Chapter XIII: The Young People

Cara’s second evening at home was passed much more happily than the first, thanks to Mrs. Meredith, and her spirits rose in consequence; but next morning there ensued a fall, as was natural, in her spiritual barometer. She went to the window in the drawing-room when she was all alone, and gazed wistfully at as much as she could see of the step and entrance of the house next door. Did they mean her to ‘run in half-a-dozen times a day,’ as Mrs. Meredith had said? Cara had been brought up in her aunt’s old-fashioned notions, with strenuous injunctions not ‘to make herself cheap,’ and to cultivate ‘a proper pride.’ She had often been told that running into sudden intimacy was foolish, and that a girl should be rather shy than eager about overtures of ordinary friendship. All these things restrained her, and her own disposition which favoured all reserves. But she could not help going to the window and looking out wistfully. Only a wall between them! and how much more cheerful it was on the other side of that wall. Her heart beat as she saw Oswald come out, not because it was Oswald--on the whole she would have preferred his mother; but solitude ceased to be solitude when friendly figures thus appear, even outside. Oswald glanced up and saw her. He took off his hat--he paused--finally, he turned and came up the steps just underneath where she was standing. In another moment he came in, his hat in his hand, his face full of brightness of the morning. Nurse showed him in with a sort of affectionate enthusiasm. ‘Here is Mr. Oswald, Miss Cara, come to see you.’

The women servants were all the slaves of the handsome young fellow. Wherever he went he had that part of the community on his side.

‘I came to see that you are not the worse for your dull dinner last evening,’ he said. ‘It used to be etiquette to ask for one’s partner at a ball; how much more after a domestic evening. Have you a headache? were you very much bored? It is for my interest to know, that I may be able to make out whether you will come again.’

‘Were _you_ bored that you ask me?’ said Cara. ‘I was very happy.’

‘And, thanks to you, _I_ was very happy,’ he said. ‘Clearly four are better company than three. Your father and my mother have their own kind of talking. Why, I have not been in this room since I was a child; how much handsomer it is than ours! Come, Cara, tell me all about the pictures and the china. Of course you must be a little connoisseur. Should one say connoisseuse? I never know. _Virtuosa_, that is a prettier word, and we are all in the way of the cardinal virtues here.’

‘But I am not at all a _virtuosa_. I don’t know. I was a child, too, when I used to be at home, and I suppose it hurts papa to come into this room. He has never been here since I came; never at all, I think, since mamma died.’

‘Does he leave you by yourself all the evening? what a shame!’ said Oswald. ‘Is he so full of sentiment as that? One never knows people. Come, Cara, if that is the case, it is clear that I must spend the evenings with you.’

Cara laughed frankly at the suggestion. She did not understand what he meant by a slight emphasis upon the pronouns, which seemed to point out some balance of duties. She said, ‘I have only been here for two evenings. The first was very dull. I had nothing to read but that book, and I was not happy. The second was last night. Oh, I am not accustomed to much company. I can be quite happy by myself, when I am used to things.’

‘That means you don’t want me,’ said Oswald; ‘but I shall come all the same. What is the book about? You don’t mean to say you understand that! What is unconscious cerebration, Cara? Good heavens! how rash I have been. Are you an F.R.S. already, like the rest of your father’s friends?’

‘I don’t know what it means,’ said Cara, ‘no more than I know about the china. But I read a chapter that first night; it was always something. You see there are very few books in this room. They have been taken away, I suppose. Nobody, except mamma, has ever lived here.’

She gave a little shiver as she spoke, and looked wistfully round. Even in the morning, with the sunshine coming in, how still it was! Oswald thought he would like to break the china, and make a human noise, over the head of the father who was sitting below, making believe to think so much of the memory of his dead wife, and neglecting his living child. The young man had a grudge against the elder one, which gave an edge to his indignation.

‘You shall have books,’ he said, ‘and company too, if you will have me, Cara: that will bring them to their senses,’ he added to himself in a half-laughing, half-angry undertone.

What did he mean? Cara had no idea. She laughed too, with a little colour starting to her face, wondering what Aunt Charity would think if she knew that Oswald meant to spend his evenings with her. Cara herself did not see any harm in it, though she felt it was a joke, and could not be.

‘You were going out,’ she said, ‘when you saw me at the window. Had you anything to do? for if you had you must not stay and waste your time with me.’

‘Why should I have anything to do?’

