Chapter XV: After Six Whole Years

No. 7, HIGH STREET, WAYATFORD
_November 1st, 18—_

EXACTLY six years to-day since last I wrote in this little old journal of mine. I had forgotten the thing utterly. It had gone out of my mind—pushed out, I suppose, as lesser interests are so often pushed out by greater ones. Odd that I should have come across it now, unexpectedly, just when we have settled into this new home, where everything seems still so strange, and yet so familiar.

During the last six years, I have never once been to Wayatford, never once paid the second visit which was talked of, and which then I so longed for.

Six years are a long while,—very long between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four. I seem to myself to be a century older than I was then. Six years between forty and fifty may not be very much, but between fifteen and twenty-five they are almost a short lifetime.

One changes so utterly in one's ideas, in one's wishes, in one's tastes, in one's estimate of other people, in one's manner of judging and of looking upon things. What I admired six years ago, I often do not admire at all now; and what I despised six years ago, I can often now admire immensely—or, at all events, I can see its worth as I could not then.

I have been reading my old journal, having stumbled upon it accidentally. There was a great pile of books to be looked through: lesson-books, copy-books, exercise-books. All this ought to have been done before we left Bath, but the move at the last was hurried, and some of the piles of books were thrown into a big box, not examined. Mother said she thought we ought to get rid of the more useless ones, so as not to be needlessly encumbered; and I chose the first wet day to overhaul them at leisure.

And there, tied in a huge packet, with exercise-books on each side of it, was my poor old journal!

After that, I could not make any further advance with the examining of other books. It was impossible. Mother had gone across to aunt Marian for the afternoon, and Juliet was writing letters downstairs, and the twins were at school. So I had the top room to myself; and I just sat down and read the whole thing through, from beginning to end.

How glad I was that "I" had found it, and not somebody else; not Juliet, for instance, and above all, not mischievous Addie! And what a crazy thing of me to do, to leave it lying about among piles of books, for anybody to read that might feel inclined!

Well, I have it safe now; and I shall either burn it, or put it in a very secure corner indeed. Perhaps I will keep it, for reading the old entries has started me off afresh. I almost think I will begin journalising again.

Only, I hope not quite in the old style. What a conceited egoistical creature I was in those days! No wonder friends found me almost unbearable. No wonder people in general did not take to me. No wonder I drove the girls half crazy. No wonder Mr. Derwentwater said I had an inordinately good opinion of myself. The only wonder is that my mother did not find me unendurable too. But do mothers—ever? Mother-love can bear what no other love can bear.

How little I dreamt, when I wrote those last words, of all that lay before us, the terrible pressure of the next two years especially. My small trouble seemed so great to me then, though now I can see how much more there was in it of wounded self-conceit than of any deeper feeling. I little dreamt how soon it was to be dwarfed, and even crushed out of existence.

The one thing I wanted then was an easy comfortable life, a life in which I could please myself, and have my own way unhindered. And that was the very last thing which I was to be allowed to have.

I think I can see the reason now—partly, at least. Looking back on what I was then, and seeing what my faults were, I do feel that just the kind of life which I wanted would have been the very worst thing in all the world that could have come to me. It would have fed the selfishness, and fostered the egoism, and made me more and more unendurable.

There are many many things that I have not learnt yet, many things that I do not grasp at all clearly. I can feel that there is an enormous difference between my mother and me, and I wish I were more like her. Perhaps in time, I may grow so. But I have at least learnt one thing; and that is, that our life here is a training for the future, and that everything has an object and a meaning, even when one cannot possibly make out what the particular object and meaning are. And I think I have learnt too—or, at least, I have begun to learn—how little I really know, and how unutterably silly it is to be for ever giving one's opinion on every conceivable question, as if one's opinion were of the very smallest importance. I "used" to feel as if I knew something about everything.

One of the sharpest and best lessons that ever came to me was seeing that letter of aunt Marian's about Mr. Derwentwater. I do not defend him; he was wrong, and he had no business to "play off" one girl against another. I do not respect him for doing it; and I never could respect any man who should be capable of such a thing. But all the same it was about the most wholesome thing that ever happened to me, and I am grateful to him, even while I dislike what he did. But for that, I might have gone on for years and years, never realising in the least what other people thought of me, or what a stuck-up conceited little affair I was. It gave my pride at the time a very sharp sting, and made me utterly miserable. But in the end, it did me, I am sure, a great deal more good than harm.

