Esther Waters Part 4

Her life grew happier and happier. She forgot that Mrs. Latch would not teach her how to make jellies, and had grown somewhat used to Sarah's allusions to her ignorance. She was still very poor, had not sufficient clothes, and her life was full of little troubles; but there were compensations. It was to her that Mrs. Barfield always came when she wanted anything in a hurry, and Miss Mary, too, seemed to prefer to apply to Esther when she wanted milk for her cats or bran and oats for her rabbits.

The Gaffer and his race-horses, the Saint and her greenhouse--so went the stream of life at Woodview. What few visitors came were entertained by Miss Mary in the drawing-room or on the tennis lawn. Mrs. Barfield saw no one. She desired to remain in her old gown--an old thing that her daughter had discarded long ago--pinned up around her, and on her head an old bonnet with a faded poppy hanging from the crown. In such attire she wished to be allowed to trot about to and fro from her greenhouse to her potting-shed, watering, pruning, and syringing her plants. These plants were dearer than all things to her except her children; she seemed, indeed, to treat them as if they were children, and with the sun pouring through the gla.s.s down on her back she would sit freeing them from devouring insects all the day long. She would carry can after can of water up the long path and never complain of fatigue. She broke into complaint only when Miss Mary forgot to feed her pets, of which she had a great number--rabbits, and cats, and rooks, and all the work devolved upon her.

She could not see these poor dumb creatures hungry, and would trudge to the stables, coming back laden with trusses of hay. But it was sometimes more than a pair of hands could do, and she would send Esther with sc.r.a.ps of meat and bread and milk to the unfortunate rooks that Mary had so unmercifully forgotten. "I'll have no more pets," she'd say, "Miss Mary won't look after them, and all the trouble falls upon me. See these poor cats, how they come mewing round my skirts." She loved to expatiate on her inexhaustible affection for dumb animals, and she continued an anecdotal discourse till, suddenly wearying of it, she would break off and speak to Esther about Barnstaple and the Brethren.

The Saint loved to hear Esther tell of her father and the little shop in Barnstaple, of the prayer-meetings and the simple earnestness and narrowness of the faith of those good Brethren. Circ.u.mstances had effaced, though they had not obliterated, the once sharply-marked confines of her religious habits. Her religion was like a garden--a little less sedulously tended than of yore, but no whit less fondly loved; and while listening to Esther's story she dreamed her own early life over again, and paused, laying down her watering-can, penetrated with the happiness of gentle memories. So Esther's life grew and was fas.h.i.+oned; so amid the ceaseless round of simple daily occupations mistress and maid learned to know and to love one another, and became united and strengthful in the tender and ineffable sympathies of race and religion.

V

The summer drowsed, baking the turf on the hills, and after every gallop the Gaffer pa.s.sed his fingers along the fine legs of the crack, in fear and apprehension lest he should detect any swelling. William came every day for news. He had five s.h.i.+llings on; he stood to win five pounds ten--quite a little fortune--and he often stopped to ask Esther if there was any news as he made his way to the pantry. She told him that so far as she knew Silver Braid was all right, and continued shaking the rug.

"You'll never get the dust out of that rug," he said at last, "here, give it to me." She hesitated, then gave it him, and he beat it against the brick wall. "There," he said, handing it back to her, "that's how I beats a mat; you won't find much dust in it now."

"Thank you.... Sarah went by an hour and a half ago."

"Ah, she must have gone to the Gardens. You have never been to those gardens, have you? Dancing-hall, theatre, sorcerers--every blessed thing.

But you're that religious, I suppose you wouldn't come?"

"It is only the way you are brought up."

"Well, will you come?"

"I don't think I should like those Gardens.... But I daresay they are no worse than any other place. I've heard so much since I was here, that really----"

"That really what?"

"That sometimes it seems useless like to be particular."

"Of course--all rot. Well, will you come next Sunday?"

"Certainly not on Sunday."

The Gaffer had engaged him as footman: his livery would be ready by Sat.u.r.day, and he would enter service on Monday week. This reminded them that henceforth they would see each other every day, and, speaking of the pain it would give his mother when he came running downstairs to go out with the carriage, he said--

"It was always her idea that I shouldn't be a servant, but I believe in doing what you gets most coin for doing. I should like to have been a jockey, and I could have ridden well enough--the Gaffer thought better at one time of my riding than he did of Ginger's. But I never had any luck; when I was about fifteen I began to grow.... If I could have remained like the Demon----"

Esther looked at him, wondering if he were speaking seriously, and really wished away his splendid height and shoulders.

A few days later he tried to persuade her to take a ticket in a s.h.i.+lling sweepstakes which he was getting up among the out and the indoor servants.

She pleaded poverty--her wages would not be due till the end of August.

But William offered to lend her the money, and he pressed the hat containing the bits of paper on which were written the horses' names so insinuatingly upon her that a sudden impulse to oblige him came over her, and before she had time to think she had put her hand in the hat and taken a number.

"Come, none of your betting and gambling in my kitchen," said Mrs. Latch, turning from her work. "Why can't you leave that innocent girl alone?"

