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?