CHAPTER XIII.
THE YOUNG PEOPLE.
Cara’s second evening at home was passed much more happily than the first, thanks to Mrs. Meredith, and her spirits rose in consequence; but next morning there ensued a fall, as was natural, in her spiritual barometer. She went to the window in the drawing-room when she was all alone, and gazed wistfully at as much as she could see of the step and entrance of the house next door. Did they mean her to ‘run in half-a-dozen times a day,’ as Mrs. Meredith had said? Cara had been brought up in her aunt’s old-fashioned notions, with strenuous injunctions not ‘to make herself cheap,’ and to cultivate ‘a proper pride.’ She had often been told that running into sudden intimacy was foolish, and that a girl should be rather shy than eager about overtures of ordinary friendship. All these things restrained her, and her own disposition which favoured all reserves. But she could not help going to the window and looking out wistfully. Only a wall between them! and how much more cheerful it was on the other side of that wall. Her heart beat as she saw Oswald come out, not because it was Oswald—on the whole she would have preferred his mother; but solitude ceased to be solitude when friendly figures thus appear, even outside. Oswald glanced up and saw her. He took off his hat—he paused—finally, he turned and came up the steps just underneath where she was standing. In another moment he came in, his hat in his hand, his face full of brightness of the morning. Nurse showed him in with a sort of affectionate enthusiasm. ‘Here is Mr. Oswald, Miss Cara, come to see you.’
The women servants were all the slaves of the handsome young fellow. Wherever he went he had that part of the community on his side.
‘I came to see that you are not the worse for your dull dinner last evening,’ he said. ‘It used to be etiquette to ask for one’s partner at a ball; how much more after a domestic evening. Have you a headache? were you very much bored? It is for my interest to know, that I may be able to make out whether you will come again.’
‘Were you bored that you ask me?’ said Cara. ‘I was very happy.’
‘And, thanks to you, I was very happy,’ he said. ‘Clearly four are better company than three. Your father and my mother have their own kind of talking. Why, I have not been in this room since I was a child; how much handsomer it is than ours! Come, Cara, tell me all about the pictures and the china. Of course you must be a little connoisseur. Should one say connoisseuse? I never know. Virtuosa, that is a prettier word, and we are all in the way of the cardinal virtues here.’
‘But I am not at all a virtuosa. I don’t know. I was a child, too, when I used to be at home, and I suppose it hurts papa to come into this room. He has never been here since I came; never at all, I think, since mamma died.’
‘Does he leave you by yourself all the evening? what a shame!’ said Oswald. ‘Is he so full of sentiment as that? One never knows people. Come, Cara, if that is the case, it is clear that I must spend the evenings with you.’
Cara laughed frankly at the suggestion. She did not understand what he meant by a slight emphasis upon the pronouns, which seemed to point out some balance of duties. She said, ‘I have only been here for two evenings. The first was very dull. I had nothing to read but that book, and I was not happy. The second was last night. Oh, I am not accustomed to much company. I can be quite happy by myself, when I am used to things.’
‘That means you don’t want me,’ said Oswald; ‘but I shall come all the same. What is the book about? You don’t mean to say you understand that! What is unconscious cerebration, Cara? Good heavens! how rash I have been. Are you an F.R.S. already, like the rest of your father’s friends?’
‘I don’t know what it means,’ said Cara, ‘no more than I know about the china. But I read a chapter that first night; it was always something. You see there are very few books in this room. They have been taken away, I suppose. Nobody, except mamma, has ever lived here.’
She gave a little shiver as she spoke, and looked wistfully round. Even in the morning, with the sunshine coming in, how still it was! Oswald thought he would like to break the china, and make a human noise, over the head of the father who was sitting below, making believe to think so much of the memory of his dead wife, and neglecting his living child. The young man had a grudge against the elder one, which gave an edge to his indignation.
‘You shall have books,’ he said, ‘and company too, if you will have me, Cara: that will bring them to their senses,’ he added to himself in a half-laughing, half-angry undertone.
What did he mean? Cara had no idea. She laughed too, with a little colour starting to her face, wondering what Aunt Charity would think if she knew that Oswald meant to spend his evenings with her. Cara herself did not see any harm in it, though she felt it was a joke, and could not be.
‘You were going out,’ she said, ‘when you saw me at the window. Had you anything to do? for if you had you must not stay and waste your time with me.’
‘Why should I have anything to do?’
‘I thought young men had,’ said Cara. ‘Of course I don’t know very much about them. I know only the Burchells well; they are never allowed to come and talk in the morning. If it is Reginald, he always says he ought to be reading; and Roger, he is of course at work, you know.’
‘I don’t know in the least,’ said Oswald; ‘but I should like to learn. What does this revelation of Rogers and Reginalds mean? I never supposed there were any such persons. I thought that Edward and myself were about the limit of friendship allowed to little Cara, and here is a clan, a tribe. I forewarn you at once that I put myself in opposition to your Reginalds and Rogers. I dislike the gentlemen. I am glad to hear that they have no time to talk in the mornings. I, for my part, have plenty of time.’
‘Oh, you are not likely to know them,’ said Cara, laughing, ‘unless, indeed, Roger comes on Sundays, as he said. They are probably not so rich as you are. Their father is a clergyman, and they have to work. I should like that myself better than doing nothing.’
‘That means,’ said Oswald, with great show of savagery, setting his teeth, ‘that you prefer the said Roger, who must not talk o’ mornings, to me, presumably not required to work? Know, then, young lady, that I have as much need to work as your Roger; more, for I mean to be somebody. If I go in for the bar it is with the intention of being Lord Chancellor; and that wants work—work! such as would take the very breath away from your clergyman’s sons, who probably intend to be mere clergymen, and drop into a fat living.’
‘Roger is an engineer,’ said Cara; ‘he is at the College; he walks about with chains, measuring. I don’t know what is the good of it, but I suppose it is of some good. There are so many things,’ she added, with a sigh, ‘that one is obliged to take for granted. Some day, I suppose, he will have bridges and lighthouses to make. That one can understand—that would be worth doing.’
‘I hate Roger!’ said Oswald. ‘I shall never believe in any lighthouses of his making; there will be a flaw in them. Do you remember the Eddystone, which came down ever so often? Roger’s will tumble down. I know it. And when you have seen it topple over into the sea you shall come and see me tranquilly seated on the woolsack, and recant all your errors.’
Upon which they both laughed—not that there was much wit in the suggestion, but they were both young, and the one lighted up the other with gay gleams of possible mirth.
