Carità

CHAPTER VII.

THE CATASTROPHE.

James Beresford was not brave. He was very kind and tender and good; but he had not courage to meet the darker emergencies of life. He felt as he rushed downstairs from his wife’s presence that he had but postponed the evil day, and that many another dreadful argument on this subject, which was not within the range of arguing, lay before him. What could he say to her? He felt the abstract justice of her plea. A hopeless, miserable, lingering, loathsome disease, which wore out even love itself, and made death a longed-for relief instead of a calamity. What could he say when she appealed to him to release her from that anguish of waiting, and hasten the deliverance which only could come in one way? He could not say that it would be wicked or a sin; all that he could say was, that he had not the courage to do it—had not the strength to put her away from him. Was it true, he asked himself, that he would rather watch out her lingering agonies than deprive himself of the sight of her, or consent to part with her a day sooner than he must? Was it himself he was thinking of alone, not her? Could he see her anguish and not dare to set her free? He knew that, in the case of another man, he would have counselled the harder self-sacrifice. But he, how could he do it? He rushed out of the house, through the afternoon sunshine, away to the first space he could find near, and struck across the open park, where there was no one to disturb him, avoiding all the pleasant walks and paths where people were. The open space and the silence subdued his excitement; and yet what could really bring him peace? He had no peace to look for—nothing but a renewed and ever-new painful struggle with her and with himself. Yes, even with himself. If she suffered greatly, he asked, with a shudder, how could he stand by and look on, knowing that he could deliver her? And would not she renew her prayers and cries to him for deliverance? God help him! It was not as if he had made an end of that mad prayer once and for ever by refusing it. It would come back—he knew it would come back—hour by hour and day by day.

Oh, how people talk (he thought) of such mysteries when the trouble is not theirs! He himself had argued the question often, in her hearing, even with her support. He had made it as clear as day to himself and to others. He had asked what but cowardice—miserable cowardice—would keep a man from fulfilling this last dread, yet tender service? Only love would dare it—but love supreme, what will that not do, to save, to succour, to help, to deliver? Love was not love which would shrink and think of self. So he had often said with indignant, impassioned expansion of the heart—and she had listened and echoed what he said. All this returned to him as he rushed across the dewy grass, wet with spring rains, and untrodden by any other foot, with London vague in mists and muffled noises all round. Brave words—brave words! he remembered them, and his heart grew sick with self-pity. How did he know it was coming to him? How could he think that this case which was so plain, so clear, should one day be his own? God and all good spirits have pity upon him! He would have bidden you to do it, praised you with tears of sympathy for that tremendous proof of love; but himself? He shrank, shrank, contracted within himself; retreated, crouching and slinking, from the house. What a poor cur he was, not worthy the name of man! but he could not do it; it was beyond the measure of his powers.

When he turned to go home the afternoon light was waning. Small heart had he to go home. If he could have escaped anywhere he would have been tempted to do so; and yet he was on the rack till he returned to her. Oh, that Heaven would give her that sweet patience, that angelical calm in suffering, which some women have! Was it only religious women who had that calm? He asked himself this question with a piteous helplessness; for neither he nor she had been religious in the ordinary sense of the word. They had been good so far as they knew how—enjoying themselves, yet without unkindness, nay, with true friendliness, charity, brotherly-heartedness to their neighbours; but as for God, they had known little and thought less of that supreme vague Existence whom they accepted as a belief, without knowing Him as a person, or desiring to know. And now, perhaps, had their theory of life been different they might have been better prepared for this emergency. Was it so? He could not tell. Perhaps philosophy was enough with some strong natures, perhaps it was temperament. Who can tell how human creatures are moved; who touches the spring, and what the spring is, which makes one rebellious and another submissive, sweet as an angel? He had loved the movement, the variety, the indocility, the very caprice, of his wife, in all of which she was so much herself. Submission, resignedness, were not in that changeful, vivacious, wilful nature; but, oh, if only now the meekness of the more passive woman could somehow get transfused into her veins, the heavenly patience, the self courage that can meet anguish with a smile! There was Cherry, his faded old maiden sister—had it been she, it was in her to have drawn her cloak over the gnawing vulture, and borne her tortures without a sign of flinching. But even the very idea of this comparison hurt him while it flashed through his mind. It was a slight to Annie to think that any one could bear this horrible fate more nobly than she. Poor Annie! by this time had she exhausted the first shock? Had she forgiven him? Was she asking for him? He turned, bewildered by all his dreary thoughts, and calmed a little by fatigue and silence, to go home once more.

