Weighed and Wanting, George MacDonald [ebook reader android txt] 📗

from under her eyelids as she sang. On his way home he brooded over the delight of having his best songs sung by such a singer as Hester; and from that night fancied he had received a new revelation of what music was and could do, confessing to himself that a similar experience within the next fortnight would send him over head and ears in love with Hester-which must not be! Cornelius went half way with him, and to his questions arising from what Miss Raymount had said about the professional, assured him, 'pon honor, that that was all Hester's nonsense!

" She in training for a public singer!-But there's nothing she likes better than taking a rise out of a fellow," said Cornelius. "She would as soon think of singing in public as of taking a bar-maid's place in a public-house!"

"But why did you never tell me your sister was such an awful swell of a singer?" asked Vavasor.

"Do you think so? She ought to feel very much flattered! Why I didn't tell you?-Oh, I don't know! I never heard her sing like that before. Upon my word I never did. I suppose it was because you were there. A brother's nobody, don't you know?"

This flattered Vavasor, as how should it not? and without the least idea of whither the spirit in the feet of his spirit was leading him, he went as often to the Raymounts' lodging as for very shame of intrusion he dared-that is, all but every night. But having, as he thought, discovered and learned thoroughly to understand her special vein, as he called it, he was careful not to bring any of his own slight windy things of leaf-blowing songs under Hester's notice-not, alas! that he thought them such, but that he judged it prudent to postpone the pleasure: she would require no small amount of training before she could quite enter into the spirit and special merit of them!

In the meantime as he knew a good song sometimes when he saw it, always when he heard her sing it, never actually displeased her with any he did bring under her notice, had himself a very tolerable voice, and was capable of managing it with taste and judgment, also of climbing upon the note itself to its summit, and of setting right with facility any fault explained to him, it came about by a scale of very natural degrees, that he found himself by and by, not a little to his satisfaction, in the relation to her of a pupil to a teacher. Hester in truth gave herself a good deal of trouble with him, in the endeavor, by no means an unsuccessful one, to improve the quality of his singing-his style, his expression, and even his way of modeling his tones. The relation between them became therefore one which, had it then lasted, might have soon led to something like genuine intimacy-at least to some truer notion on the part of each of the kind of being the other was. But the day of separation arrived first; and it was only on his way back to London that Vavasor began to discover what a hold the sister of his fellow-clerk had taken of his thoughts and indeed of his heart-of the existence of which organ he had never before had any very convincing proof.

All the time he had not once brought his aunt and the Raymounts together.


CHAPTER X.

HESTER AND AMY.


Hester did not miss Vavasor quite so much as he hoped she might, or as perhaps he believed she did. She had been interested in him mainly because she found him both receptive and capable of development in the matter of music-ready to understand, that is, and willing to be taught. To have such a man listen with respect to every word she said, never denying, defending or justifying what she might point out as a fault, but setting himself at once to the correction of the same, and in general with some measure of immediate success, could not fail to be not merely pleasant but flattering to her. Brothers, I suspect, have a good deal to answer for in the estimation of men by their sisters; their behavior at home leads them to prize the civilities of other men more highly than they deserve; brothers, I imagine, have therefore more to do than they will like to learn, with the making of those inferior men acceptable to their sisters, whose very presence is to themselves an annoyance. Women so seldom see a noble style of behavior at home!-so few are capable of distinguishing between ceremony and courtesy between familiarity and rudeness-of dismissing ceremony and retaining courtesy, of using familiarity and banishing rudeness! The nearer persons come to each other, the greater is the room and the more are the occasions for courtesy; but just in proportion to their approach the gentleness of most men diminishes. Some will make the poor defense that it is unmanly to show one's feelings: it is unmanly, because conceited and cowardly to hide them, if, indeed, such persons have anything precious to hide. Other some will say, "Must I weigh my words with my familiar friend as if I had been but that moment presented to him?" I answer, It were small labor well spent to see that your coarse-grained evil self, doomed to perdition, shall not come between your friend and your true, noble, humble self, fore-ordained to eternal life. The Father cannot bear rudeness in his children any more than wrong:-my comparison is unfit, for rudeness is a great and profound wrong, and that to the noblest part of the human being, while a mere show of indifference is sometimes almost as bad as the rudest words. And these are of those faults of which the more guilty a man is, the less is he conscious of the same.

