CHAPTER XLI
The rain ceases, and St. John endeavours to work off his disappointment and rage in a very long walk. When he at length re-enters the house, the two old people are hobbling into luncheon, and Miss Blessington sweeping, slowly and alone, after them. Her face is serene, and, to his surprise, wears no bellicose expression towards himself. To tell the truth, during three hours of point-lace work, the Gerard diamonds have kept flashing and gleaming, restless-bright, before her mind's eye. She has been telling herself that she was over-hasty in the relinquishment of them – has been resolving to make one effort, if consistent with dignity, for their recapture.
"Does Miss Craven know that luncheon is ready?" asks St. John of the butler, when they have all been seated for some minutes.
"If you please, sir, I don't think that Miss Craven is coming to lunch."
"Why not? – is she ill?" he inquires, anxiously, perfectly indifferent as to whether his anxiety is remarked or no.
"I believe she is rather poorly, sir."
Luncheon over, the old people are convoyed back to their arm-chairs. Gerard stands with his back to the hall-fire, with the
Times
in his hand. Constance, under some pretext of looking over the day's papers, lingers near him.
"I have been telling my aunt about our alarm last night, St. John," she says, as sweetly as usual.
"Indeed!"
"And its tame prosaic
dénouement
."
"Indeed!"
"I am afraid I was unreasonably angry with you for what was evidently a mere accident; but when one is nervous and frightened, one really does not know what one says. I'm sure I have the vaguest recollection of what I said."
"I remember distinctly what you said, Constance."
"Indeed!" (with a smooth low laugh). "You don't bear malice, I hope? Things are much as they were before, I suppose?"
He lays down his paper, and looks at her steadily with his clear grey eyes. "Things are between us as they have been all our lives up to last October; as they have been since then, they will never be again."
She turns away quickly, to hide the mortification which even the cold pure mask of her face cannot wholly conceal.
"That is what I meant," she answers, quietly – with great presence of mind endeavouring to prevent her defeat from being converted into a rout; and though she deceives neither herself nor him, the effort to do both is at least laudable.
And Esther, interrupted midway in the packing of her few and paltry goods by the sharper recurrence of that pain in her side, lies on her bed, shut out by the strength of that bodily agony from all power of mental suffering. The excitement of the night – the exposure to the chill morning air – the thorough wetting undergone in her wild run through the park, amid the driving rain, have hastened the coming of that great sickness with which for weeks past she has been threatened.
Darkness falls: dinner-time comes. Presently the housemaid, who had formerly given her the laudanum, knocks at her door.
"Dinner, please, miss."
"I cannot go down," answers the poor child, rather piteously, sitting up, and pushing away the tumbled hair from her flushed cheeks, while her eyes blink in the candle-light. "I don't want any dinner; I'm ill!"
"Dear me, 'm! you
do
look bad!" exclaims the woman, drawing nearer to the bed, and speaking with an accent half-shocked, half-pleased; for, in a servant's eyes, the next best thing to a death in the house is a serious illness. "Would not you like to have Mr. Brand sent for?"
"Oh, no – thanks!" replies the girl, sinking wearily back on her pillow. "I daresay it will go of itself." – "If I did send for him, I have no money to pay for him," is her mental reflection.
The evening drags away about as heavily as usual in the saloon. Gerard, having ascertained that Miss Craven is still in the house, and has consequently broken her resolution of not sleeping another night under the same roof with him, tries to content himself with the idea that to-morrow – her temporary indisposition probably past – he will have another opportunity of reasoning and pleading with her. About nine o'clock Miss Blessington's maid appears at the door.
"Please 'm, might I speak to you for a moment?"
"Certainly," answers Constance, graciously, rising and walking off to the demanded conference.
Constance is always polite to her servants; it is a bad style, middle-class to be rude to one's inferiors.
"If you please, 'm, I really think as something oughter to be done for Miss Craven; she is uncommon bad, poor young lady!"
"What is the matter with her?" inquires the other, placidly; "nothing but influenza, I daresay; it always goes through a house."
"Indeed, 'm, I don't know; but she has a hawful pain in her side, and she can scarce draw her breath, and she is hot – as hot as fire."
"Good heavens!" cries Constance, thoroughly roused by this gay picture; "I hope it is not anything
catching!
"
Reassured on this point, and having ordered the attendance of Mr. Brand, she returns unruffled to the fireside.
"What was that mysterious communication, Constance?" asks St. John, lazily, quite willing to be amicable now that their relative positions are made clearly evident.
"She only came to tell me that Miss Craven was very unwell," she answers, carelessly. "Servants exaggerate so; I daresay it is nothing!"