It was getting dusk. As he passed the populous places of the park the hum of voices and pleasant sounds came over him dreamily like a waft of warmer air. He passed through that murmur of life and pleasure, and hurried along to the more silent stony streets among which his Square lay. As he approached he overtook Maxwell walking in the same direction, who looked at him with some suspicion. The two men accosted each other at the same moment.

‘I wanted to see you. Come with me,’ said Beresford; and——’ What is the matter? Why did you send for me?’ the doctor cried.

Then Maxwell explained that a hurried message had come for him more than an hour before, while he was out, and that he was on his way to the Square now.

‘Has there been any—change?’ he said. After this they sped along hurriedly with little conversation. There seemed something strange already about the house when they came in sight of it. The blinds were down in all the upper windows, but; at the library appeared Cara’s little white face looking eagerly out. She was looking out, but she did not see them, and an organ-man stood in front of the house grinding out the notes of the Trovatore’s song ‘Ah, che la morte,’ upon his terrible instrument. Cara’s eyes and attention seemed absorbed in this. James Beresford opened the door with his latch-key unobserved by any one, and went upstairs direct, followed by the doctor, to his wife’s room.

How still it was! How dark! She was fond of light, and always had one of those tall moon lamps, which were her favourites; there was no lamp in the room, however, now, but only some twinkling candles, and through the side window a glimmer of chill blue sky. Nurse rose as her master opened the door. She gave a low cry at the sight of him. ‘Oh, don’t come here, sir, don’t come here!’ she cried.

‘Is she angry, still angry?’ said poor Beresford, his countenance falling.

‘Oh, go away, sir; it was the doctor we wanted!’ said the woman.

Meantime Maxwell had pushed forward to the bedside, He gave a cry of dismay and horror, surprise taking from him all self-control. ‘When did this happen?’ he said.

James Beresford pressed forward too, pushing aside the woman who tried to prevent him; and there he saw—what? Not his wife: a pale, lovely image, still as she never was in her life, far away, passive, solemn, neither caring for him nor any one; beyond all pain or fear of pain. ‘My God!’ he said. He did not seem even to wonder. Suddenly it became quite clear to him that for years he had known exactly how this would be.

Maxwell put the husband, who stood stupefied, out of his way; he called the weeping nurse, who, now that there was nothing to conceal, gave free outlet to her sorrow. ‘Oh, don’t ask me, sir, I can’t tell you!’ she said among her sobs. ‘Miss Carry rung the bell and I came. And from that to this never a word from her, no more than moans and hard breathing. I sent for you, sir, and then for the nearest as I could get. He came, but there was nothing as could be done. If she took it herself or if it was give her, how can I tell? Miss Carry, poor child, she don’t know what’s happened; she’s watching in the library for her papa. The medicine-box was on the table, sir, as you see. Oh, I don’t hold with them medicine-boxes; they puts things into folk’s heads! The other doctor said as it was laudanum; but if she took it, or if it was give her——’

