HONEYMOONING.
The real honeymoon is not always a delightful moment. This, which sounds
like heresy to the romantic, and blasphemy to the young, is a fact which
a great many people acknowledge readily enough when they have got beyond
the stage at which it sounds like an offence to the wife or to the
husband who is supposed to have made that period rapturous. The new pair
have not the easy acquaintance with each other which makes the happiness
of close companionship; perhaps they have not that sympathy with each
other’s tastes which is almost a better practical tie than simple love.
They are half afraid of each other; they are making discoveries every
day of new points in each other’s characters, delightful or undelightful
as may be, which bewilder their first confidence of union; and the more
mind and feeling there is between them, the more likely is this to be
the case. The shallow and superficial ‘get on’ better than those who
have a great deal of excellence or tender depth of sentiment to be found
out. But after the pair have come to full acquaintance, after they have
learned each other from A B C up to the most difficult chapter; after
the intercourse of ordinary life has borne its fruit; there is nothing
in the world so delightful as the honeymooning which has passed by many
years the legitimate period of the honeymoon. Sometimes one sees
respectable fathers and mothers enjoying it, who have sent off their
children to the orthodox honeymoon, and only then feel with a surprised
pleasure how sweet it is to have their own solitude _à deux_; to be left
to themselves for a serene and happy moment; to feel themselves dearer
and nearer than they ever were before. There is something infinitely
touching and tender in this honeymooning of the old. James Beresford and
his wife, however, were not of these. They were still young, and of all
the pleasures they had there was none equal to this close and unbroken
companionship. They knew each other so well, and all their mutual
tastes, that they scarcely required to put their intercourse into words;
and yet how they would talk--about everything, about nothing, as if they
had just met after a long absence, and had thoughts to exchange on every
subject. This is a paradox; but we are not bound to explain paradoxes
which are of the very essence of life, and the most attractive things in
it. It had been the habit of these two to go everywhere together. Mrs.
Beresford had not the prejudices of an English female Philistine. She
went where her husband wanted to go, fearing nothing, and trotted about
with him high and low, through picture galleries and old churches, to
studios, even behind the scenes of the operas, and through the smoke
clouds of big ateliers. Nothing came amiss to her with him by her side.
It is almost the only way in which a woman can enjoy the freedom of
movement, the easy locomotion of a man. Mrs. Beresford went away quite
cheerfully, as we have said. She forgot or put away her mysterious
terrors. She addressed herself to all the ordinary enjoyments which she
knew so well. ‘We shall never be so free again,’ she said, half
laughing, half with a remote infinitesimal pang. ‘We shall have to go to
the correct places and do the right things when Cara is with us.’ ‘We
must give up bric-a-brac,’ she said afterwards. ‘Cara must not grow up
acquainted with all those dusty back premises; her pretty frocks would
be spoiled and her infantine sincerity. If she had heard you
bargaining, James, for that Buen Retiro cup! Saying it is naught, it is
naught, and then bragging of the treasure you had found as soon as it
was out of the dealer’s hands.’
‘Well,’ he said, with a shrug of his shoulders; ‘I only do as other
people do. Principles of honour don’t consist with collecting. I am no
worse than my neighbours.’
‘But that will never do for Cara,’ said the mother; ‘if you and I are
not all her fancy painted us, we will not do for Cara. No; I thought you
had never remarked her really. She is the most uncompromising little
idealist! and if we disappoint her, James, I don’t know what the child
will do.’
‘It appears to me that you are making a bugbear of Cara.’
‘No; but I know her. We must give up the bric-a-brac; for if you
continue with it under her blue eyes you will be ruined. If she was here
she would make you go back and tell the man he has sold you that cup too
cheap.’
‘That would be nonsense,’ said Mr. Beresford, involuntarily putting his
hand into the pocket where he kept his money. ‘Folly! You don’t suppose
he gave half as much for it as he sold it to us for. The very mention of
that sort of sickening conscientiousness puts one out. We are to sell in
the dearest and buy in the cheapest market, eh? That’s the true
principle of trade.’
