Esther's Charge: A Story for Girls

It was the greatest possible penance to have to go up to his great big house on the hill, and she never approached it without tremors and quakings of heart. She fully believed that it contained dungeons, oubliettes, and other horrors. She had been told that the crags beneath were riddled with great hollow caves, where monks had hidden in times of persecution, and where smugglers had hidden their goods and fought desperate battles with the excise officers and coast-guardsmen. The whole place seemed to her to be full of mystery and peril, and the fit owner and guardian was this gigantic Cornish squire, with his roiling voice, leonine head, and autocratic air.

He was always asking her why she did not oftener come to see him, but Esther would only shrink away and answer in her low, little voice that she had so much to do at home. And then he would laugh one of his big, sonorous laughs, that seemed to fill the house; and it was he who had given her the name of the "little manager," and when he called her by it he did so with an air of mock homage which frightened her more than anything else. At other times he would call her "Goldylocks," and pretend he was going to cut off her hair to make a cable for his yacht, which lay at anchor in the bay; and he would tell her a terrible story about a man who sought to anchor in the middle of a whirlpool, the cable being made of maidens' hair – only the golden strand gave way, and so he got drowned instead of winning his wife by his act of daring boldness. This story was in verse, and he would roll it out in his big, melodious voice; and she was always obliged to listen, for the fascination was strong upon her. And then in the night she would lie shivering in her bed, picturing Mr. Trelawny and his yacht going round and round in the dreadful whirlpool, and her own chestnut-brown hair being the cable which had failed to hold fast!

And yet Mr. Trelawny was a very kind friend to them. He was a relation, too, though not at all a near one, and had been very fond of Esther's father, who was his kinsman. When the widow and child had been left with only a small provision, Mr. Trelawny had brought them to this pretty house at the foot of the hill upon which his big one stood. He had installed them there, and he would not take any rent for it. And he sent down his own gardener several times a week to make the garden trim and bright, and keep it well stocked with flowers and fruit.

Once a week he always came down himself and gave an eye to everything. Mrs. St. Aiden looked forward to these visits, as they broke the monotony of her life, and Mr. Trelawny was always gentle to the helpless little widow. But Esther always tried to keep out of the way when she could, and the worst of it was that she was afraid Mr. Trelawny had a suspicion of this, and that it made him tease her more than ever.

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.

"Now tell me, child – don't be afraid to speak the truth – do you want these young cubs to come, or don't you? Would it make life pleasanter to you or only a burden?"

"I don't think I can quite tell till I've tried," said Esther, shaking all over, but striving to keep her fears to herself; "but I think it might be nice to have two little boys to take care of."

"To take care of, eh? You haven't enough on your hands as it is?"

"I used often to wish I'd a brother or a sister to play with; that was before papa died. Since then I haven't had so much time to think about it, but perhaps it would be pleasant."

"You do play sometimes then?"

"Yes; when the little Polperrans come to see me, or when I go to see them."

"And you know how to do it when you try?"

Esther was a little puzzled, and answered doubtfully, —

"I know how to play the games they play. I don't know any besides."

Mr. Trelawny suddenly flung her hand away from him and burst into a great laugh.

"I think I shall advise your mother to import these two young monkeys," he said over his shoulder; and to Esther's great relief, she was allowed to walk the rest of the way home by herself, Mr. Trelawny striding on at a great rate, and muttering to himself all the while, as was his habit.

Later on, when he had gone back again, and Esther crept in her mouse-like fashion to her mother's side, she found her closing a letter she had just written.

"Mr. Trelawny advises me to have the boys, dear," she said; "so I have been writing to your uncle. I suppose it is the best thing to do, especially as Mr. Trelawny has undertaken to find a suitable tutor. That would have been difficult for me; but he is a clever man, and knows the world. He will be sure to select the right person."

"Yes, mama," said Esther gently; but she shook in her shoes the while. A tutor selected by Mr. Trelawny might surely be a very terrible person. Suppose he came from underground, and was a sort of magician himself!