‘However,’ said Oswald, ‘that we may not throw that comparison to too remote a period, where do you think I was going? Talk of me as an idler, if you please. Does this look like idling?’ He took from his pocket a little roll of paper, carefully folded, and breaking open the cover showed her a number of MS. pages, fairly copied out in graduated lines. Cara’s face grew crimson with sudden excitement.
‘Poetry!’ she said; but capital letters would scarcely convey all she meant. ‘Oswald, are you a poet?’
He laughed again, which jarred upon her feelings, for poetry (she felt) was not a thing to laugh at. ‘I write verses,’ he said; ‘that is idling—most people call it so, Cara, as well as you.’
‘But I would never call it so! Oh, Oswald, if there is anything in the world I care for—— Read me some, will you? Oh, do read me something. There is nothing,’ cried Cara, her lips trembling, her eyes expanding, her whole figure swelling with a sigh of feeling, ‘nothing I care for so much. I would rather know a poet than a king!’
Upon this Oswald laughed again, and looked at her with kind admiration. His eyes glowed, but with a brotherly light. ‘You are a little enthusiast,’ he said. ‘I called you virtuosa, and you are one in the old-fashioned sense, for that is wider than bric-à-brac. Yes; I sometimes think I might be a poet if I had anyone to inspire me, to keep me away from petty things. I am my mother’s son, Cara. I like to please everybody, and that is not in favour of the highest pursuits. I want a Muse. What if you were born to be my Muse? You shall see some of the things that are printed,’ he added; ‘not these. I am more sure of them when they have attained the reality of print.’
‘Then they are printed?’ Cara’s eyes grew bigger and bigger, her interest grew to the height of enthusiasm. ‘How proud your mother must be, Oswald! I wonder she did not tell me. Does Edward write, too?’
‘Edward!’ cried the other with disdain; ‘a clodhopper; a plodding, steady, respectable fellow, who has passed for the Civil Service. Poetry would be more sadly in his way than it is in mine. Oh, yes, it is sadly in mine. My mother does not know much; but instead of being enthusiastic she is annoyed with what she does know. That is the kind of thing one has to meet with in this world,’ he said, with a sigh over his own troubles. ‘Sometimes there is one like you—one more generous, more capable of appreciating the things that do not pay—with some people the things that pay are everything. And poetry does not pay, Cara.’
‘I don’t like you even to say so.’
‘Thanks for caring what I say; you have an eye for the ideal. I should like to be set on a pedestal, and to have something better expected from me. That is how men are made, Cara. To know that someone—a creature like yourself—expects something, thinks us capable of something. I am talking sentiment,’ he said, with a laugh; ‘decidedly you are the Muse I am looking for. On a good pedestal, with plenty of white muslin, there is not a Greek of them all would come up to you.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Oswald. Now you are laughing at me.’
‘Well, let us laugh,’ he said, putting his papers into his pocket again. ‘Are you coming to my mother’s reception this afternoon? I hear you were there yesterday. What do you think of it? Was old Somerville there with his wig? He is the guardian angel; he comes to see that we all go on as we ought, and that no one goes too far. He does not approve of me. He writes to India about me that I will never be of much use in the world.’
‘To India.’
‘Yes; all the information about us goes out there. Edward gives satisfaction, but not the rest of us. It is not easy to please people so far off who have not you to judge, but only your actions set down in black and white. Well, I suppose I must go now—my actions don’t tell for much: “Went into the house next door, and got a great deal of good from little Cara.” That would not count, you see; not even if I put down, “Cheered up little Cara, who was mopish.” Might I say that?’
‘Yes, indeed; you have cheered me up very much,’ said Cara, giving him her hand. Oswald stooped over her a moment, and the girl thought he was going to kiss her, which made her retreat a step backwards, her countenance flaming, and all the shy dignity and quick wrath of her age stirred into movement. But he only laughed and squeezed her hand, and ran downstairs, his feet ringing young and light through the vacant house. Cara would have gone to the window and looked after him but for that—was it a threatening of a visionary kiss? How silly she was! Of course he did not mean anything of the kind. If he did, it was just as if she had been his sister, and Cara felt that her momentary alarm showed her own silliness, a girl that had never been used to anything. How much an only child lost by being an only child, she reflected gravely, sitting down after he left her by the fire. How pleasant it would have been to have a brother like Oswald. And if he should be a poet! But this excited Cara more when he was talking to her than after he was gone. He did not fall in with her ideas of the poet, who was a being of angelic type to her imagination, not a youth with laughter glancing from his eyes.
That evening Cara sat solitary after dinner, the pretty silver lamp lighted, with its white moon-orb of light upon the table by her; the fire burning just bright enough for company, for it still was not cold. She had said, timidly, ‘Shall you come upstairs this evening, papa?’ and had received a mildly evasive answer, and she thought about nine o’clock that she heard the hall door shut, just as John came into the room with tea. She thought the man looked at her compassionately, but she would not question him. The room looked very pretty in the fire, light and lamplight, with the little tray gleaming in all its brightness of china and silver, and the little white figure seated by the fire; but it was very lonely. She took up a book a little more interesting than the one which had been her first resource, but presently let it drop on her knee wondering and asking herself would Oswald come? Perhaps he had forgotten; perhaps he had noticed her shrink when he went away, and, meaning nothing by his gesture, did not know why she had retreated from him—perhaps——. But who could tell what might have stopped him? A boy was not like a girl—he might have been asked somewhere. He might have gone to the theatre. Perhaps he had a club, and was there among his friends. All this passed through her head as she sat with the book in her hand, holding it open on her knee. Then she began to read, and forgot for the minute; then suddenly the book dropped again, and she thought, with a sort of childish longing, of what might be going on next door, just on the other side of the wall, where everything was sure to be so cheerful. If she could only pierce that unkindly wall, and see through! That made her think of Pyramus and Thisbe, and she smiled, but soon grew grave again. Was this how she was to go on living—lonely all the evening through, her father seeking society somewhere else, she could not tell where. She thought of the drawing-room at the Hill, and her eyes grew wet; how they would miss her there! and here nobody wanted Cara. Her father, perhaps, might think it right that his child should live under his roof; but that was all he cared apparently; and was it to be always thus, and never change? At seventeen it is so natural to think that everything that is, is unalterable and will never change. Then Cara, with a gulp, and a determination to be as happy as she could in the terrible circumstances, and above all, to shun Oswald, who had not kept his word, opened her book again, and this time got into the story, which had been prefaced by various interludes of philosophising, and remembered no more till nurse came to inquire if she did not mean to go to bed to-night. So the evening did not hang so heavy on her hands as she thought.
