Chapter XXX

This first day is a sample of Esther's new life; the other days were like it--not a jot better, not a jot worse. The same thing happened at the same time each day: no two things ever changed places. It was a life that provided all the necessaries of life--that demanded no hard manual labour, no overworking of the brain. The intellectual faculties that it called into play must have been possessed by any moderately intelligent seven-years' child. No one bullies Esther; no one oppresses her; no one troubles their head much about her. So as she performs her monotonous, easy, tiresome little duties towards them, the old people have no sort of objection to her enjoying life, _if she can_. With the aged, comfort and happiness are interchangeable terms: continuous warmth of body, pleasant-tasted meats, a profound stagnant quiet around their arm-chairs, much sleep--these are their _summum bonum_. They have had love, and have outlived it--excitement also, and grief: they have outlived all but the elemental instincts that refuse to be outlived. Looking back from the vantage-ground of dotage on the fought battle of life, they wonder that any one can long to be in the thick of it. In this life of Esther's there are no hardships to be borne--none of those sufferings, the enduring of which with self-conscious complacent heroism almost compensates them. It has none of the elements of tragedy: there is nothing very noble in bearing with respectable patience the trifling annoyance of making yourself hoarse roaring the price of wheat, and the pros and cons of disendowment, into an old man's ear; there is nothing grand in picking up the countless dropped stitches in an old woman's knitting. In it there is nothing to endure, nothing to enjoy; it is essentially negative, flat, stale, sterile. It would be all very well if any end were to be seen to it; if it were not a sort of small Eternity in life; if there were to be distant holidays to be looked forward to, when the few saved pounds might be poured, with the joyful generosity of the very poor, into some stricken parent's lap--might go to buy boots and shoes for needy little brothers and sisters. But

"Fatherly, motherly, sisterly, brotherly
Home she has none."

All her life seems crowded into the seventeen years behind her; there seems to be nothing left to happen in the fifty or sixty years ahead. She has nothing to look forward to but huge cycles of newspaper-reading, footstool-carrying, message-running; of lending all her useful organs of sight and hearing and touch to others; of keeping for herself only her suffering, aching, empty heart!

"Every succeeding year will steal something away from her beauty."

People pity her now, because she is so young and pretty--not reflecting that the possession of the two best gifts under heaven makes her so much the less worthy a subject for compassion. Twenty years hence, she will probably be a "companion" still--will be not near so young, nor near so touching, and infinitely more to be pitied.

The snow lies long--longer than it generally does at this time of year. Ordinarily the old Cheshire saying holds good:

"If there's ice in October as 'll hould a duck,
All the rest of the winter 'll turn to muck!"

But this October there has been ice enough to hold many ducks; but yet the rest of the winter shows no signs of, as the homely saw phrases it, "turning to muck." In the little flower-garden, round three sides of which the ivied buttressed house is built, only a white heap here, and a white depression there, show where bush or bed were wont to be. Over the fair wide park, with all its mimic hills and valleys, copses and spinneys, God has laid a great sheet--great as the one that was let down by its four corners on the housetop to the fastidious Apostle--a sheet purely, crisply, miserably white. In the park Esther, in the early gloaming, after the daily drive, so literally a promenade _en voiture_, takes long walks; ruins her boots, discolours her petticoats, and makes her crape crimp with snow-water: strolls listless and alone under the old bare trees that have stripped off all their clothing--now at the very time that they seem to need them most; traces the slender footprints of the famished birds--the little delicate tracks crossing and recrossing one another. And always the leading thought--displaced now and then by lesser thoughts, that flit like travelling swallows through her mind, but ever, ever returning--is, "Where is Jack? Where has my boy gone to? Where is he _now, at this moment?_" If some trusty messenger could but come to her, with sure tidings, saying, "It is well with him!" Has she any reason for believing him to be in heaven, beyond the vague confidence that most people seem to feel that their relatives must be there, on the principle, I suppose, of the French Duke, of whom his kindred remarked, that "God would certainly think twice 'avant de damner une personne de sa qualité!'"

Jack's death had been most unlike the deaths of the shining Evangelical lights in Bessy Brandon's books, whose whole lives had been but trifling prologues to the jubilant drama of their death. Death had been to them an ecstasy; they had died with words of confident rapture on their lips, with strains of welcoming music in their ears: he had departed painfully, sadly, almost dumbly; no sound of triumphant clarions greeted him from beyond Death's deep ford. Is he, then, in _hell?_ Oh blessed doctrine of cleansing purgatorial pains! if our faith would but admit of you! Which of us does not seem to himself so much too bad for heaven, so much too good for hell?

"Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
A hundred thousand, and at the last be saved!"

Where is he, then?--where is he? She takes counsel of the mute forces of nature--of the clouds, the snows, and the blasts. But of what use? They knew not of his story; or, if they did, they were forbidden to tell of it: silence was laid like a seal upon their lips.

It is not in the most edifying books that the grandest sayings are to be found. What can be nobler than this of Rousseau's dying Julie: "Qui s'endort dans le sein d'un père, n'est pas en souci du réveil?"

The wearier in body she can return from these long, sad rambles, the better pleased is Esther; for is not weariness the father of sleep--sleep, the one impartial thing under heaven; sleep, the radical; sleep, the leveller, that leaves a king's arms to embrace a tinker? But of what use is it to sleep, if in sleep one hear--

"False voices, feel the kisses of false mouths,
And footless sound of perished feet?"

And worse even than such dream-tortured slumber is fear-tortured waking. Constitutionally timid, a weakened body and broken spirit have made Esther pitiably nervous. Jealousy, remorse, and fear run a dreary race for the palm of extremest suffering; and I am not sure that fear does not win. The poor child suffers the torments of the damned in her huge hearse-bed in the far-off, rat-haunted, ghostly old chamber. She dreads falling asleep, for fear of waking to find the low fire playing antics with Burke's long nose and spectacles, with Pitt's maypole figure on the screen; flickering over the malignant fleshy Cupids on the wall; waking to see, looking in upon her through the curtains, Jack's face--not kind, _débonnaire_, smiling, as she used to see it in the study at home (for _that_ could frighten no one), but solemn, stiff, with closed eyes and bandaged chin, as she had last seen it. Sometimes she sits up in bed, a cold sweat standing on her brow, as some noise, distincter than usual, sounds through the room; "thud, thud," as of some falling object; an unexplained rustling in the passage; a little clicking in the door-lock--sits up, listening with strained ears, thinking, "Can _that_ be rats?" Momently she expects to see some crape-masked burglar enter the door or window. And if such burglar did enter, it would be useless to scream for help; she is too far off from the rest of the household to be heard: it would be of no use to ring the bell, for it rings downstairs, miles away, and everybody is in bed and asleep upstairs. So she lies quaking--her terror now and then rising to such an uncontrollable pitch that she feels as though, if it lasted a moment longer, she must go mad: listening with intense impatience to the leisurely "Tick-tack, tick-tack, tick-tack" of the cuckoo-clock outside; listening with inexpressible longing to hear it say, "Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo!" four times. At four o'clock she will be safe, she thinks; at four o'clock cocks begin to crow, dairymaids to get up, the bodiless dead return to their churchyard homes, night's unutterable horror to pass. What wonder if, after the agony of such vigils--agony causeless, you will say, unreasonable, but none the less real, none the less acute for that--she comes down in the morning wan, nerveless, with haggard cheeks, and great dark streaks under the unrested beauty of her eyes?

"The time is near the birth of Christ."

"Stir-up Sunday" is past; people have bought their raisins, and suet, and citron, and begun to mix their Christmas puddings. Turkeys lie dead, thick as autumn-leaves in Vallambrosa. The snow is gone, but not without leaving Miss Craven the legacy of a very bad cold, derived from countless soaked stockings and neglected wet petticoats. She has had it a fortnight, and her weakened, lowered frame seems incapable of shaking off the trifling ailment. For a week her voice has been almost gone, and she has consumed many sticks of liquorice, many boxes of black currant lozenges, in the endeavour to bring it back to the requisite shouting pitch for the inevitable daily newspaper reading.

It is afternoon: heavy rain, following the thaw, has prevented the invariable drive to Shelford. Mrs. Blessington and the two girls are sitting in the great room hung with battle-pieces, which is old-fashionedly named "the saloon." It is a mercy that it is a great room--else the fire, piled halfway up the chimney, and the never-opened windows would render it unendurably close. As it is, the atmosphere, though less stifling than that of the interior of the family-coach, is fustier than is altogether agreeable.

"My dear," says Mrs. Blessington, shivering, "pick up my shawl; I really must have sand-bags to those windows; there comes in a wind at them that positively nearly blows one out of one's chair."

