DEAREST THERESA, You will have heard before this that all is over. I could not write sooner, and I knew you would hear. To the last the poor dear child’s sufferings were dreadful, and she never had one moment’s consciousness....
Lord Grantham[235] arrived at the moment she expired. I wrote to him on Saturday to say he had better come, or rather to ask him if he did not think so, and he came off instantly, and I am so glad now, for you have no idea of the good effect it had on Mr. R.
Poor Sarah surprised me more than anybody. She cried a great deal, but was perfectly reasonable in her grief, and has fortunately taken the turn of feeling that it is only by her exertions her poor husband can be supported at all, and she kept repeating all the morning how much worse her calamity might have been, that at all events she had him left and ought not to repine. She thanked Sister, and, in short, nothing could be better than her conduct.
All hours come to an end at last; all griefs find, or make, a place for themselves. Don’t you know what I mean,—how they work themselves into the mind, and so, by degrees, the surface of life closes over and looks smooth again, and I always think what a blessing it is in these cases there are so many little things that must necessarily be talked over and done. It fills up the time.
Sarah and Mr. R. come here to-morrow, and then go to Nocton[236] for the funeral.
I think this day has lasted a year, and I cannot see to read, and my eyes are sore, and Sister cannot bear the light. In short, you must bear with me to-night. I am tired to death in my mind, and it rests me writing to somebody.
It was such a house of misery—the poor little French girl and the governess crying in one room; Warren[237] with his cold sarcastic manner talking to West, who was crying like a child. And yet he need not. He was right from the first, and perhaps that is a painful feeling, to think that all the misery he saw, might have been spared if he had not been thwarted....
There is nothing I would not have given to escape the journey to Nocton. I had a sort of cowardly wish that George would not let me go (though I would have gone too, at all events), and I was almost sorry when his letter began, “You are quite right, and so go.” And yet I have been often pretending to wish that I had more positive duties to do. We are such horrid hypocrites to ourselves. I am going to Nocton, I suppose, from the same feelings that lead Catholics to go up the Scala Sancta on their knees—a sort of superstition. It must be right, it is so unnatural and disagreeable; and yet I am very fond of Sister, and Sarah was once very kind to me, and is now again. It is very wrong; when you praised me in your letter it smote my conscience. Almost everybody but me has a pleasure in doing right. I have often thought how much you must have to learn on the subject of calamity for the loss of friends, but do not learn it before you must.
Lord Grantham has been such a comfort to them all. Your most affectionate
E. E.