COMING HOME.
They stayed in Como till late in October, now here, now there, as
caprice guided their steps. Sometimes Mrs. Beresford would be pleased to
be quiet, to float about the lake in the boat, doing nothing, taking in
the air and the sunshine; or to sit at her window watching the storms
that would sometimes come with little warning, turning the lovely
Italian lake in a moment into a wild Highland loch--a transformation
which always delighted her. She liked the storms, until one day a boat
was upset, which had a great effect upon her mind. The people about her
thought her heartless in her investigations into this accident, which
threw several poor families into dire trouble and sorrow.
‘Would the men die directly?’ she asked; ‘or would they have time to
think and time to struggle?’
Her husband reminded her of the common idea that all the scenes of your
life came before you, as in a panorama, when you were drowning. ‘I
should not like that,’ she said, with a shiver. Then Abbondio
interposed, he to whom the boat belonged which the Beresfords hired, and
told how he had been drowned once.
‘They brought me back,’ he said; ‘and I shall have to die twice now,
which is hard upon a man; for I was gone; if they had not brought me
back, I should never have known anything more. No, Signora, I did not
see all that had happened in my life. I felt only that I had slipped the
net, and was grasping and grasping at it, and could not get it.’
‘That was painful,’ she said, eagerly.
‘It was a confusion,’ said the fisherman.
Mrs. Beresford called to her husband to give him some money for the poor
widows who had lost their men in the boat. ‘A confusion!’ she said to
herself, dreamily. It was a very still day after the storm, and she had
been looking with a strange wistfulness at the soft blue ripples of the
water which had drowned these men. ‘A confusion! How strange it is that
we know so little about dying! A lingering death would be good for that,
that you could write it down hour by hour that others might know.’
‘One would not be able,’ said her husband; ‘besides, I think everything
gets misty; and one ceases to be interested about other people. I don’t
much believe those stories that represent passionate feeling in the
dying. The soul gets languid. Did I ever tell you what a friend of mine
said who was dead like Abbondio till the doctors got hold of her and
forced her back?’
‘No,’ she said, growing very pale; ‘tell me, James.’
‘She told me that she felt nothing that was painful, but as if she was
floating away on the sea somewhere about Capri, where she had once been.
Do you remember the sea there, how blue it is about those great
Faraglioni rocks? And there she was floating--floating--not suffering;
mind and body, all softly afloat; until they got hold of her, as I say,
and forced her back.’
‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Beresford, with a shiver; ‘I should not like to be
forced back. Poor soul! She will have to die once again some time; but
if it was only like that, she will not be much afraid.’
‘She was as far gone as she could go, to come back, I have heard. What
queer talk this is, my darling! The accident has spoiled all our
pleasure.’
‘No; it is pleasant talk. I like that idea of floating; it is better,
far better, than Abbondio’s confusion; but that, I suppose, was because
of the suddenness in his case, and clutching at something perhaps as he
got into the water. It was not an accident with her, was it? She was
dying of an illness as we poor women do.’
‘And most men, Annie; the greater part of us all.’
‘Yes, yes; I know. Poor woman! And they brought her back?’
‘Her family was round her bed, my darling, praying for her life, asking
nothing but to get her back. You don’t consider her children, and her
husband. Don’t let us talk of it. It makes me think of jumping into this
wicked lake, and getting it all over.’
‘Ah! do you feel that _too_? It is wicked, James; how dare you think
such things? Take me back home; yes, home. I am tired of this place. It
is all very well when it is fine, but winter is coming. To-morrow let us
go home.’
He took her to the shore with a few long sweeps of the oars, glad in his
heart of that decision. He, too, was very tired of the place; more tired
of the eternal shining than of the storm, and it was getting late in the
year for the Alps. Nevertheless it was by the Alps that this capricious
woman insisted upon returning, and they had something very near an
accident in the snows which roused and pleased her mightily. After the
excitement, however, nothing would satisfy her but to rush to London
with the utmost speed. She objected to stay even a single night in
Paris. She had been seized with a passion of longing for the humdrum
Square.
