‘What they can mean by making up such wicked lies, and putting a slur on her memory, poor child!’ said the old lady with a sudden gush of hot tears.
The doctor said something very hotly about ‘meddlesome parsons,’ and hastily plunged again into descriptions of poor James. The other was not a subject on which he could linger. ‘I never saw a man so broken-hearted; they were always together; he misses her morning, noon, and night. Cherry must come to him; she must come at once,’ he said, forgetting how long it was since he had spoken of Cherry before by her Christian name. But Miss Charity noticed it with the keen spectator instinct of her age, and ruminated in an undercurrent of thought even while she thought of ‘poor James,’ whether Maxwell’s faith in Cherry ‘meant anything,’ or if new combinations of life might be involved in the sequences of that death scene.
The same thought was in the minds of the clerical pair as they went down the hill. ‘Will that come to anything?’ they said to each other.
‘It is a nice little property,’ said the Rector, ‘and I suppose she will have everything.’
‘But if I was Cherry,’ said Mrs. Burchell, ‘I should not like to be thrown at his head in that very open way. Going with him to town! It is as good as offering her to him.’
‘She is no longer young, my dear,’ said the Rector, ‘and people now-a-days have not your delicacy.’
‘Oh, I have no patience with their nonsense!’ she cried; ‘and their friendships, forsooth—as if men and women could ever be friends!’
And it is possible that in other circumstances Miss Cherry’s tranquil soul might have owned a flutter at thought of the escort which she accepted so quietly to-day; but she was absorbed with thoughts of her brother and of the possible use she might be, which was sweet to her, notwithstanding her grief. Miss Charity shook her head doubtfully. ‘It is not Cherry that will help him,’ she said, ‘but the child will be the better of a woman in the house.’
Really that was what Mr. Maxwell wanted, a woman in the house; something to speak to, something to refer everything to; something to blame even, if things were not all right. The funeral was over, and all that dismal business which appals yet gives a temporary occupation and support to the sorrowful. And now the blank of common life had recommenced.
‘Perhaps she will not help him much; but she will be there,’ said the doctor. He was glad for himself that a soft-voiced, soft-eyed, pitying creature should be there. There was help in the mere fact, whatever she might say or do.