Chapter XXVIII: The Fireside

It is very hard to be obliged to alter our relationships with our friends, and still more hard to alter the habits which have shaped our lives. Mr. Beresford, when he was forbidden to continue his visits to his neighbour, was like a man stranded, not knowing what to make of himself. When the evening came he went to his library as usual, and made an attempt to settle to his work, as he called it. But long before the hour at which with placid regularity he had been used to go to Mrs. Meredith’s he got uneasy. Knowing that his happy habit was to be disturbed, he was restless and uncomfortable even before the habitual moment came. He could not read, he could not write--how was he to spend the slowing-moving moments, and how to account to her for the disturbance of the usual routine? Should he write and tell her that he was going out, that he had received a sudden invitation or a sudden commission. When he was debating this question in his mind, Edward came in with a very grave face to say that his mother was ill and unable to see anyone.

‘She said you had better be told,’ said Edward; ‘she has gone to her room. She has a--headache. She cannot see anyone to-night.’

‘Mr. Sommerville has been with you; has he anything to do with your mother’s headache?’

‘I think so,’ said Edward, angrily--‘old meddler; but she seems to think we must put up with him. I wish my father would come home and look after his own affairs.’

‘It was a mission from your father, then?’ Mr. Beresford was silent for a moment, thinking with somewhat sombre dissatisfaction of the absent Meredith. Would it be so pleasant to see him come home? Would the unaccustomed presence of the master be an advantage to the house? He could not be so insincere as to echo Edward’s wish; but he was moved sympathetically towards the youth, who certainly was quite unsuspicious of him, whatever other people might be. ‘Go upstairs and see Cara,’ he said; ‘she is in the drawing-room.’

The young man’s face brightened. Oswald was absent; he was not as usual in his brother’s way; and though Edward had agreed loyally to accept what he supposed to be the state of affairs and school himself to look upon Cara as his future sister, that was no reason--indeed it was rather the reverse of a reason--for avoiding her now. He went upstairs with a kind of sweet unhappiness in his heart. If Cara was not for him, he must put up with it; he must try to be glad if she had chosen according to her own happiness. But in the meantime he would try to forget that, and take what pleasure heaven might afford him in her society--a modified imperfect happiness with an after-taste of bitterness in it--but still better than no consolation at all.

Cara was with her aunt in the drawing-room, and they both welcomed him with smiles. Miss Cherry, indeed, was quite effusive in her pleasure.

‘Come and tell us all the news and amuse us,’ she said; ‘that is the chief advantage of having men about. My brother is no good, he never goes out; and if he did go out, he never comes upstairs. I thought Oswald would have come this evening,’ Miss Cherry said, in a tone which for her sounded querulous; and she looked from one to the other of the young people with a curious look. She was not pleased to be left out of Cara’s confidence, and when they excused Oswald with one breath, both explaining eagerly that they had known of his engagement, Miss Cherry was if anything worse offended still. Why should not they be open, and tell everything? she thought.

‘Besides,’ said Cara, very calmly, ‘Oswald never comes here in the evening: he has always so many places to go to, and his club. Edward is too young to have a club. Why should people go out always at night? Isn’t it pleasant to stay at home?’

‘My dear, gentlemen are not like us,’ said Miss Cherry, instinctively defending the absent, ‘and to tell the truth, when I have been going to the play, or to a party--I mean in my young days--I used to like to see the lighted streets--all the shops shining, and the people thronging past on the pavement. I am afraid it was a vulgar taste; but I liked it. And men, who can go where they please---- I am very sorry that your mamma has a headache, Edward. She is not seeing anyone? I wonder what James----?’ Here she stopped abruptly and looked conscious, feeling that to discuss her brother with these young persons would be very foolish. Fortunately they were occupied with each other, and did not pay much attention to what she said.

‘Oh, Edward,’ said Cara, ‘stay and read to us! There is nothing I like so much. It is always dull here in the evenings, much duller than at the Hill, except when we go out. And Aunt Cherry has her work, and so have I. Sit here--here is a comfortable chair close to the lamp. You have nothing particular to do, and if your mother has a headache, she does not want you.’

‘I don’t require to be coaxed,’ said Edward, his face glowing with pleasure; and then a certain pallor stole over it as he said to himself, she is treating me like her brother; but even that was pleasant, after a sort. ‘I am quite willing to read,’ he said; ‘what shall it be? Tell me what book you like best.’