Mr. Maxwell stopped the woman by a touch on the arm. Poor Beresford stood still there, supporting himself by the bed, gazing upon that which was no more his wife. His countenance was like that of one who had himself died; his mouth was open, the under lip dropped; the eyes strained and tearless. He heard, yet he did not hear what they were saying. Later it came back to his mind; at present he knew nothing of it. ‘God help him!’ said the doctor, turning away to the other end of the room. And there he heard the rest of the story. They left the two together who had been all in all to each other. Had he given her the quietus, he who loved her most, or had she taken it? This was what neither of them could tell. They stood whispering together while the husband, propping himself by the bed, looked at her. At her? It was not her. He stood and looked and wondered, with a dull aching in him. No more—he could not go to her, call her by her name. A dreary, horrible sense that this still figure was some one else, a something new and unknown to him, another woman who was not his wife, came into his soul. He was frozen by the sudden shock; his blood turned into ice, his heart to stone. Annie! oh, heaven, no; not that; not the marble woman lying in her place! He was himself stone, but she was sculptured marble, a figure to put on a monument. Two hours of time—light, frivolous, flying hours—could not change flesh and blood into that; could not put life so far, and make it so impossible. He did not feel that he was bereaved, or a mourner, or that he had lost what he most loved; he felt only a stone, looking at stone, with a dull ache in him, and a dull consternation, nothing more. When Maxwell came and took him by the arm he obeyed stupidly, and went with his friend, not moving with any will of his own, but only because the other moved him; making no ‘scene’ or terrible demonstrations of misery. Maxwell led him downstairs holding him by the arm, as if he had been made of wood, and took him to the library, and thrust him into a chair, still in the same passive state. It was quite dark there, and Cara, roused from her partial trance of watching at the window, stumbled down from her chair at the sight of them, with a cry of alarm, yet relief, for the lamps outside had beguiled the child, and kept her from perceiving how dark it had grown till she turned round. No one had thought of bringing in the lamp, of lighting the candles, or any of the common offices of life in that house where Death had so suddenly set up his seat. The doctor rang the bell and ordered lights and wine. He began to fear for James: his own mind was agitated with doubts, and a mingled severity and sympathy. He felt that whatever had happened he must find it out; but, whatever had happened, how could he do less than feel the sentiment of a brother for his friend? He did not take much notice of the child, but stooped and kissed her, being the friend of the house, and bade her go to her nurse in a softened tender tone. But he scarcely remarked that Cara did not go. Poor child, who had lost her mother! but his pity for her was of a secondary kind. It was the man whom he had to think of—who had done it, perhaps—who, perhaps, was his wife’s innocent murderer—yet whom, nevertheless, this good man felt his heart yearn and melt over. When the frightened servant came in, with red eyes, bringing the wine, Maxwell poured out some for the chief sufferer, who sat motionless where he had placed him, saying nothing. It was necessary to rouse him one way or other from this stupefaction of pain.

‘Beresford,’ he said curtly, ‘listen to me; we must understand each other. It is you who have done this? Be frank with me—be open. It is either you or she herself. I have never met with such a case before; but I am not the man to be hard upon you. Beresford! James! think, my dear fellow, think; we were boys together; you can’t suppose I’ll he hard on you.’

‘She asked me—she begged of me,’ said Beresford, slowly. ‘Maxwell, you are clever, you can do wonders.’

‘I can’t bring those back that have gone—there,’ said the doctor, a sudden spasm coming in his throat. ‘Don’t speak of the impossible. Clever—God knows! miserable bunglers, that is what we are, knowing nothing. James! I won’t blame you; I would have done it myself in your place. Speak out; you need not have any reserves from me.’

‘It isn’t that. Maxwell, look here; they’ve spirited my wife away, and put that in her place.’

‘God! he’s going mad,’ said the doctor, feeling his own head buzz and swim.

‘No,’ was the answer, with a sigh. ‘No, I almost wish I could. I tell you it is not her. You saw it as well as I. That my wife? Maxwell——’

‘It is all that remains of her,’ said the doctor, sternly. ‘Mind what I say; I must know; no more of this raving. Did you do it? Of course she asked you, poor soul!’ (Here the doctor’s voice wavered as if a gust of wind had blown it about.) ‘She never could endure the thought of pain; she asked you, it was natural: and you gave her—opium?’

‘Nothing. I dared not,’ he said, with a shiver. ‘I had not the courage. I let her plead; but I had not the courage. What? put her away from me, willingly? how could I do it? Yes; if she had been in a paroxysm; if I had seen her in agony; but she was calm, not suffering, and she asked me to do it in cold blood?’

‘What then?’ The doctor spoke sternly, keeping the tone of authority to which in his stupefied state poor Beresford appeared to respond. Cara from a corner looked on with wide-open eyes, listening to everything.

‘Nothing more,’ he said, still sighing heavily. ‘It was more than I could bear. I rushed away. I went out to calm myself—to try and think; and I met you, Maxwell; and now——’

He lifted his hands with a shuddering gesture. ‘That is all—that is all! and this desolate place is my—home; and that is—Annie! No, no! Maxwell, some of your doctors—your cruel doctors—have taken her away to try their experiments. Oh, say it is so, and I’ll thank you on my knees!’

