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.’