Next day Oswald came again, and told her of a forgotten engagement which he had been obliged to keep; and they chatted gaily as before; and he brought her some poems, printed in a magazine, which sounded beautiful when he read them, to her great delight, but did not seem so beautiful when she read them over herself, as she begged she might be allowed to do. After this there was a great deal of intercourse between the two houses, and Cara’s life grew brighter. Now and then, it was true, she would be left to spend an evening alone; but she got other friends, and went to some parties with Mrs. Meredith, Oswald attending them. He was always about; he came and had long private talks with her, reading his verses and appealing to her sympathies and counsel; he walked with her when she went out with his mother; he was always by her side wherever they went. ‘I know Edward will cut me out when he comes, so I must make the running now,’ he said often, and Cara no longer wondered what making the running meant. She got so used to his presence that it seemed strange when he was not there.
‘It’s easy to see what that will end in,’ said Nurse to John and Cook in the kitchen.
‘I wish as one could see what the other would end in,’ Cook replied. But the household watched the two young people with proud delight, going to the window to look at them when they went out, and rejoicing over the handsome couple.
‘I always said as our Miss Cara was one as would settle directly,’ her faithful attendant said. ‘Seventeen! it’s too young, that is, for anything.’
‘But he haven’t got a penny,’ said Cook, who was more prudent, ‘and he don’t do nothing. I’d like a man as could work for me, if I was Miss Cara.’
‘I’d like him better if he hadn’t no call to work,’ said Nurse, with true patrician feeling.
But the chief parties knew nothing of these remarks. They were very cheerful and full of mutual confidences. Oswald confiding to Cara his doubts and difficulties, his aspirations (which were chiefly in verse) and light-hearted anticipations, not going so far as to be called hopes, of sitting one day on the woolsack. Cara, though she had a great respect for Oswald, did not think much about the woolsack. But it was astonishing how she got used to him, how she liked him, and, notwithstanding the occasional dull evenings, how much more variety seemed to have come into her life. Sometimes Mrs. Meredith herself would talk to the girl about her son.
‘If he would work more steadily I should be happier, Cara,’ she would say; ‘and perhaps if he had a strong inducement he would work. He is so clever, and able to do what he likes.’
Cara did not know about this; but she liked his lively company. They were the best of friends; they talked to each other of every foolish thing that comes into the heads of young people; but she had a vague idea that he did not talk to her as the others thought he did. He was not like Roger even; though Roger was no more like him than night was like day. Roger was—different. She could not have told how, and nobody knew of this difference nor spoke to her on the subject. And thus life floated on very pleasantly, with more excitement than had existed in that placid schoolgirl life at the Hill. Miss Cherry came two or three times on a day’s visit to her darling, and observed what was going on and was puzzled; but Aunt Charity had her first attack of bronchitis that year, and it was winter weather, not good for travelling.
‘Yes, I think she’s happy on the whole,’ was Miss Cherry’s report to the elder aunt when she went home—which, as may be supposed, was not a clear enough deliverance for Aunt Charity.
‘Is the young man in love with her?’ said the old lady; ‘is she in love with him? James should not be such a fool as to let them be constantly together, unless it is a match that would please him.’
‘James is not thinking of anything of the kind,’ said Miss Cherry, impatiently. ‘James is taken up with his own affairs, and he thinks Cara a little girl still.’
‘To be sure he does—that is where men always go wrong,’ said Aunt Charity, ‘and James will always be a fool to the end of the chapter.’
Cherry winced at this, for she was the model of a good sister, and never had seen any man who was so much her ideal as James—though in some things he was foolish, she was obliged to allow. Perhaps, as Aunt Charity was ill, and the house, as it were, shut up and given over to invalidism for the winter, it was as well that Cara should be away, getting some enjoyment of her young life. Had she been at home it would have been dull for her, for Miss Cherry was in almost constant attendance upon the old lady. Thus things had turned out very well, as they so often do, even when they look least promising. Had Cara been at the Hill, Miss Cherry would not have been so free to devote herself to Aunt Charity, and both the child and the old lady would have suffered. True, Miss Cherry’s own life might have had a little additional brightness, but who thought of that? She did not herself, and you may be sure no one else did. It was altogether a fortunate arrangement, as things had turned out, and as for Cara, why, was there not Providence to watch over her, if her father was remiss? Miss Cherry felt that there was something like infidelity in the anxious desire she felt sometimes to go and help Providence in this delicate task.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE OLD PEOPLE.
When Mrs. Beresford died, as has been described, there was a great flutter of talk and private discussion among all who knew her about the particulars of her death. It was ‘so sudden at the last,’ after giving every indication of turning out a lingering and slow malady, that public curiosity was very greatly excited on the subject. True, the talk was suppressed peremptorily by Mr. Maxwell whenever he came across it, charitably by other less authoritative judges; but it lingered, as was natural, and perhaps the bereaved husband did not have all that fulness of sympathy which generally attends so great a loss. There were many people, indeed, to whom it appeared that such a loss was worse even than a more simple and less mysterious one, and that the survivor was entitled to more instead of less pity; but mysterious circumstances always damp the public sympathy more or less, and people do not like to compromise themselves by kindness which might seem complicity or guilty knowledge if, in the course of time, anything not known at the moment should be found out. Thus James Beresford, though much pitied, did not meet with that warmth of personal sympathy which circumstances like his so often call forth. He was not himself sensible of it indeed, being too miserable to take any notice of what was going on around him; but most of his friends were fully sensible of this fact, and aware that but few overtures of active kindness were made to the melancholy man, whose very abandonment of his home and life made another item in the mysterious indictment against him, of which everybody felt the burden yet nobody knew the rights. It was in these painful circumstances that Mrs. Meredith first formed the link which now associated her with her next door neighbour. The first time he had come home after his wife’s death, which was only for a week or two, the kind woman had met him, indeed had laid her simple, tender-hearted plan to meet him—going listlessly into his forsaken house. She had gone up to him, holding out her hand, her features all moved and quivering with feeling. ‘Won’t you come in and sit with me in the evening?’ she said. ‘It is the time one feels one’s loneliness most—and my boys are away, Mr. Beresford.’ Her soft eyes, as she raised them to him, were full of tears; her look so pitiful, so full of fellow-feeling, that his heart was as much touched for her as hers seemed to be for him. Of all ways of consolation, is there any so effective as that of leading those whom you grieve for to grieve also a little for you, as a fellow-sufferer? His heart was touched. He could not persuade himself to go the very first evening, but he came soon, and when he had come once returned again and again. It was the first new habit he formed after that mournful breaking-up of all his habits. He could not bear much at a time of the dismal place which he still called home; but now and then he was forced to be there, and when he came this new sweet habit gave him a little strength to meet the chaos into which his life otherwise was thrown. Did not Dante, too, get a little comfort from the sweet looks of that sympathising woman who used to glance at him from her window after the lady of his heart was carried by the angels to heaven? There was no wrong to his Annie in that refuge which kindness made for him from the miseries of the world. Eventually it became a matter of course that he should seek that shelter. He went out of his own house and knocked at her door mechanically, and would sit by her, content only to be there, often saying little, getting himself softly healed and soothed, and made capable of taking up again the burden of his life. She was not the same kind of woman as his wife—her habits of mind were different. The variety, the fluctuating charm, the constant movement and change that were in Mrs. Beresford did not exist in this other. She would sit and work by the lamplight, looking up sweetly to answer, but happy to be silent if her companion liked it. She made herself always the second and not the first, responding, not leading; her gift was to divine what was in others, to follow where they went. It was this that made her so popular with all her friends. When they came to her for advice she would give it without that doubt and fear of responsibility which restrains so many people. For why? she had a rule which was infallible, and which made her safe from responsibility, although she was not herself aware how closely she acted upon it. Her infallible guide was a faculty of seeing what people themselves wished, how their own judgments were tending, and what individually they wanted to do. This she followed sometimes consciously, but often quite unconsciously, as habit led her, and she was never afraid of saying Do this, or Do that. It was one of her great attractions. She might be wise or she might be less than wise, in her decisions, her friends said, but she never shilly-shallied, never was afraid of saying to you with sweet frankness and boldness what she thought it would be good to do.
