and turned a quick glance on her. ESTHER HILL'S SECRET. She coloured all over at this question, and bent her face down. " You need not reproach me for that — I cannot help it," was all she said pitifully after two or three moments. " Do you think I want you to help it ?" he answered quickly. And then they were both suddenly silent. When he began to speak to her presently again it was to ask her a different kind of question. " You were married to him for six years. Mrs. Hill, what sort of man was he ?" he said to her all at once, with a sort of eager, half restrained impatience in his tone. " Tell me — I want you to make me under stand. How could he have you with him for six years and not make you love him ?

Did he not love you ?" " I hardly know." She said this slowly and unwillingly. " I am not sure." Then a pause. " He thought he cared for me at first." " And after you were married did he get tired of you ? Was that it ?" " I suppose so." But the answer came very faintly. " I suppose he got tired of me, — but I never understood him, or felt sure whether he would have cared for any body else more than he cared for me. I had been pretty when he saw me first : I know it was that at the beginning that made him think of me." " Well — and afterwards ?" he said impa tiently. "He used to seem fond of me at mo ments afterwards, — but I hardly think it was in his nature to care for anything long. He was not unkind to me — I have told you that before," she said quickly. " He was wrapt up in himself, — but he never treated me ill — he never saw that I was not happy."

" He must have had a singularly dim vision!" Mr. Dunstan made this comment rather beneath his breath ; and then aloud — " What was he doing all day that he never saw it?" he said. " What were his peculiar avocations ? Had he a profession ? What was he?" " No, he had no profession," she said. " He was fond of some things that he used __) to do to — to amuse himself," (she said this rather hurriedly and nervously) — " but they were not work. He had never had to work. I think it would have been better for him if he had." "Because it would have taken him off your hands ?" " Oh no !" she said quickly. " I did not mean that, — for he was never very much with me — at least not when he was well. He knew a great many people." " And he preferred their society to yours, did he ?" " Yes— it amused him to be with them."

" And these people — were they your friends as well as his?" "No," she said coldly, after a moment's silence. " None of them ?" "Very few of them." " And that made him angry, I suppose ?" " No — it didn't make him angry. I don't know that he ever noticed it." " He seems to have had a remarkable power of passing through life without notic ing things." "Yes — he was self-absorbed. He did not take much heed of things that did not touch himself. But, Mr. Dunstan, I am not blaming him," she said suddenly and earnestly. " Men have made women infinitely more unhappy than he made me. I never loved him enough to give him the power of making me suffer much. I coidd not love him — that was at once my greatest pain, and my greatest safeguard against the pain he might have given me." " Did you love any one else, then ?

Was that why you couldn't love him ?" he said to her all at once, sharply and almost harshly. The colour came to her face ; she did not look at him as she answered — " No," half aloud. " Oh no, it was not that," she said after two or three moments' silence, but still with her eyes upon the ground. " I never cared for any one else — thank God ! He might have made me love him once — if he had been different. But you see — you see," she said pathetically, for the first time lifting up her head and looking into his face — " I had no right to blame him, or anybody, for the first fault of all was mine, in having ever married him." " It was not your fault that you married him : that was the fault of those who made you do it," he answered quickly. " At less than eighteen you were nothing but a child."

" I was old enough to have resisted per suasion, if I had not been vain and worldly," she said. " Were vanity and worldliness a pair of qualities that belonged to you in your girl hood ?" he asked her. " I should not have suspected it ! Where have they gone to now?" And then when she did not an swer him he looked at her with a laugh. " Do you want to claim possession of them still ?" he said. " Why do you laugh at me for telling you the truth ?" she answered a little sadly. " Most certainly I was vain and worldly once ; if I am neither now it is no merit of mine." " Well, you shall not be laughed at," he replied. " I was only unprepared for the kind of faults you seem to have had — that was all." And then he began to do some thing very like chuckling to himself. " Vain and worldly !" he muttered.

" I should as soon have guessed that she had been blind and lame !" There was a clock upon the mantelpiece that struck the quarters, and a minute after this it struck the third quarter after nine. " Look how late it is getting !" she said abruptly then. " Do you not want me to do some more writing for you ?" " No, let the writing wait ; you can finish it to-morrow," he said. "Then — shall we come to the drawing room ?" she suggested. " No — why should we ?" he demanded coolly. " Are you not comfortable here ?" " I did not mean that," she said. " Then why do you want to make any change ? We are very well like this. Sit still ; I want you to tell me something else." But for several minutes after that he did not ask her anything else. Instead of that he stirred the fire, and began suddenly, in a somewhat uncalled-for way, to give her some scientific information about the nature of flame and the properties of gas, — information that was no doubt excellent, but which it scarcely seemed necessary to sepa rate her from the rest of the family at this moment to communicate.

The small lecture lasted for four or five minutes : then at the end of that time he dropped the poker, and abruptly returned to the subject they had at first been talking of. " Well — and about that cap ?" he said, — and then waited with his face turned to her for an answer. The question brought her colour back in a great flood. " Oh, what does it matter ? Why cannot you let me keep it ?" she said hurriedly. " Because I like you to be honest, and you are not honest when you wear it." " But my wearing it means nothing " " Then take it off." " You will not hear what I mean. No thing, I was going to say, but that my hus band is dead." " You said that before, and I told you before that you were mistaken. It means also an assertion that you are mourning for him." And then she hung her head. " As long as you wear it you mean that you want to be supposed to be lamenting his death."