Hester Morley's Promise

Front matter

4 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA. 3 vols. crown 8vo. "If our readers wish to peruse, for the sake of pure entertainment, /a fascinating story which scarcely flags in interest from the first page to the last, we advise them to submit themselves to the romantic pages of 'The Doctor's Dilemma.' It is all story; every page contributes something to the result."— British Quarterly Review. " The best novel of the week In descriptive writing the author must be given a high place.'*— Athenæum. " Clever and agreeable."— Court Express. " Extremely interesting, and well-written."— Manchester Examiner. " This novel has many of the best features of a popular tale. There is much variety in its incidents, and many of them are strikingly told."— Edinburgh Courant. Henry S. King & Co., 65 Cornhill, and 12 Paternoster Row.

HESTER MORLEY'S PROMISE. BY HESBA STRETTON, Author of " The Doctor's Dilemma," <5_s., <&_, VOL. III. LONDON : Henry S. King & Co., 65, Cornhill. 1873- [All rights Reserved.] contents. vol. III.

Chapter I. At John Morley's Door

For John Morley there had been a brief interval of interest in outer things, and of distraction from his own morbid broodings, during the last few weeks of Carl's residence in Little Aston ; but as soon as he was gone, and the old routine closed in upon the house again, the faint throb of quicker vitality died away, and left him more dead than before. Even the fresh enthusiasm and hope of Carl's nature, tinged as they were with the buoyancy of a spirit which had not yet come into very close contact with the real world, had added a deeper shade to his disgust of life. He had looked back, and seen, through Carl's eyes, the fair visions which had attended his own early days ; and the realities which had met him, in the march of the years, only grew more intolerable VOL. III. B Hester Morley s Promise. 2 in their burden of shame.

The malady of John Morley, so long and carefully fostered, had reached a point where it was beyond his own power, or that of any man, to heal. Grant, who had cherished some hope, while Carl was in daily intercourse with him, gave up the case in despair. More closely than ever John Morley confined himself to his gloomy and unwholesome parlour, more unwholesome for his soul than his body, and there brooded over the dim memories of his grief. But they were not dim just then. As if Carl had sharpened in every respect the keen sword of the spirit, John Morley's brain presented to him clearer and more poignant recollections of the past. It seemed at times as if he almost saw the face of his faithless wife, and caught the echo of her voice somewhere upon the very confines of his ear. There was a subtle, mysterious feeling of her presence close at hand, haunting him with an undefinable terror.

The closed room overhead did not seem uninhabited, though he could hear neither voice nor step in it. Once before entering his bedroom he stole cautiously to the locked door, and listened though the empty key-hole, if there were any At John Morley's Door. 3 movement within. No grave could be more silent, and he retreated shuddering. In his chamber he could not banish the impalpable presence. He felt that he had but to strain his sight a little, and listen with a more attentive ear, and he should succeed in seeing and hearing this shadowy visitant. But dimness of sight, and dulness of hearing must be closing in upon him, in his premature old age ; and there was a film, a mist, a nameless terror, darkening his mind. His nights were sleepless, and his days fuller of poisoned thoughts. He was like a man smitten with disease, who counts the moments of his fleeting life by the sickly throbbing of his pulse.

Hester was only partly aware of this aggra vation of her father's malady. She had more to think of than in the days when she had him alone to study. There was Rose, and there was Annie, who was more warmly cultivating her friendship. Carl, too, claimed a large share of her thoughts. Nor was Robert Waldron forgotten ; that would have been impossible. The recollection of him crossed her mind often, and always with a pensive tinge of sadness, which did not amount to sorrow or regret yet Hester Morley's Promise. 4 which borrowed a shade from both. Carl was gone away, without speaking any sure words of love, and she saw him no more. Robert had paid to her the greatest and deepest homage by which any man can testify his devotion ; and it is not in the nature of a woman to hate or despise the man who truly loves her, whatever may be the character of his faults.

