Red as a Rose is She: A Novel

by Rhoda Broughton

  CHAPTER XXI.

  So the blinds are drawn down; a sort of notice that people put intheir windows, saying, "Do not look in, or you will see Death!" andthe few neighbours round drive up and inquire how Miss Craven is, andare informed that she is pretty well. And the servants each do theother's work; and there is a general interesting _bouleversement_ inthe household, and much chattering and crying and a stream of visitorsin the kitchen. And Brandon goes hither and thither, taking uponhimself all the drear work of arranging Jack's final departure from hishome among the mountains, and keeping at bay his mothers and sisters,who, armed with bibles, hymnals, and "Reflections for a Mourner," areprepared to sally forth in proselytising ardour upon the conquest ofEsther's soul. And Esther herself is, for the time, soulless as thefair 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 resentit or complain; she sits in an armchair, in the drawing-room, with herhands folded in her lap, and the servants bring her tea every half-hour(incessant tea being supposed to be the necessary accompaniment ofgreat grief), and request her to "keep up." So she sits in the armchairall day long--trying to be sorry, trying to weep. She has had Sarahin, and has made her tell her all the particulars of her brother'slast hours; has listened attentively while the woman--the easy tearsstreaming down her cheeks--relates how "Mr. Brandon was with poormaster all along, from the very first, and if he had been his own bornbrother, he could not have been kinder," and how he lifted him up inhis arms, and laid his head on his shoulder--"Master could breatheeasier so, poor dear young gentleman!"--and _he_ (master) had been sopleasant-spoken to the last, and had said, said he, 'God bless you, oldfellow! I'd have done as much for you, if I had had the chance;' andhow, about seven o'clock, he had asked what o'clock it was--we all knewwhat that meant--and had then seemed to fall asleep in Mr. Brandon'sarms, and just as the clock struck eight, he gave a sigh--likethat--and a sort of pleasant bit of a smile, and was gone all in aminute!" It is very touching, but it does not touch Esther. She risesand walks into the hall, and looks at his greatcoat and his hat, andkisses his gloves, that seem to retain somewhat of the shape of thekind hands that once filled them. She thinks resolutely of how he hasbeen her one friend throughout life; thinks of the presents he gaveher, and of how seldom he went to any town without bringing her somelittle remembrance back from it; thinks of that last five-pound note,so hardly spared, and yet so very gladly given; thinks of how poor hewas, how slight, how young. But it is all no good; it seems to her likesome pathetic tale about a stranger that she is telling herself. Andthe days pass, and she grows weak from inanition, but refuses all food.If she can be unnatural, horrible enough to feel hunger and thirst nowJack is dead, at all events she will not indulge her low nature; and soshe 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, andlies there half in sleep, half in insensibility. And the mornings andthe evenings go by, and Jack's burial-day comes. They had hoped that itwould have passed without her knowing, but it was not so. Now that heis leaving his home for this last time, he does not go light-springingdown the stairs, as at other times, but with much tramping of strangefeet, with purposed muffling of strange voices. How can she fail tohear,

  "The steps of the bearers heavy and slow?"

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