‘It is not in the Bible, though,’ said Mrs. Beresford, with a smile.
‘Cara would open her eyes and wonder; and you, who are the weakest of
men, could never stand against her if Cara made big eyes.’
‘The weakest of men! You flatter me, it must be allowed----’
‘Yes; so you are, James. You could not endure to be disapproved of. What
would have become of you if I, instead of giving in to all your ways,
had been a more correct and proper person? If I had made you visit just
the right things--go to English parties, and keep to the proper sort of
tourist society? If you had been obliged to sit indoors in the evenings
and read a _Galignani_ or a Tauchnitz novel while I worked, what would
have become of you? I know well enough, for my part.’
‘I should have done it, I suppose,’ he said, half laughing; ‘and will
Cara--little Cara--be like that? You frighten me, Annie; we had better
make away with her somehow; marry her, or hand her over to the aunts,
before it comes to this.’
Then a sudden change came over the smiling face. ‘Cara--or someone
else--will most likely be like that. Poor James! I foresee trouble for
you. How you will think of me when you are in bonds! when you want to go
out and roam about on the Boulevards, and have to sit still instead and
read aloud to somebody! Ah, how you will think of me! You will say, Poor
Annie! if Annie had but lived----’
‘What is this? what is this?’ he said. ‘Again, Annie! I think you want
to make me miserable; to take all the comfort out of my life.’
‘Oh, no, no; not that,’ she said. ‘I am only going to get my bonnet, and
then we shall go out. Cara is not here yet to keep us in order. We can
honeymoon yet for one more year.’
Was this only the caprice of her nature (she had always been capricious)
going a little further than usual? Her husband liked her all the better
for her quick changes of sentiment; the laughing and crying that were
like an April sky. He said to himself that she had always been like
that; always changing in a moment, quarrelling sometimes even, making
him uncomfortable for mere variety. Monotony was the thing she hated;
and now she had taken this fad, this fancy, and thought herself ill. How
could she be ill when she still could run about with him and enjoy
herself as much as ever? How keen she had been in the bric-a-brac shop
of which she had chosen to talk! He never should have found out that
Buen Retiro cup but for her. It was her sharp eyes that saw it. It was
she who had rummaged through the dust and all the commonplace gatherings
to those things which had really interest. Ill! though all the College
of Physicians swore it, and she to boot, he would not believe that she
was ill. Disturbance of the system--that was all the worst of them ever
said; but how little meaning there was in that! Out of sorts! reduced to
plain English, that was what disturbance of the system meant; and
everybody was subject to as much. She came in, while he was in the full
course of these thoughts, with a brilliant little flush on her cheeks,
her eyes shining, her whole aspect full of animation. ‘I am ready, Sir,’
she said, making him a mocking curtsey. Yes; capricious, that was what
she had always been, and he loved her for it. It explained her changes,
her fancies, her strange notions better than anything else could do.
That was the first day, however, on which her strength really showed
symptoms of breaking down. She got tired, which was a thing she never
owned to; lost the pretty flush on her cheek, became pale, and worn out.
‘I don’t know what is the matter with me,’ she said; ‘all at once I feel
so tired.’
‘And with very good reason,’ said he. ‘Think how rapidly we have been
travelling; think what we have been doing since. Why, you were on foot
the whole morning. You are tired; so am I, for that matter. I was
thinking of saying so, but you are always so hard upon my little
fatigues. What a comfort for me to find that you, too, for once in a
way, can give in!’ Thus he tried to take her favourite part and laugh
her out of her terrors. She consented with a smile more serious than her
gravity had been of old, and they went back to their room and dined
‘quietly;’ and he sat and read to her, according to the picture of
English domesticity which she had drawn out with smiles a few hours
before. It was so soon after that tirade of hers that they could not but
remember it, both of them. As it happened, there was nothing but a
Tauchnitz novel to read (and who that has been ill or sad, or who has
had illness or sadness to solace in a foreign place, but has blessed the
novels of Tauchnitz?) and he read it, scarcely knowing what the words
were which fluttered before his eyes. And as for her, she did not take
much notice of the story either, but lay on the sofa, and listened,
partly to his voice, partly to the distant sound of the band playing,
with strange heaviness and aching in her heart. It was not that she
wished to be out listening to the band, moving about in the warm air,
hearing the babble of society--that was not what she cared for; but to
be lying there out of the current; to have dropped aside out of the
stream; to be unable for the common strain of life! So he read, sadly
thinking, not knowing what he read; and she half listened, not knowing
what she was listening to. It was the first time, and the first time is
the worst, though the best. ‘It is only once in a way,’ he said to her,
when the long evening was over; ‘to-morrow you will be as well as ever.’
