"Wanted, a cook."
"Wanted, a good plain cook."
"Wanted, a footman."
"Wanted, a footman."
A companionship, then, is what has been decided upon as the vocation to which Esther is best suited: it requires neither French nor German, neither astronomy nor the use of the globes: it demands only a patience out-Jobing Job, a meekness out-Mosesing Moses, a capacity for eating dirt greater than that of any parvenu struggling into society, health and spirits more aggressively strong than a schoolboy's, and a pliability greater than an osier's. These qualities being supposed to be more quickly acquirable than music, drawing, and languages, Esther has decided upon entering on the office that will call for the exercise of them all.
Besides the printed advertisement above quoted, Mrs. Brandon has been advertising largely in private, by means of many long-winded epistles; has been seeking far and wide among the circle of her acquaintance for some grey maid, wife, or widow, in the tending of whose haggard, peevish age Esther may waste her sweet, ripe youth, unassailed by wicked men, in safe, respectable misery. And meanwhile Esther waits—waits through the fog-shrouded, sun-forgotten November days, through the eternal black November nights,—waits, straying lonely along the steaming tree-caverned wood-paths—the solemn charnels of the dead summer nations of leaves and flowers.
Preachers are fond of drawing a parallel between us and those forest leaves; telling us that, as in the autumn they fall, rot, are dissolved, and mingle together, stamped down and shapeless, in brown confusion, and yet in the spring come forth again, fresh as ever; so shall we—who, in our autumn, die, rot, and are not—come forth again in our distant spring, in lordly beauty and gladness. So speaking, whether thinkingly or unthinkingly, they equivocate—they lie! It is not the same leaves that reappear; others like them burst from their sappy buds, and burgeon in the "green-haired woods;" but not they—not they! They stir not, nor is there any movement among the sodden earth-mass that was them. If the parallel be complete, others like us—others as good, as fair, as we! but yet not we—other than us, shall break forth in lusty youth, in their strong May-time; but we shall rot on!
"Oh touching, patient earth,
That weepest in thy glee;
Whom God created very good,
And very mournful we!"
how much longer can you bear the weight of all your dead children, that lie so heavy on your mother breast!