Miss Cherry brought Cara up from Sunninghill to be at home to receive
her mother. But the pair of travellers had stolen a march upon the
household, and instead of waiting to be received in a proper manner in
the evening, with dinner ready and everything comfortable, had arrived
at an absurd hour in the morning, before the maids were out of bed, and
when there was nothing prepared in the house. Cook herself came, much
aggrieved, to tell Miss Cherry this, while Cara ran upstairs to her
mother’s room. ‘I don’t make no doubt as folks get very fanciful when
they’re ill; but still, Miss, there’s reason in all things. At six
o’clock in the morning, and we not up, as why should we be, not thinking
of nothing of the sort, and not a thing in the house?’
‘It was hard, cook,’ said the sympathetic Miss Cherry; ‘but then you
know my brother had a right to come to his own house when he pleased.
Coming home is not like going anywhere else. But I hope Mrs. Beresford
is looking better?’
‘Better!’ said cook, spreading out her hands; and Sarah, the housemaid,
shook her head and put her apron to her eyes.
‘Dear, dear!’ said kind Miss Cherry, appalled by their tears; ‘but
travelling all night makes any one look ill. I shall not go up until she
has had a good look at her child. Miss Cara is like a little rose.’
‘So she is, Miss, bless her!’ assented the maids; and Cherry had to wait
for a long time in the library before even her brother came to her. One
thing which struck her with great surprise was, that there were no boxes
about half emptied, in which precious fragilities had been packed in
straw and wicker cases. The Buen Retiro cup was the only thing they had
bought, and that was among Mrs. Beresford’s things--smashed; and they
had both forgotten its very existence. No more wonderful sign could have
been of the changed times.
When Miss Cherry in her turn was introduced into the bedroom in which
Mrs. Beresford still lay, resting herself, she all but cried out with
sudden panic. She only just stopped herself in time; her mouth was open;
her tongue in the very act of forming the ‘Oh!’ when her brother’s look
stopped her. Not that he saw what she was going to say, or all the
effect his wife’s changed looks had upon her. He himself had got used to
them. He asked her, half aside, ‘How do you think she is looking?’ with
an eager look in his eyes.
‘She is looking--tired,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘Most people do after
travelling all night. I could not have lifted my head from the pillow;
but Annie had always so much spirit.’
‘Yes; she has no end of spirit,’ said poor James Beresford, looking
admiringly at his wife. He flattered himself, poor fellow! that Cherry
had not remarked the thinness of the worn face, beside which her own
faintly-coloured old maid’s countenance almost looked fresh and round
and blooming. He had been alarmed at the thought of what ‘they’ would
think of her looks; but now his spirits rose. Cherry did not seem to
have remarked it; and what a hypocrite poor Cherry felt, sitting there
smiling, with her heart sinking more and more every moment! ‘What will
he do without his wife?’ she was asking herself. And, alas! that wife’s
worn looks; her fretful little outbursts of impatience; all her caprices
and restlessness betrayed a progress of evil more rapid than any one had
even feared.
‘Does Mr. Maxwell know you have come back? He will want to see you. He
was always so anxious to have news of you,’ she said, falteringly.
‘We have forgotten what doctors are like,’ said Mrs. Beresford. ‘I don’t
want ever to renew my acquaintance with them. James, send him a note,
and let him come to dinner. Yes, Cara! What has my pet got to say?’
‘You said two different things at once, mamma--that you did not want to
see doctors again, and that Mr. Maxwell was to come to dinner.’
‘I told you she was an idealist,’ said Mrs. Beresford, smiling. Then,
changing--as she had got into a way of doing,--in a moment, she added,
‘Get down from the bed, Cara; you tire me. There, sit there, further
back. Children flutter so; they are always in motion. Cherry is
still--she is a comfort; and, James, Mrs. Meredith can come, if she
likes to come before I get up. She is a soft, tranquil woman, like
Cherry; silly, perhaps, but that does not matter. When one is over
tired, silly people who don’t fatigue one are the best----’
‘I wonder does she think me silly?’ Miss Cherry said to herself; and it
is to be feared there was not much doubt on the subject. After she had
made this speech about Mrs. Meredith, next door, the invalid sent them
all away, that she might rest. This was no more than a passing fancy,
like other notions that flitted across her restless brain. They went
down softly to the library, avoiding by common consent the drawing-room,
which was _her_ room, and so closely associated with all her ways. There
James Beresford interrogated his sister very closely. ‘You don’t see a
very great change--nothing more than you expected?’ He was tired, too,
poor fellow! worn out in body and in soul.
