CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Until they lost him, they did not fully know the importance of Julius in the household. He was a very limb lopt off. To miss his tiny step at the door, his chubby face at their knees, his ringing voice about the rooms and corridors, made all appear very desolate at the Heronry. Though there had been no funeral, no room made dismal for ever by the presence of his coffin, and though there was no little green grave in the churchyard, yet the house seemed a tomb haunted by the dim shadow of his form, and saddened by the echoes of his voice.

Every endeavour was made to recover the poor child’s body. The Mine Pool was searched and dragged—it was even proposed to pump it dry; but the numerous crannies and recesses that lurked in its gloomy depths precluded much prospect of success, though the attempts were still persisted in after all hope was relinquished.

Lady Lee’s grief was of that silent sort which does not encourage attempts to console the mourner. She did not talk about her boy; she was not often observed to weep—but, whenever any stray relic brought the poor child strongly before her mind’s eye, she might be seen gazing at it with woeful earnestness, while her imagination “stuffed out his vacant garments with his form.” Rosa, observing this, stealthily removed, one by one, all the objects most likely to recall his image, and conveyed them to her own chamber; and she and Orelia avoided, so far as might be, while in Lady Lee’s presence, all allusions to their little lost friend. But in their own room at night they would talk about him for hours, cry themselves to sleep, and recover him in their dreams. A large closet in their apartment was sacred to his memory; his clothes, his rocking-horse, his trumpet, his musket, his box of dominoes, and a variety of other peaceful and warlike implements were stored there, and served vividly to recall the image of their late owner.

Rosa, waking in the morning with her face all swoln with crying, would indulge her grief with occasional peeps into the cupboard at these melancholy relics; while Orelia, a more austere mourner, sat silent under the hands of Fillett, whose sadness was of an infectious and obtrusive nature. Kitty would sniff, sigh, compress her under lip with her teeth, and glance sideways through her red, watery eyes at the sympathetic Rosa.

“I dreamt of dear Juley again last night, Orelia,” Rosa would say.

“Oh, Miss Rosa, so did I,” Fillett would break in, eager to give audible vent to her sorrow, “and so did Martha. Martha says she saw him like an angel; but I dreamed that I saw him galloping away upon Colonel Lee’s horse, and that I called and called, ‘Master Juley!’ says I, the same as if it had been real, ‘come to Kitty!’ but he never looked back. And the butler dreamed the night before last he was drawing a bottle of port, and just as he was going to stick in the corkscrew, he saw the cork was in the likeness of Master Juley, and he woke up all of a cold shiver.”

Conversations on this subject did not tend to cheer the young ladies’ countenances before they met Lady Lee at the breakfast-table. On their way down stairs they would form the sternest resolutions (generally originating with Orelia, and assented to by Rosa), as to their self-command, and exertions to be cheerful in the presence of their still more afflicted friend. They would walk up and kiss her pale, mournful face, feeling their stoicism sorely tried the while, and sitting down to table would try to get up a little conversation; till Rosa would suddenly sob and choke in her breakfast cup, and there was an end of the attempt.

This melancholy state of things was not confined to the drawing-room. A dismal hush pervaded the household, and the servants went about their avocations with slow steps and whispered voices. They took a strange pleasure, too, in assembling together at night, and remembering warnings and omens which were supposed to have foreshadowed the mournful fate of the poor little baronet. Exactly a week before the event, the cook had been woke while dozing before the kitchen fire after supper, by a voice calling her name three times, and when she looked round there was nobody there. The very day month before his loss, the housekeeper distinctly remembered to have dreamt of her grandmother, then deceased about half a century, who had appeared to her in a lavender gown trimmed with crape, and black mittens, and she had said the next morning that she was sure something would happen; in support of which prophecy she appealed to Mr Short the butler, who confirmed the same, and added, on his own account, that an evening or two afterwards he had heard a strange noise in the cellar, which might have been rats, but he didn’t think it was.

The sight of Fillett, so intimately connected with the memory and the fate of her lost child, was naturally painful to Lady Lee, and Kitty, perceiving this to be the case, wisely kept out of her way, devoting herself entirely to the young ladies. Self-reproach greatly increased the sharpness of Kitty’s sorrow for poor Julius; she accused herself of having, by her negligence, contributed to the unhappy catastrophe. She fancied, too, that she could read similar reproach in the behaviour of her fellow-servants towards her; with the exception, however, of Noble, who, melted at the sight of her melancholy, and forgetting all his previous causes of jealous resentment, was assiduous in his efforts to console her.

“Come,” said Harry, meeting her near the stables one evening—“come, cheer up. Why, you ain’t like the same girl. Anybody would think you had killed the poor boy.”

“I feel as if I had, Noble,” said Kitty, with pious austerity.

“But you shouldn’t think so much about it, you know,” replied her comforter. “It can’t be helped now. You’re crying of your eyes out, and they ain’t a quarter so bright as what they was.”

“Ho, don’t talk to me of heyes,” said Kitty, at the same time flashing at him a glance from the corners of the organs in question. “This is no time for such vanities. We ought to think of our souls, Noble.”

Noble appeared to be thinking just then less of souls than of bodies, for in his anxiety to comfort her he had passed his arm round her waist.

“Noble, I wonder at you!” exclaimed Kitty, drawing away from him with a reproving glance. “After the warning we’ve all had, such conduct is enough to call down a judgment upon us. I’m all of a trimble at the thoughts of what will become of you, if you don’t repent.”

