Chapter XXIV

It is Sunday evening. Miss Craven has been to church for the first time since her _bereavement_, as people call it. She has displayed her crape in all its crisp funeral newness before the eyes of the Plas Berwyn congregation. Also, she has been made the subject of conversation, over their early dinner, between the imbecile rector and his vinegar-faced, bob-curled wife; the latter remarking how unfortunately unbecoming black was to poor Miss Craven--really impossible to tell where her bonnet ended and her hair began; and how lucky it was for her that people did not wear mourning for as long a time as they used--three months being _ample_ nowadays, _ample_ for a brother! Esther has sat in their pew for the first time alone: she has looked at Jack's prayer-book, at his vacant corner under the dusty cobwebbed window, with eyes dryly stoic; she has walked firmly after service down the church-path, past a grassless hillock, where he who was her brother lies, dumbly submitting to the one terrific, changeless law of decay--the law that not one of us can face, as applying to ourselves, without our brains reeling at the horror of it. Oh! thrifty, harsh Nature! that, without a pang of relenting, unmixes again those cunningest compounds that we call our bodies--making the freed elements that formed them pass into new forms of life--makes us, who erewhile walked upright, godlike, fronting the sun, communing with the high stars--makes _us_, I say, creep many-legged in the beetle, crawl blind in the worm!

It is evening now, and Esther sits, in her red armchair, beside the drawing-room fire, _alone_ again. The wind comes _banging_ every minute against the shuttered French window, as one that boisterously asks to be let in; the ivy leaves are dashed against the pane, as one that sighingly begs for admittance. Every now and then the young girl looks round timidly over her shoulder, in the chill expectation of seeing a death-pale spirit-face gazing at her from some corner of the room; every now and then she starts nervously, as a hot cinder drops from the grate, or as the small feet of some restless mouse make a hurry-skurrying noise behind the wainscot. As often as she can frame the smallest excuse, she rings the bell, in order to gather a little courage from the live human face, the live human voice, of the servant that answers it.

Around Plas Berwyn also the wind thunders--against Plas Berwyn windows also the ivy-leaves fling themselves plaintively; but there the resemblance ends. The steady light from the lamp outblazes the uncertain, fitful fire-gleams: at Plas Berwyn there are no ghost-faces of the lately dead to haunt the inmates of that cheerful room. They are all sitting round the table on straight-backed chairs--no lolling in armchairs, no stealing of furtive naps on the Sabbath--sitting rather primly, rather Puritanically, reading severely good books. To Bob's palate, the _Hedley Vicarsian_ type of literature is as distasteful as to any other young man of sound head and good digestion, but he succumbs to it meekly, to please his mother; if Sunday came _twice_ a week, I think he would be constrained to rebel. From the kitchen, the servants' voices sound faintly audible above the howling wind, singing psalms. The family are divided between prose and poetry. Miss Brandon is reading a sermon; her sister a hymn. Here it is:--

THE FIRM BANK.[1]

"I have a never-failing bank,
A more than golden store;
No earthly bank is half so rich,
How can I then be poor?

"'Tis when my stock is spent and gone,
And I without a groat,
I'm glad to hasten to my bank,
And beg a little note.

"Sometimes my banker, smiling, says,
'Why don't you oftener come?
And when you draw a little note,
Why not a larger sum?

"'Why live so niggardly and poor?--
Your bank contains a plenty?
Why come and take a one-pound note
When you might have a twenty?

"'Yea, twenty thousand, ten times told,
Is but a trifling sum
To what your Father hath laid up,
Secure in God his Son.'

"Since, then, my banker is so rich,
I have no cause to borrow:
I'll live upon my cash to-day,
And draw again to-morrow.

"I've been a thousand times before,
And never was rejected;
Sometimes my banker gives me more
Than asked for or expected.

"Sometimes I've felt a little proud,
I've managed things so clever:
But, ah! before the day was done
I've felt as poor as ever!

"Sometimes with blushes on my face
Just at the door I stand;
I know if Moses kept me back,
I surely must be damned.

"I know my bank will never break--
No! it can never fall!
The Firm--Three Persons in one God!
Jehovah--Lord of All!"

A charming mixture of the jocose and familiar, isn't it?

