CHAPTER XXXI.
"Get me some fresh candles--long ones; longer than these--as long asyou possibly can," Esther says that same evening, on going to bed, tothe housemaid whom she finds putting coals on her fire.
"I think, 'm, that you will find these will last for to-night," thewoman answers, looking at the very respectable dimensions of the unlitcandles on Esther's queer old-fashioned toilet-table.
"No--no, they won't!" she answers, nervously; "it is better to be onthe safe side."
"Would you like a night-light, miss?"
"Oh no, no! they make the corners of the room blacker than ever, andthey cast such odd shadows. I'm _so_ afraid of the dark," she ends,shuddering.
"I'm afraid you don't sleep well, 'm?"
"Not very. By-the-by" (with a sudden inspiration), "have you gotanything that you could give me to make me sleep--any opiate of anykind?"
"I've got a little laudanum, ma'am, that Mrs. Franklin give me lastweek when I had a bad face."
"Fetch it me," she cries, eagerly; "that is, if you don't want ityourself. It is very foolish of me," she says, looking rather ashamed,"but I cannot sleep for fright."
The servant goes, and presently returns with a small dark blue bottle.
"About how much ought one to take, I wonder?" Esther says, holding itup between herself and the firelight.
"If you have never been used to take it before, I should think two orthree drops would be _hample_, 'm; I hope, 'm" (with a little anxietyin her florid plebeian face), "as you'll be careful not to take a_h_overdose, or you might chance never to wake up again: I knew a youngperson as took it by mistake for 'black dose'--it was the fault of thechemist's young man--and in an hour she was a corpse; they said as shehad took enough to kill ten men."
"It is no wonder that she was a corpse, then," Miss Craven answers,with a slight smile. "I should not think" (scrutinising the littlebottle inquisitively), "that there was enough here to kill one woman,let alone ten men. Yes, I'll be careful; thanks, very much. Goodnight!" (with her pretty courteous smile).
The housemaid being gone, Esther bolts the door--a weakly defensivemeasure against one class of assailants, the crape-masked burglars;though, as she is aware, utterly impotent against the other and worseclass--the intangible, unkeep-outable _revenants_; the rustlers alongthe passage, the rattlers of the lock. She then seats herself at thedressing-table, flings down her arms among her brushes and combs, andsinks her head upon them, in closest proximity to the candles, whoselittle spires of flame the wind, thrusting its thin body in betweenwindow and frame, drives right against the tumbled plenty of her hair.In this attitude she remains a long time; forgetting even to searchunder the bed, up the chimney, behind the screen, or in the hugejapanned chest, upon which a disconnected but interesting landscape ofcocks, pagodas, and junks picks itself out, in tarnished yellow, fromthe dull black ground.
It is impossible for the most comprehensive mind or body to contain anytwo distinct, even though not necessarily opposite feelings, in theirfullest force, at the same time. If one is famished with hunger, onecannot be consumed by thirst; if one is consumed by thirst, one cannotbe famished with hunger. If one is in despair at being forgotten byone's lover, one is indifferent as to the onset of any number of ghostsand murderers; if one is paralyzed by fear of ghosts and murderers, oneis tolerably indifferent as to one's lover's lapse of memory. For thefirst time since his death, Jack is not the leading thought in Esther'smind. Poor dead! How can they be so unreasonable as to expect to beanyone's leading thought? Even we noisy, voiceful, visible living areobliged to keep crying out, "I am here--remember me," in order not tosink into oblivion amongst our neighbours and kinsfolk.
"Wilt thou remember me when I am gone, Further each day from thy vision withdrawn-- Thou in the sunset, and I in the dawn?"
Pretty, tender, touching lines; but I think that the answer to them, ifgiven truly, would hardly content the asker: "I will remember thee fora very little while; even till I see some one younger and prettier thanthou wert, and then I will forget thee!"
