‘But nothing shall stand between us any more.’

CARITÀ

BY MRS. OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF “WITHIN THE PRECINCTS,” ETC.
CHEAP EDITION
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1885
All Rights Reserved

CONTENTS.

CARITÀ.

CHAPTER I.
THE BERESFORDS.

James Beresford and Annie his wife had been married for more than a dozen years—their only child, indeed, had nearly attained the age of twelve at the time when this history begins. They had both got footing on that plateau of middle age which, if it comes to something like level ground at thirty, need not think of a descending step for twenty years—the time of the greatest enjoyments and most solid progress of life. He was at one end and she at the other of the first decade; the one approaching the forties, the other scarcely well out of the twenties; both ready to laugh at the advance of years, which was as yet but a joke to them, and neither having thought of bidding any grave farewell to youth. She was impulsive, enthusiastic and nervous; he philosophical and speculative, a man ready to discuss any theory in earth or heaven, and without any prejudices such as might make one subject of discussion appear less legitimate than another. They were not very rich, but neither were they poor in any sense of the word. He had been called to the Bar, but had never gone any further in that career. They had enough between them to live on without show, but without pinching, as so many people of quietly social, semi-literary tastes do in London. They knew a number of people. They saw all the pictures, read all the books, and heard all the music that was going; not absorbed in any art, but with just enough devotion to all to make their life full and pleasant. And there could scarcely be a pleasanter life. The fantasies of youth, but not the sentiment of youth, had ended for both. Mr. Beresford had some mildly scientific pursuits, was a member of some learned societies, and of one or two new and advanced clubs where clever men were supposed to abound. Occasionally in his comfortable library he wrote an article for a review or magazine, which was very much talked about by his friends, to the great edification and amusement of people who live by writing articles and say nothing about them. This gave him an agreeable sense of duty to add seriousness to his life; and he was never without occupation—meetings of committees, scraps of semi-public business, educational and other projects, which, for the moment at least, seemed full of interest to the world, made him feel himself a not unimportant, certainly not a useless, man. Mrs. Beresford, on her side, had the natural occupation of her housekeeping, and her child, whose education gave her much thought—so much thought that many people with full nurseries listened with a certain awe to her ideas of all that was necessary for her little girl, and sighed to think how much less was possible when there were six or seven little girls to think of.

The child, however, was not so over-educated and over-cared for as might have been fancied; for the parents were young, as has been said, very fond of each other, and fond of their own way; which likings did not consist with the burden of dragging a small child with them wherever they went. The Beresfords liked to go about ‘honeymooning,’ as their friends called it, and as they themselves were not displeased to call it, by themselves, over the world. They would start sometimes quite suddenly, to the Riviera in the middle of winter, to escape London fogs and wintry chills; to Paris at Easter; to Scotland in the autumn; even to Norway sometimes, or such difficult places; and it stood to reason that they could not take the child with them when they started at a day’s notice on these delightful journeys. For their journeys were delightful. They were well enough off not to require to count the cost; they went lightly, with little luggage and no servants, and they went everywhere together. But it would have been bad for the little girl; therefore she stayed at home, under the care of the best of nurses, who had been Mrs. Beresford’s nurse before the child’s; and the father and mother, like two lovers, roamed lightly about the world. But when they were at home, Mrs. Beresford talked a great deal about education, and had plans enough to have educated six princesses, let alone one little girl of undistinguished lineage. It was a very lucky thing for all parties, their friends said, that they had but this one child. Had they been hampered by half-a-dozen, what could they have done? It would have changed their life completely. And one of their many felicities was, that whereas they were preserved from the old-maidishness of childless married persons by having a child, their freedom of action was preserved by the fact that they had but one.

And they were wonderfully free of other relations who might have hampered them. Mrs. Beresford had been an orphan from her childhood, brought up by her grandmother, who in the course of nature was dead too; and Mr. Beresford’s only two relations were a wealthy aunt, Charity Beresford, who lived in a pretty house in the country, within driving distance of London, and with whom lived his elder sister, Cherry Beresford, named after her aunt, and living in considerable subjection to that energetic woman. Miss Beresford was the richest member of the family, and her nephew had expectations from her; and Charity was the favourite female name of this branch of the race. But the idea of calling her child Charity did not at all smile upon young Mrs. Beresford when her baby was born. She was beguiled, however, by the unusual look of it, which charmed her, into calling the little girl by the more melodious name of Carità, contracted prettily into Cara in the drawing-room, and Carry in the nursery. Aunt Charity growled when she heard of this, but did not otherwise complain, and gentle Aunt Cherry declared herself unfeignedly glad that her little niece had thus escaped the worse consequences of a symbolical name. When the young couple went away pleasuring, little Cara very often would be sent to Sunninghill, to pass the quiet days there under the charge of the aunts; and so all responsibility was removed from the minds of the parents. They had a letter sent to them every day to assure them of their welfare, however far off they might go—an extravagance which Aunt Charity condemned loudly, but which Aunt Cherry was proud of, as showing the devotion of the parents to little Cara. The child herself was very happy at Sunninghill, and was a much more prominent person there than at home, where very often she was in the way, and interrupted conversation. For a father and mother who are very fond of each other, and have a great deal to talk of, often, it must be allowed, are hampered by the presence of one curious child, with quick ears and an inconveniently good memory. In this particular the half-dozen would have been more easily managed than the one.

Thus the Beresfords led a very pleasant life. They had the prettiest house; naturally, travelling so much as they did, they had been able to ‘pick up’ a great many charming things. You could scarcely see their walls for pictures; some very good, one or two wonderful windfalls, and the rest pretty enough; nothing strikingly bad, or next to nothing. Where other people had ordinary china, they had genuine old faïence, and one or two plaques which Raphael himself might have seen perhaps—Urbino ware, with Messer Giorgio’s name upon it. Not to speak of the Venice point which Mrs. Beresford wore, there were brackets in the drawing-room hung with scraps of old point coupé which many a lady would have been glad to trim her dress with; and, instead of common portières, they had two pieces of old tapestry from an Italian convent which devotees went down on their knees before. But I have not space to tell you how many pretty things they had. It was one of the pleasures of their life whenever they saw anything that pleased them to bring it home for the decoration of that pretty drawing-room, or the library, which Mr. Beresford had filled with old vellum-bound volumes of curious editions, and pretty books in Russian leather which kept the room always fragrant. What was wanting to this pleasant, warm, full, delightful living? Nothing but continuance; and it had not struck either of them that there was any doubt of this for long, long years at least. What a long way off threescore years and ten look when you are not yet forty! and death looked further off still. Neither of them thought of dying. Why should they? For, to be sure, though we know very well that must happen to us some time, in our hearts we are incredulous, and do not believe that we ever can die. The Beresfords never dreamt of anything so frightful. They were well, they were happy, they were young; and as it had been, so it would be; and a world so bright they felt must mean to go on for ever.

When Cara was about ten, however, the mother began to feel less well than usual. There was nothing much the matter with her, it was thought: want of ‘tone,’—a little irritability of disposition—a nervous temperament. What she wanted was change of air and scene. And she got that, and got better, as was thought; but then became ill again. No, not ill—unwell, indisposed, mal à son aise, nothing more. There was nothing the matter with her really, the doctors thought. Her lungs and her heart, and all vital organs, were perfectly sound; but there was a little local irritation which, acting upon a nervous temperament—— The nervous temperament was perpetually kept in the front, and all sorts of evils imputed to its agency. At Sunninghill, it must be confessed, they did not believe in the illness at all.

‘Fudge,’ said Aunt Charity, who had always been strong, and had no faith in nerves, ‘don’t talk to me of your nervous temperaments. I know what it means. It means that Annie has fallen sick of always having her own way. She has everything she can desire, and she is ill of having nothing more to wish for. A case of Alexander over again in a London drawing-room—that’s what it is, and nothing else, my word upon it; and I know my niece.’

‘Yes, Mr. Maxwell; perhaps there is some truth in what Aunt Charity says,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘I think you know I don’t judge harshly——’

‘That means that I judge harshly,’ said Miss Charity, bursting in; ‘thank you, my dear. Well, you may call me uncharitable if you please; but there’s where it is; let James lose the half of his fortune, or all his china get broken, and she’d come round in no time—that’s what ails Annie. But as she belongs to a very refined society, and has a silly husband, it’s called nerves. Bless me, Cherry, I hope I knew what nerves were, and all about it, before you were born.’

‘You could not know Annie before I was born,’ said Miss Cherry, who was devoid of imagination. ‘I hope you will give her your best attention, Mr. Maxwell. My brother James is a very fond husband, poor fellow! If anything happened to Annie, he would never get the better of it. As for marrying again, or anything of that sort——’

‘Good heavens!’ said the doctor; ‘I hope there is no need to take such an idea into consideration. We must not go so fast.’

Miss Charity laughed. She was a great deal older than her niece, but much more sensible. ‘There’s the seventh commandment to be thought of,’ she said; for her remarks were sometimes more free than they ought to be, and put Miss Cherry to the blush: and this was all the worse because she immediately walked out into the garden through the open window and left the younger lady alone with the doctor, who was an old friend of the family, and contemporary of the second Charity Beresford. Very old friends they were; even it was supposed that in their youth there had been or might have been passages of sentiment between these two now sitting so calmly opposite each other. Mr. Maxwell, however, by this time was a widower, and not at all sentimental. He laughed, too, as Miss Beresford made her exit by the window. He was very well used to the family, and all its ways.

‘She wears very well,’ he said, reflectively. ‘I don’t think she has aged to speak of for these twenty years. When I used to be coming here in my early days, when I was beginning practice——’

‘The rest of us have changed very much since then.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Maxwell, thinking most of himself; ‘but she not at all. I could think when I look at her that I was still, as I say, a young fellow beginning practice——’

Miss Cherry sighed—very softly, but still she did sigh: over forty, but still in the position and with many of the sentiments of a girl. People laugh at the combination, but it is a touching one on the whole. What ages of lingering monotonous life had passed over her since her present companion began his practice, since her Aunt Charity had begun to be an old woman! Dr. Maxwell had married, had lost his wife, had gone through perhaps sharper troubles than Miss Cherry had known. He was now middle-aged and stoutish and weather-beaten—weather-beaten in aspect and in soul—while she was slim and soft and maidenly still. The sigh was half for those uneventful years, and half for the undevelopment which she was conscious of—the unchangedness of herself, underneath the outer guise, which was changed; but this was not safe ground, nor could it be talked of. So she brushed away the sigh with a little cough, and added quickly:

‘I know perhaps what nerves are better than my aunt does, and I know Annie better. Tell me seriously, Mr. Maxwell, now we are alone. You don’t apprehend anything serious? Should she go on travelling and running about as they do if there is really anything the matter? No one can be so much interested as I am. You would be quite frank with me?’

‘It is the best thing for her,’ said the doctor. ‘You now—I should not say the same for you. You are a tranquil person and patient; but for her, the more she runs about the better. It distracts her and keeps her from thinking. If she worries, it’s all over with a woman like that.’

‘She has so little to worry about.’

‘Just so; and the less one has to bear the less one is fit for; that is to say,’ said the doctor, getting up and going to the window, ‘the less some people are fit for. There’s that old aunt of yours to prove me a fool. She has never had anything to bear, that I know of; and she is strong enough to bear anything. Sixty-eight, and just look at her. There’s a physique for you—that is the kind of woman,’ Mr. Maxwell said, with a little outburst of professional enthusiasm, ‘that I admire—as straight as a rod still, and every faculty in good order. That a woman like that should never have married is a loss to the world.’

Miss Cherry, who had gone to the window too, and stood by his side, looked out somewhat wistfully at her old aunt. Cherry was not like her, but took after the other side of the family, her own mother, who had died young, and had not possessed any physique to speak of. ‘It is very sweet to-day in the garden,’ she said, inconsequently, and stepped out into the world of flowers and sunshine. Sunninghill was an ideal house for two ladies, a place which people who were shut out from such delights considered quite enough for happiness. Indeed, Miss Cherry Beresford’s friends in general resented deeply the little plaintive air she sometimes took upon her. ‘What could she wish for more?’ they said, indignantly; ‘a place that was just too good to be wasted on two single women. There should be a family in it.’ This was especially the sentiment of the rector’s wife, who was a friend of Cherry’s, and who felt it a personal slight to herself, who had a large family and many cares, when Cherry Beresford, with not a thing in the world to trouble her, presumed to look as if she was not quite happy. The house stood upon a hill, fringed round with small but delightful woods. These woods were on a level with the highest turrets of the great beautiful royal Castle of St. George, which lay full within sight in the afternoon sunshine. So you may imagine what a view it was that was visible from the old smooth velvet lawn round the house, which formed the apex to these woods. The quiet plain all around lay basking in the light underneath, and the Castle upon its hill dominated, with a broad and placid grandeur, that majestic sweep of country, with all its lights and shadows. The royal flag fluttered on the breeze, the great tower rose grey and solid against the sky. Green branches framed in this picture on every side; the cuttings in the trees made a picture-gallery indeed of different views for different hours, according to the lights. ‘What a lovely place it is!’ Mr. Maxwell said, with sudden enthusiasm; ‘I always forget how lovely it is till I come back.’