The consequence of this simple rule was that good advice from Mrs. Meredith’s lips was ever so much more popular than good advice had ever been known to be before. It is not a commodity which is generally admired, however admirable it may be; but those whom she advised were not only edified but flattered and brightened. It made themselves feel more wise. It was sweet at once to the giver and to the receiver, and kindled an increased warmth of sympathy between them. Now and then, to be sure, the course of action she recommended might not be a successful one, but is not that the case with all human counsel? This, which was the secret of her power with all her other friends, subjugated James Beresford too. As there is nothing so dear to a man as his own way, so there is no individual so dear as that friend who will recommend and glorify his own way to him, and help him to enjoyment of it. This she did with a gentle patience and constancy which was wonderful. It was natural to her, like all great gifts, and the great charm of it all was that few people suspected the reflection from their own feelings and sentiments which coloured Mrs. Meredith’s mind, nor was she at all invariably aware of it herself. Sometimes she believed implicitly in her own advice as the natural growth of her own thoughts and experiences, and believed herself to have an independent judgment. And it is to be supposed that she had opinions and ideas—certainly she had ways of her own, the brightest, and kindest, and most caressing that could be conceived.
This was the secret of those absences which had left Cara so lonely. They had become now the confirmed and constant habit of her father’s life. And it would be vain to say that this had been done without remark. While he was at home for a week or two only in a year no one said anything about his frequent visits to the kind neighbour who was not even a widow; but lately he had stayed longer when he came back to the Square, sometimes remaining a month instead of a week, and now it was understood that he had returned ‘for good.’ Both Mrs. Meredith and Mr. Beresford had, it may be supposed, friends who took the responsibility of their conduct, and thought it necessary to supervise them in their innocent but unusual intimacy, and these excellent persons were in the attitude of suspended judgment waiting to see what difference Cara’s presence would make, and that of Oswald, in the one house and the other. But it had not as yet made any very apparent difference. At nine o’clock, or thereabouts, the door would shut in the one house, and Cook and John would exchange glances; while in the other the bell would tinkle, and the two maids, who divided John’s duties between them, would say, ‘There is Mr. Beresford, as usual!’ and shrug their shoulders. He came in, and they did not take the trouble now even to announce the habitual visitor, who had his special chair and his special corner, as if he belonged to the house. Sometimes the two friends would talk long and much, sometimes they scarcely talked at all. They knew each other like brother and sister, and yet there was between them a delicate separation such as does not exist between relations. In the warm room, softly lighted and friendly, the man who had been wounded found a refuge which was more like the old blessedness of home than anything else could be, and yet was not that blessedness. It did not occur to him that because his daughter had come back to him he was to be banished from this other shelter. Cara’s coming, indeed, had scarcely been her father’s doing. Many discussions on the point had taken place among all his friends, and Mrs. Meredith had been spurred up by everybody to represent his duty to him. She had done it with a faint sense in her mind that it would affect herself in some undesirable way, and with a certainty that she was departing altogether from her usual rule of argument with the personal wishes of her clients. Mr. Beresford had no personal wish on the subject. He preferred rather that Cara should stay where she was happy. ‘If she comes here what can I do for her?’ he said. ‘My society is not what a girl will like. I cannot take her to the dances and gaieties which will please her.’
‘Why not?’ Mrs. Meredith had said.
‘Why not!’ He was petrified by her want of perception. ‘What could I do in such places? And she is happy where she is. She has women about her who know how to manage her. Her coming would derange my life altogether. You, who feel everybody’s difficulties, you must feel this. What am I to do with a girl of seventeen? It would be wretched for her, and it could not be any addition to my happiness.’
‘Don’t you think too much of that,’ said Mrs. Meredith, faltering; for indeed this was not at all her way. And it was hard for her to go against those feelings on the part of her companion which, on ordinary occasions, she followed implicitly. Even for herself Cara’s presence would complicate the relations generally; but when she saw her duty, she did it, though with faltering. Everybody else had spurred and goaded her up to this duty, and she would not shrink. ‘If you are going to settle, you ought to have your child with you.’
‘That you should dwell like this upon abstract oughts!’ said Mr. Beresford; ‘you, who are so full of understanding of personal difficulties. It is not like you. If I feel that Cara is better where she is—happier, more suitably cared for——’
‘Still, you know when the father is settled at home his only child should be with him,’ Mrs. Meredith reiterated. She was faithful to her consigne. If she did not see it, other people did for whom she was the mouthpiece. But it will be perceived that those persons were right who said she was not clever. When she was not following her favourite and congenial pursuit of divining others and reflecting them in her own person, she was reduced to this helpless play of reiteration, and stuck to her one point till everybody was tired of it. Beresford was so impatient that he got up from his chair and began to pace up and down the room.
‘There is reason in all things,’ he said. ‘My house now is emphatically a bachelor house, my servants suit me, my life is arranged as I like it, or at least as I can support it best. Cara would make a revolution in everything. What should I do with her? How should I amuse her? for, of course, she would want amusement. And she is happy, quite happy, where she is; nowhere could she be so well as she is now. My aunt and my sister are wrapt up in her. Yes, yes, of course I am fond of my poor little girl; but what could I do with her? You are always so reasonable—but not here.’
