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.