Edward went away with his heart beating loud. To think that the rightful enjoyment of all this belonged not to himself, but to Oswald, who was out dining, perhaps flirting somewhere, caring so little about it. Was it always so in this world—what a man most wanted he never got, but that which he prized little was flung to him like a crust to a dog? How strange it was! Edward did not go in, but lit a pensive cigar, and paced up and down the Square, watching the lights rise into the higher windows. He knew which was Cara’s, and watched the lighting of the candles on the table, which he could guess by the faint brightening which showed outside. What was she thinking of? Perhaps of Oswald, wondering why he had not come; perhaps kindly of himself as of a brother, in whose affection she would trust. Yes! said Edward to himself, with pathetic enthusiasm; she should always be able to trust in his affection. If Oswald proved but a cool lover, a cooler husband, Edward would never fail her as a brother. She should never find out that any other thought had ever entered his mind. She should learn that he was always at her command, faithful to any wish of hers; but then he recollected, poor fellow, that he was going to India, in Oswald’s place, who would not go. How could he serve her—how could he be of use to her then?
Miss Cherry lingered a little after she had sent Cara to bed. She wanted to look over the end of that novel, and the fire was too good to be left, John having imprudently heaped on coals at a late hour. Before she opened the book she paused to think that if it had not been Oswald, she almost wished that it had been Edward; but it was Cara, of course, who must choose. She had not read much more than a page, however, when her studies were disturbed. Her brother came suddenly into the room, in his slippers, a carelessness of toilette which was quite unusual to him. He came in making her start, and poked the fire with a sort of violence without saying anything. Then he turned his back to the mantelpiece, and gave a glance round the room, in all its dim perfections, and sighed.
‘Cherry,’ he said, ‘if you are not busy, I should like to ask you a question. I came upstairs a little while ago, but you were too much occupied to notice me.’
‘James! indeed, I never saw you.’
‘I know you did not. I did not mean to blame anyone. Tell me what you meant the other morning, when you advised me to stay at home after dinner—not to leave Cara? Was it for Cara’s sake?’
‘Cara was lonely, James; she has never—been used—to be left alone.’
‘Was it for Cara’s sake?’
‘Oh, James,’ said Miss Cherry, faltering, ‘don’t think I wish to interfere! You are more able to judge than I am. It is not my place to make any remarks upon what you do.’
‘Cherry, don’t evade the question; why did you speak to me so? Was it entirely for Cara’s sake?’
Miss Cherry grew red and grew white. She clasped her hands together in unconscious supplication. ‘I must say what I think if I say anything, James. It was a little for—dear Mrs. Meredith too. One must think of her as well. Her husband is a long way off; she is a very kind woman—kindness itself. Even if she thought you came too often, she would not like to say anything. Women understand women, James. She would say to herself, that to send you away would hurt your feelings, and she would rather bear a little annoyance herself.’
‘Do you mean to say she has had any annoyance on my account?’
‘She might have, James dear. She has not taken me into her confidence; but people talk. I suppose if she was a widow and you could—marry——’
‘Charity!’
He had scarcely ever called her by that formal name before, and Miss Cherry was frightened. ‘Oh!’ she cried, once more clasping her hands. ‘Do not punish me for it! It is not my fault. I know better, for I know you both; but people will say so; and you should deny yourself for her sake.’
‘Does she wish it?’ he said hoarsely. It took him a strenuous effort to keep down his fury; but indeed there was no one to assail.
‘She would not wish anything for herself; it would be her nature to think of you first,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘It is not what she wishes, but what you, me, everybody, ought to wish for her, James.’
He looked round the room with a cloud upon his face. ‘Do you know what I see here?’ he said;—‘my past life, which I cannot recall. Am I to come here disturbing the new life that is beginning in it—filling the place with gloom. That does not matter, does it? Better to think of a few malicious words, and make them the rule of one’s conduct, than strive to follow nature and common sense.’
‘James!’ said Miss Cherry, ‘all the malicious words in the world will do no harm to you!’
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘You are free, so far as that is concerned,’ said his timid sister, rising from her seat. She looked at him with a mild contempt, strange to be seen in the eyes of so gentle a woman. ‘You can do what you like, James; it is not you who will suffer. Good-night,’ she said.
And though Miss Cherry’s heart beat loudly, she had the courage to go away and leave him there, transfixed with that bold dart thrown by her most timid, faltering hand. He stood still for some time after she had left him, unable to move with pain and astonishment. The ass of Balaam was nothing to this tremendous coup from Miss Cherry. He was struck prostrate. Almost he forgot to think of the room and its recollections, so entirely was he slain by this blow.
The intercourse between the two houses went on for some time in that uncomfortable and embarrassing way which comes between the sudden pause of a domestic crisis and the inevitable but delayed explanation. The evening after that on which Mrs. Meredith had a headache, Mr. Beresford had an engagement. Next night she went to the opera, which had just re-opened; the next again he had a meeting of his Society; and thus they continued, avoiding the meeting at which something would require to be said, and suffering intensely each with a sense of unkindness on the part of the other. James Beresford could not but feel that to cut him off thus, demonstrated a coolness of interest on the part of his friend which went against all those shows of kindness which made her so beloved—those soft ministrations of sympathy which, he supposed bitterly, anybody might have for the asking, but which were withdrawn as easily as they were given; while she, on her part, with a certain wondering resentment, felt his tame withdrawal from her, and uncourageous yielding of her friendship to the first suggestion of conventional fault-finding. But this could not go on for ever between two people of honest feeling. There came a time when he could not bear it, and she could not bear it. Mr. Beresford’s return to the house which he had visited daily for so long attracted naturally as much observation as the cessation of his visits had done. While these visits were habitual there might be private smiles and comments; but the sudden stoppage of them naturally aroused all the dormant criticism; and when, after a ten days’ interval, he knocked at Mrs. Meredith’s door again, all her servants and his own, and the houses next door on each side, were in a ferment of curiosity. What was going to happen? He walked upstairs into the drawing-room, with his elderly heart beating a little quicker than usual. Hearts of fifty are more apt to palpitate in such cases as this than in any other. James Beresford was not in love with his neighbour’s wife, but he had found in her that tender friendship, that healing sympathy which men and women can afford to each other, better, perhaps, than men can to men, or women to women—a friendship which is the most enduring charm of marriage, but not necessarily confined to it; which is the highest delight of fraternal intercourse, yet not always to be found in that. The loss of it without fault on either side makes one of those rents in life which are as bad as death itself, even when accompanied by full understanding, on both sides, of the reason for the separation; and very rarely can these reasons be accepted and acknowledged on both sides alike, without pangs of injury or development of other and less blameless sentiments. Vulgar opinion with one unanimous voice has stigmatised the relationship as impossible; from which it may be conceded that it is dangerous and difficult; but yet solitary examples of it are to be found all over the world; occurring here and there with delicate rarity like a fastidious flower which only some quintessence of soil can suit; and it flourishes most, as is natural, among those to whom the ordinary relationships of life have not been satisfactory. Beresford, bereft half-way on the hard road of existence of his natural companion, and Mrs. Meredith deserted by hers, were, of all people in the world, the two most likely to find some compensation in such a friendship; but I do not say it is a thing to be permitted or encouraged, because here were two for whom it was a kind of secondary happiness. They were as safe from falling into the sin which neither of them were the least inclined to, as if they had been two rocks or towers; but others might not be so safe, and social laws must, so long as the world lasts under its present conditions, be made for vulgar minds. Perhaps, too, Cara would have occupied a different place as her mother’s representative had not her father found a confidant and companion of his own age, who was so much to him; and the boys might have found their mother more exclusively their own, had not so confidential a counsellor been next door. But it is doubtful whether in the latter particular there was anything to be regretted, for boys must go out into the world, according to the same vulgar voice of general opinion, and have nothing to do with their mother’s apron-string. Still it was not a thing to be permitted, that those two should be such friends; and now at last the world’s will had been fully signified to them; and after an attempt to elude the necessity of explanation, the moment had come at which they must obey the fiat of society, and meet to part.
