Hester

something new. She was so sadly familiar with every person and thing about that any novelty was delightful to her. But the captain was not to be shaken off. He pushed Roland back into his seat. “There are worse things than rheumatism,” he said. And he scrambled into his coat and took Hester under his arm with unwonted formality. She felt annoyed and angry beyond description, vexed with her old friend. Why should he interrupt the innocent talk? Why interfere so pointedly to prevent the simplest communication between her and the stranger? A mere politeness, where could have been the harm of that? And then it was quite unnecessary that anybody should see her home. That the old man should risk an illness to do this, when she had so often run unattended from one door to the other, was more irritating than words could say. And, what was worst of all, it made the captain less perfect in her opinion⁠—the captain of whom she had felt that, all the rest of the world failing her, here was still an excellence upon which she could fall back.

Since they had come in, though the interval was short, the autumn evening had closed in completely. It was very damp and cold. The Common lay in a white mist; the sky hazy, with a few faint stars looking down through veils of vapour; the atmosphere heavy.

“Why should you come out to catch cold?” Hester said. “I want no one. I am quite able to take care of myself.”

“And I want no one, my dear, except myself, to have anything to do with you,” said the old man. “I am not afraid to tell you my meaning, without disguise.”

“Then stand at the door while I run home,” she pleaded; but he would not spare her a step of the way. He hobbled along to the verandah, with his comforter twisted about his throat and mouth, speaking out of the folds of it with a muffled voice.

“If it was any girl but you I should be afraid to say it, lest the mere contradiction might be enough for them; but with you I am not afraid,” he said.

Was his confidence justified? Was Hester too wise to be moved by that hint of opposition, that sense that a thing which is forbidden must be pleasant? It is dangerous to predict of anyone that this will be the case; and perhaps the captain did his best to falsify his own hope. He took her to the very door and saw her admitted, as if there might be a chance up to the last moment of the alarming grandson still producing himself to work her harm. And then he hobbled back in the gathering mists. He even stood lingering at his own door before he went in to the fireside and the cheerful light.

“Neither Catherine nor Hester, neither the young nor the old,” he said to himself. In his earnestness he repeated the words half aloud, “Neither Catherine nor Hester, neither money nor love.” And then there came something of scorn into the old man’s voice. “If his father’s son is capable of love,” he said.

XVII

The Young and the Old

“I like your Roland,” said Miss Vernon. She had come to pay one of her usual visits to her old relations. The grandson whom Hester had made acquaintance with without seeing his face, had now been nearly a week at the Vernonry and was known to everybody about. The captain’s precautions had, of course, come to nothing. He had gone, as in duty bound, to pay his respects to the great lady who was his relation too, though in a far-off degree, and he had pleased her. Catherine thought of nothing less than of giving a great pleasure to her old friends by her praise. “He is full of news and information, which is a godsend to us country folks, and he is very good-looking, qui ne gâte rien.”

Mrs. Morgan looked up from her place by the fireside with a smile of pleasure. She sat folding her peaceful old hands with an air of beatitude, which, notwithstanding her content, had not been upon her countenance before the young man’s arrival.

“That is a great pleasure to me, Catherine⁠—to know that you like him,” said the old lady. “He seems to me all that, and kind besides.”

“What I should have expected your grandson to be,” said Catherine. “I want him to see the people here, and make a few acquaintances. I don’t suppose that our little people at Redborough can be of much importance to a young man in town; still it is a pity to neglect an opportunity. He is coming to dine with me tomorrow⁠—as I suppose he told you?”

The old lady nodded her head several times with the same soft smile of happiness.

“You are always good,” she said; “you have done everything, Catherine, for me and my old man. But if you want to go straight to my heart you know the way lies through the children⁠—my poor Katie’s boys.”

“I am glad that the direct route is so easy,” Miss Vernon said in her fine, large, beneficent way; “at least in this case. The others I don’t know.”

Captain Morgan came and stood between his wife and the visitor. To be sure it was to the fire he went, by which he posted himself with his back to it, as is the right of every Englishman. His countenance wore a troubled look, very different from the happiness of his wife’s. He stood like a barrier between them, a nonconductor intercepting the passage of genial sentiment.

“My dear Catherine,” he said, with a little formality, “I don’t wish to be unkind, nor to check your kindness; but you must recollect that though he is poor Katie’s boy, she, poor soul, had nothing to do with the upbringing of him, and that, in short, we know nothing about him. It has been my