Chapter XXVII: The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

This was a time of great agitation for the two houses so close to each other, with only a wall dividing the troubles of the one from the excitement of the other, and a kind of strange union between them, linking them more closely in the very attempt at disjunction. The greater part of the private commotion which was going on, as it were, underground was concealed from Cara as not a proper subject of discussion before her; but it was not necessary to take any steps of the kind with Oswald, who, in his light-hearted indifference, ignored it comfortably, and followed his own devices through the whole without giving the other affairs a thought. After all, the idea of anyone exciting him or herself over the question whether a respectable old fogey, like Mr. Beresford, should go on paying perpetual visits to a respectable matron like his mother, touched Oswald’s mind with a sense of the ludicrous which surmounted all seriousness. If they liked it, what possible harm could there be? He had not the uneasy prick of wounded feeling, the sense of profanation which moved Edward at the idea of his mother’s conduct being questioned in any way. Oswald was fond of his mother, and proud of her, though he was disposed to smile at her absurd popularity and the admiration she excited among her friends. He would have thought it a great deal more natural that he himself should be the object of attraction; but, granting the curious taste of society, at which he felt disposed to laugh, it rather pleased him that _his_ mother should be so popular, still admired and followed at her age. He thought, like Mr. Sommerville, that she was something of a humbug, getting up that pretence of sympathy with everybody, which it was impossible anyone in her senses could feel. But so long as it brought its reward, in the shape of so much friendliness from everybody, and gratitude for the words and smiles, which cost nothing, Oswald, at least, saw no reason to complain. And as for scandal arising about Mr. Beresford! he could not but laugh; at their age! So he pursued his easy way as usual, serenely lighthearted, and too much occupied with his own affairs to care much for other people’s. In addition to this, it must be added that Oswald was falling very deep in love. These interviews between the hospital and the House were but meagre fare to feed a passion upon; but the very slightness of the link, the oddity of the circumstances, everything about it delighted the young man, who had already gone through a great many drawing-room flirtations, and required the help of something more piquant. He was very happy while they were all so agitated and uncomfortable. Twice a week were hospital days, at which he might hope to see her; and almost every morning now he managed to cross the path of the little school procession, and, at least see her, if he did not always catch the eye of the demure little teacher in her long cloak. Sometimes she would look at him sternly, sometimes she gave him a semi-indignant, sometimes a wholly friendly glance, sometimes, he feared, did not perceive him at all. But that was not Oswald’s fault. He made a point of taking off his hat, and indeed holding it in his hand a moment longer than was necessary, by way of showing his respect, whether she showed any signs of perceiving him or not. She went softly along the vulgar pavement, with steps which he thought he could distinguish among all the others, ringing upon the stones with a little rhythm of her own, about which he immediately wrote some verses. All this he would tell to Cara, coming to her in the morning before he set out to watch the children defiling out of the House. And all the world thought, as was natural, that the subject of these talks was his love for Cara, not his love, confided to Cara, for someone else.

As for Agnes, she not only saw Oswald every time he made his appearance, whether she allowed him to know it or not, but she felt his presence in every nerve and vein, with anger for the first day or two after Roger’s visit, then with a softening of all her heart towards him as she caught his reverential glance, his eager appeal to her attention. After all, whispers to Cara, whom he had known all her life--little Cara, who even to Agnes herself seemed a child--could not mean half so much as this daily haunting of her own walks, this perpetual appearance wherever she was. That was a totally different question from her own struggle not to notice him, not to think of him. The fact that it was shocking and terrible on her part to allow her mind to dwell on any man, or any man’s attentions, while occupied in the work to which she had devoted herself, and filling almost the position of a consecrated Sister, was quite a different thing from the question whether he was a false and untrustworthy person, following her with the devices of vulgar pursuit, a thing too impious to think of, too humiliating. Agnes was anxious to acquit the man who admired and sought her, as well as determined to reject his admiration; and, for the moment, the first was actually the more important matter of the two. Herself she could be sure of. She had not put her hand to the plough merely to turn back. She was not going to abandon her ideal at the call of the first lover who held out his hand to her. Surely not; there could be no doubt on that subject; but that this generous, gentle young man, with those poetic sentiments which had charmed yet abashed her mind, that he should be false to his fair exterior, and mean something unlovely and untrue, instead of a real devotion, that was too terrible to believe. Therefore, she did not altogether refuse to reply to Oswald’s inquiries when the next hospital day brought about another meeting. This time he did not even pretend that the meeting was accidental, that he had been too late for making the proper inquiries in his own person, but went up to her, eagerly asking for ‘our little patient,’ with all the openness of a recognised acquaintance.