"Don't be that disagreeable, mother; it ain't betting, it's a sweepstakes."

"It is all the same," muttered Mrs. Latch; "it always begins that way, and it goes on from bad to worse. I never saw any good come from it, and Heaven knows I've seen enough misfortune."

Margaret and Sarah paused, looking at her open-mouthed, a little perplexed, holding the numbers they had drawn in both hands. Esther had not unfolded hers. She looked at Mrs. Latch and regretted having taken the ticket in the lottery. She feared jeers from Sarah, or from Grover, who had just come in, for her inability to read the name of the horse she had drawn. Seeing her dilemma, William took her paper from her.

"Silver Braid.... by Jingo! She has got the right one."

At that moment the sound of hoofs was heard in the yard, and the servants flew to the window.

"He'll win," cried William, leaning over the women's backs, waving his bony hand to the Demon, who rode past on Silver Braid. "The Gaffer will bring him to the post as fit as a fiddle."

"I think he will," said Mr. Leopold. "The rain has done us a lot of good; he was beginning to go a bit short a week ago. We shall want some more rain. I should like to see it come down for the next week or more."

Mr. Leopold's desires looked as if they were going to be fulfilled. The heavens seemed to have taken the fortunes of the stable in hand. Rain fell generally in the afternoon and night, leaving the mornings fine, and Silver Braid went the mile gaily, becoming harder and stronger. And in the intermittent swish of showers blown up from the sea Woodview grew joyous, and a conviction of ultimate triumph gathered and settled on every face except Mrs. Barfield's and Mrs. Latch's. And askance they looked at the triumphant little butler. He became more and more the topic of conversation. He seemed to hold the thread of their destiny in his press.

Peggy was especially afraid of him.

And, continuing her confidences to the under-housemaid, the young lady said, "I like to know things for the pleasure of talking about them, but he for the pleasure of holding his tongue." Peggy was Miss Margaret Barfield, a cousin, the daughter of a rich brewer. "If he brings in your letters in the morning he hands them to you just as if he knew whom they are from. Ugly little beast; it irritates me when he comes into the room."

"He hates women, Miss; he never lets us near his pantry, and he keeps William there talking racing."

"Ah, William is very different. He ought never to have been a servant. His family was once quite as good as the Barfields."

"So I have heard, Miss. But the world is that full of ups and downs you never can tell who is who. But we all likes William and 'ates that little man and his pantry. Mrs. Latch calls him the 'evil genius.'"

A furtive and clandestine little man, ashamed of his women-folk and keeping them out of sight as much as possible. His wife a pale, dim woman, tall as he was short, preserving still some of the graces of the lady's-maid, shy either by nature or by the severe rule of her lord, always anxious to obliterate herself against the hedges when you met her in the lane or against the pantry door when any of the family knocked to ask for hot water, or came with a letter for the post. By nature a bachelor, he was instinctively ashamed of his family, and when the weary-looking wife, the thin, shy girl, or the corpulent, stupid-faced son were with him and he heard steps outside, he would come out like a little wasp, and, unmistakably resenting the intrusion, would ask what was wanted.

If it were Ginger, Mr. Leopold would say, "Can I do anything for you, Mr.

Arthur?"

"Oh, nothing, thank you; I only thought that----" and Ginger would invent some paltry excuse and slink away to smoke elsewhere.

Every day, a little before twelve, Mr. Leopold went out for his morning walk; every day if it were fine you would meet him at that hour in the lane either coming from or going to Sh.o.r.eham. For thirty years he had done his little const.i.tutional, always taking the same road, always starting within a few minutes of twelve, always returning in time to lay the cloth for lunch at half-past one. The hour between twelve and one he spent in the little cottage which he rented from the squire for his wife and children, or in the "Red Lion," where he had a gla.s.s of beer and talked with Watkins, the bookmaker.

"There he goes, off to the 'Red Lion,'" said Mrs. Latch. "They try to get some information out of him, but he's too sharp for them, and he knows it; that's what he goes there for--just for the pleasure of seeing them swallow the lies he tells them.... He has been telling them lies about the horses for the last twenty years, and still he get them to believe what he says. It is a cruel shame! It was the lies he told poor Jackson about Blue Beard that made the poor man back the horse for all he was worth."

"And the horse didn't win?"

"Win! The master didn't even intend to run him, and Jackson lost all he had, and more. He went down to the river and drowned himself. John Randal has that man's death on his conscience. But his conscience don't trouble him much; if it did he'd be in his grave long ago. Lies, lies, nothing but lies! But I daresay I'm too 'ard on him; isn't lies our natural lot? What is servants for but to lie when it is in their master's interest, and to be a confidential servant is to be the Prince of liars!"

"Perhaps he didn't know the 'orse was scratched."

"I see you are falling in nicely with the lingo of the trade."

"Oh," replied Esther, laughing; "one never hears anything else; one picks it up without knowing. Mr. Leopold is very rich, so they say. The boys tell me that he won a pile over the City and Suburban, and has thousands in the bank."

"So some says; but who knows what he has? One hears of the winnings, but they say very little about the losings."

VI