He walked into the room, his heart thumping with a muffled sound against his bosom—not like the heart-beats of young emotion—heavier, less rapid, painful throbs. She was seated in her usual place by the fire, a little table beside her with a lamp upon it, and some books. She had her knitting in her hand. She did not rise to receive him, but raised her eyes in all the old friendly sweetness, and held out her hand. She was agitated too, but she had more command over herself. There are cases in which a man may, and a woman must not, show emotion.
‘Well?’ she said, in a voice with a falter in it, taking no notice of his absence, or of any reason why they should not meet. ‘Well?’ half a question, half a salutation, betraying only in its brevity that she was not sufficiently at her ease for many words.
He went up and stood before her, putting out his hands to the fire with that want of warmth which all unhappy people feel. He could not smile or take no notice as she tried to do. ‘I have come to ask you what is the meaning of this?’ he said; ‘and whether there is no resource. If it must be——’
‘The meaning of—what?’ she said, faltering; then again a pause: ‘I have nothing to do with it, Mr. Beresford; I do not understand it. These people speak a strange language.’
‘Don’t they?’ he cried; ‘a vile language, made for other ears than yours. Are we to be ruled by it, you and I, to whom it is a jargon of the lower world?’
She did not make any answer; her fingers trembled over her knitting, but she went on with it. That he should speak so, gave her a little consolation; but she knew very well, as perhaps he also knew, that there was nothing for it but to yield ‘What harm can I do you?’ he said, with a kind of aimless argument. ‘I am not a man to harm people by the mere sight of me, am I? I am not new and untried, like a stranger whom people might be doubtful of. All my antecedents are known. What harm can I do you? or the boys—perhaps they think I will harm the boys.’
‘Oh, do not talk so,’ she said; ‘you know no one thinks of harm in you. It is because everything that is unusual must be wrong; because—but why should we discuss it, when there is no reason in it?’
‘Why should we obey it, when there is no reason in it?’ he said.
‘Alas! we cannot help ourselves now; when a thing is said, it cannot be unsaid. After this we could not be the same. We should remember, and be conscious.’
‘Of what?’
‘Oh, of—nothing, except what has been said. Don’t be angry with me. I have so many things to think of—the boys first of all; there must be no talking for them to hear. Don’t you think,’ she said, with tears in her eyes, which glistened and betrayed themselves, yet with an appealing smile, ‘that least said is soonest mended? To discuss it all is impossible. If you could come—now and then—as other people come.’
Then there was a pause. To come down to the level of other people—to confess that their intercourse must be so restricted—was not that of itself a confession that the intercourse was dangerous, impossible, even wrong? ‘Other people!’ Mr. Beresford repeated, in a low tone of melancholy mockery, with a resenting smile. If it had come to that, indeed!—and then he stood with his head bent down, holding his hands to the fire. She was silent, too: what could they say to each other? So many times they had sat in this room in tranquil companionship, sometimes talking, sometimes silent, no bond of politeness upon them to do one thing or the other, understanding each other. And now all at once this comradeship, this brotherhood (are all these nouns of alliance masculine?) had to be dropped, and these two friends become as other people. Not a word was said now—that was the tolling of the dead bell.
‘I think I shall go away,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Life has not so much in it now-a-days, that it can have the best half rent off, and yet go on all the same. I think I shall go away ‘Where will you go to?’ she asked softly.
‘What do I care?’ he said, and then there was another long pause.
All this time, on the other side of the wail, by the fire which corresponded like one twin to another with this, Edward was reading to Cara and Miss Cherry. There is no time in his life in which a young man is so utterly domestic, so content with the little circle of the fireside, as when he is in love. All the amusements and excitements of life were as nothing to Edward in comparison with the limited patch of light in which Miss Cherry and her niece did their needlework. He was very unhappy, poor young fellow; but how sweet it was to be so unhappy! He thought of all that Oswald was relinquishing, with a sense of semi-contempt for Oswald. Nothing would he have done against his brother’s interests, however his own were involved: but he could not help the rising sense that in this case at least it was he who was worthy rather than his brother. And it was a never-ceasing wonder to him that Cara took it so placidly. Oswald went to her in the morning and held long conversations with her, but in the evening he pursued his ordinary course, and in the present disorganised state of the two houses all the mutual dinners and evening meetings being made an end of, they scarcely saw each other except in the morning. This, however, the girl seemed to accept as the natural course of affairs. She was not gay, for it was not Cara’s habit to be gay; but she went seriously about her little world, and smiled upon Edward with absolute composure as if Oswald had no existence. It was a thing which Edward could not understand. He sat at the other side of the table and read to her, whatever she chose to place before him, as long as she chose. He was never weary; but he did not derive much intellectual advantage from what he read. While he was giving forth someone else’s sentiments, his own thoughts were running on a lively under-current. Why was Oswald never here? and why did Cara take his absence so quietly? These were the two leading thoughts with which he perplexed himself; and as he never made out any sort of answer to them, the question ran on for ever. That evening on which Mr. Beresford had gone to have his parting interview with Mrs. Meredith, Miss Cherry was more preoccupied than usual. She sighed over her crewels with more heaviness than could be involved in the mere difficulties of the pattern. To be sure, there was enough in that pattern to have driven any woman out of her senses. And as she puckered her brows over it, Miss Cherry sighed; but this sigh told of a something more heavy which lay upon her mind, the distracted state of which may be best described by the fact that when they were in the middle of their reading, Cara hemming on with a countenance absorbed, Miss Cherry made the communication of which she was full, all at once, without warning, breaking in, in the middle of a sentence, so that Edward’s voice mingled with hers for a line or so, before he could stop himself—
‘Your papa is thinking of going away.’
‘What?’ cried Cara and Edward in a breath.
‘Your papa,’ said Miss Cherry, with another great sigh, ‘is thinking of shutting up his house again, and going away.’
‘Aunt Cherry!’ cried Cara, with the colour rushing suddenly to her face as it had a way of doing when she was moved: and she half-turned and cast a glance at Edward of wonder and sudden dismay. As for him, he had not leisure to feel the strange delight of this confidential glance, so entirely struck dumb was he with the appalling news. He grew pale as Cara grew red, and felt as if all the blood was ebbing out of his heart.