‘Yes, it is beautiful,’ said Cherry, who was used to it. ‘If you are going to send them away, I suppose Cara may come to us for the summer?—that makes such a difference.’ Cherry was very well used to the different lights. She acknowledged the beauty of her home, and yet I can fancy circumstances under which she would have liked a little house in a street better. Man or woman either cannot live by beauty alone any more than by bread.

‘Here’s a pretty business,’ said Miss Beresford, briskly; ‘half of my roses, I believe, spoiled for this year; no second show this time. Jones is the greatest idiot; he pretends to know everything, and he knows nothing. Your protégé, Cherry, of course. All the incapables hang on by you.’

‘I can’t see any signs of deficiency,’ said the doctor, looking round.

‘Not at this moment; if there were, he should have his dismissal on the spot. If those two go off again, as you are always sending them off, tell James I insist on the child coming here. Ah! that’s what your women of nervous temperament do—leave their children at home in a poky London square, while they go wandering over the world. Tell them I wish it,’ said Miss Beresford, with a laugh; ‘they never go against me.’

‘They know how kind you always are.’

‘They know I’m old and will have something to leave behind me, that’s the plain English of it—as if I was going to accept poor Cherry’s subjection, poor soul, without rewarding her for it! It is she who will have everything when I’m gone. I’ve told them that, but still they think there’s a chance that Cara might cut her old aunt out. I can see through them. I see through most people,’ she added, with a laugh, looking at him full. How could she know the thought passing through his mind at the moment, which was the abrupt reflection, uncalled for perhaps, that for a professional man, who had made no extraordinary name in his profession, Cherry Beresford, though an old maiden, would make not such a bad wife? Could the old witch see through broadcloth, and the comfortable coating of middle-aged flesh and blood, straight into a man’s heart? He grew red foolishly, as if that were possible, and stammered a little in his reply:

‘I can believe everything that is clever of you as well as everything that is kind; though why you ladies should make such a point of having a little chit like that, who can only disturb your quiet in this paradise of a place——’

‘Oh, how can you say so!’ said Cherry. ‘The child’s voice and the child’s face make all the difference—they are better than sunshine. They make the place beautiful. I would give it all, twenty times over, to have the child.’

‘Whom her mother is very glad to leave behind her.’

‘Hold your tongue, Cherry,’ said the elder lady; ‘you mild little old maids, you are always in a way about children. I never took up that line. A child in the abstract is a nuisance. Now, a man—there are advantages about a man. Sometimes he’s a nuisance too, but sometimes he’s a help. Believe them, and they’ll tell you that marriage was always far from their thoughts, but that children are their delight. That’s not my way of thinking. But I happen to like little Cara because she is Cara, not because she is a child. So she may come and take her chance with the rest.’

Cherry had turned away along the garden path, and was looking through one of the openings at one of the views. She knew it by heart—exactly how the light fell, and where were the shadows, and the name of every tower, and almost the shape of every cloud. Was it wonderful that this was not so delightful to her as to the strangers who could not see that view every day in their lives? To some people, indeed, the atmospheric changes, the effects of wind and colour, the waverings and dispersions of those clouds, would have made poetry enough to fill up all that was wanting; but poor Miss Cherry was not poetical in this big way, though she was very fond of pretty verses, and even wrote some occasionally; but how she longed for the child’s innocent looks—the child’s ceaseless prattle! Her gentle delicacy was hurt at that unnecessary gibe about the old-maidishness, and her supposed sham rejection of the husband who had never come her way. ‘Why should she talk of men—especially before him? What do I want with men?’ said poor Miss Cherry to herself; ‘but my own niece—my brother’s child—surely I may wish for her.’ And surely there could not have been a more innocent wish.

CHAPTER II.
A FRIGHT.

‘Which you please; you are not gouty or rheumatical, or anything of that sort,’ said Mr. Maxwell, almost gaily. ‘Homburg, for instance—Homburg would do—or Baden, if you prefer that. I incline to the one you prefer; and enjoy yourself as much as you can—that is my prescription. Open air, novelty, change; and if you find you don’t relish one place, go to another. The sea, if you take a fancy for the sea; and Sir William is of my opinion exactly. Choose the place which amuses you most.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Mr. Beresford, ‘that these wise men are laughing at you, Annie. They know there’s nothing the matter with you. If I were not much obliged to them for thinking so, I should say you had some reason to be offended. One knows what you doctors mean when you tell a patient to do whatever she likes best.’

‘It means one of two things,’ said Mrs. Beresford; ‘either that it is nothing, or that it is hopeless——’

Her husband burst into a soft laugh. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it is very evident it cannot be the last—so it must be as I say. It is injurious to our pride, my darling; for I allow that it is pleasant to possess either in your own person or your wife’s a delicate and mysterious malady, of which it can be said that it baffles the doctors, without very much hurting the patient; but never mind. If you can bear this disrespectful verdict that you have nothing the matter with you, I assure you it makes me quite happy.’

Mrs. Beresford looked at the doctor with very keen, eager eyes—eyes which had grown bigger and keener of late, perhaps from the failing of the round, smooth outlines of the face. She noticed that, though Maxwell saw very well that she was looking at him, he did not reply to those looks, but rather turned to her husband and answered him, as if he had not observed her at all.

‘I don’t mean to be at all disrespectful,’ he said; ‘there is a little disturbance of the system, which might turn to something as serious as you could desire, and take away the comfort of life perhaps more completely than a regular disease; but I hope that is not likely to happen here.’

‘No; I don’t think it,’ said the easy man. ‘We shall try Baden, which is the prettiest—unless you prefer some other place; in short, we shall go off without guide or compass, and do exactly what pleases ourselves. We have done so, it must be allowed, pretty often before—but to do it with the sanction of the faculty——’

‘And the child—as usual—will go to Sunninghill?’

‘Why should you say as usual, Mr. Maxwell?’ said Mrs. Beresford, with a suspicion of offence. ‘Do you think I ought to take her with me? Do you suppose, perhaps, that I might not come back again—that I might never—see——’

‘This is so unnecessary,’ said the doctor, remonstrating. ‘What must I say? I wish I was as certain of a thousand a year. You will come back quite well, I hope.’

‘When people are very ill don’t you say much the same things to them? There was poor Susan Maitland, whom you banished to Italy to die. People talked of her coming back again. Oh, no! I am not thinking of myself, but of the subject in general. One needed only to look in her face to see that she would never come back.’

‘People have different ideas of their duty,’ said Maxwell. ‘Some think it best not to frighten a patient with thoughts of death. I don’t know that one can lay down any rule; one is guided by circumstances. To some nervous people it is best not to say anything. Some are more frightened than others—just as some people are more susceptible to pain than others.’

‘Now I am going to ask you another question,’ said Mrs. Beresford. ‘Suppose you had a patient very ill—I mean hopelessly ill, beyond all cure—do you think it is right to keep them alive as you do now, struggling to the last, staving off every new attack that might carry them off in quiet, fighting on and on to the last moment, and even prolonging that, when it comes so far, with cordials and stimulants? Keeping their breath in their poor, suffering bodies till you get to the end of your resources—your dreadful, cruel resources, that is what I call them. Do you think this is right? I had an aunt who died dreadfully—of cancer——’

‘Ah! An aunt? You did not tell me this,’ said the doctor, off his guard; then, recovering himself, with something that looked like alarm, he said, hurriedly: ‘What would you have us do—kill the poor creatures? neglect them? refuse what aid, what alleviations we can——’

‘I’ll tell you what I should like you to do if it were me,’ she said, eagerly. ‘When it was all over, when you were sure I could not get better, when there was nothing more in life but to suffer—suffer: then I should like you to make a strong, sweet dose for me to put me out of my trouble. I should like James to give it me. Do you remember what was said that time in India, in the mutiny? I don’t know if it was true, but people said it. That the husbands of some of the poor ladies kissed them and shot them, to save them; don’t you remember? That is what I should like you to do—a sweet, strong dose; and James would bring it to me and kiss me, and put it to my lips. That would be true love!’ she said, growing excited, the pale roses in her cheeks becoming hectic red; ‘that would be true friendship, Mr. Maxwell! Then I should not feel afraid. I should feel that you two stood between me and anguish, between me and agony——’

Both the men rose to their feet as if to restrain her vehemence, with one impulse. ‘My darling, my darling!’ said James Beresford, in dismay, ‘what are you thinking of?’ As for Mr. Maxwell, he walked to the window and looked out, his features working painfully. There was a moment in which the husband and wife clung together, he consoling her with every reassuring word that he could think of, she clinging to him with long, hysterical sobs. ‘My love, what has put this into your head?’ he said, half sobbing too, yet pretending to laugh. ‘My Annie, what fancy is this? Have you lost your wits, my darling? Why, this is all folly; it is a dream; it is a craze you have taken into your head. Here is Maxwell will tell you——’

But Maxwell made him a sign over his wife’s head so impassioned and imperative that the man was struck dumb for the moment. He gazed blankly at the doctor, then stooped down to murmur fond words less distinct and articulate in her ear. Fortunately, she was too much excited, too much disturbed, to notice this sudden pause, or that the doctor said nothing in response to her husband’s appeal. She held fast by his arm and sobbed, but gradually grew calmer, soothed by his tenderness, and after a while made a half-smiling, tearful apology for her weakness. It was after dinner on a lovely summer evening, not more than twilight, though it was late. The two gentlemen had been lingering over their claret, while she lay on the sofa waiting for them, for she did not choose to be shut up upstairs all by herself, she said. After she had recovered they went to the drawing-room, where the windows were all open, and a couple of softly-burning lamps lit up the twilight with two half-veiled moons of light. There was not a lovely prospect as at Sunninghill; nothing, indeed, but the London square, where a few trees vegetated, just room enough for the dews to fall, and for ‘the little span of sky and little lot of stars’ to unfold themselves. But even London air grows soft with that musical effect of summer, and the sounds of passing voices and footsteps broke in with a faint, far-off sound as in dreams: the country itself could not have been more peaceful. Mrs. Beresford, half ashamed of herself, sat down at the little, bright tea-table, just within the circle of one of the lamps, and made tea, talking with a little attempt at gaiety, in which, indeed, the natural revulsion of relief after that outbreak of alarm and melancholy was evident. It was she now who was the soul of the little party; for the doctor was moody and preoccupied, and her husband watched her with an anxiety almost too great to be kept within the bounds of ordinary calm. She rose, however, to the occasion. She began to talk of their probable travels, of Baden and Homburg, and all the other places which had been suggested to her. ‘We shall be as well known about the world as the Wandering Jew,’ she said; ‘better, for he had not a wife; and now that we have nearly exhausted Europe, there will be nothing for us but the East or Egypt—suppose we go to Egypt; that would be original?’

‘Not at all original,’ said Mr. Maxwell, who seemed half to resent her new-born gaiety. ‘All the cockneys in the world go to Egypt. Mr. Cook does the Pyramids regularly; and as for Jerusalem, it is common, common as Margate, and the society not much unlike.’

‘Margate is very bracing, I have always heard,’ said Mrs. Beresford, ‘and much cheaper than a German bath. What do you say to saving money, James, and eating shrimps and riding donkeys? I remember being at Margate when I was a child. They say there is no such air anywhere; and Mr. Maxwell says that the sea, if I like the sea——’

‘As for bracing air, my love, I think there is nothing like St. Moritz. Do you remember how it set me up after that—that——’

‘Give him a big, well-sounding name, doctor,’ said Mrs. Beresford, laughing; ‘it was only a bilious attack. But talking of the sea, there is Biarritz—that would do, don’t you think? It is warm, and it was gay. After all, however, I don’t think I care for the sea. The Italian lakes are fine in the autumn, and as it gets cooler we might get on perhaps to Florence, or even Rome—or Kamtschatka, or Timbuctoo, or the Great Sahara,’ she said, with a burst of laughter. ‘You are complaisance itself, you gentlemen. Now I’ll go and sing you something to reward you for humouring me to the top of my bent, and licensing me to go where I please.’