How we lived through those two years following is a mystery to me. My father grew steadily worse, as the months went on. He consulted more than one first-rate doctor, ill as we could afford it; and the verdict was always a kind of reserved opinion: general failure of health, brain affected by long overstrain, and probably by a neglected sunstroke; nothing much to be done for him, beyond perfect rest and quiet, and absence of all worry and excitement. He was not to exert himself; he was not to be contradicted; he was to be kept as placid and happy as possible.

No easy order to carry out, for me especially, an impulsive girl with very limited powers of self-control, long addicted to self-pleasing. Yet I "had" to learn. Self-defence, contradiction, argument, impatience, those things which were most of all characteristic of me, brought so heavy a penalty on my gentle Mother that I "had" to control myself for her sake. I had to bear injustice, to crush back the bitter words, to clench my hands and endure in silence. And I found that I could. One can bear much for the sake of those whom one loves with a real heart-love. It is when love is faint that bearing becomes so hard.

I am not blaming my poor father. It was not "himself" all those months that was so irritable and unjust. He was not really himself. The state of intense brain-irritation made self-control to some extent an impossible matter, so the doctors said. He suffered sadly, not so much from actual pain as from a perfect misery of depression and restlessness and nervous excitement, and even of delusions.

Juliet did not know how things were. My father utterly refused to have her, or anybody except ourselves in the house, even for a week. And Mother never wavered in her resolution not to make a convenient use of Juliet, after all that had passed. Since we had not made her happy among us in happier days,—since "I" had not, my mother ought to have said,—we could not appeal to her in need.

I do not think Mother ever quite realised how sharp a rebuke to me those words carried. If she had, she would not have repeated them. It always seemed as if, in her gentle humble way, she somehow identified herself with me in the past failure.

Once or twice Juliet proposed to pay us a visit, but my father was terribly upset and excited by the bare idea. And Mother always had to say that he was so "nervous," he could at present stand no visitors in the house. Juliet was puzzled, and I think rather hurt; and for a whole year, she scarcely wrote at all, or Clarissa either.

And we went down lower, lower, into the shadows.

How my mother bore the strain, I do not know. She seemed to have an unnatural strength given to her, at least for a time.

We were short enough as to money. The girls knew that it must be so; and towards the end of the first year, they wrote offering to pay entirely for the twins' schooling. Mother did not refuse. She was most thankful, for this made us able to put them both into a boarding school. The house was hardly fit for children, in my father's state of irritation and depression; and Emmie was falling into a weakly nervous condition, which made us anxious.

Getting them out of the house was better for them, and was worse for us. Johnnie, of course, was away too—only at home in the holidays; and there were no gleams of brightness to help us on.

I suppose hardly anything could have so changed my very self as that second year did: the long long slow months creeping on, with nothing to lighten them, and my father getting always worse, and the perpetual fear of the strain being too much for my mother, and the kind of helpless feeling of having no one to turn to, no one to call in! It seemed to crush out every bit of childishness that remained in me, and to kill all the nonsense, and to make life so awfully real and earnest!

Then at last, the thing I had dreaded most came upon other troubles. My mother suddenly broke down, and became very very ill.

At first, I did not even think of Juliet. We had grown so into the way of going on alone, and of being unable to have friends in and out, because of my father's state, that it seemed as if I just had to go on still in the same way. A week passed somehow, I hardly know how. I had to nurse my mother with the help of our one good-natured and very stupid girl; and I had to look after my father and try to keep him from being utterly miserable. It was just a little comfort to find him turning to me when he could not turn to her. But he was ordered not to go into her room, and I found it impossible to keep him out, and the excitement made her worse. Then she was in danger; and in despair, I thought all at once of Juliet, and wrote off a hurried letter, telling her how things were.

She came off by the very first train, arriving sooner than I could have thought possible. And oh, the comfort I never shall forget seeing her walk in, with her kind capable face, and her "Why, Rhoda, how is it that I was never told?" I just threw myself into her arms, with one great sob, and she held me, and kissed me, and whispered,—

"You poor child. But things will be better now. Why did you not telegraph for me sooner?"

The difference after she came! No words could describe it. The whole household seemed changed, and everything began to go rightly. She sent at once for a trained nurse for my mother; and she undertook my father chiefly herself, and managed him splendidly. He had always stood out against having any one in the house: yet he took to Juliet the very first moment, and never even showed a sign of vexation at seeing her, though I had expected a terrible storm, because I had written without his leave. Juliet had such a quiet cheerful "strong" way of never seeming to contradict, and yet of somehow making him do exactly what was best for him.