‘She should be with her father,’ said Mrs. Meredith, sticking to her consigne; and of course he thought it was perversity and opposition, and never divined what it cost her to maintain, against all her habits of mind, the opposite side. When, however, it appeared by the Sunninghill letters that the ladies there took the same view, Mr. Beresford had no more to say. He yielded, but not with a good grace. ‘You shall have your will,’ he said; ‘but Cara will not be happy.’ He did not take Oswald Meredith into consideration, or any such strange influence; and as for changing his own habits, how was that to be thought of? Life was hard enough anyhow, with all the alleviations which fate permitted. Did anyone suppose that a girl of seventeen, whom he scarcely knew, could be made into a companion for him by the mere fact that she was his daughter? No; his mornings, which were occupied with what he called hard work; his afternoons, which he spent among his serious friends in his clubs and learned societies; and that evening hour, most refreshing to his soul of any, in which the truest sympathy, the tenderest kindness proved a cordial which kept him alive—which of these, was it to be supposed, he would give up for the society of little Cara? He was very glad to give her all that was wanted for her comfort—a good careful attendant, plenty of dresses and pocket-money, and so forth; but he could not devote himself, surely (who could expect it?), to the society of a child. That anyone should expect this gave him even a little repulsion from, a half-prejudice against her. When she appeared, with that serious, half-disapproving look of hers, and when he realised her, seated upstairs in that drawing-room which he had never entered since her mother’s death, among all her mother’s relics, recalling to him at once a poignant sense of his loss, and a sharp thrill of conscious pain, in having so far surmounted that loss and put it behind him, the impulse of separation came still more strongly upon him. He shut himself up in his study more determinedly in the morning, and in the evening had more need than ever of the consoling visits which wound him up and kept his moral being in harmony. He had to ask Mrs. Meredith her advice and her opinion, and to ask even her guidance in respect to Cara. Who could tell him so well what to do with a girl as the kindest and best of women? Oswald, who had been at home for some time, did not like these visits so well as his mother did. No one ever suggested to the young man that he was de trop; but to be sure there were pauses in their conversation when this third person was present, and allusions would be made which he did not understand. So that latterly he had been out or in the library downstairs when Mr. Beresford came; very often out, which Mrs. Meredith did not like, but did not know how to prevent, for to be sure she felt the embarrassment also of her son’s slight disapproval, and of the restraint his presence produced. Why should he cause a restraint? her boy! but she felt that he did so, and it made her unhappy. It was pleasanter in the former evenings, when Mr. Beresford came home only now and then, and there was neither a Cara nor an Oswald to perplex the simple state of affairs.
‘How is she to amuse herself!’ Mr. Beresford said to her. ‘Yes, yes, I know you will do what you can—when was there ever a time when you did not do what you could and more?—but I cannot take her about, I cannot have anyone in the house to keep her company, and how is she to live there, a young girl, alone?’
‘I think Cara will do very well,’ said Mrs. Meredith. ‘She can always come to me. I have told her so; and the people we know are all beginning to call. She will soon have plenty of friends. People will invite her, and you must go with her here and there.’
‘I go with her? You know how I hate going out!’
‘Once at least—say only once. You must do that, and then you will find Cara will have her own friends; she will not be a difficulty any longer. I am glad you trust in me to do what I can for her—and Oswald.’
‘Of course I trust in you,’ he said; ‘but it will break up everything. I know it will—after coming to a kind of calm, after feeling that I can settle down again, and that life is not utterly distasteful to me—you will not wonder that I should be frightened for everything. And you, who have done so much for me.’
‘I have not done anything,’ said Mrs. Meredith, looking up smiling from her book.
‘You say so; but it is you who have done everything; and if I am to be plucked from my refuge now, and pitched forth upon the world—— I believe I am a coward. I shrink from mere outside intercourse, from being knocked up against one and another, and shut out from what I prize most.’
‘How can that be?’ she said; ‘you get fretful, you men, when everything does not go as you wish. Have a little patience. When Oswald came home, it seemed at first, as if he, dear boy, was going to upset all my habits; but it was a vain fear. The first little strangeness is over, and he has settled down, and we are happy—happier than ever. It will be the same with Cara and you.’
Beresford gave a half-groan of dissent. I fear Mrs. Meredith saw that it had a double meaning, and that it expressed a certain impatience of her son as well as of his daughter; but this was one of the things which she would not see.
‘Yes,’ she said, with a little nod of her head, ‘I will answer for it, it will be just the same with Cara and you.’
Mr. Beresford gave a little snort at this of absolute dissatisfaction. ‘I don’t like changes of any kind,’ he said; ‘when we have got to be tolerably well in this dismal world, why not be content with it, and stop there! Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien. How true that is! and yet what can be better than well? I dislike changes, and this almost more than any other. I foresee it will bring me a thousand troubles—not to you, I hope,’ he said, his voice slightly faltering; ‘it would be unbearable indeed if it brought any trouble to you.’
‘Cara cannot bring any trouble to me,’ she said brightly; ‘of that I am sure enough: you are making a ghost of the dearest child. By-and-by you will see how sweet she is and how good.’
‘All girls have a way of being sweet and good,’ he said cynically, which was a mood quite uncongenial to him and out of his way.
‘That is not like you,’ said Mrs. Meredith.
He knew it was not. The thought had passed through his own mind that the saying was ungenerous and unworthy of him, and unworthy of utterance in her presence. What could any man be worth who could utter one of those foolish stock taunts against women in any stage of life, before a woman who was to him the queen of friends, the essence of everything consolatory and sweet. ‘You are always right,’ he replied hastily, ‘and I am wrong, as a matter of course. I am out of sorts. I had but just caught hold of life again and found it practicable, and here seems something that may unsettle all; but I am wrong, it is almost certain, and you must be right.’
‘That is a delightful sentiment—for me; but I am sure of my ground about Cara. Oh, quite sure!’ she said, ‘as sure—as I am of my own boys.’