‘I thought young men had,’ said Cara. ‘Of course I don’t know very much about them. I know only the Burchells _well_; they are never allowed to come and talk in the morning. If it is Reginald, he always says he ought to be reading; and Roger, he is of course at work, you know.’

‘I don’t know in the least,’ said Oswald; ‘but I should like to learn. What does this revelation of Rogers and Reginalds mean? I never supposed there were any such persons. I thought that Edward and myself were about the limit of friendship allowed to little Cara, and here is a clan, a tribe. I forewarn you at once that I put myself in opposition to your Reginalds and Rogers. I dislike the gentlemen. I am glad to hear that they have no time to talk in the mornings. I, for my part, have plenty of time.’

‘Oh, you are not likely to know them,’ said Cara, laughing, ‘unless, indeed, Roger comes on Sundays, as he said. They are probably not so rich as you are. Their father is a clergyman, and they have to work. I should like that myself better than doing nothing.’

‘That means,’ said Oswald, with great show of savagery, setting his teeth, ‘that you prefer the said Roger, who must not talk o’ mornings, to me, presumably not required to work? Know, then, young lady, that I have as much need to work as your Roger; more, for I mean to be somebody. If I go in for the bar it is with the intention of being Lord Chancellor; and that wants work--work! such as would take the very breath away from your clergyman’s sons, who probably intend to be mere clergymen, and drop into a fat living.’

‘Roger is an engineer,’ said Cara; ‘he is at the College; he walks about with chains, measuring. I don’t know what is the good of it, but I suppose it is of some good. There are so many things,’ she added, with a sigh, ‘that one is obliged to take for granted. Some day, I suppose, he will have bridges and lighthouses to make. That one can understand--that would be worth doing.’

‘I hate Roger!’ said Oswald. ‘I shall never believe in any lighthouses of his making; there will be a flaw in them. Do you remember the Eddystone, which came down ever so often? Roger’s will tumble down. I know it. And when you have seen it topple over into the sea you shall come and see me tranquilly seated on the woolsack, and recant all your errors.’

Upon which they both laughed--not that there was much wit in the suggestion, but they were both young, and the one lighted up the other with gay gleams of possible mirth.

‘However,’ said Oswald, ‘that we may not throw that comparison to too remote a period, where do you think I was going? Talk of me as an idler, if you please. Does this look like idling?’ He took from his pocket a little roll of paper, carefully folded, and breaking open the cover showed her a number of MS. pages, fairly copied out in graduated lines. Cara’s face grew crimson with sudden excitement.

‘_Poetry!_’ she said; but capital letters would scarcely convey all she meant. ‘Oswald, are you a poet?’

He laughed again, which jarred upon her feelings, for poetry (she felt) was not a thing to laugh at. ‘I write verses,’ he said; ‘that is idling--most people call it so, Cara, as well as you.’

‘But I would _never_ call it so! Oh, Oswald, if there is anything in the world I care for---- Read me some, will you? Oh, do read me something. There is nothing,’ cried Cara, her lips trembling, her eyes expanding, her whole figure swelling with a sigh of feeling, ‘nothing I care for so much. I would rather know a poet than a king!’

Upon this Oswald laughed again, and looked at her with kind admiration. His eyes glowed, but with a brotherly light. ‘You are a little enthusiast,’ he said. ‘I called you _virtuosa_, and you are one in the old-fashioned sense, for that is wider than bric-à-brac. Yes; I sometimes think I might be a poet if I had anyone to inspire me, to keep me away from petty things. I am my mother’s son, Cara. I like to please everybody, and that is not in favour of the highest pursuits. I want a Muse. What if you were born to be my Muse? You shall see some of the things that are printed,’ he added; ‘not these. I am more sure of them when they have attained the reality of print.’

‘Then they are printed?’ Cara’s eyes grew bigger and bigger, her interest grew to the height of enthusiasm. ‘How proud your mother must be, Oswald! I wonder she did not tell me. Does Edward write, too?’

‘Edward!’ cried the other with disdain; ‘a clodhopper; a plodding, steady, respectable fellow, who has passed for the Civil Service. Poetry would be more sadly in his way than it is in mine. Oh, yes, it is sadly in mine. My mother does not know much; but instead of being enthusiastic she is annoyed with what she does know. That is the kind of thing one has to meet with in this world,’ he said, with a sigh over his own troubles. ‘Sometimes there is one like you--one more generous, more capable of appreciating the things that do not pay--with some people the things that pay are everything. And poetry does not pay, Cara.’

