Carità

‘The young lady said as there was another lady coming,’ the porter said to him, who had told him last night about the train; and the man looked suspiciously about the carriage, in the netting and under the seat.

‘Do you think I’ve made away with her?’ said Oswald; but he trembled as he walked down the road to the inn between the two high hedgerows. Agnes was walking about, waiting, with wistful eyes. He saw at a glance that she had modified her dress by some strange art not to be divined by man. Her cloak was laid aside; her long black dress looked severely graceful in comparison with the snippings and trimmings of fashion, but not otherwise extraordinary. And she had a simple hat, borrowed from the landlady’s daughter, over the warm golden brown Perugino hair. She stood still, clasping her hands, when she saw he was alone.

‘It is no fault of mine,’ he said, going up to her in hurried apology and desperation. Agnes grew so pale that he lost all his courage.

‘She would not come then?’ the poor girl cried, with a half-sobbing sigh.

‘No, no; not that; she was not there. It is our bad luck. She has gone to the mother-house, whatever that may be. What could I do? I have done nothing but think since I left you. O Agnes, forgive me, my darling, for having brought you into this! My own plan is the only one; but I never thought of this—Sunday—to-morrow, to-morrow every thing can be arranged.’

This was the text upon which he enlarged for the whole afternoon. There was not another train till the evening, and what could they do even if there had been trains? They had to eat the chicken which the curious landlady had prepared, together, and went out again in the afternoon, and sat under a tree and talked. They were miserable, or at least Agnes was miserable—and yet happy. Oh, if she had but known, if she had but gone on this morning, or back to Limpet Bay, where there were Sisters and a shelter! But now! every moment compromised her more, and made it more impossible to do anything but acquiesce in what he proposed. And so the long, slow, weary, anxious, miserable, delicious Sunday wore to a close; it was all these things together. They took the landlady into their confidence, and told her all that had happened, while Agnes sat crying. She thought even this woman would shrink from her; but the woman, on the contrary, was deeply interested, delighted, and flattered. There was the parsonage half a mile off, and the clergyman the kindest old gentleman. A wedding in the house! She could not contain herself with pride and pleasure. Crying! what was the young lady crying about? An ‘usband that adored her instead of them nunnery places as she never could abide to hear of. This unexpected support quite exhilarated Oswald, and it cowed Agnes, who had no power of self-assertion left.

In this way it all came about according to Oswald’s rapid programme which he had sketched out as soon as he knew they were too late on Saturday night. He was so much in earnest, so eager to carry out his plans, that, much as it went against his mind to do so, he went to town again on Monday by the six o’clock train. As soon as the offices were open he presented himself at the proper place (wherever that may be; I have not the information) and got the licence. By this time he was so much himself again, his light heart had so regained its characteristic boyish ease, and the tragicality had gone so completely out of the situation, that it seemed to him the best of jokes—a delightful, practical pleasantry, a piece of charming mischief to startle all sober people. He went about in his hansom with involuntary smiles on his lips, the chief thing that alarmed him being the chance of meeting Edward or Cara or someone who would know him. How startled they would be when they knew! Poor dear little Cara, would she feel it just a little? But for the rest it was the greatest joke. To come down upon them with his wife—his wife! Oswald laughed in spite of himself, half with happiness, half with a sense of the fun. When he had got his licence safe in his pocket—which gave a kind of legality to the whole—he went to a famous milliner’s, and had a large boxful of things packed up. This was a business which delighted him. He chose a little white bonnet, a white dress, partially made, which the lady’s maid could arrange in an hour, the smiling milliner assured him, a veil which would envelop the figure of Agnes from top to toe, a hat in which she could travel. How she was to be transported to London in that white silk dress it did not occur to him to ask; for he was still young and thoughtless, though on the eve of being married. He had never seen her surrounded by any of the pretty finery which girls love, in nothing but her black dress and poke bonnet. To throw the veil about her, to see her Perugino countenance under the large leaved hat with its drooping feathers, what a transformation it would be! And when, having done all his business, he travelled back to the junction with his big dressmaker’s box, all thoughts except those of delighted anticipation had gone out of Oswald’s mind. The junction had a friendly look to him, and he walked down the lane to the inn with the feeling of going home.

What a fortunate thing that the poor old governor had died when he did! Poor old fellow! his son did not grudge him his existence as long as he remained in this world, or rather in the other world across the seas in India, where he interfered with nobody. But as he did mean to die, what a thing it was that he should have done it just then. Oswald made a hurried run to his banker’s while he was in town, and supplied himself with money, that grand requisite of all extravagant and eccentric proceedings. He was as happy as a child walking down the lane, the porters grinning and knowing all about it, carrying the big box after him; he had got his own portmanteau, too, with his best clothes in it, according to the orders which he had telegraphed to the Square; and all was ready for the wedding. Surely a stranger wedding never was. The little cluster of houses at the junction was as much excited as if the event had been a family one concerning each house. How did they know? Who could say? The landlady swore it was no doing of hers. Agnes would not wear the white silk which he had bought for her, but consented to put on a plain white muslin which the dressmaker next door had luckily just made for herself, and which she was free to dispose of at a profit. And so the soft June twilight dropped and the dews fell once more, and quite a little crowd hung about the inn, trying for a peep at ‘them.’ Only three days since they came from London in separate carriages to meet ‘by accident’ on the sands. And now they were bridegroom and bride, and to-morrow was their wedding-day.

