‘Surely not, if you don’t wish it. There is only your wish to be considered.’
‘It is not myself I am thinking of. It is for him,’ she said, faltering. Of all things that could happen to her, she was least willing to allow that her own will or wish had any share in her decisions. It was a weakness which perhaps the more enlightened of her friends were already aware of. As for Mr. Beresford, he was more critical of her than ever he had been before, although more entirely sympathetic, more ready to throw himself into her service. She looked at him so anxiously. She wanted his opinion and the support of his concurrence. There was nothing for him to do, to be of use as he proposed, but to agree with her, to support what she had thought of—that was friendship indeed.
On the next day Miss Cherry paid a similar visit of condolence, but she was not so tenderly sympathetic as, under other circumstances, she would naturally have been. She looked at the new-made widow with a critical eye. A short time before no one had been more anxious than Miss Cherry that Mrs. Meredith should suffer no harm, should lose no title of respect due to her. She had with her own soft hand struck a blow, the severity of which astonished herself, at her favourite and only brother on Mrs. Meredith’s account; but the sudden revolution in their neighbour’s affairs, instead of touching her heart, closed it. The position was changed, and a hundred tremors and terrors took at once possession of her gentle bosom. Who could doubt what James would wish now—what James would do? and who could doubt that the woman who had permitted him so intimate a friendship would respond to these wishes? This idea leaped at once into the minds of all the lookers-on. Old Sommerville sent the news with a chuckle of grim cynicism yet kindness; Maxwell communicated it with a grudge; and Miss Cherry received it with an instant conviction yet defiance. They had no doubt of what would, nay, must ensue, and jumped at the conclusion with unanimous agreement; and it would be quite true to say that Mr. Meredith’s death brought quite as great a pang to Miss Cherry, who had never seen him, as it did to his wife, though in a different way. If the first marriage, the natural youthful beginning of serious life, brings often with it a train of attendant embarrassments, almost miseries, what is a second marriage to do? Good Miss Cherry’s maidenly mind was shocked by the idea that her brother, so long held up somewhat proudly by the family as an example of conjugal fidelity and true sorrow, had allowed feelings less exalted to get possession of him. And what would Cara do? How would her imaginative delicate being, too finely touched for common issues, conform to the vulgar idea of a stepmother? Miss Cherry grew hot and angry as she thought of it. And a man who had such a child, a grown-up daughter, sweetest and only fit substitute for the mother dead, what did he want with a new companion, a new love? Faugh! to use such a word disgusted her; and that James—James! the most heart-broken and inconsolable of mourners, should come to that! With all this in her mind, it may be supposed that Miss Cherry’s feelings when she went to see Mrs. Meredith and found her in all her crape, crying softly by the fire, were not so sweet as they ought to have been. She said the usual things in the way of consolation—how, as it was to be, perhaps it was best that they had heard of it all at once, and had not been kept in anxiety; and how she supposed such afflictions were necessary for us, though it was very sad that the dear boys had known so little of their father; but, on the other hand, how that fact must soften it to them all, for of course it was not as if he had died at home, where they would have felt the loss every day. This last speech had a sting in it, which was little intentional, and yet gave Miss Cherry a sense of remorse after it was said; for though she had a certain desire to give pain, momentary, and the result of much provocation, yet the moment the pain was given, it was herself who suffered most. This is what it is to have a soft nature; most people have at least a temporary satisfaction in the result when they have been able to inflict a wound.
‘Oh, yes, my dear, she feels it, I suppose,’ Miss Cherry said, when she returned. ‘She was sitting over the fire, and the room much too warm for the season; for it is really like spring to-day. Of course a woman must feel it more or less when she has lost her husband. I have never been in these circumstances, but I don’t see how one could help that—however little one cared for the man.’
‘Did she care little for the man?’ Cara was at the age when most things are taken for granted. She had not entered into any peculiarities in the position of Mrs. Meredith with her husband. She was like Hamlet, recognising more and more, as she realised her own position, the quagmires and unsafe footing round her—was this another? There was a sinking sensation in Cara’s youthful mind, and a doubt and faltering wherever she thought to place her foot.
‘My dear child,’ said Miss Cherry, ‘when a woman spends years after years away from her husband, never making any effort to join him, quite satisfied with a letter now and then, receiving her own friends, making a circle, going into society—while the poor man is toiling to keep it up, thousands and thousands of miles away’—here Miss Cherry paused, a little frightened by the blackness of the picture which she had herself drawn. ‘I hope I am not doing anyone injustice,’ she faltered. ‘Oh, my dear, you may be sure I don’t mean that. And I believe poor Mrs. Meredith could not stand the climate, and of course there was the boys’ education to think of—children always must come home. Indeed, how anyone can settle in India knowing that their children must be sent away——’
‘Aunt Cherry, no one is to be trusted,’ said the girl, tears coming to her eyes; ‘there is no truth anywhere. We are all making a pretence one way or another; pretending to care for people who are living, pretending to mourn for people who are dead; pretending that one thing is our object, while we are trying for another; pretending to be merry, pretending to be sad. Ah! it makes my heart sick!’
‘Cara, Cara! What do you know about such things? They say it is so in the world, but you and I have very little to do with the world, dear. You must not think—indeed, indeed, you must not think that it is so with us.’
‘I don’t know anything of the world,’ said Cara. ‘I only know what is round me. If Mrs. Meredith is false, and papa false, and other people——’
‘My dear,’ said Miss Cherry, trembling a little, ‘it is always dangerous to apply abstract principles so. When I say that Mrs. Meredith was a long time away from her husband, I do not say that she is false. Oh, Cara, no! that would be terrible. If I say anything, all I mean is that she could not be so grieved, not so dreadfully grieved, as a woman would be whose husband had been always with her. Think of the boys, for instance; they did not know him really; they may be very sorry; but, how different would it be if it was a father like your father! And other people—what do you mean by other people?’