"What is the matter with her?" he asks, hurriedly.
"I really don't know," she replies, drily; "you had better wait till Mr. Brand comes, and ask him."
Ten o'clock! The old couple are trundled off to their separate apartments: and Miss Blessington, having bidden St. John a cold "good-night," sails, candle in hand, up the grand staircase, to that sleep that never fails to come at her calm bidding. Gerard foregoes his evening pipe, because the smoking-room does not look to the front. In painful unrest, he unfastens the shutters of one of the saloon-windows, and, raising the stiff and seldom-opened sash, leans out, looking and listening – looking at the maiden moon that rides, pale and proud, while black ruffian clouds chase each other to overtake her. Mr. Brand is out, apparently; for half-past ten has been struck, in different tones – bass and treble, deep and squeaky – by half-a-dozen different clocks, and still he has not arrived. At length, to the watcher's strained ear, comes the sound of wheels descending the steep pitch, from Blessington village; then a brougham's lamps gleam, issuing from between the rhododendron banks, and roll, like two angry eyes, to the door. In his feverish anxiety, and impatience at the long tarrying of the sleepy footman, St. John himself admits the doctor; and, following him at a little distance, as he is ushered upstairs, sits down in his own bedroom, with the door wide open, ready to pounce out upon the small Æsculapius, as he passes along the gallery at his departure, and learn his verdict.
The visit is rather a long one; to St. John, sitting still in his idle impatient misery, it seems as though the sound of Esther's opening door would never come; but never is a long day. At length the welcome sound is heard; and the young man, precipitating himself into the passage, comes face to face with a small elderly gentleman, shiveringly taking his way down the unwarmed ghostly old corridors.
"Is it a serious case?" he asks, abruptly, framing the simple words as they rise from his full heart.
Mr. Brand stares, surprised, at his questioner's blanched face. He had imagined that his patient was a little friendless orphan companion, whose life or death – save as a mere matter of compassion – were subjects of almost equal indifference to the people under whose roof she lies, panting out her young life.
"
Serious?
Well – oh! I assure you there is no cause for alarm, my dear sir," he says, imagining that he has got the key to the mystery; "it is nothing infectious, I assure you – nothing whatever!"
"That is not what I asked," rejoins Gerard, bluntly. "I don't care whether it is infectious or not; is it
dangerous?
"
"Are you any relation of the young lady, may I ask? – brother, perhaps?" inquires the little doctor, peering inquisitively, though under difficulties – for the abundant wind is playing rude tricks with the flame of his candle – into St. John's sad brown face.
"No – none."
"Well, then, to be candid with you, it
does
look rather serious," he answers, with the careless deliberate calmness which those whose half-life is spent in pronouncing death-warrants seem insensibly to acquire: "a sharp attack of inflammation of the lungs, brought on by neglect and exposure. By-the-by, can you inform me whether there is any predisposition to lung-disease in Miss – Miss Craven's family?"
"I know nothing about her family," replies the other, gloomily. He has no reason, beyond the probability of the thing, for supposing that she had ever had a father or mother, much less a grandfather or grandmother. Mr. Brand retires, completely mystified; and St. John, re-entering his room, throws himself into an arm-chair, and, covering his face with his hands, sends up violent voiceless prayers for the young life that is exchanging the first passes with that skilfulest of fencers, whom the nations have christened "Death!" In all his rough godless life he has had small faith in the efficacy of prayer: but, on the bare chance of there being some good in it, he prays wordlessly in his stricken heart for her.
Before they have done with him, the inmates of Blessington Hall have grown very familiar with Dr. Brand's face; night and morning, night and morning, coming and going, coming and going, through many days; for the adversary with whom the child is wrestling has thrown many a better and stouter than she – and the battle is bitter. It is of little use now that she hate the shadowing ginger curtains of the vast old wooden four-poster; there must she lie, through all the weary twenty-four hours, in paroxysms of acutest pain, in fits of utter breathlessness, in agonies of thirst. Grief for Jack, love for St. John, shamed concern at Miss Blessington's damaging story and insulting words, are all swallowed up in the consuming craving for something to wet her parched lips, to cool her dry throat – something to drink! something to drink! By-and-by, with the pain, she becomes light-headed – wanders a little – "babbles of green fields;" babbles to the uninterested ears of the sleepy tired nurse, of the twisted seat under the old cherry-tree, of the tea-roses up the kitchen-garden walk, of the yellow chickens in the rickyard. Then her delirium grows wilder: the green flabby Cupids on the walls come down out of the tapestry, and make at her. One, that is riding on a lion and blowing a horn, with fat cheeks puffed out, comes riding at her – riding up the bed-quilt, riding over her. Then the black and gold cocks on the old japan-chest, that, with neck-feathers ruffled, and heads lowered, stand ever, in act to fight, change their attitude: come pecking, pecking at her – pecking at her eyes; and she, with terrified hands stretched out, fights at them – thrusts them away.