CHAPTER XLIV.

CLEARING UP.

Mr. Burchell was brought upstairs with some solemnity. Though Mrs. Meredith’s mind was very full of all that had been passing, and with no small amount of personal feeling, a father in such a case could not be put off. They were all agitated in different ways, the elder people painfully, the young ones happily. As for Edward, his energy and satisfaction knew no bounds. He even jarred upon the feelings of the others, though most innocently, his heart was so light. ‘You are like Oswald,’ his mother said to him, with a sigh of anxiety; ‘you are not like yourself.’ ‘I feel like Oswald,’ said Edward. He did not seem able to put his self-gratulation into fitter words. The sense of being second, of being the shadow to Oswald’s sunshine, went out of his mind; and, with it, all sense of grudging and everything like envy, which, however deeply repressed and disapproved, had been in his heart hitherto, an involuntary weakness. All that was over now. That Cara loved him he scarcely ventured to believe; but she was free; she was not swept up like every other good thing by his elder brother. What an ease diffused itself through his heart! And with Cara, too, the sensation was that of ease; her bonds were broken. She might have stood faithful still as the Screen (for indeed that poor lady was in the Vita Nuova, and it was not kind of great Dante, great as he was!) but circumstances had broken her bonds. Cara had not been intimate with Agnes Burchell that she should be much disturbed by finding out her identity with Oswald’s Agnes. And after the first shock she was confident that nothing amiss could have happened to her while Oswald was there. And her own pre-occupations made the whole matter but secondary in her mind. Was it selfish of her? But she could not help it. She had cast off more than one burden; her young frame was tingling with the excitement of the two disclosures she had made, one of which had brought her father to her, the other—well, the other at least had set her free; it had set her right with others, if nothing more. It was Edward who went to the dining-room to conduct Mr. Burchell upstairs, feeling such a friendliness towards him as words could not express. Had not he been the occasion of it all? ‘My mother begs that you will come upstairs,’ he said, feeling an inclination to hug his visitor, though he was little captivating. Mr. Burchell had a feeling of disapproval of the house and all that were in it. It was the house Roger had given an account of, where he had dined on Sunday, and where the lady lived who was so intimate with Mr. Beresford. The Rector disapproved of all such intimacy. But he was anxious and rather unhappy about his daughter, and it was his duty to take Agnes back out of this doubtful, perhaps polluted house. So he followed his conductor upstairs, looking about him with involuntary criticism. These kind of people had so many comforts that did not fall to the lot of their superiors in every moral sense. Large comfortable houses, many servants, the Times every day (he found it on the table in the dining-room), and many other luxuries. He could not help making this remark to himself; he could not afford such pleasures; and now his child, his daughter, not theirs who perhaps deserved it, had gone away. Matters were not mended when Mrs. Meredith, with all her usual sweetness, but with a thrill of agitation still about her, came up to him holding out her hand.

‘Cara tells me that you are anxious about your daughter, and that my son—knows her,’ she said faltering. It was so difficult to know what to say.

‘So she tells me,’ said the Rector. ‘You will understand it is not from me; I know nothing of it. Agnes has said nothing; and perhaps,’ he added, looking round with a little natural defiance, ‘her absence may turn out to be quite simple; there may be nothing in it. She is not a good correspondent. But we are anxious, her mother and I.’

‘I do not know where Oswald is. Oh! heaven knows, if my son has anything to do with it, I shall be grieved, grieved and ashamed to the heart! But no harm will happen to her in Oswald’s company,’ said Mrs. Meredith, raising her head in her turn with tearful pride. ‘I know my boy.’

‘It is what I would not say of any child of mine, or of myself, for that matter,’ said the Rector. ‘Who can tell what a moment may bring forth? But if there should be anything in it, and you have any clue to your son’s movements——’

‘I have none. Thursday or Friday he said he would come back. Cara, if you can tell us anything——’