Miss Craven starts up, after awhile, and begins to walk up anddown, over the creaky, up-and-downy boards, and to speak vehementlyand out loud to the rats, who, numerous and cheerful as usual, arescrabbling, pattering, squeaking under the floor, behind the wainscot,in the japan-chest. "At all events," she says, with a sort of savagesatisfaction, "there is one comfort: he'll be miserable--he'll cursethe day when he ties himself to that lump of blancmange. Blancmange!white meat! that exactly expresses her; she looks as if she wouldbe good to eat--soft, luscious, ripe. Unfortunately, a man does notcontemplate _eating_ his wife!"
But even this little angry gleam of comfort has but a short life. Soon,too soon, it occurs to her that men do not look at a woman with women'seyes. Men, being three parts animal themselves, condone any offence toa woman the animal part of whom is perfect and beautiful. How else isit that beauty--mere blank beauty, although destitute of any accessorycharms--can always command its price in the market, and that price ahigh one? In marrying Constance, St. John will have no disappointmentsto undergo, no discoveries to make. He has known her all her life; hasseen her change from a handsome stupid child into a handsomer stupidergirl, and bloom, lastly, into a handsomest, stupidest woman. Constancehas no antecedents; she is a woman without a history. That also is inher favour. A man likes to write his name on a sheet of white paperbetter than on one upon which many other men have written theirs.Perfectly virtuous, perfectly healthy, perfectly beautiful, young,rich, not ill-tempered, not fast, not shrew-tongued--surely she is aprize worth any man's drawing. If, in addition to her long list ofqualifications, she possessed also Desdemona's heart and Imogen's mind,it would be too hard upon the rest of womankind:
"Why should one woman have all goodly things?"
Want of sympathy with the companion of her life makes a womanembittered, reckless--sends her often trespassing on her neighbours'preserves, in the endeavour to find there that congeniality of spiritwhich is not to be met with in her own. Want of sympathy with thecompanion of _his_ life sends a man oftener to his club; makes himmuch pleasanter to other women when he goes into society; makes himsulky and sleepy when he dines at home--that is all. Doubtless St.John will be indifferent to his bride at first; he will dislocate hisjaw with yawning during their wedding-tour, but she will bear himchildren; "selon les us et coutumes Anglaises, elle aura beaucoupd'enfants;" he will like her for that. Year by year they will comehere to Blessington, probably. Year by year she (Esther) will see theblossom of a fuller contentment on his wide brow, the quiet of a deeperrest in his restless eyes. And she herself will be here always, forone cannot throw away one's daily bread. Year by year they will findher with ever thinner hair, sharper shoulders, drabber cheeks; and he,looking upon her with the forgiveness of complete indifference, willsay to himself, "She is bad, and she is ugly; I was well rid of her!"Than to be so forgiven, how much rather would she have been struck downdead by his hand, lifted in righteous anger and vengeance, on thatmoonlit September night, beside the glassy rush-brimmed mere at Felton!A sudden rage at her own fatuity fills her, when she looks back on thatidiotic hope that had upsprung in her mind, that his object in comingto Blessington was to pardon her, and take her back to himself. Do menever pardon a sin against themselves?
"...............Worse than despair, Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope. It is the only ill which can find place Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost, That it should spare the eldest flower of spring; Plead with awakening earthquake, o'er whose couch Even now a city stands, strong, fair and free, Now stench and blackness yawns like death. Oh! plead With famine and wind-walking pestilence, Blind lightning, or the deep sea; not with man-- Cruel, cold formal man--righteous in words, In deeds a Cain."
She sits down before her looking-glass, and stares desperately, withinner eyes, at the blank ruin of her life; with outer eyes at the
ruinmirrored in her sunken, altered face, that the old looking-glass,blurred with rust stains, makes look more sunken and altered still.Involuntarily she lifts her thumb and forefinger, and lays them in thehollows of her cheek, as if seeking for the red carnations that usedto flower so fairly there. She has noticed before the decay of herbeauty--noticed it with apathy, as who should say, "Everything else isgone, why should not this go too?" But now she observes it with a sickpang, as at the parting with a friend; she would give ten years of herlife to reach it back again. "It was only for my beauty he liked me,"she says, still speaking aloud; "it was only for my beauty that anybodycould like me; there is nothing else to like in me. I never was clever,or said witty things, or sang, or played: I was only pretty. Now thatthat is gone, everything is gone!"
