THE FIRESIDE.
It is very hard to be obliged to alter our relationships with our
friends, and still more hard to alter the habits which have shaped our
lives. Mr. Beresford, when he was forbidden to continue his visits to
his neighbour, was like a man stranded, not knowing what to make of
himself. When the evening came he went to his library as usual, and made
an attempt to settle to his work, as he called it. But long before the
hour at which with placid regularity he had been used to go to Mrs.
Meredith’s he got uneasy. Knowing that his happy habit was to be
disturbed, he was restless and uncomfortable even before the habitual
moment came. He could not read, he could not write--how was he to spend
the slowing-moving moments, and how to account to her for the
disturbance of the usual routine? Should he write and tell her that he
was going out, that he had received a sudden invitation or a sudden
commission. When he was debating this question in his mind, Edward came
in with a very grave face to say that his mother was ill and unable to
see anyone.
‘She said you had better be told,’ said Edward; ‘she has gone to her
room. She has a--headache. She cannot see anyone to-night.’
‘Mr. Sommerville has been with you; has he anything to do with your
mother’s headache?’
‘I think so,’ said Edward, angrily--‘old meddler; but she seems to think
we must put up with him. I wish my father would come home and look after
his own affairs.’
‘It was a mission from your father, then?’ Mr. Beresford was silent for
a moment, thinking with somewhat sombre dissatisfaction of the absent
Meredith. Would it be so pleasant to see him come home? Would the
unaccustomed presence of the master be an advantage to the house? He
could not be so insincere as to echo Edward’s wish; but he was moved
sympathetically towards the youth, who certainly was quite unsuspicious
of him, whatever other people might be. ‘Go upstairs and see Cara,’ he
said; ‘she is in the drawing-room.’
The young man’s face brightened. Oswald was absent; he was not as usual
in his brother’s way; and though Edward had agreed loyally to accept
what he supposed to be the state of affairs and school himself to look
upon Cara as his future sister, that was no reason--indeed it was rather
the reverse of a reason--for avoiding her now. He went upstairs with a
kind of sweet unhappiness in his heart. If Cara was not for him, he must
put up with it; he must try to be glad if she had chosen according to
her own happiness. But in the meantime he would try to forget that, and
take what pleasure heaven might afford him in her society--a modified
imperfect happiness with an after-taste of bitterness in it--but still
better than no consolation at all.
Cara was with her aunt in the drawing-room, and they both welcomed him
with smiles. Miss Cherry, indeed, was quite effusive in her pleasure.
‘Come and tell us all the news and amuse us,’ she said; ‘that is the
chief advantage of having men about. My brother is no good, he never
goes out; and if he did go out, he never comes upstairs. I thought
Oswald would have come this evening,’ Miss Cherry said, in a tone which
for her sounded querulous; and she looked from one to the other of the
young people with a curious look. She was not pleased to be left out of
Cara’s confidence, and when they excused Oswald with one breath, both
explaining eagerly that they had known of his engagement, Miss Cherry
was if anything worse offended still. Why should not they be open, and
tell everything? she thought.
‘Besides,’ said Cara, very calmly, ‘Oswald never comes here in the
evening: he has always so many places to go to, and his club. Edward is
too young to have a club. Why should people go out always at night?
Isn’t it pleasant to stay at home?’
‘My dear, gentlemen are not like us,’ said Miss Cherry, instinctively
defending the absent, ‘and to tell the truth, when I have been going to
the play, or to a party--I mean in my young days--I used to like to see
the lighted streets--all the shops shining, and the people thronging
past on the pavement. I am afraid it was a vulgar taste; but I liked it.
And men, who can go where they please---- I am very sorry that your
mamma has a headache, Edward. She is not seeing anyone? I wonder what
James----?’ Here she stopped abruptly and looked conscious, feeling that
to discuss her brother with these young persons would be very foolish.
Fortunately they were occupied with each other, and did not pay much
attention to what she said.
‘Oh, Edward,’ said Cara, ‘stay and read to us! There is nothing I like
so much. It is always dull here in the evenings, much duller than at the
Hill, except when we go out. And Aunt Cherry has her work, and so have
I. Sit here--here is a comfortable chair close to the lamp. You have
nothing particular to do, and if your mother has a headache, she does
not want you.’
‘I don’t require to be coaxed,’ said Edward, his face glowing with
pleasure; and then a certain pallor stole over it as he said to himself,
she is treating me like her brother; but even that was pleasant, after a
sort. ‘I am quite willing to read,’ he said; ‘what shall it be? Tell me
what book you like best.’