Cara told at once what she knew; how he had heard that Agnes was going somewhere, she did not remember where, and that he had made up his mind to go too, and explain himself. ‘Limpet Bay; she is not there,’ said Mr. Burchell. He took no interest in the rest of the story, which excited the others so much, that half of them spoke together. Edward, however, had the pas as being most energetic. ‘I will go at once to Limpet Bay,’ he said, ‘and find out if anything is known of them; that seems the best thing.’ Mr. Burchell looked at him with a half-suspicion in his eyes. But this was how it was finally arranged. The Rector himself seemed to have greater confidence in wandering about town. He was going now to his sister’s at Notting Hill, and then to the House. Then he would come back again to the Square, to see if any news had come. ‘My son Roger will be in London in an hour or two,’ he added, with a kind of vague trust in that. But he neither sanctioned nor objected to Edward’s mission. He had no notion himself what to do. He had no faith in his own child, and even thought worse of Mrs. Meredith—if there could be a worse or a better about such a person—for thinking well of hers. When he went away at last in his heavy distress they were all relieved. He was to come back in a few hours to see if any news had been received. As for Edward, he was like a man transformed. He ran upstairs with airy energy, thrust what he wanted into a bag, tossed a heap of notebooks on the floor (where his mother found them, and picking them up carefully, put them away behind his bureau where he could not find them), and came down again swiftly and lightly, ready for anything. Then it was arranged that Cara and her father should walk with him to the House to see if anything had been heard there. This new chapter of anxiety was a relief to all of them, strange as it may seem to say so. Even Mrs. Meredith was comforted, after all the personal excitement of the afternoon, to have this outlet to her emotion. She was not afraid that anything very dreadful could have happened to Oswald, nor, though Mr. Burchell thought her confidence wicked, to anyone else, through her boy. She knew Oswald’s faults, she said to herself—who better? but Agnes would get no harm from him. On the other hand, the fact that they had disappeared together was in itself active harm. The boy was safe enough, but the girl—that was a more difficult matter; and even a young man who decoyed away, or could be said to have decoyed away, not a poor milliner or housemaid, but a girl in his own rank—society would look but darkly, there could be no doubt, on such a man. It was evident that in any point of view to find Oswald was the chief thing to be thought of. In the meantime, however, they had been reckoning without their train. There was not one going to Limpet Bay till six o’clock, and a pause perforce had to be made. And people began to come in, to call in the midst of their agitation, the first being actually shown up into the drawing-room while they still stood together talking in their scarcely subsiding excitement. This was more than the others could bear. Mrs. Meredith indeed met her visitors with her usual smiles, with hands stretched out, with all the air of soft and kind interest in them which bound her friends so close to her; the air of agitation about her only increased the kindness of her looks; but the three others were not so courageous. They all forsook her, stealing away one by one. Mr. Beresford went to his library, where he had so many things to think of. Cara and Edward, stealing away one after the other, met on the stairs. ‘Will you come into the Square,’ he said, ‘till it is time for my train?’ The Square was a spot where they had played together when they were children. It had been avoided by both of them without any reason given: now they went out and took refuge in it, where the little ladies and gentlemen of the Square were still playing. They wandered demurely under the flowery shrubs and those kind trees which do not despise London, their hearts beating softly yet loud, their young lives in a tender harmony. They seemed to be walking back into the chapter of their childhood and to see themselves playing hide and seek among the bushes. ‘You used to look just like that,’ Edward said, pointing to a pretty child in a white sun-bonnet with her lap full of daisies, who looked up at them with serious blue eyes as they passed. Cara was not so very much older, and yet what a world of youthful experience lay between her and this child. Then naturally they began to talk of what had happened to their knowledge, and of what might have happened which they did not know.

‘And you think he really loved her,’ Edward said, his voice at this word taking a reverential tone. ‘He must indeed—or else——. But was he in earnest—he was always so full of levity? And where can they have gone?’

‘He did not mean to have gone for more than the day. It must have been some accident. He would not have done anything again to get her scolded. I scolded him for it before.’

‘You scolded him. I wish you would scold me, Cara,’ said Edward, looking at her. ‘You never talk to me as you used to talk to him. What bad feelings you used to rouse in my mind—you who are as good as an angel! hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness. I went very near to hating my brother. Poor Oswald, I shall stand by him now through thick and thin.’

‘I am glad of that,’ said Cara, thankfully ignoring what went before.

‘That is your doing too, like the other; Cara—there seems so many things that I want to say to you.’

‘Oh, we must not talk of anything to-day, but how to get this settled,’ cried the girl, with a nervous shiver. ‘What a trouble for your mother, to see all these people to-day. I could not stay to help her—it seemed impossible; but she—she could not be unkind to anyone,’ said Cara, with generous fervour; though indeed Mrs. Meredith, unwittingly, had strewn a few thorns in Cara’s pathway too.

‘Yes,’ said Edward; ‘I don’t think my mother is a humbug—at least, yes, she is, in the way of kindness. She can’t bear that anyone should feel neglected—and yet she means it, too,’ he added, doubtfully looking up at the window, at which some of her visitors showed, for the day was very warm. Her friends had flooded back upon her, notwithstanding her recent widowhood. It was not like going into society, they all said. Society, indeed, went to her instead. To desert her in her troubles was not a friend’s part. The consequence of this doctrine was that her receptions were almost as crowded as ever, and that all who considered themselves her intimates were more punctual than ever they had been.