‘It is not that we will not be happy—oh! happy beyond measure—to have you again, my darling,’ said Miss Cherry; ‘but I would be false if I did not say what a disappointment it is to think, after all our hopes for my poor James, that he is not able to settle down in his own house. I can’t tell you what a disappointment it is. So far as we are concerned—Aunt Charity and I—it will be new life to us to have you home. But we did not wish to be selfish, to think of our own comfort, and it will be such a shock to dear Aunt Charity. She always said, as you know, Cara, what a comfort it was to think that the only man of the family was at hand, whatever happened. I don’t know how I am to break it to her, and in her weak state of health.’
‘But, Aunt Cherry—what does it mean?—What has made him change?—Are you sure you are not mistaken? Don’t you think you have misunderstood? It does not seem possible. Are you quite, quite certain?’
‘I am not so silly as you think me, my dear,’ said Miss Cherry, half offended, ‘I know the meaning of words. Yes, there are reasons. He is not so happy as he thought he might be. No, my darling, I don’t think you are to blame. He does not blame you; he only says it is not possible. If you could get him to move perhaps to another house—but not here: he could not possibly stay here.’
Now it was Cara’s turn to grow pale and Edward’s to grow red. She looked at him again with a wondering, questioning glance, but he did not reply.
‘I hope it has nothing to do with the folly of any busybody—making mischief between him and his friends,’ Edward said, with indignation. ‘Mr. Beresford ought to have some philosophy—he ought not to mind.’
‘Ah—he might not mind for himself—but when others are concerned,’ said Miss Cherry, mysteriously. ‘But so it is, my dear, Whether we approve or not. I meant to have gone back to poor dear Aunt Charity, but now I am to stay on to shut up the house and settle everything. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good,’ she added, with a smile; ‘we shall have you back again, Cara; and that will be like the spring to the flowers. We gave you up without grumbling—but it is not in nature that we should not be glad to have you back.’
This gentle piece of self-congratulation was all, however, that was said. Cara had grown quite still and pale. She turned her eyes to Edward once more, and looked at him with a sort of woeful appeal that made his heart beat. ‘This is dreadful news,’ he said, with his voice trembling; and then, true to his brotherly generosity, added as steadily as he could, ‘It will be dreadful news for poor Oswald.’ Cara clasped her hands together in a kind of mute prayer.
‘Do you think nothing can be done?’ she said.
Now it was Miss Cherry’s turn to feel a little, a very little wounded. ‘You have soon forgotten your old home,’ she said. ‘I thought, though you might be sorry, you would be glad too—to get home.’
‘It is not that,’ said Cara, with tears in her voice. What a break was this of the calm happiness of the evening, the pleasure of being together, the charm of the poetry, all those ‘influences of soul and sense’ that had been stealing into the girl’s innocent soul and transforming her unawares! No doubt she might have outlived it all and learnt to look back upon that first shock with a smile—but nevertheless it was the first shock, and at the moment it was overwhelming. She looked at Edward again amazed, appealing to him, asking his sympathy; ought he to thrust in Oswald between them once more? Between love and honour the young man did not know what to do or say. His heart was wrung with the thought of parting, but it was not to him the same shock and unforeseen, unbelievable calamity—under which she turned appealing to earth and heaven.
‘And I am going to India,’ he said, with a kind of despairing smile and quivering lips.
The elder pair on the other side of the wall were not moved by these ineffable visionary pangs. They did not stand aghast at the strange thought that their happiness was being interfered with, that heaven and earth had ceased to favour them—nor did they think that everything was over and life must come to a standstill. Their feelings were less full of the rapture of anguish; yet perhaps the heavy oppression of pain that troubled them was more bitter in its way. They knew very well that life would go on just as before, and nothing dreadful happen. They would only miss each other—miss the kind look and kind word, and simple daily consolation and quiet confidence each in the other. Nobody else could give them that rest and mutual support which they were thus forced to give up without cause. It was a trouble much less to be understood by the common eye, and appealing a great deal less to the heart than those pangs of youth which we have all felt more or less, and can all sympathise with—but it was not a less real trouble. After the interval of silence which neither of them broke, because neither of them had anything to say, James Beresford sank upon his knees and took her hands into his—not in any attitude of sentimental devotion, but only to approach her as she sat there. They looked at each other through tears which to each half blurred the kind countenance which was the friendliest on earth. Then he kissed the hands he held one after the other. ‘God bless you,’ she sobbed, her tears falling upon his sleeve. Why was it? Why was it? yet it had to be. And then they parted; he going back to his gloomy library, she sitting still where he had left her in her lonely drawing-room, wiping away the tears, few but bitter, which this unlooked-for parting had brought to her eyes. They would not complain nor resist—nor even say what the separation cost them—but the young ones would cry out to heaven and earth, sure at least of pity, and perhaps of succour. That made all the difference. While her father came in with his latch-key, and shut his door, shutting himself up with his thoughts, Cara was lifting the mute anguish of her sweet eyes to Edward, disturbing his very soul, poor fellow, with the question, whether it was only his sympathy she asked as a spectator of her misery in parting with his brother, whether it was—— When he said that about going to India, with that tremulous smile and attempt to mock at his own pain, the tears fell suddenly in a little shower, and a sob came from Cara’s oppressed bosom. For whom? Such distracting tumults of excitement do not rise in the maturer being—he was almost out of himself with wonder and anxiety, and hope and dread, dismay and terror. Was it for Oswald? Was it only his sympathy she asked for—was it but a pang of sisterly pity intensified by her own suffering, that she gave to him?
The same roof, divided only by a partition, stretched over all those agitated souls, old and young. The only quite light heart it covered was that of Oswald, who came in rather late from a merry party, and lingered still later, smoking his cigar, and thinking what was the next step to be taken in his pursuit of that pretty frightened Agnes, who was no doubt suffering for his sake. It did not hurt Oswald to think that she was suffering for him—rather it brought a smile on his face, and a pleasurable sensation. He had got a hold on her which nothing else could have given him. When they met again he would have a right to inquire into it, to give her his tender sympathy. After all, a scolding from Sister Mary Jane was not very tragical suffering. On the score of that it might be permitted to him to say a great many things that otherwise he could not have said, to suggest conclusions more momentous. And he did not think Agnes would be hard to move. He believed that she would pardon him, and not take away her favour from him—rather perhaps, even in her own despite, look upon him with eyes more kind. Oswald smoked at least two cigars in her honour, wondering if perhaps she was crying over the catastrophe of the evening, and feeling assured that there would be sweetness in her tears. He was apt to be very sure of the favour of all he cared to please, and that everything would go well with him. And as for the troubles that were under the same roof with him, he knew nothing of them, and would not have thought much had he known. He would have laughed—for of course each of these commotions had its ludicrous side, and Oswald would have made fun of them quite successfully. But they were much less important anyhow than his own preoccupations—full of which, with confidence in his heart, and a smile on his lips, he went cheerfully upstairs, past the door within which his mother lay awake in the dark, thinking over all her life, which had not been, in external circumstances, a very bright one; and that which was closed upon Edward’s conflict and confusion. Neither conflict nor confusion was in the mind of Oswald as he went smiling upstairs with his candle. All was likely to turn out well for him at least, whatever might happen to the rest of the world.