"Mother," says Bob, rather abruptly, looking up from a civil-spoken, pleasant little work, entitled "Thou Fool!" which he is perusing (it is generally an understood thing that conversation is not to be included among the Sabbath evening diversions at Plas Berwyn)--"Mother, do you know I don't think I shall try for extension, after all?"

The gold-rimmed spectacles make a hasty descent from their elevation upon Mrs. Brandon's high thin nose.

"Dear Bob! why not?"

"Because I don't see why I should," he answers, frankly. "I'm perfectly well: why should I shirk work any more than any other fellow? I might say that I prefer a cool climate to a hot vapour-bath, English winds to oily calms, but I don't suppose that I am singular in that!"

"My dear boy!" says the old woman, tremulously, stretching out her withered hand across the table to him,--"why did you ever go into that dreadful profession? Why did not you enter the ministry, like your dear father, as I so much wished you to do?"

"I'm very glad I didn't, mother!" replies the young man, bluntly; "I should have been a fish sadly out of water, and, after all, I hope that Heaven will not be quite so full of black coats that there will not be room for one or two of our colour."

"Have you told Essie?" inquires his eldest sister, joining in the conversation.

"Yes, she knows."

"Will she be ready to go with you on such short notice?"

"No."

"You'll leave her behind, then?"

"Yes."

"I thought you always had such a horror of long engagements?"

"So I have, but--but" (involuntarily lowering his voice, and lifting "Thou Fool!" to be a partial shade for his face)--"there is no engagement between us now!"

Six startled eyes fix themselves upon his face. "What!" cry three simultaneously shrill female voices. "No engagement! Has she thrown you over?"

"No."

"Have _you_ thrown _her_ over?" (with an astonished emphasis on the pronouns).

"No."

"Have you quarrelled, then?" "No, we haven't," answers Bob, wincing. "Poor little child! one would hardly choose such a time as this to quarrel with her. Cannot you understand two people coming to the conclusion that they are better apart; better as friends than as--as anything else?"

His three comforters stare at one another in bewilderment; then his parent speaks, shaking her head oracularly:

"I'm afraid I see how it is, Bob; you have found out that this unfortunate girl is, in some way, unworthy of you, and you are too generous to confess it, even to us."

Bob dashes down "Thou Fool!" in a fury, and his blue eyes shine with quick fire.

"Mother, do you call that the 'charity that thinketh no evil?' I tell you, Essie is willing to marry me to-morrow, but I--"

"But you are _not_ willing!" interrupts the domestic pack, bursting again into full cry.

"Tell us something a _little_ more probable, Bob, and we'll try and believe it," subjoins Bessy, with a small curling smile.

"It is a matter of perfect indifference to me whether you believe me or not," replies the young man, sternly; keeping under, with great difficulty, an unmanly longing to box Miss Bessy's ears. "I only tell you, _upon my honour_, that Essie is willing to marry me, and that I--solely for her own sake, solely because I know that an inferior being cannot make a superior one happy--am _not_ willing."

"And a very good thing too," cries Bessy, viciously. "I always thought you were singularly ill-suited to one another; I always said so to mamma and Jane. Didn't I, mamma?--didn't I, Jane? 'Can two walk together except they be agreed?' you know."

"Girls," says poor Bob, harried almost beyond endurance, and addressing his sisters by the conveniently broad appelative which covers everything virgin between the ages of six and a hundred--"Girls, would you mind going into the dining-room for a few minutes? I want to speak to mother alone."

The "girls" look rebellious, but their rebellion does not break into open mutiny. Rising, they comply with his request.

"Of course, what _most nearly_ concerns our _only_ brother cannot be supposed to have any interest for _us_," says Bessy, leaving her sting behind, like a wasp, and shutting the door with as near an approach to a bang as her conscience will admit.

As soon as they are well out of the room, Bob comes and sits at his mother's feet, and lays his head on her lap, as he used to do when he was a very little boy. She passes her fingers fondly through his curly hair.

"This is a severe trial, my dear boy," she says, a little tritely; "but take an old woman's word for it; look for comfort in the right direction, and you'll _surely, surely_ find it!"

