‘Then please tell her so,’ said the child; ‘please tell her so. I know what you think. You think she is very, very ill; but you will not say it. You try to deceive papa and me, and her too. I cannot bear to be deceived.’
‘My dear, some time or other you will learn to know that one must not say everything one thinks; though indeed, indeed, I would always have you say the truth.’
‘I shall never learn not to say what I think,’ said the little girl, with erect head and severe blue eyes fixed upon her aunt disapprovingly. Miss Cherry was nervous and easily disturbed. She could not bear even Cara’s disapproval, and she began to cry in spite of herself, even then not quite ingenuously she felt; for her disturbed nerves and her distress and sympathy for her brother were at the bottom of her emotion, though Cara’s severity gave an immediate reason for her tears.
Mrs. Beresford was better in the evening, and came down to dinner, putting on one of her prettiest dresses in honour of the return. ‘I have worn nothing but grey alpaca for months,’ she said; ‘like you, Cherry; I am quite glad to get out of it, and feel at home again. We have had rather a long spell of honeymooning this time, and we were beginning to get tired of each other; but it was the last, you know, for Cara is to go with us next year.’
Cara, who was sitting by, began to speak. ‘If——,’ she said, and then stopped, arrested in spite of herself by such a passionate look as she had never seen before in her father’s eyes.
‘If—what? You think I shall change my mind? Ah, Mr. Maxwell, how do you do! Am I feeling strong? Well, not strong, perhaps, but very well to-night. I have ups and downs. And poor James there, whom I have punished severely, will tell you I have grown the most fanciful, troublesome, capricious woman. James!’
He had taken Cara into a corner, and was whispering to her in a voice which made the child tremble: ‘If you say a word! if you vex your mother or frighten her with that idiotic sincerity of yours, by Heaven I’ll kill you!’ he said, clenching his hand. ‘Capricious! Yes, you never saw anything like it, Maxwell. Such a round as she has led me—such a life as I have had!’ And he laughed. Heaven help them! they all laughed, pretending to see the joke. While the child in the corner, her little frame thrilling in every nerve with that strange, violent whisper, the first roughness that had ever come her way, sat staring at the group in a trance of wonder. What did it mean? Why were they false all of them, crying when she was not there, pretending to laugh as soon as they turned to her. It was Cara’s first introduction to the mysteries of life.
That night when Miss Cherry had cried herself almost blind, after a stolen interview with the doctor in the passage as he left the house, she was frightened nearly out of her wits by a sudden apparition. It was late, for Cherry, though used to early hours, had not been able to think of sleep after the doctor’s melancholy shake of the head and whisper of ‘I fear the worst.’ She was sitting sadly thinking of what that pretty house would be with the mistress gone. What would become of James? Some men have work to occupy them. Some men are absorbed in the outdoor life which makes a woman less a companion to them, perpetual and cherished; but James! Cherry Beresford was so different a woman from her sister-in-law, that the affection between them had been limited, and almost conventional—the enforced union of relations, not anything spontaneous; for where mutual understanding is not, there cannot be much love. But this did not blind her perception as to what his wife was to James. She herself had not been very much to him, nor he to her. They had loved each other calmly, like brother and sister, but they had not been companions since they were children. Cherry, who was very simple and true, not deceiving herself any more than other people, knew very well that she could never fill for him anything of the place his wife had left vacant. Her heart would bleed for him; but that was all—and what would become of him? She shivered and wept at the thought, but could think of nothing—nothing! What would poor James do?
Then Cara came stalking in upon her in her nightgown, with a candle in her hand, white and chill as a little ghost, her face very pale, her brown hair hanging about her shoulders, her white bare feet showing below her night-dress, all lighted up by the candle she carried. ‘I have come to ask you what it all means,’ the child said; ‘none of you say what is true. You laugh when I can see you are more like crying, and you make jokes, and you tell—lies. Have you all gone mad, Aunt Cherry? or what does it mean?’
Upon this a little burst of impatience came to Miss Cherry, which was an ease to her over-wrought feelings. ‘You disagreeable, tiresome little child! How dare you make yourself a judge of other people? Are you so wise or so sensible that you should be able to say exactly what is right and what is wrong? I wonder at you, Cara! When you see us unhappy, all upset and miserable, about your poor mamma.’