Chapter XV: Roger

Roger Burchell had set his mind steadily, from the moment of Cara’s translation to her father’s house, upon spending those Sundays, which he had hitherto passed at home, with his aunt at Notting Hill. But the rest of the world has a way of throwing obstacles in the path of heroes of twenty in a quite incredible and heartless manner. It was not that the authorities at the Rectory made any serious objections. There was so many of them that one was not missed--and Roger was not one of the more useful members of the family. He had no voice, for one thing, and therefore was useless in church; and he declined Sunday-school work, and was disposed to be noisy, and disturbed the attention of the little ones; therefore he could be dispensed with at home, and nobody cared to interfere with his inclinations. Neither had the aunt at Notting Hill any objection to Roger--he was a friendly boy, willing to take a quiet walk, ready to be kind to those who were kind to him--and to have somebody to share her solitary Sunday’s dinner, and make her feel like other people when she went to church, was pleasant to her. He was a boy who never would want to shirk morning church, or keep the servants from it, to get him a late breakfast, like so many young men. But accident, not evil intention, came in Roger’s way. His aunt fell ill, and then something went wrong at the Engineering College, and leave was withheld--entirely by caprice or mistake, for Roger of course was sure of being entirely innocent, as such youthful sufferers generally are. The upshot was, that his first Sunday in London did not really occur until Cara had been a whole month in her new home. How he chafed and fretted under this delay it is unnecessary to tell. It seemed to him an age since that October afternoon when the sun was so warm on the Hill, and Cara stood by his side looking over the country in its autumn tints, and watching the shadows fly and the lights gleam over St. George’s. What a long time it was! the mellow autumn had stolen away into the fogs of winter; November is but the next month, yet what a difference there is between its clammy chills, and the thick air that stifles and chokes you, and that warmth and sunny glow with which red-breasted October sings the fall of the leaves and the gathering-in of the fruit! And in that time how much might have happened. Had it been dreary for her all by herself in London, separated from her friends? or had she found new people to keep her cheerful, and forgotten the friends of her youth? These were the questions the lad asked himself as he went up to town from Berkshire, on the evening of Saturday, the 25th of November. All that he had heard of since she left had been from a letter which Miss Cherry had read to his sister Agnes, and from which it appeared that Cara felt London lonely, and regretted her friends in the country. ‘How I wish I could have a peep at all of you or any of you!’ she had said. Agnes had been pleased with the expression, and so was he. ‘All of us or any of us,’ he said to himself for the hundredth time as the train flew over the rain-sodden country. He thought, with a thrill at his heart, that her face would light up, as he had seen it do, and she would be glad to see him. She would put into his that small hand, that seemed to melt in his grasp like a flake of snow; and perhaps there would come upon her cheek that faint crimson, which only things very pleasant brought there--the reflection of a sweet excitement. What an era that would be for Roger! he dreamt it out moment by moment, till he almost felt that it had occurred. Sometimes a dream of the other kind would start across him--a horrible fancy that he would find her happy among others, making new friends, forgetting the old; but this was too painful to be encouraged. He thought the train as slow as an old hackney coach, when at last, after all these delays, he got away and found himself actually on the road to London and to her, and thought of a story he had heard of someone in hot haste, as he was, who had jumped out of his carriage and pushed it on behind to arrive the sooner. Roger felt disposed to do so, though his train was an express, and though he knew he could not go to the Square that evening to see her. But he was so much nearer her when he got to Notting Hill. She was on one side of the Park and he on the other. Next day he would walk across, through all the Sunday people, through the yellow fog, under the bare-branched trees, and knock at her door. There was still a moment of suspense, still a long wintry night--and then!

His aunt thought very well of the young man when he got to Notting Hill. She was his mother’s sister, a widow, and without children, and Roger had been named after her husband, the late Captain Brandon, whose portrait hung over her mantelpiece, and whose memory was her pride. She thought her nephew was like her side of the house, not ‘those Burchells,’ and felt a thrill of pride as he came in, tall and strong, in his red-brown hair and budding moustache, with a touch of autumn colour about him in the heavy despondency of the November day.

‘What weather!’ she said, ‘what weather, Roger! I daresay it is a little better in the country; but we have nothing else to expect in November, when the wind blows up the smoke out of the city.’

Roger hastened to assure her that the country was a great deal worse, that the river was like a big, dismal ditch, full of mists and rains, and that town, with its cheerful lights and cheerful company, was the only place. Aunt Mary let herself be persuaded. She gave him a nice little dish of cutlets with his tea. She asked him questions about his mother and sister, and whether his papa’s opinions were not getting modified by experience and by the course of events.