"_I_ don't want comfort," answers Bob, pluckily; he having by no means exiled his sisters in order to pule and whimper over his own woes. "_I_ do very well."

"I thought you had come to your old mother for consolation," answers his parent, a little aggrievedly: naturally somewhat disappointed at being balked of the office of Paraclete, so dear to every woman's heart; "if not, what was it that you wanted to talk to me about that you did not wish your sisters to hear?"

"About _her!_" he answers, emphatically, lifting up his head, and reading her face earnestly. "I didn't wish her to be the mark for any more of Bessy's sneers. I wonder," he says, a little bitterly, "that she who is always talking about '_our Great Exemplar_' does not recollect that _He_ never sneered at any one."

"Did you say that it was Esther Craven that you wished to speak to me about?" inquires Mrs. Brandon, rather coldly.

"Mother," he says, passionately, "she has not a farthing in the world! What _is_ to become of her?"

"Any one that my dear son takes an interest in will always be welcome to a home with me, for as long as they like to avail themselves of it," says the old lady, primly.

He shakes his head.

"She would not come," he says, despondently; "she is too proud: she hates to be beholden to any one: she is bent on working for her own living."

"And a very proper resolution, too," replies his mother, stoutly, her heart being steeled against Esther by a latent conviction that that fair false maid has dealt unhandsomely by her son. "Providence is always more willing to help those that help themselves."

"How _can_ she help herself?" cries Esther's champion, indignantly. "What sort of work are those little weak hands, that little inexperienced head, fitted for?"

"Women with hands as weak and heads as inexperienced have toiled for their daily bread before now, I suppose," rejoins Mrs. Brandon, with a certain hardness, foreign to her nature, and arising from that spirit of contradiction, innate in us all, which makes us look coldly upon any object that some one else is making a fuss over.

Bob springs to his feet in great wrath, and speaks low and quick: "Mother! I'm sorry I ever broached this subject to you; one takes a long time, I see, to get acquainted with one's nearest relatives' characters. If you can see the child of one of your oldest friends working her poor little fingers to the bone for the bare necessaries of life without stretching out a finger to help her, _I_ cannot!"

Speaking thus disrespectfully, he walks towards the door.

"A spaniel, a woman, and a walnut tree,
The more you beat 'em, the better they be."

says the rude old saw. Every woman, from a mother to a mistress, enjoys, rather than otherwise, being bullied.

The old woman half rises, and stretching out her hand to her son, says, "My boy! come back! let us talk rationally: don't quarrel with your old mother about a person that will never be so good a friend to you as she is."

He turns, half hesitating: anger's red ensign still aflame on his honest face.

"Shall I tell you, Bob, why I cannot feel common compassion for--for this girl?"

"Why?"

"Because," says the old lady, with emotion, Mr. Brandon's image heaving up and down rather quicklier than usual upon her ample breast,--"because some instinct tells me that she has not had common compassion upon you."

"'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth;' in fact," answers Bob, with a sarcasm unusual to him, "you are forgetting, mother, how often you have impressed upon me that we are no longer under the Mosaic dispensation! But why should she have compassion on me, may I ask? In what way do I stand in need for it? _I_'m not a woman, thank God!"

She looks at him, intently, with a steadiness that disconcerts him. "Bob, can you look me in the face and tell me that you have not been unhappier since you knew Esther Craven than ever you were before in all your life?"

"I have," he answers, simply, "and happier too; so that makes it square."

Foiled in this direction, she varies her point of attack a little: "Can you look me in the face, and tell me that since your engagement she has behaved to you as a modest, honourable woman should behave to the man she has promised to marry?"

He casts his eyes down troubled, and begins to fidget with a dilapidated little Chelsea Cupid on the mantelshelf, too truthful to say "Yes," too generous to say "No."

"She is ready to fulfil her promise," he answers, evasively. "She is willing to marry me whenever I like, as I told you before--to-morrow! to-night! this instant, if I wish!"

"For a home, of course; one can understand that, in her situation," says his mother, in a tone of slighting pity.

Bob perceives, and is stung by it.

"No, not for a home!" he answers, indignantly. "Poor soul! she may have that without paying such a heavy toll for it."

"To what motive, then, do you ascribe her willingness?"

