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withdrawn: full consciousness returns, and remembrance; and in their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," he answers, gravely;
and so, with one final effort, he being strong, and she being weak,
he obtains possession of her two hands, and her face lies bare,
unshaded--dyed with an agony of shame--clothed with great beauty--under
the hungry tenderness of his happy eyes.
"To think of making one's last dying speech and confession, and then
not dying after all," she says, in torments of confusion, yet unable to
restrain an uneasy laugh. "It is _too_ disgraceful! I shall never get
over it! _Never!_--NEVER!--_NEVER!!_"
"Time, which mitigates all afflictions, _may_ mitigate yours," he
replies, gaily, unable to resist the exquisite pleasure of teasing her.
She turns from him with a petulant movement of head and shoulder. "Why
don't you go?" she cries, the angry tears flashing into her eyes; "I
hate the sight of you!"
At that he grows grave. "Essie," he says, slipping his arms round her
as she sits, shrinking away from him in the deep chintz chair, "in that
awful moment, when you thought--and God knows I thought so too--that we
were saying 'goodbye' to one another for _always_, the barriers that
your wretched false pride had built up between us were knocked down;
try as you may, you can never build them up again."
"I knocked down plenty of barriers, I'm aware," she answers, ruefully.
"You need not remind me of that!"
"Never to be built up again any more--never any more!" he says, his
mirth swallowed up in great solemn joy.
She has fallen forwards into his embrace; he holds her little trembling
form against his heart--a posture to which she submits, chiefly because
it affords her an opportunity of hiding her face upon his shoulder.
"Never any more!" she repeats, mechanically, and then there is silence,
save for the thrush, that trills ever his high tender lay. Presently
Essie stirs, and whispers, with uneasiness, "St. John!"
"Well?"
"You won't tell any one, will you?"
"Tell them what?--that you and I are going to be married? By this time
to-morrow I hope to have told every one I meet: I am not so selfish as
to wish to keep such good news to myself."
"No--I don't mean that; but you won't tell any one about--about--about
_that?_" This is the nearest approach she can bear to make to the
abhorred theme.
"Esther!"
"And you'll promise never to joke about it?"
"_Never_, by the holy poker!"
"And you won't twit me with it when we quarrel?"
"What! you contemplate our having little differences of opinion?"
"Of course," she answers, laughing; "when two such ill-tempered people
come together, how can it be otherwise?"
"Quarrel or no quarrel," he cries, passionately kissing her sweet shy
lips, as one that can never be satiated with their tender warmth, "we
are together now, for bad and good, for fair weather and foul, till
death us do part! Say it after me, Essie; don't let ours be a one-sided
compact."
And Essie, obedient, murmurs after him, "Till death us do part!"
* * * * *
And so it comes to pass that in the sweet spring weather, when the
ground is a carpet of strewn cherry-blooms, when the cows stand
knee-deep in buttercups, and the brake-fern is uncrumpling its tender
fronds, the church-bells ring out, and they two are wed.
And the sun, that shines down on the bravery of the wedding pomp, as
bride and groom pace by, shines also hotlier, with a more brazen sickly
glare, on a soldier's grave, over which, three days ago, his comrades
fired the parting volley on Bermuda's sultry shore.
The name of the soldier to whom Heaven has granted his discharge is
Robert Brandon. Esther Gerard may spare her remorse now; treachery of
hers can wound that loyal heart, on which the worm feeds sweetly, never
more! Not unknowing of the good fortune of the woman he had so madly,
miserably, nobly loved, has he passed away. In his poor schoolboy
scrawl he had written her a little simple, badly-worded note, bidding,
"God bless and speed her on her way!" The tears had fallen hot and
thick upon the paper; but he had wiped them off, and she had never
guessed them. He has hoarded his scant pay, has denied himself many of
the small comforts that to his brother-officers are bare necessaries
of life, that he may send her a wedding-gift befitting Gerard's bride.
And he had gone about his wonted ways with no moping martyr's airs,
unshaken in his simple creed that, since God wills it, all must be
for the best. His honest laugh, if it come seldomer than it used, yet
is none the less hearty and genial when it does come. And then, that
pestilence which, at stated seasons, never forgetting its appointed
periods, visits that tropic clime, comes and lays its heavy hand on
the shoulder of many a fair-haired youth; and, among the first, upon
the stalwart shoulder of Robert Brandon. And he, with no life-hating
madness, with no quarrel against fate, yet not all unwilling, having
stoutly fought life's hard battle:
"Surrenders his fair soul
Unto his Captain--Christ!"
THE END.