Vavasor did not move the deepest in Hester. How should he? With that deepest he had no developed relation. There were worlds of thought and feeling already in motion in Hester's universe, while the vaporous mass in him had hardly yet begun to stir. To use another simile, he was living on the surface of his being, the more exposed to earthquake and volcanic eruption that he had never yet suspected the existence of the depths profound whence they rise, while she was already a discoverer in the abysses of the nature gradually yet swiftly unfolding in her-every discovery attended with fresh light for the will, and a new sense of power in the consciousness. When Vavasor was gone she turned with greater diligence to her musical studies.

Amy Amber continued devoted to her, and when she was practicing would hover about her as often and as long as she could. Her singing especially seemed to enchant and fascinate the girl. But a change had already begun to show itself in her. The shadow of an unseen cloud was occasionally visible on her forehead, and unmistakable pools were left in her eyes by the ebb-tide of tears. In her service, notwithstanding, she was nowise less willing, scarcely less cheerful. The signs of her discomfort grew deeper, and showed themselves oftener as the days went on. She moved about her work with less elasticity, and her smile did not come so quickly. Both Hester and her mother saw the change, and marked even an occasional frown. In the morning, when she was always the first up, she was generally cheerful, but as the day passed the clouds came. Happily, however, her diligence did not relax. Sound in health, and by nature as active as cheerful, she took a positive delight in work. Doing was to her as natural as singing to the birds. In a household with truth at the heart of it she would have been invaluable, and happy as the day was long. As it was, she was growing daily less and less happy.

One night she appeared in Hester's room as usual before going to bed. The small, neat face had lost for the time a great part of its beauty, and was dark as a little thunder-cloud. Its black, shadowy brows were drawn together over its luminous black eyes; its red lips were large and pouting, and their likeness to a rosebud gone.

Its cheeks were swollen, and its whole aspect revealed the spirit of wrath roused at last, and the fire alight in the furnace of the bosom. She tried to smile, but what came was the smile of a wound rather than a mouth.

"My poor Amy! what is the matter?" cried Hester, sorry, but hardly surprised; for plainly things had been going from bad to worse.

The girl burst into a passionate fit of weeping. She threw herself in wild abandonment on the floor, and sobbed; then, as if to keep herself from screaming aloud, stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth, kicked with her little feet, and beat her little hands on the floor. She was like a child in a paroxysm of rage-only that with her its extravagance came of the effort to overcome it.

"Amy, dear, you mustn't be naughty!" said Hester, kneeling down beside her and taking hold of her arm.

"I'm not naughty, miss-at least I am doing all I can to get over it," she sobbed.

Thereupon she ceased suddenly, and sitting up on the floor, her legs doubled under her in eastern fashion, looked straight at Hester, and said thoughtfully, as if the question had just come, with force to make her forget the suffering she was in-

"I should like to know how you would do in my place-that I should, miss!"

The words spoken, her eyes fell, and she sat still as a statue, seeming steadfastly to regard her own lap.

"I am afraid, if I were in your place, I should do nothing so well as you, Amy," said Hester. "But come, tell me what is the matter. What puts you in such a misery?"

"Oh, it's not one thing nor two things nor twenty things!" answered Amy, looking sullen with the feeling of heaped-up wrong. "What would my mother say to see me served so! She used to trust me everywhere and always! I don't understand how those two prying suspicious old maids can be my mother's sisters!"

She spoke slowly and sadly, without raising her eyes.

"Don't they behave well to you, my poor child?" said Hester.

"It's not," returned Amy, "that they watch every bit I put in my mouth-I don't complain of that, for they're poor-at least they're always saying so, and of course they want to make the most of me; but not to be trusted one moment out of their sight except they know exactly where I am-to be always suspected, and followed and watched, and me working my hardest-that's what drives me wild, Miss Raymount. I'm afraid they'll make me hate them out and out-and them my own flesh and blood, too, which can't but be wicked! I bore it very well for a while, for at first it only amused me. I said to myself, 'They'll soon know me better!' But when I found they only got worse, I got tired of it altogether; and when I got tired of it I got cross, and grew more and more cross, till now I can't bear it. I'm not used to be cross, and my own crossness is much harder to bear than theirs. If I could have kept the good temper people used to praise me for to my mother, I shouldn't mind; but it is hard to lose it this way! I don't know