‘Be quiet, Beresford! Try and be a man. Don’t you see what I have got to do? If it was not you it was herself. I don’t blame her, poor soul, poor soul! the thought of all she had to go through made her mad. Be silent, man, I tell you! We must not have her branded with the name of suicide, James,’ cried the doctor, fairly sobbing. ‘Poor girl, poor girl! it is not much wonder if she was afraid; but we must not let them say ill of her now she is gone. I remember her before you married her, a lovely creature; and there she is, lying—but they must not speak ill of her. I’ll say it was—— Yes. if it’s a lie I can’t help that—my conscience will bear it—there must not be talk, and an inquest. Yes, that’s what I’ll say.’

‘An inquest!’ said the wretched husband, waking up from his stupor with a great cry.

‘I’ll take it upon myself,’ said Maxwell, going to the writing-table. Then he saw Cara leaning out of her chair towards them with great strained wide-open eyes.

‘Cara! have you heard all we were saying?’

‘I don’t understand, I don’t understand!’ said the child with sudden sobs. ‘What have you done to my mamma?’

The door of the library opened softly, and they all started as if at the approach of a new calamity.

‘If you please, sir,’ said John, addressing Maxwell with natural recognition of the only source of authority, ‘I came to see if you wouldn’t have some dinner—and master——’

With a moan, Beresford hid his face in his hands. Dinner must be, whosoever lives or dies—if the world were breaking up—if hope and love had failed for ever. John stood for a moment against the more powerful light of the gas in the hall, for his answer, and then, not getting any, he had the grace to steal quietly away.

But this wonderful intrusion of the outer ordinary life disturbed the melancholy assembly. It roused Beresford to a sense of what had befallen him. He got up and began to pace up and down the long room, and Cara’s sobs broke the silence, and Maxwell at the table, with a spasm in his throat, compiled the certificate of the death. In what medical form he put it I cannot tell; but he strained his conscience and said something which would pass, which nobody could contradict; was not that enough? ‘I hope I may never do anything more wicked,’ he said, muttering to himself. The nurse came to call the child, which was the first thing that had seemed natural to Cara in the whole miserable day’s proceedings. She did not resist the command to go to bed, as they had all resisted the invitation to dine. She got up quickly when nurse called her, glad of something she was used to.

‘It’s the only place as we’re all fit for,’ said nurse, with a sigh of weariness; ‘your poor papa, Miss Carry, as well as the rest.’ Then she turned to the gentlemen with a touch of natural oratory. ‘What is the use of talking,’ she said; ‘I’m one as has loved her since first she drew breath. She was my child, she was; and look you here, I’m glad—her old nurse is glad. I’ll not cry nor make no moan for her,’ said nurse, the tears running down her cheeks. ‘I’d have give her that dose myself if the darling had asked me; I would, and never have trembled. I’d have done it and stood up bold and told you I done it, and I don’t blame her. She’s seen what it was, and so have I.’

‘Nurse, you are a good woman,’ said the doctor, coming hastily forward and grasping her hand. ‘Nurse, hold your tongue, and don’t say a word. Don’t let those idiots talk downstairs. I’m ready to give them the reason of it whoever asks. I did not know it would come on so quickly when I left to-day; but I know what it is that has carried her off. It was to be expected, if we hadn’t all been a parcel of fools.’

Nurse looked him anxiously in the face. ‘Then it wasn’t—it wasn’t?—— Ah!’ she added, drawing a long breath, ‘I think I understand.’

‘Now, hold your tongue,’ he cried, curtly, ‘and stop the others. You are a sensible woman. My poor little Cara, good-night.’

‘Don’t speak to him,’ nurse whispered, drawing the child away. ‘Leave your poor papa alone, darling. God help him, he can’t say nothing to you to-night. Here’s Sarah coming to put you to bed, and glad I’d be to be there too: it’s the only place as we’re fit for now.’

Sarah, who was waiting outside, had red eyes overflowing with tears. She hugged the little girl and kissed her, bursting out into fits of subdued crying. But Cara’s own sobs were stilled and over. Her head ached with bewildering pain; her mind was full of confused bewildering thoughts.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONSOLATION.

‘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.

CHAPTER IX.

THE HILL.

