A FRIGHT.
‘Which you please; you are not gouty or rheumatical, or anything of that
sort,’ said Mr. Maxwell, almost gaily. ‘Homburg, for instance--Homburg
would do--or Baden, if you prefer that. I incline to the one you prefer;
and enjoy yourself as much as you can--that is my prescription. Open
air, novelty, change; and if you find you don’t relish one place, go to
another. The sea, if you take a fancy for the sea; and Sir William is of
my opinion exactly. Choose the place which amuses you most.’
‘It seems to me,’ said Mr. Beresford, ‘that these wise men are laughing
at you, Annie. They know there’s nothing the matter with you. If I were
not much obliged to them for thinking so, I should say you had some
reason to be offended. One knows what you doctors mean when you tell a
patient to do whatever she likes best.’
‘It means one of two things,’ said Mrs. Beresford; ‘either that it is
nothing, or that it is hopeless----’
Her husband burst into a soft laugh. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it is very
evident it cannot be the last--so it must be as I say. It is injurious
to our pride, my darling; for I allow that it is pleasant to possess
either in your own person or your wife’s a delicate and mysterious
malady, of which it can be said that it baffles the doctors, without
very much hurting the patient; but never mind. If you can bear this
disrespectful verdict that you have nothing the matter with you, I
assure you it makes me quite happy.’
Mrs. Beresford looked at the doctor with very keen, eager eyes--eyes
which had grown bigger and keener of late, perhaps from the failing of
the round, smooth outlines of the face. She noticed that, though Maxwell
saw very well that she was looking at him, he did not reply to those
looks, but rather turned to her husband and answered him, as if he had
not observed her at all.
‘I don’t mean to be at all disrespectful,’ he said; ‘there is a little
disturbance of the system, which might turn to something as serious as
you could desire, and take away the comfort of life perhaps more
completely than a regular disease; but I hope that is not likely to
happen here.’
‘No; I don’t think it,’ said the easy man. ‘We shall try Baden, which is
the prettiest--unless you prefer some other place; in short, we shall go
off without guide or compass, and do exactly what pleases ourselves. We
have done so, it must be allowed, pretty often before--but to do it with
the sanction of the faculty----’
‘And the child--as usual--will go to Sunninghill?’
‘Why should you say as usual, Mr. Maxwell?’ said Mrs. Beresford, with a
suspicion of offence. ‘Do you think I ought to take her with me? Do you
suppose, perhaps, that I might not come back again--that I might
never--see----’
‘This is so unnecessary,’ said the doctor, remonstrating. ‘What must I
say? I wish I was as certain of a thousand a year. You will come back
quite well, I hope.’
‘When people are very ill don’t you say much the same things to them?
There was poor Susan Maitland, whom you banished to Italy to die. People
talked of her coming back again. Oh, no! I am not thinking of myself,
but of the subject in general. One needed only to look in her face to
see that she would never come back.’
‘People have different ideas of their duty,’ said Maxwell. ‘Some think
it best not to frighten a patient with thoughts of death. I don’t know
that one can lay down any rule; one is guided by circumstances. To some
nervous people it is best not to say anything. Some are more frightened
than others--just as some people are more susceptible to pain than
others.’
‘Now I am going to ask you another question,’ said Mrs. Beresford.
‘Suppose you had a patient very ill--I mean hopelessly ill, beyond all
cure--do you think it is right to keep them alive as you do now,
struggling to the last, staving off every new attack that might carry
them off in quiet, fighting on and on to the last moment, and even
prolonging that, when it comes so far, with cordials and stimulants?
Keeping their breath in their poor, suffering bodies till you get to the
end of your resources--your dreadful, cruel resources, that is what I
call them. Do you think this is right? I had an aunt who died
dreadfully--of cancer----’
‘Ah! An aunt? You did not tell me this,’ said the doctor, off his guard;
then, recovering himself, with something that looked like alarm, he
said, hurriedly: ‘What would you have us do--kill the poor creatures?
