I never before had realized how dangerous a thing it was to touch with even the daintiest hand, the festering wound that both pride and remorse conspire to hide from the sight even of the sufferer's self. I could not have done anything worse for poor Essie's cause, than just what I did do, and she shared with me in the feeling of vexation and resentment that my words awakened in her mother's breast.

I soon forgot the severity of the rebuff I had received, however, when coming into the nursery, I took the struggling child from Felicie, and watched with anxiety the gradual subsiding of the fit of pa.s.sion that had convulsed her. From whatever cause it might be, she was evidently growing quieter, and in less than half an hour, the little head on my arm had relaxed its tossings, and sunk into repose, while a dreamy languor dulled the wildness of her eyes, and save when the slightest movement woke an alarm that I would leave her, she lay quite motionless.

"She is better now," said Felicie, in a low tone, who was watching her with her basilisk eyes as she lay apparently sleeping. A nervous tightening of the slight fingers on my wrist at the sound of her voice, showed me that it was only apparently.

When Mrs. Churchill had completed her toilette, she came upstairs.

Esther, with her long eyelashes sweeping her crimsoned cheeks, lay so quiet that there seemed some reason in her mother's cutting rebuke for the unnecessary alarm I had given her. I began to feel heartily ashamed of it myself, and wondered that I had been so easily frightened.

Felicie, with a wicked look of exultation, said, that if Miss Esther hadn't been in a pa.s.sion, she wouldn't have brought the fever on again.

She had been better all day, the doctor had said she had scarcely any fever, when he was here.

Mrs. Churchill hoped, with a withering look, that I would get used to ill temper in time, and not think it necessary to disturb the household whenever Esther had a fit of crying. Then feeling the child's pulse, and giving many and minute directions for the care of her during the night, she went away. As, a moment after, the hall door closed with a heavy sound, a momentary tremor pa.s.sed over the child's frame, and opening her eyes, a strange light fluttered for an instant in them, as she murmured, "you will not go away?" then closed them again, and she seemed to sleep.

I watched beside her for an hour; then releasing myself from her unresisting hands, and kissing her lightly, I went into my own room.

I returned several times to look at her again, before I put the light out and lay down to sleep. How many times the monotonous nursery-clock struck the half hour before I slept, I cannot tell; the heavy air was broken by no other sound; there was nothing in the silent house, shrouded by the close fog without and the dead silence within, to keep me awake, yet it was long before I slept. But sleep, when it came, was heavy and dreamless--a sort of dull stifling of consciousness, in keeping with the night.

Hours of this sleep had pa.s.sed over me, when a fierce grasp upon my arm, and a hissing voice in my ear, woke me with a terrified start, and chilled me with horror, as struggling to collect my senses, I tried to comprehend Felicie's frantic words. In a moment, they made their way to my brain, and burned themselves there.

"I've given her too much--I cannot wake her! O mon Dieu! _Je l'ai tuee!

Je l'ai tuee!_"

A horrible sickening faintness for an instant rushed over me, then a keen sense of agony like an electric flash thrilled through me, and without a look, a thought, a word, I was kneeling at the little bed in the nursery. But, as my eager eyes searched the whitened face on the pillow there, and as my aching ears listened for the almost inaudible breathing, and my hand touched the cold arms that lay outside the covers, such a cry burst from my lips as might have waked the dead, if dead were indeed before me. But there was no voice nor answer; there was an awful stillness when I listened for response; when I raised my eyes in wild appeal from the white face of the child, there was but a horrible face above me, whereon was all the pallor of death, without its calm repose; such a face as the lost and d.a.m.ned may wear when their sentence is new in their ears--when endless perdition is but just begun, and life and hope but just cut off.

Another moment, and all the house was roused. Putting back, with one strong effort, the agony and hopelessness that welled up from my heart, I mastered myself enough to direct the terrified and helpless servants.

Dispatching different ones to the nearest doctors I could think of, another for my aunt, another for all the restoratives that occurred to me, the next few minutes of suspense pa.s.sed.

But before the doctor could arrive, I knew there was no need of his coming. There had been a little flutter of the drooping eyelid, ever so slight a quiver of the parted lip, and bending down, I had listened, with agonized suspense, for the low breathing, and called her name with the tenderness that never finds perfect expression till death warns us it shall be the last. Then a little arm crept round my neck, the soft eye opened for a moment, a sigh stirred the bosom that my forehead touched, and, as the arm relaxed its faint clasp, I knew that Essie was a stranger and an alien no longer, but was where it were better for us all to be--where there is peace, eternal, unbroken, beyond the reach of sin forever.

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 G.o.d 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 sh.o.r.e, Because the rocks thy nearer prospect close."

KEBLE.

Felicie 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 amus.e.m.e.nt and excitement only heightened.

A storm indeed had pa.s.sed 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.

I missed more than I had fancied possible, my little companion and pupil. No hour in the day but brought some fresh souvenir of the tortured young life that had ended its penance so early, the shrinking little soul that had been released so soon. It was not seldom, in those dark days, that I thought, with something like envy, of the peace she had inherited, and with something like repining of my lonely lot. How many years of warfare might stretch between me and the end; how many chances that I might fail or faint, grow weary, or yield to sin; while the little child I had so long looked upon with pity, so long tried to help and guide, now redeemed and safe, and everlastingly at peace, had pa.s.sed "the golden portals of the City of the Blest." Good angels had pitied her, struggling and bewildered on her way, and lifting her in their arms, had carried her home; floating through the blue ether, in a moment of time she had pa.s.sed the rough and weary road that would have taken a lifetime to have traversed alone. But no angels, it seemed to me, looked on my weary path; no sympathy, from heaven or of men, came to help me as I pressed on alone. Parting and death, repentance and self-accusation made that Lent a time of heartfelt sorrow; and before Easter-week was over, the low fever that had been hanging about me since the spring began, accomplished its errand, and laid me on a tedious bed of sickness.