Beresford did not say anything, but he breathed a short impatient sigh. Her boys were all very well at a distance. When they had been absent he had been fond of them, and had shared in the sentiment expressed by all Mrs. Meredith’s friends, of regret for their absence; but when a small share even of a woman’s company has become one of your daily comforts it is difficult not to find her grown-up son in your way. He reflected upon this as he shook hands with her, and went back to his dwelling-place next door with a consciousness of impatience which was quite unjustifiable. To be sure her grown-up son had a right to her which nothing could gainsay, and was, in a sort of a way, master of the house under her, and might even have a kind of right to show certain mild objections and dislikes to special visitors. Mr. Beresford could not deny these privileges of a son; but they galled him, and there was in his mind an unexpressed irritation against those troublesome members of the new generation who would thrust themselves in the way of their elders, and tread upon their heels perpetually. Children were much pleasanter than these grown-up young people. He did not see the use of them. Cara, for instance, though it was supposed she was to keep house for her father, of what use was she in the house? Cook (naturally) knew a hundred times more than she did, and kept everything going as on wheels. As for Oswald Meredith, who had been a sprightly and delightful boy, what was he now?—an idle young man about town, quite beyond his mother’s management; doing nothing, probably good for nothing, idling away the best years of his life. Why did not she send him to India, as he was doing so little here? What an ease to everybody concerned that would be! He thought of it in the most philosophical way, as good for everybody, best for the young man—a relief to his mother’s anxieties, a thing which his best friends must desire. What a pity that it could not be done at once! But it would scarcely be good policy on his part to suggest it to Oswald’s mother. She might think he had other motives; and what motive could he have except to promote the welfare of the son of such a kind friend?
CHAPTER XV.
ROGER.
Roger Burchell had set his mind steadily, from the moment of Cara’s translation to her father’s house, upon spending those Sundays, which he had hitherto passed at home, with his aunt at Notting Hill. But the rest of the world has a way of throwing obstacles in the path of heroes of twenty in a quite incredible and heartless manner. It was not that the authorities at the Rectory made any serious objections. There was so many of them that one was not missed—and Roger was not one of the more useful members of the family. He had no voice, for one thing, and therefore was useless in church; and he declined Sunday-school work, and was disposed to be noisy, and disturbed the attention of the little ones; therefore he could be dispensed with at home, and nobody cared to interfere with his inclinations. Neither had the aunt at Notting Hill any objection to Roger—he was a friendly boy, willing to take a quiet walk, ready to be kind to those who were kind to him—and to have somebody to share her solitary Sunday’s dinner, and make her feel like other people when she went to church, was pleasant to her. He was a boy who never would want to shirk morning church, or keep the servants from it, to get him a late breakfast, like so many young men. But accident, not evil intention, came in Roger’s way. His aunt fell ill, and then something went wrong at the Engineering College, and leave was withheld—entirely by caprice or mistake, for Roger of course was sure of being entirely innocent, as such youthful sufferers generally are. The upshot was, that his first Sunday in London did not really occur until Cara had been a whole month in her new home. How he chafed and fretted under this delay it is unnecessary to tell. It seemed to him an age since that October afternoon when the sun was so warm on the Hill, and Cara stood by his side looking over the country in its autumn tints, and watching the shadows fly and the lights gleam over St. George’s. What a long time it was! the mellow autumn had stolen away into the fogs of winter; November is but the next month, yet what a difference there is between its clammy chills, and the thick air that stifles and chokes you, and that warmth and sunny glow with which red-breasted October sings the fall of the leaves and the gathering-in of the fruit! And in that time how much might have happened. Had it been dreary for her all by herself in London, separated from her friends? or had she found new people to keep her cheerful, and forgotten the friends of her youth? These were the questions the lad asked himself as he went up to town from Berkshire, on the evening of Saturday, the 25th of November. All that he had heard of since she left had been from a letter which Miss Cherry had read to his sister Agnes, and from which it appeared that Cara felt London lonely, and regretted her friends in the country. ‘How I wish I could have a peep at all of you or any of you!’ she had said. Agnes had been pleased with the expression, and so was he. ‘All of us or any of us,’ he said to himself for the hundredth time as the train flew over the rain-sodden country. He thought, with a thrill at his heart, that her face would light up, as he had seen it do, and she would be glad to see him. She would put into his that small hand, that seemed to melt in his grasp like a flake of snow; and perhaps there would come upon her cheek that faint crimson, which only things very pleasant brought there—the reflection of a sweet excitement. What an era that would be for Roger! he dreamt it out moment by moment, till he almost felt that it had occurred. Sometimes a dream of the other kind would start across him—a horrible fancy that he would find her happy among others, making new friends, forgetting the old; but this was too painful to be encouraged. He thought the train as slow as an old hackney coach, when at last, after all these delays, he got away and found himself actually on the road to London and to her, and thought of a story he had heard of someone in hot haste, as he was, who had jumped out of his carriage and pushed it on behind to arrive the sooner. Roger felt disposed to do so, though his train was an express, and though he knew he could not go to the Square that evening to see her. But he was so much nearer her when he got to Notting Hill. She was on one side of the Park and he on the other. Next day he would walk across, through all the Sunday people, through the yellow fog, under the bare-branched trees, and knock at her door. There was still a moment of suspense, still a long wintry night—and then!
His aunt thought very well of the young man when he got to Notting Hill. She was his mother’s sister, a widow, and without children, and Roger had been named after her husband, the late Captain Brandon, whose portrait hung over her mantelpiece, and whose memory was her pride. She thought her nephew was like her side of the house, not ‘those Burchells,’ and felt a thrill of pride as he came in, tall and strong, in his red-brown hair and budding moustache, with a touch of autumn colour about him in the heavy despondency of the November day.
‘What weather!’ she said, ‘what weather, Roger! I daresay it is a little better in the country; but we have nothing else to expect in November, when the wind blows up the smoke out of the city.’
Roger hastened to assure her that the country was a great deal worse, that the river was like a big, dismal ditch, full of mists and rains, and that town, with its cheerful lights and cheerful company, was the only place. Aunt Mary let herself be persuaded. She gave him a nice little dish of cutlets with his tea. She asked him questions about his mother and sister, and whether his papa’s opinions were not getting modified by experience and by the course of events.
‘Hasn’t he learnt to take warning by all this Romanising?’ she asked, and shook her head at Roger’s doubtful reply. She differed so much in ecclesiastical opinion from her brother-in-law, that she very seldom went to the Rectory. But she was glad to hear all about her godchild, little Mary, and how Philip was getting on at Cambridge. And how pleasant it was to have someone to talk to, instead of sitting all alone and melancholy, thinking, or reading the newspaper. She made much of Roger, and told him he would always be welcome; he was to come as often as he pleased.
‘I shall see her to-morrow,’ Roger said to himself, as he laid his head upon his pillow. The thought did not stop him from sleeping; why should it? but it suggested a string of dreams, some of which were terribly tantalising. He was just putting out his hand to take hers, just about to hear the answer to some momentous question, when he would wake suddenly and lose it all; but still even the disappointment only awakened him to the fact that he was to see her to-morrow; he was to see her to-morrow; nay, to-day, though this yellow glimmer did not look much like daylight. He got up the moment he was called, and dressed with much pains and care—too much care. When his toilet was careless Roger looked, as he was, a gentleman; but when he took extra pains, a Sunday look crept about him, a certain stiffness, as of a man occupying clothes to which he was unaccustomed. His frock-coat—it was his first—was uglier and squarer than even frock-coats generally are, his hat looked higher, his gloves a terrible bondage. Poor boy! but for Cara he never would have had that frock-coat; thus to look our best we look our worst, and evil becomes our good. But his aunt was much pleased with his appearance when he went to church with her, and thought his dress just what every gentleman ought to wear on Sunday.