Cara was busy in the drawing-room next morning, arranging a basketful of spring flowers which had come from the Hill, when Oswald came in with his usual budget. He was light-hearted, she was very sad. Oswald was gay because of the triumph he foresaw, and Cara was doubly depressed because she felt that her depression was ungrateful to the kind aunts whom she had been so sorry to leave, though she was so unwilling to go back. Why was it that the thought of going home made her so miserable? she asked herself. Miss Cherry’s delusion about Oswald, which had almost imposed upon Cara herself, had floated all away from her mind, half in laughter half in shame, when she found out that Oswald’s object was to make her the confidant of his love for another girl, not to make love to her in her own person. Cara had been ashamed of the fancy which her aunt’s suggestion had put into her mind, but the désillusion had been a relief—and a more sympathetic confidant could not have been. She was interested in every step of the nascent romance, eager to hear all about the romantic intercourse, consisting chiefly of looks and distant salutations, which he confided to her. No suspicion that she knew who his Agnes was had crossed Cara’s mind, for Agnes Burchell was just so much older than herself as to have removed her above the terms of intimacy which are so readily formed between country neighbours. It was Liddy, the third girl of the family, who was Cara’s contemporary, and it was to Miss Cherry that Agnes talked when she went to the Hill. But Cara was less interested than usual to-day; her mind was occupied with her own affairs, and that future which seemed, for the moment, so dim and deprived of all the light and brightness of life. When Oswald took the basket of crocuses out of her hand, and bid her to sit down and listen to him, she complied languidly, without any of the bright curiosity and interest which were so pleasant to him. At first, however, occupied by his own tale, he did not even notice this failure. He told her of all that had happened, of the sudden apparition of Sister Mary Jane, and the fright in which his companion had left him. Oswald told the story with a smile. It amused him as if it had happened, Cara said to herself, being in a state of mind to judge more harshly than usual, to someone else.
‘But it would not be pleasant for her,’ said Cara. ‘I don’t think she would laugh, Oswald. Even if there was nothing wrong in talking to you, she would feel as if there was when she saw the Sister. Do you think it is—quite—nice? That is a stupid word, I know, but it is the one that comes easiest; quite—quite—kind——?’
‘To what, Cara?’
‘Get a girl into trouble like that, and walk away and smile? indeed, I don’t think it is. They could not say anything to you, but they might say a great many things that would not be pleasant to her—they would say it was not—nice: they would say it was not like a lady: they would say—— Oh,’ said Cara, with great gravity, ‘there are a great many very disagreeable things that people can say.’
‘You look as if you had felt it,’ said Oswald, with a laugh—‘but what does it all mean? Only that the old people cannot amuse themselves as we do—and are jealous. You may be a little tender-conscienced creature, but you don’t suppose really that girls mind?’
‘Not mind!’ cried Cara, growing red, ‘to be called unwomanly, unladylike! What should one mind, then? Do you think nothing but beating us should move us? Most likely she has not slept all night for shame—and you, you are quite pleased! you laugh.’
‘Come, Cara, you are too hard upon me. Poor little darling! I would save her if I could from ever shedding a tear. But what does a scolding of that kind matter? She will cry I daresay—and next time we meet she will tell me about it, and laugh at herself for having cried. But I must find out who she is, and get introduced in proper form.’
‘Could I go, or Aunt Cherry? I am not hard, Oswald—I would do anything for you or for her—but you should not be so unfeeling. If she is only a teacher and poor, she might get into disgrace, she might be turned away—for, after all,’ said Cara, with gentle severity, ‘I do not suppose she was to blame—but girls should not talk to gentlemen in the streets. Oh, yes, I know it was your fault—— but, after all——’
‘What a little dragon!’ cried Oswald. ‘You! why, I should have thought you would have sympathised with a girl like yourself—that is what comes of being brought up by old maids.’
Cara gave him a look of superb yet gentle disdain. She rose up and got her flowers again, and began to arrange the golden crocus-cups among the moss which she had prepared to receive them. She had nothing to reply to such an accusation—and, to tell the truth, Oswald felt, notwithstanding his fine manly conscious superiority to old maids and prudish girls, and all the rules of old-fashioned decorum, somewhat sharply pricked by the dart of that quiet contempt.
‘I recant,’ he said. ‘Miss Cherry would be less hard than you, my lady Cara.’
‘Aunt Cherry would go if you wished it, and tell the Sister not to be angry,’ said Cara. ‘So would I—though perhaps I am too young. We could say that it was entirely your fault—that you would talk to her—that you wish to know her friends.’
‘Oh, thanks, I can manage all that myself,’ he said, with a mixture of amusement and irritation. ‘Remember, I talk to you in confidence, Cara. I don’t want my private affairs to travel to Miss Cherry’s ears, and to be the talk of all the old ladies. Well, then, I beg your pardon, I will say I am fond of old ladies if you like; but I think we can manage for ourselves without help. She is a darling, Cara—her pretty eyes light up when she says anything, and she will not stand the conventional things that everybody says any more than you will. I am lucky to have got two such clever girls—one for my friend, the other——’
‘Oswald, it is so difficult to know when you are in earnest and when you are making fun. I do not feel so sure of you as I used to do. Are you only making fun of her, or are you really, truly in earnest?’
‘Making fun of her! did not I tell you she had made me serious, pious even? You are a little infidel. But, Cara, look here, I am not joking now. You don’t think very much of me, I know; but there is no joke in this; I am going now to try to find out who she is, and all about her, and then I shall make my mother go, or someone. I did not mean any harm in laughing. Nobody thinks seriously of such affairs; and don’t you see we have a secret between us now, we have a link—we are not like strangers. But, as for being serious—if she is not my wife in three months——?’
‘In three months!’ cried Cara, astounded by his boldness.
‘In less than that. She likes me, Cara. I can see it in her pretty eyes, though she will never look at me if she can help it. You are a horrid little cold-hearted wretch and mock me, but most people do like me,’ said the young man with a laugh of happy vanity in which just enough half-modesty was mingled to make it inoffensive; ‘everybody I may say but you. Oh, I am serious; serious as a judge. In three months; but for heaven’s sake not a word about it, not a syllable to my mother, or anyone!’
‘I am not a telltale,’ said Cara; ‘and I am very glad to see that you can be serious sometimes,’ she added with a sigh.
He looked up alarmed. The first idea, indeed, that crossed Oswald’s mind was that Cara, though she had borne it so well, was now giving in a little, and feeling the bitterness of losing him; which was an idea slightly embarrassing but agreeable, for it did not occur to him in the first place as it might to some men that such an occurrence would be humbling and painful to Cara if pleasant and flattering to himself. ‘What is the matter?’ he asked, looking at her curiously. ‘You are not so cheerful as usual.’
‘Oh, Oswald!’ she said, with the tears coming to her eyes. ‘Papa is going away again! I don’t know why. I don’t even know where he is going. It appears that he cannot make himself comfortable at home as he once thought, and the house is to be shut up, and I am going back to the Hill with Aunt Cherry. It is ungrateful—horribly ungrateful of me to be sorry—but I am, I cannot help it. I thought that papa would have settled and stayed at home, and now all that is over.’
‘Ah!’ said Oswald. ‘So! I did not think it would be so serious; it is about my mother, I suppose.’
‘About your mother!’
‘Yes. People have interfered; they say he is not to come to see her every day as he has been in the habit of doing. It is supposed not to be liked by the governor out in India. It is all the absurdest nonsense. The governor out in India is as indifferent as I am, Cara—you may take my word for that—and only a set of busybodies are to blame. But I am very sorry if it is going to bother you.’