Esther complies, and then resumes her occupation of holding a skein of wool for Miss Blessington to wind. As often as she can do so without positive rudeness, she takes long looks at her companion's face--immovably polished, like a monumental angel's: looks at her, half out of that sheer love of beauty in any form, from a man's to a beetle's, which is innate in some sensuous natures; partly, and much more, because each frosty-fair feature of her face, each trinket almost upon her person, is linked indissolubly in her mind with some look or word of St. John. Association, they say, lies stronger in a smell than in aught else--stronger than in anything seen or heard; and so now the slight subtle scent floating from Constance's perfumed hair recalls to the sad young "companion," with a thrust of sharpest pain, her one day's betrothal; that one day for whose sweet sake she does not regret having endured the calamity of existence; that day when they sowed--

"......Their talk with little kisses, thick
As roses in rose harvest."

It is odd how often, when one is musing dumbly on some unspoken name, the people in whose company one is give utterance to that name, without any former conversation having led up to it.

"My dear Constance," says Mrs. Blessington, her slow old thoughts having at length travelled from draughts and sandbags, "do you think St. John has any fancy as to what room he has? Young men are sometimes _faddy_. I depend upon you to tell me, and I will give Franklin orders about it."

St. John's room! He is coming here, then! The wool that she is holding drops forgotten into Esther's lap; the old delicious carmine that used to make her so like a dog-rose springs up suddenly lovely into her face. Love is as hard to kill as any snake:

"Now, at the last gasp of love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, passion speechless lies;
When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And innocence is closing up his eyes:
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have given him over
From death to life, thou mightst him yet recover."

"Unless you hold the skein differently, Miss Craven, I'm afraid I really cannot wind it," says Constance, a slight shade of contemptuous displeasure in her voice.

Esther jumps back to reality, to find Miss Blessington's icy, unescapable eyes riveted upon her. She cannot turn away her head, nor dive under the table for an imaginary lost handkerchief; she cannot lift her hands to hide her face; her occupation, which keeps both ruthlessly employed, forbids it. She can only sit still, plainly crimson, and be stared at.

"Thanks, very much, aunt," Constance says, in her ladylike, piano voice, beginning again to turn the scarlet ball swiftly through her long pale fingers; "but I don't think he has any fancies. I could not think of letting you spoil him by supposing he has; I'm sure he will be very happy, wherever you put him."

"The blue room, in the west gallery, is one of the warmest in the house," rejoins the old lady, gathering her wraps closelier about her: "it is next but two to Miss Craven's; it has the same aspect. Yours is warm--isn't it, my dear?--and there is a bath-room opening out of it."

"Is Mr. Gerard coming here?" asks Esther, tremulously, resolute to show Miss Blessington that she _can_ mention his name.

"Yes, my dear--to-morrow. Do you know him? Oh no! of course you cannot," replies the old lady, looking a little inquisitively at the tender rose-face of the girl.

"Miss Craven met him at Felton, last autumn," Constance answers for her--no faintest gust of feeling apparently agitating the even indifference of her voice. "He was most good-natured to her; riding and walking, and altogether making a martyr of himself. St. John makes himself very useful, flirting with all the young ladies that come to the house: he really is invaluable in that way!"

Esther stoops her head low down, choked with indignation. "Perhaps I don't come under the head of a 'young lady,'" she says, almost in a whisper; "but he certainly did not flirt with me."

"Didn't he?" Constance replies, carelessly. "Oh, if I recollect right, he amused himself a little--he always does. I often take him to task about that manner of his; it might give rise to unlucky mistakes; people who don't know him don't understand it."

Esther bites her lips, but has the sense to allow, with vast difficulty, this last observation to pass unquestioned.

"His horses have arrived already," continues Constance, placidly; "he has actually been unconscionable enough to send four of them: he is evidently going to test uncle's and your patience to the utmost by making a perfect visitation."

"Felton is such a good hunting country, that I wonder Mr. Gerard can bear to leave it now, just as the frost has broken up," remarks Esther, almost composedly; a dim, exquisite hope flashing up in her mind that he has heard of her being at Blessington, and is coming to ask her to forgive him--to forgive her, rather; to ask her to kiss and make friends.