She had a pretty voice and sang well. The piano was at the other end of the room, the ‘back drawing-room’ of the commonplace London house. The two men kept their places while she went away into the dim evening, and sat down there scarcely visible, and sang. The soft, sweet voice, not powerful, but penetrating, rose like a bird in the soft gloom. James Beresford looked at the doctor with an entreating look of secret anguish as the first notes rose into the air, so liquid, so tender, so sweet.

‘Are you afraid? tell me!’ he said, with pathetic brevity.

Maxwell could not bear this questioning. He started up, and went to look this time at a picture on the wall. ‘I don’t know that I have any occasion to be afraid,’ he said, standing with his back turned to his questioner, and quite invisible from the piano. ‘I’m—a nervous man for a doctor when I’m interested in a case——’

Here there was a pause, for she had ended the first verse of the song, and the low warble of the symphony was not enough to cover their voices.

‘Don’t speak of her as a case,’ said Beresford, low but eager, as the singing recommenced: ‘you chill my very blood.’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ said the doctor, with colloquial homeliness; and he went away into the back drawing-room and sat down near the piano, to escape being questioned, poor Beresford thought, who sat still mournfully in the narrow circle of the lamplight, asking himself whether there was really anything to fear. The soft security of the house with all its open windows, the friendly voices heard outside, the subdued pleasant light, the sweet voice singing in the dimness, what a picture of safety and tranquillity it made! What should happen to disturb it? Why should it not go on for ever? James Beresford’s sober head grew giddy as he asked himself this question, a sudden new ache undreamed of before leaping up, in spite of him, into his heart. The doctor pretended to be absorbed in the song; he beat time with his fingers as the measure went on. Never in the memory of man had he shown so much interest in singing before. Was it to conceal something else, something which could not be put into words, against the peace of this happy house, which had come into his heart?

Fortunately, however, Beresford thought, his wife forgot all about that agitating scene for some days. She did not speak of it again; and for about a week after was unusually lively and gay, stronger and better than she had been for some time, and more light in heart, talking of their journey, and making preparations for it with all the pleasant little sentiment which their ‘honeymooning’ expeditions had always roused in her. When everything was ready, however, the evening before they left home a change again came over her. Cara had been sent to Sunninghill with her nurse that day, and the child had been unwilling to go, and had clung to her mother with unusual pertinacity. Even when this is inconvenient it is always flattering: and perhaps Mrs. Beresford was pleased with the slight annoyance and embarrassment which it caused.

‘Remember, James,’ she said, with some vivacity, as they sat together that evening, ‘this is to be the last time we go honeymooning. Next time we are to be respectable old married people (as we are, with our almost grown-up daughter). She is nearly as tall as I am, the child! nearly eleven—and so very tall for her age.’

‘I think we might take her,’ said Beresford, who indeed had often wished for her before. ‘She is old enough to bear the travelling, and otherwise it would do her good.’

‘Yes; this must be the last time,’ she said, her voice suddenly dropping into a sigh, and her mood changing as rapidly. A house is dreary on the eve of departure. Boxes in the hall, pinafores on the furniture, the pretty china, the most valuable nicknacks all carried away and locked up—even the habitual books disturbed from their places, the last Pall Mall on the table. The cloud came over her face as shadows flit over the hills, coming down even while she was speaking. ‘The last time!’ she said. ‘I can’t help shivering. Has it grown cold? or is it that someone is walking over my grave, as people say?’

‘Why, Annie, I never knew you were superstitious.’

‘No. It is a new thing for me; but that is scarcely superstition. And why should I care who walked over my grave? I must die some time or other and be buried, unless they have taken to burning before then. But there is one thing I feel a great deal about,’ she added, suddenly. ‘I said it once before, and you were frightened, James. If you knew that I was going to die of a painful disease—must die—that nothing could happen to save me, that there was nothing before me but hopeless pain—James, dear, listen to me!—don’t you think you would have the courage for my sake to make an end of me, to put me out of my trouble?’

‘Annie, for Heaven’s sake don’t talk so. It is nonsense, but it makes me unhappy.’

‘As a matter of speculation,’ she said, with a knowledge of his weakness, ‘you can’t think it would be wrong to do it—do you, James?’

‘As a matter of speculation,’ he said; and the natural man awoke in him. He forgot the pain the idea had caused him, and thought of it only as an idea; to put it in other words, the woman beguiled him, and he got upon one of his hobbies. ‘There are many things one allows as speculation which one is not fond of in fact. People must have a certain power over their own lives, and I think with you, my love, that it is no charity to keep infirm and suffering people just alive, and compel them to drag their existence on from day to day. Notwithstanding Heaven’s canon ‘gainst self-slaughter, I think people should be allowed a certain choice. I am not altogether against euthanasia; and if indeed recovery is hopeless and life only pain——’

‘Yes, James,’ she said, eagerly, her eyes lighting up, her cheeks flaming with the red of excitement; ‘I am glad you see it like that; one might go further perhaps—when from any reason life was a burden; when one was useless, hopeless, unhappy——’

‘Stop a little; we are going too fast,’ he said, with a smile, so entirely did the argument beguile him. ‘No one is justified in treating unhappiness like a mortal disease; unhappiness may pass away—does pass away, we all know, even when it seems worst. I cannot allow that; neither would I let people judge which lives were useless, their own or other people’s; but illness which was beyond the possibility of cure might be different; therefore, if the patient wished it, his wish, I think, should be law—— Annie, my darling! what is this? what do you mean?’

She had suddenly risen from where she was sitting near him, and thrown herself half at his feet, halt into his arms.

‘Only this,’ she said; ‘promise me—promise me, James! if this should ever happen to me—if you had the assurance, not only from me, but from—the people who know—that I had a terrible complaint, that I could never get better; promise that you would put me out of my pain, James. Promise that you would give me something to deliver me. You would not stand by and see me going down, down into the valley of death, into misery and weariness and constant pain, and, O God! loathsomeness, James!’

She buried her head in his breast, clinging to him with a grasp which was almost fierce; her very fingers which held him, appealing strenuously, forcing a consent from him. What could he say? He was too much distressed and horrified to know how to shape his answer. Fond words, caresses, soothings of every kind were all in vain for use at such a moment. ‘Far be it from you, my darling; far be it from you,’ he cried. ‘You! oh, how can you let your imagination cheat you so, my love! Nothing like this is going to happen, my Annie, my best, my dearest—— ’

‘Ah!’ she cried; ‘but if it were not imagination!—promise me, James.’

Whether she did eventually wring this wild promise from him he never knew. He would have said anything to calm her, and finally he succeeded; and having once more cleared her bosom of this perilous stuff, she regained her gaiety, her courage and spirits, and they set off as cheerful as any pair of honeymoon travellers need wish to be. But after she had left him and gone to her room pacified and comforted that night, you may fancy what sort of a half hour that poor man had as he closed the windows, which had still been left open, and put out the lamps, as was his practice, for they were considerate people and did not keep their servants out of bed. He stepped out on the balcony and looked up at the moon, which was shedding her stream of silver light as impartially upon the London housetops as if those white roofs had been forest trees. How still it seemed, every one asleep or going to rest, for it was late—a few lights glimmering in high windows, a sensation of soft repose in the very air! God help this silent, sleeping earth, upon which, even in her sleep, dark evils were creeping! Was someone perhaps dying somewhere even at that serene moment, in the sweet and tranquil stillness? His heart contracted with a great pang. In the midst of life we are in death. Why had those haunting, terrible words come into his ears?

CHAPTER III.
HONEYMOONING.

The real honeymoon is not always a delightful moment. This, which sounds like heresy to the romantic, and blasphemy to the young, is a fact which a great many people acknowledge readily enough when they have got beyond the stage at which it sounds like an offence to the wife or to the husband who is supposed to have made that period rapturous. The new pair have not the easy acquaintance with each other which makes the happiness of close companionship; perhaps they have not that sympathy with each other’s tastes which is almost a better practical tie than simple love. They are half afraid of each other; they are making discoveries every day of new points in each other’s characters, delightful or undelightful as may be, which bewilder their first confidence of union; and the more mind and feeling there is between them, the more likely is this to be the case. The shallow and superficial ‘get on’ better than those who have a great deal of excellence or tender depth of sentiment to be found out. But after the pair have come to full acquaintance, after they have learned each other from A B C up to the most difficult chapter; after the intercourse of ordinary life has borne its fruit; there is nothing in the world so delightful as the honeymooning which has passed by many years the legitimate period of the honeymoon. Sometimes one sees respectable fathers and mothers enjoying it, who have sent off their children to the orthodox honeymoon, and only then feel with a surprised pleasure how sweet it is to have their own solitude à deux; to be left to themselves for a serene and happy moment; to feel themselves dearer and nearer than they ever were before. There is something infinitely touching and tender in this honeymooning of the old. James Beresford and his wife, however, were not of these. They were still young, and of all the pleasures they had there was none equal to this close and unbroken companionship. They knew each other so well, and all their mutual tastes, that they scarcely required to put their intercourse into words; and yet how they would talk—about everything, about nothing, as if they had just met after a long absence, and had thoughts to exchange on every subject. This is a paradox; but we are not bound to explain paradoxes which are of the very essence of life, and the most attractive things in it. It had been the habit of these two to go everywhere together. Mrs. Beresford had not the prejudices of an English female Philistine. She went where her husband wanted to go, fearing nothing, and trotted about with him high and low, through picture galleries and old churches, to studios, even behind the scenes of the operas, and through the smoke clouds of big ateliers. Nothing came amiss to her with him by her side. It is almost the only way in which a woman can enjoy the freedom of movement, the easy locomotion of a man. Mrs. Beresford went away quite cheerfully, as we have said. She forgot or put away her mysterious terrors. She addressed herself to all the ordinary enjoyments which she knew so well. ‘We shall never be so free again,’ she said, half laughing, half with a remote infinitesimal pang. ‘We shall have to go to the correct places and do the right things when Cara is with us.’ ‘We must give up bric-a-brac,’ she said afterwards. ‘Cara must not grow up acquainted with all those dusty back premises; her pretty frocks would be spoiled and her infantine sincerity. If she had heard you bargaining, James, for that Buen Retiro cup! Saying it is naught, it is naught, and then bragging of the treasure you had found as soon as it was out of the dealer’s hands.’

‘Well,’ he said, with a shrug of his shoulders; ‘I only do as other people do. Principles of honour don’t consist with collecting. I am no worse than my neighbours.’

‘But that will never do for Cara,’ said the mother; ‘if you and I are not all her fancy painted us, we will not do for Cara. No; I thought you had never remarked her really. She is the most uncompromising little idealist! and if we disappoint her, James, I don’t know what the child will do.’

‘It appears to me that you are making a bugbear of Cara.’

‘No; but I know her. We must give up the bric-a-brac; for if you continue with it under her blue eyes you will be ruined. If she was here she would make you go back and tell the man he has sold you that cup too cheap.’

‘That would be nonsense,’ said Mr. Beresford, involuntarily putting his hand into the pocket where he kept his money. ‘Folly! You don’t suppose he gave half as much for it as he sold it to us for. The very mention of that sort of sickening conscientiousness puts one out. We are to sell in the dearest and buy in the cheapest market, eh? That’s the true principle of trade.’

‘It is not in the Bible, though,’ said Mrs. Beresford, with a smile. ‘Cara would open her eyes and wonder; and you, who are the weakest of men, could never stand against her if Cara made big eyes.’

‘The weakest of men! You flatter me, it must be allowed——’

‘Yes; so you are, James. You could not endure to be disapproved of. What would have become of you if I, instead of giving in to all your ways, had been a more correct and proper person? If I had made you visit just the right things—go to English parties, and keep to the proper sort of tourist society? If you had been obliged to sit indoors in the evenings and read a Galignani or a Tauchnitz novel while I worked, what would have become of you? I know well enough, for my part.’

‘I should have done it, I suppose,’ he said, half laughing; ‘and will Cara—little Cara—be like that? You frighten me, Annie; we had better make away with her somehow; marry her, or hand her over to the aunts, before it comes to this.’

Then a sudden change came over the smiling face. ‘Cara—or someone else—will most likely be like that. Poor James! I foresee trouble for you. How you will think of me when you are in bonds! when you want to go out and roam about on the Boulevards, and have to sit still instead and read aloud to somebody! Ah, how you will think of me! You will say, Poor Annie! if Annie had but lived——’

‘What is this? what is this?’ he said. ‘Again, Annie! I think you want to make me miserable; to take all the comfort out of my life.’