Cara did not make any answer. A flush of visionary shame came over her face. What did it mean? Such questions pain the delicate half-consciousness of a girl that there are matters in the world not fit for her discussion, beyond anything that elder minds can conceive. The suggestion of these hurts her, as elder and stouter fibres are incapable of being hurt, and this all the more when the parties involved are any way connected with herself. That there could be any question of the nature of her father’s regard for any woman, much less for Mrs. Meredith, a woman whom she knew and loved, cut Cara like a knife. Her very soul shrank within her. She changed the subject eagerly—
‘Were you ever at the Hill, Oswald? You must come. It will soon be spring now! look at the crocuses! and in the primrose time the woods are lovely. I was almost brought up there, and I always think of it as home.’
‘But I must ask some more about this—about your father. It ought to be put a stop to——’
‘Oh, don’t say any more,’ cried Cara, hurriedly, with another blush. ‘You must let me know how your own affairs go on, and what happens; and, Oswald, oh! I hope you will take care and not let her get into trouble about you. If she was to lose her home and her comfort or even to get scolded——’
‘Getting scolded is not such a dreadful punishment, Cara.’
‘But it is to a girl,’ said Cara, very gravely, and she became so absorbed in the arrangement of her crocuses, setting them in the green moss, which had packed them, that he yielded to her preoccupation, being one of the persons who cannot be content without the entire attention of anyone to whom they address themselves. He did not make out how it was that he had failed with Cara on this special morning, but he felt the failure, and it annoyed him. For the first time he had lost her interest. Was it that she did not like his devotion to Agnes to go so far, that she felt the disadvantage of losing him? This idea excited and exhilarated Oswald, who liked to be first with everybody. Poor Cara, if it was so! he was very sorry for her. If she had shown any inclination to accept him, he would have been very willing to prove to her that he had not given her up, notwithstanding his love for the other; but she would not pay any attention to his overtures, and nothing was left for him but to go away.
Cara’s whole frame seemed to tingle with her blushing, her fancy fled from the subject thrust upon her attention even when excitement brought her back to it and whispered it again in her ears. Her father! Never since the scene which she had witnessed in her mother’s sick room, had Cara felt a child’s happy confidence in her father. She had never analysed her sentiments towards him, but there had been a half-conscious shrinking, a sense as of something unexplained that lay between them. She had gone over that scene a hundred times and a hundred to that, roused to its importance only after it was over. What had been the meaning of it? never to this day had she been quite able to make up her mind, nobody had talked to her of her mother’s death. Instead of those lingerings upon the sad details, upon the last words, upon all the circumstances which preceded that catastrophe, which are usual in such circumstances, there had been a hush of everything, which had driven the subject back upon her mind, and made her dwell upon it doubly. Time had a little effaced the impression, but the return to the Square had brought it back again in greater force, and in those lonely hours which the girl had spent there at first, left to her own resources, many a perplexed and perplexing fancy had crowded her mind. The new life, however, which had set in later, the companionship, the gentle gaieties, the new sentiment, altogether strange and wonderful, which had arisen in her young bosom, had quietly pushed forth all painful thoughts. But now, with the pang of parting already in her heart, and the sense, so easily taken up at her years and so tragically felt, that life never could again be what it had been—a certain pang of opposition to her father had come into Cara’s mind. Going away!—to break her heart and alter her life because he would not bear the associations of his home! was a man thus, after having all that was good in existence himself, to deprive others of their happiness for the sake of his recollections? but when this further revelation fell upon his conduct, Cara’s whole heart turned and shrank from her father. She could not bear the suggestion, and yet it returned to her in spite of herself. The shame of it, the wrong of it, the confused and dark ideas of suspicion and doubt which had been moving vaguely in her mind, all came together in a painful jumble. She put away her flowers, flinging away half of them in the tumult of her thoughts. It was too peaceful an occupation, and left her mind too free for discussion with herself. The girl’s whole being was roused, she scarcely knew why. Love! she had never thought of it, she did not know what it meant, and Oswald, whom her aunt supposed to entertain that wonderful occult sentiment for her, certainly did not do so, but found in her only a pleasant confidante, a friendly sympathiser. Something prevented Cara from inquiring further, from asking herself any questions. She did not venture even to think in the recesses of her delicate bosom, that Edward Meredith was anything more to her, or she to him, than was Miss Cherry. What was the use of asking why or wherefore? She had begun to be happy, happier certainly than she had been before; and here it was to end. The new world, so full of strange, undefined lights and reflections, was to break up like a dissolving view, and the old world to settle down again with all its old shadows. The thought brought a few hot, hasty tears to her eyes whenever it surprised her as it did now. Poor inconsistent child! She forgot how dull the Square had been when she came, how bitterly she had regretted her other home in those long dreary evenings when there was no sound in the house except the sound of the hall-door closing upon her father when he went out. Ah! upon her father as he went out! He who was old, whose life was over (for fifty is old age to seventeen), he could not tolerate the interruption of his habits, of his talk with his friend; but she in the first flush of her beginning was to be shut out from everything, banished from her friends without a word! And then there crept on Cara’s mind a recollection of those evening scenes over the fire: Aunt Cherry bending her brows over her needlework, and Edward reading in the light of the lamp. How innocent it was; how sweet; and it was all over, and for what? Poor little Cara’s mind seemed to turn round. That sense of falsehood and insincerity even in the solid earth under one’s feet, which is the most bewildering and sickening of all moral sensations, overcame her. It was for her mother’s sake, because of the love he bore her, that he could not be at ease in this room, which had been so specially her mother’s; all those years while he had been wandering, it was because the loss of his wife was fresh upon his mind, and the blow so bitter that he could not resume his old life; but now what was this new breaking up of his life? Not for her mother’s sake, but for Mrs. Meredith’s! Cara paused with her head swimming, and looked round her to see if anything was steady in the sudden whirl. What was steady? Oswald, whom everybody (she could see) supposed to be ‘in love,’ whatever that was, with herself, was, as she knew, ‘in love,’ as he called it, with somebody else. Cara did not associate her own sentiments for anyone with that feeling which Oswald expressed for Agnes, but she felt that her own position was false, as his position was false, and Mrs. Meredith’s and her father’s. Was there nothing in the world that was true?
The next day or two was filled with somewhat dolorous arrangements for breaking up again the scarcely-established household. Miss Cherry occupied herself with many sighs in packing away the silver, shutting up the linen, all the household treasures, and covering the furniture with pinafores. Cara’s clothes were in process of packing, Cara’s room was being dismantled. Mr. Beresford’s well-worn portmanteaux had been brought out, and John and Cook, half pleased at the renewed leisure which began to smile upon them, half-vexed at the cessation of their importance as purveyors for and managers of their master’s ‘establishment,’ were looking forward to the great final ‘cleaning up,’ which was to them the chief event of the whole. All was commotion in the house. The intercourse with the house next door had partially ceased; Oswald still came in the morning, and Edward in the evening; but there had been no communication between the ladies of the two houses since the evening when Mr. Beresford took final leave of Mrs. Meredith. To say that there were not hard thoughts of her in the minds of the Beresfords would be untrue, and yet it was impossible that anyone could have been more innocent than she was. All that she had done was to be kind, which was her habit and nature. ‘But too kind,’ Miss Cherry said privately to herself, ‘too kind! Men must not be too much encouraged. They should be kept in their place,’ and then the good soul cried at the thought of being hard upon her neighbour. As for Cara, she never put her thoughts on the subject into words, being too much wounded by the mere suggestion. But in her mind, too, there was a sense that Mrs. Meredith must be wrong. It could not be but that she must be wrong; and they avoided each other by instinct. After poor James was gone, Miss Cherry promised herself she would call formally and bid good-by to that elderly enchantress who had made poor James once more an exile. Nothing could exceed now her pity for ‘poor James.’ She forgot the darts with which she herself had slain him, and all that had been said to his discredit. He was the sufferer now, which was always enough to turn the balance of Miss Cherry’s thoughts.
