Chapter XX

The mountains stand still and drowsy in the sleepiness of midday. Through the mistiness of the air, the russet glories of the dying bracken blaze on their breasts: the oak-woods still keep their deep dusk green, but the sycamore has felt the kiss of winter, and is growing red and sere beneath it. The sun is reigning, sole despot of the sky, having banished every rebel cloud beyond the horizon's limits. It is almost always fine weather when we are most miserable. Whatever poets say to the contrary, Nature is not sympathetic: rather is she very insolent to us in her triumphant, durable beauty. She loves to say to us, "Though you are weeping, my eyes are dry: though you are very sick and feeble, I am strong and fair: though you are most short-lived, here to-day and gone to-morrow, I am eternal, I _endure_."

In the meadow below the house, Jack's sheep are browsing--the Cheviots that he was so proud of: down the stony, steep back-road the cart-horses come jogging, to be watered at the pool at the hill-foot. With shortened breath and straining muscles, Esther runs fleetly past them, not daring to look into the carter's face. Through the gate, by the stables, and then the familiar little old house comes in sight, with its high-pitched roof and its old-fashioned chimney-pots. White pigeons are walking about on the gravelled sweep, bowing and scraping, and making love, with a formal solemnity worthy of Sir Charles Grandison. The Virginia creeper's scarlet banners wave from the wall; the hall-window is open; on the ledge lies a tabby cat, with one eye open and the other shut; two cocks are crowing in emulous rivalry in the farmyard. Everything looks peaceful, happy, _alive_. Gathering a little feeble hope from these signs, Esther collects her small remnant of breath, and runs towards the door. She has nearly reached it, when, stepping hastily out from the porch, one comes to meet her: _one_, but not _the_ one: he will pass through that porch but once again, and then not of his own accord, but borne heavily on others' shoulders. Unable to frame any speech, Esther looks up mutely in Brandon's face (for it is he), and there reads her doom. "He is dead--he is dead!" she sees written wetly on either eye.

"He is better off than we are," says the young man, brokenly, taking hold of both her hands.

She sits down heavily on the bench in the porch: what hurry is there now? After all, it is but a poor shabby remnant of us that Death gets when he makes his final claim upon us; in most of us the greater, better part has died long before. Of Esther, three-fourths died as she sat on the oak bench in the porch that autumn morning: breath remained, and blood still circulated through veins and arteries, and speech and hearing were left; but youth, and hope, and heart, died very suddenly and utterly, to come back to life again never any more. She sits staring vacantly at the seat opposite her for several minutes, and then speaks distinctly, almost loudly: "How long ago?"

"About eight," answers Brandon, briefly and sadly, turning away his head to hide his womanish tears for the young fellow that fell asleep so gently in his arms, in the early morning, when other folks were waking.

"What was it killed him?" asks the girl, in the same hard, clear voice.

Bob looks at her in astonishment: he had been steeling himself against faintings, hysterics, a terrible scene of shrieks and waitings, but this conscious stony collectedness fills him with a fearful surprise.

"It was diphtheria," he answers, sorrowfully taking her hand again, and stroking it, while his hot tears fall thick upon it.

She leaves it in his, passive as the hand of a statue, unknowing, indifferent, whether he held it or not.

"Did he suffer much?" she inquires, lifting her lovely, hopeless eyes piteously to his face.

"Not at the last," answers Brandon, evasively, almost under his breath.

Silence for a few seconds: the cocks are still crowing, the pigeons courting, the cat purring on the window-sill: Nature is fond of these horrible contrasts.

Presently she speaks again: "Why was not I sent for before?" she asks in a rough, harsh whisper.

"We telegraphed for you yesterday morning, the instant that we found there was any danger," he replies, speaking very gently, but wincing a little under the reproach implied in her question.

"And it did not reach me till this morning. If I had had it when I ought, I suppose I should have been in time to see him," she says, with apathy, looking away towards the misty hill.

"He sent you his love," says Brandon, struggling again with that same breaking in his voice. "Dear fellow! he was quite happy!"

"Was he?" she says, with the same vacant look. "I'll go to him." As she speaks, she rises and moves towards the door.

"You had better not," he says hastily, laying his hand on her arm.

"Why?" inquires she, looking at him with perfect calmness; "are you afraid of my fainting or going into hysterics? You need not be; it is only that I am not the least sorry that Jack is dead, and that I want to be."

"It is not that," he answers, earnestly; "but--but--you know, dear, that it is a terribly infectious complaint."

"Is it?" she answers, a ray of animation lighting up her haggard face. "I'm glad; perhaps God will let me catch it!"

Seeing that she is resolute, he ceases trying to dissuade her. In the small dark hall, old Luath is lying on the rug; seeing Esther enter, he raises himself quickly, and goes to meet her, with heavy tail wagging and affectionate eyes, on which age is written in blue dimness. Now that the master's sister has come home, he is sure that the master cannot be far behind. He is waiting for him, waiting to walk round the farm; he has been waiting this long time, thinking that he has gone upon a journey; and so he has. But oh! Luath, it is a journey on which man may take neither horse nor dog, neither wife, nor sister, nor friend; a journey on which some man, woman, or child is setting off every minute that beats; and whence no explorers return, with maps and charts, and wondrous tales, to vaunt themselves of their exploits, and be extolled and praised as benefactors to their race. Let us hope that it is because they find that country most pleasant that they come not again. In the drawing-room a canary is shrilling his loud, sharp song: they have thrown a shawl over his cage to keep him quiet; but through the shawl the sun pierces, and the bird's keen clear jubilation goes up to meet it. How can he sing so very gaily now Jack is dead? At the room-door they pause.

