Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages | Page 5

I've often wished I was a lady. It must be so nice ter
wear fine clo'es an' never have ter do any work all day long.'
Willoughby thought it innocent of the girl to say this; it reminded him of his own notion
as a child--that kings and queens put on their crowns the first thing on rising in the
morning. His cordiality rose another degree.
'If being a gentleman means having nothing to do,' said he, smiling, 'I can certainly lay no
claim to the title. Life isn't all beer and skittles with me, any more than it is with you.
Which is the better reason for enjoying the present moment, don't you think? Suppose,
now, like a kind little girl, you were to show me the way to Beacon Point, which you say
is so pretty?'
She required no further persuasion. As he walked beside her through the upland fields
where the dusk was beginning to fall, and the white evening moths to emerge from their
daytime hiding-places, she asked him many personal questions, most of which he thought
fit to parry. Taking no offence thereat, she told him, instead, much concerning herself and
her family. Thus he learned her name was Esther Stables, that she and her people lived
Whitechapel way; that her father was seldom sober, and her mother always ill; and that
the aunt with whom she was staying kept the post-office and general shop in Orton
village. He learned, too, that Esther was discontented with life in general; that, though she
hated being at home, she found the country dreadfully dull; and that, consequently, she
was extremely glad to have made his acquaintance. But what he chiefly realized when
they parted was that he had spent a couple of pleasant hours talking nonsense with a girl
who was natural, simple-minded, and entirely free from that repellently protective
atmosphere with which a woman of the 'classes' so carefully surrounds herself. He and
Esther had 'made friends' with the ease and rapidity of children before they have learned
the dread meaning of 'etiquette', and they said good night, not without some talk of
meeting each other again.
Obliged to breakfast at a quarter to eight in town, Willoughby was always luxuriously
late when in the country, where he took his meals also in leisurely fashion, often reading
from a book propped up on the table before him. But the morning after his meeting with
Esther Stables found him less disposed to read than usual. Her image obtruded itself upon
the printed page, and at length grew so importunate he came to the conclusion the only
way to lay it was to confront it with the girl herself.
Wanting some tobacco, he saw a good reason for going into Orton. Esther had told him
he could get tobacco and everything else at her aunt's. He found the post-office to be one
of the first houses in the widely spaced village street. In front of the cottage was a small
garden ablaze with old-fashioned flowers; and in a large garden at one side were
apple-trees, raspberry and currant bushes, and six thatched beehives on a bench. The
bowed windows of the little shop were partly screened by sunblinds; nevertheless the
lower panes still displayed a heterogeneous collection of goods--lemons, hanks of yarn,
white linen buttons upon blue cards, sugar cones, churchwarden pipes, and tobacco jars.

A letter-box opened its narrow mouth low down in one wall, and over the door swung the
sign, 'Stamps and money-order office', in black letters on white enamelled iron.
The interior of the shop was cool and dark. A second glass-door at the back permitted
Willoughby to see into a small sitting-room, and out again through a low and
square-paned window to the sunny landscape beyond. Silhouetted against the light were
the heads of two women; the rough young head of yesterday's Esther, the lean outline and
bugled cap of Esther's aunt.
It was the latter who at the jingling of the doorbell rose from her work and came forward
to serve the customer; but the girl, with much mute meaning in her eyes, and a finger laid
upon her smiling mouth, followed behind. Her aunt heard her footfall. 'What do you want
here, Esther?' she said with thin disapproval; 'get back to your sewing.'
Esther gave the young man a signal seen only by him and slipped out into the side-garden,
where he found her when his purchases were made. She leaned over the privet-hedge to
intercept him as he passed.
'Aunt's an awful ole maid,' she remarked apologetically; 'I b'lieve she'd never let me say a
word to enny one if she could help it.'
'So you got home all right last night?' Willoughby inquired; 'what did your aunt say to
you?'