CONSOLATION.
‘This is indeed an affliction, dear Miss Beresford. We came up directly
we heard of it; I would not let a moment pass. Oh, how little we know!
We were thinking of your poor niece as having returned from her foreign
tour; as being about to enter upon the brilliant society of the season.
I don’t know when I have received such a shock; and my poor Maria, her
feelings were almost beyond control; but she would not stay away.’
‘I thought she would come,’ said Miss Charity. ‘Maria always likes to
get news from the fountain-head, and to see how people are bearing their
troubles. Yes, my dear, I am bearing mine very well, as you see. Poor
Annie! she was only my niece by marriage after all. At my age one sees
even one’s own nieces, women with families, die without great trouble.
It may sound hard, but it’s true. When a woman is married, and has her
own children about her, you can’t but feel that she’s less to you. It’s
dreadful for _them_; but, so far as you are concerned, you lost her long
ago.’
‘Oh, dear Miss Beresford, you like to pretend you are calm, to hide how
soft-hearted you are! But we know you better than that. I myself, though
I knew (comparatively) so little of poor Mrs. James----’
‘And I thought you did not like each other, so it is all the more kind
of you to cry. Cherry will cry too as much as you please, and be
thankful for your sympathy. Have you had a pleasant walk? I think the
primroses are thicker than ever this spring. We have been sending up
basketsful. She was fond of them----’ Here the old lady faltered for a
moment. This was the kind of allusion that melted her, not
straightforward talk. She was in profound black, a great deal more
crape than the dressmaker thought at all necessary, but Miss Charity had
her own views on these subjects. ‘Put double upon me, and take it off
the child,’ she had said, to the wonder of the tradespeople, who felt
that the mourning for a niece by marriage was a very different thing
from that which was required for a mother. Mrs. Burchell respected her
greatly for her crape. She knew the value of it, and the unthriftiness,
and felt that this was indeed showing respect.
‘We heard it was very sudden at last,’ said the Rector, ‘that nobody had
the least idea--it was a very lingering disorder that she was supposed
to have? So we heard, at least. Do you happen to know how the doctors
accounted for its suddenness at last? There is something very dreadful
to the imagination in so sudden a death.’
‘I wish I could think I should have as quick an end,’ said Miss Charity;
‘but we Beresfords are strong, and die hard. We can’t shake off life
like that. We have to get rid of it by inches.’
‘My dear lady,’ said the Rector, ‘I don’t mean to say that I would put
any trust in death-bed repentances; but surely it is a privilege to have
that time left to us for solemn thought, for making sure that we are in
the right way.’
‘I never think much when I am ill, my dear Rector; I can’t. I think why
the flies buzz so, and I think if I was Martha it would make me unhappy
to have such a red nose; and if you came to me, instead of listening to
what you said, I should be thinking all the time that your white tie was
undone’ (here the Rector furtively and nervously glanced down, and
instinctively put up his hand to feel if the remark was true) ‘or your
coat rusty at the elbows. I say these things at a hazard, not that I
ever remarked them,’ she added, laughing. ‘You are tidiness itself.’
The Rector was put out by these chance possibilities of criticism, and
could not but feel that Miss Charity’s quick eyes must have seen him
with his white tie untidy, loosely unfastened, under his beard. He had
grown a beard, like so many clergymen, and it was not an improvement.
Instead of looking clean, as he once did, he looked black and coarse, a
mixture of sea-captain and divine. He kept putting up his hand
stealthily all the time he remained, and inviting his wife with nervous
glances, to let him know if all was right. Unfortunately he could not
see it under the forest of black beard.
‘We heard,’ said his wife, coming to his relief, ‘that there was
something about an opiate--an over-dose, something of that sort--that
poor Mrs. James had taken it without measuring it, or--you know how
everything is exaggerated. I was quite afraid, and so glad to see the
death in the paper without any inquest or formalities of that kind,
which must be so painful. Was there really nothing in the story of the
opiate? It is so strange how things get about.’
‘I don’t think it at all strange, Maria. The servants call in a strange
doctor, in their fright, who does not know anything about her case or
temperament. He hears that she has to take some calming drops to relieve
her pain, and of course he jumps in his ignorance to the idea of an
overdose. It is the fashionable thing now-a-days. It is what they all
say----’
‘And there was _no_ truth in it?’
‘None whatever,’ said Miss Charity, who, safest of all advocates,
implicitly believed what she was saying, not knowing that any doubt had
ever existed on the subject. She sat facing them in her new mourning, so
freshly, crisply black. Miss Charity knew of no mystery even, and her
calm certainty had all the genuine force of truth.
