strict. She was so very good herself, I
thought, that the badness of other people made her frown all her life. I
felt so different from her, even making every allowance for the
differences between a child and a woman; I felt so poor, so trifling, and
so far off that I never could be unrestrained with her—no, could never
even love her as I wished. It made me very sorry to consider how good
she was and how unworthy of her I was, and I used ardently to hope that
I might have a better heart; and I talked it over very often with the dear
old doll, but I never loved my godmother as I ought to have loved her
and as I felt I must have loved her if I had been a better girl.
This made me, I dare say, more timid and retiring than I naturally
was and cast me upon Dolly as the only friend with whom I felt at ease.
But something happened when I was still quite a little thing that helped
it very much.
I had never heard my mama spoken of. I had never heard of my papa
either, but I felt more interested about my mama. I had never worn a
black frock, that I could recollect. I had never been shown my mama’s
grave. I had never been told where it was. Yet I had never been taught to
pray for any relation but my godmother. I had more than once
approached this subject of my thoughts with Mrs. Rachael, our only
servant, who took my light away when I was in bed (another very good
woman, but austere to me), and she had only said, Esther, good night!” ‟
and gone away and left me.
Although there were seven girls at the neighbouring school where I
was a day boarder, and although they called me little Esther Summerson,
I knew none of them at home. All of them were older than I, to be sure (I
was the youngest there by a good deal), but there seemed to be some
other separation between us besides that, and besides their being far
more clever than I was and knowing much more than I did. One of them
in the first week of my going to the school (I remember it very well)
invited me home to a little party, to my great joy. But my godmother
wrote a stiff letter declining for me, and I never went. I never went out at
all.
It was my birthday. There were holidays at school on other birthdays
—none on mine. There were rejoicings at home on other birthdays, as I
knew from what I heard the girls relate to one another—there were none
on mine. My birthday was the most melancholy day at home in the
whole year.
I have mentioned that unless my vanity should deceive me (as I know
it may, for I may be very vain without suspecting it, though indeed I
don’t), my comprehension is quickened when my affection is. My
disposition is very affectionate, and perhaps I might still feel such a
wound if such a wound could be received more than once with the
quickness of that birthday.
Dinner was over, and my godmother and I were sitting at the table
before the fire. The clock ticked, the fire clicked; not another sound had
been heard in the room or in the house for I don’t know how long. I
happened to look timidly up from my stitching, across the table at my
godmother, and I saw in her face, looking gloomily at me, It would have ‟
been far better, little Esther, that you had had no birthday, that you had
never been born!”
I broke out crying and sobbing, and I said, Oh, dear godmother, tell ‟
me, pray do tell me, did Mama die on my birthday?”
No,” she returned. Ask me no more, child!” ‟ ‟
‟Oh, do pray tell me something of her. Do now, at last, dear
godmother, if you please! What did I do to her? How did I lose her? Why
am I so different from other children, and why is it my fault, dear
godmother? No, no, no, don’t go away. Oh, speak to me!”
I was in a kind of fright beyond my grief, and I caught hold of her
dress and was kneeling to her. She had been saying all the while, Let me ‟
go!” But now she stood still.
Her darkened face had such power over me that it stopped me in the
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