‘Poetry,’ said Cara; ‘don’t you like poetry, Aunt Cherry? There is a
novel there; but I prefer Tennyson. Mr. Browning is a little too hard
for me. Aunt Cherry, Edward is very good when he reads out loud. You
would like to hear “Elaine”?’
‘Ye-es,’ said Miss Cherry. She cast a regretful glance at the novel,
which was fresh from Mudie’s; but soon cheered up, reflecting that she
was half through the second volume, and that it would not be amusing to
begin it over again. ‘In my young days stories would bear reading two or
three times over,’ she said, unconsciously following out her own
thought; ‘but they have fallen off like everything else. Yes, my dear, I
am always fond of poetry. Let me get my work. It is the new kind of
art-needlework, Edward. I don’t know if you have seen any of it. It is
considered a great deal better in design than the Berlin work we used to
do, and it is a very easy stitch, and goes quickly. That is what I like
in it. I must have the basket with all my crewels, Cara, and my scissors
and my thimble, before he begins. I hate interrupting anyone who is
reading. But you are only hemming, my dear. You might have prettier work
for the drawing-room. I think girls should always have some pretty work
in hand; don’t you think so, Edward? It is pleasanter to look at than
that plain piece of white work.’
‘I should think anything that Cara worked at pretty,’ said Edward,
forgetting precaution. Miss Cherry looked up at him suddenly with a
little alarm, but Cara, who was searching for the crewels, and the
thimble and the scissors, on a distant table, fortunately did not hear
what he said.
‘H-hush!’ said Miss Cherry; ‘we must not make the child vain;’ but, to
tell the truth, her lively imagination immediately leaped at a rivalship
between the brothers. ‘I suppose we must consider her fate sealed,
though she is not so frank about it as I could wish,’ she added, in an
undertone.
‘Here are your crewels, Aunt Cherry; and here is the book, Edward. What
were you talking about?’ said Cara, coming back into the warm circle of
the light.
‘Nothing, my darling--about the art-needlework, and Edward thinks it
very pretty; but I am not sure that I don’t prefer the Berlin wool.
After all, to work borders to dusters seems scarcely worth while, does
it? Oh yes, my dear, I know it is for a chair; but it looks just like a
duster. Now we used to work on silk and satin--much better worth it.’
‘Aunt Cherry, you always talk most when someone is beginning to read.’
‘Do I, dear?’ said Miss Cherry, in a wondering, injured tone. ‘Well,
then, I shall be silent. I do not think I am much given to be talkative.
Have I got everything?--then, my dear boy, please go on.’
It was a pretty scene. The rich warm centre of the fire, the moon-lamps
on either table, filled the soft atmosphere with light. Miss Cherry, in
her grey gown, which was of glistening silk, full of soft reflections,
in the evening, sat on one side, with her crewels in her lap, giving
points of subdued colour, and her face full in the light, very intent
over the work, which sometimes puzzled her a little. Cara and Edward had
the other table between them; he with his book before him, placed so
that he could see her when he raised his eyes; she with the muslin she
was hemming falling about her pretty hands--a fair white creature, with
a rose-light shed upon her from the fire. The rest of the room was less
light, enshrining this spot of brightness, but giving forth chance
gleams in every corner from mirrors which threw them forth dimly, from
china and old Venetian glass, which caught the light, and sent flickers
of colour about the walls. Mr. Beresford, who, deprived of his usual
rest, was wandering about, an _âme en peine_, looked in for a moment at
the door, and paused to look at them, and then disappeared again. He
never spent a moment longer than he could help in that haunted room; but
to-night, perhaps, in his restlessness, might have found it a relief to
take his natural place there, had he not been checked by the quiet
home-like aspect of this pretty group, which seemed complete. It did not
look like any chance combination, but seemed so harmonious, so natural
to the place, as if it had always been there, and always must possess
the warm fireside, that he was incapable of disturbing them. Better to
bear the new life alone. This genial party--what had he to do with it,
disturbing it by his past, by the ghosts that would come with him? He
shut the door noiselessly, and went back again, down to his gloomy
library. Poor Annie’s room, in which everything spoke of her--how the
loss of her had changed all the world to him, and driven him away for
ever from the soft delight of that household centre! Strangely enough,
the failure of the refuge which friendship had made for him, renewed all
his regrets tenfold for his wife whom he had lost. He seemed almost to
lose her again, and the bitterness of the first hours came back upon him
as he sat alone, having nowhere to go to. Life was hard on him, and
fate.