Is there any one who has ever been sick "away from home," among strangers, courteous and attentive, perhaps, but whose courtesy and attention were of duty, not love, that cannot understand what it was to be lying, day after day, in a "home" like mine, knowing it was the only one I had a right to, or a hope of, this side heaven, and knowing, through all the exaggerating excitement of fever, and the languid hopelessness of slow convalescence, that in it there was no one to whom the care of me was not a penance, that no hour was so grudged as that spent by my bedside? Cold faces met me when I waked from my feverish, troubled sleep, commonplace, unsympathetic voices fell upon my ear, when, unnerved and childish, I longed for nothing so much as for a kind word or a caressing touch.

They were very attentive; I had every care; my recovery was as rapid as the doctor wished; it had not been a very alarming illness; n.o.body was particularly excited about it. They said it was a "light case," and I could not be doing better. They had a right to know, certainly; but oh!

the weariness of that dark room, the length of those spring days, the stillness of those warm nights, the loathing of those city sounds, the longing for the country!

June was now not many weeks off; and hour after hour, the question, "would Mr. Rutledge remember his promise?" perplexed my brain. I knew I had done enough to have forfeited it; I knew it had been made hastily; that, indescribably and unaccountably, he was changed since then, and we had ceased to be anything like friends. Still, I was nearly certain he would keep his word; whatever else he might forget, he would not forget that. No matter if it bored him, as I almost knew it would, I was sure he would do it just the same. Though I had a thousand fears that I should not be allowed to go, I knew I should be sent for, and I was not disappointed.

It was the first morning that I had breakfasted downstairs; I had been well enough for a week, but a languor and indifference possessed me that made me averse to all thought of change or exertion. Now, however, that I was actually in the cool dining-room, where white curtains replaced the heavy winter drapery of the windows, and white matting the thick carpet, I wondered that I had not made the effort before. It was vastly more attractive than my own room, certainly; and the parlors, as I glanced into them, looked in comparison, almost imposing in their vastness. The world, I saw, had been creeping in again. There were notes and cards on the table, and a lovely basket of violets; the piano was open, and some new music lay on it. Josephine, too, at breakfast, talked of drives and engagements that showed the days of mourning were over.

There was little difference in my aunt's manner from formerly, but she looked ten years older, and was somewhat colder and more precise.

"Who on earth can that be from?" Grace exclaimed, as John brought in the letters, and Mrs. Churchill took up the only one that did not look like an invitation or a milliner's circular. "It's from out of town," she continued, reaching out her hand for the envelope, as her mother laid it down. "It's postmarked Rutledge! What can Mr. Rutledge have to say to mamma? Joseph, doesn't your heart beat?"

If Joseph's didn't, mine did, and so quickly, too, that I felt sick and faint, and dreaded lest Grace's prying eyes should inquire the cause of my alternating color. But the letter absorbed the attention of all, and I could only wait till Mrs. Churchill should divulge its contents.

Josephine tried to look undisturbed, but there was an accent of impatience in her tone, as she said:

"Well, dear mamma, may I see it, if ever you should finish it? I suppose there is nothing that I may not know about."

"It is a very kind letter," said Mrs. Churchill, as she glanced back to the beginning; "very kind, indeed, and you are all interested in it. Mr.

Rutledge says that he has been detained at his place several weeks longer than he had antic.i.p.ated, and there is now a prospect of his being obliged to remain till possibly the middle of summer; in which event, he thinks that we could not do a kinder thing than come and pay him a visit. He describes the country as looking very delightfully, and promises all sorts of rural amus.e.m.e.nts if we will come; and, by way of insuring the enjoyment of the young ladies, he begs we will make up a party to accompany us, and suggests the Wynkars, Mr. Reese, Captain McGuffy, Phil, of course, and any one else we may choose to ask. He is really very urgent, and begs we will not refuse to enliven the gloomy old mansion with our presence for awhile. He puts it entirely into my hands, and begs I will invite whom I choose."

"Delightful!" exclaimed Josephine. "Mamma, could anything be nicer?"

"Mr. Rutledge is 'a gentleman and a scholar,'" said Grace; "he ought to be encouraged. You'll accept, of course?"

"_Cela depend_," said her mother, thoughtfully.

"Oh, mamma!" cried Josephine, "you cannot dream of refusing. What possible objection can there be? We do not want to go to Newport before the middle of July, and of course we can't stay in town all through June. This is the very thing; and you know I'd rather go to Rutledge than any other place in the world. Surely, mamma, you cannot think of refusing."

"There are a great many things to be considered, my dear."

"Ah," cried Grace, with unusual animation, "there'll be no peace till you say, yes. I long to get out of this dusty city. What else does he say, mamma?"

"Not much," answered her mother, glancing down the second page. "He says he only heard a few days ago of my niece's illness, which he hopes will not prove serious, and that a change of air, and return to the scene of her last year's convalescence will be of benefit to her."

"How do you imagine he heard she had been sick?" asked Grace.

"I haven't the least idea, I am sure," said Josephine. "It's of no great consequence, any way. But, mamma, who shall we ask? The captain, of course, and Phil, and, I suppose, the Wynkars; Ella will be delighted, no doubt, and think it's all on her account! And about Mr. Reese--he's such a tiresome old fogie, let's get somebody in his place."

"Ask Victor Viennet," said Grace, "just to spite Ella Wynkar. You know she hates him. He's as nice as anybody."

"I haven't quite made up my mind," said Josephine, with dignity.

"Wait till I have made up mine," said her mother, quietly.