‘Ought we not to go?’ said Cara at last, and they turned and came out through the dusty bushes once more. The Square was not lovely in itself, but it looked like a garden of Eden to the two, when they had been walking in the cool of the day, like Adam and Eve, thinking of each other, talking, with little breaks and relapses into thoughts which were dangerous, but very sweet, of other things. Now they came out again, side by side. As they crossed the road, Roger Burchell joined them. He had been sent for, and had hurried up, poor fellow, to do his duty, and look for his lost sister. It was not a happy errand to begin with, nor was it exactly happiness for him to see Cara, though the thought of doing so had lent wings to his feet. He looked at her with a face full of suppressed agitation, longing and yet suspicious. This was not the Meredith he was afraid of—this was the one with whom he was rather in sympathy, the unfortunate one, like himself. But there was something in the looks of the two which hurt Roger and angered him, he could scarcely have told why.

He addressed Edward rather roughly. ‘If you are going after them, tell me,’ he said, with a hoarse tone in his voice, ‘or I will do it. There is no time to lose.’

‘I am waiting only for the train,’ said Edward. It was a valid excuse enough, and poor Roger felt that he might have waited hours for the train without being amused meantime in this heavenly fashion. The gate of the garden was at some little distance from the house, close to the thoroughfare which passed along the end of the Square. They could see along this line of road as they turned to go back.

‘We must go for Mr. Beresford,’ Edward was saying. ‘He was to go with us first to the House.’

Here he stopped short, open-mouthed, and the others stopped too, by that curious instinct which makes one man share in the startled sensations of his companion, without knowing what they mean. They were both startled like Edward. A carriage had drawn up within a little distance, and two people were getting out of it. Cara’s eye, following Edward’s, reached this little group. She ran forward, with a low cry. The new-comers, seeing nobody, occupied with themselves, advanced steadily. They came up to the corner of the Square. Just within that comparative stillness, they too started and stopped, he facing the others boldly, with smiles on his face, she drooping, blushing, trembling, with her hand on his arm.

‘Oswald! for heaven’s sake, who is this lady?’ cried Edward, stepping in advance. The others waited with equal eagerness, though they knew very well who she was.

‘Edward, my good fellow, you must make much of her,’ said Oswald. He was really moved, and his gay voice faltered. ‘You and Cara—We want you and Cara to make up our happiness. This is my wife.’

Though it was the public road, or, at least, the corner of the Square, Cara rushed forward and threw herself upon Agnes, who, red as a rose, with downcast face and eyes that could not bear the light, stood on her trial, as it were. Edward put out one hand to her and another to his brother, without saying a word. He came, unthinking, between Roger and his sister.

‘You and Cara.’ He and Cara; nothing to say to the brother, who stood behind, red and lowering, looking on, noticed by no one, like a stranger. The two pairs fell together as by nature; Roger was the one who was left out. Is it not the very essence of all youthful story, even of all childish games, that someone should be left out? The little girl in the sun-bonnet in the Square garden could have produced half a dozen instances—that there is no fun without this; from puss in the corner upwards, the situation is invariable. But the left-out one does not see the fun. Roger stood, and changed into all manner of colours. He was not wanted. He and Agnes—he and Cara; for himself nobody, no companion, no notice, no share in it all. To take it sentimentally and sadly, and turn away, in all the dignity of the neglected, is one way; to be angry and resent is another. Roger, who felt the hot blood tingling down to his very finger-points, chose the latter. He made a step forward, pushing Edward aside, even thrusting aside Cara, and seized his sister roughly by the arm.

‘What is the meaning of all this?’ he said. ‘Agnes, what do you want here? Where have you been? My father has come up to town in trouble about you; my mother is ill of it at home. Where have you been? These people have nothing to do with you. You’ve got to give me an explanation of it—and you too, sir!’ cried Roger, with natural inconsistency, turning fiercely upon Oswald. What! this fellow, who had appropriated Cara so calmly, was he to have Agnes too?

‘Oh, Roger! don’t quarrel—don’t quarrel! I went home this morning. Mamma knows,’ cried Agnes, flushed and tearful, clasping her hands.

‘And I am ready to give you every explanation,’ said Oswald. ‘You have a right to it. We were married on Tuesday. It was no doing of hers. The fault is all mine. And your mother is satisfied. Come in with us, and you shall have every detail. And come, Roger, shake hands with me. There is no harm done after all.’

‘Harm done!’ cried the young man in his bitterness; ‘harm done! Is it no harm that she has disgraced herself? I don’t know what greater harm is in the world.’

‘Oh, Roger, Roger!’

‘This has gone far enough,’ said Oswald; ‘take care what you say. Agnes, my darling, take my arm, and come to my mother. He does not know what he is saying; and Ned, come along, you and Cara. There are a hundred things to tell you. I want you to hear everything to-day.’

They passed him, while he stood fuming with bitter rage, not on account of Agnes, though she was the excuse for it. She took all the guilt to herself, however, looking at him pitifully, appealing to him as her husband led her to his mother’s door.

‘Roger, oh Roger, dear, come with us!’ she cried. She had spoken to no one but him.