Mother was ill for a long time. She had fought so hard against the breakdown that when at last it came, it went on for months. And Juliet would not leave us. She said her duty was plain, and aunt Jessie must do without her for a while. Juliet did not mind what she did, or how much she spent for my mother. Every kind of comfort was provided, and the best advice was procured, and the nurse was kept on month after month, I do not know what it did not cost; yet Juliet never allowed us to feel burdened. I cannot tell how she managed; only it was all done cheerfully and naturally, and she was delighted to be with Mother again. I felt then more than ever how selfish I had been to drive her away from the home she loved best: and I knew at last that she "had" loved it best, and that my mother was far more to her and Clarissa than ever aunt Jessie could be. No wonder. But why did I not understand sooner?

When she came to us in our trouble, she put aside all the past, and never showed any signs of thinking about it. There was nothing in her manner to remind me of the way in which I had behaved to her. I told her one day how sorry I was. And she answered brightly:

"Oh, well, that is all right now, and we know one another at last; don't we?"

As the months went on, my father grew still worse, but in a different way. The irritation and restlessness were not so bad; and a kind of powerlessness crept over him, almost as if he had had a slight stroke, though I believe it was not that really, but only the brain disease going on. He grew more and more shaky, and he could not walk much, and then he took to sleeping a great deal, and he was less and less able to enter into anything like conversation. He could not collect his thoughts, or remember things, or follow out any fixed idea.

By that time, we knew that there was no hope of any improvement, and that he would go steadily down until the end. Only it was a great comfort that he became more placid, not so terribly excited. He quite lost his dislike to me—if dislike is not too strong a word—and would let me sit with him as much as I wished; and gradually he became quiet and affectionate, almost like a child in his ways. And from that he passed slowly into a state when he did not know any of us, and could not say the simplest thing clearly, and had to be taken care of as if he had been a baby.

When he began to grow helpless, Juliet insisted on engaging a capable man-servant to look after him. She said it would kill my mother to attempt again what she had done, and this was true enough. Juliet gave us no choice, so we had to submit. When Mother was really a great deal better, Juliet went back to aunt Jessie for a time, but she soon returned to us, and stayed long. And the house was always like a different place when she passed through the front door.

Those foolish days, when I thought Juliet was against me, and when I wanted to get rid of her at almost any cost! Oh, what a little goose I was!

Well, I am making a long story of the six years. But indeed they have seemed long, though no part of them has been such a terrible drag as the first two years.

My father became slowly worse until about a year ago, when he passed quietly away. None of us could wish to keep him. For months before the end, he had ceased to know any one, and we all felt what a joy to him the release must be,—Mother most of all, because she loved him most.

The Bath house was on our hands still for nearly another year; and my mother was too worn and shattered to be able at first to think of any change. All she wanted was to keep quiet. She and I passed months together, seeing almost nobody, except when Juliet came to stay with us.

Then Clarissa paid us a week's visit and she tried to rouse us up. She declared that the life was bad for us both, and that we ought to go elsewhere, and start afresh. She frightened me by saying how thin my mother was, and how, if I didn't look-out, she would slip away out of our hands altogether.

"Your mother is three-quarters an angel already, Rhoda," she said; "but we don't want her to become one entirely just yet!"

I do not believe that we "do" become angels when we die. Angels are surely quite different from human beings. But people often say that sort of thing; and I have given up arguing with Clarissa. What is the use?

About that time, aunt Marian wrote, much to the same purpose. She asked if we had ever thought of such a thing as living in Wayatford. A pretty little house in High Street, almost exactly across the road, was vacant, and the rent was low; and there was a good day-school near, which would do for the twins.

Clarissa and Juliet both took up the idea; and I did not at all dislike it. I thought it would be nice to be near aunt Marian, and perhaps to see Millicent again, though I had heard nothing of her for a long time, and somehow our correspondence died a natural death years ago.

So the plan came about, and everything was settled. Then the oddest thing happened. Aunt Jessie gave out that she was going to be married.

Fancy—at her age!

It was to be to a nice old widower, whom she had known many years. And Juliet was so curious about it. She laughed at first; and then she actually began to cry, and said she had no home.

Mother said, "My dear!—" and stopped.

And Juliet crept into Mother's arms, and whispered,—

"Will you have me? Can we live together again? Could Rhoda put up with me?"

"O Juliet! If you can put up with me!" I cried.

And that too was arranged in less than half-an-hour. Juliet was staying with us when the news first came of aunt Jessie's engagement.

We did not give up this little house, because it is so pretty and quaint, and it stands in such a nice garden, and the rooms are of a very good size. But Juliet has insisted on no end of improvements, and has even built an extra wing of two rooms.

Then at last, we came, and here we have been now for nearly a fortnight.

I have put all this into one entry, though I have not written it all in one day, because it is a sort of history of the last six years.