Chapter XXX: A Rebellious Heart

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.’