Stone crosses like these are not unfamiliar to you, nor are these dim
garlands of everlasting flowers. Here is the place: green sod and a
grey marble head-stone--Jessy sleeps below. She lived through an
April day; much loved was she, much loving. She often, in her brief
life, shed tears--she had frequent sorrows; she smiled between,
gladdening whatever saw her. Her death was tranquil and happy in
Rose's guardian arms, for Rose had been her stay and defence through
many trials; the dying and the watching English girls were at that
hour alone in a foreign country, and the soil of that country gave
Jessy a grave.
* * * * *
"But, Jessy, I will write about you no more. This is an autumn
evening, wet and wild. There is only one cloud in the sky; but it
curtains it from pole to pole. The wind cannot rest; it hurries
sobbing over hills of sullen outline, colourless with twilight and
mist. Rain has beat all day on that church tower" (Haworth): "it
rises dark from the stony enclosure of its graveyard: the nettles, the
long grass, and the tombs all drip with wet. This evening reminds me
too forcibly of another evening some years ago: a howling, rainy
autumn evening too--when certain who had that day performed a
pilgrimage to a grave new made in a heretic cemetery, sat near a wood
fire on the hearth of a foreign dwelling.
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