"She told me that she liked me better than any one else in the world," he answers, with the reluctance of one who is making a statement that he believes will not be credited by the auditor to whom it is addressed.

"My poor simple boy! and you believed her?" (with a sort of compassionate scorn).

He hesitates. "I believe that she meant what she said at the moment," he replies, doubtfully.

"If there was such perfect harmony of opinion between you, why was the engagement broken, may I ask?" she inquires, a little sharply.

No answer, except quickened breathing, and a frown slightly contracting his climate-bronzed forehead.

"Was it--oh, my dear boy! if it was so, no one can respect your scruples more than I do--was it because you were not quite sure that she was one of the Lord's people?"

"Oh, dear, no," answers the young man, quickly, with scarcely repressed impatience in his tone--"nothing of the kind. God forbid my being so presumptuously uncharitable! How am I to know who is, or who is not? All I know is that if she is not, neither am I; and I trust, mother, that you will find, by-and-bye, that they are not quite such, a scanty nation as you seem to imagine."

"A higher authority than I am has expressly designated them 'a little flock,'" says the old woman, sententiously, pursing up her mouth; "but far be it from me to wish to judge, whatever you may imply. But I am still waiting to hear what your motive was for breaking your engagement, a motive which you seem to have such an unaccountable difficulty in telling me."

He looks down, for an instant or two, biting his lips, then speaks petulantly:

"Why should I tell you, mother?--why should I tell any one? A man's _motives_ are his own concern, whatever his actions may be; if mine are strong enough to satisfy myself and her, surely that is enough."

"Oh, of course," answers his mother, rather nettled at what she considers a want of confidence; "only that, unless I am put in possession of the circumstances of the case, I really don't see how I can be expected to give advice----"

"I don't want advice," interrupts the young man, eagerly. "I want a much better thing--assistance."

"Assistance in what?"

"Why, in hindering that poor girl," he says, with warmth, "from being thrown upon the world penniless, helpless, and without a friend, as she will be after the sale at Glan-yr-Afon."

"Not without a friend, as long as you are alive, Bob; one can answer for that!" rejoins his mother, rather tartly.

"I count for nothing," says Bob, quietly. "A man's friendship can be of no service to a woman, unless he is in some authorised position of relationship or connection with her; otherwise he does her more harm than good. What she needs, and what I hoped she would have found in you, mother, is a woman-friend."

"If," replies his mother, drawing herself up and looking very stiff--"If she is, as you say, _too proud_ to avail herself of the home that I am, _for your sake_, willing to offer her, she is likely to be _too proud_ to consent to be befriended in any other way."

Brandon looks at her for a moment with something akin to indignant scorn in his face, dutiful son as he usually is; then, repenting, throws himself on his knees beside her, and clasping his arms about her withered neck, says, entreatingly: "Mother, why are you so hard upon her?--what has she done to you? Just think, how would you have liked Jane or Bessy, when they were her age, to have been driven out into the world to make their own way, without a single soul to say a kind word to them, or give them a helping hand; and," he continues, musingly, "they never could have been exposed to the temptations she will be--they never were beautiful, like her!"

He had never spoken truer words in all his life, but the truth is not always the best to be spoken.

"At all events," says the old lady, with emphasis, freeing herself from his arms, and getting rather red in the face--"At all events, Bob, however disparagingly you may speak of them, they were and are good, modest, pious girls, that would not trifle with an honest man's affection for their own amusement, as handsomer ones have done before now."

"I never heard of any honest man having given them the chance," retorts Bob, sarcastically, quitting his caressing posture, with a revulsion of feeling as sudden as it was complete.

"The servants are assembled," says the youngest, best, modestest, piousest of the girls, opening the door, and putting in her little drab face. "Must I tell them to go back to the kitchen for a quarter of an hour, or has Bob nearly finished his _private communication?_"

"Quite!" replies Bob, emphatically.

He is standing leaning against the chimneypiece, his colour heightened, and a sorely angered look on his open simple face.

"You need not wait for me, mother," he continues, seeing his parent look inquiringly towards him, as she moves with the slowness of age and portliness to the door; "I shall not come to prayers to-night. When one prays, one ought to be in charity with all the world, ought not one? And I am not."

[1] A real Revivalist hymn.