But Roger paid no attention to Agnes. It was the other pair who had all his thoughts; he seemed to be supplanted over again, to have all the pangs of failure to bear over again. The idea of Oswald’s success with Cara had become familiar to him, and there was a little consolation in the fact that Edward, like himself, was unhappy. But at this new change, the poor young fellow ground his teeth. It was more than he could bear. Rage and anguish were in his eyes. Even Cara’s kind look at him, her little mute apology and deprecation of his wrath, increased it. Why should he go with them? What did it matter to him? His sister? Oh, there were plenty of people to look after his sister, and why should he follow them, who cared so little for him? But, after a while, he did follow them. There is something in this kind of suffering which attracts the sufferer to the rack. He is in course of healing when he has the courage to turn his back upon it, and go firmly away.

The whole young party went into the dining-room, where the Times which Mr. Burchell had grudged to Mrs. Meredith was still on the table. A dining-room is an oppressive place for such a purpose. It looks like bad interviews with fathers when there are admonitions to be given, or those fearful moments when a young offender is detained after the others have left the cheerful table, to be told of his faults. Agnes went into the house of her husband’s mother, with her heart in her mouth, or, at least, in her throat, leaping wildly, ready to sink into the ground with shame and terror. How would Mrs. Meredith receive her? Her own mother had yielded only to the arguments which the poor girl despised the most, to the details of Oswald’s income, and the settlements, about which he had already written to his lawyer. This mollified her—not Agnes’s weeping explanations; and the bride’s heart was still sore from the pang of this forgiveness, which Oswald, not caring in the least for Mrs. Burchell, had been quite satisfied with. He did not care very much for anything except herself, she had already found out, and took all disapproval with the frankest levity of indifference, which made it burn all the more into the heart of Agnes. Perhaps it was necessary for her to have a burden of one kind or another. And his mother; how would his mother look upon her? Would she set her down, as it was so natural for mothers to do, as the guilty party, the chief offender? Agnes had felt that her own mother had done this. She had excused Oswald. ‘No man would ever think of such a thing, if he had not got encouragement.’ Even Sister Mary Jane had said so, in a modified and more generous way. Was it always the poor girl’s, the poor wife’s fault? Agnes shrank into a corner. She could not take any courage from Cara’s caressings, who came and hung about her, full of admiration and interest.

‘I was his confidante all the time,’ said Cara; ‘but how was I to know that his Agnes was you?’

Agnes did not get much comfort out of this; she was not quite sure even that she liked him to have had a girl confidante. Though she was ‘happy,’ in the ordinary sense of the word, as applied to brides, happy in the love of her new husband, and in her own love for him, yet the troubles of the moment had seized hold upon her at their worst. She trembled for the opening of the door. She was almost at the limit of her powers of endurance. Her ‘happiness’ had cost her dear. She had got it at the sacrifice of all her tender prejudices, all her little weaknesses of sentiment. She took Roger’s angry speech for true, and endorsed it. However happily it might all turn out, though everything should be better than she thought, still she would have disgraced herself. Nobody could be so much shocked at the whole business as she herself was. To everyone who censured her she was ready to say amen. It may be supposed, therefore, that the feelings with which she awaited Oswald’s mother were agitating enough. If Mrs. Meredith received her unkindly, or coldly—and how was it possible that a mother could receive otherwise than coldly such an unexpected bride?—it seemed to Agnes, in her discouragement and terror, that she must fall at her feet and die.

‘Go and tell my mother, Ned,’ said Oswald, who was himself rather breathless with suspense. ‘Go, you and Cara—take Cara with you. She will be kinder if you go together.’

‘Was she ever unkind?’ said Cara, half indignant.

‘Come all the same,’ said Edward, taking her hand in the freedom of the moment. ‘If I offer to make a sacrifice to her if she will forgive them?’ he whispered, as they went upstairs together—‘it will not be true—Cara, may I do it, not being true?’

‘Does she want to be paid for her kindness?’ said Cara, whispering back; but she smiled, notwithstanding, not knowing what he meant, yet knowing quite well what he meant. They went into the drawing-room thus, still for the moment hand in hand, which Mrs. Meredith perceiving, turned round from her guests with a little excitement. What had they come to tell her? She disengaged herself from the people whom she was talking to, and hurried towards them, breathless—‘Children, what is it?’ the conjunction had already had its effect.

‘Mother, Oswald and his wife are downstairs; come and speak to them—come and console her.’

‘His wife! Good heavens! has it gone so far?—and is that all?’ the mother said inconsistently in one breath.

Edward went up close to her, and whispered in her ear—‘And I no longer think of going to India. If that pleases you, forgive them.’

‘Traitor!’ said Mrs. Meredith; ‘that is not the reason;’ and then, ‘God bless you, my darling!’ she said, with tears in her eyes.

CHAPTER XLV.

CONCLUSION.

It is not necessary to go into details, and tell how Mrs. Meredith forgave her son and received her new daughter. In any case, I don’t believe she would have been capable of ‘hurting Agnes’s feelings’ by a cold reception; but as it was, she was as tender to her as if she been her own daughter, and Oswald was the stranger husband who had to be forgiven. A great deal of this was that superlative politeness which was part of her nature, and part of it was the result of Edward’s communication. The cloud which had spoilt everything was definitely lifted from her life, and to be good to the trembling, timid bride, which was the first kind action within her reach, was Mrs. Meredith’s way of thanksgiving for her happiness. It must be allowed it is not a bad way, as good as giving public thanks in church, or perhaps better, though that is good too. When Agnes began a faltering confession of wrong doing, Mrs. Meredith kissed her and stopped her.

