CHAPTER XXIII.
A REMONSTRANCE.
Mr. Beresford was seated in his library, as usual, in the morning; he had breakfasted and glanced over his newspaper, and now had settled down to ‘work,’ that is, to what he called work. He would not have been much the worse had he idled, nor would his finances or anybody’s comfort have suffered; probably that was one reason why he was so industrious. His writing-table was arranged with the most perfect order: here his blotting-book, his pens, his paper of all sizes, from ponderous foolscap to the lightest accidental note; there his books of reference; in the centre, the volume he was studying. John, by long practice, had learned to know exactly where to place all his master’s paraphernalia. He sat in front of the fire, which crackled merrily and made light pétillements, in the sound of which alone there was genial company. The ruddy sunshine of the winter morning entered in a side-long gleam; everything was comfortable, warm, and luxurious round him; the room was lined almost as high as the ceiling with books, and the square table near the further window was covered with magazines and newspapers. He spared nothing in that way, though for himself he did not read half the literature that was placed there ready for him. He took his place at his table, opened his book, put down the letters which he had brought with him from the breakfast-table, and prepared to write—or rather to work—for his object was to write a review of the serious book he was reading; his letters were about this and other important matters—a meeting of the Imperial Society—the arrangements to be made for a series of lectures—the choice of a new member. He put down all these momentous epistles on his table, and turned over a page of the book in respect to which he was prepared to give to the world some new ideas of his own on the relations between mind and matter, or rather, upon some of those strange processes by which the human brain, which is as purely matter as the human leg, pranks itself up in the appearance of a spiritual entity. He was fond of philosophical questions. But when he had made all these preparations he stopped suddenly short and began to think. What process was it that brought across him, like a sudden breath of summer air with the scent of flowers in it, that sudden flood of recollections? In a moment, invading his breast and his mind with thoughts of the past, he felt as people do to whom an old friend appears suddenly, bringing with him a hundred forgotten associations. Had someone come into the warm and pleasant room and laid a hand upon his shoulder and looked him in the face? If James Beresford had been a superstitious man he would have thought so. His wife had been dead for more than five years—and long and weary and painful these years had been. Lately, however, his heart had been lulled to rest by sweet friendliness and sympathy and help; he had felt strong enough to take up his ordinary life again and return into the world—not unfaithful, but consoled and soothed. Nothing had happened to him to break this sensation of rest from trouble, and what happened now was not painful. It was only the sudden return of thoughts which had been in abeyance. She seemed to come and stand by him, as she used to do, looking over his shoulder, asking after his work. ‘What are you doing?’ he seemed to hear her say—leaning over him with that familiar proprietorship of him and all his works and ways which was so sweet. Why had this visitation come to him to-day? Of course it must have been some impression on his nerves which thus reflected itself through his being. Some chance contact had stirred one of those strings which move what we call feelings in the strange machinery of our puppet nature. He thought somehow that when he had said this it explained the mystery. All at once, like a gale of spring, like a sudden thaw—or like someone coming into the room; though the last metaphor was not so fine as the others, it was the most true. Few of our mental processes (he would have allowed) are pure thought—this was not thought at all; he felt as if she stood by him—she whom he had lost: as if their life came back as it used to be. His grief for her, he knew, had been lulled to rest, and it was not any revival of the sharpness and bitterness of that grief which moved him: it was a return for a few minutes of the life they had lived together, of the conditions which life had borne before.