‘Oh, no, no; not that,’ she said. ‘I am only going to get my bonnet, and then we shall go out. Cara is not here yet to keep us in order. We can honeymoon yet for one more year.’

Was this only the caprice of her nature (she had always been capricious) going a little further than usual? Her husband liked her all the better for her quick changes of sentiment; the laughing and crying that were like an April sky. He said to himself that she had always been like that; always changing in a moment, quarrelling sometimes even, making him uncomfortable for mere variety. Monotony was the thing she hated; and now she had taken this fad, this fancy, and thought herself ill. How could she be ill when she still could run about with him and enjoy herself as much as ever? How keen she had been in the bric-a-brac shop of which she had chosen to talk! He never should have found out that Buen Retiro cup but for her. It was her sharp eyes that saw it. It was she who had rummaged through the dust and all the commonplace gatherings to those things which had really interest. Ill! though all the College of Physicians swore it, and she to boot, he would not believe that she was ill. Disturbance of the system—that was all the worst of them ever said; but how little meaning there was in that! Out of sorts! reduced to plain English, that was what disturbance of the system meant; and everybody was subject to as much. She came in, while he was in the full course of these thoughts, with a brilliant little flush on her cheeks, her eyes shining, her whole aspect full of animation. ‘I am ready, Sir,’ she said, making him a mocking curtsey. Yes; capricious, that was what she had always been, and he loved her for it. It explained her changes, her fancies, her strange notions better than anything else could do.

That was the first day, however, on which her strength really showed symptoms of breaking down. She got tired, which was a thing she never owned to; lost the pretty flush on her cheek, became pale, and worn out. ‘I don’t know what is the matter with me,’ she said; ‘all at once I feel so tired.’

‘And with very good reason,’ said he. ‘Think how rapidly we have been travelling; think what we have been doing since. Why, you were on foot the whole morning. You are tired; so am I, for that matter. I was thinking of saying so, but you are always so hard upon my little fatigues. What a comfort for me to find that you, too, for once in a way, can give in!’ Thus he tried to take her favourite part and laugh her out of her terrors. She consented with a smile more serious than her gravity had been of old, and they went back to their room and dined ‘quietly;’ and he sat and read to her, according to the picture of English domesticity which she had drawn out with smiles a few hours before. It was so soon after that tirade of hers that they could not but remember it, both of them. As it happened, there was nothing but a Tauchnitz novel to read (and who that has been ill or sad, or who has had illness or sadness to solace in a foreign place, but has blessed the novels of Tauchnitz?) and he read it, scarcely knowing what the words were which fluttered before his eyes. And as for her, she did not take much notice of the story either, but lay on the sofa, and listened, partly to his voice, partly to the distant sound of the band playing, with strange heaviness and aching in her heart. It was not that she wished to be out listening to the band, moving about in the warm air, hearing the babble of society—that was not what she cared for; but to be lying there out of the current; to have dropped aside out of the stream; to be unable for the common strain of life! So he read, sadly thinking, not knowing what he read; and she half listened, not knowing what she was listening to. It was the first time, and the first time is the worst, though the best. ‘It is only once in a way,’ he said to her, when the long evening was over; ‘to-morrow you will be as well as ever.’ And so she was. It was the most natural thing in the world that both or either of them should be tired, once in a way.

The Beresfords stayed for a long time on the Continent that year. They went about to a great many places. They stayed at Baden till they were tired of the place. They went to Dresden, because Mrs. Beresford took a fancy to see the great San Sisto picture again. Then they went on to lovely old-world Prague, and to lively Vienna, and through the Tyrol to Milan, and then back again to the Italian lakes. Wherever they went they found people whom it was pleasant to know, whom they had met before on their many journeys—people of all countries and every tongue—noble people, beautiful people, clever people—the sort of society which can only be had by taking a great deal of trouble about it, and which, even with the greatest amount of trouble, many people miss entirely. This society included ambassadors and hill-farmers, poor curés, bishops, great statesmen, and professors who were passing rich on five shillings a day: nothing was too great or too small for them; and as wherever they went they had been before, so wherever they went they found friends. Sometimes it was only a chambermaid; but, nevertheless, there she was with a pleasant human smile. And, to tell the truth, James Beresford began to be very glad of the friendly chambermaids, and to calculate more where they were to be found than upon any other kind of society; for his wife had followed her usual practice of coming without a maid, and, as her strength flagged often, he was thankful, too thankful, to have someone who would be tender of her, and care for her as he himself was not always permitted to do, and as nobody else but a woman could. Oh, how he longed to get home, while he wandered about from one beautiful spot to another, hating the fine scenery, loathing and sickening at everything he had loved! Commonplace London and the square with its comforts would have pleased him a hundred times better than lovely Como or the wild glory of the mountains; but she would not hear of going home. One day, when the solemn English of a favourite Kammer Mädchen had roused him to the intolerable nature of the situation, he had tried, indeed, with all his might to move her to return. ‘Your goot laty,’ Gretchen had said, ‘is nod—well. I ton’t untershtand your goot laty. She would be bedder, mooch bedder at ‘ome, in Lonton.’ ‘I think you are right, Gretchen,’ he had said, and very humbly went in to try what he could do. ‘My love,’ he said, ‘I am beginning to get tired of the Tyrol. I should like to get home. The Societies are beginning. I see Huxley’s lectures start next week. I like to be there, you know, when all my friends are there. Shouldn’t you be pleased to get home?’

‘No,’ she said. She had been lying on the sofa, but got up as soon as he came in. ‘You know I hate autumn in London; the fogs kill me. I can’t—I can’t go back to the fogs. Go yourself, James, if you please, and attend all your dear Societies, and hear Mr. Huxley. Take me to Como first, and get me rooms that look on the lake, and hire Abbondio’s boat for me; and then you can go.’

‘It is likely that I should go,’ he said, ‘without you, my darling! When did I ever leave you? But there are so many comforts at home you can’t have here; and advice—I want advice. You don’t get better so fast as I hoped.’

She looked at him with a strange smile. ‘No; I don’t get better, do I?’ she said. ‘Those doctors tell such lies; but I don’t get worse, James; you must allow I don’t get worse. I am not so strong as I thought I was; I can’t go running about everywhere as I used to do. I am getting old, you know. After thirty I believe there is always a difference.’

‘What nonsense, Annie! there is no difference in you. You don’t get back your strength——’

‘That’s it; that’s all. If you were to leave me quite alone and quiet, to recruit now; yes, I think I should like to know that you were in London enjoying yourself. Why shouldn’t you enjoy yourself? Women get worn out sooner than men; and I don’t want to cripple you, James. No; take me to Como—I have taken a fancy to Como—and then you can come back for me whenever you please.’

‘I am not going to leave you,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘You must not be unreasonable, my darling. What pleasure would it be to me to go home without you? It was you I was thinking of; for me it is all right. I am quite happy here. As for Huxley and the rest, you don’t think I care for them. It was you I was thinking of.’

‘You said the Societies. Whatever you do, James, speak the truth. I suppose,’ she added, with a laugh which sounded harsh, ‘you are afraid I shall get very ill—die, perhaps, away from home?’

Poor man! what was he to say? ‘Oh, Annie!’ he cried, ‘how you stab me! If I thought anything of the kind, you know I’d have Sir William here to-morrow, or any one, if it should cost me all I have. I know very well there is no danger,’ he went on, taking a certain forlorn comfort out of his own bold words; ‘but you don’t get up your strength as you ought, and knocking about in these bare rooms can’t be good for you; and, living as we are—and you have no maid——’

‘I hate a maid. I like Gretchen a great deal better. She makes so much of me.’

‘Then take Gretchen with you, my dearest; take her to Como; keep her with you till you get home.’

‘Oh, how like a man that is!’ she said, laughing. ‘Take Gretchen with me—Gretchen, who is her father’s only daughter, the life and soul of the place! What would he do without Gretchen? He would have to shut up altogether. I might drop out of the world, and I would not be missed half so much as she would be. Do you know I begin to get tired of this place, and the hills, James,’ she cried, starting up. ‘Let us go and ask about Donato and his horses. I want to get to Como before October. Why, we’ll come in for the vintage! I like the vintage; and there are advertisements everywhere about a sale at one of the villas. We shall be sure to pick up something. Is it too late to start to-day?’

‘My darling, when you take a thing into your head——’

‘Yes, to be sure, I like to do it all at once. I was always hot-headed. Now mind, we are to start to-morrow. I always loved Como, James; you know I always did. We went there the first year we were married. I don’t call it honeymooning when we don’t go to Como; and remember this is our last bout of honeymooning; we shall have Cara next year.’

She laughed, and was very gay all the evening, delighted with the idea of the change. But when he put her into Donato’s big old-fashioned vettura next morning, and saw everything fastened on, and prepared for the long, slow journey, poor Beresford was very sad. He thought, if he could only have a long talk with Maxwell, and hear what Sir William had got to say, and know what it was that he had to fear, he should be less unhappy. There must be something, or she would not be so strange; but what was it? Almost anything was better, he thought, than fighting in the dark—fighting with ghosts, not knowing what you were afraid of. She was quite light-hearted at first, interested with the drive, and waved her hands to the hills as they went slowly out of sight. ‘Good-bye,’ she said, ‘you dear old giants! I hope those white furs of yours will keep you warm till we bring Cara. What will Cara think of the mountains? She never saw anything bigger than Sunninghill.’

‘Sunninghill has the effect of being much higher than it is with that great level stretch of flat country. It impresses the imagination just as much as your giants. Don’t laugh, Annie; but your mountains stifle me. I never have air enough to breathe. I like miles and miles of country round me. You know my weakness.’

‘Sunninghill before the Alps!’ she cried, laughing. ‘’Tis clear you are a true cockney. Give me your shoulder for a pillow; I think I shall go to sleep.’

And so she did; and the horses jogged on and on, now slow, now fast, their bells jingling, and Donato’s whip making harmless circles and slashes over their heads; and houses and hedgerows, and slopes of mountain, flew past in a dream. James Beresford could see nothing but the wan lines of the face that rested on his shoulder, solemn in that deep sleep of weariness. How worn she was! how pale! growing whiter, he thought, and whiter, till sometimes in terror he stooped down close to make sure that the pale lips were parted by living breath.

CHAPTER IV.
THE THREE CHARITIES.

To live at Sunninghill, with one’s feet on a level with the highest pinnacle of the big Castle at St. George’s, what a thing it was in summer! All that country is eloquent with trees—big beeches, big oaks, straight elms, sweet birch-trees; even the very holly-bushes, in their dark green, grow tall into prickly, straggling monsters, as big as the elms. But the triumph of the place perhaps is in spring, when the primroses come too thick for counting, and the woods are full of their fairy, indefinable fragrance. In the ripe summer there was no such lovely suggestion about; all was at that perfection which suggests only decay. The wild flowers were foxgloves, with here and there in the marshy places a lingering plume of meadow-sweet. The ferns had grown too strong and tall, like little trees. The woods were in their darkest, fullest garments of green; not another leaflet to come anywhere; all full, and mature, and complete. Wild honeysuckle waved flags of yellow and brown from the high branches of big trees, which it had caught and tangled in; and made the hedge into one big wall of flowers—almost too much when the sun was on it. In the very heart of August it was as cool in these shadowy wood-walks as in a Gothic chapel, and here and there on a little plateau of brown earth a bench underneath a tree offered rest and a view to the wayfarer. Mrs. Burchell was sitting on one of these, panting a little, on the special day we have to record. She was that rector’s wife already mentioned, who was a contemporary of Cherry Beresford, and who grudged so much that ‘two single women’ should have all the delights of Sunninghill. She was just Miss Cherry’s age, fat and fair, but more than forty, and she had seven children, and felt herself inconceivably in advance of Cherry, for whom she retained her old friendship however, modified by a little envy and a good deal of contempt. Cherry was an old maid; that of itself surely was quite enough to warrant the contempt and the envy. You had but to look at Mr. Burchell’s rectory, which lay at the foot of the hill under the shadow of the woods, but facing towards the high road, which was very dusty, and exposed without a tree to the blaze of the west, and to compare it with the beautiful house on the top of the hill, sheltered so carefully, not too much nor too little—set in velvet lawns and dewy gardens, dust and noise kept at arm’s length—to see the difference between them. It was a difference which Mrs. Burchell for her part could not learn not to resent; though, indeed, but for the benefice bestowed by Miss Beresford, the Burchells must have had a much worse lot, or indeed perhaps never would have united their lots at all. The rector’s wife might have been as poor a creature as Miss Cherry, an old maid, and none of the seven Burchells might ever have come into being, but for the gift of that dusty Rectory from the ladies on the hill; but the rectorinn did not think of that. She was seated on the bench under the big oak, fanning herself with her handkerchief, while Agnes, her eldest daughter, and Dolly, her youngest, dutifully waited for her. They were going up to ‘The Hill’ for tea, which was a weekly ceremonial at least.