‘My dear, we will think nothing more of that,’ she said; ‘we might have wished it otherwise; but no one is beyond the reach of accident, and this will end most happily, please God, for all of us.’

The result of the interview was that Agnes fell in love with her mother-in-law—not a very usual thing, if one puts one’s faith in books, yet not unparalleled. They understood each other, or rather the elder woman understood the younger, and with her warm natural charity was able to comprehend and excuse everything. She looked with a little wonder and amusement at the awe with which Agnes still regarded her bridegroom. That there should be someone in the world who did not simply make allowance for Oswald, and love him in spite of his faults, but to whom his faults were as yet invisible, and himself worthy of deepest respect and admiration, was a thing which was very amusing to his mother. She could scarcely keep from smiling when she saw the serious looks of veneration which his wife gave him. ‘Hush, hush,’ she said, when Edward, grown saucy, ventured to smile at his brother, and when she even herself felt tempted to say, ‘How like Oswald!’ Oswald was like everything that was fine and noble and generous to his bride.

‘And if he did not think of himself quite so much, how good my poor boy is,’ the mother said, with tears in her eyes; and in future, perhaps, he would not think so much of himself.

Anyhow, on the other side everybody was quite satisfied. Oswald, never ungenerous, made settlements upon his wife after they were married which filled the Burchell family with admiration. And they got a pretty little house, and made a kind of religion of furnishing it; and for every pretty thing they got, Agnes, compunctious, hurried down to the House and devised something for the orphans. Sister Mary Jane grew used to these visits, and, being a wise woman, restrained undue liberalities. She gave a great deal of good advice to the young wife. ‘If you take on another child for every bit of china,’ she said, ‘there will soon be no room for the girls, and no money left in the purse.’

‘Oh, how can I let money be spent for nothings, when I know how much need there is in the world!’ cried Agnes. It was difficult to answer such arguments. As for Oswald, he never attempted to answer them. He gave her to understand that she was a mixture of a goose and an angel.

‘Both have wings, you know,’ he said, going away lighthearted to his pleasures, and understanding about as much of the more serious feelings in her mind as her baby did when she had one, which fortunately was in good time. He made the best of husbands, ever eager that she should spend more money on her dressmaker, entertain more, have all manner of pleasures. Louisa Burchell, who was the next sister, thought the little house in Mayfair was like heaven; and Mrs. Burchell kept a list of the important people to whose houses Agnes was asked, looking up her noble acquaintances in the peerage, and finding out the incomes of the rich ones, and the works of those who wrote or painted (though these last figured much less largely in her mind). And Agnes was happy; to have a husband you love, and in due time a pretty baby; and a delightful little house in Mayfair, and a pair of ponies, and more dresses and bonnets than you wish for—could there be a happier lot? If a young woman in such beatific circumstances got confused sometimes in her mind, and wondered whether it might not be better to walk about at the head of a procession of school girls in a black cloak and poke-bonnet, and to work in stuffy schoolrooms, and to have no more recreation than could be got among the girls in St. Cecilia, what could that be but momentary aberration or even a kind of temporary insanity? Is not a wife better than a Sister? Oswald had no kind of doubt on the subject when he saw his beautiful young wife at the head of his table, and reflected with inward complacency upon the aspect she bore when first he saw her, though at that time he had thought the poke-bonnet half-divine. But Agnes was not so sure, had not such unhesitating convictions as her husband, and wondered. This, perhaps, was the penalty she paid for her escapade. Oswald’s light-heartedness was alien to her serious mood. He took his existence so easily! and she knew that life was not so easy a matter, and would take an occasional panic as the fair landscape glided past her, the beautiful days and years flying away from her as fields and trees do on a journey, when you seem yourself to be stationary, and it is the country about that flies and travels on either side.

If she had known him longer, if she had known him better, would it have made any difference? In all probability not the slightest, and she did not ask herself that question; for, after all, Oswald was Oswald, and the only man in the whole world——

As for the other personages mentioned in these pages, their affairs worked themselves out as was to be expected, with no very extraordinary results. Roger Burchell recovered of his wound because he could not help it, not with any will of his; and went out to India in due time, where he did very well and made steady progress, but neither then nor now became very remarkable. He married too in the due course of events, when he could afford it—as most men do, except perhaps in the very heart and centre of society, a sect so small that it does not affect the world’s continuance, nor need necessarily affect our peace of mind who look on. He forgot Cara and the chapter in his life which was dominated by her, far more completely than the romantic reader would believe possible, and was not at all sure after he had been some years married whether it was not he who had behaved badly to her; and, indeed, I think his wife had this impression, and never having seen this object of his early affections, was rather pleased to believe Cara a little flirt with whom her Roger had been involuntarily ‘entangled,’ but escaped in time. So stories are travestied and turned into myths with piquant change of circumstance all over the world.

