AT HOME.
When Mrs. Eastwood received, after a long and anxious waiting,
Frederick’s letter from Leghorn, telling her of his illness and
detention in Paris (“the last place in the world one would like to be
ill in,” she said in her innocence), she was, as might be supposed,
greatly agitated and distressed. Her first thought was for his health,
poor fellow! her second for the office, and whether he could get an
extension of leave, or if this staying away without permission would
injure him. She did not quite know which of her counsellors to send for
in such an emergency, and therefore she did what she would have done in
any case, whether her advisers had bidden her or not. After she had
wondered with Ellinor what it could have been, and why he gave them no
details, and had cried over the bad news, and taken comfort at the
thought he was better, she sent for her habitual fly, the vehicle which
she had patronized ever since she put down her carriage. It was a very
respectable fly, with a sensible brown horse, which never got into any
trouble, as the horses of private individuals do, but would stand as
patiently at a door of its own free will as if it knew there was a place
round the corner where its inferior brother, the coachman, went to
refresh himself, and sympathized in his thirst. Mrs. Eastwood and
Ellinor got into this respectable vehicle about twelve o’clock, and
drove by Whitehall and the Horse Guards to the Sealing-Wax Office. There
they found the head of the office, Mr. Bellingham, who had just come in
from his cottage in the country, with a rosebud in his coat, which came
from his own conservatory, and had roused the envy of all the young men
as he came by. Mrs. Eastwood explained that Frederick had been detained
by illness in Paris. He had not written sooner in order that his friends
might not be anxious, she explained, and she hoped, as it was totally
unforeseen, and very, very inconvenient to himself, that there would be
no difficulty in the office. Mr. Bellingham smiled upon her, and said he
would make all that right. “Jolly place to be ill in,” he said with a
little nod and smile. “Indeed, I thought it the very last place in the
world for a sick person,” said Mrs. Eastwood, feeling somehow that her
boy’s sufferings were held too lightly; “so little privacy, so much
noise and bustle; and in a hotel, of course, the comforts of home are
not to be looked for.” It seemed to Ellinor that Mr. Bellingham’s
countenance bore traces of a suppressed grin, but he said nothing more
than that a letter had been received at the office from the sufferer,
and that, of course, under the circumstances, there would be no question
about the extended leave. “That is all right, at least,” Mrs. Eastwood
said as they left the office; but it may well be supposed that to wait
ten days for any news whatever of the absent son, and at the end of that
period, when they began to expect his return, to hear that he had been
ill all the time within reach of them was not pleasant. The mother and
daughter could talk of nothing else as they drove home.
“If he had but written at first, when he felt himself getting ill, you
or I, or both of us, might have gone to him, Nelly. I cannot think of
anything more dreary than being ill in an inn. And then the expense! I
wonder if he has money enough, poor boy, to bring him home?”
“If he wanted money he would have told you so,” said Nelly, half uneasy,
she could not quite tell why.
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Eastwood, “boys are so odd. To be sure, when
they want money they generally let one know. But there never was
anything so tiresome, so vague, as men’s letters about themselves. ‘I
have been ill.’--Now if it had been you or me, Nelly, we should have
said, ‘I took cold, or I got a bad headache,’ or whatever it was, on
such a day--and how it got worse or better; and when we were able to get
up again, or to get out again. It is not Frederick alone. It is every
man. They tell you just enough to make you unhappy--never any details. I
suppose,” she added, with a sigh, “it is because that sort of meagre
information is enough for themselves. They don’t care to know all about
it as women do. They don’t understand what it is to be really anxious.
In a great many ways, Nelly, men have the advantage over us--things,
too, that no laws can change.”
“I don’t think it is an advantage not to care,” said Nelly indignantly.
“I am not so sure of that,” said her mother. “We care so much that we
can’t think of anything else. We can’t take things calmly as they do.
