Chapter XXXV: Roger’s Fate

Roger Burchell had made two unsuccessful visits to the Square--the first absolutely painful, the second disappointing. On both occasions he had failed to see Cara, except surrounded by strangers, who were nothing, and indeed less than nothing to him; and both times he had gone away resolute that nothing should induce him to tempt fate again, and come back. But a young man who is in love persuades himself with difficulty that fate is against him. It seems so unlikely and incredible that such a thing should be; and short of a distinct and unmistakable sentence, hope revives after the shock of a mere repulse has a little worn off. And then Roger had heard that Cara was coming back to the Hill, and his heart had risen. When she was there again, within his reach, without ‘these fellows’ by, who had troubled him, Cara, he flattered himself, would be to him as she used to be; and, distance lending enchantment to his vision, it appeared to him that she had been much kinder in those days than she ever really was, and that she must have understood him, and had seriously inclined to hear what he had to say. Soon he managed to persuade himself that Cara had never been cold, never had been anything but sweet and encouraging, and that it was only her surroundings which had led her far away from him, and forced the attention which she would have much more willingly bestowed upon himself, the companion of her youth. This idea brought a rush of tender feeling with it, and resolution not to be discouraged--never to take an answer again but from Cara herself. How likely that she might have wondered too why he did not take the initiative, why he did not insist upon speaking to her, and getting her own plain answer! From this to the thought that Cara was looking out for him every Sunday--wondering, disappointed, and alarmed that he did not come--was but a step; and then Roger made up his mind to go again, to insist on seeing her, and _to ask her_--simply to ask her, neither more nor less--for there was very little time to lose. In the autumn he was going to India; already his importance had risen with all belonging to him. Up to this moment he had been only one of the boys, more or less, wasting money, and limiting the advantages of the others; but in autumn he would have an income of his own, and would be independent. The sense of importance went to his head a little. Had he met the Queen, I think that he would have expected her Majesty to know that he was going out to India in October. It was not that he was vain of himself or his prospects; but a man _with an income_ is very different from a man without that possession. This is a fact which no one can doubt. It was late in April when he came to the Square for the third time, and so fine a day that everybody had gone out, except Cara, who was not well. When he was ushered into the drawing-room, he found her seated in an easy chair, with a shawl round her. Though it was very sunshiny outside, it was rather cold indoors. Miss Cherry, who stood by with her bonnet on, and her prayer-book in her hand, had just ordered the fire to be lighted, and Cara, with her cold, had crept close to it. Miss Cherry was going to the afternoon service.

‘I shall not be long, my darling. You will not miss me,’ she was saying, ‘though I don’t like to leave you on my last day.’

‘Don’t say it is the last day--and look, here is Roger to keep me company,’ said Cara. ‘He will sit with me while you are away.’

How glad he was, and how eager to promise!

Miss Cherry thought no more of poor Roger than if he had been a cabbage. She thought it might be an amusement to her niece to hear his little gossip about home; and though she saw through his eagerness, and suspected his object, yet she was not alarmed for Cara. Poor blind moth, coming to scorch his wings, she said to herself, with a half-amused pity. She did not pay very much attention to what he might have to suffer. Indeed, unless one has a special interest in the sufferer, such pangs always awake more or less amusement in the mature bosom; and, tender-hearted as Miss Cherry was, her mind was too full of other things to have much leisure for Roger, who was, she thought, anyhow too shy and awkward to commit himself. She had her mind full of a great many things. She was going away, now that her brother was not going. But though she was anxious about her old aunt, and her home, which she had left for so long a period, she was anxious about Cara too, and did not know which of these opposing sentiments dragged her most strongly to one side or the other. And then she was angry with her brother--angry with him for staying, and angry that there had been an occasion for his going away. She went to afternoon church at that drowsiest hour, when, if the mind has any temptation to be dejected, or to be cross, it is crosser and more downcast than at any other moment, and attended a sleepy service in an old dingy chapel, one of the few which are still to be found remaining, in which a scattered congregation drowse in big pews, and something like a clerk still conducts the responses. Miss Cherry had been used to this kind of service all her life, and in her gentle obstinacy of conservatism clung to it, though it possessed very few attractions. She said her own prayers very devoutly, and did her best to join in the irregular chorus of the clerk; and she sat very erect in the high corner of the pew, and gave an undivided attention to the sermon, sternly commanding every stray thought out of the way. But the effort was not so successful as the valour of the endeavour merited. Miss Cherry did not like, as she said, to have the good effect all dissipated by worldly talk after a good sermon (and was not every sermon good in intention at least--calculated, if we would only receive its directions, to do good to the very best of us?), and for this reason she was in the habit of avoiding all conversation on her way from church. But her resolution could not stand when she saw Mr. Maxwell coming towards her from the other side of the street. He had not been at church, she feared; but yet she had a great many things to ask him. She let him join her, though she liked to have her Sundays to herself.