Mr. Maxwell had a more unlikely fate. Bursting out of No. 6 in the Square, in the trouble of his mind, after that unlucky interference which had come to less than nothing, but which must, he felt sure, cost him his friends, he went with murderous energy through all his round of patients, and took it out of them with unregulated zeal, making his hypochondriacs really ill by way of variety, twisting the joints and cramping the sinews of the unhappy people in his hands as cruelly as Prospero. This way of avenging himself upon mankind, however, did not prevent him from suffering tortures in his own person. Should he apologise—should he appeal to Cara to intercede for him? Should he go humbly to the feet of the injured one, and ask to be kicked and forgiven? He adopted another expedient more wonderful than any of these. Next day was the day of his weekly visit to the Hill. Lovelier lights and visions than those that revealed themselves through the openings of the trees on that sweetest day of June could scarcely be. The sky was as soft as a child’s eyes—the air as its breath. The trees hung rich and close still in their early green, throwing their wealth of foliage all the more closely together to hide that the flowers were over, the may faded, the golden laburnum boughs all dropped to dust. Through the leafy arches came glimpses of the great plain all billowy with trees, shadowing far into the blue distance, and the great grey castle with its royal flag. Underneath on the hedgerows there was one flush of the wild rose lighting up the winding road as with a smile. To live on such a day was enough for pleasure. To move through it easily without fatigue, with trees waving over you, and the unfathomable blue shining, and the sun throwing magical gleams over the landscape, hushed even the most restless soul to a semblance of goodness and happiness. Unless you happen to be toiling along a dusty road, in the blaze of the sunshine, in tight boots, or a dress too warm for the season, which circumstances I allow to be contrary both to happiness and goodness, I cannot understand how you could refuse to be good and happy on such a day.

But everything promoted these exemplary sensations about the Hill. Fatigue was not there, nor dust, nor undue heat. Old Miss Charity in her sun-bonnet, and less old but still not young Miss Cherry in her cool and soft grey gown, were on the lawn, surrounded by a world of roses—roses everywhere in standards, in dwarfs, on trellis-work, over arches, along the walls. The air was just touched by them to a delicate sweetness, to be elevated into beatitude when you approached your face to a particular flower. Mr. Maxwell arrived with his troubled soul, and the ladies made much of him. They compassionated him for his hot drive. They offered him tea; they gave him, on his refusal of the tea, claret cup with great bits of ice tinkling in it, and making a grateful noise. They gave him a comfortable chair on the lawn, where he had his doctors’ talk with old Miss Charity, and felt her pulse and admired its steady beat, not one more or less than it ought to be. ‘Please God, if I live long enough, I’ll pull you along to a hundred,’ he said, with professional enthusiasm. ‘But I shall not live long enough,’ he added, in a despondent tone.

‘How old are you now?’ said Miss Charity. ‘Fifty? phoo, nonsense. I am seventy-three. I want only seven-and-twenty of the hundred. You will be just over my present age when we’ve accomplished it. And what a thing to have lived for?’ The old lady was more ready for the joke than he was—he shook his head.

‘You can’t think what foolish things I have been doing,’ he said; ‘never man made a greater fool of himself.’

‘You have been asking someone to marry you, my poor man!’

‘No, by Jove! I never thought of that,’ he said, looking up quickly. Miss Cherry had walked discreetly out of hearing, as she always did while they had their medical talk. This was evidently a new idea to the doctor. ‘No,’ he went on, ‘trying to keep other people from marrying, that was all.’

‘Still sillier; they will hate you for ever and ever,’ Miss Charity said, in her ignorance, seated cool and smiling in her garden chair.

Meanwhile Miss Cherry strayed to one of the openings and looked wistfully across the country. She wanted to hear about ‘the child.’ A thousand questions were on her lips, but in her soft old-maidenly self-consciousness she did not like to take the doctor aside in her turn, and there were questions which she did not wish to ask in her aunt’s presence. It may be imagined then what her surprise was when, startled by a voice at her elbow, she turned round and found the doctor by her side. ‘The views are lovely to-day,’ he said; but he was not thinking of the views, Miss Cherry could see. Had he something painful to tell her—had anything gone wrong? She began to ask a few faltering questions. ‘Tell me about Cara,’ she said. ‘I am so hungering for news of the child.’ Miss Cherry looked up pathetically in the doctor’s face with wistful anxiety in her soft eyes—everything about her was soft, from her grey gown to her eyes. A mild consolatory woman, not charming like Mrs. Meredith, not clever like other people he knew, but a refreshment, like green lawns and green leaves and quietness to the heart. The doctor turned round to see that nobody was looking. The old lady, who had her suspicions of him, had gone in, and like a naughty old lady as she was, had gone upstairs to a bedroom window, where she stood behind the curtains, chuckling to herself, to watch the result. When Mr. Maxwell saw the coast was clear and nobody looking (as he thought), he turned round again to Miss Cherry, who stood anxiously waiting for the next word, and deliberately, without a word of preface, fired as it were point blank into her with a pistol at her heart—that is to say, he proposed. A greater shock never was administered by any human being to another. Right off on the spot, without wasting any words, he offered her himself and his brougham and his practice and all that he had. The old lady at the window—naughty old lady!—could make out the very moment when it was done, and saw Cherry’s start and jump of amazement. ‘Will she have him?’ she asked herself. ‘I could not put up with a man in my house.’ But it does not do to take a gentle old maiden like Miss Cherry so suddenly. In the very extremity of her surprise, she said no. How she trembled! ‘Oh no, I could not, I could not, thank you, Mr. Maxwell! I am too old now. Long ago I might have thought of such a thing; but I could not, I could not. It is not possible. You must excuse me now.’