After this a long interval passed, which it is needless to describe in detail. Five years is a long time in a life; how much it does! Makes ties and breaks them, gives life and withdraws it, finds you happy and leaves you miserable, builds you up or plucks you down; and at the same time how little it does! Buffets you, caresses you, plays at shuttlecock with you; yet leaves you the same man or woman, unchanged. Most of this time James Beresford had spent in absences, now here, now there; not travels according to the old happy sense, though in a real and matter-of-fact sense they were more travels than those he had made so happily in the honeymooning days. But he did not like to use the word. He called his long voyages absences, nothing more. And they were of a very different kind from those expeditions of old. He avoided the Continent as if pestilence had been there, and would not even cross it to get the mail at Brindisi, but went all the way round from Southampton when he went to the East. He went up the Nile, with a scientific party, observing some phenomena or other. He went to America in the same way. He was not a very good sailor, but he made up his mind to that as the best way of fighting through those lonely years. Once he went as far north as any but real Arctic explorers, with their souls in it, had ever done. Once he tracked the possible path of Russia across the wildest border wastes to the Indian frontier. He went everywhere languidly but persistently, seldom roused, but never discouraged. A man may be very brave outside, though he is not brave within; and weakness is linked to strength in ways beyond our guessing. He went into such wilds once, that they gave him an ‘ovation’ at the Geographical Society’s meeting, not because of any information he had brought them, or anything he had done, but because he had been so far off, where so few people had ever been. And periodically he came back to the Square; he would not leave that familiar house. His wife’s drawing-room was kept just as she had liked it, though no one entered the room: the cook and John the butler, who had married, having the charge of everything. And when Mr. Beresford came back to England, he went home, living downstairs generally, with one of his travelling companions to bear him company. Maxwell and he had dropped apart. They were still by way of being fast friends, and doubtless, had one wanted the other, would still have proved so—last resource of friendship, in which the severed may still hope. But, as nothing happened to either, their relations waxed cold and distant. The doctor had never got clear of the suspicion which had risen in his mind at Mrs. Beresford’s death. It is true that had James Beresford given the poor lady that ‘strong sweet dose’ she once had asked for, Maxwell would have forgiven his friend with all his heart. I do not know, in such a strange case, what the doctor could have done; probably exactly as he did afterwards do, invent a death-certificate which might be accepted as possible, though it was not in accordance with the facts. But, anyhow, he would have taken up warmly, and stood by his friend to his last gasp. This being the case, it is impossible to tell on what principle it was that Maxwell half hated Beresford, having a lurking suspicion that he had done it—a suspicion contradicted by his own statement and by several of the facts. But this was the case. The man who would have helped his wife boldly, heart-brokenly, to escape from living agony, was one thing; but he who would give her a fatal draught, or connive at her getting it, and then veil himself so that no one should know, was different. So Mr. Maxwell thought. The inconsistency might be absurd; but it was so. They positively dropped out of acquaintance. The men who visited James Beresford when he was at home, were men with tags to their names, mystic initials, F.G.S.’s, F.R.S.’s, F.S.A.’s, and others of that class. And Maxwell, who was his oldest friend, dropped off. He said to himself that if Beresford ever wanted him badly, he would find his friendship surviving. But Beresford did not want Maxwell nor Maxwell Beresford; and thus they were severed for a suspicion which would not have severed them had it been a reality, or so at least Maxwell thought. The doctor still went down once a week regularly to visit Miss Charity, and so kept up his knowledge of the family; but ‘nothing came’ of the old fancy that had been supposed to exist between him and Cherry. They all hardened down unconsciously, these middle-aged folk, in their various ways. The doctor became a little rougher, a little redder, a trifle more weather-beaten; and Miss Cherry grew imperceptibly more faded, more slim, more prim. As for Miss Charity, being now over seventy, she was younger than ever; her unwrinkled cheeks smoother, her blue eyes as blue, her step almost more alert, her garden more full of roses. ‘After seventy,’ she tersely said, ‘one gets a new lease.’ And Mrs. Burchell, at the Rectory, was a little stouter, and her husband a little more burly, and both of them more critical. Fifty is perhaps a less amiable age than three-score and ten. I am not sure that it is not the least amiable age of all; the one at which nature begins to resent the fact of growing old. Of all the elder generation, James Beresford was the one to whom it made least change, notwithstanding that he was the only one who had ‘come through’ any considerable struggle. He was still speculative, still fond of philosophical talk, still slow to carry out to logical conclusions any of the somewhat daring theories which he loved to play with. He was as little affected as ever by what he believed and what he did not believe.