The party in the drawing-room had not perceived this ghost looking in
upon them: they went on tranquilly; Miss Cherry puckering her soft old
forehead over her art design, and the firelight throwing its warm
ruddiness over Cara’s white dress. Barring the troubles incident upon
art-needlework, the two ladies were giving their whole minds to the lily
maid of Astolat and her love-tragedy. But the reader was not so much
absorbed in ‘Elaine.’ Another current of thought kept flowing through
his mind underneath the poetry. He wondered whether this would be his
lot through his life, to sit in the light of the warmth which was for
his brother, and be the tame spectator of the love which was his
brother’s, and make up for the absence of the gay truant who even for
that love’s sake would not give up his own pleasures. Edward felt that
there would be a certain happiness touched with bitterness even in his
lot; but how strange that this, which he would have given his life for,
should fall to Oswald’s share, who would give so little for it, and not
to him! These thoughts ran through his mind like a cold undercurrent
below the warm sunlit surface of the visible stream; but they did not
show, and indeed they did not much disturb Edward’s happiness of the
moment, but gave it a kind of poignant thrill of feeling, which made it
more dear. He knew (he thought) that Oswald was the favoured and chosen,
but as yet he had not been told of it, and the uncertainty was still
sweet, so long as it might last.
‘Ah!’ said Cara, drawing a long breath: the poetry had got into her
head--tears were coming into her eyes, filling them and then ebbing back
again somehow, for she would not shed them. She had no thought but for
‘Elaine,’ yet felt somehow, as youth has a way of doing, a soft
comparison between herself and Elaine, a wavering of identity--was it
that she too was capable of that ‘love of the moth for the star?’ Edward
watching her, felt that there was more poetry in Cara’s blue eyes than
in the Laureate; and no shame to Mr. Tennyson. Is it not in that tender
emotion, that swelling of the heart to all lofty and sorrowful, and
beautiful things, that poetry takes its rise? Cara being truly the
poet’s vision, even to her own touched and melting consciousness, was
all Elaine in her young lover’s eyes.
‘But, my dear, my dear!’ said Miss Cherry, ‘if poor Elaine had only
loved someone like herself, some young knight that could respond to her
and make her happy, oh, how much better it would have been! It makes my
heart ache: for Lancelot, you know, never could have loved her; though
indeed I don’t know why not, for men being middle-aged is no guarantee,’
Miss Cherry added, with a little sigh, ‘against their making fools of
themselves for young girls; but it would have been far more natural and
happier for her had she set her heart on someone of her own age, who
would have made her----’
‘Oh,’ cried Cara, ‘don’t say it over again! made her happy! did Elaine
want to be made happy? She wanted what was the highest and noblest, not
asking what was to become of her. What did it matter about her? It was
enough that she found out Lancelot without even knowing his name. I
suppose such a thing might be,’ said Cara, sinking her voice in poetic
awe, ‘as that Lancelot might come to one’s very door, and one never know
him. That would be worse, far worse, than dying for his sake.’
‘Oh, Cara, Lancelot was not such a very fine character after all,’ said
Miss Cherry, ‘and though I am not so clever about poetry as you are, I
have seen many a young girl taken in with an older man, who seemed
everything that was noble, but had a very sad past behind him that
nobody knew of; but after they are married, it is always found out. I
would rather, far rather, see _you_ with a young man of your own age.’
‘Aunt Cherry!’ cried the girl, blushing all over with the hot, sudden,
overwhelming blush of her years, and then Cara threw a glance at Edward,
seeking sympathy and implying horror at this matter-of-fact view, and
caught his eye and blushed all the more; while Edward blushed too, he
knew not why. This glance of mutual understanding silenced them both,
though neither knew what electric spark had passed between them. Cara in
her confusion edged her chair a little further off, and Edward returned
to his book. It was an interruption to the delicious calm of the
evening. And Miss Cherry began to look at her watch and wonder audibly
to find that it was so late. ‘Past ten o’clock! almost time for bed. I
thought it was only about eight. Are you really going, Edward? I am sure
we are very much obliged--the evening has passed so quickly. And I hope
your mamma will be better to-morrow. Tell her how very very sorry we
are, and give her my love.’