‘Emmy is better--if you mean Emmy,’ said Agnes, with great state. ‘The fever is gone, and I hope she will soon be well.’

‘Poor little Emmy,’ said Oswald; ‘but I don’t want her to be well too soon--that is, it would not do to hurry her recovery. She must want a great deal of care still.’

He hoped she would smile at this, or else take it literally and reply seriously; but Agnes did neither. She walked on, with a stately air, quickening her pace slightly, but not so as to look as if she were trying to escape.

‘I suppose, as the fever is gone, she has ceased to imagine herself in heaven,’ said Oswald. ‘Happy child! when sickness has such illusions, it is a pity to be well. We are not so well off in our commonplace life.’

He thought she would have responded to the temptation and turned upon him to ask what he meant by calling life commonplace; and indeed the wish stirred Agnes so that she had to quicken her pace in order to resist the bait thus offered. She said nothing, however, to Oswald’s great discomfiture, who felt that nothing was so bad as silence, and did not know how to overcome the blank, which had more effect on his lively temperament than any amount of disapproval and opposition. But he made another valorous effort before he would complain.

‘Yours, however, is not a commonplace life,’ he said. ‘We worldlings pay for our ease by the sense that we are living more or less ignobly, but it must be very different with you who are doing good always. Only, forgive me, is there not a want of a little pleasure, a little colour, a little brightness? The world is so beautiful,’ said Oswald, his voice slightly faltering, not so much from feeling, as from fear that he might be venturing on dubious ground. ‘And _we_ are so young.’

That pronoun, so softly said, with such a tender emphasis and meaning, so much more than was ever put into two letters before, went to the heart of Agnes. She was trying so hard to be angry with him, trying to shut herself against the insinuating tone of his voice, and those attempts to beguile her into conversation. All the theoretical fervour that was in her mind had been boiling up to reply, and perhaps her resolution would not have been strong enough to restrain her, had not that we come in, taking the words from her lips and the strength from her mind. She could neither protest against the wickedness and weakness of consenting to live an ignoble life, nor indignantly declare that there was already more than pleasure, happiness, and delight in the path of self-sacrifice, when all the force was stolen out of her by that tiny monosyllable--_we_! How dared he identify himself with her? draw her into union with him by that little melting yet binding word? She went on faster than ever in the agitation of her thoughts, and was scarcely conscious that she made him no answer; though surely what he had said called for some reply.

Oswald was at his wit’s end. He did not know what to say more. He made a little pause for some answer, and then getting none, suddenly changed his tone into one of pathetic appeal. ‘Are you angry with me? ‘he said. ‘What have I done? Don’t you mean to speak to me any more?’

‘Yes,’ she said, turning suddenly round, so that he could not tell which of his questions she was answering. ‘I am vexed that you will come with me. Gentlemen do not insist on walking with ladies to whom they have not been introduced--whom they have met only by chance----’

He stopped short suddenly, moved by the accusation; but unfortunately Agnes too, startled by his start, stopped also, and gave him a curious, half-defiant, half-appealing look, as if asking what he was going to do; and this look took away all the irritation which her words had produced. He proceeded to excuse himself, walking on, but at a slower pace, compelling her to wait for him--for it did not occur to Agnes, though she had protested against his company, to take the remedy into her own hands, and be so rude as to break away.

