CHAPTER XXII.
Thus the grave yawns for another victim, and having swallowed him, anda million more that same day, returns to its former state of insatiablefamished greed. It is a law--natural, wise, and comprehensible bythe feeblest understanding--that all created beings, in which thereis progressive life, must come forth, ripen, decay, and fall. Butwhy, oh! why, in too many cases does the decay and fall forerun theripening? Why is so many a worm permitted to gnaw out so many a closedbud's green heart? Why is the canker death allowed to pasture on somany an unblown life? Why are so many little toddling children, notyet come into the heritage of reason to which we are all by our humanbirth entitled, borne from their mother's emptied arms to their smallshort graves? Is it, as Hartley Coleridge very nobly, whether truly oruntruly, said--
"God only made them for his Christ to save?"
Very wasteful is the mighty mother, knowing that her materials areinexhaustible. And so they lay Jack down in the wormy grave.
"Bear, bear him along, With his few faults shut up like dead flow'rets."
No one will ever abuse him or say anything ill-natured of him again;for to speak evil of the helpless, speechless, answerless dead,requires a heart as bad, a nature as cowardly vile, as his must bethat foully murders a young child. And the mourners go home, and takeoff their hatbands and scarves, and give them to their wives to makeaprons of. And old Luath lies in the hall, watching still, with earsattentively pricked at any incoming footstep, and hope drooping, as daydroops too, begins to howl dismally towards sun-down.
And Esther--"You ought not to grieve for him; it is a happy change forhim; he is in Heaven!" So they had said to her weepingly, as people dosay to us, when the desire of our eyes has left us; but even as theyspake them, she felt that they were but words, hollow and empty as thegreetings in the market-place with which we salute our indifferentacquaintance. Was she so sure that the change had been a happy one?It was a change from the known to the unknown, from moderate certainevils, and moderate probable good, to infinite possibilities of horroror blessedness. Where lay this heaven, this promised land, where we soconfidently lodge our dead? Was it up above that highest bluest archthat looks in truth pure enough, and solid enough, to be the floorof some sweet elysium? Ah! no! Human knowledge, that like a naughty,prying child, has found out at once so infinitely too much and toolittle, tells us that that skyey vault is but thin air. She thinks,shuddering--"What if heaven itself be but thin air? _Is it anywhere?_What if its existence at all be but the fine-spun fancy of poor humanhearts, that must needs frame for themselves some blessed definitehope, since _real_ hope have they none? Is it a beautiful tender fraudpractised by themselves upon themselves, to save them from the despairof the black vagueness into which they must send out their departedones, and go out themselves when life's little day is over? Oh, light!light! When the great God said, 'Let there be light!' in the materialworld, why did not He say so too in the world of spirits? I know thatmy soul shall live for ever! I know that there is that within me overwhich the most insatiable of monsters, insatiabler than any slain inclassic tale--a monster that turns beauty to unsightliness, whosehandmaid is corruption, and whose drink is tears--has no power. Butalas! alas! can I rejoice in my immortality, when I know not where,or under what conditions, those endless, endless aeons will rollthemselves away into the past?"
* * * * *
"We must bow beneath the rod," says old Mrs. Brandon, nodding her headand her poke bonnet. It is the identical poke bonnet, and not another,in which she once paid her congratulatory visit. The summer sun hadbrowned it a little, but otherwise it is in a state of high efficiency."We must bow beneath the rod, knowing that it is a _tender Father's_hand that wields it."
"I suppose so," answers Esther, listlessly. To her it seems a matter ofindifference whose hand it was that inflicted such an immedicable hurt,seeing that it has been inflicted by some one, and now yawns, a gapingrift in her soul, never to be assuaged by any balsam.
"Suppose!" cries Miss Bessy, her long, uncertain nose reddening alittle in her righteous zeal, at the slackness of Esther's faith."Surely, surely, if we are _Believers_, there can be no '_suppose_' insuch a case."
"I did not mean to express any doubt," Esther says, gently, but wearily.