As one shipwrecked, floating about on a plank among the weltering wavesof some great plunging, grey-green sea, strains his eyes along thehorizon to see some sail-speck, some misty palm-island, that looksas though it were hung midway in air; so she strains her mental eyesto catch sight of some friendly ship that may take her off from thisrock of her despair. This world is full of pairs, but some oversighthas left a good many odd ones also; Esther is an odd one. Her roadhas come to a blank wall, and there stopped. Is there no ladderthat can overclimb this wall?--no gap in all the thickness of itsbrick-and-mortar?--no outlet?
She rises and stands by the fire; her eyes down-dropped on theblue-and-white Dutch tiles--on the hobs, and queer brass-inlaiddogs: involuntarily she raises them, and they rest upon the littlelaudanum-bottle on the chimneypiece. Quick as lightning, an answer toher thought-question seems flashed across her mind. There is a ladderthat can overclimb _any_ wall; there is a gap that can give egressthrough the stoutest masonries; there is an outlet from the deepestdungeon; and this ladder, this gap, this outlet, men call _Death_. Overthe sea of her memory the housemaid's words float back: "I hope you'llbe careful not to take an overdose, 'm, or you might chance never towake again!" They had been spoken in careful warning; to her theyseemed words of persuasive promise. Never to wake again! Never to sayagain in the evening, "Would God it were morning!" and in the morning,"Would God it were evening!"
To Esther, the great sting of death had always laid in his pain--in hisgasping breath, twitched features, writhen unfleshed limbs; but thisdeath that comes in sleep can be no bitterer than a mother that liftsher little slumbering child out of his small bed (he not knowing),and bears him away softly. The idea of self-slaughter, when firstsuggested, has always something terrific, especially to us, who fromour birth have been taught to look upon it as a crime hardly secondto murder; to us, to whom Cato's great heroism and Lucretia's chastemartyrdom seem as sins. Some vague idea that suicide is forbidden inthe Scriptures runs through Esther's mind. She sits down at the table,and, drawing a Bible towards her, searches long among the partial,temporary, and local prohibitions and commands of the Books of theLaw, and still longer among the universal, all-applying prohibitionsand commands of Gospel and Epistle. Whether it be that she search ill,or that there is nought therein written on the subject she seeks, sheknows not; only she finds nothing; and, closing the book, she leans herpale cheek on her closed white hand. Her brain feels strangely calm,and she even forgets the darkness of the night, musing on a deeperdarkness.
What is this death, that we write in such great black letters?After all, what is it that we know about him, for or against? Is itfair to condemn him unheard, unknown? Why should we give him anyembodiment?--why should we personify him at all? He is but an ending:what is there in the end of anything more terrifying than in itsbeginning, or its middle? Death is but the end of life, as birth is itsbeginning, and as some unnoticed moment in its course is its middle.
Why are the waters in which we set our feet at the last more coldlyawful than those out of which we stepped at the first? Both--both,are they not portions of the great sea of Eternity that floweth everround Time's little island? A clock is wound up for a certain numberof hours; when that number of hours has elapsed, it stops. Our morecomplicated machinery is wound up to go for a certain number of years,months, days; when that number of years, months, and days is elapsed,we stop--that is all. What is this life, about the taking or keeping ofwhich we make such a clamour, as if it were some great, costly, goodlything?
"It is but a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep."
It is cowardly, disloyal, say they, for a soldier to desert the postat which he has been set. Ay, but the galley-slave, chained to an oar,if he can but break his chain and be gone, may flee away, and noneblame him. A prisoner that is not on parole, what shall hinder him fromescaping? If he can but burst his bars, and draw his strong bolts, mayhe not out and away into the free air? If, before our birth, in thatunknown pre-existence of ours at which backward-reaching memory catchesnot, we, standing looking into life, had said, "Oh, Master, give me ofthis life! I know not what it is, but I would fain taste it; and ifThou givest it to me, I swear to Thee to keep and guard it carefully,as long as I may----." But have we ever so asked for it? Has it notbeen thrust upon us, undesiring, unconsulted, as a gift that is neitherof beauty nor of price? Who can chide us, if, laying it down meekly atthe everlasting feet, we say, "Oh, Great Builder! take back that housein which, a reluctant tenant, Thou hast placed me. Resume Thy gift; itis a burden too heavy for me! Lay it, I pray Thee, on shoulders thatmayhap may bear it stoutlier!"