"And thrice the double twilights rose and fell,
About a land where nothing seemed the same,
At morn or eve, as in the days gone by."
And it comes to pass, that there falls a day when these sick fancies pass – when the pain and breathlessness pass – and when Esther lies in utter exhaustion, weak as a day-old babe, whiter than any Annunciation lily, between her sheets. Eyes and ears and power of touch are still hers: but it seems as though all objects of sensation, of sight and sound and touch, reach her only through a thick blanket. She can see, as if at an immense distance off, shrouded in mist, the faces of doctor and nurse as they lean over her, and then, turning away, whisper together. She cannot hear what they say; she has no wish to hear – she has no wish for anything; only she lies, staring, with great eyes, straight before her at the bed-hangings, at the ceiling, at the little countless pigeon-holes in her toilet-table. One of the windows is open; and heaven's sweet breath circulates fresh and slow through the quiet room.
It is Sunday; the village people are clustering about the church-door; the violets, like blue eyes that have slept through winter's night, are opening under the churchyard wall. The bells are ringing; now, loud and clear – "ding-dong bell! ding-dong bell!" almost as if they were being rung in the still chamber itself – they come; now, faint and far; the wind has caught the sound in his rough hand, and carried it otherwhither. Whether they ring loud or faint, whether they ring or ring not at all, she has no care; she has no care for anything. She is very weary: it seems as if there were but a faint life-spark left in her; she can scarce lift her hand to her head. Now and then they raise her up, and, without asking her consent, pour brandy and beef-tea down her reluctant throat. She is
so
tired! Oh! why cannot they leave her alone! The slow hours roll themselves round; the people have gone into church, and have come out again.
Mr. Brand is here still; he is entering at the door; he is leaning over her. What can he have to say that he must needs look so solemn over? "My dear Miss Craven," he begins, with slow distinctness, as if he imagined that her illness had carried away her powers of hearing, "Mr. Winter is here; would not you like to see him?"
Mr. Winter is the meek M.A., whose voice the old squire drowns.
She fixes her great eyes,
"Yet larger through her leanness,"
upon his face – wondering as a child's just opened upon this strange green world. "I – why should I?" she asks, in a faint astonished whisper. She cannot speak above a whisper.
The good man looks embarrassed. "You are very ill," he says, indirectly.
"Am I?"
"And people in your situation generally wish for the holy offices of a minister of the Church."
"Do they?" She is too feeble to join one link to another in the simplest chain of reasoning. She has failed to grasp his meaning. He looks baffled, uneasy.
"My dear young lady," he says, very gravely, "it is very painful for me to have such a sad task to perform; but I cannot reconcile it with my conscience not to tell you that, in all human probability, you have not many more days to live."
Through the thick veil of her weakness and its attendant apathy pierces the sting of that awful news: her eyes dilate in their horror and fear, and she falls to weeping, feebly and helplessly.
"Don't say that – it is not true. How unkind you are! I don't want to die; I'm so young; I have had so little pleasure!"
"We must submit to God's will," says the doctor, a little tritely. It is so easy to submit to God's will towards one's friends and acquaintance.
She does not answer, but raises her hands with difficulty to her wasted face, while the tears trickle hot and frequent through that poor white shield.
"Have you any relations that you would like to have sent for?" inquires Mr. Brand, not unkindly; stooping over her, rather moved, but not very much so. Often before has it been his portion to say, to youth and maid and stalwart man, "Thou must die!"
"I have no relations," she answers, almost inaudibly.
"Any friends?"
"I have no friends."
"You have, then, no wish to see any one?"
"No. Stay," she says, as he turns to leave her, reaching out her hand to detain him; "are you
quite
sure that I shall die?" (Her lips quiver, and a slight shudder passes over her form, as she utters the words, "Is it
quite
certain?")
"It is impossible to be
quite
certain in any case," he answers, slowly; "while there is life, there is hope, you know; but – but – I cannot buoy you up with a false confidence."
She lies quiet a moment or two, regathering her spent strength. "How long do you think I shall live?"
"It is impossible to say exactly," he replies, gravely. "A few days – a few hours; one cannot be certain which."
Again she is silent, exhausted with the slight effort of framing a sentence. "Ask Mr. Gerard to come and see me —
now – at once – before I die!