Perhaps it was simply because his sister was there, and the sound of the two feminine voices, hers and Cara’s, at the breakfast-table, had brought back memories of the old times. He leant his elbows on his open book and his chin in the hollow of his hands. What a different life it had been! What were his societies now, his articles, all his ‘work,’ to the first spontaneous living of those days that were dead? How she would come in familiar, sure of her right to be wherever he was—not timid, like Cara, who never knew whether her father would be pleased or not pleased to see her, nor reverential, like good Cherry, who admired and wondered at his books and his writing. He knew how these two would look at any moment if need or business brought them knocking to his door. But he never could tell how she would look, so various were her aspects, never the same—two women sometimes in one moment, turning to tears or to sunshine in the twinkling of an eye, cheering him, provoking him, stimulating him. Ah, what a change! life might have its soothings now, its consolations, little makings up and props, to give it the appearance of being the same life as before, but nothing could ever make it what it had been. He had not died of it, neither would he die of it—the grief that kills is rare; but whatever might happen to him in the world, so much was certain, that the delight of life was over, the glory gone out of it. And he did not wish it to be otherwise, he said to himself. There are things which a man can have but once. Some men are so happy as to retain those best things of life till old age—but he was not one of those blessed men——. And he was no longer wretched and a wanderer on the face of the earth. Time had brought him a softening quiet, a dim pleasantness of tranquillity and friends—good, tender, soothing, kindest friends.
Someone coming in broke suddenly this strange revival of memory—and of all people in the world it was the doctor, Maxwell, whose name was so linked to the recollections of the old life, but who, Beresford felt, had never been the same to him since Annie died. His mind had been so preoccupied that he had never inquired what was the cause of this estrangement. What did it matter to him if all the world was estranged? He had felt vaguely; and if he thought upon the subject at all, supposed that in the anguish of his mind he had said something or done something to vex his old friend. But what did it matter? His life had been too much shipwrecked at first to leave his mind at liberty to care what might happen. And now the estrangement was a fait accompli. But his heart was touched and soft that morning. The thought of Annie had come back to him, and here was someone deeply associated with Annie. In the little start with which he got up from his chair at the sound of Maxwell’s name, a rush of resolution ran through his veins with a rapidity such as leaves words hopelessly behind. ‘I will get to the bottom of it whatever it is. I will know the cause, and make it up with Maxwell.’ These words would have taken some definite atom of time to think and say, but the thought rushed through his mind instantaneously as he rose holding out his hand. ‘Maxwell! you are an unusual visitor now-a-days. I am very glad to see you,’ he said. That he should have come just now of all times in the world!
‘Yes; I have ceased to be about the house as I used to be,’ the doctor said, with a slight confusion, grasping the hand offered to him. And then they sat down on two chairs opposite to each other, and there was a pause. They were both embarrassed a little. This kind of coolness between two friends is more difficult to get over than an actual quarrel. Maxwell was not at his ease. How many recollections this room brought back to him! That strange visitor who had stood by James Beresford’s side a minute before stood by his now. He seemed to see her standing against the light, shaking her finger at them in reproof. How often she had done so, the light catching her dress, making a kind of halo round her! Was it possible she was gone—gone, disappeared from before their eyes, making no sign? And yet how clearly she seemed to stand there, looking at the two whose talk she had so often interrupted, broken off, made an end of, with capricious sweet impertinences. Maxwell, like her husband, felt the reality of her so strong that his mind rejected with a strange vertigo the idea of her absolute severance from this house and this life. The vertigo grew still greater, and his head seemed to turn round and round when he remembered why he had come.
‘Why is it?’ said Beresford. ‘Something seems to have come between us—I can’t tell what. Is it accidental, or does it mean anything? I have had a distracted life, as you know, and I may have done something amiss—— ’
‘No, no,’ said the other, hurriedly; ‘let us say nothing about that. I meant nothing. Beresford, if you have this feeling now, what will you think when you hear that I have undertaken a disagreeable, intrusive mission?’
‘Intrusive?’ He smiled. ‘I don’t see what you could be intrusive about. You used to know all my affairs—and if you don’t know them now, it is not my fault.’
‘Good heavens!’ cried the doctor, involuntarily, ‘how am I to do it? Look here, Beresford; I said I would come, thinking that I, who knew you so well, would annoy you less than a stranger—but I don’t feel so sure about that now.’