The Rector and his wife looked at each other. ‘It shows that one should
not believe the tenth part of what one hears,’ he said. ‘I was told
confidently that poor Mrs. James Beresford held strange ideas about some
things.’
‘That you may be quite sure of, Rector. I never knew any one yet worth
their salt who did not hold odd ideas about something----’
‘Not about fundamentals, my dear lady. I am not straitlaced; but there
are some matters--on some things, I am sure, none of us would like to
give an uncertain sound. Life, for example--human life, is too sacred to
be trifled with; but there is a set of speculatists, of false
philosophers--I don’t know what to call them--sceptics, infidels they
generally are, and at the same time radicals, republicans----’
‘Ah, politics? I dare say poor Annie was odd in politics. What did it
matter? they were not political people. If James had been in Parliament,
indeed, as I should like to have seen him--but unfortunately he was a
man of fine tastes; that is fatal. A man of fine tastes, who is fond of
travelling, and collecting, and rapt up in his wife, will never become a
public man; and I should like to have seen James in Parliament. Strange
ideas! oh, yes, queer to the last degree. If there is anything worse
than republicanism (is there?) I should think poor Annie went in for
that.’
‘That is bad enough, but it is not exactly what I meant,’ said the
Rector; and then he rose up with an air of the deepest conventional
respect. ‘My dear, here is your kind friend, Miss Cherry,’ he said.
Mrs. Burchell sprang up at the intimation, and rushed forward with open
arms. She had put on a black merino dress instead of her usual silk, and
a black shawl, to mark her sense of the calamity--and swallowed up poor
slim Miss Cherry in the entanglements of that embrace, with solemn
fervour. Cherry had not much sense of humour, and she was too good to
pass any judgment upon the sudden warmth of affection thus exhibited;
but it was a little confusing and suffocating to find herself without
any warning engulfed in Mrs. Burchell’s old merino and the folds of her
shawl.
‘Oh, my dear, dear Cherry, if I could but tell you how I feel for you!
How little did we think when we last met----’
‘You are very kind,’ said Miss Cherry, drawing herself forth somewhat
limp and crushed from this embrace. ‘I am sure you are very kind.’ Her
lips quivered and the tears came to her eyes; but she was not so
overwhelmed as her consoler, who had begun to sob. ‘It is my poor
brother I think of,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘It is little to us in comparison
with, what it is to him. I think of him most; more than of poor Annie,
who is safe out of all trouble.’
‘We must hope so, at least,’ said the Rector, shaking his head; and his
wife stopped sobbing, and interchanged a glance with him, which was full
of meaning.
‘Poor Mrs. James! It was so sudden. I fear there was no time for
preparation--no time even for thought?’
‘Men soon get the better of these things,’ said Miss Charity, ‘and the
more they feel it at the time the more easily they are cured. Cherry
there will think of her longer than her husband will. I don’t mean to
say your grief’s so great, my dear, but it will last.’
‘Oh, aunt, you do James injustice! He thought of nothing but Annie. The
light of his eyes is gone, and the comfort of his house, and all he
cares for in life.’
Here poor Miss Cherry, moved by her own eloquence, began to cry,
picturing to herself this dismal future. Nothing at Sunninghill was
changed: the room was as full of primroses as the woods were; great
baskets of them mingled with blue violets filled every corner; the
sunshine came in unclouded; the whole place was bright. It struck the
tender-hearted woman with sudden compunction: ‘We are not touched,’ she
said; ‘we have everything just the same as ever, as bright; but my poor
James, in that house by himself; and the child! Oh, Aunt Charity, when I
think of him, I feel as if my heart would break.’
Miss Charity took up her work and began to knit furiously. ‘He will get
over it,’ she said, ‘in time. It will be dreadful work at first; but he
will get over it. He has plenty of friends, both men and women. Don’t
upset me with your talk; he will get over it--men always do.’
‘And let us hope it will lead him to think more seriously,’ said Mrs.
Burchell. ‘Oh, I am sure if you thought my dear husband could be of any
use--we all know he has not been what we may call serious, and oh, dear
Miss Beresford, would not this affliction be a cheap price to pay for
it, if it brought him to a better state of mind?’
‘His wife’s life? It would be a high price for any advantage that would
come to him, I think. Dry your eyes, Cherry, and go and put on your
bonnet. This is Mr. Maxwell’s day, and you had better go back to town
with him.’