As for Cara, however, these five years had made a great difference to her; they had widened the skies over her head and the earth under her feet. Whereas she had been but twelve, a child, groping and often in the dark, now she was seventeen, and every new day that rose was a new wonder to her. Darkness had fled away, and the firmament all around her quivered and trembled with light; night but pretended to be, as in summer, when twilight meets twilight, and makes the moment of so-called midnight and darkness the merriest and sweetest of jests. Everything was bright around her feet, and before her in that flowery path which led through tracts of sunshine. She was no more afraid of life than the flowers are. Round about her the elders, who were her guides, and ought to have been her examples, were not, she might have perceived, had she paused to think, exuberantly happy. They had no blessedness to boast of, nor any exemption from common ills; but it no more occurred to Cara to think that she, she could ever be like her good Aunt Cherry, or Mrs. Burchell, than that she could be turned into a blue bird, like the prince in the fairy tale. The one transformation would have been less wonderful than the other. She had lived chiefly at Sunninghill during her father’s absence, and it was a favourite theory with the young Burchells, all but two (there were ten of them), that she would progress in time to be the Miss Cherry, and then the Miss Charity, of that maiden house. A fate was upon it, they said. It was always to be in the hands of a Miss Beresford, an old-maidish Charity, to be transmitted to another Charity after her. This was one of the favourite jokes of the rectorial household, warmly maintained except by two, i.e. Agnes, the eldest, a young woman full of aspirations; and Roger, the second boy, who had aspirations too, or rather who had one aspiration, of which Cara was the object. She would not die Charity Beresford if he could help it; but this was a secret design of which nobody knew. Cara’s presence, it may be supposed, had made a great deal of difference at Sunninghill. It had introduced a governess and a great many lessons; and it had introduced juvenile parties and an amount of fun unparalleled before in the neighbourhood. Not that she was a very merry child, though she was full of visionary happiness; but when she was there, there too was drawn everything the two other elder Charity Beresfords could think of as delightsome. The amusements of the princesses down in St. George’s were infinitely less considered. To be sure there were many of them, and Cara was but one. She would have been quite happy enough in the garden, among the roses; but because this was the case she had every ‘distraction’ that love could think of, and all the young people in the neighbourhood had reason to rejoice that Cara Beresford had come to live with her aunts at Sunninghill.

However, these delights came to an end when Mr. Beresford came home at length ‘to settle.’ To say with what secret dismay, though external pleasure, this news was received at ‘the Hill’ would require a volume. The hearts of the ladies there sank into their shoes. They did not dare to say anything but that they were delighted.

‘Of course I am to be congratulated,’ Miss Charity said, with a countenance that seemed to be cut out of stone. ‘To see James settle down to his life again is the greatest desire I can have. What good was he to any one, wandering like that over the face of the earth? We might all have been dead and buried before we could have called him back.’

‘Of course we are delighted,’ said Miss Cherry, with a quaver in her voice. ‘He is my only brother. People get separated when they come to our time of life, but James and I have always been one in heart. I am more glad than words can say.’ And then she cried. But she was not a strong-minded or consistent person, and her little paradoxes surprised nobody. Miss Charity herself, however, who was not given to tears, made her blue eyes more muddy that first evening after the news came, than all her seventy years had made them. ‘What is the child to do?’ she asked abruptly when they were alone; ‘of an age to be “out,” and without a chaperon, or any sense in his head to teach him that such a thing is wanted?’

‘You would not like him to marry again?’ said Miss Cherry, blowing her agitated nose.

‘I’d like him to have some sense, or sensible notions in his head, whatever he does. What is to become of the child?’

Alas! I fear it was, ‘What is to become of us without her?’ that filled their minds most.

It was autumn; the end of the season at which the Hill was most beautiful. It had its loveliness too in winter, when the wonderful branching of the trees—all that symmetry of line and network which summer hides with loving decorations—was made visible against the broader background of the skies, which gained infinitude from the dropping of those evanescent clouds of foliage. But the common mind rejected the idea of the Hill in winter as that place of bliss which it was acknowledged to be during the warmer half of the year. In autumn, however, the ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’ of the great plain, the tints of fervid colour which came to the trees, the soft hazy distances and half-mournful brightness of the waning season, gave the place a special beauty. There were still abundant flowers fringing the lawn; blazing red salvias, geraniums, all the warm-hued plants that reach the ‘fall;’ big hollyhocks flaunting behind backs, and languishing dahlias. Some late roses lingered still; the air was sweet with the faint soft perfume of mignonette; petunias, just on the point of toppling over into decay, made a flutter of white and lilac against the walls, and here and there a bunch of belated honeysuckle, or cluster of jessamine stars out of date, threw themselves forth upon the trellis. It was on the sweetest mellow autumnal day, warm as July, yet misty as October, that the Miss Beresfords had their last garden-party for Cara. All their parties were for Cara; but this was especially hers, her friends far and near coming to take leave of her, as her life at the Hill terminated.