‘Poetry,’ said Cara; ‘don’t you like poetry, Aunt Cherry? There is a novel there; but I prefer Tennyson. Mr. Browning is a little too hard for me. Aunt Cherry, Edward is very good when he reads out loud. You would like to hear “Elaine”?’

‘Ye-es,’ said Miss Cherry. She cast a regretful glance at the novel, which was fresh from Mudie’s; but soon cheered up, reflecting that she was half through the second volume, and that it would not be amusing to begin it over again. ‘In my young days stories would bear reading two or three times over,’ she said, unconsciously following out her own thought; ‘but they have fallen off like everything else. Yes, my dear, I am always fond of poetry. Let me get my work. It is the new kind of art-needlework, Edward. I don’t know if you have seen any of it. It is considered a great deal better in design than the Berlin work we used to do, and it is a very easy stitch, and goes quickly. That is what I like in it. I must have the basket with all my crewels, Cara, and my scissors and my thimble, before he begins. I hate interrupting anyone who is reading. But you are only hemming, my dear. You might have prettier work for the drawing-room. I think girls should always have some pretty work in hand; don’t you think so, Edward? It is pleasanter to look at than that plain piece of white work.’

‘I should think anything that Cara worked at pretty,’ said Edward, forgetting precaution. Miss Cherry looked up at him suddenly with a little alarm, but Cara, who was searching for the crewels, and the thimble and the scissors, on a distant table, fortunately did not hear what he said.

‘H-hush!’ said Miss Cherry; ‘we must not make the child vain;’ but, to tell the truth, her lively imagination immediately leaped at a rivalship between the brothers. ‘I suppose we must consider her fate sealed, though she is not so frank about it as I could wish,’ she added, in an undertone.

‘Here are your crewels, Aunt Cherry; and here is the book, Edward. What were you talking about?’ said Cara, coming back into the warm circle of the light.

‘Nothing, my darling--about the art-needlework, and Edward thinks it very pretty; but I am not sure that I don’t prefer the Berlin wool. After all, to work borders to dusters seems scarcely worth while, does it? Oh yes, my dear, I know it is for a chair; but it looks just like a duster. Now we used to work on silk and satin--much better worth it.’

‘Aunt Cherry, you always talk most when someone is beginning to read.’

‘Do I, dear?’ said Miss Cherry, in a wondering, injured tone. ‘Well, then, I shall be silent. I do not think I am much given to be talkative. Have I got everything?--then, my dear boy, please go on.’

It was a pretty scene. The rich warm centre of the fire, the moon-lamps on either table, filled the soft atmosphere with light. Miss Cherry, in her grey gown, which was of glistening silk, full of soft reflections, in the evening, sat on one side, with her crewels in her lap, giving points of subdued colour, and her face full in the light, very intent over the work, which sometimes puzzled her a little. Cara and Edward had the other table between them; he with his book before him, placed so that he could see her when he raised his eyes; she with the muslin she was hemming falling about her pretty hands--a fair white creature, with a rose-light shed upon her from the fire. The rest of the room was less light, enshrining this spot of brightness, but giving forth chance gleams in every corner from mirrors which threw them forth dimly, from china and old Venetian glass, which caught the light, and sent flickers of colour about the walls. Mr. Beresford, who, deprived of his usual rest, was wandering about, an _âme en peine_, looked in for a moment at the door, and paused to look at them, and then disappeared again. He never spent a moment longer than he could help in that haunted room; but to-night, perhaps, in his restlessness, might have found it a relief to take his natural place there, had he not been checked by the quiet home-like aspect of this pretty group, which seemed complete. It did not look like any chance combination, but seemed so harmonious, so natural to the place, as if it had always been there, and always must possess the warm fireside, that he was incapable of disturbing them. Better to bear the new life alone. This genial party--what had he to do with it, disturbing it by his past, by the ghosts that would come with him? He shut the door noiselessly, and went back again, down to his gloomy library. Poor Annie’s room, in which everything spoke of her--how the loss of her had changed all the world to him, and driven him away for ever from the soft delight of that household centre! Strangely enough, the failure of the refuge which friendship had made for him, renewed all his regrets tenfold for his wife whom he had lost. He seemed almost to lose her again, and the bitterness of the first hours came back upon him as he sat alone, having nowhere to go to. Life was hard on him, and fate.

