THE OLD PEOPLE.
When Mrs. Beresford died, as has been described, there was a great
flutter of talk and private discussion among all who knew her about the
particulars of her death. It was ‘so sudden at the last,’ after giving
every indication of turning out a lingering and slow malady, that public
curiosity was very greatly excited on the subject. True, the talk was
suppressed peremptorily by Mr. Maxwell whenever he came across it,
charitably by other less authoritative judges; but it lingered, as was
natural, and perhaps the bereaved husband did not have all that fulness
of sympathy which generally attends so great a loss. There were many
people, indeed, to whom it appeared that such a loss was worse even than
a more simple and less mysterious one, and that the survivor was
entitled to more instead of less pity; but mysterious circumstances
always damp the public sympathy more or less, and people do not like to
compromise themselves by kindness which might seem complicity or guilty
knowledge if, in the course of time, anything not known at the moment
should be found out. Thus James Beresford, though much pitied, did not
meet with that warmth of personal sympathy which circumstances like his
so often call forth. He was not himself sensible of it indeed, being too
miserable to take any notice of what was going on around him; but most
of his friends were fully sensible of this fact, and aware that but few
overtures of active kindness were made to the melancholy man, whose very
abandonment of his home and life made another item in the mysterious
indictment against him, of which everybody felt the burden yet nobody
knew the rights. It was in these painful circumstances that Mrs.
Meredith first formed the link which now associated her with her next
door neighbour. The first time he had come home after his wife’s death,
which was only for a week or two, the kind woman had met him, indeed had
laid her simple, tender-hearted plan to meet him--going listlessly into
his forsaken house. She had gone up to him, holding out her hand, her
features all moved and quivering with feeling. ‘Won’t you come in and
sit with me in the evening?’ she said. ‘It is the time one feels one’s
loneliness most--and my boys are away, Mr. Beresford.’ Her soft eyes, as
she raised them to him, were full of tears; her look so pitiful, so full
of fellow-feeling, that his heart was as much touched for her as hers
seemed to be for him. Of all ways of consolation, is there any so
effective as that of leading those whom you grieve for to grieve also a
little for you, as a fellow-sufferer? His heart was touched. He could
not persuade himself to go the very first evening, but he came soon, and
when he had come once returned again and again. It was the first new
habit he formed after that mournful breaking-up of all his habits. He
could not bear much at a time of the dismal place which he still called
home; but now and then he was forced to be there, and when he came this
new sweet habit gave him a little strength to meet the chaos into which
his life otherwise was thrown. Did not Dante, too, get a little comfort
from the sweet looks of that sympathising woman who used to glance at
him from her window after the lady of his heart was carried by the
angels to heaven? There was no wrong to his Annie in that refuge which
kindness made for him from the miseries of the world. Eventually it
became a matter of course that he should seek that shelter. He went out
of his own house and knocked at her door mechanically, and would sit by
her, content only to be there, often saying little, getting himself
softly healed and soothed, and made capable of taking up again the
burden of his life. She was not the same kind of woman as his wife--her
habits of mind were different. The variety, the fluctuating charm, the
constant movement and change that were in Mrs. Beresford did not exist
in this other. She would sit and work by the lamplight, looking up
sweetly to answer, but happy to be silent if her companion liked it. She
made herself always the second and not the first, responding, not
leading; her gift was to divine what was in others, to follow where they
went. It was this that made her so popular with all her friends. When
they came to her for advice she would give it without that doubt and
fear of responsibility which restrains so many people. For why? she had
a rule which was infallible, and which made her safe from
responsibility, although she was not herself aware how closely she acted
upon it. Her infallible guide was a faculty of seeing what people
themselves wished, how their own judgments were tending, and what
individually they wanted to do. This she followed sometimes
consciously, but often quite unconsciously, as habit led her, and she
was never afraid of saying Do this, or Do that. It was one of her great
attractions. She might be wise or she might be less than wise, in her
decisions, her friends said, but she never shilly-shallied, never was
afraid of saying to you with sweet frankness and boldness what she
thought it would be good to do.
The consequence of this simple rule was that good advice from Mrs.