And they have an advantage in it. Frederick is a very good son, but if I
were to write to him, ‘I have been ill, and I am better,’ he would be
quite satisfied, he would want nothing more. Whereas I want a great deal
more,” Mrs. Eastwood said, flicking off with her finger the ghost of a
tear which had gathered, in spite of her, in the corner of her eye, and
giving a short little broken laugh. The path of fathers and mothers is
often strewn with roses, but the roses have very big thorns. Even Nelly,
who was young, whose heart leapt forward to a future of her own, in
which brothers had but little share, did not here quite comprehend her
mother. For her own part, had she been left to herself, it is possible
that Frederick’s “I have been ill, but I am better,” would have
satisfied all her anxieties; but as the girl by force of sympathy was
but half herself and half her mother, she entered into the feelings
which she did not altogether share with a warmth which was increased by
partisanship, if such a word can be used in such a case.
“It is wicked of him not to write more fully,” she said.
“No, Nelly, dear, not wicked, only thoughtless; all men are the same,”
said Mrs. Eastwood. And to be sure this large generalization affords a
little comfort now and then to women, as the same principle does to men
in different circumstances; for there is nothing about which the two
halves of humanity are so fond of generalizing as each other. It seems
to afford a certain consolation that “all men are just the same,” or
that “women are like that everywhere”--an explanation which, at least,
partially exonerates the immediate offender.
Another week elapsed, during which the Eastwoods carried on their
existence much as usual, unmoved to appearance by the delay, and not
deeply disturbed by the prospect of the new arrival. Mrs. Eastwood spoke
to Mr. Brotherton, her rector and adviser about “the boys,” on the
subject, but not much came of it; for Mr. Brotherton, though fond, like
most people, of giving advice, and feeling, like most people, that a
widow with sons to educate was his lawful prey, was yet shy of saying
anything on the subject of Frederick, who was no longer a boy. Whether
any more serious uneasiness lay underneath her anxiety for her son’s
health, no one, not even Mrs. Eastwood’s chief and privy councillor,
could have told; but when appealed to as to what he thought on the
subject, whether another messenger or the mother herself should go to
the succour of the invalid, Mr. Brotherton shook his head and did not
know what to advise. “If he has been able to go on to Leghorn, I think
you may feel very confident that he is all right again,” he said. “You
must not make yourself unhappy about him. From Leghorn to Pisa is but a
step,” added the Rector, pleased to be able to recall his own experience
on this subject. But Mrs. Everard, the Privy Councillor, was of a
different opinion. She was always for action in every case. To sit still
and wait was a policy which had no attractions for her. She was a slight
and eager woman, who had been a great beauty in her day. Her husband had
been a judge in India, and she was, or thought she was, deeply
instructed in the law, and able to be “of real service” to her friends,
when legal knowledge was requisite. It is almost unnecessary to say that
she was as unlike Mrs. Eastwood as one woman could be to another. The
one was eager, slight, and restless, with a mind much too active for her
body, and an absolute incapacity for letting anything alone; the other
plump and peaceable, not deficient in energy when it was necessary, but
slightly inert and slow to move when the emergency did not strike her as
serious. Of course it is equally unnecessary to add that Mrs. Everard
also was a widow. This fact acts upon the character like other great
facts in life. It makes many and important modifications in the aspect
of affairs. Life _à deux_ (I don’t know any English phrase which quite
expresses this) is scarcely more different from the primitive and
original single life than is the life which, after having been _à deux_,
becomes single, without the possibility of going back to the original
standing ground. That curious mingling of a man’s position and
responsibilities with a woman’s position and responsibilities, cannot
possibly fail to mould a type of character in many respects individual.
A man who is widowed is not similarly affected, partly perhaps because
in most cases he throws the responsibility from him, and either marries
again or places some woman in the deputy position of governess or
housekeeper to represent the feminine side of life, which he does not
choose to take upon himself. Women, however, abandon their post much
less frequently, and sometimes, I suspect, get quite reconciled to the
double burden, and do not object to do all for, and be all to, their
children. Sometimes they attempt too much, and often enough they fail;
but so does everybody in everything, and widows’ sons have not shown
badly in general life. I hope the gentle reader will pardon me this
digression, which, after all, is scarcely necessary, since it is the
business of the ladies in this history to speak for themselves.