The party in the drawing-room had not perceived this ghost looking in upon them: they went on tranquilly; Miss Cherry puckering her soft old forehead over her art design, and the firelight throwing its warm ruddiness over Cara’s white dress. Barring the troubles incident upon art-needlework, the two ladies were giving their whole minds to the lily maid of Astolat and her love-tragedy. But the reader was not so much absorbed in ‘Elaine.’ Another current of thought kept flowing through his mind underneath the poetry. He wondered whether this would be his lot through his life, to sit in the light of the warmth which was for his brother, and be the tame spectator of the love which was his brother’s, and make up for the absence of the gay truant who even for that love’s sake would not give up his own pleasures. Edward felt that there would be a certain happiness touched with bitterness even in his lot; but how strange that this, which he would have given his life for, should fall to Oswald’s share, who would give so little for it, and not to him! These thoughts ran through his mind like a cold undercurrent below the warm sunlit surface of the visible stream; but they did not show, and indeed they did not much disturb Edward’s happiness of the moment, but gave it a kind of poignant thrill of feeling, which made it more dear. He knew (he thought) that Oswald was the favoured and chosen, but as yet he had not been told of it, and the uncertainty was still sweet, so long as it might last.

‘Ah!’ said Cara, drawing a long breath: the poetry had got into her head--tears were coming into her eyes, filling them and then ebbing back again somehow, for she would not shed them. She had no thought but for ‘Elaine,’ yet felt somehow, as youth has a way of doing, a soft comparison between herself and Elaine, a wavering of identity--was it that she too was capable of that ‘love of the moth for the star?’ Edward watching her, felt that there was more poetry in Cara’s blue eyes than in the Laureate; and no shame to Mr. Tennyson. Is it not in that tender emotion, that swelling of the heart to all lofty and sorrowful, and beautiful things, that poetry takes its rise? Cara being truly the poet’s vision, even to her own touched and melting consciousness, was all Elaine in her young lover’s eyes.

‘But, my dear, my dear!’ said Miss Cherry, ‘if poor Elaine had only loved someone like herself, some young knight that could respond to her and make her happy, oh, how much better it would have been! It makes my heart ache: for Lancelot, you know, never could have loved her; though indeed I don’t know why not, for men being middle-aged is no guarantee,’ Miss Cherry added, with a little sigh, ‘against their making fools of themselves for young girls; but it would have been far more natural and happier for her had she set her heart on someone of her own age, who would have made her----’

‘Oh,’ cried Cara, ‘don’t say it over again! made her happy! did Elaine want to be made happy? She wanted what was the highest and noblest, not asking what was to become of her. What did it matter about her? It was enough that she found out Lancelot without even knowing his name. I suppose such a thing might be,’ said Cara, sinking her voice in poetic awe, ‘as that Lancelot might come to one’s very door, and one never know him. That would be worse, far worse, than dying for his sake.’

‘Oh, Cara, Lancelot was not such a very fine character after all,’ said Miss Cherry, ‘and though I am not so clever about poetry as you are, I have seen many a young girl taken in with an older man, who seemed everything that was noble, but had a very sad past behind him that nobody knew of; but after they are married, it is always found out. I would rather, far rather, see _you_ with a young man of your own age.’

‘Aunt Cherry!’ cried the girl, blushing all over with the hot, sudden, overwhelming blush of her years, and then Cara threw a glance at Edward, seeking sympathy and implying horror at this matter-of-fact view, and caught his eye and blushed all the more; while Edward blushed too, he knew not why. This glance of mutual understanding silenced them both, though neither knew what electric spark had passed between them. Cara in her confusion edged her chair a little further off, and Edward returned to his book. It was an interruption to the delicious calm of the evening. And Miss Cherry began to look at her watch and wonder audibly to find that it was so late. ‘Past ten o’clock! almost time for bed. I thought it was only about eight. Are you really going, Edward? I am sure we are very much obliged--the evening has passed so quickly. And I hope your mamma will be better to-morrow. Tell her how very very sorry we are, and give her my love.’