neglect them? refuse what aid, what alleviations we can----’
‘I’ll tell you what I should like you to do if it were me,’ she said,
eagerly. ‘When it was all over, when you were sure I could not get
better, when there was nothing more in life but to suffer--suffer: then
I should like you to make a strong, sweet dose for me to put me out of
my trouble. I should like James to give it me. Do you remember what was
said that time in India, in the mutiny? I don’t know if it was true, but
people said it. That the husbands of some of the poor ladies kissed them
and shot them, to save them; don’t you remember? That is what I should
like you to do--a sweet, strong dose; and James would bring it to me and
kiss me, and put it to my lips. That would be true love!’ she said,
growing excited, the pale roses in her cheeks becoming hectic red; ‘that
would be true friendship, Mr. Maxwell! Then I should not feel afraid. I
should feel that you two stood between me and anguish, between me and
agony----’
Both the men rose to their feet as if to restrain her vehemence, with
one impulse. ‘My darling, my darling!’ said James Beresford, in dismay,
‘what are you thinking of?’ As for Mr. Maxwell, he walked to the window
and looked out, his features working painfully. There was a moment in
which the husband and wife clung together, he consoling her with every
reassuring word that he could think of, she clinging to him with long,
hysterical sobs. ‘My love, what has put this into your head?’ he said,
half sobbing too, yet pretending to laugh. ‘My Annie, what fancy is
this? Have you lost your wits, my darling? Why, this is all folly; it is
a dream; it is a craze you have taken into your head. Here is Maxwell
will tell you----’
But Maxwell made him a sign over his wife’s head so impassioned and
imperative that the man was struck dumb for the moment. He gazed blankly
at the doctor, then stooped down to murmur fond words less distinct and
articulate in her ear. Fortunately, she was too much excited, too much
disturbed, to notice this sudden pause, or that the doctor said nothing
in response to her husband’s appeal. She held fast by his arm and
sobbed, but gradually grew calmer, soothed by his tenderness, and after
a while made a half-smiling, tearful apology for her weakness. It was
after dinner on a lovely summer evening, not more than twilight, though
it was late. The two gentlemen had been lingering over their claret,
while she lay on the sofa waiting for them, for she did not choose to be
shut up upstairs all by herself, she said. After she had recovered they
went to the drawing-room, where the windows were all open, and a couple
of softly-burning lamps lit up the twilight with two half-veiled moons
of light. There was not a lovely prospect as at Sunninghill; nothing,
indeed, but the London square, where a few trees vegetated, just room
enough for the dews to fall, and for ‘the little span of sky and little
lot of stars’ to unfold themselves. But even London air grows soft with
that musical effect of summer, and the sounds of passing voices and
footsteps broke in with a faint, far-off sound as in dreams: the country
itself could not have been more peaceful. Mrs. Beresford, half ashamed
of herself, sat down at the little, bright tea-table, just within the
circle of one of the lamps, and made tea, talking with a little attempt
at gaiety, in which, indeed, the natural revulsion of relief after that
outbreak of alarm and melancholy was evident. It was she now who was the
soul of the little party; for the doctor was moody and preoccupied, and
her husband watched her with an anxiety almost too great to be kept
within the bounds of ordinary calm. She rose, however, to the occasion.
She began to talk of their probable travels, of Baden and Homburg, and
all the other places which had been suggested to her. ‘We shall be as
well known about the world as the Wandering Jew,’ she said; ‘better, for
he had not a wife; and now that we have nearly exhausted Europe, there
will be nothing for us but the East or Egypt--suppose we go to Egypt;
that would be original?’
‘Not at all original,’ said Mr. Maxwell, who seemed half to resent her
new-born gaiety. ‘All the cockneys in the world go to Egypt. Mr. Cook
does the Pyramids regularly; and as for Jerusalem, it is common, common
as Margate, and the society not much unlike.’
‘Margate is very bracing, I have always heard,’ said Mrs. Beresford,
‘and much cheaper than a German bath. What do you say to saving money,
James, and eating shrimps and riding donkeys? I remember being at
Margate when I was a child. They say there is no such air anywhere; and
Mr. Maxwell says that the sea, if I like the sea----’
‘As for bracing air, my love, I think there is nothing like St. Moritz.
