CONCLUSION.
It is not necessary to go into details, and tell how Mrs. Meredith
forgave her son and received her new daughter. In any case, I don’t
believe she would have been capable of ‘hurting Agnes’s feelings’ by a
cold reception; but as it was, she was as tender to her as if she been
her own daughter, and Oswald was the stranger husband who had to be
forgiven. A great deal of this was that superlative politeness which was
part of her nature, and part of it was the result of Edward’s
communication. The cloud which had spoilt everything was definitely
lifted from her life, and to be good to the trembling, timid bride,
which was the first kind action within her reach, was Mrs. Meredith’s
way of thanksgiving for her happiness. It must be allowed it is not a
bad way, as good as giving public thanks in church, or perhaps better,
though that is good too. When Agnes began a faltering confession of
wrong doing, Mrs. Meredith kissed her and stopped her.
‘My dear, we will think nothing more of that,’ she said; ‘we might have
wished it otherwise; but no one is beyond the reach of accident, and
this will end most happily, please God, for all of us.’
The result of the interview was that Agnes fell in love with her
mother-in-law--not a very usual thing, if one puts one’s faith in books,
yet not unparalleled. They understood each other, or rather the elder
woman understood the younger, and with her warm natural charity was able
to comprehend and excuse everything. She looked with a little wonder and
amusement at the awe with which Agnes still regarded her bridegroom.
That there should be someone in the world who did not simply make
allowance for Oswald, and love him in spite of his faults, but to whom
his faults were as yet invisible, and himself worthy of deepest respect
and admiration, was a thing which was very amusing to his mother. She
could scarcely keep from smiling when she saw the serious looks of
veneration which his wife gave him. ‘Hush, hush,’ she said, when Edward,
grown saucy, ventured to smile at his brother, and when she even herself
felt tempted to say, ‘How like Oswald!’ Oswald was like everything that
was fine and noble and generous to his bride.
‘And if he did not think of himself quite so much, how good my poor boy
is,’ the mother said, with tears in her eyes; and in future, perhaps, he
would not think so much of himself.
Anyhow, on the other side everybody was quite satisfied. Oswald, never
ungenerous, made settlements upon his wife after they were married which
filled the Burchell family with admiration. And they got a pretty
little house, and made a kind of religion of furnishing it; and for
every pretty thing they got, Agnes, compunctious, hurried down to the
House and devised something for the orphans. Sister Mary Jane grew used
to these visits, and, being a wise woman, restrained undue liberalities.
She gave a great deal of good advice to the young wife. ‘If you take on
another child for every bit of china,’ she said, ‘there will soon be no
room for the girls, and no money left in the purse.’
‘Oh, how can I let money be spent for nothings, when I know how much
need there is in the world!’ cried Agnes. It was difficult to answer
such arguments. As for Oswald, he never attempted to answer them. He
gave her to understand that she was a mixture of a goose and an angel.
‘Both have wings, you know,’ he said, going away lighthearted to his
pleasures, and understanding about as much of the more serious feelings
in her mind as her baby did when she had one, which fortunately was in
good time. He made the best of husbands, ever eager that she should
spend more money on her dressmaker, entertain more, have all manner of
pleasures. Louisa Burchell, who was the next sister, thought the little
house in Mayfair was like heaven; and Mrs. Burchell kept a list of the
important people to whose houses Agnes was asked, looking up her noble
acquaintances in the peerage, and finding out the incomes of the rich
ones, and the works of those who wrote or painted (though these last
figured much less largely in her mind). And Agnes was happy; to have a
husband you love, and in due time a pretty baby; and a delightful little
house in Mayfair, and a pair of ponies, and more dresses and bonnets
than you wish for--could there be a happier lot? If a young woman in
such beatific circumstances got confused sometimes in her mind, and
wondered whether it might not be better to walk about at the head of a
procession of school girls in a black cloak and poke-bonnet, and to work
in stuffy schoolrooms, and to have no more recreation than could be got
among the girls in St. Cecilia, what could that be but momentary
aberration or even a kind of temporary insanity? Is not a wife better
than a Sister? Oswald had no kind of doubt on the subject when he saw
his beautiful young wife at the head of his table, and reflected with
inward complacency upon the aspect she bore when first he saw her,
though at that time he had thought the poke-bonnet half-divine. But
Agnes was not so sure, had not such unhesitating convictions as her
husband, and wondered. This, perhaps, was the penalty she paid for her
escapade. Oswald’s light-heartedness was alien to her serious mood. He
took his existence so easily! and she knew that life was not so easy a
matter, and would take an occasional panic as the fair landscape glided
past her, the beautiful days and years flying away from her as fields
and trees do on a journey, when you seem yourself to be stationary, and
it is the country about that flies and travels on either side.