She lifts the bottle, having uncorked it, to her lips and tastes. Ithas a deathly, sickly flavour, not enticing. Hesitating, she holds itin her hand, half-frightened, half-allured; while her heart beats loudand hard. "It is the key to all my doubts," she says within herself,looking steadfastly at it; "it is the answer to all my questions. IfI do but drink this little draught, I shall have all knowledge; Ishall never wonder again! I shall know where Jack is; I shall be withhim! But shall I?" Ay, that's the rub! Even in this small world, tobe alive at the same time with another person is not necessarily, oreven probably, to be _with_ him. Wide continents, high mountains,deep rivers often sever those that are closest of kin; and in theworld of the dead, which, being so much more populous, must be so muchthe greater, is it not likely that still wider continents, highermountains, deeper rivers, may part two that would fain be together?What if, before her time, she incur the abasement of death, thedishonour of corruption, and yet attain not the object for whose sakeshe is willing desperately to lay her comely head in the dust?
She changes her attitude, puts down the bottle, and again stoops hersmall flower-face on her bent fingers--her thoughts varying theirchannel a little: "If I go, I shall leave no gap behind me, anymore than a teacupful of water taken out of a great pool leaves agap behind. If it is disgraceful to go willingly out of the world,instead of being dragged unwillingly out of it, my disgrace is myown. I involve no one else in it; there is no one of my name left tobe ashamed of me. I leave no work undone in the world. Hundreds ofothers can carry air-cushions, and read to a deaf old man far morepatiently than I have done. My fifty pounds a year will go to putdaily bread into some other poor woman's mouth, to whom it may perhapstaste sweeter than it has done to me." Her head sinks forward again onher outstretched arms.... "It is awful to go out into the dark all byoneself," she thinks, with a pang of intense self-pity, as she feelsthe warm, gentle life throbbing in her round, tender limbs: "and I,that hate the dark so----, is it very wicked of me to think of thisthing? People will say so, but I will not hear them. Where shall I beto-morrow at even?"
"You will be at Blessington, and feeling a good deal ashamed of yourabsurd paroxysm of cowardly despair," answers plain common sense,who, in the shape of an untold multitude of rats, begins rushing andgnawing, hundred-toothed, scampering hundred-footed behind the walls.
Esther lifts her foolish prone head, and listens. "Skurry--skurry!"go the rats; "Crack!" go the beams; "Thud!" goes some unexplainedbulk, in the dining-room underneath! As the tide, at flood, creeps upand over the sands, so the child's old fear creeps up and over hernew mad scheme of suicide. "
Rustle--rustle!" come the ghostly dressesalong the China gallery; "Click, rattle--rattle, click!" goes thedoor-lock. Down goes the laudanum bottle on the table, and Esther,springing to her feet, begins to unfasten, with fingers renderednervous by extreme haste, her dress and the belt round her slim waist."Crack--crack--crack!" goes something close to the bed-head; "Bang!"goes a distant door. There is no wind; what or who can have executedthat bang? The fire, which has been burning hollow for some time,collapses, and falls in suddenly with a clear, loud noise. In one leapMiss Craven is in bed and beneath the sheltering bed-clothes.
All very well pensively to contemplate, in half-earnest, the conveyingoneself out of a world that has been a most harsh step-mother to one,but by no means well to have one's graceful farewells to existencebroken in upon by a nation tailed and whiskered--by the spirits of oldreprobates in flowered dressing-gowns, and of ladies, who nightly carrytheir patched and powdered heads like parcels under their arms.
Good night, wicked woman! May the rats career all night over your smallface, as a punishment for your great idiocy!