‘What could I do?’ he said piteously. ‘You would not tell me even your name--you know mine. I don’t know how to address you, nor how to seek acquaintance in all the proper forms. It is no fault of mine.’

This confused Agnes by a dialectic artifice for which she was not prepared. He gave a very plausible reason, not for the direct accusation against him, but for a lesser collateral fault. She had to pause for a moment before she could see her way out of the maze. ‘I did not mean that. I meant you should not come at all,’ she said.

‘Ah! you cannot surely be so hard upon me,’ cried Oswald, in real terror, for it had not occurred to him that she would, in cold blood, send him away. ‘Don’t banish me!’ he cried. ‘Tell me what I am to do for the introduction--where am I to go? I will do anything. Is it my fault that I did not know you till that day?--till that good child, bless her, broke her leg. I shall always be grateful to poor little Emmy. She shall have a crutch of gold if she likes. She shall never want anything I can give her. Do you think I don’t feel the want of that formula of an introduction? With that I should be happy. I should be able to see you at other times than hospital days, in other places than the streets. The streets are beautiful ever since I knew you,’ cried the young man, warming with his own words, which made him feel the whole situation much more forcibly than before, and moved him at least, whether they moved her or not.

‘Oh!’ cried Agnes, in distress, ‘you must not talk to me so. You must not come with me, Mr. Meredith; is not my dress enough----’

‘There now!’ he said, ‘see what a disadvantage I am under. I dare not call you Agnes, which is the only sweet name I know. And your dress! You told me yourself you were not a Sister.’

‘It is quite true,’ she said, looking at him, trying another experiment. ‘I am a poor teacher, quite out of your sphere.’

‘But then, fortunately, I am not poor,’ said Oswald, almost gaily, in sudden triumph. ‘Only tell me where your people are, where I am to go for that introduction. I thank thee, Lady Agnes, Princess Agnes, for teaching me that word. I will get my introduction or die.’

‘Oh, here we are at the House!’ she cried suddenly, in a low tone of horror, and darted away from him up the steps to the open door. Sister Mary Jane was standing there unsuspicious, but visibly surprised. She had just parted with someone, whom poor Agnes, in her terror, ran against; for in the warmth of the discussion they had come up to the very gate of the House, the entrance to that sanctuary where lovers were unknown. Sister Mary Jane opened a pair of large blue eyes, which Oswald (being full of admiration for all things that were admirable) had already noted, and gazed at him, bewildered, letting Agnes pass without comment. He took off his hat with his most winning look of admiring respectfulness as he went on--no harm in winning over Sister Mary Jane, who was a fair and comely Sister, though no longer young. Would Agnes, he wondered, have the worldly wisdom to make out that he was an old acquaintance, or would she confess the truth? Would Sister Mary Jane prove a dragon, or, softened by her own beauty and the recollection of past homages, excuse the culprit? Oswald knew very well that anyhow, while he walked off unblamed and unblamable, the girl who had been only passive, and guilty of no more than the mildest indiscretion, would have to suffer more or less. This, however, did not move him to any regret for having compromised her. It rather amused him, and seemed to give him a hold over her. She could not take such high ground now and order him away. She was in the same boat, so to speak. Next time they met she would have something to tell which he would almost have a right to know. It was the establishing of confidence between them. Oswald did not reckon at a very serious rate the suffering that might arise from Sister Mary Jane’s rebuke. ‘They have no thumbscrews in those new convents, and they don’t build girls up in holes in the walls now-a-days,’ he said to himself, and, on the whole, the incident was less likely to end in harm than in good.