‘But your gloves are too tight, my dear,’ she said.
Roger thought everything was tight, and was in twenty minds to abandon his fine clothes and put on the rough morning suit he had come in; but the frock-coat carried the day. He could not eat at Mrs. Brandon’s early dinner. She was quite unhappy about him, and begged him not to stand on ceremony, but to tell her frankly if it was not to his mind. ‘For if you are going to spend your Sundays with me it is just as easy to buy one thing as another,’ Aunt Mary said, good, kind, deceived woman. She was very glad he should take a walk afterwards, hoping it would do him good.
‘And I think perhaps I had better call at the Square and see Miss Beresford. Her aunt is sure to ask me when I see her,’ he said.
‘Do, my dear,’ said the unsuspecting woman. And he set off across the park. It was damp enough and foggy enough to quench any man’s courage. The Sunday people, who were out in spite of all disadvantages, were blue, half with the cold and half with the colour of the pitiless day. A few old ladies in close broughams took their constitutional drive slowly round and round. What pleasure could they find in it? still, as it is the ordinance of heaven that there should be old ladies as well as young men of twenty, it was a good thing they had comfortable broughams to drive about in; and they had been young in their time, Roger supposed, feeling it hard upon everybody not to have the expectations, the hopes, that made his own heart beat. How it beat and thumped against his breast! He was almost sorry, though he was glad, when the walk was over and the tall roofs of the houses in the Square overshadowed him. His heart jumped higher still, though he thought it had been incapable of more, when he got to the house. ‘Doors where my heart was used to beat.’ He did not know any poetry to speak of, and these words did not come to him. He felt that she must be glad to see him, this dull, damp Sunday afternoon, the very time when heaven and earth stood still, when there was nothing to amuse or occupy the languid mind. No doubt she and her father would be sitting together, suppressing two mutual yawns, reading two dull books; or, oh, blessed chance! perhaps her father would have retired to his library, and Cara would be alone. He pictured this to himself—a silent room, a Sunday solitude, a little drooping figure by the chimney-corner, brightening up at sight of a well-known face—when the drawing-room door opened before him, and his dream exploded like a bubble, and with a shock of self-derision and disappointment more bitter than honest Roger had ever felt in all his simple life before. There were several people in the room, but naturally Roger’s glance sought out the only one he was interested in, the only one he knew in the little company. She was standing in front of one of the windows, the pale wintry light behind making a silhouette of her pretty figure, and the fine lines of her profile; but curiously enough, it was not she, after the first glance, who attracted Roger’s gaze, but the other figure which stood beside her, close to her, young, and friendly, in all the confidence of intimacy. It was Oswald Meredith who was holding a book in which he was showing Cara something—she, holding the corner of it with one hand, drew it down to her level, and with a raised finger of the other seemed to check what he was saying. They made the prettiest group; another young man, sitting at the table, gazing at the pair, thought so too, with an envious sentiment, not so strong or so bitter as Roger’s, but enough to swear by. Oswald had all the luck, this young fellow was saying to himself: little Cara, too! Behind was Mrs. Meredith, sitting by the fire, and Mr. Beresford, gloomy and sombre, standing by her. It was the first time he had been in this room, and the visit had been made expressly for the purpose of dragging him into it. He stood near his friend, looking down, sometimes looking at her, but otherwise never raising his eyes. This, however, was a side scene altogether uninteresting to Roger. What was it to him what these two elder people might be feeling or thinking? All that he could see was Cara and ‘that fellow,’ who presumed to be there, standing by her side, occupying her attention. And how interested she looked! more than in all the years they had known each other she had ever looked for him.
Cara started at the sound of his name. ‘Mr. Burchell? oh, something must be wrong at home!’ she cried; then, turning round suddenly, stopped with a nervous laugh of relief. ‘Oh, it is only Roger! what a fright you gave me! I thought it must be your father, and that Aunt Charity was ill. Papa, this is Roger Burchell, from the Rectory. You remember, he said he would come and see me. But, Roger, I thought you were coming directly, and it is quite a long time now since I left home.’
‘I could not come sooner,’ he said, comforted by this. ‘I came as soon as ever I could. My aunt was ill and could not have me; and then there was some trouble at the College,’ he added, hurriedly, feeling himself to be getting too explanatory. Cara had given him her hand; she had pointed to a chair near where she was standing; she had given up the book which Oswald now held, and over which he was looking, half-amused, at the new-comer. Roger was as much occupied by him, with hot instinct of rivalry, as he was with Cara herself, who was the goddess of his thoughts; and how the plain young engineer, in his stiff frock-coat, despised the handsome young man about town, so easy and so much at home! with a virulence of contempt which no one could have thought to be in Roger. ‘Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?’ he was tempted to say, making up to him straight before the other had time to open his lips. But of course, being in civilised society, Roger did not dare to obey his impulse, though it stirred him to the heart.
‘You don’t introduce us to your friend, Cara,’ said Oswald, smiling, in an undertone.
The fellow called her Cara! Was it all settled, then, and beyond hope, in four short weeks? Oh, what a fool Roger had been to allow himself to be kept away!
‘Mr. Roger Burchell—Mr. Meredith—Mr. Edward Meredith,’ said Cara, with a slight evanescent blush. ‘Roger is almost as old a friend at the Hill as you are at the Square. We have all been children together;’ and then there was a pause which poor little Cara, not used to keeping such hostile elements in harmony, did not know how to manage. She asked timidly if he had been at the Hill—if he had seen——?
‘I came direct from the College last night,’ he said; and poor Roger could not keep a little flavour of bitterness out of his tone, as who should say, ‘A pretty fool I was to come at all!’
‘The—College?’ said Oswald, in his half-laughing tone.
‘I mean only the Scientific College, not anything to do with a University,’ said Roger, defiant in spite of himself. ‘I am an engineer—a working man’—and though he said this as a piece of bravado, poor fellow! it is inconceivable how Sundayish, how endimanché, how much like a real working man in unused best raiment, he felt in his frock-coat.
