The Solitary House by Lynn Shepherd Read Free Book Online

and said,
    “Run along now, child. I have business to talk with good Mrs Millard.”
    And so it was that exactly a week later I left the only place that I had ever known, and travelled by stagecoach for London. Mr Millard showed no discernible emotion at my departure aside, perhaps, from relief, but Mrs Millard had a softer heart and wept many sad tears. I do believe she had become quite fond of me, in the short time we had had together. When she gave me one last kiss, and adjured me to tread always in the paths of righteousness, I felt so remorseful and despondent that I threw my arms around her and wept myself, saying it was all my fault, and that Mother would never have left me if I had been good.
    “No, Hester!” she returned with a sad smile. “It is just your unhappy lot, my dear. And whatever Mr Millard says on the matter, I believe in my heart that our Heavenly Father does not visit the sins of the fathers upon the children, and will not hold you culpable for the circumstances of your birth, but only for the rectitude of your own conduct.”
    I wondered a little at these words, but the coach was already at the gate, so I had no time to ask her what she meant. She turned then and went into the house, and I never saw her again. I had no friend left now in the world, and no protector, except, perhaps for my new and as yet unknown Guardian.
    I looked back at the house until I could see it no more, and then wiped my eyes and cast my gaze instead at the landscape unrolling before me. It was a very beautiful day, with the new buds on the trees, and the fields pricked with the first green shoots of the year. After a very long and rattling journey, during most of which I was quite alone, the coach finally came to a halt and a lady opened the coach door and said, “I am Miss Darby. You must be Hester.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Come then. Mr Jarvis is waiting for us.”
    My boxes were put into a small green pony carriage by a maid in a starched white apron and cap, dressed altogether rather more formally, to my eyes, than the servants I was used to seeing in our country village. But that was only to be expected.
    Presently we drew up to a little lodge, and waited for the keeper to open the gate, before trotting up a long avenue of trees to a broad sweep before a large porch. It was a tall redbrick house with yellow-framed casements, and squares of blue and green glass in the windowpanes. On one side a bay had been thrown out one floor up, creating a view over what seemed to me to be a large and very pretty lawn, bordered with flowers, with beyond it an orchard and a vegetable garden. I heard a bell ring as the trap stopped, and I found my heart beating very fast as Miss Darby got down and helped me to descend. The door opened, and a man appeared. It was not the same person I had seen at Mrs Millard’s but another gentleman. He had a broad smile and a full beard, and came down the steps briskly and took me by the hand.
    “Welcome, Hester. I think you will be very happy here.”
    I felt the colour flood my face as I tried, without much success, to say some words of thanks, but Mr Jarvis seemed determined not to notice anything was amiss. He drew my hand through his arm as if it was the most natural thing there could be.
    “Come,” he said. “Let me show you your new home!”
    From that moment I felt quite at my ease with him, and knew in my heart how blessed I was to have found someone I could trust so completely, and in whom I could confide so unreservedly.
    He showed me to my little room, and truly I felt myself at that moment the luckiest girl in the world. It was a bright homely room, with a well-tended fire in the hearth, and a high metal-framed bed with smooth white pillows. The window looked down upon the flower-garden, and across the heath to the far-away steeples and towers of London, almost ethereal that day under a light silvery cloud. I turned to Mr Jarvis with tears in my eyes, wondering how all this could