If she had known him longer, if she had known him better, would it have
made any difference? In all probability not the slightest, and she did
not ask herself that question; for, after all, Oswald was Oswald, and
the only man in the whole world----
As for the other personages mentioned in these pages, their affairs
worked themselves out as was to be expected, with no very extraordinary
results. Roger Burchell recovered of his wound because he could not help
it, not with any will of his; and went out to India in due time, where
he did very well and made steady progress, but neither then nor now
became very remarkable. He married too in the due course of events, when
he could afford it--as most men do, except perhaps in the very heart and
centre of society, a sect so small that it does not affect the world’s
continuance, nor need necessarily affect our peace of mind who look on.
He forgot Cara and the chapter in his life which was dominated by her,
far more completely than the romantic reader would believe possible, and
was not at all sure after he had been some years married whether it was
not he who had behaved badly to her; and, indeed, I think his wife had
this impression, and never having seen this object of his early
affections, was rather pleased to believe Cara a little flirt with whom
her Roger had been involuntarily ‘entangled,’ but escaped in time. So
stories are travestied and turned into myths with piquant change of
circumstance all over the world.
Mr. Maxwell had a more unlikely fate. Bursting out of No. 6 in the
Square, in the trouble of his mind, after that unlucky interference
which had come to less than nothing, but which must, he felt sure, cost
him his friends, he went with murderous energy through all his round of
patients, and took it out of them with unregulated zeal, making his
hypochondriacs really ill by way of variety, twisting the joints and
cramping the sinews of the unhappy people in his hands as cruelly as
Prospero. This way of avenging himself upon mankind, however, did not
prevent him from suffering tortures in his own person. Should he
apologise--should he appeal to Cara to intercede for him? Should he go
humbly to the feet of the injured one, and ask to be kicked and
forgiven? He adopted another expedient more wonderful than any of these.
Next day was the day of his weekly visit to the Hill. Lovelier lights
and visions than those that revealed themselves through the openings of
the trees on that sweetest day of June could scarcely be. The sky was as
soft as a child’s eyes--the air as its breath. The trees hung rich and
close still in their early green, throwing their wealth of foliage all
the more closely together to hide that the flowers were over, the may
faded, the golden laburnum boughs all dropped to dust. Through the leafy
arches came glimpses of the great plain all billowy with trees,
shadowing far into the blue distance, and the great grey castle with its
royal flag. Underneath on the hedgerows there was one flush of the wild
rose lighting up the winding road as with a smile. To live on such a day
was enough for pleasure. To move through it easily without fatigue, with
trees waving over you, and the unfathomable blue shining, and the sun
throwing magical gleams over the landscape, hushed even the most
restless soul to a semblance of goodness and happiness. Unless you
happen to be toiling along a dusty road, in the blaze of the sunshine,
in tight boots, or a dress too warm for the season, which circumstances
I allow to be contrary both to happiness and goodness, I cannot
understand how you could refuse to be good and happy on such a day.
But everything promoted these exemplary sensations about the Hill.
Fatigue was not there, nor dust, nor undue heat. Old Miss Charity in her
sun-bonnet, and less old but still not young Miss Cherry in her cool and
soft grey gown, were on the lawn, surrounded by a world of roses--roses
everywhere in standards, in dwarfs, on trellis-work, over arches, along
the walls. The air was just touched by them to a delicate sweetness, to
be elevated into beatitude when you approached your face to a particular
flower. Mr. Maxwell arrived with his troubled soul, and the ladies made
much of him. They compassionated him for his hot drive. They offered him
tea; they gave him, on his refusal of the tea, claret cup with great
bits of ice tinkling in it, and making a grateful noise. They gave him a
comfortable chair on the lawn, where he had his doctors’ talk with old
Miss Charity, and felt her pulse and admired its steady beat, not one
more or less than it ought to be. ‘Please God, if I live long enough,
I’ll pull you along to a hundred,’ he said, with professional
enthusiasm. ‘But I shall not live long enough,’ he added, in a
despondent tone.