And so she was. It was the most natural thing in the world that both or
either of them should be tired, once in a way.
The Beresfords stayed for a long time on the Continent that year. They
went about to a great many places. They stayed at Baden till they were
tired of the place. They went to Dresden, because Mrs. Beresford took a
fancy to see the great San Sisto picture again. Then they went on to
lovely old-world Prague, and to lively Vienna, and through the Tyrol to
Milan, and then back again to the Italian lakes. Wherever they went they
found people whom it was pleasant to know, whom they had met before on
their many journeys--people of all countries and every tongue--noble
people, beautiful people, clever people--the sort of society which can
only be had by taking a great deal of trouble about it, and which, even
with the greatest amount of trouble, many people miss entirely. This
society included ambassadors and hill-farmers, poor curés, bishops,
great statesmen, and professors who were passing rich on five shillings
a day: nothing was too great or too small for them; and as wherever they
went they had been before, so wherever they went they found friends.
Sometimes it was only a chambermaid; but, nevertheless, there she was
with a pleasant human smile. And, to tell the truth, James Beresford
began to be very glad of the friendly chambermaids, and to calculate
more where they were to be found than upon any other kind of society;
for his wife had followed her usual practice of coming without a maid,
and, as her strength flagged often, he was thankful, too thankful, to
have someone who would be tender of her, and care for her as he himself
was not always permitted to do, and as nobody else but a woman could.
Oh, how he longed to get home, while he wandered about from one
beautiful spot to another, hating the fine scenery, loathing and
sickening at everything he had loved! Commonplace London and the square
with its comforts would have pleased him a hundred times better than
lovely Como or the wild glory of the mountains; but she would not hear
of going home. One day, when the solemn English of a favourite Kammer
Mädchen had roused him to the intolerable nature of the situation, he
had tried, indeed, with all his might to move her to return. ‘Your goot
laty,’ Gretchen had said, ‘is nod--well. I ton’t untershtand your goot
laty. She would be bedder, mooch bedder at ‘ome, in Lonton.’ ‘I think
you are right, Gretchen,’ he had said, and very humbly went in to try
what he could do. ‘My love,’ he said, ‘I am beginning to get tired of
the Tyrol. I should like to get home. The Societies are beginning. I see
Huxley’s lectures start next week. I like to be there, you know, when
all my friends are there. Shouldn’t you be pleased to get home?’
‘No,’ she said. She had been lying on the sofa, but got up as soon as he
came in. ‘You know I hate autumn in London; the fogs kill me. I can’t--I
can’t go back to the fogs. Go yourself, James, if you please, and attend
all your dear Societies, and hear Mr. Huxley. Take me to Como first, and
get me rooms that look on the lake, and hire Abbondio’s boat for me; and
then you can go.’
‘It is likely that I should go,’ he said, ‘without you, my darling! When
did I ever leave you? But there are so many comforts at home you can’t
have here; and advice--I want advice. You don’t get better so fast as I
hoped.’
She looked at him with a strange smile. ‘No; I don’t get better, do I?’
she said. ‘Those doctors tell such lies; but I don’t get worse, James;
you must allow I don’t get worse. I am not so strong as I thought I was;
I can’t go running about everywhere as I used to do. I am getting old,
you know. After thirty I believe there is always a difference.’
