with any special feeling of funereal solemnity.
But something about herself, or in the room, at last
struck her with awe, bidding her remember how death
had of late been busy among those who had been her
dearest and nearest friends; and she sat down, almost
frightened at her own heartlessness, in that she was
allowing herself to be happy at such a time.
Her aunt had been carried away to her grave only yesterday,
and her brother’s death had occurred under circumstances
of peculiar distress within the year and yet she was
happy, triumphant almost lost in the joy of her own
position! She remained for a while in her chair,
with her black dress hanging across her lap, as she
argued with herself as to her own state of mind.
Was it a sign of a hard heart within her, that she
could be happy at such a time? Ought the memory
of her poor brother to have such an effect upon her
as to make any joy of spirits impossible to her?
Should she at the present moment be so crushed by
her aunt’s demise, as to be incapable of congratulating
herself upon her own success? Should she have
told him, when he asked her that question upon the
bridge, that there could be no marrying or giving in
marriage between them, no talking on such a subject
in days so full of sorrow as these? I do not
know that she quite succeeded in recognizing it as
a truth that sorrow should be allowed to bar out no
joy that it does not bar out of absolute necessity
by its own weight, without reference to conventional
ideas; that sorrow should never, under any circumstances,
be nursed into activity, as though it were a thing
in itself divine or praiseworthy. I do not know
that she followed out her arguments till she had taught
herself that it is the Love that is divine the Love
which, when outraged by death or other severance,
produces that sorrow which man would control if he
were strong enough, but which he cannot control by
reason of the weakness of his humanity. I doubt
whether so much as this made itself plain to her, as
she sat there before her toilet table, with her sombre
dress hanging from her hands on to the ground.
But something of the strength of such reasoning was
hers. Knowing herself to be full of joy, she would
not struggle to make herself believe that it behoved
her to be unhappy. She told herself that she
was doing what was good for others as well as for
herself what would be very good for her father, and
what should be good, if it might be within her power
to make it so, for him who was to be her husband.
The blackness of the cloud of her brother’s death
would never altogether pass away from her. It
had tended, as she knew well, to make her serious,
grave, and old, in spite of her own efforts to the
contrary. The cloud had been so black with her
that it had nearly lost for her the prize which was
now her own. But she told herself that that blackness
was an injury to her, and not a benefit, and that it
had now become a duty to her for his sake, if not
for her own to dispel its shadows rather than encourage
them. She would go down to him full of joy, though
not full of mirth, and would confess to him frankly,
that in receiving the assurance of his love, she had
received everything that had seemed to have any value
for her in the world.