Agnes did not think so, who rushed in--not to her room, which would have been a little comfort, but to the curtained corner of the dormitory, from which she superintended night and day ‘the middle girls,’ who were her charge, and where she was always afraid of some small pair of peeping eyes prying upon her seclusion. She threw off her bonnet, and flung herself on her knees by the side of her little bed. ‘Oh, what a farce it was,’ she thought, to cover such feelings as surged in her heart under the demure drapery of that black cloak, or to tie the conventual bonnet over cheeks that burned with blushes, called there by such words as she had been hearing! She bent down her face upon the coverlet and cried as if her heart would break, praying for forgiveness, though these same foolish words would run in and out of her prayers, mixing with her heart-broken expressions of penitence in the most bewildering medley. After all, there was no such dreadful harm done. She was not a Sister, nor had she ever intended to be a Sister, but that very simple reflection afforded the fanciful girl no comfort. She had come here to seek a higher life, and lo, at once, at the first temptation, had fallen--fallen, into what? Into the foolishness of the foolishest girl without an ideal--she whose whole soul had longed to lay hold on the ideal, to get into some higher atmosphere, on some loftier level of existence. It was not Sister Mary Jane she was afraid of, it was herself whom she had so offended; for already, could it be possible? insidious traitors in her heart had begun to ply her with suggestions of other kinds of perfection; wicked lines of poetry stole into her head, foolish stories came to her recollection. Oh! even praying, even penitence were not enough to keep out this strife. She sprang to her feet, and rushed to St. Cecilia, the room which was her battleground, and where the noise of the girls putting away their books and work, and preparing to go to tea, promised her exemption, for a little while at least, from any possibility of thought. But Agnes was not to be let off so easily. In the passage she met Sister Mary Jane. ‘I was just going to send for you,’ said the Sister, benign but serious. ‘Come to my room, Agnes. Sister Sarah Ann will take the children to tea.’

Agnes followed, with her heart, she thought, standing still. But it would be a relief to be scolded, to be delivered from the demon of self-reproach in her own bosom. Sister Mary Jane seated herself at a table covered with school-books and account-books, in the little bare room, laid with matting, which was all the House afforded for the comfort of its rulers. She pointed to a low seat which all the elder girls knew well, which was the stool of repentance for the community. ‘My dear,’ said Sister Mary Jane, ‘did you know that gentleman in the world? Tell me truly, Agnes. You are only an associate: you are not under our rule, and there is no harm in speaking to an acquaintance. But so long as anyone wears our dress there must be a certain amount of care. Did you know him, my dear, tell me, in the world?’

Agnes could not meet these serious eyes. Her head drooped upon her breast. She began to cry. ‘I do not think it was my fault. Oh, I have been wrong, but I did not mean it. It was not my fault.’

‘That is not an answer, my dear,’ said Sister Mary Jane.

And then the whole story came rushing forth with sobs and excuses and self-accusations all in one. ‘It is the badness in my heart. I want to be above the world, but I cannot. Things come into my mind that I don’t want to think. I would rather, far rather, be devoted to my work, and think of nothing else, like you, Sister Mary Jane. And then I get tempted to talk, to give my opinion. I was always fond of conversation. Tell me what to do to keep my course straight, to be like you. Oh, if I could keep steady and think only of one thing! It is my thoughts that run off in every direction: it is not this gentleman. Oh, what can one do when one’s heart is so wrong!’

Sister Mary Jane listened with a smile. Oswald’s confidence in her beautiful eyes was perhaps not misplaced. And probably she was conscious now and then of thinking of something else as much as her penitent. She said, ‘My dear, I don’t think you have a vocation. I never thought it. A girl may be a very good girl and not have a vocation. So you need not be very unhappy if your thoughts wander; all of us have not the same gifts. But, Agnes, even if you were in the world, instead of being in this house, which should make you more careful, you would not let a gentleman talk to you whom you did not know. You must not do it again.’

‘It was not meant badly,’ said Agnes, veering to self-defence. ‘He wanted to know how little Emmy was. It was the gentleman who carried her to the hospital. It was kindness; it was not meant for----’

‘Yes, I saw who it was. And I can understand how it came about. But it is so easy to let an acquaintance spring up, and so difficult to end it when it has taken root. Perhaps, my dear, you had better not go to little Emmy again.’