‘At all events, mamma, you must allow,’ said Agnes, ‘that it is better to live at the foot of the hill than at the top. You never could take any walks if you had this long pull up every time you went out.’

‘They don’t have any long pull,’ said her mother; ‘they have their carriage. Ah, yes, they are very different from a poor clergyman’s wife, who has done her duty all her life without much reward for it. It is not those who deserve them most, or who have most need of them, who get the good things of this life, my dear. I don’t want to judge my neighbours; but Miss Charity Beresford I have heard all my life was not so very much better than a heathen. It may not go so far as that—but I have seen her, with my own eyes, laugh at your papa’s best sermons. I am afraid she is not far removed from the wicked that flourish like a green bay tree; yet look at her lot in life and your papa’s—a gentleman, too, and a clergyman with so many opportunities of doing good—and she in this fine place, a mere old woman!’

‘If papa lived here should we all live here?’ said Dolly, whose small brain was confused by this suggestion; ‘then I should have the pony instead of Cara, and Miss Cherry would be my auntie! Oh, I wish papa lived here!’

‘Hold your tongue,’ said her mother. ‘Cherry Beresford is a ridiculous old creature. Dear me, when I think of the time when she and I were girls together! Who would have thought that I should have been the one to toil up here in the sun, while she drove in her carriage. Oh, yes, that’s very true, she was born the richest—but some girls have better luck than others! It was mine, you see, to marry a poor clergyman. Ah, well, I daresay Cherry would give her head to be in my place now!’

‘And you in hers? Is that what you mean, mamma?’

‘Me in hers! I’d like to be in her house, if that’s what you mean; but me a fanciful, discontented, soured old maid—me!’

‘Then, mamma dear, if you are better off in one way and she in another, you are equal,’ said Agnes, somewhat crossly; ‘that’s compensation. Have not you rested long enough?’ Agnes was in the uncomfortable position of an involuntary critic. She had been used to hear a great deal about the Miss Beresfords all her life, and only a little while before had awoke out of the tranquil satisfaction of use and wont, to wonder if all this abuse was justifiable. She stood under the tree with her back to her mother, looking out upon the view with an impatient sadness in her face. She was fond of her mother; but to hear so many unnecessary animadversions vexed and ashamed her, and the only way in which she could show this was by an angry tone and demeanour, which sat very badly upon her innocent countenance and ingenuous looks.

Just then they heard the sound of footsteps coming towards them, and voices softly clear in the warm air. ‘But, Cara, we must not be so ready to blame. All of us do wrong sometimes—not only little girls, but people who are grown up.’

‘Then, Aunt Cherry, you ought not, and one ought to blame you. A little child who cannot read—yes, perhaps that ought to be excused—it does not know; but us——’

‘We do wrong, too, every day, every minute, Cara. You will learn that as you grow older, and learn to be kind, I hope, and forgive.’

‘I shall never learn that.’

They came within sight as these words were said. Miss Cherry, in a cool grey gown, with a broad hat which Mrs. Burchell thought far too young for her; little Cara in her white frock, the shadows speckling and waving over her, erect as a little white pillar, carrying herself so straight. They made a pretty picture coming down the brown mossy path all broken up by big roots under the cool shade of the trees. On the bank behind them were low forests of coarse fern, and a bundle of foxgloves flowering high up on a brown knoll. The cool and tranquil look of them felt almost like an insult to the hot and panting wayfarers who had toiled up the path this hot day. Mrs. Burchell was in black silk, as became her age and position; she had a great deal of dark hair, and, though she blamed Miss Cherry for it, she, too, wore a hat; but, though she had been resting for ten minutes, she was still red and panting. ‘Ah, Cherry,’ she said, ‘how lucky you are coming downhill while we have been climbing! Some people have always the best of it. It makes me feel hotter and hotter to see you so cool and so much at your ease.’

‘We have come to meet you,’ said Miss Cherry, ‘and we shall be equal the rest of the way, for we shall all climb. Little Dolly, will you drag me up? You are so big and so strong, and you like to help old ladies. Come.’

Dolly being a very little mite, more fit to be carried, was made very happy by this address. She stretched forth two fat, small hands, and made great pretences to drag her thin charge. ‘But you must want to come, or I can’t drag you,’ she said.

‘Dolly is a little, wise woman, and speaks proverbs and parables,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘Yes, dear, I want to come; but we must wait for mamma.’

‘Oh, go on, you are light and airy; you have not been tried with a large family like me! You had better give me your arm, Agnes, for the rest of the way. What a pull it is! I don’t think I should ever walk if I had my choice. If I could afford a pair of ponies like yours; but with so many children ponies are out of the question,’ said Mrs. Burchell, still aggrieved. Miss Cherry looked wistfully at the pretty daughter upon whose arm her friend laid a heavy hand.

‘Perhaps we both have something that the other would like to have,’ she said, mildly. ‘I believe that is the way in life.’

‘Oh, it would never do for you, a single woman, to wish for children! I consider that most improper,’ said the rector’s wife. ‘Of course we all wished for husbands in our day, and some of us were successful and some weren’t; but it isn’t a subject to be talked of, pardon me, my dear Cherry, before young girls.’

Miss Cherry opened her mild eyes very wide, and then she blushed a delicate, overwhelming old-maidenly blush, one of those demonstrations of feeling which are almost more exquisite in the old than in the young. She did not make any reply. Mrs. Burchell went on in her daughter’s ear: ‘She is an old fool—look at her. Blushing! as if she were a young girl.’

‘I can’t blush when I please, mamma,’ said Agnes; ‘neither, I suppose, can she. Lean on me a little heavier; we shall soon get to the top now.’

‘Why, she runs actually,’ said poor Mrs. Burchell. ‘She is as light as Dolly; she doesn’t mind the hill. So, Cara, your papa and mamma have gone away again? Why don’t they take you with them? I should think you are old enough now to go too. How different people are! Now, I can never bear to be separated from my children. I like them to go everywhere with me. It is quite astonishing the difference. Doesn’t your Aunt Charity think it strange that they should always send you here?’

‘Aunt Charity likes to have me,’ said Cara; ‘for mamma travels very fast, and I should get very tired. I think I like the Hill best. Mamma is not very strong, and I should have to stop all my lessons.’

‘But you would not mind that, I should think. My girls are always so glad to get lessons over. They would go mad with joy to have their month’s holiday, and I am sure so would you.’

‘No,’ said Cara; ‘I am nearly twelve, and I can only play three or four tunes, and talk a little French with Aunt Cherry. We pronounce very badly,’ she continued, with a blush. ‘I know by the French people who come to see us in the Square.’

‘You poor child! do you mean to say they let you stay up at night, and hear people talking in the drawing-room? How very wrong for you, both for your mind and health! that is what makes you so thin, I am sure; and you must hear a great many things that you ought not to hear.’

Cara opened her blue eyes very wide. She was on the whole gratified by the idea that she had heard things she ought not to hear. That perhaps accounted for her superior wisdom which she felt in herself.

‘Mamma says I ought to learn to judge for myself,’ she said, with dignity. ‘When there is an argument going on I like to listen, and often she makes me tell her what I thought, and which side I take.’

Mrs. Burchell gave Agnes a significant look; and Agnes, it must be allowed, who heard little conversation which did not turn on personal subjects, was slightly horrified too.

‘Poor child!’ repeated the rector’s wife; ‘at your age!—and what kind of subjects do they talk about? It must be very bad for you.’

‘Oh, about books chiefly,’ said Cara, ‘and pictures—but I don’t understand pictures—and sometimes about politics. I like that—about Ireland and Mr. Gladstone they talked once. And to hear the Frenchmen talk about Ireland—just as if it were Poland, papa said.’

‘Well, I am sure it could not be much worse,’ Mrs. Burchell said, after a pause of alarm. She did not know much about Ireland, except that they shot landlords there, and that when she advertised for a housemaid she said ‘No Irish need apply;’ and she knew nothing at all about Poland, and what the analogy was between them she had not an idea. She looked at Cara after this with a little awe; but naturally held fast by her censure, which no doubt must be just, though she could not tell how.

‘It cannot be good for you to hear such talk as that,’ she said. ‘A good romp and go to bed at eight o’clock, that is what I hold with for my girls. You are a great deal too old for your age. Before you are eighteen, people will be taking you for five-and-twenty. To hear you talk, one would think you were eighteen now.’

‘I wish they would,’ said Cara; ‘I don’t like to be always thought a child. I have often things I want to say just on my very lips. I know I could set the people right if I might but speak. But mamma holds up her finger, and I dare not. If I were eighteen, I should be grown up, and I might give my opinion—and twenty-five! Is Agnes twenty-five?’

‘Agnes! you spiteful little thing!’ cried the mother, getting redder and redder. Agnes was sixteen, and the eldest of five, so that to add anything to her age was very undesirable. Cara was too much bewildered to ask what it was which made her a ‘spiteful little thing,’ for just then they came to the final plateau, where the path reached the level of the lawn. And there, snipping away at her roses, was Miss Beresford herself, in a deep sun-bonnet and garden gloves, with a large pair of scissors in her hand, and two baskets at her feet. The roses were in the full flush of their second bloom, notwithstanding their mistress’s fears. She was snipping off the withered flowers, the defective buds, and yellow leaves on one hand, and here and there making a savage dash at a sound twig infested by a colony of green flies, while she cut roses for the decoration of the room. One of the baskets was filled with these flowers, and Miss Cherry, who had preceded them, had lifted this basket from the path, and was looking at it with a perplexed face.

‘There’s a “Malmaison” which is perfect,’ said Miss Charity; ‘and as for those “Giant of Battles”——’ She liked to pronounce their names in her own way, scorning pretence, as she said; and she put down her nose into the basket with true satisfaction. The one thing in the world Miss Charity was a little ‘off her head’ about was a fine rose.

‘They are fine flowers,’ said Miss Cherry, very seriously, her soft voice relaxing, with no smile; ‘but the stalks are so short! How am I to arrange them? unless you put them bolt upright, each one by itself, as they are in a rose show?’

‘You don’t think I’m going to sacrifice my buds,’ said Miss Charity; ‘never! I see you do it, and that dolt of a gardener, and it goes to my heart. Put them bolt upright; what could be better? or they do very well in flat dishes. You can’t go wrong with roses; but sacrifice my buds—not for the world!’

‘There is not one long enough to put in one’s belt,’ said Miss Cherry, who looked half disposed to cry. ‘We have more roses than any one, but they never look nice, for they never have any stalks. I must think what is to be done. The flat dishes are not effective, and the pyramids are wearisome, and specimen glasses make the table like a child’s garden.’

‘There’s a dinner party to-night,’ said Miss Beresford; ‘that’s why Cherry is put out. Come to the arbour and sit down, you poor hot people. How very hot you look, to be sure. That is what it is to be stout. Neither Cherry nor I are stout, and it is a great advantage to us, especially in summer. Come, Maria, you shall have some tea.’

‘I don’t consider myself stout,’ said Mrs. Burchell, offended. ‘The mother of a large family naturally develops a little. “It would not do, my dear, if you were as slim as you were at twenty,” my husband says to me; “only old maids are thin:” and if he likes it——’

‘Yes; you see we’re all old maids here,’ said Miss Charity, with one of her hearty laughs. Her handsome old face shone cool at the bottom of the deep tunnel of her sun-bonnet, clear red and white, as if she had been twenty; and with large, blue, undimmed eyes, from which little Cara had taken hers, and not from either father’s or mother’s. Cara, indeed, was considered by everybody ‘the very image’ of Miss Charity, and copied her somewhat, it must be allowed, in a longer step and more erect carriage than was common to little girls. Miss Charity put down her scissors in her other basket, while Miss Cherry bent her reflective and troubled countenance over the roses, and drew off her big garden gloves, and led the way to the arbour or bower, which was not so cockney an erection as its name portended. At that height, under the shadow of a group of big fragrant limes, in which two openings cleverly cut revealed the broad beautiful plain below, one with St. George’s noble Castle in the midst of the leafy frame, the air was always fresh and sweet. By stretching your neck, as all the young Burchells knew, you could see the dusty road below, and the Rectory lying deep down in the shadow of the trees; but not a speck of dust made its way up to the soft velvet lawn, or entered at the ever-opened windows. ‘Ah, yes, there’s our poor little place, children; a very different place from this!’ Mrs. Burchell said, plaintively, as she sat down and began to fan herself once more.