Meredith’s lips was ever so much more popular than good advice had ever
been known to be before. It is not a commodity which is generally
admired, however admirable it may be; but those whom she advised were
not only edified but flattered and brightened. It made themselves feel
more wise. It was sweet at once to the giver and to the receiver, and
kindled an increased warmth of sympathy between them. Now and then, to
be sure, the course of action she recommended might not be a successful
one, but is not that the case with all human counsel? This, which was
the secret of her power with all her other friends, subjugated James
Beresford too. As there is nothing so dear to a man as his own way, so
there is no individual so dear as that friend who will recommend and
glorify his own way to him, and help him to enjoyment of it. This she
did with a gentle patience and constancy which was wonderful. It was
natural to her, like all great gifts, and the great charm of it all was
that few people suspected the reflection from their own feelings and
sentiments which coloured Mrs. Meredith’s mind, nor was she at all
invariably aware of it herself. Sometimes she believed implicitly in her
own advice as the natural growth of her own thoughts and experiences,
and believed herself to have an independent judgment. And it is to be
supposed that she had opinions and ideas--certainly she had ways of her
own, the brightest, and kindest, and most caressing that could be
conceived.
This was the secret of those absences which had left Cara so lonely.
They had become now the confirmed and constant habit of her father’s
life. And it would be vain to say that this had been done without
remark. While he was at home for a week or two only in a year no one
said anything about his frequent visits to the kind neighbour who was
not even a widow; but lately he had stayed longer when he came back to
the Square, sometimes remaining a month instead of a week, and now it
was understood that he had returned ‘for good.’ Both Mrs. Meredith and
Mr. Beresford had, it may be supposed, friends who took the
responsibility of their conduct, and thought it necessary to supervise
them in their innocent but unusual intimacy, and these excellent persons
were in the attitude of suspended judgment waiting to see what
difference Cara’s presence would make, and that of Oswald, in the one
house and the other. But it had not as yet made any very apparent
difference. At nine o’clock, or thereabouts, the door would shut in the
one house, and Cook and John would exchange glances; while in the other
the bell would tinkle, and the two maids, who divided John’s duties
between them, would say, ‘There is Mr. Beresford, as usual!’ and shrug
their shoulders. He came in, and they did not take the trouble now even
to announce the habitual visitor, who had his special chair and his
special corner, as if he belonged to the house. Sometimes the two
friends would talk long and much, sometimes they scarcely talked at all.
They knew each other like brother and sister, and yet there was between
them a delicate separation such as does not exist between relations. In
the warm room, softly lighted and friendly, the man who had been wounded
found a refuge which was more like the old blessedness of home than
anything else could be, and yet was not that blessedness. It did not
occur to him that because his daughter had come back to him he was to be
banished from this other shelter. Cara’s coming, indeed, had scarcely
been her father’s doing. Many discussions on the point had taken place
among all his friends, and Mrs. Meredith had been spurred up by
everybody to represent his duty to him. She had done it with a faint
sense in her mind that it would affect herself in some undesirable way,
and with a certainty that she was departing altogether from her usual
rule of argument with the personal wishes of her clients. Mr. Beresford
had no personal wish on the subject. He preferred rather that Cara
should stay where she was happy. ‘If she comes here what can I do for
her?’ he said. ‘My society is not what a girl will like. I cannot take
her to the dances and gaieties which will please her.’
‘Why not?’ Mrs. Meredith had said.
‘Why not!’ He was petrified by her want of perception. ‘What could I do
in such places? And she is happy where she is. She has women about her
who know how to manage her. Her coming would derange my life altogether.
You, who feel everybody’s difficulties, you must feel this. What am I to
do with a girl of seventeen? It would be wretched for her, and it could
not be any addition to my happiness.’
‘Don’t you think too much of that,’ said Mrs. Meredith, faltering; for
indeed this was not at all her way. And it was hard for her to go
against those feelings on the part of her companion which, on ordinary
occasions, she followed implicitly. Even for herself Cara’s presence
would complicate the relations generally; but when she saw her duty, she
did it, though with faltering. Everybody else had spurred and goaded her
up to this duty, and she would not shrink. ‘If you are going to settle,
you ought to have your child with you.’
‘That you should dwell like this upon abstract oughts!’ said Mr.
Beresford; ‘you, who are so full of understanding of personal
difficulties. It is not like you. If I feel that Cara is better where
she is--happier, more suitably cared for----’
‘Still, you know when the father is settled at home his only child
should be with him,’ Mrs. Meredith reiterated. She was faithful to her
_consigne_. If she did not see it, other people did for whom she was the
mouthpiece. But it will be perceived that those persons were right who
said she was not clever. When she was not following her favourite and
congenial pursuit of divining others and reflecting them in her own
person, she was reduced to this helpless play of reiteration, and stuck
to her one point till everybody was tired of it. Beresford was so
impatient that he got up from his chair and began to pace up and down
the room.