‘I think you should see Mr. Maxwell at once,’ said Miss Cherry, who was
timid, and did not like to commit herself. ‘What does it matter what I
think, who don’t know? I think she is perhaps--more worn than I
expected; but then she has been travelling all night. Perhaps you ought
not to have allowed her to do so much.’
‘I? How could I help it? and I was too thankful to get home. How I hate
those pleasure places! the more beautiful they are, the more terrible. I
detest them. I shall never be able to endure mountains and lakes
again--till Annie is better, he added, with such a miserable pretence
at a smile that his kind sister almost broke down. She made up her mind
to remain at his entreaty, though both of them had a doubt whether the
invalid would like it. ‘Annie will be pleased, I am sure,’ he said, with
hesitation. How well they all understood her! But quiet Miss Cherry felt
no anger with the fanciful, capricious, suffering woman, who meant
happiness in this house, notwithstanding all her uncertain moods and
ways.
‘I will tell her I have something to do in town, and ask her to give me
a bed for a few nights.’
‘Aunt Cherry, you had nothing to do when we started; you meant to go
home to-day.’
‘Yes, Cara; but I should like to see your mamma get a little better.’
‘Then please tell her so,’ said the child; ‘_please_ tell her so. I know
what you think. You think she is very, very ill; but you will not say
it. You try to deceive papa and me, and her too. I cannot bear to be
deceived.’
‘My dear, some time or other you will learn to know that one must not
say everything one thinks; though indeed, indeed, I would always have
you say the truth.’
‘I shall never learn not to say what I think,’ said the little girl,
with erect head and severe blue eyes fixed upon her aunt disapprovingly.
Miss Cherry was nervous and easily disturbed. She could not bear even
Cara’s disapproval, and she began to cry in spite of herself, even then
not quite ingenuously she felt; for her disturbed nerves and her
distress and sympathy for her brother were at the bottom of her emotion,
though Cara’s severity gave an immediate reason for her tears.
Mrs. Beresford was better in the evening, and came down to dinner,
putting on one of her prettiest dresses in honour of the return. ‘I have
worn nothing but grey alpaca for months,’ she said; ‘like you, Cherry; I
am quite glad to get out of it, and feel at home again. We have had
rather a long spell of honeymooning this time, and we were beginning to
get tired of each other; but it was the last, you know, for Cara is to
go with us next year.’
Cara, who was sitting by, began to speak. ‘If----,’ she said, and then
stopped, arrested in spite of herself by such a passionate look as she
had never seen before in her father’s eyes.
‘If--what? You think I shall change my mind? Ah, Mr. Maxwell, how do you
do! Am I feeling strong? Well, not strong, perhaps, but very well
to-night. I have ups and downs. And poor James there, whom I have
punished severely, will tell you I have grown the most fanciful,
troublesome, capricious woman. James!’
He had taken Cara into a corner, and was whispering to her in a voice
which made the child tremble: ‘If you say a word! if you vex your mother
or frighten her with that idiotic sincerity of yours, by Heaven I’ll
kill you!’ he said, clenching his hand. ‘Capricious! Yes, you never saw
anything like it, Maxwell. Such a round as she has led me--such a life
as I have had!’ And he laughed. Heaven help them! they all laughed,
pretending to see the joke. While the child in the corner, her little
frame thrilling in every nerve with that strange, violent whisper, the
first roughness that had ever come her way, sat staring at the group in
a trance of wonder. What did it mean? Why were they false all of them,
crying when she was not there, pretending to laugh as soon as they
turned to her. It was Cara’s first introduction to the mysteries of
life.
That night when Miss Cherry had cried herself almost blind, after a
stolen interview with the doctor in the passage as he left the house,
she was frightened nearly out of her wits by a sudden apparition. It was
late, for Cherry, though used to early hours, had not been able to think
of sleep after the doctor’s melancholy shake of the head and whisper of
‘I fear the worst.’ She was sitting sadly thinking of what that pretty
house would be with the mistress gone. What would become of James? Some
men have work to occupy them. Some men are absorbed in the outdoor life
which makes a woman less a companion to them, perpetual and cherished;
but James! Cherry Beresford was so different a woman from her
sister-in-law, that the affection between them had been limited, and
almost conventional--the enforced union of relations, not anything
spontaneous; for where mutual understanding is not, there cannot be much
love. But this did not blind her perception as to what his wife was to
James. She herself had not been very much to him, nor he to her. They
had loved each other calmly, like brother and sister, but they had not
been companions since they were children. Cherry, who was very simple
and true, not deceiving herself any more than other people, knew very
well that she could never fill for him anything of the place his wife
had left vacant. Her heart would bleed for him; but that was all--and
what would become of him? She shivered and wept at the thought, but
could think of nothing--nothing! What would poor James do?