‘You once thought it a very nice little place, Maria,’ said Miss Charity. ‘I am afraid you are getting tired of the rector, good man—— ’

‘I?’ said Mrs. Burchell, ‘tired of my husband! You little know him or me, or you would not say such a thing. Nobody except those who have a husband like mine can understand what a blessing it is——’

‘We don’t keep anything of the kind up here,’ said Miss Charity; ‘and here comes the tea. Cherry has gone in to have a cry over her roses. When one has not one thing to trouble about, one finds another. You because your house is not so big as ours; she because I cut the roses too short. We are but poor creatures, the best of us. Well, what’s the news, Maria? I always expect a budget of news when I see you.’

The rector’s wife, offended, began by various excuses, as that she was the last person in the world to hear anything, and that gossips knew better than to bring tales to her; but in the end unfolded her stores and satisfied Miss Charity, who took a lively interest in her fellow-creatures, and loved to hear everything that was going on. By the time this recital was fairly begun Miss Cherry came back, carrying with her own hands a bowl of creamy milk for little Dolly, who clung to her skirts and went with her wherever she went. Mrs. Burchell sat in the summer-house, which afforded a little shelter, and was safer as well as more decorous than the grass outside. When Cherry sat down with the children, Agnes had her gossip, too, to pour into the gentle old maiden’s sympathetic ears. Agnes was in the crotchety stage of youth, when the newly-developed creature wants to be doing something for its fellows. She had tried the school and the parish, not with very great success. She wanted Miss Cherry to tell her what to do. ‘The schoolmistress can teach the girls better than I can. She shrugs her shoulders at me. She is certificated, and knows everything; and the old women are not at their ease. They talk about my dear papa, and what a beautiful sermon it was last Sunday. And mamma is busy with her housekeeping. Couldn’t you tell me, dear Miss Cherry, anything a girl can do?’ Miss Cherry somehow was a girl herself, though she was old. It was more natural to appeal to her than even to mamma.

Dolly for her part drank her milk, and dipped her biscuit in it, and made ‘a figure’ of herself unnoticed by anybody, carrying on a monologue of her own all the time. And Cara sat on the lawn, with the leaves playing over her, flecking her pretty head and white frock with a perpetual coming and going of light and shadow. Cara said nothing to any one. She was looking out with her blue eyes well open, through the branches over big St. George’s, upon that misty blueness which was the world.

CHAPTER V.
COMING HOME.

They stayed in Como till late in October, now here, now there, as caprice guided their steps. Sometimes Mrs. Beresford would be pleased to be quiet, to float about the lake in the boat, doing nothing, taking in the air and the sunshine; or to sit at her window watching the storms that would sometimes come with little warning, turning the lovely Italian lake in a moment into a wild Highland loch—a transformation which always delighted her. She liked the storms, until one day a boat was upset, which had a great effect upon her mind. The people about her thought her heartless in her investigations into this accident, which threw several poor families into dire trouble and sorrow.

‘Would the men die directly?’ she asked; ‘or would they have time to think and time to struggle?’

Her husband reminded her of the common idea that all the scenes of your life came before you, as in a panorama, when you were drowning. ‘I should not like that,’ she said, with a shiver. Then Abbondio interposed, he to whom the boat belonged which the Beresfords hired, and told how he had been drowned once.

‘They brought me back,’ he said; ‘and I shall have to die twice now, which is hard upon a man; for I was gone; if they had not brought me back, I should never have known anything more. No, Signora, I did not see all that had happened in my life. I felt only that I had slipped the net, and was grasping and grasping at it, and could not get it.’

‘That was painful,’ she said, eagerly.

‘It was a confusion,’ said the fisherman.

Mrs. Beresford called to her husband to give him some money for the poor widows who had lost their men in the boat. ‘A confusion!’ she said to herself, dreamily. It was a very still day after the storm, and she had been looking with a strange wistfulness at the soft blue ripples of the water which had drowned these men. ‘A confusion! How strange it is that we know so little about dying! A lingering death would be good for that, that you could write it down hour by hour that others might know.’

‘One would not be able,’ said her husband; ‘besides, I think everything gets misty; and one ceases to be interested about other people. I don’t much believe those stories that represent passionate feeling in the dying. The soul gets languid. Did I ever tell you what a friend of mine said who was dead like Abbondio till the doctors got hold of her and forced her back?’

‘No,’ she said, growing very pale; ‘tell me, James.’

‘She told me that she felt nothing that was painful, but as if she was floating away on the sea somewhere about Capri, where she had once been. Do you remember the sea there, how blue it is about those great Faraglioni rocks? And there she was floating—floating—not suffering; mind and body, all softly afloat; until they got hold of her, as I say, and forced her back.’

‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Beresford, with a shiver; ‘I should not like to be forced back. Poor soul! She will have to die once again some time; but if it was only like that, she will not be much afraid.’

‘She was as far gone as she could go, to come back, I have heard. What queer talk this is, my darling! The accident has spoiled all our pleasure.’

‘No; it is pleasant talk. I like that idea of floating; it is better, far better, than Abbondio’s confusion; but that, I suppose, was because of the suddenness in his case, and clutching at something perhaps as he got into the water. It was not an accident with her, was it? She was dying of an illness as we poor women do.’

‘And most men, Annie; the greater part of us all.’

‘Yes, yes; I know. Poor woman! And they brought her back?’

‘Her family was round her bed, my darling, praying for her life, asking nothing but to get her back. You don’t consider her children, and her husband. Don’t let us talk of it. It makes me think of jumping into this wicked lake, and getting it all over.’

‘Ah! do you feel that too? It is wicked, James; how dare you think such things? Take me back home; yes, home. I am tired of this place. It is all very well when it is fine, but winter is coming. To-morrow let us go home.’

He took her to the shore with a few long sweeps of the oars, glad in his heart of that decision. He, too, was very tired of the place; more tired of the eternal shining than of the storm, and it was getting late in the year for the Alps. Nevertheless it was by the Alps that this capricious woman insisted upon returning, and they had something very near an accident in the snows which roused and pleased her mightily. After the excitement, however, nothing would satisfy her but to rush to London with the utmost speed. She objected to stay even a single night in Paris. She had been seized with a passion of longing for the humdrum Square.

Miss Cherry brought Cara up from Sunninghill to be at home to receive her mother. But the pair of travellers had stolen a march upon the household, and instead of waiting to be received in a proper manner in the evening, with dinner ready and everything comfortable, had arrived at an absurd hour in the morning, before the maids were out of bed, and when there was nothing prepared in the house. Cook herself came, much aggrieved, to tell Miss Cherry this, while Cara ran upstairs to her mother’s room. ‘I don’t make no doubt as folks get very fanciful when they’re ill; but still, Miss, there’s reason in all things. At six o’clock in the morning, and we not up, as why should we be, not thinking of nothing of the sort, and not a thing in the house?’

‘It was hard, cook,’ said the sympathetic Miss Cherry; ‘but then you know my brother had a right to come to his own house when he pleased. Coming home is not like going anywhere else. But I hope Mrs. Beresford is looking better?’

‘Better!’ said cook, spreading out her hands; and Sarah, the housemaid, shook her head and put her apron to her eyes.

‘Dear, dear!’ said kind Miss Cherry, appalled by their tears; ‘but travelling all night makes any one look ill. I shall not go up until she has had a good look at her child. Miss Cara is like a little rose.’

‘So she is, Miss, bless her!’ assented the maids; and Cherry had to wait for a long time in the library before even her brother came to her. One thing which struck her with great surprise was, that there were no boxes about half emptied, in which precious fragilities had been packed in straw and wicker cases. The Buen Retiro cup was the only thing they had bought, and that was among Mrs. Beresford’s things—smashed; and they had both forgotten its very existence. No more wonderful sign could have been of the changed times.

When Miss Cherry in her turn was introduced into the bedroom in which Mrs. Beresford still lay, resting herself, she all but cried out with sudden panic. She only just stopped herself in time; her mouth was open; her tongue in the very act of forming the ‘Oh!’ when her brother’s look stopped her. Not that he saw what she was going to say, or all the effect his wife’s changed looks had upon her. He himself had got used to them. He asked her, half aside, ‘How do you think she is looking?’ with an eager look in his eyes.

‘She is looking—tired,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘Most people do after travelling all night. I could not have lifted my head from the pillow; but Annie had always so much spirit.’

‘Yes; she has no end of spirit,’ said poor James Beresford, looking admiringly at his wife. He flattered himself, poor fellow! that Cherry had not remarked the thinness of the worn face, beside which her own faintly-coloured old maid’s countenance almost looked fresh and round and blooming. He had been alarmed at the thought of what ‘they’ would think of her looks; but now his spirits rose. Cherry did not seem to have remarked it; and what a hypocrite poor Cherry felt, sitting there smiling, with her heart sinking more and more every moment! ‘What will he do without his wife?’ she was asking herself. And, alas! that wife’s worn looks; her fretful little outbursts of impatience; all her caprices and restlessness betrayed a progress of evil more rapid than any one had even feared.

‘Does Mr. Maxwell know you have come back? He will want to see you. He was always so anxious to have news of you,’ she said, falteringly.

‘We have forgotten what doctors are like,’ said Mrs. Beresford. ‘I don’t want ever to renew my acquaintance with them. James, send him a note, and let him come to dinner. Yes, Cara! What has my pet got to say?’

‘You said two different things at once, mamma—that you did not want to see doctors again, and that Mr. Maxwell was to come to dinner.’

‘I told you she was an idealist,’ said Mrs. Beresford, smiling. Then, changing—as she had got into a way of doing,—in a moment, she added, ‘Get down from the bed, Cara; you tire me. There, sit there, further back. Children flutter so; they are always in motion. Cherry is still—she is a comfort; and, James, Mrs. Meredith can come, if she likes to come before I get up. She is a soft, tranquil woman, like Cherry; silly, perhaps, but that does not matter. When one is over tired, silly people who don’t fatigue one are the best——’

‘I wonder does she think me silly?’ Miss Cherry said to herself; and it is to be feared there was not much doubt on the subject. After she had made this speech about Mrs. Meredith, next door, the invalid sent them all away, that she might rest. This was no more than a passing fancy, like other notions that flitted across her restless brain. They went down softly to the library, avoiding by common consent the drawing-room, which was her room, and so closely associated with all her ways. There James Beresford interrogated his sister very closely. ‘You don’t see a very great change—nothing more than you expected?’ He was tired, too, poor fellow! worn out in body and in soul.

‘I think you should see Mr. Maxwell at once,’ said Miss Cherry, who was timid, and did not like to commit herself. ‘What does it matter what I think, who don’t know? I think she is perhaps—more worn than I expected; but then she has been travelling all night. Perhaps you ought not to have allowed her to do so much.’

‘I? How could I help it? and I was too thankful to get home. How I hate those pleasure places! the more beautiful they are, the more terrible. I detest them. I shall never be able to endure mountains and lakes again—till Annie is better, he added, with such a miserable pretence at a smile that his kind sister almost broke down. She made up her mind to remain at his entreaty, though both of them had a doubt whether the invalid would like it. ‘Annie will be pleased, I am sure,’ he said, with hesitation. How well they all understood her! But quiet Miss Cherry felt no anger with the fanciful, capricious, suffering woman, who meant happiness in this house, notwithstanding all her uncertain moods and ways.

‘I will tell her I have something to do in town, and ask her to give me a bed for a few nights.’

‘Aunt Cherry, you had nothing to do when we started; you meant to go home to-day.’

‘Yes, Cara; but I should like to see your mamma get a little better.’

‘Then please tell her so,’ said the child; ‘please tell her so. I know what you think. You think she is very, very ill; but you will not say it. You try to deceive papa and me, and her too. I cannot bear to be deceived.’

‘My dear, some time or other you will learn to know that one must not say everything one thinks; though indeed, indeed, I would always have you say the truth.’