"Don't come in! I'd rather have him to myself, please," Esther says, in a steady whisper.

"Promise not to kiss him, Essie!" Brandon rejoins, very earnestly; also in a whisper, "We cannot spare you too."

She takes no notice of his request, but, opening the door gently, enters the chamber, where the king of kings, and lord of lords, almighty Death--before whom we all grovelling do unwilling obeisance--is holding one of his myriad courts. It is but a small, slightly furnished room in which he is holding this one, but that concerns him but little. His majesty is so great that he can afford to dispense with the adventitious adjuncts of pomp and circumstance. Without his crown and sceptre, without his courtiers--Plague, Pestilence, and Famine--he is still very king and emperor.

The window is open, but the white curtains drawn--

"While through the lattice ivy shadows creep."

On the table stand physic-bottles--puny foils with which we fence with death--and an open Bible, out of which Brandon, with shaking voice, and a weak, dying hand held in his strong tender one, read the old comfortable words that have soothed many a transit, to the young traveller who was setting out meekly, and not fearfully, in the autumn morning. Over the bed spreads a white sheet, and beneath it a formless form!

Can that be Jack? Can that be Jack, lying still and idle in the bright midday?--Jack, to whom the shelter of a house was ever irksome, who was up and about at cock-crow, to whom all weathers were the same, and the bracing wind blowing about the heathery hills the very breath of his nostrils? A feeling of incredulity steals over her. She walks to the bed and turns down the sheet from the face, and the incredulity deepens into incredulous awe. Oh, ye liars! all ye that say that sleep and death are alike! what kinship is there between the pliant relaxer of soft limbs, the light brief slumber, that, at any trivial noise, a trumpeting gnat or distant calling voice, flies and is dissolved, and the grave stiff whiteness of that profoundest rest that no thousand booming cannons, no rock-rending earthquake, no earth-riving thunderbolt can break? It is an insult to that strong narcotic to liken any other repose to that he gives. They have crossed the young fellow's hands upon his unheaving breast, meekly, as the hands of one that prayeth; and laid sprigs of grey-flowered rosemary in them. She looks at him steadfastly, a great, awful amazement in her dilated eyes. Is _this_ the boy that whistled "I paddle my own canoe"--whose step, glad and noisy, echoed about the stairs?--the boy that sat and smoked at the study window, with her fond head resting on his young slight shoulder?--the boy that was worried about failing crops and barren land?--the boy whose laugh had a sincerer ring in it than any one else's, who made so many jokes, and had such a light heart? Can _this_ be he--this white, awful, beautiful statue? Was ever crowned king, in purple and minever, half so majestical as he, as he lies on his narrow bed in the scant poor room, with that serene stern smile that only dead mouths wear on his solemn changed face?--that smile that seems to say, "I have overcome! I _know!_"

Esther's love for Jack is great as love can be--greater than Jonathan's for David, greater than David's for Absalom; and this pale, prone figure is unearthly fair and grand; but can she connect the two ideas? What have they to say to one another? Can she realise that if this form be not her brother, neither will she find him again on the earth's face, though she seek him carefully with tears. For one instant it comes home to her; for one instant light darts into her soul--light keen and cruel as the forked lightning flash that, on some mirk night, glares blinding bright into a dark room, illumining every object as with the furnace-fires of hell! She sinks on her trembling knees by the bedside, and says, with dumb, heart-wrung entreaty--"God! God! give him back to me, or let me go where he is."

But the great Lord that said once, "Lazarus, come forth!" has said "Come forth!" to never another since him. "Lie thou still, till I call thee!" He says; and none durst move hand or foot. But since he cannot come to her, why should not she go to him? Has the disease that slew him spent all its force on that one slight frame? Is not there enough of it left to kill her too? It was Juliet's thought when she spake reproachingly to her dead Romeo, as she looked into the empty poison-cup--

"Oh, churl! drink all and leave no friendly drop,
To help me after----."

Suddenly Brandon's beseeching words recur to her: "Promise not to kiss him, Essie!" If she kiss him, he may give her the boon of death. Instantly she rises, and stooping over him, lays her tremulous warm lips on his still cheek. The unearthly awful cold of the contact between the dead and the living strikes a chilly shrinking along her veins and limbs; but not for that shrinking does she desist. Again and again she kisses him, driven on by that strong drear hope, saying moaningly, "My boy,! my boy!--give it me! give it me!" Then unbelief comes back. This is not Jack: he is somewhere else. She will find him by-and-by. This is very terrible, this present experience, but she catches herself thinking she will tell Jack all about it when she sees him. To the incredulity succeeds a stupid apathy. She sinks down upon her knees again, with her elbows resting on the counterpane, and fixes her stony eyes upon the dead stripling; watches him; looks at him steadfastly, without intermission; looks at "the shell of a flown bird," as the old philosopher very grandly said. She does not know how long she means to stay there; she does not know how long she has already staid there; when some one entering, lays his hand upon her shoulder, and says, with kindly gravity, "Come away, dear!"

"I am doing no harm!" she answers dully, not moving her eyes.

"Come, darling!" he says, not attempting to reason with her, but speaking in the coaxing tone one would use to a fractious sickly child.

She answers neither "Ay" nor "Nay;" she neither resists nor consents, and so, half carrying, half leading, he takes her from the room, and they leave poor Jack lying all alone in his shroud, smiling sternly sweet.