‘How old are you now?’ said Miss Charity. ‘Fifty? phoo, nonsense. I am
seventy-three. I want only seven-and-twenty of the hundred. You will be
just over my present age when we’ve accomplished it. And what a thing to
have lived for?’ The old lady was more ready for the joke than he
was--he shook his head.
‘You can’t think what foolish things I have been doing,’ he said; ‘never
man made a greater fool of himself.’
‘You have been asking someone to marry you, my poor man!’
‘No, by Jove! I never thought of that,’ he said, looking up quickly.
Miss Cherry had walked discreetly out of hearing, as she always did
while they had their medical talk. This was evidently a new idea to the
doctor. ‘No,’ he went on, ‘trying to keep other people from marrying,
that was all.’
‘Still sillier; they will hate you for ever and ever,’ Miss Charity
said, in her ignorance, seated cool and smiling in her garden chair.
Meanwhile Miss Cherry strayed to one of the openings and looked
wistfully across the country. She wanted to hear about ‘the child.’ A
thousand questions were on her lips, but in her soft old-maidenly
self-consciousness she did not like to take the doctor aside in her
turn, and there were questions which she did not wish to ask in her
aunt’s presence. It may be imagined then what her surprise was when,
startled by a voice at her elbow, she turned round and found the doctor
by her side. ‘The views are lovely to-day,’ he said; but he was not
thinking of the views, Miss Cherry could see. Had he something painful
to tell her--had anything gone wrong? She began to ask a few faltering
questions. ‘Tell me about Cara,’ she said. ‘I am so hungering for news
of the child.’ Miss Cherry looked up pathetically in the doctor’s face
with wistful anxiety in her soft eyes--everything about her was soft,
from her grey gown to her eyes. A mild consolatory woman, not charming
like Mrs. Meredith, not clever like other people he knew, but a
refreshment, like green lawns and green leaves and quietness to the
heart. The doctor turned round to see that nobody was looking. The old
lady, who had her suspicions of him, had gone in, and like a naughty old
lady as she was, had gone upstairs to a bedroom window, where she stood
behind the curtains, chuckling to herself, to watch the result. When Mr.
Maxwell saw the coast was clear and nobody looking (as he thought), he
turned round again to Miss Cherry, who stood anxiously waiting for the
next word, and deliberately, without a word of preface, fired as it were
point blank into her with a pistol at her heart--that is to say, he
proposed. A greater shock never was administered by any human being to
another. Right off on the spot, without wasting any words, he offered
her himself and his brougham and his practice and all that he had. The
old lady at the window--naughty old lady!--could make out the very
moment when it was done, and saw Cherry’s start and jump of amazement.
‘Will she have him?’ she asked herself. ‘I could not put up with a man
in my house.’ But it does not do to take a gentle old maiden like Miss
Cherry so suddenly. In the very extremity of her surprise, she said no.
How she trembled! ‘Oh no, I could not, I could not, thank you, Mr.
Maxwell! I am too old _now_. Long ago I might have thought of such a
thing; but I could not, I could not. It is not possible. You must excuse
me _now_.’
‘Oh, no one will force you, Miss Cherry, against your inclination,’ said
the doctor, angry and discomfited. And without waiting to say good-day
to his patient, he went off and threw himself into his brougham more
uncomfortable than before.
Whether Miss Cherry ever regretted this I cannot tell--perhaps if she
had not been so entirely taken by surprise--but ‘Oh no, oh no,’ she said
to herself, ‘I could not have done it. It would have been cheating
Cara.’ But what a shock it was on that June afternoon! As if the man had
brought an electric battery with him, Miss Charity said, who was the
only one of the three, however, to whom it was an amusement and no shock
at all.
Such was the end of this middle-aged wooing, which was all over in a
quarter of an hour. The other of which we know, which had been going on
so long, and which only artificial motives made into a wooing at all,
had been broken off very abruptly by that interpellation of Dr.