“I would go if I were in your place,” said Mrs. Everard, talking over
all these circumstances in the twilight over the fire the same evening.
“A man, as we both know, never tells you anything fully. Of course you
cannot tell in the least what is the matter with him. He may have
overtasked his strength going on to Pisa. He may break down on the road
home, with no one to look after him. I suppose this girl will be a
helpless foreign thing without any knowledge of the world. Girls are
brought up so absurdly abroad. You know my opinion, dear, on the whole
subject. I always advised you--instead of taking this trouble and
bringing her here with great expense and inconvenience, to make her an
inmate of your own house--I always advised you to settle her where she
is, paying her expenses among the people she knows. You remember what I
told you about poor Adelaide Forbes?--what a mistake she made, meaning
to be kind! You know your own affairs best; but still on this point I
think I was right.”
“Perhaps you may have been,” said Mrs. Eastwood, from the gloom of the
corner in which she was seated, “but there are some things that one
cannot do, however much one’s judgment may be convinced. Leave my own
flesh and blood to languish among strangers? I could not do it; it would
have been impossible.”
“If your flesh and blood had been a duchess, you would have done it
without a thought,” said Mrs. Everard. “She is happy where she is (I
suppose). You don’t know her temper nor her ways of thinking, nor what
kind of girl she is, and yet you will insist upon bringing her here----”
“You speak as if Frederick’s illness was mamma’s doing,” said Nelly,
with a little indignation, coming in from one of her many occupations,
and placing herself on a stool in front of the fire, in the full glow of
the firelight. Nelly was not afraid of her complexion. She did
everything a girl ought not to do in this way. She would run out in the
sunshine unprotected by veil or parasol, and she had a child’s trick of
reading by firelight, which, considering how she scorched her cheeks,
can scarcely be called anything short of wicked. This was a point upon
which Mrs. Everard kept up a vigorous but unsuccessful struggle.
“Nelly, Nelly! you will burn your eyes out. By the time you are my age
how much eyesight will you have left, do you think?”
“I don’t much care,” said Nelly, in an undertone. She thought that by
the time she reached Mrs. Everard’s age (which was under fifty) she
would have become indifferent to eyesight and everything else, in the
chills of that advanced age.
“Nelly, you are not too civil,” said Mrs. Eastwood, touching the toe of
Nelly’s pretty shoe with her own velvet slipper, in warning and reproof.
The girl drew her toes out of the way, but did not make any apology. She
was not fond of Mrs. Everard, nor indeed was any one in the house.
“Of course, I don’t mean that your decision had anything whatever to do
with Frederick’s illness,” Mrs. Everard resumed, “that I don’t need to
say. He might have been ill at home as much as abroad. I am speaking now
on the original question. Of course, if Frederick had not gone away, you
would have been spared this anxiety, and might have nursed him
comfortably at home. But that is incidental. What I _am_ sorry for is
that you are bringing a girl into your house whom you know nothing of.
She may be very nice, but she may be quite the reverse. Of course one
can never tell whether it may or may not be a happy change even for
her--but it is a great risk for you. It is a very brave thing to do. I
should not have the courage to make such an experiment, though it would
be a great deal simpler in my house, where there is no one to be
affected but myself.”
“I don’t see where the courage lies,” said Nelly; “a girl of sixteen.
What harm could she do to any one?”
“Oh, a great deal of harm, if she chose,” said Mrs. Everard; “a girl of
sixteen, in a house full of young men! One or the other of them will
fall in love with her to a certainty if she is at all pretty----”
“Oh, please!” said Mrs. Eastwood; “you do think so oddly, pardon me for
saying so, about the boys. Frederick is grown up, of course, but the
last young man in the world to think of a little cousin. And as for
Dick, he is a mere boy; and Jenny? Don’t be vexed if I laugh. This is
too funny.”
“I hope you will always think it as funny,” said the Privy Councillor
solemnly, “but I know you and I don’t think alike on these subjects.
Half the ridiculous marriages in the world spring out of the fact that
parents will not see when boys and girls start up into men and women. I
don’t mean to say that harm will come of it immediately--but once she is
in your house there is no telling how you are to get rid of her.