Do you remember how it set me up after that--that----’
‘Give him a big, well-sounding name, doctor,’ said Mrs. Beresford,
laughing; ‘it was only a bilious attack. But talking of the sea, there
is Biarritz--that would do, don’t you think? It is warm, and it _was_
gay. After all, however, I don’t think I care for the sea. The Italian
lakes are fine in the autumn, and as it gets cooler we might get on
perhaps to Florence, or even Rome--or Kamtschatka, or Timbuctoo, or the
Great Sahara,’ she said, with a burst of laughter. ‘You are complaisance
itself, you gentlemen. Now I’ll go and sing you something to reward you
for humouring me to the top of my bent, and licensing me to go where I
please.’
She had a pretty voice and sang well. The piano was at the other end of
the room, the ‘back drawing-room’ of the commonplace London house. The
two men kept their places while she went away into the dim evening, and
sat down there scarcely visible, and sang. The soft, sweet voice, not
powerful, but penetrating, rose like a bird in the soft gloom. James
Beresford looked at the doctor with an entreating look of secret anguish
as the first notes rose into the air, so liquid, so tender, so sweet.
‘Are you afraid? tell me!’ he said, with pathetic brevity.
Maxwell could not bear this questioning. He started up, and went to look
this time at a picture on the wall. ‘I don’t know that I have any
occasion to be afraid,’ he said, standing with his back turned to his
questioner, and quite invisible from the piano. ‘I’m--a nervous man for
a doctor when I’m interested in a case----’
Here there was a pause, for she had ended the first verse of the song,
and the low warble of the symphony was not enough to cover their voices.
‘Don’t speak of her as a case,’ said Beresford, low but eager, as the
singing recommenced: ‘you chill my very blood.’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ said the doctor, with colloquial homeliness; and he
went away into the back drawing-room and sat down near the piano, to
escape being questioned, poor Beresford thought, who sat still
mournfully in the narrow circle of the lamplight, asking himself whether
there was really anything to fear. The soft security of the house with
all its open windows, the friendly voices heard outside, the subdued
pleasant light, the sweet voice singing in the dimness, what a picture
of safety and tranquillity it made! What should happen to disturb it?
Why should it not go on for ever? James Beresford’s sober head grew
giddy as he asked himself this question, a sudden new ache undreamed of
before leaping up, in spite of him, into his heart. The doctor pretended
to be absorbed in the song; he beat time with his fingers as the measure
went on. Never in the memory of man had he shown so much interest in
singing before. Was it to conceal something else, something which could
not be put into words, against the peace of this happy house, which had
come into his heart?
Fortunately, however, Beresford thought, his wife forgot all about that
agitating scene for some days. She did not speak of it again; and for
about a week after was unusually lively and gay, stronger and better
than she had been for some time, and more light in heart, talking of
their journey, and making preparations for it with all the pleasant
little sentiment which their ‘honeymooning’ expeditions had always
roused in her. When everything was ready, however, the evening before
they left home a change again came over her. Cara had been sent to
Sunninghill with her nurse that day, and the child had been unwilling to
go, and had clung to her mother with unusual pertinacity. Even when this
is inconvenient it is always flattering: and perhaps Mrs. Beresford was
pleased with the slight annoyance and embarrassment which it caused.
‘Remember, James,’ she said, with some vivacity, as they sat together
that evening, ‘this is to be the last time we go honeymooning. Next time
we are to be respectable old married people (as we are, with our almost
grown-up daughter). She is nearly as tall as I am, the child! nearly
eleven--and so very tall for her age.’
‘I think we might take her,’ said Beresford, who indeed had often wished
for her before. ‘She is old enough to bear the travelling, and otherwise
it would do her good.’
‘Yes; this must be the last time,’ she said, her voice suddenly dropping
into a sigh, and her mood changing as rapidly. A house is dreary on the
eve of departure. Boxes in the hall, pinafores on the furniture, the
pretty china, the most valuable nicknacks all carried away and locked
up--even the habitual books disturbed from their places, the last _Pall
Mall_ on the table. The cloud came over her face as shadows flit over
the hills, coming down even while she was speaking. ‘The last time!’ she
said. ‘I can’t help shivering. Has it grown cold? or is it that someone
is walking over my grave, as people say?’
‘Why, Annie, I never knew you were superstitious.’
