Esther snatches it, while a sudden, awful cold grasps her heart, and reads by the wavering, feeble light these words, in a scrawly clerk's hand:
"Robert Brandon to Esther Craven. Come home instantly; Jack is very ill."
With how few pen-strokes can a death-warrant be written! For a moment she sits bolt upright, void of breath or motion, as a white dead woman, from the house of whose fair body the spirit departed an hour ago; the telegram grasped in a stiff hand that knows not of it. Then consciousness returns, brought back by a huge, tearing, killing agony; then even the agony yields to one intense, consuming longing—one all-dominating purpose—the longing to slay time and space; to be with him now, this instant; to be beside Jack dying, not Jack dead.
"Can I see Sir Thomas?" she asks collectedly, but in a rough, deep voice. "I have had bad news from home: my brother is very ill."
"Indeed, 'm, you don't say so;" replies the servant, growing broadly awake under the delightful excitement of a calamity having happened to somebody, and of herself being the first recipient of the news.
"I must see Sir Thomas!" Esther says, putting her hand up in a bewildered way to her head, and then springing off the bed and walking quickly towards the door.
"See Sir Thomas," repeats the woman, the most unfeigned alarm painting itself on her broad face—"now! Indeed, ma'am, you must be mad to think of such a thing! It would be as much as all our places are worth if he were to be disturbed before his usual time."
Esther turns and clutches her arm, while her great eyes brimful of despair, burn on her face. "I tell you my brother is dying!" she says, hoarsely—"I know he is; I must go to him this minute; for God's sake help me to get to the station!"
"Indeed, 'm, I'm sorry to see you in such trouble, that I am!" answers her companion, moved to compassion by the terrible, haggard misery of the young, round face, that she, in company with her fellow-servants, had often admired in its happy, dewy rosiness at prayers on Sunday evenings; "but, you see, all the men are in bed, and Simpson 'ud cut off his own 'ead afore he'd venture to take out the carriage without Sir Thomas's orders."
The tall, yellow candle flares between them: lights up the tortured beauty of the one woman, the placid stolidity of the other. Esther groans, and smites her hands together.