‘What nonsense, Annie! there is no difference in you. You don’t get back
your strength----’
‘That’s it; that’s all. If you were to leave me quite alone and quiet,
to recruit now; yes, I think I should like to know that you were in
London enjoying yourself. Why shouldn’t you enjoy yourself? Women get
worn out sooner than men; and I don’t want to cripple you, James. No;
take me to Como--I have taken a fancy to Como--and then you can come
back for me whenever you please.’
‘I am not going to leave you,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘You must not be
unreasonable, my darling. What pleasure would it be to me to go home
without you? It was you I was thinking of; for me it is all right. I am
quite happy here. As for Huxley and the rest, you don’t think I care for
them. It was you I was thinking of.’
‘You said the Societies. Whatever you do, James, speak the truth. I
suppose,’ she added, with a laugh which sounded harsh, ‘you are afraid I
shall get very ill--die, perhaps, away from home?’
Poor man! what was he to say? ‘Oh, Annie!’ he cried, ‘how you stab me!
If I thought anything of the kind, you know I’d have Sir William here
to-morrow, or any one, if it should cost me all I have. I know very well
there is no danger,’ he went on, taking a certain forlorn comfort out of
his own bold words; ‘but you don’t get up your strength as you ought,
and knocking about in these bare rooms can’t be good for you; and,
living as we are--and you have no maid----’
‘I hate a maid. I like Gretchen a great deal better. She makes so much
of me.’
‘Then take Gretchen with you, my dearest; take her to Como; keep her
with you till you get home.’
‘Oh, how like a man that is!’ she said, laughing. ‘Take Gretchen with
me--Gretchen, who is her father’s only daughter, the life and soul of
the place! What would he do without Gretchen? He would have to shut up
altogether. I might drop out of the world, and I would not be missed
half so much as she would be. Do you know I begin to get tired of this
place, and the hills, James,’ she cried, starting up. ‘Let us go and ask
about Donato and his horses. I want to get to Como before October. Why,
we’ll come in for the vintage! I like the vintage; and there are
advertisements everywhere about a sale at one of the villas. We shall be
sure to pick up something. Is it too late to start to-day?’
‘My darling, when you take a thing into your head----’
‘Yes, to be sure, I like to do it all at once. I was always hot-headed.
Now mind, we are to start to-morrow. I always loved Como, James; you
know I always did. We went there the first year we were married. I don’t
call it honeymooning when we don’t go to Como; and remember this is our
last bout of honeymooning; we shall have Cara next year.’
She laughed, and was very gay all the evening, delighted with the idea
of the change. But when he put her into Donato’s big old-fashioned
_vettura_ next morning, and saw everything fastened on, and prepared for
the long, slow journey, poor Beresford was very sad. He thought, if he
could only have a long talk with Maxwell, and hear what Sir William had
got to say, and know what it was that he had to fear, he should be less
unhappy. There must be something, or she would not be so strange; but
what was it? Almost anything was better, he thought, than fighting in
the dark--fighting with ghosts, not knowing what you were afraid of. She
was quite light-hearted at first, interested with the drive, and waved
her hands to the hills as they went slowly out of sight. ‘Good-bye,’ she
said, ‘you dear old giants! I hope those white furs of yours will keep
you warm till we bring Cara. What will Cara think of the mountains? She
never saw anything bigger than Sunninghill.’
‘Sunninghill has the effect of being much higher than it is with that
great level stretch of flat country. It impresses the imagination just
as much as your giants. Don’t laugh, Annie; but your mountains stifle
me. I never have air enough to breathe. I like miles and miles of
country round me. You know my weakness.’
‘Sunninghill before the Alps!’ she cried, laughing. ‘’Tis clear you are
a true cockney. Give me your shoulder for a pillow; I think I shall go
to sleep.’
And so she did; and the horses jogged on and on, now slow, now fast,
their bells jingling, and Donato’s whip making harmless circles and
slashes over their heads; and houses and hedgerows, and slopes of
mountain, flew past in a dream. James Beresford could see nothing but
the wan lines of the face that rested on his shoulder, solemn in that
deep sleep of weariness. How worn she was! how pale! growing whiter, he
thought, and whiter, till sometimes in terror he stooped down close to
make sure that the pale lips were parted by living breath.