‘There is reason in all things,’ he said. ‘My house now is emphatically
a bachelor house, my servants suit me, my life is arranged as I like it,
or at least as I can support it best. Cara would make a revolution in
everything. What should I do with her? How should I amuse her? for, of
course, she would want amusement. And she is happy, quite happy, where
she is; nowhere could she be so well as she is now. My aunt and my
sister are wrapt up in her. Yes, yes, of course I am fond of my poor
little girl; but what could I do with her? You are always so
reasonable--but not here.’
‘She should be with her father,’ said Mrs. Meredith, sticking to her
_consigne_; and of course he thought it was perversity and opposition,
and never divined what it cost her to maintain, against all her habits
of mind, the opposite side. When, however, it appeared by the
Sunninghill letters that the ladies there took the same view, Mr.
Beresford had no more to say. He yielded, but not with a good grace.
‘You shall have your will,’ he said; ‘but Cara will not be happy.’ He
did not take Oswald Meredith into consideration, or any such strange
influence; and as for changing his own habits, how was that to be
thought of? Life was hard enough anyhow, with all the alleviations which
fate permitted. Did anyone suppose that a girl of seventeen, whom he
scarcely knew, could be made into a companion for him by the mere fact
that she was his daughter? No; his mornings, which were occupied with
what he called hard work; his afternoons, which he spent among his
serious friends in his clubs and learned societies; and that evening
hour, most refreshing to his soul of any, in which the truest sympathy,
the tenderest kindness proved a cordial which kept him alive--which of
these, was it to be supposed, he would give up for the society of little
Cara? He was very glad to give her all that was wanted for her
comfort--a good careful attendant, plenty of dresses and pocket-money,
and so forth; but he could not devote himself, surely (who could expect
it?), to the society of a child. That anyone should expect this gave him
even a little repulsion from, a half-prejudice against her. When she
appeared, with that serious, half-disapproving look of hers, and when he
realised her, seated upstairs in that drawing-room which he had never
entered since her mother’s death, among all her mother’s relics,
recalling to him at once a poignant sense of his loss, and a sharp
thrill of conscious pain, in having so far surmounted that loss and put
it behind him, the impulse of separation came still more strongly upon
him. He shut himself up in his study more determinedly in the morning,
and in the evening had more need than ever of the consoling visits which
wound him up and kept his moral being in harmony. He had to ask Mrs.
Meredith her advice and her opinion, and to ask even her guidance in
respect to Cara. Who could tell him so well what to do with a girl as
the kindest and best of women? Oswald, who had been at home for some
time, did not like these visits so well as his mother did. No one ever
suggested to the young man that he was _de trop_; but to be sure there
were pauses in their conversation when this third person was present,
and allusions would be made which he did not understand. So that
latterly he had been out or in the library downstairs when Mr. Beresford
came; very often out, which Mrs. Meredith did not like, but did not know
how to prevent, for to be sure she felt the embarrassment also of her
son’s slight disapproval, and of the restraint his presence produced.
Why should he cause a restraint? her boy! but she felt that he did so,
and it made her unhappy. It was pleasanter in the former evenings, when
Mr. Beresford came home only now and then, and there was neither a Cara
nor an Oswald to perplex the simple state of affairs.
‘How is she to amuse herself!’ Mr. Beresford said to her. ‘Yes, yes, I
know you will do what you can--when was there ever a time when you did
not do what you could and more?--but I cannot take her about, I cannot
have anyone in the house to keep her company, and how is she to live
there, a young girl, alone?’
‘I think Cara will do very well,’ said Mrs. Meredith. ‘She can always
come to me. I have told her so; and the people we know are all beginning
to call. She will soon have plenty of friends. People will invite her,
and you must go with her here and there.’
‘_I_ go with her? You know how I hate going out!’
‘Once at least--say only once. You must do that, and then you will find
Cara will have her own friends; she will not be a difficulty any longer.
I am glad you trust in me to do what I can for her--and Oswald.’
‘Of course I trust in you,’ he said; ‘but it will break up everything. I
know it will--after coming to a kind of calm, after feeling that I can
settle down again, and that life is not utterly distasteful to me--you
will not wonder that I should be frightened for everything. And you, who
have done so much for me.’