Edward went away with his heart beating loud. To think that the rightful
enjoyment of all this belonged not to himself, but to Oswald, who was
out dining, perhaps flirting somewhere, caring so little about it. Was
it always so in this world--what a man most wanted he never got, but
that which he prized little was flung to him like a crust to a dog? How
strange it was! Edward did not go in, but lit a pensive cigar, and paced
up and down the Square, watching the lights rise into the higher
windows. He knew which was Cara’s, and watched the lighting of the
candles on the table, which he could guess by the faint brightening
which showed outside. What was she thinking of? Perhaps of Oswald,
wondering why he had not come; perhaps kindly of himself as of a
brother, in whose affection she would trust. Yes! said Edward to
himself, with pathetic enthusiasm; she should always be able to trust in
his affection. If Oswald proved but a cool lover, a cooler husband,
Edward would never fail her as a brother. She should never find out that
any other thought had ever entered his mind. She should learn that he
was always at her command, faithful to any wish of hers; but then he
recollected, poor fellow, that he was going to India, in Oswald’s place,
who would not go. How could he serve her--how could he be of use to her
then?
Miss Cherry lingered a little after she had sent Cara to bed. She wanted
to look over the end of that novel, and the fire was too good to be
left, John having imprudently heaped on coals at a late hour. Before she
opened the book she paused to think that if it had not been Oswald, she
almost wished that it had been Edward; but it was Cara, of course, who
must choose. She had not read much more than a page, however, when her
studies were disturbed. Her brother came suddenly into the room, in his
slippers, a carelessness of toilette which was quite unusual to him. He
came in making her start, and poked the fire with a sort of violence
without saying anything. Then he turned his back to the mantelpiece, and
gave a glance round the room, in all its dim perfections, and sighed.
‘Cherry,’ he said, ‘if you are not busy, I should like to ask you a
question. I came upstairs a little while ago, but you were too much
occupied to notice me.’
‘James! indeed, I never saw you.’
‘I know you did not. I did not mean to blame anyone. Tell me what you
meant the other morning, when you advised me to stay at home after
dinner--not to leave Cara? Was it for Cara’s sake?’
‘Cara was lonely, James; she has never--been used--to be left alone.’
‘Was it for Cara’s sake?’
‘Oh, James,’ said Miss Cherry, faltering, ‘don’t think I wish to
interfere! You are more able to judge than I am. It is not my place to
make any remarks upon what you do.’
‘Cherry, don’t evade the question; why did you speak to me so? Was it
entirely for Cara’s sake?’
Miss Cherry grew red and grew white. She clasped her hands together in
unconscious supplication. ‘I must say what I think if I say anything,
James. It was a little for--dear Mrs. Meredith too. One must think of
her as well. Her husband is a long way off; she is a very kind
woman--kindness itself. Even if she thought you came too often, she
would not like to say anything. Women understand women, James. She would
say to herself, that to send you away would hurt your feelings, and she
would rather bear a little annoyance herself.’
‘Do you mean to say she has had any annoyance on my account?’
‘She might have, James dear. She has not taken me into her confidence;
but people talk. I suppose if she was a widow and you could--marry----’
‘Charity!’
He had scarcely ever called her by that formal name before, and Miss
Cherry was frightened. ‘Oh!’ she cried, once more clasping her hands.
‘Do not punish me for it! It is not my fault. I know better, for I know
you both; but people will say so; and you should deny yourself for her
sake.’
‘Does _she_ wish it?’ he said hoarsely. It took him a strenuous effort
to keep down his fury; but indeed there was no one to assail.
‘She would not wish anything for herself; it would be her nature to
think of you first,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘It is not what she wishes, but
what you, me, everybody, ought to wish for her, James.’
He looked round the room with a cloud upon his face. ‘Do you know what I
see here?’ he said;--‘my past life, which I cannot recall. Am I to come
here disturbing the new life that is beginning in it--filling the place
with gloom. That does not matter, does it? Better to think of a few
malicious words, and make them the rule of one’s conduct, than strive to
follow nature and common sense.’
‘James!’ said Miss Cherry, ‘all the malicious words in the world will do
no harm to _you_!’
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘You are free, so far as that is concerned,’ said his timid sister,
rising from her seat. She looked at him with a mild contempt, strange to
be seen in the eyes of so gentle a woman. ‘You can do what you like,
James; it is not _you_ who will suffer. Good-night,’ she said.
And though Miss Cherry’s heart beat loudly, she had the courage to go
away and leave him there, transfixed with that bold dart thrown by her
most timid, faltering hand. He stood still for some time after she had
left him, unable to move with pain and astonishment. The ass of Balaam
was nothing to this tremendous _coup_ from Miss Cherry. He was struck
prostrate. Almost he forgot to think of the room and its recollections,
so entirely was he slain by this blow.