‘Oh!’ Agnes gave a cry of remonstrance and protest. It did not hurt her to be told not to speak to him any more--but not to go to little Emmy! She was not sure herself that it was all for little Emmy’s sake, and this made her still more unhappy, but not willing to relinquish the expedition. Sister Mary Jane, however, took no notice of the cry. She put a heap of exercises into Agnes’s hands to be corrected. ‘They must all be done to-night,’ she said, calculating with benevolent severity that this would occupy all the available time till bedtime. ‘One nail drives out another,’ she said to herself, being an accomplished person, with strange tongues at her command. And thus she sent the culprit away, exhausted with tears and supplied with work. ‘I will send you some tea to St. Monica, where you can be quiet,’ she said. And there Agnes toiled all the evening over her exercises, and had not a moment to spare. ‘Occupation, occupation,’ said the Sister to herself; ‘that is the only thing. She will do very well if she has no time to think.’

But was that the ideal life? I doubt if Sister Mary Jane thought so; but she was old enough to understand the need of such props, which Agnes was still young enough to have indignantly repudiated. For her part, Agnes felt that a little more thought would save her. If she could get vain imaginations out of her head, and those scraps of poetry, and bits of foolish novels, and replace them with real thought--thought upon serious subjects, something worthy the name--how soon would all those confusing, tantalising shadows flee away! But, in the meantime, it is undeniable that the girl left this interview with a sense of relief, such as it is to be supposed, is one of the chief reasons why confession continues to hold its place, named or nameless, in all religious communions more or less. Sister Mary Jane was not the spiritual director of the community, though I think the place would have very well become her; but it was undeniable that the mind of Agnes was lightened after she had poured forth her burdens; also that her sin did not look quite so heinous as it had done before; also that the despair which had enveloped her, and of which the consciousness that she must never so sin again formed no inconsiderable part, was imperceptibly dispelled, and the future as well as the past made less gloomy. Perhaps, if any very searching inspection had been made into those recesses of her soul which were but imperfectly known to Agnes herself, it might have been read there that there was no longer any crushing weight of certainty as to the absolute cessation of the sin; but that was beyond the reach of investigation. Anyhow, she had no time to think any more. Never had exercises so bad come under the young teacher’s inspection; her brain reeled over the mis-spellings, the misunderstandings. Healthy human ignorance, indifference, opacity, desire to get done anyhow, could not have shown to greater advantage. They entirely carried out the intentions of Sister Mary Jane, and left her not a moment for thought, until she got to her recess in the dormitory. And then, after the whisperings were all hushed, and the lights extinguished, Agnes was too tired for anything but sleep--a result of occupation which the wise Sister was well aware of too. Indeed, everything turned out so well in the case of this young penitent, that Sister Mary Jane deemed it advisable not to interfere with the visits to the hospital. If she surmounted temptation, why, then she was safe; if not, other steps must be taken. Anyhow, it was well that her highly-wrought feelings and desire of excellence should be put to the test; and as Agnes was not even a Postulant, but still in ‘the world,’ an unwise backsliding of this kind was less important. No real harm could come to her. Nevertheless, Sister Mary Jane watched her slim figure disappear along the street from her window with unusual interest. Was it mere interest in little Emmy that had made the girl so anxious to go, or was she eager to encounter the test and try her own strength? Or was there still another reason, a wish more weak, more human, more girlish? Agnes walked on very quickly, pleased to find herself at liberty. She was proud of the little patient, whose small face brightened with delight at the sight of her. And she did not like the sensation of being shut up out of danger, and saved arbitrarily from temptation. Her heart rose with determination to keep her own pure ideal path, whatever solicitations or blandishments might assail her. And indeed, to Agnes, as to a knight of romance, it is not to be denied that ‘the danger’s self was lure alone.’