For those first moments, when I knelt alone beside the little bed, with the soft arm still round my neck, and the breath of that sigh still on the air, there was no feeling that I had suffered a bereavement, that death and sorrow had entered the house; but holy thoughts of God and heaven—strange longings for the rest that she had entered into—a sort of hushed and hallowed awe, as if the new angel still lingered, with a half regret at leaving me alone—as if the parting, if parting there were to be, were but for a "little while"—as if the communion of saints were so divine and comfortable a thing, that there was no need for tears and sorrow.
But when there came a sudden tumult below, hurried steps upon the stairs, a sound beside me, a pause, and then a cry that made my blood freeze in my veins, I knew that there was more than joy in heaven—that there was bitter agony on earth: that there was more than an angel won above—that there was a child dead below—a household in mourning—a mother's heart writhing in torture—a judgment fallen—a punishment following close upon a sin—a remorse begun that no time could heal, that no other life could quench, no other love allay.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
"Back, then, complainer; loathe thy life no more,
Nor deem thyself upon a desert shore,
Because the rocks thy nearer prospect close."
KEBLE.
Félicie had fled. When, in the agonized confusion of that dreadful night, she was at last remembered and searched for, there was no trace of her to be found, and all future inquiry was equally unavailing. The wretched woman need not have concealed herself with such desperate fear; no one felt any heart to search her out, or revenge on her the death of her little charge. No one of that sad household but knew, in their hearts, that there was a sin at more than her door—a sin that lay heavy in proportion to its unnaturalness and strangeness.
Those were wretched nights and days that followed little Esther's death. The vehement grief that, in the first hours of amazement and remorse, had burst from the miserable mother, was succeeded by a calm more unnatural and more alarming. My heart ached for the misery that showed itself but too plainly in her haggard face and restless eyes; but, shutting herself up in her cold and speechless wretchedness, from all sympathy, I longed, but did not dare, to offer any. And I, perhaps more than any other, involuntarily recalled the phantom she was trying to fly, the remorse that she was struggling to subdue. Though her self-control, even then, was almost perfect, I could see that she never looked at me unmoved—that she winced at any attention from me, as if a newly bleeding wound had been roughly handled, and shrunk more than ever into herself. She refused all visitors, even the most intimate. Josephine was the only one of the family whose presence did not seem to pain her, and at times even she was sent away. She was too strong and proud a woman not to bear her sorrow, as she bore all other emotions, alone. Not even Josephine saw any further into her heart than strangers did.
With the resumption of the ordinary household ways, came the cold insincerity that custom sanctions, of banishing from familiar mention the name that, a month ago, had been a household word, now recurring hourly to the lips, but hourly to be hushed and sent back to deal another pang to the aching heart. No more allusion was made to Essie than if, a few short weeks ago, she had not been one of this small circle, the youngest, and "the child," who, welcome or unwelcome, had necessarily, and by virtue of her position, claimed some part of the time and notice of those around her.
It was impossible to define how much of the subdued apathy of Grace's manner was owing to the grief she felt at her sister's loss, and how much to a sort of cowardly nervousness and shrinking from the idea of death. For days after the shock, she was like my shadow, dreading, evidently more than anything else, to be left alone, shunning her mother and everything that brought the hateful subject to her thoughts, trying, with all ingenuity, to divert herself and think of other things. It was useless to attempt to lead her higher, to make her see in her little sister's death anything but dread and horror. She shrunk from all mention of it with aversion, and turned eagerly to any diverting subject, and before any other member of the family, she shook off the depression it had caused. With Josephine it had been different. At first she was awe-struck and stunned, and for a while there seemed a danger of her falling into a morbid state of feeling; but as the freshness of the shock wore away, her elasticity returned, and with it the old impatience and imperiousness, that the absence of amusement and excitement only heightened.
A storm indeed had passed over our house, but a storm that had not purified and cleared the atmosphere, only left it more close and sultry than before; the black sky, indeed, had brightened again, leaving comparative sunshine overhead, but threatening clouds still lingered around the horizon, and distant rumbling still warned of danger.