When things had arrived at this pitch, a sudden and extraordinary change occurred all at once in Mr. Beresford’s plans. For a day no communications whatever took place between No. 7 and No. 8 in the Square. Oswald did not come in the morning—which was a thing that might be accounted for; but Edward did not appear in the evening—which was more extraordinary. Miss Cherry had brought out her art-needlework, notwithstanding the forlorn air of semi-dismantling which the drawing-room had already assumed, and Cara had her hemming ready. ‘It will only be for a night or two more,’ said Miss Cherry, ‘and we may just as well be comfortable; but she sighed; and as for Cara, the expression of her young countenance had changed altogether to one of nervous and impatient trouble. She was pale, her eyes had a fitful glimmer. Her aunt’s little ways fretted her as they had never done before. Now and then a sense of the intolerable seized upon the girl. She would not put up with the little daily contradictions to which everybody is liable. She would burst out into words of impatience altogether foreign to her usual character. She was fretted beyond her powers of endurance. But at this moment she calmed down again. She acquiesced in Miss Cherry’s little speech and herself drew the chairs into their usual places, and got the book which Edward had been reading to them. The ladies were very quiet, expecting their visitor; the fire sent forth little puffs of flame and crackles of sound, the clock ticked softly, everything else was silent. Cara fell into a muse of many fancies, more tranquil than usual, for the idea that he would not come had not entered her mind. At least they would be happy to-night. This thought lulled her into a kind of feverish tranquillity, and even kept her from rousing, as Miss Cherry did, to the sense that he had not come at his usual hour and might not be coming. ‘Edward is very late,’ Miss Cherry said at last. ‘Was there any arrangement made, Cara, that he was not to come?’
‘Arrangement? that he was not to come!’
‘My dear,’ said good Miss Cherry, who had been very dull for the last hour, ‘you have grown so strange in your ways. I don’t want to blame you, Cara; but how am I to know? Oswald comes in the morning and Edward in the evening; but how am I to know? If one has said more to you than the other, if you think more of one than the other, you never tell me. Cara, is it quite right, dear? I thought you would have told me that day that Oswald came and wanted to see you alone; of course, we know what that meant; but you evaded all my questions; you never would tell me.’
‘Aunt Cherry, it was because there was nothing to tell. I told you there would be nothing.’
‘Then there ought to have been something, Cara. One sees what Edward feels, poor boy, and I am very sorry for him. And it is hard upon him—hard upon us all to be so treated. Young people ought to be honest in these matters. Yes, dear, it is quite true. I am not pleased. I have not been pleased ever since——’
‘Aunt Cherry,’ said the girl, her face crimson, her eyes full of tears, ‘why do you upbraid me now—is this the moment? As if I were not unhappy enough. What does Edward feel? Does he too expect me to tell him of something that does not exist?’
‘Poor Edward! All I can say is, that if we are unhappy, he is unhappy too, and unhappier than either you or me, for he is——. Poor boy; but he is young and he will get over it,’ said Miss Cherry with a deep sigh.
‘Oh, hush! hush! but tell me of him—hush!’ said Cara, eagerly; ‘I hear him coming up the stairs.’
There was someone certainly coming up stairs, but it was not Edward’s youthful footstep, light and springy. It was a heavier and slower tread. They listened, somewhat breathless, being thus stopped in an interesting discussion, and wondered at the slow approach of these steps. At last the door opened slowly, and Mr. Beresford, with some letters in his hand, came into the room. He came quite up to them before he said anything. The envelope which he held in his hand seemed to have contained both the open letters which he carried along with it, and one of them had a black edge. He was still running his eyes over this as he entered the room.
‘I think,’ he said, standing with his hand upon Cara’s table, at the place where Edward usually sat, ‘that you had better stop your packing for the moment. An unfortunate event has happened, and I do not think now that I can go away—not so soon at least; it would be heartless, it would be unkind!’
‘What is it?’ cried Miss Cherry, springing to her feet. ‘Oh, James, not any bad news from the Hill?’
‘No, no; nothing that concerns us. The fact is,’ said Mr. Beresford, gazing into the dim depths of the mirror and avoiding their eyes, ‘Mr. Meredith, the father of the boys, has just died in India. The news has come only to-day.’
The news which had produced so sudden and startling an effect upon the inmates of No. 7 had been known early in the morning of the same day to the inmates of No. 8. This it was which had prevented either of the young men from paying their ordinary visits; but the wonder was that no rumour should have reached at least the kitchen of Mr. Beresford’s house of the sad news which had arrived next door. Probably the reason was that the servants were all fully occupied, and had no time for conversation. The news had come early, conveyed by Mr. Sommerville personally, and by post from the official head-quarters, for Mr. Meredith was a civil servant of standing and distinction. There was nothing extraordinary or terrible in it. He had been seized with one of the rapid diseases of the climate, and had succumbed like so many other men, leaving everything behind him settled and in order. It was impossible that a well-regulated and respectable household could have been carried on with less reference to the father of the children, and nominal master of the house, than Mrs. Meredith’s was; but perhaps this was one reason why his loss fell upon them all like a thunderbolt. Dead! no one had ever thought of him as a man who could die. The event brought him near them as with the rapidity of lightning. Vaguely in their minds, or at least in the wife’s mind, there had been the idea of some time or other making up to him for that long separation and estrangement—how, she did not inquire, and when, she rather trembled to think of, but some time. The idea of writing a kinder letter than usual to him had crossed her mind that very morning. They did not correspond much; they had mutually found each other incompatible, unsuitable, and lately Mrs. Meredith had been angry with the distant husband, who had been represented as disapproving of her. But this morning, no later, some thrill of more kindly feeling had moved her. She had realised all at once that it might be hard for him to be alone in the world, and without that solace of the boys, which from indifference, or from compunction, he had permitted her to have without interference all these years. She had thought that after all it was cruel, after such a long time, to deny him a share in his own children, and she had resolved, being in a serious mood and agitated state of mind, to make the sacrifice, or to attempt to make the sacrifice more freely, and to write to him to express her gratitude to him for leaving her both the boys so long; had not he a right to them no less than hers?—in the eye of nature no less, and in the eye of the law more. Yet he had been generous to her, and had never disputed her possession of her children. These were the softening thoughts that had filled her mind before she came downstairs. And no sooner had she come down than the news arrived. He was dead. When those die who are the most beloved and cherished, the best and dearest, that calamity which rends life asunder and overclouds the world for us, has seldom in it the same sickening vertigo of inappropriateness which makes the soul sick when someone essentially earthly is suddenly carried away into the unseen, with which he seems to have had nothing to do all his previous life. He! dead! a man so material, of the lower earth. What could dying be to him? What connection had he with the mystery and solemnity of the unseen? The vulgar and commonplace awe us more at these dread portals than the noble or great. What have they to do there? What had a man like Mr. Meredith to do there? Yet he had gone, no one knowing, and accomplished that journey which classes those who have made it, great and small, with the gods. A hundred discordant thoughts entered into his wife’s mind—compunction, and wonder, and solemn trembling. Could he have known what she had been thinking that morning? Was it some dumb approach of his soul to hers which had aroused these more tender thoughts? Had he been aware of all that had gone on in her mind since the time when, she knowing of it, he had died? Nature has always an instinctive certainty, whatever philosophy may say against it, and however little religion may say in favour of it, that this sacred and mysterious event of death somehow enlarges and expands the being of those who have passed under its power. Since we lost them out of our sight, it seems so necessary to believe that they see through us more than ever they did, and know what is passing within the hearts to which they were kindred. Why should the man, who living had concerned himself so little about what his wife did, know now instantaneously all about it, having died? She could not have given a reason, but she felt it to be so. The dark ocean, thousands of miles of it, what was that to an emancipated soul? He had died in India; but he was there, passing mysteriously through the doors, standing by her, ‘putting things into her head,’ in this corner of England. Which of us has not felt the same strange certainty? All at once the house seemed full of him, even to the children, who had scarcely known him. He was dead; passed into a world which mocks at distance, which knows nothing of fatigue. He was as God in some mysterious way, able to be everywhere, able to influence the living unconsciously, seeing, hearing them—simply because he was dead, and had become to mortal vision incapable of either seeing or hearing more.