"
He looks at her in astonishment, with a half-suspicion that she is light-headed; but her eyes look back at him with such perfect sanity in their clear depths, that he must needs abandon that idea. He cannot choose but undertake her commission at her bidding.
And St. John comes. They are singing the "Nunc Dimittis," which, saith Bacon, "is ever the sweetest canticle" in the Church, as he crosses the threshold of that room, and draws near that bed on which, but a few short nights ago, he had seen her, with his covetous lover's eyes, lying in all her round dimpled beauty. There comes no greeting blush
now
into her cheeks – the cheeks, that the sound of his far-off footfall had been wont to redden. How can she, that is the affianced of great Death, blush for any
mortal
lover? Her eyes lift themselves languidly to his face; and, even in the "valley of the shadow," dwell there comfortably; though in that countenance – never beautiful, and now made haggard by watching, with reddened eyelids and quivering muscles – a stranger would have seen small comeliness.
"So I am going to die, they tell me!" she says, whisperingly – says it simply and mournfully.
Gerard cannot answer; only he flings himself forward upon the bed, and devours her thin hand with miserable kisses.
"Perhaps it is not true! Oh, I hope it is not, St. John!" she says, falling to weeping; in her feebleness and great dread of that goal to which all our highways and byways and field-paths lead:
"Death, and great darkness after death!"
Still no answer.
"Cannot they do anything for me?" she asks piteously.
He lifts his head; and in his eyes – the eyes that have not wept more than twice since he was a little white-frocked child – stand heavy burning tears.
"Nothing, darling, I'm afraid," he answers, in a rough choked voice.
"There is
no
hope, then?"
"Oh, poor little one! why do you torture me with such questions? I
dare
not tell you a lie!"
"You mean that I am
sure
to die!" she says, faintly, with a slight shudder, while a look of utter hopeless fear comes into her wan face.
He throws his arms about her in his great despair. "Why do you make me tell you such news
twice?
Is not
once
enough?"
"It is
quite
sure! Oh, I wish I was not so frightened!"
His features contract in the agony of that moment; an overpowering temptation assails him, to tell her some pleasant falsehood about her state; but he resists it.
"As far as anything human
can
be sure, it is so," he says, turning away his head.
"Are you sure there is no mistake? – is it
quite
certain?"
"Quite."
"Then" – essaying to raise herself in the bed, and reaching out her slight, weary arms to him – "then kiss me, St. John!"
Without a word he gathers her to his breast; fully understanding, in his riven heart, that this embrace, which she herself can ask for, must indeed be a final one; his lips cling to hers in the wild silence of a solemn last farewell.
"I'm glad you are not angry with me now," she whispers, almost inaudibly; and then her arms slacken their clasp about his bronzed neck, and her head droops heavy and inert on his shoulder.
And so they find them half an hour later: he, like one crazed, with a face as ashen-white as her own, clasping a lifeless woman to his breast.
CHAPTER XLII
Lifeless! Yes! But there are two kinds of lifelessness: one from which there is no back-coming – one from which there is. Esther's is the latter. Although a member of that fraternity whose province it is to kill and to make alive has sapiently said of her, "She will die! – she has not week to live!" Mother Nature has made answer, "She shall
not
die; I will save her alive! She has yet many years." And Esther lives. For many days, it is hard to predicate of her whether she be dead or alive; so faintly does the wave of life heave to and fro in her breast – so lowly does life's candle burn. But though the candle burn low, it is not blown out. By-and-bye strength gathers itself again, and comes back to pulse and vein and limb.
At seventeen life holds us so fast in his embrace that he will hardly let us go. To the sick child there come sweet sleeps; there comes a desire for food – a pleasure in the dusty sunbeam streaming through the window – in the mote playing up and down on ceiling and wall. I marvel will the bliss of spirits at the Resurrection dawn, feeling the clothing of pure new bodies, surpass the delight that attends the renewal of the old body at the uprising from a great sickness? The blanket that hung between Esther and all objects of sensation is withdrawn: full consciousness returns, and remembrance; and in their company, untold shame – shame at not having died! The celandine's greenish buds are unclosing into little brazen wide-awake flowers in the hedge-banks: the crocuses in the garden-borders hold up their gold chalices to catch the gentle February rain and the mild February sunbeams; in the wood-hollows the mercury – spring's earliest herald – flourishes, thick and frequent, its stout green shoots. About the meadows, small gawky lambs make a feeble "ba-a-a-ing." It is drawing towards sundown. The window is open; and near it, on a beech bough, a thrush sits, singing a loud sweet even-song.