‘Was it Mr. Maxwell who attended poor Mrs. James? I hope he is
considered a clever man.’
‘How oddly you good people speak! Do you want to insinuate that he is
not a clever man? He takes charge of my health, you know, and he has
kept me going long enough. Eh! yes, I am irritable, I suppose; we are
all put out. You good quiet folks, with all your children about, nothing
happening to you----’
‘Indeed, Miss Beresford, you do us great injustice,’ said Mrs. Burchell,
stung, as was natural, by such an assertion, while the Rector slowly
shook his head. ‘We do not complain; but perhaps if we were to tell all,
as some people do. Nothing happening to us!--ah, how little you know!’
‘Well, well, let us say you have a great many troubles; you can feel
then for other people. Ah, here is Mr. Maxwell. Don’t talk of me now;
don’t think of me, my good man. I am as well--as well--a great deal
better than a poor useless woman of nearly threescore and ten has any
right to be when the young are taken. How is James?’
The doctor, who had come in by the open window with a familiarity which
made the Rector and his wife look at each other, sat down by the old
lady’s side and began to talk to her. Miss Cherry had gone to put on her
bonnet, and by-and-by Mr. and Mrs. Burchell rose to take their leave.
‘I am so glad to hear that, sad as it was, it was a natural death, and
one that you expected,’ said the Rector, taking Maxwell aside for a
moment.
The doctor stared at him, with somewhat fiery eyes. ‘A natural death?
Mrs. Beresford’s? What did you expect it to be?’
‘Oh, my dear sir, I don’t mean anything! We had heard very different
accounts--so many things are said----’
‘You should put a stop to them, then,’ said the other, who was not
without temper; and he and Miss Charity paused in their sadder talk, as
the visitors disappeared, to interchange some remarks about them which
were not complimentary.
‘What they can mean by making up such wicked lies, and putting a slur on
her memory, poor child!’ said the old lady with a sudden gush of hot
tears.
The doctor said something very hotly about ‘meddlesome parsons,’ and
hastily plunged again into descriptions of poor James. The other was not
a subject on which he could linger. ‘I never saw a man so
broken-hearted; they were always together; he misses her morning, noon,
and night. Cherry must come to him; she must come at once,’ he said,
forgetting how long it was since he had spoken of Cherry before by her
Christian name. But Miss Charity noticed it with the keen spectator
instinct of her age, and ruminated in an undercurrent of thought even
while she thought of ‘poor James,’ whether Maxwell’s faith in Cherry
‘meant anything,’ or if new combinations of life might be involved in
the sequences of that death scene.
The same thought was in the minds of the clerical pair as they went down
the hill. ‘Will _that_ come to anything?’ they said to each other.
‘It is a nice little property,’ said the Rector, ‘and I suppose she will
have everything.’
‘But if I was Cherry,’ said Mrs. Burchell, ‘I should not like to be
thrown at his head in that very open way. Going with him to town! It is
as good as offering her to him.’
‘She is no longer young, my dear,’ said the Rector, ‘and people
now-a-days have not your delicacy.’
‘Oh, I have no patience with their nonsense!’ she cried; ‘and their
friendships, forsooth--as if men and women could ever be friends!’
And it is possible that in other circumstances Miss Cherry’s tranquil
soul might have owned a flutter at thought of the escort which she
accepted so quietly to-day; but she was absorbed with thoughts of her
brother and of the possible use she might be, which was sweet to her,
notwithstanding her grief. Miss Charity shook her head doubtfully. ‘It
is not Cherry that will help him,’ she said, ‘but the child will be the
better of a woman in the house.’
Really that was what Mr. Maxwell wanted, a woman in the house; something
to speak to, something to refer everything to; something to blame even,
if things were not all right. The funeral was over, and all that dismal
business which appals yet gives a temporary occupation and support to
the sorrowful. And now the blank of common life had recommenced.
‘Perhaps she will not help him much; but she will be there,’ said the
doctor. He was glad for himself that a soft-voiced, soft-eyed, pitying
creature should be there. There was help in the mere fact, whatever she
might say or do.