Perhaps Harry may be excused for not seeing any immediate connection between the decease of his young master and the necessity of himself becoming an ascetic. But Kitty, in the excess of her penitence, from being as lively and coquettish a waiting-maid as could be found anywhere off the stage, suddenly became a kind of Puritan. It happened that at this time the members of a religious sect, very numerous in Doddington, having been suddenly seized with an access of religious zeal, held almost nightly what they termed “revivals”—meetings where inspired brethren poured forth their souls in extempore prayer; and those who were not fortunate enough to obtain possession of the platform indemnified themselves by torrents of pious ejaculations, which well-nigh drowned the voice of the principal orator. There is something attractive to the plebeian imagination in the idea of taking heaven by storm: the clamour, excitement, and _éclat_ attending a public conversion had caused the ranks of these uproarious devotees to be recruited by many of their hearers, for the most part susceptible females; and Kitty, going to attend these meetings under the escort of Mr Noble (who, with profound hypocrisy, affected a leaning towards Methodism as soon as he perceived Miss Fillett’s bias in that direction), was converted the very first night. The grocer whose lodgings Oates and Bruce occupied was the preacher on this occasion, and his eloquence was so fervid and effective that, coupled with the heat of the place, it threw Kitty into hysterics. At the sight of so fair a penitent in this condition, many brethren of great sanctity hastened to her assistance, and questioned her so earnestly and affectionately as to her spiritual feelings, some of them even embracing her in the excess of their joy at seeing this good-looking brand snatched from the burning, that Mr Noble, conceiving (erroneously no doubt) that they were somewhat trenching on his prerogative, interfered, and conveyed her from the scene. After this, Kitty became a regular attendant at the revivals, and her demeanour grew more serious than ever, insomuch that Mr Dubbley, ignorant of this change in her sentiments, and petitioning for a meeting at the white gate, received an unexpected and dispiriting repulse.

The personage who seemed the least affected by grief of the household was the cat Pick. Perhaps he missed the teazings and tuggings, and frequent invasions of his majestic ease, which he had been wont to sustain; if so, this was probably to him a source of private self-congratulation and rejoicing. Never was a cat so petted as he now was, for the sake of his departed master, with whom he had been such a favourite. But Pick, far from testifying any regret, eat, lapped, purred, basked, and washed his face with his paw, as philosophically as ever.

The Curate’s sorrow at the event did him good—it distracted his mind from his own sorrows, and gave a new direction to his feelings for Hester. The unselfishness of his nature had an opportunity of displaying itself on the occasion. The thought of Lady Lee’s grief had roused his warmest sympathies, and he longed to comfort her—he longed to sit by her side, to hold her hand, to pour forth words of consolation and hope. He had done this, but not to the extent he could have wished; he could not trust himself for that. The Curate felt the most deep and tender pity for her—and we all know what pity is akin to: those very near relations, the Siamese twins, were not more closely allied than the Curate’s compassion and love for Lady Lee. Therefore Josiah, in his moments of extremest sympathy, kept watch and ward upon his heart, and said not all he felt.

But he bethought himself of preaching a sermon on the subject. He was conscious that his sermons had of late lacked earnestness and spirit; and he would now pour his feelings into a discourse at once touching and consolatory. He chose for his text, “_He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow._” He had intended to extract from this text a hopeful moral, and to set forth powerfully the reasons for being resigned and trustful under such trials. But the poor Curate felt too deeply himself on the occasion to be the minister of comfort to others, and, breaking down half-a-dozen times from emotion, set all Lanscote weeping.

“How could you make us all cry so, Josiah?” asked Rosa, reproachfully. “Weren’t we sad enough before?”

In fact, it seemed as if poor Julius might have lived long, and died at a green old age, without being either more faithfully remembered or more sincerely lamented.

Finding themselves disappointed in all their efforts to comfort Lady Lee, Orelia and Rosa came to the conclusion that, so long as she remained at the Heronry, she would never cease to be saddened by the image of the lost Juley. So they agreed it would be well to persuade her to leave the now sorrowful scene; and no place seemed so likely to divert her sorrow, by making a powerful appeal to her feelings, as Orelia’s cottage. Here she might recall her maiden fancies, and renew her youth, while her married life might slip aside like a sad episode in her existence.

“We’ll all start together next week,” said Orelia, when she had obtained Lady Lee’s sanction to this arrangement.

“No,” said Rosa, “not all, Reley. You and Hester shall go.”

“What does the monkey mean?” cried Orelia. “You don’t suppose we’re going without you, do you?”

“You know I should like to accompany you, Reley,” said Rosa, “and you know I shall be dreadfully disconsolate without you; but I must go and live with Josiah.”

“Live with Josiah, indeed!” quoth Orelia, with high scorn. “What does Josiah want of you, d’ye think, to plague his life out? Hasn’t he got that Mrs what’s-her-name, his housekeeper, to take care of him and his property? I’m sure I never see the woman without thinking of candle-ends.”

“’Tisn’t to take care of him that I stay, but to comfort him,” said Rosa. “You’ve no idea how low-spirited Josiah has been this some time past, ever since his friend Captain Fane went away. He has lost his interest in his books and flowers, and sits for hours in thought looking so melancholy. Oh! I couldn’t think of leaving him.”

Rosa persisted in this determination, and all the concession they could obtain was, that as soon as Josiah recovered his spirits she would rejoin her friends at Orelia’s cottage. Meantime, the latter and Lady Lee made preparations for a speedy departure.