Maxwell’s and all that followed. It was not till after the commotion
caused by Oswald’s return, and all the arrangements consequent upon his
marriage, were over, that the two friends returned to this broken
chapter again. The changes which had happened had not thrown them apart,
however, and the naturalness with which, even in the suspense of this
question between themselves, their intercourse went on, showed plainly
either that warmer relationships were unlikely or that they were the
most natural things in the world; but which? Each of them had been
slightly piqued by the absence of enthusiasm on the part of the other,
but even that pique produced no enthusiasm in themselves. They were
exactly in the same state of feeling, their minds only too much alike.
But a return to the question was inevitable one way or other, and Mr.
Beresford took it in hand, not without a little tremor, one still summer
evening at the usual hour, when they were sitting in their usual places,
their windows open, but the lamps lighted, and the soft dusk outside
relieving with its shadowy background the soft illumination within.
‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘the talk we had one evening before all
these agitations began? It was not decided. You would not say yes, or
no.’
‘Would I not say no? it was because it has too harsh a sound. Why should
there be yes’es or no’es between you and me?’
‘Ah, but it was needful. What do you say now? I can only repeat what I
said then. You know all my heart. Speak to me, dear. Shall it be yes or
no?’
She had nothing to do with blushing at her age--yet she blushed and was
ashamed of it; but looked at him frankly, openly, all the same, holding
out her hands. ‘Dear,’ she said, ‘I will call you so too. No; why should
we do this and disturb our life and trouble our children with new ideas.
Listen, James Beresford. I would rather marry you than lose you; but
there is no thought of losing you in any case.’
‘None, my dear, none--none, whatever comes of it.’
‘Then why should we trouble each other with new ideas and disturb our
lives? We cannot be happier in our intercourse, you and I; we have all
we want in each other. Let the children marry; it is natural. What a
blessing of God it is that we have these dear proxies, James! And my boy
is not going away,’ she said, the tears coming to her eyes. ‘And I love
your girl as if she were my own--and we are the father and mother
without any trouble. What could heart wish for more?’
And no more was said. The subject was closed at once and for ever. Such
is the perversity of human nature, that when James Beresford went home
that evening he felt just a little cast down, disgusted, lonely, and
slighted as it were by fate. He had not really wished for the change;
indeed, did not really wish for it now; but yet--on the other side of
the wall, Mrs. Meredith was much more comfortable--for why? She had been
permitted the woman’s privilege of being the refuser, which banished all
possibilities of pique, and made it impossible for her to feel herself
slighted. But by-and-by they were both a great deal happier, and at
their ease, which they had not been for weeks before.
And do I need to tell how the natural conclusion which their father and
mother wisely and happily evaded arrived for Edward and Cara? Not quite
immediately, however, for the young man gathered his note-books together
again, and having given up India, entered upon his course of dinners,
and betook himself (like most other people) to the Bar. He was ‘called’
before the marriage took place; and when the marriage did take place the
young people remained along with the old people in the two houses which
were one. It would be hard to make an absolute appropriation of what
belongs to No. 6 and what belongs to No. 8 in the Square. The thing
which is most like a fixture is Mrs. Meredith, who sits smiling in the
same chair as the years go on, hearing what everybody has to say. She is
not expected to go to anyone; but everyone comes to her; and her chair
is the only absolutely undisputed piece of property in the two houses.
The young people are very happy and go honeymooning as once their elders
did; and sometimes Mr. Beresford will make a journey in the interests of
science or art. But nothing has touched the double house, nor is likely
to touch it, till death does those sworn companions part.
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Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
beileved he would always=> believed he would always {pg 78}
coming in brokes uddenly=> coming in broke suddenly {pg 205}
herself treexmely disagreeable=> herself extremely disagreeable {pg 223}
being scarely fashionable=> being scarcely fashionable {pg 233}
It will send you=> I will send you {pg 249}
eager to her all about=> eager to hear all about {pg 269}
were like emblmes=> were like emblemes {pg 356}
ppinion for granted=> opinion for granted {pg 374}
believe that oerhaps=> believe that perhaps {pg 374}
still speechlsss=> still speechless {pg 398}
were bridgroom and bride=> were bridegroom and bride {pg 402}
she said falteriug=> she said faltering {pg 404}
unkindly, or coldy=> unkindly, or coldly {pg 411}