The story-book ending, "Lived happy ever after," is running through her brain, when her reverie is broken, gently, but very effectually, as reveries are apt to be, by a simple speech of Miss Blessington's, spoken with a little smile:

"It is evident that Miss Craven has not heard our news, is not it, aunt?"

"What news?" inquires the girl, eagerly.

"Nothing of much interest to any one but ourselves, I suppose. It is only" (speaking with slow triumph, and narrowly watching the effect of her words) "that St. John and I have made up our minds to marry one another!"

The knife cuts as clean and clear as she could have wished; the divine happy rose-flush slips away suddenly out of the poor blank face opposite her; a grey ashy-white takes its place. She had thought that pain and pleasure were buried with Jack on the slope of Glan-yr-Afon's mountain graveyard; but that moment of raging agony undeceives her. For an instant the table and chairs seem dancing round; a humming buzz sounds dully in her ears; then the faintness passes; the table and chairs stand still again; the buzz ceases; and she is sitting on an old gilt chair: her arms still moving mechanically, with the outstretched wool upon them, while Constance goes winding, winding on--winding away hope and pleasure and joy; while the ball, growing larger under her hands, seems to have stolen its red colour from Esther's heart-blood.

"Our friends have really been very disagreeable to us about it," says Miss Blessington with a subdued laugh; "they tell us that it is the most uninteresting marriage they ever heard of, for that they had all foretold it, heaven knows how many centuries ago!"

"It is very seldom," replies Mrs. Blessington, shaking her head slowly to and fro, "that a young man shows the sense St. John Gerard has done in coming into his parents' views for him: in the present day they are mostly so headstrong and resolute to pick and choose for themselves, which generally ends in their selecting some worthless person utterly unsuited to their rank and fortune."

"How long have you been engaged?" asks Esther, presently, framing her words with as much difficulty as though they had been spoken in some little-known foreign tongue. Worse to her than the loss of St. John is the consciousness that that loss is written in despair's grey colours on her faded face, right under her rival's victorious eyes.

"How long? I really forget," answers Constance, with affected carelessness. "Oh, no! By-the-by, I recollect; it was almost immediately after you left Felton. I daresay" (with a smile) "that you were among the ranks of the prophets; lookers-on proverbially see most of the game."

"Indeed--no!" cries the girl, with a passionate disclaimer, the agony of loss made sharper by the humiliation of defeat. "Nothing ever struck me as more unlikely!"

"Indeed! And why, may I ask?"

The skein is finished; Esther lifts one hand to her face, and feels a slight relief in the partial shade.

"Why, pray?" with a slightly sharpened accent.

"Because--because," she answers, in confusion, "you had been brought up together from children; because Mr. Gerard's manner seemed so much more like a brother's than a--a--lover's."

The word so applied half chokes her.

"We dislike public demonstrations of affection, both of us," rejoins the other, coldly displeased; "we leave those to servants and _savages_."

A footman enters with tea in handleless red dragon cups, costly as age, brittleness, and ingenious ugliness can make them.

Esther leans back in her chair, idle, staring vacantly at the pane, blurred with big rain-drops.

After a pause, "You have not congratulated me, Miss Craven," Constance says, sipping her tea delicately; her madonna smile relaxing the severely correct lines of her Greek mouth.

Esther gives a great start. "I? Oh, I beg your pardon! I--I forgot; I--I--I congratulate you!"

"I was just going to write and tell you the news," says Constance, graciously--"I thought it might interest you, as you had been with us so lately, and seen the whole thing going on--when we heard of your brother's sudden death."

Esther rises abruptly, and walks to the window, with that painful hatred in her heart towards Miss Blessington that we feel towards those who lightly name our sacred dead to us.

"Was he your _only_ brother, my dear?" inquires Mrs. Blessington, with languid interest.

"Yes."

"Dear--dear! Very sad--very sad! And what did he die of? Consumption?"

"No--diphtheria."

"Ah! A very fatal complaint, my dear, especially among children. I have always had a great horror of it. In my younger days it used to be called sore throat, but I suppose it killed just as many people then as it does now that it has got a fine long Latin name. I suppose your poor brother suffered a great deal--didn't he, love?"

No answer, except a stifled sob, a rush from the room, and the sound of flying feet upon the hall's stone floor.

There are some things past human endurance; and to hear Jack's parting agonies--agonies whose memory she herself dare as yet hardly contemplate in her heart's low depths--lightly discussed by a gossiping old woman, is one of those things.