‘I have not done anything,’ said Mrs. Meredith, looking up smiling from
her book.
‘You say so; but it is you who have done everything; and if I am to be
plucked from my refuge now, and pitched forth upon the world---- I
believe I am a coward. I shrink from mere outside intercourse, from
being knocked up against one and another, and shut out from what I prize
most.’
‘How can that be?’ she said; ‘you get fretful, you men, when everything
does not go as you wish. Have a little patience. When Oswald came home,
it seemed at first, as if he, dear boy, was going to upset all my
habits; but it was a vain fear. The first little strangeness is over,
and he has settled down, and we are happy--happier than ever. It will be
the same with Cara and you.’
Beresford gave a half-groan of dissent. I fear Mrs. Meredith saw that it
had a double meaning, and that it expressed a certain impatience of her
son as well as of his daughter; but this was one of the things which she
would not see.
‘Yes,’ she said, with a little nod of her head, ‘I will answer for it,
it will be just the same with Cara and you.’
Mr. Beresford gave a little snort at this of absolute dissatisfaction.
‘I don’t like changes of any kind,’ he said; ‘when we have got to be
tolerably well in this dismal world, why not be content with it, and
stop there! _Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien._ How true that is! and yet
what can be better than well? I dislike changes, and this almost more
than any other. I foresee it will bring me a thousand troubles--not to
you, I hope,’ he said, his voice slightly faltering; ‘it would be
unbearable indeed if it brought any trouble to you.’
‘Cara cannot bring any trouble to me,’ she said brightly; ‘of that I am
sure enough: you are making a ghost of the dearest child. By-and-by you
will see how sweet she is and how good.’
‘All girls have a way of being sweet and good,’ he said cynically, which
was a mood quite uncongenial to him and out of his way.
‘That is not like you,’ said Mrs. Meredith.
He knew it was not. The thought had passed through his own mind that the
saying was ungenerous and unworthy of him, and unworthy of utterance in
her presence. What could any man be worth who could utter one of those
foolish stock taunts against women in any stage of life, before a woman
who was to him the queen of friends, the essence of everything
consolatory and sweet. ‘You are always right,’ he replied hastily, ‘and
I am wrong, as a matter of course. I am out of sorts. I had but just
caught hold of life again and found it practicable, and here seems
something that may unsettle all; but I am wrong, it is almost certain,
and you must be right.’
‘That is a delightful sentiment--for me; but I am sure of my ground
about Cara. Oh, quite sure!’ she said, ‘as sure--as I am of my own
boys.’
Beresford did not say anything, but he breathed a short impatient sigh.
Her boys were all very well at a distance. When they had been absent he
had been fond of them, and had shared in the sentiment expressed by all
Mrs. Meredith’s friends, of regret for their absence; but when a small
share even of a woman’s company has become one of your daily comforts it
is difficult not to find her grown-up son in your way. He reflected upon
this as he shook hands with her, and went back to his dwelling-place
next door with a consciousness of impatience which was quite
unjustifiable. To be sure her grown-up son had a right to her which
nothing could gainsay, and was, in a sort of a way, master of the house
under her, and might even have a kind of right to show certain mild
objections and dislikes to special visitors. Mr. Beresford could not
deny these privileges of a son; but they galled him, and there was in
his mind an unexpressed irritation against those troublesome members of
the new generation who would thrust themselves in the way of their
elders, and tread upon their heels perpetually. Children were much
pleasanter than these grown-up young people. He did not see the use of
them. Cara, for instance, though it was supposed she was to keep house
for her father, of what use was she in the house? Cook (naturally) knew
a hundred times more than she did, and kept everything going as on
wheels. As for Oswald Meredith, who had been a sprightly and delightful
boy, what was he now?--an idle young man about town, quite beyond his
mother’s management; doing nothing, probably good for nothing, idling
away the best years of his life. Why did not she send him to India, as
he was doing so little here? What an ease to everybody concerned that
would be! He thought of it in the most philosophical way, as good for
everybody, best for the young man--a relief to his mother’s anxieties, a
thing which his best friends must desire. What a pity that it could not
be done at once! But it would scarcely be good policy on his part to
suggest it to Oswald’s mother. She might think he had other motives; and
what motive could he have except to promote the welfare of the son of
such a kind friend?