There is nothing more usual than to rail at the dreadful and often unduly prolonged moment between death and the final ceremonial which clears us away from cumbering the living soil any longer; but this moment is often a blessing to the survivors. In such a case as this ‘the bereaved family’ did not know what to do. How were they to gain that momentary respite from the common round? If the blinds were drawn down, and the house shut up, according to the usual formula, that would be purely fictitious; for of course he had been buried long ago. Edward paused with the shutter in his hand when about to close it, struck by this reflection, and Oswald gave vent to it plainly—‘What’s the good? he’s in his grave long ago.’ Mrs. Meredith had retired to her room on the receipt of the news, where her maid took her her cup of tea; and the young men sat down again, and ate their breakfast, as it were under protest, ashamed of themselves for the good appetites they had, and cutting off here and there a corner of their usual substantial meal, to prove to themselves that they were not quite without feeling. What were they to do to make the fact evident that they had just heard of their father’s death, and to separate this day, which was to them as the day of his death, from other days? They were very much embarrassed to know how they were to manage this. To abstain altogether from their usual occupations was the only thing which instinctively occurred to them. They sat down after breakfast was over, as though it had been a doubly solemn dolorous Sunday, on which they could not even go to church. Edward was doubtful even about The Times, and Oswald hesitated about going to his smoking-room as usual. A cigar seemed a levity when there was a death in the house. On the whole, however, it was Oswald who settled the matter most easily, for he began a copy of verses, ‘To the memory of my Father,’ which was a very suitable way indeed of getting through the first hours, and amusing too.
The house was very still all the morning, and then there was another subdued meal. Meals are a great thing to fall back upon when young persons of healthful appetite, not broken down by grief, feel themselves compelled to decorous appearance of mourning. By this time Oswald and Edward both felt that not to eat was an absurd way of doing honour to their dead father, and accordingly they had an excellent luncheon; though their mother still ‘did not feel able,’ her maid reported, to come down. After this the two young men went out together to take a walk. This, too, was a kind of solemn Sabbatical exercise, which they had not taken in the same way since they were boys at school together. When they met any acquaintance, one of them would bow formally, or stretch out a hand to be shaken, passing on, too grave for talk, while the other paused to explain the ‘bad news’ they had received. When it was a friend of Oswald’s, Edward did this, and when it was Edward’s friend, Oswald did it. This little innocent solemn pantomime was so natural and instinctive that it impressed everyone more or less, and themselves most of all. They began to feel a certain importance in their position, enjoying the sympathy, the kind and pitying looks of all they met as they strolled along slowly arm-in-arm. They had not been so much united, or felt so strong a connection with each other, for years. Then they began to discuss in subdued tones the probable issues. ‘Will it change our position?’ Edward asked.
‘I think not, unless to better it,’ said Oswald. ‘I don’t think you need go to India now unless you like.’
He had just said this, when they were both addressed by someone coming up behind them, as hasty and business-like as they were languid and solemn.
‘I say, can you tell me whereabouts the India Office is?’ said the new comer. ‘Good-morning. I shouldn’t have disturbed you but that I remembered you were going to India too. I’m in for my last Exam., that is, I shall be directly, and I’ve got something to do at the India Office; but the fact is, I don’t know where to go.’
It was Edward who directed him, Oswald standing by holding his brother’s arm. Roger Burchell was very brisk, looking better than usual in the fresh spring sunshine, and Oswald’s eye was caught by his face, which was like someone he had seen recently—he could not remember where—the ruddy, mellow, warmly-toned complexion, brown eyes, and dusky gold of the hair. Who was it? Roger, being out of his depth in London, was glad to see faces he knew, even though he loved them little; and then he had heard that Cara was to return to the Hill, and felt that he had triumphed, and feared them no more.
‘I hope your neighbours are well?’ he said. ‘They are coming back, I hear, to the country. I suppose they don’t care for London after being brought up in a country place? I should not myself.’
‘Mr. Beresford is going abroad,’ said Edward, coldly.
‘Everybody is going abroad, I think; but few people so far as we are. I don’t think I should care for the Continent—just the same old thing over and over; but India should be all fresh. You are going to India too, ain’t you? at least, that is what I heard.’
‘I am not sure,’ said Edward. ‘The truth is, we have had very bad news this morning. My father died at Calcutta——’
‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ said Roger, who had kind feelings. ‘I should not have stopped you had I known; I thought you both looked grave. I am very sorry. I hope you don’t mind——?’
‘Don’t mind my father’s death?’
‘Oh, I mean don’t mind my having stopped you. Perhaps it was rude; but I said to myself, “Here is someone I know.” Don’t let me detain you now. I am very sorry, but I wish you were coming to India,’ said Roger, putting out his big fist to shake hands. Oswald eluded the grip, but Edward took it cordially. He was not jealous of Roger, but divined in him an unfortunate love like his own.
‘Poor fellow!’ Edward said as they went on.
‘Poor fellow!—why poor fellow? he is very well off. He is the very sort of man to get on; he has no feelings, no sensitiveness, to keep him back.’
‘It is scarcely fair to decide on such slight acquaintance that he has no feelings; but he is going to India.’
‘Ned, you are a little bit of a fool, though you’re a clever fellow. Going to India is the very best thing a man can do. My mother has always made a fuss about it.’