‘Oh, no one will force you, Miss Cherry, against your inclination,’ said the doctor, angry and discomfited. And without waiting to say good-day to his patient, he went off and threw himself into his brougham more uncomfortable than before.

Whether Miss Cherry ever regretted this I cannot tell—perhaps if she had not been so entirely taken by surprise—but ‘Oh no, oh no,’ she said to herself, ‘I could not have done it. It would have been cheating Cara.’ But what a shock it was on that June afternoon! As if the man had brought an electric battery with him, Miss Charity said, who was the only one of the three, however, to whom it was an amusement and no shock at all.

Such was the end of this middle-aged wooing, which was all over in a quarter of an hour. The other of which we know, which had been going on so long, and which only artificial motives made into a wooing at all, had been broken off very abruptly by that interpellation of Dr. Maxwell’s and all that followed. It was not till after the commotion caused by Oswald’s return, and all the arrangements consequent upon his marriage, were over, that the two friends returned to this broken chapter again. The changes which had happened had not thrown them apart, however, and the naturalness with which, even in the suspense of this question between themselves, their intercourse went on, showed plainly either that warmer relationships were unlikely or that they were the most natural things in the world; but which? Each of them had been slightly piqued by the absence of enthusiasm on the part of the other, but even that pique produced no enthusiasm in themselves. They were exactly in the same state of feeling, their minds only too much alike. But a return to the question was inevitable one way or other, and Mr. Beresford took it in hand, not without a little tremor, one still summer evening at the usual hour, when they were sitting in their usual places, their windows open, but the lamps lighted, and the soft dusk outside relieving with its shadowy background the soft illumination within.

‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘the talk we had one evening before all these agitations began? It was not decided. You would not say yes, or no.’

‘Would I not say no? it was because it has too harsh a sound. Why should there be yes’es or no’es between you and me?’

‘Ah, but it was needful. What do you say now? I can only repeat what I said then. You know all my heart. Speak to me, dear. Shall it be yes or no?’

She had nothing to do with blushing at her age—yet she blushed and was ashamed of it; but looked at him frankly, openly, all the same, holding out her hands. ‘Dear,’ she said, ‘I will call you so too. No; why should we do this and disturb our life and trouble our children with new ideas. Listen, James Beresford. I would rather marry you than lose you; but there is no thought of losing you in any case.’

‘None, my dear, none—none, whatever comes of it.’

‘Then why should we trouble each other with new ideas and disturb our lives? We cannot be happier in our intercourse, you and I; we have all we want in each other. Let the children marry; it is natural. What a blessing of God it is that we have these dear proxies, James! And my boy is not going away,’ she said, the tears coming to her eyes. ‘And I love your girl as if she were my own—and we are the father and mother without any trouble. What could heart wish for more?’

And no more was said. The subject was closed at once and for ever. Such is the perversity of human nature, that when James Beresford went home that evening he felt just a little cast down, disgusted, lonely, and slighted as it were by fate. He had not really wished for the change; indeed, did not really wish for it now; but yet—on the other side of the wall, Mrs. Meredith was much more comfortable—for why? She had been permitted the woman’s privilege of being the refuser, which banished all possibilities of pique, and made it impossible for her to feel herself slighted. But by-and-by they were both a great deal happier, and at their ease, which they had not been for weeks before.

And do I need to tell how the natural conclusion which their father and mother wisely and happily evaded arrived for Edward and Cara? Not quite immediately, however, for the young man gathered his note-books together again, and having given up India, entered upon his course of dinners, and betook himself (like most other people) to the Bar. He was ‘called’ before the marriage took place; and when the marriage did take place the young people remained along with the old people in the two houses which were one. It would be hard to make an absolute appropriation of what belongs to No. 6 and what belongs to No. 8 in the Square. The thing which is most like a fixture is Mrs. Meredith, who sits smiling in the same chair as the years go on, hearing what everybody has to say. She is not expected to go to anyone; but everyone comes to her; and her chair is the only absolutely undisputed piece of property in the two houses. The young people are very happy and go honeymooning as once their elders did; and sometimes Mr. Beresford will make a journey in the interests of science or art. But nothing has touched the double house, nor is likely to touch it, till death does those sworn companions part.

Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London.

MURRAY’S LIBRARY
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