Cara had been living a strange life through these melancholy days. She
had not known, poor child, the full significance of that scene by her
mother’s bedside, of which she had been a witness. She did not fully
understand even now: but glimmers of horrible intelligence had come to
her during that interview in the library, and the things she had heard
afterwards from the servants had enlightened her still more. She heard
the whispers that circulated among them, terrified whispers, said half
under their breath. That she had done it herself--that she knew, poor
dear, what she was doing--that if anything had been known, there would
have been an inquest, and things would have come out. This was what Cara
heard breathing about in half whispers, and which filled her with
strange panic, lest her secret should escape her. She knew the secret,
and she only. Nobody had questioned her, but the child’s impulse to tell
had bound her very soul for days after. She had resisted it, though she
had felt guilty and miserable to know something which no one else knew;
but she had kept her secret. ‘Don’t let us brand her with the name of
suicide.’ These words seemed to ring in her ears night and day. She
repeated them over and over to herself. ‘Don’t let us brand her with the
name of suicide.’
‘No, no,’ poor Cara said to herself, trembling; ‘no, no:’ though this
premature and horrible secret weighed down her heart like a visible
burden. Oh, if she could but have told it to nurse, or to Aunt Cherry!
but she must not, not even to papa. When her aunt arrived, it was
mingled torture and relief to the poor child. She clung round her with
sobbing, longing so to tell; but even to cling and to sob was
consolatory, and Aunt Cherry wanted no explanation of that unusual depth
of childish distress. ‘Cara was not like other children,’ she said to
herself. She had feelings which were deeper and more tender. She was
‘sensitive,’ she was ‘nervous.’ She was more loving than the ordinary
children, who cry one moment and forget the next. And kind Cherry,
though her own grief was of the milder, secondary kind, as was natural,
had always tears of sympathy to give for the grief of others. She took
the little girl almost entirely into her own care, and would talk to her
for hours together; about being ‘good,’ about subduing all her little
irritabilities, in order to please mamma, who was in heaven, and would
be grieved in her happiness to think that her child was not ‘good.’ Cara
was greatly awed and subdued by this talk. It hushed her, yet set her
wondering; and those conversations were sometimes very strange ones,
which went on between the two in their melancholy and silent hours.
‘Does everybody go to heaven who dies?’ said Cara, with awe-stricken
looks.
Miss Cherry trembled a little, having some fear of false doctrine before
her eyes. ‘Everybody, I hope, who loves God. There are bad people, Cara;
but we don’t know them, you and I.’
‘Who love God? but I never think of God, Aunt Cherry. At least, I do
now; I wonder. But if they did not do that, would they still go to
heaven all the same?’
‘God loves us, dear,’ said Cherry, with the tears in her soft eyes.
‘Fathers and mothers love their children, whether their children love
them or not. That is all we know.’
‘Whatever they do? if they even laugh, and go wrong? Yes,’ said Cara,
very thoughtfully, ‘I suppose papa would not send me away, out into the
dark, if I did ever so wrong.’
‘I am sure he would not; but you must not think of such things, dear;
they are too difficult for you. When you are older, you will understand
better,’ Cherry said, faltering, and with something in her heart which
contradicted her; for did not the child ‘understand’ better than she?
Then Cara started another difficulty, quite as appalling; facing it with
innocent confidence, yet wonder: ‘What sort of a place,’ she asked,
softly, looking up with her blue eyes full of serious faith and awe, ‘is
heaven?’
‘Oh, my dear,’ said Miss Cherry, ‘you ask me what I would give all I
have in the world to know! There are so many whom I love there.’
‘But what do you _think_? Often when one doesn’t know, one has an
_idea_. I don’t know Italy or India; but I imagine something. Aunt
Cherry, tell me what you think.’
‘Oh, Cara, my darling, I don’t know what it is _like_! I know there is
no trouble or pain in it; and that God is not so far off as here. No, He
is not far off here; but we can’t see Him; and we are such poor dull
creatures. And I _think_, Cara, I _think_ that our Lord must be always
about there. That people may go and stand on the roadside and see Him
pass, and talk to Him, and be satisfied about everything.’
‘How--be satisfied about everything?’
‘Oh, child! _I_ should not want anything more. He sees both sides, my
darling, both here and there, and understands. I am sure they must be
able to speak to Him, and go to Him, whenever they will----’
This thought brought great tears, a suffusion of utter wistfulness yet
heart-content, to Cherry’s eyes. Little Cara did not know very well what
was meant by such words. She did not understand this conception of the
great Creator as a better taught child might have done. But she said to
herself, all secretly: ‘If there is One like _that_, whether it is in
heaven or earth, I might tell Him, and it would be no harm.’
While Miss Cherry dried her eyes, her heart lightened by that
overflowing. Perhaps, though they had not seen Him, He had passed that
way, and heard the babble--what was it more?--between the woman and the
child.