He was still at Aston Court. She had seen him, and he had seen her twice, as he was passing Grant's house, and looked up to its windows. She heard very much of him through Law son's mother. He looked pale and suffering ; Madame assured her that he was desolated. Amongst her many other thoughts Hester gave a place, a poor paltry place, Robert would have considered it, to him. It was impossible he should ever rival Carl ; but for very pity's sake, and because with Rose always in her mind he could not be far off, Hester often thought of Robert Waldron. To Robert himself, the departure of Carl and the assurance of Madame Lawson that he had not proposed for Hester, brought a new hope. He knew the flatteries and adulations, so diffi cult to resist, which would wrap about Carl At John Morley s Door. 5 upon his introduction into the religious world of London ; and he trusted somewhat to their seductions to make him forgetful of the grave, quiet girl at Little Aston.

If Carl only with drew from the field, he could not believe that she would persist in choosing poverty, and debt, and the increasing difficulties of her position, to the bright future he had to offer. He possessed the faculty of burying in oblivion what he did not wish to remember; and he had forgotten the singular solemnity of Hester's rejection of his suit. The fact that she had refused him remained in his memory only as being possibly the caprice of a girl, under Carl's ascendancy. He blamed his father for hurrying him into a premature avowal, which would have been better timed by being deferred a little ; but his withered hope bloomed again. There would be need of still more delicate management than before ; but after all, in spite of all, his little Hetty should one day be mistress of Aston Court.

" What news of Little Aston ?" asked Robert of Grant, one evening, with the carelessness of a man to whom so small a place could yield no news of any interest. "John Morley is dangerously ill," answered Grant, very gravely. " 111 ! good God ! " cried Robert, " what will become of Hester ? " " He is not beyond hope yet," said Grant, " and I shall do my utmost to save him ; but his constitution is terribly weakened. To my knowledge, he has never turned the corner of the street since I have been here, except once to see Carl." " Is he in bed ? " asked Robert. " To be sure, and the shop shut up alto gether," he answered. "It has never done him any good ; he is about as fit for business as you are. The place looks more dismal than ever ; what with that room which is never opened, where the shutters are falling to pieces, — " " What room ?

" inquired Robert, as Grant hesitated. " Oh, a drawing-room or something," he added, " which they say is never opened. But I am in a hurry. I promised Hester to sit up with her father to-night." Grant left Robert with fresh food for thought. He knew very little personally of the man whom he had injured ; years ago he had been At John Morley s Door. 7 Rose's husband, now he was Hester's father. The news of his illness affected him chiefly as it touched his own purposes. He was soon considering Hester's position should her father die, and how it would affect him. He flattered himself that Hester's reluctance to receive his suit arose partly from regard to her father ; but his death would remove this stumbling-block ; nay, might become a stepping-stone to the attainment of his end. She would be left homeless, penniless, and friendless ; and it was incredible to suppose that she would again refuse the lot he would offer her.

In his idle and luxurious worldliness, he could not compre hend the possibility of Hester choosing rather a life of difficulty and trial than his own lot of untroubled abundance of all things. He had strolled on unthinkingly until he reached the entrance of the town, just as the clock of the old church struck ten. The streets lay before him, with lights twinkling fitfully in many of the windows. There would be no danger now in walking once again under the walls of Hester's home. He passed on to it, with the impatient swiftness of one who has been long denied a pleasure. The gloom of the evening was deeper there, for the street was narrow and the houses high on each side. He crossed over to the opposite causeway, and looked up to the second storey. He had done so often in the old times to see if any light shone in Rose's pleasant sitting-room ; but the shutters of that window were closed.

In the next casement, however, glimmered a wan and sickly gleam, the beacon of illness, the pale watch-fire, where Hester, solitary and uncom forted, kept watch over the inroads of death. Why did his treacherous fancy mingle the images of Hester and Rose ? He had diligently rooted from his memory all un pleasant and disquieting reminiscences. Yet now, standing in the dark, opposite the house, and looking up to the windows, he felt himself the boy he had been eleven years ago. A boy only. He caught again the oft repeated apology for the past. It was as a boy he had loved and tempted Rose ; it was as a man he loved and honoured Hester. He stood in the quiet street some minutes, no passer-by coming to disturb him. At length he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, and felt that it was time to move on.

He At John Morley s Door. 9 traversed the whole length of the street, and then retraced his steps past John Morley's door. Was he in a dream to-night ? Was he the boy of three-and-twenty ; or the man thirty four years of age, weary, disenchanted, with a pricking goad in his conscience which he could not altogether pluck out ? To see Hester, only for a moment, would allay this fever of his spirit ; and what would be more natural than for him to testify his concern for her, and her father ? There could be neither harm nor danger in simply knocking at the door, and asking the servant how John Morley was. Perhaps Hester herself might answer his knock; as he could remember her doing once many years before. He called back her image to his mind ; a grave, sweet, simple child, who hailed his coming with a demure rapture of delight.

