Evelyn Everett-Green - Esther's Charge - A Story for Girls

However, she never disobeyed her mother, or refused to do what was asked of her, and she knew that such a step as this one would never be taken without Mr. Trelawny's approval. Indeed, she saw that he ought to be asked, since the house was his; and, perhaps, he would not like two boys to be brought there. Esther had heard that boys could be very mischievous beings, and, though she could not quite think what they did, she saw that the lord of the manor had a right to be consulted.

The Hermitage lay nestling just at the foot of a great craggy hill, that was clothed on one side with wood – mostly pine and spruce fir; but on the other it was all crag and cliff, and looked sheer down upon the tumbling waves of the great Atlantic.

Near to the Hermitage, along the white road, lay a few other houses, and the little village of St. Maur, with its quaint old church and pretty village green. There were hills and moors again behind it, wild, and bleak, and boundless, as it seemed to the little girl whenever she climbed them. But St. Maur itself was a sheltered little place; the boom of the sea only sounded when the surf was beating very strong, and it was so sheltered from the wind that trees grew as they grew nowhere else in the neighborhood, and flowers flourished in the gardens as Esther had never seen them flourish in the other places where she had lived. Geraniums grew into great bushes, and fuchsias ran right up the houses as ivy did in the north, and roses bloomed till Christmas, and came on again quite early in the spring, so that they seemed to have flowers all the year round. That was a real delight to the little girl, who loved the garden above any other place; and with a book and an apple, crouched down in the arbor or some pleasant flowery place, she would find a peace and contentment beyond all power of expression.

As she climbed the path through the pine woods leading to Mr. Trelawny's great house, she began to wonder what it would be like to have her precious solitude invaded by a pair of little boys.

"I wish they were rather littler, so that I could take care of them," said Esther to herself. "I should like to be a little mother to them, and teach them to say their prayers, and wash their hands and faces, and keep their toys nice and tidy. But perhaps they are too big to care for being taken care of. If they are, I don't quite know what I shall do with them. But we shall have lessons a good part of the day, I suppose, and that will be interesting. Perhaps I shall be able to help them with theirs. Only they may know more than I do."

Musing like this, Esther soon found herself at the top of the hill, and coming out of the wood, saw the big, curious house right in front of her. She never looked at it without a little tremor, and she felt the thrill run through her to-day.

It was such a very old house, and there were such lots of stories about it. Once it had been a castle, and people had fought battles over it; but that was so long, long ago that there was hardly anything left of that old building. Then it had been a monastery, and there were lots of rooms now where the monks had lived and walked about; and the gardens were as they made them, and people said that at night you could still see the old monks flitting to and fro. But for a long time it had been a house where people lived and died in the usual way, and Trelawnys had been there for nearly three hundred years now.

Esther had a private belief that this Mr. Trelawny had been there for almost all that time, and that he had made or found the elixir of life which the historical romances talked about, so that he continued living on and on, and knew everything, and was strange and terrible. He always did seem to know everything that had happened, and his stories were at once terrifying and entrancing. If only she could have got over her fear of him, she would have enjoyed listening; as it was, she always felt half dead with terror.

"Hallo, madam! and whither away so very fast?" cried a great deep voice from somewhere out of the heart of the earth; and Esther stopped short, with a little strangled cry of terror, for it was Mr. Trelawny's voice, and yet he was nowhere to be seen.

"Wait a minute and I'll come!" said the voice again, and Esther stood rooted to the spot with fear. There was a curious little sound of tap, tap, tapping somewhere underground not far away, and in another minute a great rough head appeared out of one of those crevices in the earth which formed one of the many terrors of the Crag, and a huge man dragged himself slowly out of the fissure, a hammer in his hand and several stones clinking in one of his big pockets. He was covered with earth and dust, which he proceeded to shake off as a dog does when he has been burrowing, whilst Esther stood rooted to the spot, petrified with amazement, and convinced that he had come up from some awful subterranean cavern, known only to himself, where he carried on his strange magic lore.

"Well, madam?" he said, making her one of his low bows. When he called her madam and bowed to her Esther was always more frightened than ever. "To what happy accident may I attribute the honor of this visit?"

"Mama sent me," said Esther, seeking to steady her voice, though she was afraid to speak more than two or three words at a time.

"Ah, that is it – mama sent you. It was no idea of your own. Alas, it is ever so! Nobody seeks the poor old lonely hermit for his own sake. So mama has sent you, has she, Miss Goldylocks? And what is your errand?"

"Mama asks if you will please read this letter, and then come and see her and advise her what to do."

Mr. Trelawny took the letter, gave one of his big laughs, and looked quizzically at Esther.

"Does your mama ever take advice, my dear?"

Esther's eyes opened wide in astonishment.

"Yes, of course she does. Mama never does anything until she has been advised by everybody."

The big, rolling laugh sounded out suddenly, and Esther longed to run away. She never knew whether she were being laughed at herself, and she did not like that thought.

"May I say you will come soon?" she asked, backing a little way down the hillside.

"Wait a moment, child; I will come with you," answered the big man, turning his fossils out of his pocket, and putting them, with his hammer, inside a hollow tree. "Do you know what this letter says?"

"Oh yes; mama read it to me."

"Ah, of course. The 'little manager' must be consulted first. Well, and what does she say about it?"

"Mama? Oh, I think – "

"No, not mama; the 'little manager' herself. What do you want to do about it?"

Esther summoned up courage to reply sedately, —

"I think perhaps it might be a good plan. You see, I should get a good education then, and I should like that very much. It would be a great advantage in many ways – "

But Esther left off suddenly, for Mr. Trelawny was roaring with laughter again.

"Hear the child!" he cried to the empty air, as it seemed; "she is asked if she likes boy-playfellows, and she replies with a dissertation on the advantages of a liberal education! Hear that, ye shades of all the sages! A great advantage! – Yes, my dear, I think it will be a great advantage. You will learn to be young at last, perhaps, after being grown-up ever since you were shortened. A brace of boys will wake you up a bit, and, if I read between the lines correctly, this pair are going to turn out a precious pair of pickles."

Esther understood very little of this speech, but she tingled from head to foot with the consciousness that fun was being poked at her.

"I think mama will do as you advise about it," she said, not being able to think of anything else to say.

The big man in the rough clothes was looking down at her with a twinkle in his eyes. He got hold of her hand and made her look up at him.