‘Hasn’t he learnt to take warning by all this Romanising?’ she asked, and shook her head at Roger’s doubtful reply. She differed so much in ecclesiastical opinion from her brother-in-law, that she very seldom went to the Rectory. But she was glad to hear all about her godchild, little Mary, and how Philip was getting on at Cambridge. And how pleasant it was to have someone to talk to, instead of sitting all alone and melancholy, thinking, or reading the newspaper. She made much of Roger, and told him he would always be welcome; he was to come as often as he pleased.

‘I shall see her to-morrow,’ Roger said to himself, as he laid his head upon his pillow. The thought did not stop him from sleeping; why should it? but it suggested a string of dreams, some of which were terribly tantalising. He was just putting out his hand to take hers, just about to hear the answer to some momentous question, when he would wake suddenly and lose it all; but still even the disappointment only awakened him to the fact that he was to see her to-morrow; he was to see her to-morrow; nay, to-day, though this yellow glimmer did not look much like daylight. He got up the moment he was called, and dressed with much pains and care--too much care. When his toilet was careless Roger looked, as he was, a gentleman; but when he took extra pains, a Sunday look crept about him, a certain stiffness, as of a man occupying clothes to which he was unaccustomed. His frock-coat--it was his first--was uglier and squarer than even frock-coats generally are, his hat looked higher, his gloves a terrible bondage. Poor boy! but for Cara he never would have had that frock-coat; thus to look our best we look our worst, and evil becomes our good. But his aunt was much pleased with his appearance when he went to church with her, and thought his dress just what every gentleman ought to wear on Sunday.

‘But your gloves are too tight, my dear,’ she said.

Roger thought everything was tight, and was in twenty minds to abandon his fine clothes and put on the rough morning suit he had come in; but the frock-coat carried the day. He could not eat at Mrs. Brandon’s early dinner. She was quite unhappy about him, and begged him not to stand on ceremony, but to tell her frankly if it was not to his mind. ‘For if you are going to spend your Sundays with me it is just as easy to buy one thing as another,’ Aunt Mary said, good, kind, deceived woman. She was very glad he should take a walk afterwards, hoping it would do him good.

‘And I think perhaps I had better call at the Square and see Miss Beresford. Her aunt is sure to ask me when I see her,’ he said.

‘Do, my dear,’ said the unsuspecting woman. And he set off across the park. It was damp enough and foggy enough to quench any man’s courage. The Sunday people, who were out in spite of all disadvantages, were blue, half with the cold and half with the colour of the pitiless day. A few old ladies in close broughams took their constitutional drive slowly round and round. What pleasure could they find in it? still, as it is the ordinance of heaven that there should be old ladies as well as young men of twenty, it was a good thing they had comfortable broughams to drive about in; and they had been young in their time, Roger supposed, feeling it hard upon everybody not to have the expectations, the hopes, that made his own heart beat. How it beat and thumped against his breast! He was almost sorry, though he was glad, when the walk was over and the tall roofs of the houses in the Square overshadowed him. His heart jumped higher still, though he thought it had been incapable of more, when he got to the house. ‘Doors where my heart was used to beat.’ He did not know any poetry to speak of, and these words did not come to him. He felt that she must be glad to see him, this dull, damp Sunday afternoon, the very time when heaven and earth stood still, when there was nothing to amuse or occupy the languid mind. No doubt she and her father would be sitting together, suppressing two mutual yawns, reading two dull books; or, oh, blessed chance! perhaps her father would have retired to his library, and Cara would be alone. He pictured this to himself--a silent room, a Sunday solitude, a little drooping figure by the chimney-corner, brightening up at sight of a well-known face--when the drawing-room door opened before him, and his dream exploded like a bubble, and with a shock of self-derision and disappointment more bitter than honest Roger had ever felt in all his simple life before. There were several people in the room, but naturally Roger’s glance sought out the only one he was interested in, the only one he knew in the little company. She was standing in front of one of the windows, the pale wintry light behind making a silhouette of her pretty figure, and the fine lines of her profile; but curiously enough, it was not she, after the first glance, who attracted Roger’s gaze, but the other figure which stood beside her, close to her, young, and friendly, in all the confidence of intimacy. It was Oswald Meredith who was holding a book in which he was showing Cara something--she, holding the corner of it with one hand, drew it down to her level, and with a raised finger of the other seemed to check what he was saying. They made the prettiest group; another young man, sitting at the table, gazing at the pair, thought so too, with an envious sentiment, not so strong or so bitter as Roger’s, but enough to swear by. Oswald had all the luck, this young fellow was saying to himself: little Cara, too! Behind was Mrs. Meredith, sitting by the fire, and Mr. Beresford, gloomy and sombre, standing by her. It was the first time he had been in this room, and the visit had been made expressly for the purpose of dragging him into it. He stood near his friend, looking down, sometimes looking at her, but otherwise never raising his eyes. This, however, was a side scene altogether uninteresting to Roger. What was it to him what these two elder people might be feeling or thinking? All that he could see was Cara and ‘that fellow,’ who presumed to be there, standing by her side, occupying her attention. And how interested she looked! more than in all the years they had known each other she had ever looked for him.