If he had only foreseen into what a womanhood this childhood was about to expand ! With a profound sigh, Robert Waldron set his foot upon John Morley's threshold, and knocked a low uncertain knock at his door.

Chapter II. On The Other Side

When Rose Morley heard of her husband's dangerous illness, she implored Hester to suffer her to see him at once, lest he should die without forgiving her. But his malady was more of the mind than the body, and Grant forbade any kind of agitation for him. John Morley's brain was at work with too busy and too perilous an activity. He was neither insensible nor delirious ; but from hour to hour his thoughts were flashing, with lightning speed, over all the events of his past life ; and his tongue, so long reticent, read aloud the secret records. It was a fever, but not a fever of the blood. The spirit, long kept in check, was at last avenging itself upon its tyrant. John Morley, lying almost motionless upon his bed, with his meagre face and burning eyes turned towards the listener at his side, poured out restlessly the pent-up emotions of his years of silence.

To speak to him of Rose, in this strange fire and fever os his memory, would have been madness. The only persons he admitted near to him were Hester and Lawson ; and to them his tongue ran on fast of all his love to her, and of all the torture of despair and shame he had suffered for her. Her name was always upon his lips. There was something of a solemn humiliation in this spectacle of a soul, forced at last to make itself known to some other human soul. Neither Hester nor Lawson answered him, and he did not need an answer. The fire within him was consuming him until he spoke with his lips ; that was all. They had only to stand by and listen. It was difficult to Hester to turn from her father to Rose with gentleness. She began to question whether the sin she had committed did not shut her out from all claim to her husband's pardon.

When Rose demanded an entrance to his room, with an importunity almost angry, she replied by telling her all that her father had said. Until that moment Rose had not felt the fulness of the wrong she had inflicted upon a nature like John Morley's. She could scarcely hope any more ; but she would minister to him afar off, and Hester, Hester Morley s Promise. 12 sorry for her in her heart, gave her permission to help in the additional labour of the house. The servant was gone to bed, and Rose was sitting up by the kitchen fire, waiting to let in Grant, when Robert Waldron's low knock reached her ear. She was scarcely afraid of being recognised now ; especially in the dim light kept burning in the entrance. Yet she crept slowly and tremblingly to the door, and paused with her fingers upon the handle before turning it.

Who could it be on the other side ? And what errand brought them there ? It was not Grant, for he was to have tapped softly on the window, lest the patient should have fallen asleep. Her heart throbbed, and her lips felt dry. But she fancied the person outside was about to give a second knock, and she threw the door open quickly and fully. For a minute or two Rose Morley and Robert Waldron stood face to face in silence, feeling as if they had met in another world. Yet it was the old place, the door she had opened to him so often, the threshold he had crossed with guilty feet. There was the difference only 'twixt now and then ; but the wofulness of the change was in Rose. He stood there, still handsome, almost young, with the air and mien of a man with whom all the world was pleased ; and she con fronted him, motionless, nearly lifeless, a faded withered woman, bowed down with the world's censure.

He closed his eyelids as if to shut out a vision so repugnant to him ; but Rose, with eyes that would not blench, gazed stead fastly and mournfully into his face. " Hush ! " she whispered, in a guilty tone, and with a gesture of silence, such as she might have used in the former days, " he is sleeping perhaps. Follow me softly. There is nobody to see you." He would have given worlds to escape from this interview, yet he had no power to resist. He followed her reluctantly, watching her now with keen eyes, which would not allow him to pass over any change in her. It was the same Rose, but with no more bloom or sweetness. The poor emaciated hand was trembling, the face was marked and sallow, the slender and graceful figure meagre and bent. Her eyes only were the eyes of Rose, though their deep blue was troubled with shame.

She was leading him through the house, and across the court, when the flame of the candle she carried Hester Morley's Promise. 14 flickered in the wind ; he could see how trans parent her hand was as she curved it round the flame. Where could she be taking him ? He climbed a steep staircase after her, and the light fell upon the swarthy leaves of ivy about the door ; and then he remembered the melancholy little room opposite Hester's window, which had once oppressed and fascinated his attention. Had Rose been in the house at the time when John Morley nearly murdered him ? Was it possible that she had even then been concealed so near to him, in a refuge of which he could never have dreamed ? This refuge was a mere, bare, comfortless cell in his eyes. The poor pieces of furniture, pro vided by Hester with so much difficulty, looked mean and scanty.