Edward went away with his heart beating loud. To think that the rightful enjoyment of all this belonged not to himself, but to Oswald, who was out dining, perhaps flirting somewhere, caring so little about it. Was it always so in this world--what a man most wanted he never got, but that which he prized little was flung to him like a crust to a dog? How strange it was! Edward did not go in, but lit a pensive cigar, and paced up and down the Square, watching the lights rise into the higher windows. He knew which was Cara’s, and watched the lighting of the candles on the table, which he could guess by the faint brightening which showed outside. What was she thinking of? Perhaps of Oswald, wondering why he had not come; perhaps kindly of himself as of a brother, in whose affection she would trust. Yes! said Edward to himself, with pathetic enthusiasm; she should always be able to trust in his affection. If Oswald proved but a cool lover, a cooler husband, Edward would never fail her as a brother. She should never find out that any other thought had ever entered his mind. She should learn that he was always at her command, faithful to any wish of hers; but then he recollected, poor fellow, that he was going to India, in Oswald’s place, who would not go. How could he serve her--how could he be of use to her then?

Miss Cherry lingered a little after she had sent Cara to bed. She wanted to look over the end of that novel, and the fire was too good to be left, John having imprudently heaped on coals at a late hour. Before she opened the book she paused to think that if it had not been Oswald, she almost wished that it had been Edward; but it was Cara, of course, who must choose. She had not read much more than a page, however, when her studies were disturbed. Her brother came suddenly into the room, in his slippers, a carelessness of toilette which was quite unusual to him. He came in making her start, and poked the fire with a sort of violence without saying anything. Then he turned his back to the mantelpiece, and gave a glance round the room, in all its dim perfections, and sighed.

‘Cherry,’ he said, ‘if you are not busy, I should like to ask you a question. I came upstairs a little while ago, but you were too much occupied to notice me.’

‘James! indeed, I never saw you.’

‘I know you did not. I did not mean to blame anyone. Tell me what you meant the other morning, when you advised me to stay at home after dinner--not to leave Cara? Was it for Cara’s sake?’

‘Cara was lonely, James; she has never--been used--to be left alone.’

‘Was it for Cara’s sake?’

‘Oh, James,’ said Miss Cherry, faltering, ‘don’t think I wish to interfere! You are more able to judge than I am. It is not my place to make any remarks upon what you do.’

‘Cherry, don’t evade the question; why did you speak to me so? Was it entirely for Cara’s sake?’

Miss Cherry grew red and grew white. She clasped her hands together in unconscious supplication. ‘I must say what I think if I say anything, James. It was a little for--dear Mrs. Meredith too. One must think of her as well. Her husband is a long way off; she is a very kind woman--kindness itself. Even if she thought you came too often, she would not like to say anything. Women understand women, James. She would say to herself, that to send you away would hurt your feelings, and she would rather bear a little annoyance herself.’

‘Do you mean to say she has had any annoyance on my account?’

‘She might have, James dear. She has not taken me into her confidence; but people talk. I suppose if she was a widow and you could--marry----’

‘Charity!’

He had scarcely ever called her by that formal name before, and Miss Cherry was frightened. ‘Oh!’ she cried, once more clasping her hands. ‘Do not punish me for it! It is not my fault. I know better, for I know you both; but people will say so; and you should deny yourself for her sake.’

‘Does _she_ wish it?’ he said hoarsely. It took him a strenuous effort to keep down his fury; but indeed there was no one to assail.

‘She would not wish anything for herself; it would be her nature to think of you first,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘It is not what she wishes, but what you, me, everybody, ought to wish for her, James.’

He looked round the room with a cloud upon his face. ‘Do you know what I see here?’ he said;--‘my past life, which I cannot recall. Am I to come here disturbing the new life that is beginning in it--filling the place with gloom. That does not matter, does it? Better to think of a few malicious words, and make them the rule of one’s conduct, than strive to follow nature and common sense.’

‘James!’ said Miss Cherry, ‘all the malicious words in the world will do no harm to _you_!’

‘What do you mean?’ he said.

‘You are free, so far as that is concerned,’ said his timid sister, rising from her seat. She looked at him with a mild contempt, strange to be seen in the eyes of so gentle a woman. ‘You can do what you like, James; it is not _you_ who will suffer. Good-night,’ she said.

And though Miss Cherry’s heart beat loudly, she had the courage to go away and leave him there, transfixed with that bold dart thrown by her most timid, faltering hand. He stood still for some time after she had left him, unable to move with pain and astonishment. The ass of Balaam was nothing to this tremendous _coup_ from Miss Cherry. He was struck prostrate. Almost he forgot to think of the room and its recollections, so entirely was he slain by this blow.