Cara started at the sound of his name. ‘Mr. Burchell? oh, something must be wrong at home!’ she cried; then, turning round suddenly, stopped with a nervous laugh of relief. ‘Oh, it is only Roger! what a fright you gave me! I thought it must be your father, and that Aunt Charity was ill. Papa, this is Roger Burchell, from the Rectory. You remember, he said he would come and see me. But, Roger, I thought you were coming directly, and it is quite a long time now since I left home.’

‘I could not come sooner,’ he said, comforted by this. ‘I came as soon as ever I could. My aunt was ill and could not have me; and then there was some trouble at the College,’ he added, hurriedly, feeling himself to be getting too explanatory. Cara had given him her hand; she had pointed to a chair near where she was standing; she had given up the book which Oswald now held, and over which he was looking, half-amused, at the new-comer. Roger was as much occupied by him, with hot instinct of rivalry, as he was with Cara herself, who was the goddess of his thoughts; and how the plain young engineer, in his stiff frock-coat, despised the handsome young man about town, so easy and so much at home! with a virulence of contempt which no one could have thought to be in Roger. ‘Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?’ he was tempted to say, making up to him straight before the other had time to open his lips. But of course, being in civilised society, Roger did not dare to obey his impulse, though it stirred him to the heart.

‘You don’t introduce us to your friend, Cara,’ said Oswald, smiling, in an undertone.

The fellow called her Cara! Was it all settled, then, and beyond hope, in four short weeks? Oh, what a fool Roger had been to allow himself to be kept away!

‘Mr. Roger Burchell--Mr. Meredith--Mr. Edward Meredith,’ said Cara, with a slight evanescent blush. ‘Roger is almost as old a friend at the Hill as you are at the Square. We have all been children together;’ and then there was a pause which poor little Cara, not used to keeping such hostile elements in harmony, did not know how to manage. She asked timidly if he had been at the Hill--if he had seen----?

‘I came direct from the College last night,’ he said; and poor Roger could not keep a little flavour of bitterness out of his tone, as who should say, ‘A pretty fool I was to come at all!’

‘The--College?’ said Oswald, in his half-laughing tone.

‘I mean only the Scientific College, not anything to do with a University,’ said Roger, defiant in spite of himself. ‘I am an engineer--a working man’--and though he said this as a piece of bravado, poor fellow! it is inconceivable how Sundayish, how _endimanché_, how much like a real working man in unused best raiment, he felt in his frock-coat.

‘Oh, tell me about that!’ said Mrs. Meredith, coming forward; ‘it is just what I want to know. Mr. Roger Burchell, did you say, Cara? I think I used to know your mother. I have seen her with Miss Cherry Beresford? Yes; I thought it must be the same. Do you know I have a particular reason for wishing to hear about your College? One of my friends wants to send his son there if he can get in. Will you tell me about it? I know you want to talk to Cara----’

‘Oh, no; not if she is engaged,’ said Roger, and blushed hot with excessive youthful shame when he had made this foolish speech.

‘She will not be engaged long, for we are going presently,’ said the smiling gracious woman, who began to exercise her usual charm upon the angry lad in spite of himself. She drew a chair near to the spot where he still stood defiant. ‘I shall not keep you long,’ she said; and what could Roger do but sit down, though so much against his will, and allow himself to be questioned?

‘Your friend from the country is impatient of your other friends,’ said Oswald, closing the book which he held out to Cara, and marking the place as he gave it to her. ‘Do you want to get rid of us as much as he does?’

‘He does not want to get rid of anyone, but he does not understand--society,’ said Cara, in the same undertone. Roger could not hear what it was, but he felt sure they were talking of him, though he did his best to listen to Mrs. Meredith’s questions. Then the other one rose, who was not so handsome as Oswald, and went to her other side, completely shutting her out from the eyes of the poor fellow who had come so far, and taken so much trouble to see her. The College--what did he care for the College! about which the soft-voiced stranger was questioning him. He made her vague broken answers, and turned round undisguisedly, poor fellow! to where Cara stood; yet all he could see of her was the skirt of her blue dress from the other side of Edward Meredith, whose head, leaning forward, came between Roger and the girl on whom his heart was set.

‘Mr. Burchell, Cara and her father are dining with my boys and me. Edward is only with me for a few hours; he is going away by the last train. Will not you come, too, and join us? Then Cara can see a little more of you. Do you stay in town to-night?’

Two impulses struggled in Roger’s mind--to refuse disdainfully, or to accept gratefully. In the first case he would have said he had dined already, making a little brag of his aunt’s early hours--in the second--a calculation passed very quickly through his mind, so quick that it was concluded almost before Mrs. Meredith’s invitation.

