“I am not so sure of that,” said her mother. “We care so much that we can’t think of anything else. We can’t take things calmly as they do. And they have an advantage in it. Frederick is a very good son, but if I were to write to him, ‘I have been ill, and I am better,’ he would be quite satisfied, he would want nothing more. Whereas I want a great deal more,” Mrs. Eastwood said, flicking off with her finger the ghost of a tear which had gathered, in spite of her, in the corner of her eye, and giving a short little broken laugh. The path of fathers and mothers is often strewn with roses, but the roses have very big thorns. Even Nelly, who was young, whose heart leapt forward to a future of her own, in which brothers had but little share, did not here quite comprehend her mother. For her own part, had she been left to herself, it is possible that Frederick’s “I have been ill, but I am better,” would have satisfied all her anxieties; but as the girl by force of sympathy was but half herself and half her mother, she entered into the feelings which she did not altogether share with a warmth which was increased by partisanship, if such a word can be used in such a case.
“It is wicked of him not to write more fully,” she said.
“No, Nelly, dear, not wicked, only thoughtless; all men are the same,” said Mrs. Eastwood. And to be sure this large generalization affords a little comfort now and then to women, as the same principle does to men in different circumstances; for there is nothing about which the two halves of humanity are so fond of generalizing as each other. It seems to afford a certain consolation that “all men are just the same,” or that “women are like that everywhere”—an explanation which, at least, partially exonerates the immediate offender.
Another week elapsed, during which the Eastwoods carried on their existence much as usual, unmoved to appearance by the delay, and not deeply disturbed by the prospect of the new arrival. Mrs. Eastwood spoke to Mr. Brotherton, her rector and adviser about “the boys,” on the subject, but not much came of it; for Mr. Brotherton, though fond, like most people, of giving advice, and feeling, like most people, that a widow with sons to educate was his lawful prey, was yet shy of saying anything on the subject of Frederick, who was no longer a boy. Whether any more serious uneasiness lay underneath her anxiety for her son’s health, no one, not even Mrs. Eastwood’s chief and privy councillor, could have told; but when appealed to as to what he thought on the subject, whether another messenger or the mother herself should go to the succour of the invalid, Mr. Brotherton shook his head and did not know what to advise. “If he has been able to go on to Leghorn, I think you may feel very confident that he is all right again,” he said. “You must not make yourself unhappy about him. From Leghorn to Pisa is but a step,” added the Rector, pleased to be able to recall his own experience on this subject. But Mrs. Everard, the Privy Councillor, was of a different opinion. She was always for action in every case. To sit still and wait was a policy which had no attractions for her. She was a slight and eager woman, who had been a great beauty in her day. Her husband had been a judge in India, and she was, or thought she was, deeply instructed in the law, and able to be “of real service” to her friends, when legal knowledge was requisite. It is almost unnecessary to say that she was as unlike Mrs. Eastwood as one woman could be to another. The one was eager, slight, and restless, with a mind much too active for her body, and an absolute incapacity for letting anything alone; the other plump and peaceable, not deficient in energy when it was necessary, but slightly inert and slow to move when the emergency did not strike her as serious. Of course it is equally unnecessary to add that Mrs. Everard also was a widow. This fact acts upon the character like other great facts in life. It makes many and important modifications in the aspect of affairs. Life à deux (I don’t know any English phrase which quite expresses this) is scarcely more different from the primitive and original single life than is the life which, after having been à deux, becomes single, without the possibility of going back to the original standing ground. That curious mingling of a man’s position and responsibilities with a woman’s position and responsibilities, cannot possibly fail to mould a type of character in many respects individual. A man who is widowed is not similarly affected, partly perhaps because in most cases he throws the responsibility from him, and either marries again or places some woman in the deputy position of governess or housekeeper to represent the feminine side of life, which he does not choose to take upon himself. Women, however, abandon their post much less frequently, and sometimes, I suspect, get quite reconciled to the double burden, and do not object to do all for, and be all to, their children. Sometimes they attempt too much, and often enough they fail; but so does everybody in everything, and widows’ sons have not shown badly in general life. I hope the gentle reader will pardon me this digression, which, after all, is scarcely necessary, since it is the business of the ladies in this history to speak for themselves.
“I would go if I were in your place,” said Mrs. Everard, talking over all these circumstances in the twilight over the fire the same evening. “A man, as we both know, never tells you anything fully. Of course you cannot tell in the least what is the matter with him. He may have overtasked his strength going on to Pisa. He may break down on the road home, with no one to look after him. I suppose this girl will be a helpless foreign thing without any knowledge of the world. Girls are brought up so absurdly abroad. You know my opinion, dear, on the whole subject. I always advised you—instead of taking this trouble and bringing her here with great expense and inconvenience, to make her an inmate of your own house—I always advised you to settle her where she is, paying her expenses among the people she knows. You remember what I told you about poor Adelaide Forbes?—what a mistake she made, meaning to be kind! You know your own affairs best; but still on this point I think I was right.”
“Perhaps you may have been,” said Mrs. Eastwood, from the gloom of the corner in which she was seated, “but there are some things that one cannot do, however much one’s judgment may be convinced. Leave my own flesh and blood to languish among strangers? I could not do it; it would have been impossible.”
“If your flesh and blood had been a duchess, you would have done it without a thought,” said Mrs. Everard. “She is happy where she is (I suppose). You don’t know her temper nor her ways of thinking, nor what kind of girl she is, and yet you will insist upon bringing her here——”
“You speak as if Frederick’s illness was mamma’s doing,” said Nelly, with a little indignation, coming in from one of her many occupations, and placing herself on a stool in front of the fire, in the full glow of the firelight. Nelly was not afraid of her complexion. She did everything a girl ought not to do in this way. She would run out in the sunshine unprotected by veil or parasol, and she had a child’s trick of reading by firelight, which, considering how she scorched her cheeks, can scarcely be called anything short of wicked. This was a point upon which Mrs. Everard kept up a vigorous but unsuccessful struggle.
“Nelly, Nelly! you will burn your eyes out. By the time you are my age how much eyesight will you have left, do you think?”
“I don’t much care,” said Nelly, in an undertone. She thought that by the time she reached Mrs. Everard’s age (which was under fifty) she would have become indifferent to eyesight and everything else, in the chills of that advanced age.