Esther has been fully dressed for the first time, and has been moved into an adjoining dressing-room. In the small change of scene, there is, to her, intense delight – delight even in the changed pattern on the walls, in the different shape of the chairs – even in the brass handles of the old oak chest of drawers. Every power seems new and fresh – every sensation exquisitely keen; in every exercise of sight and sound and touch there is conscious joy. She has been amusing herself making little tests of her strength. She lifts a book that lies on the table beside her; it is small and light, but to her it seems over-heavy; she has to take two hands to it. She makes a pilgrimage from her arm-chair to the window – she has to catch at the wall, at the furniture, for support; but she gets there at last, and, sitting down on the window-seat, looks out at the quiet sky, blackened with home-coming rooks – at the pool made flame-red by the westering sun – at the peeping roof of the distant deer-barn. That little bit of roof brings a flood of recollections to her, and first and foremost amongst them stands St. John and her last interview with him. Although she is quite alone, a torrent of red invades cheeks and throat and brow, even to the roots of her hair. "
I sent for him
," she says to herself, with a sort of gasp; "
I asked him to kiss me
, and
I did not die!
How horrible! I must never see him again." Then she falls to thinking about him: whether he is still in the house? whether he has made up his differences with Miss Blessington? whether he is very joyful at her own recovery? whether he is not penetrated with the ridiculousness of her impressive leave-taking, which, after all – oh bathos! – was no leave-taking at all? "He must never hear me mentioned again," she says, twisting her hands nervously together. "Perhaps he will forget it in time; perhaps he will not tell any one about it. How soon shall I be well enough to go? – in a week? five days? four? three? – and whither am I to go?"
Aye, whither, Miss Craven? There are but two alternatives for her – the Union and Plas Berwyn. She must swallow her pride, and return to the Brandons: to the long prayers; to the half-past six tea and bread and scrape; to the three bits of bacon at breakfast; and to the perusal of the
Record
and the
Rock:
she must induce Mrs. Brandon again to advertise for a situation in a pious family. This morning's post has brought her four pages of doctrine, reproof, and instruction from Miss Bessy, and, lurking within them, has come a short, sweet, metrical prayer, adapted to every Christian's daily use:
"My heart is like a rusty lock,
Lord, oil it with Thy grace;
And rub, and rub, and rub it, Lord,
Till I can see Thy face."
There is no time like the present; she will write now. She has drawn paper and pens towards her, when the door opens, and her friend the housemaid enters. Doctor and nurse have fled,
"Like bats and owls,
And such melancholy fowls,
At the rising of the day."
"If you please, Miss Craven, do you feel well enough to see visitors?"
She looks up astonished. "I'm well enough for anything; but I'm sure I don't know who is likely to visit me."
"Mr. Gerard was asking whether he might speak to you 'm?"
"Certainly not – I mean yes – No. – Yes, I suppose – if he wishes," replies the girl, stammering hopelessly.
Miss Craven looks rather small, and excessively childish, sunk in her huge elbow-chair; a white wrapper envelopes her figure; her hair, which she has not taken the trouble to dress properly, is twisted up in the loosest, unfashionablest, sweetest great knot at the back of her neck; while a cherry-coloured ribbon coquettishly snoods her noble small head: the innocentest, freshest, shyest rosebud-face, and the liquidest southern eyes, complete the picture. St. John apparently treads hard upon the heels of the messenger, for, before permission is well accorded him, he is in his mistress's presence. Upon his brown face is untold gladness – in his eyes enormous love; and in them lurks also a look of half-malicious, half-tender mirth. She rises, and then sits down again, in unutterable confusion; and at length holds out her hand with distant diffidence to him, while as intense a blush as ever made mortal woman call upon the hills to cover her, bathes every inch of her that is visible. Her cheeks feel like gigantic red globes, over which her eyes have difficulty in looking.
His
eyes, laughing, pitiless, yet impassioned, refuse to leave her.
"You did not give me so cold a greeting when I last saw you, Essie?" he says, with an enraging smile of passionate triumph.
She turns away her head, and covers her face with both hands; but, in the interstices between her fingers, the lovely carnation blazes manifestly vivid.
"Oh, don't – don't be so cruel!" she murmurs, in a stifled voice.
"The truth can never be cruel!" he says quietly, smiling still; and so kneels down on the floor beside her.
But she only murmurs, "Go away;
please
go away! please let me alone!" – the words coming half-broken, half-lost, from behind the covering of her hands.
He puts up his, and tries to draw away the screen from her shamed discomfited face, saying, "Look at me, Essie!" But she, with all her feeble strength, resists.
"I cannot! – I cannot!" she cries, vehemently; "don't ask me! Why didn't I die? When they saw I was getting well, they ought to have killed me. Oh, I wish they had!"
"I'm rather glad, on the whole, they did not," h