Then Cara came stalking in upon her in her nightgown, with a candle in
her hand, white and chill as a little ghost, her face very pale, her
brown hair hanging about her shoulders, her white bare feet showing
below her night-dress, all lighted up by the candle she carried. ‘I have
come to ask you what it all means,’ the child said; ‘none of you say
what is true. You laugh when I can see you are more like crying, and you
make jokes, and you tell--lies. Have you all gone mad, Aunt Cherry? or
what does it mean?’
Upon this a little burst of impatience came to Miss Cherry, which was an
ease to her over-wrought feelings. ‘You disagreeable, tiresome little
child! How dare you make yourself a judge of other people? Are you so
wise or so sensible that you should be able to say exactly what is right
and what is wrong? I wonder at you, Cara! When you see us unhappy, all
upset and miserable, about your poor mamma.’
‘But why? To tell me--lies, will that make her well?’
‘You should have been whipt,’ cried the indignant lady. ‘Oh, you should
have been whipt when you were a small child, and then you never would
have dared to speak so to me, and to your poor father, whose heart is
broken! Would you like us to go and tell her how ill she is, and beg of
her to make haste and die? Poor, poor Annie! that is what would be best
for her, to get rid of the pain. Is that what you would like us to do?’
‘Oh, Aunt Cherry, Aunt Cherry! don’t say that mamma--that mamma----’
‘No, my darling, I can’t say it,’ cried Miss Cherry, drawing the child
into her arms, kissing and crying over her. ‘I won’t say it. I’ll never,
never give up hope. Doctors are deceived every day. Nobody can tell what
may happen, and God hears prayers when we pray with all our hearts. But
that’s why we hide our feelings, Cara; why we laugh, dear, when we would
like to cry; why we try to talk as if we were happy when we are very
sad; for she would give up hope if she once knew----’
‘And would that make any difference?’ said the child, in all the
impenetrability of wonder, one revelation bursting upon her after
another, feeling this new dark mysterious world beyond her powers.
‘Would hope make any difference?’ cried Miss Cherry. ‘Oh, child, how
little you know! It is hope that makes all the difference. If you think
things are going well, it helps them to go well--it keeps up your
strength, it cheers your heart, it makes you a different creature.
Everything, everything, lies in keeping up hope.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Cara, slowly. She had pushed open a door
unawares into a spiritual world of which she knew nothing. She had not
one of the happy superficial natures which sail over mysteries. That
which was deeper than fact and truer than truth was a perplexity and
aching wonder to the child. She could not fathom it, she had but just
discovered it. She stood quite still while Miss Cherry explained to her
as well as she could how nothing must be said or done that would alarm
the patient, how everything must be made smooth and kept cheerful round
her. ‘And, Cara, you will remember--you will say nothing to frighten
her, whatever you may hear. If she should suffer very much, you must
always look as if you felt sure she would soon be better.’
‘Even if it is not true?’
‘Oh, my dear child! the only way to mend that is to pray to God day and
night, day and night, to make it true! He can and He will--or, oh, Cara!
we hope He will,’ cried Miss Cherry, with tears. ‘And you can help by
always praying, and always being cheerful. Look at your poor papa, how
he smiles and jokes, and his heart is breaking all the time.’
‘His heart is breaking!’ said Cara, under her breath.
‘But if we all do what we can, and are cheerful, and trust in God, she
may get better, dear. There is so much we can do. That is how I try to
keep up my heart. We must never look frightened, never let her get
alarmed. Keep cheerful, cheerful, Cara, whatever we do.’
The child went back to bed with her head buzzing full of strange
thoughts. She knew very well that nurse had often exhorted her to
patience under toothache, for instance, as the best cure; but it never
had been cured by that in Cara’s experience. Was cheerfulness likely to
answer in her mother’s case, and smiles instead of crying, and people
saying things they did not believe? Such knowledge was too high for her.
It confused her head, and made it ache and throb with the multitude of
her thoughts.