‘I shall never learn not to say what I think,’ said the little girl, with erect head and severe blue eyes fixed upon her aunt disapprovingly. Miss Cherry was nervous and easily disturbed. She could not bear even Cara’s disapproval, and she began to cry in spite of herself, even then not quite ingenuously she felt; for her disturbed nerves and her distress and sympathy for her brother were at the bottom of her emotion, though Cara’s severity gave an immediate reason for her tears.

Mrs. Beresford was better in the evening, and came down to dinner, putting on one of her prettiest dresses in honour of the return. ‘I have worn nothing but grey alpaca for months,’ she said; ‘like you, Cherry; I am quite glad to get out of it, and feel at home again. We have had rather a long spell of honeymooning this time, and we were beginning to get tired of each other; but it was the last, you know, for Cara is to go with us next year.’

Cara, who was sitting by, began to speak. ‘If——,’ she said, and then stopped, arrested in spite of herself by such a passionate look as she had never seen before in her father’s eyes.

‘If—what? You think I shall change my mind? Ah, Mr. Maxwell, how do you do! Am I feeling strong? Well, not strong, perhaps, but very well to-night. I have ups and downs. And poor James there, whom I have punished severely, will tell you I have grown the most fanciful, troublesome, capricious woman. James!’

He had taken Cara into a corner, and was whispering to her in a voice which made the child tremble: ‘If you say a word! if you vex your mother or frighten her with that idiotic sincerity of yours, by Heaven I’ll kill you!’ he said, clenching his hand. ‘Capricious! Yes, you never saw anything like it, Maxwell. Such a round as she has led me—such a life as I have had!’ And he laughed. Heaven help them! they all laughed, pretending to see the joke. While the child in the corner, her little frame thrilling in every nerve with that strange, violent whisper, the first roughness that had ever come her way, sat staring at the group in a trance of wonder. What did it mean? Why were they false all of them, crying when she was not there, pretending to laugh as soon as they turned to her. It was Cara’s first introduction to the mysteries of life.

That night when Miss Cherry had cried herself almost blind, after a stolen interview with the doctor in the passage as he left the house, she was frightened nearly out of her wits by a sudden apparition. It was late, for Cherry, though used to early hours, had not been able to think of sleep after the doctor’s melancholy shake of the head and whisper of ‘I fear the worst.’ She was sitting sadly thinking of what that pretty house would be with the mistress gone. What would become of James? Some men have work to occupy them. Some men are absorbed in the outdoor life which makes a woman less a companion to them, perpetual and cherished; but James! Cherry Beresford was so different a woman from her sister-in-law, that the affection between them had been limited, and almost conventional—the enforced union of relations, not anything spontaneous; for where mutual understanding is not, there cannot be much love. But this did not blind her perception as to what his wife was to James. She herself had not been very much to him, nor he to her. They had loved each other calmly, like brother and sister, but they had not been companions since they were children. Cherry, who was very simple and true, not deceiving herself any more than other people, knew very well that she could never fill for him anything of the place his wife had left vacant. Her heart would bleed for him; but that was all—and what would become of him? She shivered and wept at the thought, but could think of nothing—nothing! What would poor James do?

Then Cara came stalking in upon her in her nightgown, with a candle in her hand, white and chill as a little ghost, her face very pale, her brown hair hanging about her shoulders, her white bare feet showing below her night-dress, all lighted up by the candle she carried. ‘I have come to ask you what it all means,’ the child said; ‘none of you say what is true. You laugh when I can see you are more like crying, and you make jokes, and you tell—lies. Have you all gone mad, Aunt Cherry? or what does it mean?’

Upon this a little burst of impatience came to Miss Cherry, which was an ease to her over-wrought feelings. ‘You disagreeable, tiresome little child! How dare you make yourself a judge of other people? Are you so wise or so sensible that you should be able to say exactly what is right and what is wrong? I wonder at you, Cara! When you see us unhappy, all upset and miserable, about your poor mamma.’

‘But why? To tell me—lies, will that make her well?’

‘You should have been whipt,’ cried the indignant lady. ‘Oh, you should have been whipt when you were a small child, and then you never would have dared to speak so to me, and to your poor father, whose heart is broken! Would you like us to go and tell her how ill she is, and beg of her to make haste and die? Poor, poor Annie! that is what would be best for her, to get rid of the pain. Is that what you would like us to do?’

‘Oh, Aunt Cherry, Aunt Cherry! don’t say that mamma—that mamma——’

‘No, my darling, I can’t say it,’ cried Miss Cherry, drawing the child into her arms, kissing and crying over her. ‘I won’t say it. I’ll never, never give up hope. Doctors are deceived every day. Nobody can tell what may happen, and God hears prayers when we pray with all our hearts. But that’s why we hide our feelings, Cara; why we laugh, dear, when we would like to cry; why we try to talk as if we were happy when we are very sad; for she would give up hope if she once knew——’

‘And would that make any difference?’ said the child, in all the impenetrability of wonder, one revelation bursting upon her after another, feeling this new dark mysterious world beyond her powers.

‘Would hope make any difference?’ cried Miss Cherry. ‘Oh, child, how little you know! It is hope that makes all the difference. If you think things are going well, it helps them to go well—it keeps up your strength, it cheers your heart, it makes you a different creature. Everything, everything, lies in keeping up hope.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Cara, slowly. She had pushed open a door unawares into a spiritual world of which she knew nothing. She had not one of the happy superficial natures which sail over mysteries. That which was deeper than fact and truer than truth was a perplexity and aching wonder to the child. She could not fathom it, she had but just discovered it. She stood quite still while Miss Cherry explained to her as well as she could how nothing must be said or done that would alarm the patient, how everything must be made smooth and kept cheerful round her. ‘And, Cara, you will remember—you will say nothing to frighten her, whatever you may hear. If she should suffer very much, you must always look as if you felt sure she would soon be better.’

‘Even if it is not true?’

‘Oh, my dear child! the only way to mend that is to pray to God day and night, day and night, to make it true! He can and He will—or, oh, Cara! we hope He will,’ cried Miss Cherry, with tears. ‘And you can help by always praying, and always being cheerful. Look at your poor papa, how he smiles and jokes, and his heart is breaking all the time.’

‘His heart is breaking!’ said Cara, under her breath.

‘But if we all do what we can, and are cheerful, and trust in God, she may get better, dear. There is so much we can do. That is how I try to keep up my heart. We must never look frightened, never let her get alarmed. Keep cheerful, cheerful, Cara, whatever we do.’

The child went back to bed with her head buzzing full of strange thoughts. She knew very well that nurse had often exhorted her to patience under toothache, for instance, as the best cure; but it never had been cured by that in Cara’s experience. Was cheerfulness likely to answer in her mother’s case, and smiles instead of crying, and people saying things they did not believe? Such knowledge was too high for her. It confused her head, and made it ache and throb with the multitude of her thoughts.

CHAPTER VI.
THE CONSULTATION.

‘Yes, Miss Carry, if you like. Your dear mamma is falling into a doze; and I don’t wonder, poor dear, after all those doctors a-poking and fingering. Oh, it turns my heart sick! If I don’t get a breath of air I’ll die. Sit in the corner, honey, behind the curtains. Don’t you tease her, nor talk to her; if she wants anything, ring the bell. There now, my darling, don’t say as you haven’t got your way. How that child has worried to get into the room!’ said nurse, confidentially, as she went soft-footed and noiseless downstairs, with an anxious maid in attendance. ‘But a sick-room ain’t a place for a child. It’s bad enough for the like of me.’

‘Yes, poor soul! I can’t think how you stand it night and day as you do,’ said Sarah the housemaid, under her breath.

‘Bless you, I’m used to it,’ she said; ‘but there’s things as I can’t bear. Them doctors a-staring and a-poking, and looking as if they knowed everything. What do they know more than me? It’s experience does it, not their Latin and their wise looks. I know well enough what they’ll say—and I could have said it myself and welcome, ‘stead of taking all that money out of master’s pocket, as can’t do good to nobody. I’d have said it as easy as they could—allowing as it’s any good to say it, which is what I can’t see.’

‘What is it then, nursey?’ said Sarah. ‘It seems awkward like, when folks comes with kind inquiries, never to know no more nor the door you’re opening. But I won’t say a word,’ she added, contradictory but coaxing, ‘if you mind.’

‘I’ll warrant as you won’t,’ said nurse; and so disappeared down the kitchen stairs to snatch that cup of tea which is the saving of poor women. ‘And make it strong, do, or I can’t go through with it much longer,’ she said, throwing herself into a chair.

This was some months after the home-coming of the invalid. Mrs. Beresford had rallied, and spent a pleasant Christmas with her friends round her once more, and she recovered her looks a little, and raised high hopes in all those who watched her so curiously. But just as spring began to touch the Square, and the crocuses appeared, a sudden and rapid relapse had come on, and to-day there had been a consultation of the doctors of a kind which could not be mistaken, so deeply serious was it. They were in Mr. Beresford’s study while nurse went downstairs, and he had just been called in solemnly from the next room to hear her fate, which implied his own. She had dropped into an uneasy sleep when her trial was over, too tired and worn out to be capable of more; and it was during this moment that nurse had yielded to Cara’s entreaties, made through the half-open door. The child had not seen her mother all day, and her whole being was penetrated by the sense of anxiety and foreboding that was in the house. She had wandered up and down the staircase all the time the doctors had been about, and her little, anxious face affected nurse with pity. It was the best thing for Cara to take the watch by her mother’s side during this moment of suspense, as it was the best thing for nurse to get out of the sick-room and refresh herself with change. Nurse’s heart was heavy too, but not with suspense. There had been no mystery to her in the growing illness. She was an ‘old-fashioned servant’—alas! of a very old-fashioned sort indeed; for few in any age, we fear, are those poetical retainers whose service is given for duty, not for need. Nurse served not for duty, indeed; to which word she might have objected—for was it not the duty ‘of them as she had done everything for’ to look after her, as much as hers to look after them?—but for love, which is a more effectual argument. She liked her good wages and her comforts, as an honest woman has a right to do; but she liked the ‘family’ better still, and cared not very much for any other family, not even that with which she was herself connected in the capacity of sister and aunt—for, though she had been married, she had no children of her own. Mrs. Beresford had been her child; then, so long after, Cara. Her heart was concentrated in those two. But after this trial of the medical examination, which was almost as hard upon her as upon her mistress, nurse was very thankful to take advantage of that door, and escape for a little into the more cheerful world of the kitchen, with all its coming and going, and the cup of tea which cook, sympathetic and curious, and very anxious to hear all that could be heard, made for her with such friendly care.

Thus little Cara stole in and established herself noiselessly in the corner by her mother’s bedside, hidden by the curtains. Many and strange had been the thoughts in the child’s head through these winter months, since her parents came home. She had lived a very quiet life for a child since ever she could remember, though it was a happy life enough; and the curious baby rigidity of the little code of morals which she had formed for herself had been unbroken up to that time. Cara had felt that, whosoever did wrong ought to be hanged, beheaded, burnt, or whatsoever penalty was practicable, at once, without benefit of clergy. A lie being the worst possible offence that ever came within her ken, had been as murder in the swift and sudden vengeance of her thoughts. The offence had been considered capital, beyond the reach of pardon or extenuation. It is impossible to tell what horrible overthrow of all her canons ensued when her father and aunt not only sanctioned, but enforced, lying upon her, and boldly avowed their practice of it themselves as a duty. Cara had lost herself for a long time after that. She had wandered through that bottomless darkness for months, and now had only just come to a glimmering of daylight again by aid of the individual argument, that though truth was necessary for the world in general, modifications were permitted in cases where people were ill—in the case of mamma being ill, which was the immediate thing before her. It was the one evil she was individually cognisant of in the world; but the thing was to accept it, not struggle against it, as guilt which was justified by necessity. Cara felt that here was one thing upon which more light would come as one grew older—a prospect which generally this little idealist treated with the contempt it deserves. Mamma would be better then, she thought, and the world get back into its due balance and equilibrium without any one being the worse. Probably now that time was soon approaching, now that the doctors had come and found what was the matter, and probably very soon, Cara hoped, the worst of all her difficulties would be removed; and upon this doubtful subject she would be able to get the opinion of the individual on whose behalf the others were defying Heaven with so much horrible daring, of mamma herself, for whom the sun and moon were being made to stand still, and all the world was put out of joint for the time. This hope was in her thoughts as she took her seat in nurse’s big, softly-cushioned chair, which never creaked nor made any noise, and sat there as still as a mouse, sometimes not unlike a mouse, peeping round the corner of the curtain at her charge, who lay half buried among the pillows which her restlessness had thrown into disorder, with little starts and twitches of movement, and now and then a broken moan. Worn as she was, there was still beauty in the face—white and sharpened with pain, with red hectic spots upon it, like stains on the half-transparent flesh. Her hair had been pushed away under a cap, which had come loose, and only half confined the soft golden brown locks, which had not lost their lustre; she had thrown out one arm from under the bedclothes, which lay on the white coverlet, an ivory hand, half visible only through the lace and needlework of the sleeve. With what wondering awe and pity Cara looked at her—pity which was inexpressible, like all profound childish sentiments! Poor mamma! who suffered as she? for whom else did God permit the laws of truth to be broken? She was very fond of her beautiful mother, proud of her, and oh, so piteously sorry for her. Why should she be ill—she who hated it so much? Cara herself now and then was ill, and had to put up with it, without making any fuss. But mamma was different. The still child watched with a pity which was unfathomable, and beyond the reach of words.