The two chairs, the table, the pallet-bed, a book or two upon the narrow window-sill, a basket of work, — this was all the room contained. The walls were dark with smoke, and the low roof was not ceiled. There was not a loft over the stables at Aston Court which was not better fitted for a human dwelling than this. Yet this was the poor shelter to which Rose Morley had been brought by him. He had not spoken yet ; he could not speak. Could this monstrous dream be by any chance a reality ? His conscience also was so diligently at work among the records of the past, turning back to old leaves which had long since been pressed down, that he was unconscious of his own dumbness before this awful apparition of his first love. If she had kept silence, he would have sat mute for hours, gazing at her in blank bewilderment.

" You have found me out," she murmured at last, in a voice of fear, " and there is no help for me but to throw myself upon your mercy. Do not drive me from here ; do not betray me. Nobody knows I am here, except Hester and Carl Bramwell. If you ever had any love for me, leave me here in peace." " Here ! " he repeated, casting round the place a glance of disgust. " Yes, here," she added, vehemently. " Why, it is a hundred times better than the place to which I might have fallen through you. Do you know who has saved me and gives me now this refuge ? It is Hester. But for the re membrance of her, the good little child I had forsaken, I might have fallen lower than I did. I owe all to Hester, my little Hetty." Her voice, broken and trembling, fell into sobs, until she could speak no more. The name of Hester brought Robert back to the present, and his deep absorbing love for her, so widely different to his fitful and poisoned passion for Rose.

What influence had her presence there upon Hester with regard to him ? " How long have you been here ? " he asked, in lowered tones, as if afraid of being over heard. " I have sought for you everywhere. I could not endure to think of you in poverty, without a home, and without friends. Why did you never let me know where you were ? It was cruel to me." Still thinking of himself, he asked this last question in a tone of so much tenderness, that Rose trembled and flushed a little. A last gleam of the good-tempered vanity of her girlish days flashed across her saddened heart. " Why have you never married, Robert ? " she asked. " I could have been happier and more contented if you had been married. Have you never loved any one — " but me ? she would have added, but her lips only moved, no sound came through them.

"Yes," he answered, briefly; " I have loved." " And would she not marry you ? " asked Rose, as soon as the spark of jealousy which his words had kindled had died away. " Is it possible that any woman could say No to you?" " I love Hester," he said again, with the short sharp utterance of one in great anguish of mind. " Hester ! " she echoed, " Hester ! " She could say no more ; but she sat silent for a few minutes, thinkings of what might have been had she but resisted temptation eleven years before. She saw herself John Morley's honoured and happy wife, the wife of a pros perous and happy man, the mother of Hester, about to become the mistress of Aston Court. A phantasmagoria of brilliant scenes, in which she played a prominent part, passed before her. The life that would have been but for her sin, was a hundred-fold better suited to her than the one she had chosen for herself.

Oh, Robert ! " she cried. " What can be done ? " " Nothing!" he said, in an accent of bitterness and despair; "nothing! I know now that vol. in. c Hester could no more love me than an angel could come down from heaven to me. How could she, having you before her eyes ? " He had almost told her that his chief hope had been to discover that she was dead, but he stopped himself in time. It was not in his nature to hate her, as some men hate the woman they have fancied they loved. He was sorry for her, but he was still more sorry for himself. " Robert," said Rose, "we neither of us knew what we were doing, when we sinned against a man like John Morley. It has been well-nigh the death of his soul, as well as mine. But I think now, I am a better woman than I was then. Look away from me, look away from me.

I wish to tell you what I think God has done for me, and I cannot bear your eyes to look into mine while I speak of Him." She was silent again for a moment or two, sitting before him, with bended head and closed eyelids, as if searching into her own soul with a keen and unsparing scrutiny. His eyes were riveted upon her in spite of her appeal. A feeble smile played once more about her pale lips, and her eye-brows expanded as if some pleasant thought had come to her amid all the pitiless shame and trouble of her inter view with him. She was once more something like the Rose he had known. " I believe," she said, softly and solemnly, "that He has forgiven my sin, for the sake of His Son. I believe that when the woman, who was a sinner, stood at the feet of Jesus, weeping and washing His feet with her tears, He saw me there ; and it was of me, as well as of her, He said, ' Her sins, which are many, are forgiven.' I believe that."