‘I could,’ he said, faltering; ‘or, perhaps, if your son is going I might go, too, which would be best----’

‘Very well, then, it is a bargain,’ she said, putting out her hand with a delightful smile. He felt how warm and sweet it was, even though he was trying at the moment to see Cara. This was the kind of mother these fellows had, and Cara living next door! Surely all the luck seems to be centred on some people; others have no chance against them. He stood by while Mrs. Meredith got up, drawing her sons with her. ‘Come, boys, you can carry on your talk later,’ she said. ‘Good-by for the moment, Cara mia.’ Then she turned to Mr. Beresford, who stood gloomily, with his eyes bent on the fire. ‘You are not sorry you have broken the spell?’ she said, with a voice which she kept for him alone, or so at least he thought.

He gave his shoulders a hasty shrug. ‘We can talk of that later. I am going to see you to the door,’ he said, giving her his arm. The boys lingered. Oswald was patting his book affectionately with one hand. It was Edward who was ‘making the running’ now.

‘You are still coming to dine, Cara?’ he said. ‘Don’t turn me off for this friend. He cannot be such an old friend as I am; and I have only a few hours----’

‘So has he,’ said Cara; ‘and he told me he was coming. What am I to do?’

‘There are three courses that you can pursue,’ said Oswald, ‘Leave him, as Ned recommends; stay with him, as I certainly don’t recommend; or bring him with you. And which of these, Cara, you may choose will be a lesson as to your opinion of us. But you can’t stay with him; that would be a slight to my mother, and your father would not allow it. The compromise would be to bring him.’

‘Oh, how can I do that, unless Mrs. Meredith told me to do it? No; perhaps he will go away of himself--perhaps----’

‘Poor wretch! he looks unhappy enough,’ said Edward, with a sympathy of fellow-feeling. Oswald laughed. The misery and offence in the new-comer’s face was only amusing to him.

‘Cara,’ he said, ‘if you are going to begin offensive warfare, and to flaunt young men from the country in our faces, I for one will rebel. It is not fair to us; we were not prepared for anything of the sort.’

‘My mother is calling us,’ said Edward, impatiently. Two or three times before his brother had irritated him to-day. Either he was in a very irritable mood, or Oswald was more provoking than usual. ‘I have only a few hours,’ he continued, aggrieved, in a low tone, ‘and I have scarcely spoken to you, Cara; and it was you and I who used to be the closest friends. Don’t you remember? Oswald can see you when he pleases; I have only one day. You won’t disappoint us, will you? I wish you’d go’--this was to his brother--‘I’ll follow. There are some things I want to speak to Cara about, and you have taken her up all the afternoon with your poetry. Yes, yes; I see, there is _him_ behind; but, Cara, look here, you won’t be persuaded to stay away to-night?’

‘Not if I can help it,’ said the girl, who was too much embarrassed by this first social difficulty to feel the flattery involved. She turned to Roger, when the others went downstairs, with a somewhat disturbed and tremulous smile.

‘They are our next-door neighbours, and they are very kind,’ she said. ‘Mrs. Meredith is so good to me; as kind as if she were a relation’ (this was all Cara knew of relationships). ‘I don’t know what I should do without her; and I have known the boys all my life. Roger, won’t you sit down? I am so sorry to have been taken up like this the very moment you came.’

‘But if they live next door, and you know them so well, I daresay you are very often taken up like this,’ said Roger, ‘and that will be hard upon your country friends. And I think,’ he added, taking courage as he found that the door remained closed, and that not even her father (estimable man!) came back, ‘that we have a better claim than they have; for you were only a child when you came to the Hill, and you have grown up there.’

‘I like all my old friends,’ said Cara, evasively. ‘Some are--I mean they differ--one likes them for different things.’

The poor boy leaped to the worse interpretation of this, which, indeed, was not very far from the true one. ‘Some are poorer and not so fine as others,’ he said; ‘but, perhaps, Cara, the rough ones, the homely ones, those you despise, are the most true.’

‘I don’t despise anyone,’ she said, turning away, and taking up Oswald Meredith’s book.

By Jove! even when he was gone was ‘that fellow’ to have the best of it with his confounded book? Roger’s heart swelled; and then he felt that expediency was very much to be thought of, and that when a man could not have all he wanted it was wise to put up with what he could get.

‘Cara, don’t be angry with me,’ he said. ‘I shall like your friends, too, if--if you wish me. The lady is very nice and kind, as you say. She has asked me to go there to dinner, too.’

‘You!’ Cara said, with (he thought) a gleam of annoyance. Roger jumped up, wild with rage and jealousy, but then he sat down again, which was certainly the best thing for him to do.