The room was very still; it was at the back of the house, looking out upon nothing but gardens; so quiet that you could not have thought you were within reach of the full torrent of London life. The little pétillement of the fire, the occasional soft falling of the ashes, the ticking of the small, soft-toned clock, were the only audible sounds. It was a warm spring afternoon, and, but that Mrs. Beresford liked to see it, there was no need for a fire. It made the room warm and drowsy. How it was that, amid all her confused and troubled thoughts, such a reflective child as little Cara should have got drowsy too, who can tell? The stillness and quiet were unusual to her. She was leaning back against nurse’s chair, her feet curled up, her small frame entirely contained within it, her mother sleeping beside her, the room very still, with those soft rhythms of periodic sound. All at once she came to herself in a moment, after a lapse, the duration of which she knew nothing of. It was the sound of voices which roused her. Her mother speaking—her father, though how he got there she could not tell, standing very haggard and pale, in front of the fire.

‘You said you would tell me—oh, tell me the truth! I am tired of waiting, and of uncertainty. James, in pity, the truth!’

‘Yes, my darling; but they came—to no decision. It is so long since Sir William saw you. You could not bear him, you know. He must come again—he must have time——’

‘James! You are not telling me the truth!’

Cara saw that her father turned round to the fire, and held out his hands to it, as if he were cold. That change made his voice sound further away. ‘Annie, Annie! do you think I would deceive you?’ he said, faltering. Neither of them knew that the child was there behind the curtain, but of that Cara never thought.

‘What did they say?’ she cried. ‘Oh, yes, you deceive me: you do nothing but deceive me; and now, at least, I must know the truth. I will send for Maxwell to come back, and he will tell me—he is honest, not like you. James, James! have you no love for me left? You did love me once—and promised. What did they say? I know they have told you. You cannot hide it from me—it is in your face.’

He made no answer, but stooped down over the fire, so that his very profile might be hid from her. She could not see anything, he thought, in his shoulders—and yet the tremor in his frame, the very gesture told more plainly than words. She sat up in her bed, growing wild with eager energy. Her cap fell back, which had been loose before, and her long hair streamed over her shoulders. ‘Bring me the medicine-box, quick, quick!’ she cried. He ran to obey her, glad of the diversion, and knowing how often she had paroxysms of pain, which had to be stilled at all hazards. The neat little medicine-chest, with its orderly drawers and shelves, like a toy in tiny regularity and neatness, was kept in a closet at the other end of the room. He brought it out, and put it down on the table by her bedside. ‘Is it the usual pain?’ he said, his voice trembling. And now she could see all the misery in his haggard face. She clutched with her white, feverish fingers at his arm.

‘Tell me. You have heard—oh, I can see, you have heard—tell me, what do they say?’

He tried for a moment to get free; but what was the use? His face, all quivering with miserable excitement, his heavy eyes that would not look her in the face, his lips, not steady enough even to frame an excuse, were more telling than any words. She devoured his face with her strained eyes, holding him by his sleeve. Then, with a convulsive shiver, ‘It is as I thought. I see what it is,’ she cried.

‘O my darling!’ he said, sinking down on his knees by her bedside. ‘What do they know? They are mistaken every day. How often have we said that, you and I? Why should we make gods of them now? Annie! we never believed in doctors, you and I!’

‘I believe in them now,’ she said. All her excitement had faded from her. The hectic red had disappeared from her cheeks, a convulsive shivering was all that remained of her strong excitement and emotion. She was hushed by the certainty. No doubt was in her mind as to the truth of it. There was silence for a moment—a long, long time, as it seemed; and when the silence was broken, it was she who spoke, not in complaint or despair, but with a strange, chill wonder and reflective pain. ‘There are some people who would not have minded so much,’ she said, in a half whisper. ‘Some people do not feel the pain so much—or—the loathing. O my God, my God, me!’ What could be said? Hard sobs shook the man’s helpless frame. He could do nothing for her—and she was dearer to him than his life.

‘Do not cry,’ she said, as if she had been talking to a child; ‘that hurts me more. Don’t you remember when we talked of it—if it ever came to this, James—and I made you promise. You promised. Surely, surely, you must remember? In summer, before we went away.’

He tried to look at her blankly, as if he did not know what she meant; but, God help him, he remembered every word.

‘Yes; you know what I mean. I can see it in your eyes. You can’t deceive me now, James! you promised!’

‘Never! never!’ he said, his voice broken with passionate sobs.

‘I think you promised; but at least you said it was right—no wickedness in it. Oh, do it, James! You can save me still. Why should I have any more pain, now? I could bear it if it was for any good; but why should I now, James?’

‘I cannot, I cannot,’ he cried; ‘do not ask me. Myself, if you will, but not you—not you!’

‘Yourself!’ she said, with a dreamy contempt. In her deadly danger and despair she was somehow raised above all creatures who had no warrant of death in them. ‘Why yourself? You are safe; there is no vulture coming to gnaw your flesh. O James, have you not the heart of a man to save me! Think if it had been in India, in the Mutiny—and you said it would be right.’

‘How could I know?’ cried the unhappy man, with the artlessness of despair; ‘how could I tell it was coming to us? I did not think what I was saying. I thought of others—strangers. Annie! oh, let me go!—let me go!’

‘Think a moment,’ she said, still holding him; ‘think what it will be. Torment! It is hard to bear now, but nothing to what it will be—and worse than torment. You will sicken at me; the place will be unendurable. O God! James, save me! oh, save me! It would be so easy—nothing but a dose, a drink—and all safe. James! James!’

The man burst out into terrible tears—he was beyond the stage at which self-restraint exists—but as for her, she was calm. It was she who held the chief place in this conflict. He was but secondary. The day, the moment was for him but one of many; his life would flow on the same as before, but hers had to stop if not now, yet immediately. She had her sentence delivered to her. And suddenly a fever of longing woke up in her—a desire to taste this strange death, at once to anticipate fate, like that vertigo which makes shipwrecked people plunge into the sea to meet their end a few minutes before it comes inevitably, forestalling it, not waiting for it. She rushed all at once into sudden energy and excitement.

‘Come,’ she cried, with a breathlessness which was half taste, half from the sudden acceleration of her heart. ‘Come; this is the moment. There could be no time as good as now. I am not unhappy about it, nor sorry. It is like champagne. James, if you love me, do it at once; do it now!’

He made no reply, but clung to the bed, hiding his face, with a convulsive shivering all over him. Was it that the excitement in her communicated itself to him, and that he was tempted to obey? There was a singing and a buzzing in his ears. Despair and misery stupefied him. Sooner or later she was to be taken from him: now, or a few weeks, a few months hence through a burning path of, torture. And he could make it easy. Was it a devil or an angel that tugged at his heart, and echoed what she said?

‘Come,’ she said, in soft tones of pleading, ‘cannot you see? I am in the right mind now. Death takes people constantly by surprise, but I am just as I should like to be, able to understand everything, able to feel what is happening to me, not in pain, or unhappy. Oh, quick, quick, James! you shall hold my hand, and as long as I can speak I will tell you how it feels; like your friend. You remember Como and the boat and the floating away. Quick, quick, while I am happy, out of pain, clear in my head!’ Then her voice softened still more, and a piteous smile came upon her face. ‘Sorry only for you—O my James, my poor James! But you would rather send me away like this than see me perishing—perishing! Come, James!’

She loosed her hold upon him to let him rise, and he stumbled up to his feet like a man dazed, paused, looked at her; then throwing up his arms in a paroxysm of despair and misery, turned and fled from the room. ‘Ah!’ she gave a cry that he thought pursued him, echoing and echoing round his head as he rushed out of the house like a hunted man. But she had no power to pursue him, though her cry had. She sat up gazing after him, her arm stretched out, her head bent forward as when she was talking. Then her arm relaxed, her head drooped, a rush of womanish childish tears came to her eyes. Tears! at such a moment they made everything dim around her, but cleared away gradually like a mist, and once more the doomed woman saw clear. He was gone who should have been her loving executioner and saviour; but—her heart, which had sunk with the disappointment, gave another leap in her breast. He had left the remedy in her hands. The little medicine-chest stood open beside her on the table, within her reach. She did not pause to think, but put out her hand and selected one of the bottles firmly yet trembling, trembling only in her nerves, not in her courage. It required a little effort to pluck it out of the closely-fitting case, and then she held death in her hands.

Just then a little rustle behind the curtain, a childish face peeping round the corner, disturbed her more than anything else in the world would have done. ‘Mamma,’ said Cara, ‘what is that? What is that you are going to take? If papa would not give it you, can it be good for you? Oh, don’t take it, mamma!’

Mrs. Beresford trembled so much that she could scarcely hold the bottle in her hand. ‘It is something that will put my pain away,’ she said, quite humbly. ‘O Cara, my darling, I must take it; it will put away my pain!’

‘Are you sure, quite sure?’ said the child. ‘Shall I ring for nurse, mamma, or shall I do it? My hand is quite steady. I can drop medicine as well as nurse can. Mamma, you are quite, quite sure it will do you good; then let me give it you.’

‘No, no,’ she said, with a low shriek and shudder, turning away from her. ‘No, Cara, not for the world.’

‘But I am very steady; and here is your glass, mamma.’

‘God forbid!’ she cried, ‘not you, not you.’ This last strange incident seemed to take from her the last excuse for delay, and hurried on her fate. She paused a moment, with her hands clasped close upon the little phial, and looked upward, her face inspired and shining with a wonderful solemnity. Then slowly she unclasped her fingers, sighed, and put it to her lips. It was not the right way to take medicine, poor little Cara thought, whose mind was all in a confusion, not knowing what to think. But the moment the deed was done, that solemn look which frightened Cara passed away from her mother’s face. ‘Ah!’ she cried, fretfully, wiping her lips with her handkerchief, ‘how nasty, how nasty it is! Give me a piece of sugar, a bit of biscuit, anything to put the taste away.’

Cara brought the biscuit, pleased to be of use. She picked up the bottle which had dropped out of her mother’s hand, and put it back tidily in the case. She smoothed the disordered pillow. Mamma had been vexed because papa would not tell her something, would not let her know the truth, which was precisely what Cara herself objected to in him; but perhaps papa might have reason on his side too, for she was not strong enough to be agitated. And no doubt he would come back presently and make amends. In the meantime it pleased Cara to be her mother’s sole attendant; she put everything tidy with great care, drawing the coverlet straight, and smoothing the bed. The medicine chest was too heavy for her to carry back to its proper place, but at least she put it exactly level upon the table, with the other things cosily arranged round it. Her mother, following her movements with drowsy eyes, smiled softly upon her. ‘Cara, come here,’ she said; ‘come and give me a kiss. You will be good, and take care of papa?’

‘Yes,’ said Cara, astonished. She was almost frightened by the kiss, so clinging and solemn, which her mother gave her, not on her cheek, but her mouth. Then Mrs. Beresford dropped back on the pillow, her eyes closing. Cara had finished her tidying. She thought the room looked more still than ever, and her patient more comfortable; and with a curious mixture of satisfaction and wonder she went back behind the curtain to nurse’s big chair. Then her mother called her again; her eyes altogether closed this time, her voice like one half asleep.

‘Cara, tell him I was not angry; tell him it is quite true—no pain, only floating, floating away.’

‘What are you saying, mamma?’

‘Floating, floating; he will know.’ Then she half opened the drowsy eyes again, with a smile in them. ‘Give me one kiss more, my Cara. I am going to sleep now.’

The child could not tell what made her heart beat so, and filled her with terror. She watched her mother for a moment, scarcely daring to draw her breath, and then rang the bell, with a confused desire to cry for help, though she could not have told why.

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——’