"_Suppose_ will not do us much good at the _Last Day_," continues MissBessy, rather venomously. "Unless we can lay fast hold upon Jesus"(_laying hold of a roll of paper to exemplify the tenacity of her owngrasp_[1]), "unless we have assurance that we are _Elect_, where arewe?"
"If it is any comfort to you, love, you know that you have ourprayers," says Mrs. Brandon, squeezing Esther's hand.
"We have set apart a special day with several Christian friends,"says Bessy, with animation, "to wrestle in prayer for you, that thissearching dispensation may be blessed to your conversion--that you mayfind the Lord."
"Thanks," answers Esther, meekly, too broken-down to resent even theindignity of being set up on a metaphorical stool of repentance, amid aselect circle of Miss Bessy's Christian friends.
"If we could send you anything from Plas Berwyn--" begins Mrs. Brandon.
"Any books or leaflets," interrupts Bessy.
"Any eatables, or anything of that kind," amends her mother. "I daresayyou have not been thinking much about housekeeping lately, my poorchild; and you know whenever you feel inclined to come to us _forgood_, you will always find open hearts and open arms," concludes thegood old woman, suiting her action to her words, and folding Esther ina black bombazine embrace.
"Thank you very much," replies the girl, gratefully, her low, sad voicealmost smothered by her mamma-in-law's bonnet strings, amongst whichher little disconsolate head is lying _perdue_.
"We are only broken cisterns, you should remember, mamma," says Bessy,a little reprovingly of her parent's carnal materialism; "leakyvessels, all of us! You should direct Esther to the one _Ebenezer_."
The race of Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar theNaamathite, is by no means extinct: if not in the male line, at allevents in the female, it still survives in the person of many a MissBessy Brandon.
* * * * *
Brandon has been busy all day with Jack's lawyer: returning in theafternoon, he finds Esther sitting on the study window-ledge, onwhich she and Jack used to sit on summer nights, and watch the littlefeathery, plumy clouds sail along the sky's sapphire sea; used to watch
"The large white stars rise one by one,"
and speculate who lived in them, and what they were made of. Jack hasentered into the ranks of the initiated, but she still sits and wonders.
"Come out for a stroll, Essie," says the young man, stooping over hertill his yellow beard, curly as a bull's forehead, almost touches herdark, drooped head.
"If you like," she answers, indifferently; and so drags herself slowlyup, and walks away heavily to get ready.
"Where shall we go?" inquires he, as they stand at the farmyard gate.The callow Cochin chickens have grown up, and are stalking about, inall the dignity of long, yellow legs and adolescence, under the framesof the corn-ricks, "Where shall we go?--to see my mother?"
"That would be returning her visit almost too promptly," answers theyoung girl, with a weary smile; "it is not more than half an hour sincethey left this house."
"_They!_ Were my sisters here too, then?" inquires Bob, quickly; hisconfidence in his sisters' infallibility as to words and actions notbeing so perfect as in his mamma's. "I hope their coming did not worryyou much."
"Nothing worries me now," she answers, calmly; "I defy anything toworry, or anger, or frighten me. Do you remember a line of Mrs. BarrettBrowning's? Oh no, by-the-bye, you never read poetry--
"'Fallen too low for special fear.'
"That is exactly my case."
"I never know the right sort of thing to say, don't you know," remarksBrandon, rather awkwardly, looking down, and poking about littlepebbles with the end of his
stick. "But I had hoped that mother mighthave hit upon something that would have comforted you a little."
"She meant to, I am sure," replies Esther, gravely. "She was very kind,and so were the girls, I suppose; only some of Bessy's speeches ratherreminded me of Eliphaz the Temanite's, 'Remember, I pray thee, who everperished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?'"
"I wish to heaven that Bessy could be possessed with a dumb devil!"says that young lady's brother, looking up, red with sudden anger. "Noone should ever have my leave to try and cast it out."
"Let us go to the common," Esther says, abruptly, not heeding him.
[1] A fact.