‘And yourself——’
‘Myself! I am not the sort of fellow. I am no good. I get dead beat; but you that are all muscle and sinew, and that have no tie except my mother——’
‘That to be sure,’ said Edward with a sigh, and he wondered did his brother now at last mean to be confidential and inform him of the engagement with Cara? His heart began to beat more quickly. How different that real sentiment was from the fictitious one which they had both been playing with! Edward’s breath came quickly. Yes, it would be better to know it—to get it over; and then there would be no further uncertainty; but at the same time he was afraid—afraid both of the fact and of Oswald’s way of telling it. If Cara’s name was spoken with levity, how should he be able to bear it? Needless to say, however, that Oswald had no intention of talking about Cara, and nothing to disclose on that subject at least.
‘You that have no tie—except my mother,’ repeated Oswald, ‘(and of course she would always have me), I would think twice before I gave up India. It’s an excellent career, nothing better. The governor (poor old fellow) did very well, I have always heard, and you would do just as well, or more so, with the benefit of his connection. I wonder rather that my mother kept us out of the Indian set, except the old Spy. Poor old man, I daresay he will be cut up about this. He’ll know better than anyone,’ continued Oswald, with a change of tone, ‘what arrangements have been made.’
‘I wonder if it will be long before we can hear?’ Thus they went on talking in subdued tones, the impression gradually wearing off, and even the feeling of solemn importance—the sense that, though not unhappy, they ought to conduct themselves with a certain gravity of demeanour becoming sons whose father was just dead. They had no very distinct impression about the difference to be made in their own future, and even Oswald was not mercenary in the ordinary sense of the word. He thought it would be but proper and right that he should be made ‘an eldest son;’ but he did not think it likely—and in that case, though he would be absolutely independent, he probably would not be very rich—not rich enough to make work on his own part unnecessary. So the excitement on this point was mild. They could not be worse off than they were—that one thing he was sure of, and for the rest, one is never sure of anything. By this time they had reached the region of Clubs. Oswald thought there was nothing out of character in just going in for half an hour to see the papers. A man must see the papers whoever lived or died. When the elder brother unbent thus far, the younger brother went home. He found his mother still in her own room taking a cup of tea. She had been crying, for her eyes were red, and she had a shawl wrapped round her, the chill of sudden agitation and distress having seized upon her. Mr. Meredith’s picture, which had not hitherto occupied that place of honour, had been placed above her mantelpiece, and an old Indian box, sweet with the pungent odour of the sandal-wood, stood on the little table at her elbow. ‘I was looking over some little things your dear papa gave me, long before you were born,’ she said, with tears in her voice. ‘Oh, my poor John!’
‘Mother, you must not think me unfeeling; but I knew so little of him.’
‘Yes, that was true—yes, that was true. Oh, Edward, I have been asking myself was it my fault? But I could not live in India, and he was so fond of it. He was always well. He did not understand how anyone could be half killed by the climate. I never should have come home but for the doctors, Edward.’
She looked at him so appealingly that Edward felt it necessary to take all the responsibility unhesitatingly upon himself. ‘I am sure you did not leave him as long as you could help it, mother.’
‘No, I did not—that is just the truth—as long as I could help it; but it does seem strange that we should have been parted for so much of our lives. Oh, what a comfort it is, Edward, to feel that whatever misunderstanding there might be, he knows all and understands everything now!’
‘With larger, other eyes than ours,’ said Edward piously, and the boy believed it in the confidence of his youth. But how the narrow-minded commonplace man who had been that distinguished civil servant, John Meredith, should all at once have come to this godlike greatness by the mere fact of dying, neither of them could have told. Was it nature in them that asserted it to be so? or some prejudice of education and tradition so deeply woven into their minds that they did not know it to be anything but nature? But be it instinct or be it prejudice, what more touching sentiment ever moved a human bosom? He had not been a man beloved in his life; but he was as the gods now.
By-and-by, however—for reverential and tender as this sentiment was, it was neither love nor grief, and could not pretend to the dominion of these monarchs of the soul—the mother and son fell into talk about secondary matters. She had sent for her dressmaker about her mourning, and given orders for as much crape as could be piled upon one not gigantic female figure, and asked anxiously if the boys had done their part—had got the proper depth of hatbands, the black studs, &c., that were wanted. ‘I suppose you may have very dark grey for the mourning; but it must be very dark,’ she said.
‘And you, mother, must you wear that cap—that mountain of white stuff?’
‘Certainly, my dear,’ said Mrs. Meredith with fervour. ‘You don’t think I would omit any sign of respect? And what do I care whether it is becoming or not? Oh, Edward, your dear papa has a right to all that we can do to show respect.’
There was a faltering in her lip as of something more she had to say, but decorum restrained her. That first day nothing ought to be thought of, nothing should be mentioned, she felt, in which consolation had a part. But when the night came after that long, long day, which they all felt to be like a year, the secret comfort in her heart came forth as she bade her boy good-night. ‘Edward, oh, I wish you had gone years ago, when you might have been a comfort to him! but now that there is no need——’ Here she stopped and kissed him, and looked at him with a smile in her wet eyes, which, out of ‘respect,’ she would no more have suffered to come to her lips than she would have worn pink ribbons in her cap, and said quickly, ‘You need not go to India now.’
This was the blessing with which she sent him away from her. She cried over it afterwards, in penitence looking at her husband’s portrait, which had been brought out of a corner in the library downstairs. Poor soul, it was with a pang of remorse that she felt she was going to be happy in her widow’s mourning. If she could have restrained herself, she would have kept in these words expressive of a latent joy which came by means of sorrow. She stood and looked at the picture with a kind of prayer for pardon in her heart—Oh, forgive me! with once more that strange confidence that death had given the attributes of God to the man who was dead. If he was near, as she felt him to be, and could hear the breathing of that prayer in her heart, then surely, as Edward said, it was with ‘larger, other eyes’ that he must look upon her, understanding many things which up to his last day he had not been able to understand.
But they were all very glad when the day was over—that first day which was not connected with the melancholy business or presence of death which ‘the family’ are supposed to suffer from so deeply, yet which proves a kind of chapel and seclusion for any grief which is not of the deepest and most overwhelming kind. The Merediths would have been glad even of a mock funeral, a public assuming of the trappings of woe, a distinct period after which life might be taken up again. But there was nothing at all to interrupt their life, and the whole affair remained unauthentic and strange to them. Meanwhile, in the house next door these strange tidings had made a sudden tumult. The packings had been stopped. The servants were angry at their wasted trouble; the ladies both silenced and startled, with thoughts in their minds less natural and peaceful than the sympathy for Mrs. Meredith, which was the only feeling they professed. As for Mr. Beresford himself, it would be difficult to describe his feelings, which were of a very strange and jumbled character. He was glad to have the bondage taken off his own movements, and to feel that he was free to go where he pleased, to visit as he liked; and the cause of his freedom was not really one which moved him to sorrow though it involved many curious and uncomfortable questions. How much better the unconscious ease of his feelings had been before anyone had meddled! but now so many questions were raised! Yet his mind was relieved of that necessity of immediate action which is always so disagreeable to a weak man. Yes, his mind was entirely relieved. He took a walk about his room, feeling that by-and-by it would be his duty to go back again to Mrs. Meredith’s drawing-room to ask what he could do for her, and give her his sympathy. Not to-night, but soon; perhaps even to-morrow. The cruel pressure of force which had been put upon him, and which he had been about to obey by the sacrifice of all his comforts, relaxed and melted away. It was a relief, an undeniable relief; but yet it was not all plain-sailing—the very relief was an embarrassment too.