However, I suppose your mind is made up. About the other matter here are
the facts of the case. Frederick is ill, you don’t know how or with
what; he has taken a long and dangerous journey----”
“Not dangerous, dear, not dangerous----”
“Well, not dangerous if you please, but long and fatiguing, and
troublesome to a man who is ill. He has gone on to Pisa in a bad state
of health. You know that he has reached so far; and you know no more.
Of course he will be anxious to get home again as quickly as possible.
What if he were to get worse on the road? There is nothing more likely,
and the torturing anxiety you would feel in such circumstances I need
not suggest to you. You will be terribly unhappy. You will wait for news
until you feel it impossible to wait any longer, and then when your
strength and patience are exhausted, you will rush off to go to
him--most likely too late.”
“Oh, have a little pity upon me! Don’t talk so--don’t think so----”
“I can’t stop my thoughts,” said Mrs. Everard, not without a little
complacency, “and I have known such things to happen before now. What
more likely than that he should start before he is equal to the journey,
and break down on the way home? Then you would certainly go to him; and
my advice is, go to him now. Anticipating the evil in that way, you
would probably prevent it. In your place I would not lose a day.”
“But I could not reach Pisa,” said Mrs. Eastwood, nervously taking out
her watch, “I could not reach Pisa, even if I were to start to-night,
before they had left it; and how can I tell which way they would come? I
should miss them to a certainty. I should get there just when they were
arriving here. I should have double anxiety, and double expense----”
“If they ever arrived here,” said Mrs. Everard ominously; “but indeed it
is not my part to interfere. Some people can bear anxiety so much better
than others. I know it would kill me.”
Mrs. Eastwood very naturally objected to such a conclusion. To put up
with the imputation of feeling less than her friend, or any other woman,
in the circumstances, was unbearable. “Then you really think I have
reason to be alarmed?” she said in a tremulous voice.
“I should not have any doubt on the subject,” said her adviser. “A young
man in delicate health, a long journey, cold February weather, and not
even a doctor whom you can rely upon to see him before he starts.
Recollect I would not say half so much if I did not feel quite sure that
you would be forced to go at last--and probably too late.”
“Oh, don’t say those awful words!” said the poor woman. And thus the
conversation went on, till Brownlow appeared with the lamp, interrupting
the agitating discussion. Then Mrs. Everard went her way, leaving her
friend in very low spirits with Nelly, who, though kept up by a
wholesome spirit of opposition, was yet moved, in spite of herself, by
the gloomy picture upon which she had been looking. They sat together
over the fire for a little longer, very tearful and miserable, while
Mrs. Everard went home, strong in the sense of having done her duty
“however things might turn out.”
“Must you really go, mamma?” said Nelly, much subdued, consulting her
watch, in her turn, and thinking of the hurried start at eight o’clock
to catch the night train, and of the dismal midnight crossing of that
Channel which travellers hate and fear. “It will be a dreadful journey.
Must you really go?”
“What do _you_ think, Nelly?” said Mrs. Eastwood, beginning to recover a
little. “I have the greatest respect for Jane Everard’s opinion, but she
does always take the darkest view of everything. Oh, Nelly, what would
_you_ advise me to do?”
This was an infallible sign that the mercury had begun to rise.
“Pressure had decreased,” to use a scientific term. The mother and
daughter made up their minds, after much discussion, that to catch the
night train would be impossible, and that there might perhaps be further
news next day. “If that is your opinion, Nelly?” Mrs. Eastwood said, as
they went up-stairs, supporting herself with natural casuistry upon her
child’s counsel. The fact was that she herself saw very clearly all the
practical difficulties of the question. She loved advice, and did not
think it correct for “a woman in my position” to take any important step
without consulting her friends; and their counsel moved her deeply. She
gave all her attention to it, and received it with respectful
conviction; but she did not take it. It would be impossible to
overestimate the advantage this gave her over all her advisers.
“I knew she had made up her mind,” Mrs. Everard said next day, with
resignation. Whatever might happen she had done her duty; and the
consequences must certainly fall on the culprit’s own head.