‘Oh, tell me about that!’ said Mrs. Meredith, coming forward; ‘it is just what I want to know. Mr. Roger Burchell, did you say, Cara? I think I used to know your mother. I have seen her with Miss Cherry Beresford? Yes; I thought it must be the same. Do you know I have a particular reason for wishing to hear about your College? One of my friends wants to send his son there if he can get in. Will you tell me about it? I know you want to talk to Cara——’
‘Oh, no; not if she is engaged,’ said Roger, and blushed hot with excessive youthful shame when he had made this foolish speech.
‘She will not be engaged long, for we are going presently,’ said the smiling gracious woman, who began to exercise her usual charm upon the angry lad in spite of himself. She drew a chair near to the spot where he still stood defiant. ‘I shall not keep you long,’ she said; and what could Roger do but sit down, though so much against his will, and allow himself to be questioned?
‘Your friend from the country is impatient of your other friends,’ said Oswald, closing the book which he held out to Cara, and marking the place as he gave it to her. ‘Do you want to get rid of us as much as he does?’
‘He does not want to get rid of anyone, but he does not understand—society,’ said Cara, in the same undertone. Roger could not hear what it was, but he felt sure they were talking of him, though he did his best to listen to Mrs. Meredith’s questions. Then the other one rose, who was not so handsome as Oswald, and went to her other side, completely shutting her out from the eyes of the poor fellow who had come so far, and taken so much trouble to see her. The College—what did he care for the College! about which the soft-voiced stranger was questioning him. He made her vague broken answers, and turned round undisguisedly, poor fellow! to where Cara stood; yet all he could see of her was the skirt of her blue dress from the other side of Edward Meredith, whose head, leaning forward, came between Roger and the girl on whom his heart was set.
‘Mr. Burchell, Cara and her father are dining with my boys and me. Edward is only with me for a few hours; he is going away by the last train. Will not you come, too, and join us? Then Cara can see a little more of you. Do you stay in town to-night?’
Two impulses struggled in Roger’s mind—to refuse disdainfully, or to accept gratefully. In the first case he would have said he had dined already, making a little brag of his aunt’s early hours—in the second—a calculation passed very quickly through his mind, so quick that it was concluded almost before Mrs. Meredith’s invitation.
‘I could,’ he said, faltering; ‘or, perhaps, if your son is going I might go, too, which would be best——’
‘Very well, then, it is a bargain,’ she said, putting out her hand with a delightful smile. He felt how warm and sweet it was, even though he was trying at the moment to see Cara. This was the kind of mother these fellows had, and Cara living next door! Surely all the luck seems to be centred on some people; others have no chance against them. He stood by while Mrs. Meredith got up, drawing her sons with her. ‘Come, boys, you can carry on your talk later,’ she said. ‘Good-by for the moment, Cara mia.’ Then she turned to Mr. Beresford, who stood gloomily, with his eyes bent on the fire. ‘You are not sorry you have broken the spell?’ she said, with a voice which she kept for him alone, or so at least he thought.
He gave his shoulders a hasty shrug. ‘We can talk of that later. I am going to see you to the door,’ he said, giving her his arm. The boys lingered. Oswald was patting his book affectionately with one hand. It was Edward who was ‘making the running’ now.
‘You are still coming to dine, Cara?’ he said. ‘Don’t turn me off for this friend. He cannot be such an old friend as I am; and I have only a few hours——’
‘So has he,’ said Cara; ‘and he told me he was coming. What am I to do?’
‘There are three courses that you can pursue,’ said Oswald, ‘Leave him, as Ned recommends; stay with him, as I certainly don’t recommend; or bring him with you. And which of these, Cara, you may choose will be a lesson as to your opinion of us. But you can’t stay with him; that would be a slight to my mother, and your father would not allow it. The compromise would be to bring him.’
‘Oh, how can I do that, unless Mrs. Meredith told me to do it? No; perhaps he will go away of himself—perhaps——’
‘Poor wretch! he looks unhappy enough,’ said Edward, with a sympathy of fellow-feeling. Oswald laughed. The misery and offence in the new-comer’s face was only amusing to him.
‘Cara,’ he said, ‘if you are going to begin offensive warfare, and to flaunt young men from the country in our faces, I for one will rebel. It is not fair to us; we were not prepared for anything of the sort.’
‘My mother is calling us,’ said Edward, impatiently. Two or three times before his brother had irritated him to-day. Either he was in a very irritable mood, or Oswald was more provoking than usual. ‘I have only a few hours,’ he continued, aggrieved, in a low tone, ‘and I have scarcely spoken to you, Cara; and it was you and I who used to be the closest friends. Don’t you remember? Oswald can see you when he pleases; I have only one day. You won’t disappoint us, will you? I wish you’d go’—this was to his brother—‘I’ll follow. There are some things I want to speak to Cara about, and you have taken her up all the afternoon with your poetry. Yes, yes; I see, there is him behind; but, Cara, look here, you won’t be persuaded to stay away to-night?’
‘Not if I can help it,’ said the girl, who was too much embarrassed by this first social difficulty to feel the flattery involved. She turned to Roger, when the others went downstairs, with a somewhat disturbed and tremulous smile.
‘They are our next-door neighbours, and they are very kind,’ she said. ‘Mrs. Meredith is so good to me; as kind as if she were a relation’ (this was all Cara knew of relationships). ‘I don’t know what I should do without her; and I have known the boys all my life. Roger, won’t you sit down? I am so sorry to have been taken up like this the very moment you came.’
‘But if they live next door, and you know them so well, I daresay you are very often taken up like this,’ said Roger, ‘and that will be hard upon your country friends. And I think,’ he added, taking courage as he found that the door remained closed, and that not even her father (estimable man!) came back, ‘that we have a better claim than they have; for you were only a child when you came to the Hill, and you have grown up there.’
‘I like all my old friends,’ said Cara, evasively. ‘Some are—I mean they differ—one likes them for different things.’
The poor boy leaped to the worse interpretation of this, which, indeed, was not very far from the true one. ‘Some are poorer and not so fine as others,’ he said; ‘but, perhaps, Cara, the rough ones, the homely ones, those you despise, are the most true.’
‘I don’t despise anyone,’ she said, turning away, and taking up Oswald Meredith’s book.
By Jove! even when he was gone was ‘that fellow’ to have the best of it with his confounded book? Roger’s heart swelled; and then he felt that expediency was very much to be thought of, and that when a man could not have all he wanted it was wise to put up with what he could get.
‘Cara, don’t be angry with me,’ he said. ‘I shall like your friends, too, if—if you wish me. The lady is very nice and kind, as you say. She has asked me to go there to dinner, too.’
‘You!’ Cara said, with (he thought) a gleam of annoyance. Roger jumped up, wild with rage and jealousy, but then he sat down again, which was certainly the best thing for him to do.