‘She goes just at the proper moment,’ Miss Charity said, sitting out on the lawn in her white crape shawl, receiving her visitors, with St. George’s and all the plain beyond shining through the autumn branches like a picture laid at her feet. ‘She takes the full good of us to the last, and when winter comes, which lays us bare, she will be off with the other birds. She lasts just a little longer than the swallows,’ said the old lady with a laugh.

‘But you can’t wonder, dear Mrs. Beresford, that she should wish to go to her father. What can come up to a father?’ said Mrs. Burchell, meaning, it is to be supposed, to smooth over the wound.

Miss Charity lifted her big green fan ominously in her hand. It was closed, and it might have inflicted no slight blow; and, of all things in the world, it would have pleased the old lady most to bring it down smartly upon that fat hand, stuffed desperately into a tight purple glove, and very moist and discoloured by the confinement, which rested on the admirable clergywoman’s knee.

Meanwhile Roger Burchell, who was bold, and did not miss his chances, had got Cara away from the croquet players and the talk, on pretence of showing her something. ‘I am coming to see you in town,’ he said. ‘It is as easy to go there as to come here, and I shan’t care for coming here when you are gone. So you need not say good-bye to me.’

‘Very well,’ said Cara, laughing; ‘is that all? I don’t mean to say good-bye to any one. I am not going for good. Of course I shall come back.’

‘You will never come back just the same,’ said Roger; ‘but mind what I tell you. I mean to come to town. I have an aunt at Notting Hill. When I get leave from the college I shall go there. The old lady will be pleased; and so you shall see me every Sunday, just as you do now.’

‘Every Sunday!’ said Cara, slightly surprised. ‘I don’t mind, Roger; it can’t matter to me; but I don’t think they will like it here.’

‘They will like it if you do,’ said the enterprising youth. He was twenty, and soon about to enter on his profession, which was that of an engineer. He was not deeply concerned as to what his parents might feel; but at the same time he was perfectly confident of their appreciation of Cara as an excellent match, should that luck be his. This is not intended to mean that Roger thought of Cara as a good match. He had, on the contrary, an honest boyish love for her, quite true and genuine, if not of the highest kind. She was the prettiest girl he knew, and the sweetest. She was clever too in her way, though that was not his way. She was the sort of girl to be proud of, wherever you might go with her; and, in short, Roger was so fond of Cara, that but for that brilliant idea of his, of passing his Sundays with his aunt at Notting Hill instead of at home, her departure would have clouded heaven and earth for him. As it was, he felt the new was rather an improvement on the old; it would throw him into closer contact with the object of his love. Cara took the arrangement generally with great composure. She was glad enough to think of seeing some one on the dull Sundays; and somehow the Sundays used to be duller in the Square, where nobody minded them, than at the Hill, where they were kept in the most orthodox way. Thus she had no objection to Roger’s visits; but the prospect did not excite her. ‘I suppose you are soon going away somewhere?’ she said, with great calm. ‘Where are you going? to India? You cannot come from India to your aunt at Notting Hill.’

‘But I shall not go—not as long as I can help it—not till——’

Here Roger looked at her with eager eyes. He was not handsome; he was stoutly built, like his father, with puffy cheeks and premature black whiskers. But his eyes at the present moment were full of fire. ‘Not till——’ How much he meant by that broken phrase! and to Cara it meant just nothing at all. She did not even look at him, to meet his eyes, which were so full of ardour. But she was not disinclined to loiter along this walk instead of joining the crowd. She was thinking her own thoughts, not his.

‘I wonder if papa will be changed? I wonder if the house will look strange? I wonder——’ said Cara, half under her breath. She was not talking to him, yet perhaps if he had not been with her, she would not have said the words aloud. He was a kind of shield to her from others, an unconscious half-companion. She did not mind what she said when he was there. Sometimes she replied to him at random; often he so answered her, not knowing what she meant. It was from want of comprehension on his part, not want of attention; but it was simple carelessness on hers. He listened to these wonderings of hers eagerly, with full determination to fathom what she meant.