‘No. It is a new thing for me; but that is scarcely superstition. And
why should I care who walked over my grave? I must die some time or
other and be buried, unless they have taken to burning before then. But
there is one thing I feel a great deal about,’ she added, suddenly. ‘I
said it once before, and you were frightened, James. If you knew that I
was going to die of a painful disease--_must_ die--that nothing could
happen to save me, that there was nothing before me but hopeless
pain--James, dear, listen to me!--don’t you think you would have the
courage for my sake to make an end of me, to put me out of my trouble?’
‘Annie, for Heaven’s sake don’t talk so. It is nonsense, but it makes me
unhappy.’
‘As a matter of speculation,’ she said, with a knowledge of his
weakness, ‘you can’t think it would be wrong to do it--do you, James?’
‘As a matter of speculation,’ he said; and the natural man awoke in him.
He forgot the pain the idea had caused him, and thought of it only as an
idea; to put it in other words, the woman beguiled him, and he got upon
one of his hobbies. ‘There are many things one allows as speculation
which one is not fond of in fact. People must have a certain power over
their own lives, and I think with you, my love, that it is no charity to
keep infirm and suffering people just alive, and compel them to drag
their existence on from day to day. Notwithstanding Heaven’s canon
‘gainst self-slaughter, I think people should be allowed a certain
choice. I am not altogether against euthanasia; and if indeed recovery
is hopeless and life only pain----’
‘Yes, James,’ she said, eagerly, her eyes lighting up, her cheeks
flaming with the red of excitement; ‘I am glad you see it like that; one
might go further perhaps--when from any reason life was a burden; when
one was useless, hopeless, unhappy----’
‘Stop a little; we are going too fast,’ he said, with a smile, so
entirely did the argument beguile him. ‘No one is justified in treating
unhappiness like a mortal disease; unhappiness may pass away--does pass
away, we all know, even when it seems worst. I cannot allow that;
neither would I let people judge which lives were useless, their own or
other people’s; but illness which was beyond the possibility of cure
might be different; therefore, if the patient wished it, his wish, I
think, should be law---- Annie, my darling! what is this? what do you
mean?’
She had suddenly risen from where she was sitting near him, and thrown
herself half at his feet, halt into his arms.
‘Only this,’ she said; ‘promise me--promise me, James! if this should
ever happen to me--if you had the assurance, not only from me, but
from--the people who know--that I had a terrible complaint, that I could
never get better; promise that you would put me out of my pain, James.
Promise that you would give me something to deliver me. You would not
stand by and see me going down, down into the valley of death, into
misery and weariness and constant pain, and, O God! loathsomeness,
James!’
She buried her head in his breast, clinging to him with a grasp which
was almost fierce; her very fingers which held him, appealing
strenuously, forcing a consent from him. What could he say? He was too
much distressed and horrified to know how to shape his answer. Fond
words, caresses, soothings of every kind were all in vain for use at
such a moment. ‘Far be it from you, my darling; far be it from you,’ he
cried. ‘You! oh, how can you let your imagination cheat you so, my love!
Nothing like this is going to happen, my Annie, my best, my dearest----
’
‘Ah!’ she cried; ‘but if it were not imagination!--promise me, James.’
Whether she did eventually wring this wild promise from him he never
knew. He would have said anything to calm her, and finally he
succeeded; and having once more cleared her bosom of this perilous
stuff, she regained her gaiety, her courage and spirits, and they set
off as cheerful as any pair of honeymoon travellers need wish to be. But
after she had left him and gone to her room pacified and comforted that
night, you may fancy what sort of a half hour that poor man had as he
closed the windows, which had still been left open, and put out the
lamps, as was his practice, for they were considerate people and did not
keep their servants out of bed. He stepped out on the balcony and looked
up at the moon, which was shedding her stream of silver light as
impartially upon the London housetops as if those white roofs had been
forest trees. How still it seemed, every one asleep or going to rest,
for it was late--a few lights glimmering in high windows, a sensation of
soft repose in the very air! God help this silent, sleeping earth, upon
which, even in her sleep, dark evils were creeping! Was someone perhaps
dying somewhere even at that serene moment, in the sweet and tranquil
stillness? His heart contracted with a great pang. In the midst of life
we are in death. Why had those haunting, terrible words come into his
ears?