Chapter XXI

So the blinds are drawn down; a sort of notice that people put in their windows, saying, "Do not look in, or you will see Death!" and the few neighbours round drive up and inquire how Miss Craven is, and are informed that she is pretty well. And the servants each do the other's work; and there is a general interesting _bouleversement_ in the household, and much chattering and crying and a stream of visitors in the kitchen. And Brandon goes hither and thither, taking upon himself all the drear work of arranging Jack's final departure from his home among the mountains, and keeping at bay his mothers and sisters, who, armed with bibles, hymnals, and "Reflections for a Mourner," are prepared to sally forth in proselytising ardour upon the conquest of Esther's soul. And Esther herself is, for the time, soulless as the fair marble mask in the quiet room upstairs.

"His lips are very mild and meek;
Though one should smite him on the cheek,
Or on the mouth, he will not speak."

If any one were to smite her on lip or cheek, neither would she resent it or complain; she sits in an armchair, in the drawing-room, with her hands folded in her lap, and the servants bring her tea every half-hour (incessant tea being supposed to be the necessary accompaniment of great grief), and request her to "keep up." So she sits in the armchair all day long--trying to be sorry, trying to weep. She has had Sarah in, and has made her tell her all the particulars of her brother's last hours; has listened attentively while the woman--the easy tears streaming down her cheeks--relates how "Mr. Brandon was with poor master all along, from the very first, and if he had been his own born brother, he could not have been kinder," and how he lifted him up in his arms, and laid his head on his shoulder--"Master could breathe easier so, poor dear young gentleman!"--and _he_ (master) had been so pleasant-spoken to the last, and had said, said he, 'God bless you, old fellow! I'd have done as much for you, if I had had the chance;' and how, about seven o'clock, he had asked what o'clock it was--we all knew what that meant--and had then seemed to fall asleep in Mr. Brandon's arms, and just as the clock struck eight, he gave a sigh--like that--and a sort of pleasant bit of a smile, and was gone all in a minute!" It is very touching, but it does not touch Esther. She rises and walks into the hall, and looks at his greatcoat and his hat, and kisses his gloves, that seem to retain somewhat of the shape of the kind hands that once filled them. She thinks resolutely of how he has been her one friend throughout life; thinks of the presents he gave her, and of how seldom he went to any town without bringing her some little remembrance back from it; thinks of that last five-pound note, so hardly spared, and yet so very gladly given; thinks of how poor he was, how slight, how young. But it is all no good; it seems to her like some pathetic tale about a stranger that she is telling herself. And the days pass, and she grows weak from inanition, but refuses all food. If she can be unnatural, horrible enough to feel hunger and thirst now Jack is dead, at all events she will not indulge her low nature; and so she eats not, and her pulse grows feeble,

"And all the wheels of being slow!"

So it comes to pass that she falls sick and is carried up to bed, and lies there half in sleep, half in insensibility. And the mornings and the evenings go by, and Jack's burial-day comes. They had hoped that it would have passed without her knowing, but it was not so. Now that he is leaving his home for this last time, he does not go light-springing down the stairs, as at other times, but with much tramping of strange feet, with purposed muffling of strange voices. How can she fail to hear,

"The steps of the bearers heavy and slow?"

Through all her trance it breaks; from her little latticed window, with her sick limbs trembling beneath her, and her miserable eyes nailed to the gaoler coffin, in whose strait custody her dead lies prisoned, she sees the drooped pall and the black-scarfed mourners. These mourners are but few, for Jack--though now awfuller than any absolutest monarch--was, in life, poor and of little consequence: the gap made by the extinction of that one young life is but narrow. Standing there, she feels a pang of bitter regret and anguish that there are not more people to be sorry for Jack. And so, being weak, the fountains of her soul are broken up within her, and she falls to weeping mightily; and, but for that weeping, she would, perchance, have died, some say; but I think not--for why should grief, being our natural element, kill us any more than water the fish, or air the bird?