‘I didn’t mean to,’ said the doctor, with colloquial homeliness; and he went away into the back drawing-room and sat down near the piano, to escape being questioned, poor Beresford thought, who sat still mournfully in the narrow circle of the lamplight, asking himself whether there was really anything to fear. The soft security of the house with all its open windows, the friendly voices heard outside, the subdued pleasant light, the sweet voice singing in the dimness, what a picture of safety and tranquillity it made! What should happen to disturb it? Why should it not go on for ever? James Beresford’s sober head grew giddy as he asked himself this question, a sudden new ache undreamed of before leaping up, in spite of him, into his heart. The doctor pretended to be absorbed in the song; he beat time with his fingers as the measure went on. Never in the memory of man had he shown so much interest in singing before. Was it to conceal something else, something which could not be put into words, against the peace of this happy house, which had come into his heart?
Fortunately, however, Beresford thought, his wife forgot all about that agitating scene for some days. She did not speak of it again; and for about a week after was unusually lively and gay, stronger and better than she had been for some time, and more light in heart, talking of their journey, and making preparations for it with all the pleasant little sentiment which their ‘honeymooning’ expeditions had always roused in her. When everything was ready, however, the evening before they left home a change again came over her. Cara had been sent to Sunninghill with her nurse that day, and the child had been unwilling to go, and had clung to her mother with unusual pertinacity. Even when this is inconvenient it is always flattering: and perhaps Mrs. Beresford was pleased with the slight annoyance and embarrassment which it caused.
‘Remember, James,’ she said, with some vivacity, as they sat together that evening, ‘this is to be the last time we go honeymooning. Next time we are to be respectable old married people (as we are, with our almost grown-up daughter). She is nearly as tall as I am, the child! nearly eleven—and so very tall for her age.’
‘I think we might take her,’ said Beresford, who indeed had often wished for her before. ‘She is old enough to bear the travelling, and otherwise it would do her good.’
‘Yes; this must be the last time,’ she said, her voice suddenly dropping into a sigh, and her mood changing as rapidly. A house is dreary on the eve of departure. Boxes in the hall, pinafores on the furniture, the pretty china, the most valuable nicknacks all carried away and locked up—even the habitual books disturbed from their places, the last Pall Mall on the table. The cloud came over her face as shadows flit over the hills, coming down even while she was speaking. ‘The last time!’ she said. ‘I can’t help shivering. Has it grown cold? or is it that someone is walking over my grave, as people say?’
‘Why, Annie, I never knew you were superstitious.’
‘No. It is a new thing for me; but that is scarcely superstition. And why should I care who walked over my grave? I must die some time or other and be buried, unless they have taken to burning before then. But there is one thing I feel a great deal about,’ she added, suddenly. ‘I said it once before, and you were frightened, James. If you knew that I was going to die of a painful disease—must die—that nothing could happen to save me, that there was nothing before me but hopeless pain—James, dear, listen to me!—don’t you think you would have the courage for my sake to make an end of me, to put me out of my trouble?’
‘Annie, for Heaven’s sake don’t talk so. It is nonsense, but it makes me unhappy.’
‘As a matter of speculation,’ she said, with a knowledge of his weakness, ‘you can’t think it would be wrong to do it—do you, James?’
‘As a matter of speculation,’ he said; and the natural man awoke in him. He forgot the pain the idea had caused him, and thought of it only as an idea; to put it in other words, the woman beguiled him, and he got upon one of his hobbies. ‘There are many things one allows as speculation which one is not fond of in fact. People must have a certain power over their own lives, and I think with you, my love, that it is no charity to keep infirm and suffering people just alive, and compel them to drag their existence on from day to day. Notwithstanding Heaven’s canon ‘gainst self-slaughter, I think people should be allowed a certain choice. I am not altogether against euthanasia; and if indeed recovery is hopeless and life only pain——’