‘I don’t like you even to say so.’

‘Thanks for caring what I say; you have an eye for the ideal. I should like to be set on a pedestal, and to have something better expected from me. That is how men are made, Cara. To know that someone--a creature like yourself--expects something, thinks us capable of something. I am talking sentiment,’ he said, with a laugh; ‘decidedly you are the Muse I am looking for. On a good pedestal, with plenty of white muslin, there is not a Greek of them all would come up to you.’

‘I don’t know what you mean, Oswald. Now you are laughing at me.’

‘Well, let us laugh,’ he said, putting his papers into his pocket again. ‘Are you coming to my mother’s reception this afternoon? I hear you were there yesterday. What do you think of it? Was old Somerville there with his wig? He is the guardian angel; he comes to see that we all go on as we ought, and that no one goes too far. He does not approve of me. He writes to India about me that I will never be of much use in the world.’

‘To India.’

‘Yes; all the information about us goes out there. Edward gives satisfaction, but not the rest of us. It is not easy to please people so far off who have not you to judge, but only your actions set down in black and white. Well, I suppose I must go now--my actions don’t tell for much: “Went into the house next door, and got a great deal of good from little Cara.” That would not count, you see; not even if I put down, “Cheered up little Cara, who was mopish.” Might I say that?’

‘Yes, indeed; you have cheered me up very much,’ said Cara, giving him her hand. Oswald stooped over her a moment, and the girl thought he was going to kiss her, which made her retreat a step backwards, her countenance flaming, and all the shy dignity and quick wrath of her age stirred into movement. But he only laughed and squeezed her hand, and ran downstairs, his feet ringing young and light through the vacant house. Cara would have gone to the window and looked after him but for that--was it a threatening of a visionary kiss? How silly she was! Of course he did not mean anything of the kind. If he did, it was just as if she had been his sister, and Cara felt that her momentary alarm showed her own silliness, a girl that had never been used to anything. How much an only child lost by being an only child, she reflected gravely, sitting down after he left her by the fire. How pleasant it would have been to have a brother like Oswald. And if he should be a poet! But this excited Cara more when he was talking to her than after he was gone. He did not fall in with her ideas of the poet, who was a being of angelic type to her imagination, not a youth with laughter glancing from his eyes.

That evening Cara sat solitary after dinner, the pretty silver lamp lighted, with its white moon-orb of light upon the table by her; the fire burning just bright enough for company, for it still was not cold. She had said, timidly, ‘Shall you come upstairs this evening, papa?’ and had received a mildly evasive answer, and she thought about nine o’clock that she heard the hall door shut, just as John came into the room with tea. She thought the man looked at her compassionately, but she would not question him. The room looked very pretty in the fire, light and lamplight, with the little tray gleaming in all its brightness of china and silver, and the little white figure seated by the fire; but it was very lonely. She took up a book a little more interesting than the one which had been her first resource, but presently let it drop on her knee wondering and asking herself would Oswald come? Perhaps he had forgotten; perhaps he had noticed her shrink when he went away, and, meaning nothing by his gesture, did not know why she had retreated from him--perhaps----. But who could tell what might have stopped him? A boy was not like a girl--he might have been asked somewhere. He might have gone to the theatre. Perhaps he had a club, and was there among his friends. All this passed through her head as she sat with the book in her hand, holding it open on her knee. Then she began to read, and forgot for the minute; then suddenly the book dropped again, and she thought, with a sort of childish longing, of what might be going on next door, just on the other side of the wall, where everything was sure to be so cheerful. If she could only pierce that unkindly wall, and see through! That made her think of Pyramus and Thisbe, and she smiled, but soon grew grave again. Was this how she was to go on living--lonely all the evening through, her father seeking society somewhere else, she could not tell where. She thought of the drawing-room at the Hill, and her eyes grew wet; how they would miss her there! and here nobody wanted Cara. Her father, perhaps, might think it right that his child should live under his roof; but that was all he cared apparently; and was it to be always thus, and never change? At seventeen it is so natural to think that everything that is, is unalterable and will never change. Then Cara, with a gulp, and a determination to be as happy as she could in the terrible circumstances, and above all, to shun Oswald, who had not kept his word, opened her book again, and this time got into the story, which had been prefaced by various interludes of philosophising, and remembered no more till nurse came to inquire if she did not mean to go to bed to-night. So the evening did not hang so heavy on her hands as she thought.

