“You are surprised to hear me so talkative, Hester? But it is not often I have a grandson to wake me up. You did not know I had one perhaps? Ah! I have been hearing of so many people that I don’t often hear of. That does an old body good.”
“I like it too,” said Hester, the firelight adding colour and animation to her face. “I did not know there were so many people in the world.”
“That’s very pretty of you to say, my dear,” said the old lady. “I was afraid you would think it all gossip; but they are people who belong to me, the most of them. And letters don’t tell you like the voice. You must run away when you are tired, for I think I shall go on asking questions till midnight. This young lady—this dear girl—Roland, is the comfort of our lives.”
“I thought no less,” said the voice of the shadow, with a softness which went to Hester’s heart, sending a little thrill of pleasure through her. She had not even seen his face—but she could not be unaware that he was looking at hers—from the protecting darkness on the other side of the fire. This curious pleasurable encounter, as through a veil, of two fresh souls, hitherto unknown to each other—a moment as full of enchantment as can be in this world—was suddenly broken in upon by the old captain, who jumped up, notwithstanding his rheumatism, as quickly as a boy, and, coming between, stood up with his back to the fire, interrupting the light.
“My old woman,” he said, “your Elinors and your Emilys are like a book to her. It is like reading a chapter at hazard out of a novel; but there is no end to the story and no beginning, and she is at this moment deep in her own—approaching the end of the third volume.”
“I should have said, to see Miss Vernon,” said the stranger, who was more a voice than ever, now that the old man interrupted what little light there was, “that she was at the beginning of the first.”
Was it the beginning of the first? Hester felt a wave of colour fly over her face, and thought in her heart that the newcomer was right. The initial chapter—surely this was true; not even a beginning, but something that went before any beginning.
“It never answers,” said Captain Morgan, “to give an opinion without knowledge of the facts. You are a clever fellow, Roland, but not so clever as that comes to. You will find, Hester, that round every human creature you come across, there is some kind of a world hanging ‘bound with gold chains about the feet of—’ That is the most uncomfortable metaphor I know. I wonder what Mr. Tennyson could have been thinking of? Did he think that this round world was hanging on like a big ball, hampering the going of God, do you suppose? But there is something of that kind, true enough, with men.”
“If you mean that for me,” said the old lady, smiling, “you are wrong, Rowley. God knows my heart yearns after them all, great and small, and it is the greatest refreshment and no hampering, to hear about them all—their pleasures and their troubles. What hurts me is to keep it all in and ask no questions, as so often I have to do.”
The old captain shook his head. He kept on shaking it gently.
“We have argued that question a great many times,” he said, “but I am not convinced.”
What was evident was, that he intended this conversation which had been so animated and pleasant to come to an end. He could not surely be unkind? But he placed himself, as it were, in the midst of the current, and stopped its flowing. A sensation of vexed displeasure and disappointment with her old friend whom she loved rose in Hester’s mind. Was it like him to reject the kindness of kin, to limit his wife in her affections, to turn a cold shoulder on his grandson? And yet all these things he seemed to do. “Roland” on the other side (she knew no other name for him), had been silenced. He had scarcely attempted to speak since the old man took that place in front of the fire, from which his shadow fell like a dark pillar across the room, dividing the side on which Mrs. Morgan sat with Hester beside her, from the other on which was the new being with whom Hester had already formed an almost intimate acquaintance she felt, though she did not know his name and had not seen his face. This very uncertainty pleased her imagination, and inclined her to the newcomer. But it was embarrassing to find herself in the midst of a scene, where so many confusing uncomprehended elements were at work, and where something which was not family harmony and peace lay evidently under the surface. When she rose up to go away, the unknown rose too; but the captain was on the alert.
“You can now go back to your gossip,” he said, “my dear: for I mean to see Hester round the corner.”
“No, Captain Morgan. It is very damp, and your rheumatism—”
“Bah! my rheumatism. There are worse things than my rheumatism,” he said, bustling to get his coat.
“Might I not replace you, grandfather? It would be a pleasure, and I have no rheumatism.”
This idea pleased Hester. It would be only for a moment; but he was
