‘What is this? what is this?’ he said. ‘Again, Annie! I think you want to make me miserable; to take all the comfort out of my life.’
‘Oh, no, no; not that,’ she said. ‘I am only going to get my bonnet, and then we shall go out. Cara is not here yet to keep us in order. We can honeymoon yet for one more year.’
Was this only the caprice of her nature (she had always been capricious) going a little further than usual? Her husband liked her all the better for her quick changes of sentiment; the laughing and crying that were like an April sky. He said to himself that she had always been like that; always changing in a moment, quarrelling sometimes even, making him uncomfortable for mere variety. Monotony was the thing she hated; and now she had taken this fad, this fancy, and thought herself ill. How could she be ill when she still could run about with him and enjoy herself as much as ever? How keen she had been in the bric-a-brac shop of which she had chosen to talk! He never should have found out that Buen Retiro cup but for her. It was her sharp eyes that saw it. It was she who had rummaged through the dust and all the commonplace gatherings to those things which had really interest. Ill! though all the College of Physicians swore it, and she to boot, he would not believe that she was ill. Disturbance of the system—that was all the worst of them ever said; but how little meaning there was in that! Out of sorts! reduced to plain English, that was what disturbance of the system meant; and everybody was subject to as much. She came in, while he was in the full course of these thoughts, with a brilliant little flush on her cheeks, her eyes shining, her whole aspect full of animation. ‘I am ready, Sir,’ she said, making him a mocking curtsey. Yes; capricious, that was what she had always been, and he loved her for it. It explained her changes, her fancies, her strange notions better than anything else could do.
That was the first day, however, on which her strength really showed symptoms of breaking down. She got tired, which was a thing she never owned to; lost the pretty flush on her cheek, became pale, and worn out. ‘I don’t know what is the matter with me,’ she said; ‘all at once I feel so tired.’
‘And with very good reason,’ said he. ‘Think how rapidly we have been travelling; think what we have been doing since. Why, you were on foot the whole morning. You are tired; so am I, for that matter. I was thinking of saying so, but you are always so hard upon my little fatigues. What a comfort for me to find that you, too, for once in a way, can give in!’ Thus he tried to take her favourite part and laugh her out of her terrors. She consented with a smile more serious than her gravity had been of old, and they went back to their room and dined ‘quietly;’ and he sat and read to her, according to the picture of English domesticity which she had drawn out with smiles a few hours before. It was so soon after that tirade of hers that they could not but remember it, both of them. As it happened, there was nothing but a Tauchnitz novel to read (and who that has been ill or sad, or who has had illness or sadness to solace in a foreign place, but has blessed the novels of Tauchnitz?) and he read it, scarcely knowing what the words were which fluttered before his eyes. And as for her, she did not take much notice of the story either, but lay on the sofa, and listened, partly to his voice, partly to the distant sound of the band playing, with strange heaviness and aching in her heart. It was not that she wished to be out listening to the band, moving about in the warm air, hearing the babble of society—that was not what she cared for; but to be lying there out of the current; to have dropped aside out of the stream; to be unable for the common strain of life! So he read, sadly thinking, not knowing what he read; and she half listened, not knowing what she was listening to. It was the first time, and the first time is the worst, though the best. ‘It is only once in a way,’ he said to her, when the long evening was over; ‘to-morrow you will be as well as ever.’ And so she was. It was the most natural thing in the world that both or either of them should be tired, once in a way.
The Beresfords stayed for a long time on the Continent that year. They went about to a great many places. They stayed at Baden till they were tired of the place. They went to Dresden, because Mrs. Beresford took a fancy to see the great San Sisto picture again. Then they went on to lovely old-world Prague, and to lively Vienna, and through the Tyrol to Milan, and then back again to the Italian lakes. Wherever they went they found people whom it was pleasant to know, whom they had met before on their many journeys—people of all countries and every tongue—noble people, beautiful people, clever people—the sort of society which can only be had by taking a great deal of trouble about it, and which, even with the greatest amount of trouble, many people miss entirely. This society included ambassadors and hill-farmers, poor curés, bishops, great statesmen, and professors who were passing rich on five shillings a day: nothing was too great or too small for them; and as wherever they went they had been before, so wherever they went they found friends. Sometimes it was only a chambermaid; but, nevertheless, there she was with a pleasant human smile. And, to tell the truth, James Beresford began to be very glad of the friendly chambermaids, and to calculate more where they were to be found than upon any other kind of society; for his wife had followed her usual practice of coming without a maid, and, as her strength flagged often, he was thankful, too thankful, to have someone who would be tender of her, and care for her as he himself was not always permitted to do, and as nobody else but a woman could. Oh, how he longed to get home, while he wandered about from one beautiful spot to another, hating the fine scenery, loathing and sickening at everything he had loved! Commonplace London and the square with its comforts would have pleased him a hundred times better than lovely Como or the wild glory of the mountains; but she would not hear of going home. One day, when the solemn English of a favourite Kammer Mädchen had roused him to the intolerable nature of the situation, he had tried, indeed, with all his might to move her to return. ‘Your goot laty,’ Gretchen had said, ‘is nod—well. I ton’t untershtand your goot laty. She would be bedder, mooch bedder at ‘ome, in Lonton.’ ‘I think you are right, Gretchen,’ he had said, and very humbly went in to try what he could do. ‘My love,’ he said, ‘I am beginning to get tired of the Tyrol. I should like to get home. The Societies are beginning. I see Huxley’s lectures start next week. I like to be there, you know, when all my friends are there. Shouldn’t you be pleased to get home?’
‘No,’ she said. She had been lying on the sofa, but got up as soon as he came in. ‘You know I hate autumn in London; the fogs kill me. I can’t—I can’t go back to the fogs. Go yourself, James, if you please, and attend all your dear Societies, and hear Mr. Huxley. Take me to Como first, and get me rooms that look on the lake, and hire Abbondio’s boat for me; and then you can go.’
‘It is likely that I should go,’ he said, ‘without you, my darling! When did I ever leave you? But there are so many comforts at home you can’t have here; and advice—I want advice. You don’t get better so fast as I hoped.’
She looked at him with a strange smile. ‘No; I don’t get better, do I?’ she said. ‘Those doctors tell such lies; but I don’t get worse, James; you must allow I don’t get worse. I am not so strong as I thought I was; I can’t go running about everywhere as I used to do. I am getting old, you know. After thirty I believe there is always a difference.’
‘What nonsense, Annie! there is no difference in you. You don’t get back your strength——’