And see If aught of sprightly, fresh, or free, With the calm sweetness may compare Of the pale form half slumbering there. Therefore this one dear couch about We linger hour by hour: The love that each to each we bear, All treasures of enduring care, Into her lap we pour. --LYRA INNOCENTUM
The brother and sisters, left at home together, had been a very sad and silent party, unable to attempt comforting each other. Charlotte's grief was wild and ungovernable; breaking out into fits of sobbing, and attending to nothing till she was abashed first by a reproof from Mr. Ross, and next by the description of Amabel's conduct; when she grew ashamed and set herself to atone, by double care, for her neglect of Charles's comforts.
Charles, however, wanted her little. He had rather be let alone. After one exclamation of, 'My poor Amy!' he said not a word of lamentation, but lay hour after hour without speaking, dwelling on the happy days he had spent with Guy,--companion, friend, brother,--the first beam that had brightened his existence, and taught him to make it no longer cheerless; musing on the brilliant promise that had been cut off; remembering his hopes for his most beloved sister, and feeling his sorrow with imagining hers. It was his first grief, and a very deep one. He seemed to have no comfort but in Mr. Ross, who contrived to come to him every day, and would tell him how fully he shared his affection and admiration for Guy, how he had marvelled at his whole character, as it had shown itself more especially at the time of his marriage, when his chastened temper had been the more remarkable in so young a man, with the world opening on him so brightly.
As to the promise lost, that, indeed, Mr. Ross owned, and pleased Charles by saying how he had hoped to watch its fulfilment; but he spoke of its having been, in truth, no blight, only that those fair blossoms were removed where nothing could check their full development or mar their beauty. 'The hope in earthly furrows sown, would ripen in the sky;' Charles groaned, saying it was hard not to see it, and they might speak as they would, but that would not comfort him in thinking of his sister. What was his sorrow to hers? But Mr. Ross had strong trust in Amabel's depth and calm resignation. He said her spirit of yielding would support her, that as in drowning or falling, struggling is fatal, when quietness saves, so it would be with her: and that even in this greatest of all trials she would rise instead of being crushed, with all that was good and beautiful in her purified and refined. Charles heard, strove to believe and be consoled, and brought out his letters, trying, with voice breaking down, to show Mr. Ross how truly he had judged of Amy, then listened with a kind of pleasure to the reports of the homely but touching laments of all the village.