She raised her eyes to him, with a serene and hopeful light in their blue depths. Yet even as he dared to look into them for a moment, the tears came across them and dimmed them. " But my husband," she said, " does not forgive me. He has treasured up all our sins, and now he is counting them over one by one, while he is perhaps dying. Do you know that he recollects each day as if it were only a week ago, and he keeps on saying, ' On such a morning he came here, and I heard Rose singing to him in the drawing-room ;' or ' Such a night I found him here when I came home from chapel.' Oh, it is horrible ! He must hate us with a terrible hatred. If he should be lost, it is you and I who have brought his soul to ruin." " No, no. He is a good man," muttered Robert. " He was a good man," she continued mournfully.

" He was so good himself that he thought no evil of you or me, though he took so much notice of all we did. But all these years our crime has come between him and God. Do you suppose he would not have rejoiced in your death or mine ? They say he was almost guilty of murder. And now he is going to die ! " "He is not going to die, my poor Rose," said Robert. " I wish I could die for him ! " she exclaimed. " I should not be sorry to die. It would be well for me to be out of the world altogether." There was a passion of mournful pathos in her words, and Robert Waldron could have cast himself at her feet, and hiding his face in her lap, have given way to an agony of grief and repentance. It was true that he had not known till now what he had done. Till this moment he had not seen the blackness of his transgression.

At times, when he had been himself low-spirited, or when the even tenor of his comfort and well-being had been infringed, he had experienced what he had been pleased to call repentance. But it was now, looking at Rose and thinking of John Morley counting over his wrongs perhaps in the very hour of death, that his real remorse began. There stole a subtle and fine sense of his speechless anguish over Rose. " I thought never to let you know," she said, " but now I see you again — it must be for the last time — I cannot help telling you. I have a child." " A child ! " he repeated. " Yes," she said, believing she was giving him the only consolation in her power. " You shall see her some day. I thought you should never, never know ; but perhaps it would be wrong to keep her all to myself. She thinks her father is dead and in heaven ; you must never tell her different.

She is about as old as Hester was when I was married. You remember little Hetty?" Remember her! He had done nothing else these months past. There was no consolation or relief in the thought of their child to him as there was to Rose ; it only deepened the heavy cloud which hung over him. " I have called her Hester," said Rose, after a pause, for he had not answered her last question. Robert bowed his face upon his hands and groaned. This then was the Hester who was to belong to him, — his own child, who was never to know him as her father. But for Hester Morley, grave and gentle and sweet, with all the simple grace which satisfied his taste, the innocent and saintly soul which would have helped him to save his own un stable soul, — this Hester was lost to him for ever by an irrevocable forfeit.

" My punishment is greater than I can bear," he cried, bitterly. " No," she said, "your punishment is not so great as mine. Think of it. You are rich and honoured, and no one casts a stone at you ; while I am a beggar at my husband's door, and he does not know that I am fed by his hand. If he knew, he would fling me as a worthless thing into the street, where every one who passed by would revile me. Yet I think our sin was equal. But I don't know. No; it was more evil in me than in you. Let my punish ment remain. I deserve it all." Robert Waldron scarcely heard her. The sound of her words passed through his brain without making any impression there. This woman beside him, who had laid her thin chilly fingers upon his hand, had but a small share in his thoughts. He could no longer endure her presence.

He must be alone to taste, drop by drop, the dregs of the bitter cup which he had first tasted hastily in his youth. He rose ab ruptly and said that he must leave her. " It is the last time you will ever see me," said Rose, calmly. "No," he answered ; " we must see one another again." "You do not know what you say," she added. "There is peril in this house for you and forme. It will never happen again that we can meet as we have done now." She had opened the door, and was holding the light while he prepared to descend the crazy staircase, so shading it with her hand that the rays fell upon him and the steps he had to tread upon, while her own face was in shadow. She glanced round the sombre court for an instant. A light shone in Hester's window opposite, and the face of Lawson pressed ea gerly against the panes, watching Robert making his slow and cautious descent.