Next day Oswald came again, and told her of a forgotten engagement which he had been obliged to keep; and they chatted gaily as before; and he brought her some poems, printed in a magazine, which sounded beautiful when he read them, to her great delight, but did not seem so beautiful when she read them over herself, as she begged she might be allowed to do. After this there was a great deal of intercourse between the two houses, and Cara’s life grew brighter. Now and then, it was true, she would be left to spend an evening alone; but she got other friends, and went to some parties with Mrs. Meredith, Oswald attending them. He was always about; he came and had long private talks with her, reading his verses and appealing to her sympathies and counsel; he walked with her when she went out with his mother; he was always by her side wherever they went. ‘I know Edward will cut me out when he comes, so I must make the running now,’ he said often, and Cara no longer wondered what making the running meant. She got so used to his presence that it seemed strange when he was not there.

‘It’s easy to see what that will end in,’ said Nurse to John and Cook in the kitchen.

‘I wish as one could see what the other would end in,’ Cook replied. But the household watched the two young people with proud delight, going to the window to look at them when they went out, and rejoicing over the handsome couple.

‘I always said as our Miss Cara was one as would settle directly,’ her faithful attendant said. ‘Seventeen! it’s too young, that is, for anything.’

‘But he haven’t got a penny,’ said Cook, who was more prudent, ‘and he don’t do nothing. I’d like a man as could work for me, if I was Miss Cara.’

‘I’d like him better if he hadn’t no call to work,’ said Nurse, with true patrician feeling.

But the chief parties knew nothing of these remarks. They were very cheerful and full of mutual confidences. Oswald confiding to Cara his doubts and difficulties, his aspirations (which were chiefly in verse) and light-hearted anticipations, not going so far as to be called hopes, of sitting one day on the woolsack. Cara, though she had a great respect for Oswald, did not think much about the woolsack. But it was astonishing how she got used to him, how she liked him, and, notwithstanding the occasional dull evenings, how much more variety seemed to have come into her life. Sometimes Mrs. Meredith herself would talk to the girl about her son.

‘If he would work more steadily I should be happier, Cara,’ she would say; ‘and perhaps if he had a strong inducement he would work. He is so clever, and able to do what he likes.’

Cara did not know about this; but she liked his lively company. They were the best of friends; they talked to each other of every foolish thing that comes into the heads of young people; but she had a vague idea that he did not talk to her as the others thought he did. He was not like Roger even; though Roger was no more like him than night was like day. Roger was--different. She could not have told how, and nobody knew of this difference nor spoke to her on the subject. And thus life floated on very pleasantly, with more excitement than had existed in that placid schoolgirl life at the Hill. Miss Cherry came two or three times on a day’s visit to her darling, and observed what was going on and was puzzled; but Aunt Charity had her first attack of bronchitis that year, and it was winter weather, not good for travelling.

‘Yes, I think she’s happy on the whole,’ was Miss Cherry’s report to the elder aunt when she went home--which, as may be supposed, was not a clear enough deliverance for Aunt Charity.

‘Is the young man in love with her?’ said the old lady; ‘is she in love with him? James should not be such a fool as to let them be constantly together, unless it is a match that would please him.’

‘James is not thinking of anything of the kind,’ said Miss Cherry, impatiently. ‘James is taken up with his own affairs, and he thinks Cara a little girl still.’

‘To be sure he does--that is where men always go wrong,’ said Aunt Charity, ‘and James will always be a fool to the end of the chapter.’

Cherry winced at this, for she was the model of a good sister, and never had seen any man who was so much her ideal as James--though in some things he was foolish, she was obliged to allow. Perhaps, as Aunt Charity was ill, and the house, as it were, shut up and given over to invalidism for the winter, it was as well that Cara should be away, getting some enjoyment of her young life. Had she been at home it would have been dull for her, for Miss Cherry was in almost constant attendance upon the old lady. Thus things had turned out very well, as they so often do, even when they look least promising. Had Cara been at the Hill, Miss Cherry would not have been so free to devote herself to Aunt Charity, and both the child and the old lady would have suffered. True, Miss Cherry’s own life might have had a little additional brightness, but who thought of that? She did not herself, and you may be sure no one else did. It was altogether a fortunate arrangement, as things had turned out, and as for Cara, why, was there not Providence to watch over her, if her father was remiss? Miss Cherry felt that there was something like infidelity in the anxious desire she felt sometimes to go and help Providence in this delicate task.