‘He will be changed, and so will the house,’ said Roger. ‘We may be sure of it. You were but a child when you left; now you are a—young lady. Even if he was not changed, you would think him so,’ cried Roger, with insight which surprised himself; ‘but those who have grown up with you, Cara—I, for instance, who have seen you every day, I can never change. You may think so, but you will be mistaken. I shall always be the same.’

She turned to look at him, half amused, half wondering. ‘You, Roger; but what has that to do with it?’ she said. How little she cared! She had faith in him: oh, yes; did not think he would change; believed he would always be the same. What did it matter? It did not make her either sadder or gladder to know that it was unlikely there would be any alteration in him.

‘What are you doing here, Cara, when you ought to be looking after your guests, or playing croquet, or amusing yourself?’

‘I am amusing myself, Aunt Cherry, as much as I wish to amuse myself. It is not amusing to go away.’

‘My darling, we must think of your poor father,’ said Miss Cherry, her voice trembling; ‘and there are all your young friends. Will you go and help to form that game, Roger? They want a gentleman. Cara, dear, I would rather you did not walk with Roger Burchell like this, when everybody is here.’

‘He said he had something to show me,’ said Cara. ‘I was glad to get away. All this looks so like saying farewell; as if I might never be here again.’

‘Cara, if you make me cry, I shall not be fit to be seen; and we must not make a show of ourselves before all these people.’ Miss Cherry pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. ‘I am so silly; my eyes get so red for nothing. What did Roger have to show you? He ought to be at work, that boy.’

‘He has an aunt at Notting Hill,’ said Cara, with a soft laugh; ‘and he told me he meant to come to town on Sundays instead of coming here. He says he shall see me quite as often as usual. I suppose he thought I should miss him. Poor Roger! if that were all!’

‘But, Cara, we must not allow that,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘I must speak to his mother. See him every Sunday, as usual! it is ridiculous; it must be put a stop to. Roger Burchell! a lad who is nobody, who has his way to make in the world, and neither connections, nor fortune, nor any advantage——’

Here Miss Cherry was arrested by Cara’s look turned calmly upon her, without excitement or anxiety, yet with that half smile which shows when a young observer has seen the weak point in the elder’s discourse.

‘What should his connections or his fortune have to do with it if he wanted to see me and I wanted to see him?’ said Cara; ‘we have been friends all our lives. But do not make yourself uneasy, Aunt Cherry; for though I might, perhaps, like well enough to see Roger now and then, I don’t want him every Sunday. What would papa say? Roger thinks Sunday in the Square is like Sunday here—church and then a stroll, and then church again. You know it was not like that when I was at home before.’

‘No,’ said Miss Cherry, with a sigh; ‘but then it was different.’ She had her own thoughts as to whose fault that was, and by whose influence James had been led away from natural churchgoing; but she was far too loyal, both to the dead and to the living, to show this. ‘Cara,’ she added, hurriedly, ‘in that respect, things will be as you like best hereafter. You will be the one to settle what Sunday is to be—and what a great many other things are to be. You must realise what is before you, my dear child.’

‘I can’t realise Roger there in papa’s library,’ said Cara, ‘or upstairs. Am I to live there? in the drawing-room. Will it never be changed?’

‘It is so pretty, Cara—and you would like the things to be as pleased her,’ said Miss Cherry, in trembling tones.

Cara did not make any response—her face wore a doubtful expression, but she did not say anything. She turned her back upon the landscape, and looked up at the house. ‘Shall I never come back just the same?’ she said. ‘Roger says so; but he is not clever—how should he know? what should change me? But the Square is not like the Hill,’ she added, with a little shiver. ‘Papa will not think of me as you do—everything for Cara; that will make a change.’

‘But you can think of him,’ said Cherry, ‘everything for him; and, perhaps, for a woman that is the happiest way of the two.’

Once more Cara was silent. Clouds of doubt, of reluctance, of unwilling repugnance, were floating through her mind. She had a horror and fear of the Square, in which her life was henceforward to be passed—and of her father, of whom she knew so much more than he was aware. For a moment the old tumult in her soul about the secret she had never told came surging back upon her, a sudden tide from which she could scarcely escape. ‘Come, Aunt Cherry,’ she said, suddenly seizing her astonished companion by the arm. ‘Come and play for us. We must have a dance on the lawn my last day.’