‘Yes, I hope Miss Charity is better,’ he said. ‘Her energy has come back to her, and if the summer would really come---- I hear of another change, which I can’t say surprises me, but yet--your brother then is not going away?’

‘No--why should he?’ said Miss Cherry. It is one thing to find fault with one’s brother, and quite another thing to hear him criticised by his friend.

‘I thought so,’ said Maxwell; ‘he has no stamina, no firmness. I suppose, then, he has made up his mind?’

‘To what, Mr. Maxwell? He has made up his mind not to go away.’

‘And to all the consequences. Miss Cherry, you are not so simple as you wish people to think. He means, of course, to marry again. I had hoped he would have more sense--and better feeling.’

‘I don’t know why you should judge James so harshly,’ said Miss Cherry, with spirit. ‘Many people marry twice, of whom nothing is said--and when they do not, perhaps it is scarcely from good taste or feeling on their part.’

‘You are kind,’ said the doctor, growing red, and wondering within himself how the d---- could she know what he had been thinking of? Or was it merely a bow drawn at a venture, though the arrow whistled so close?

‘Whatever wishes I might have,’ he added, betraying himself, ‘are nothing to the purpose. Your brother is in a very different position. He has a pretty, sweet daughter, grown up, at a companionable age, to make a home for him. What would he have? Such a man might certainly be content--instead of compelling people to rake up the past, and ask unpleasant questions.’

‘Questions about James? I don’t know what questions anyone could ask about my brother----’

‘Well,’ said Maxwell, somewhat hotly; ‘I don’t like doing anything in the dark, and you may tell Beresford, if you like, Miss Cherry, all that I have to say, that I shall oppose it. I shall certainly oppose it. Never should I have said a word, had he let things alone; but in this case, it will become my duty.’

‘What will become your duty?’ said Miss Cherry, aghast.

He looked at her wondering face, and his own countenance changed. ‘It is not anything to bother you about,’ he said. ‘It is--a nothing--a matter between your brother and me.’

‘What is it?’ she said, growing anxious.

He had turned with her, and walked by her side in his vehemence. Now that she had taken fright, he stopped short.

‘It is only that I have a patient to see,’ he said; ‘and I am glad to be able to make your mind quite easy about Miss Beresford. She is twice as strong as either you or I.’

And before she could say another word he had knocked at a door they were passing, and left her, taking off his hat in the most ordinary way. What did he mean? or was it nothing--some trifling quarrel he had got into with James? Miss Cherry walked the rest of the way home, alone indeed and undisturbed, but with a strange commotion in her mind. Was there something serious behind these vague threatenings, or was he only depressed and cross, like herself, from the troublesome influence of spring, and of this east-windy day?

Meanwhile, Roger sat down in front of Cara’s fire, which was too warm, and made him uncomfortable--for he had been walking quickly, and he had no cold. He thought she looked pale, as she reclined in the big chair, with that fleecy white shawl round her, and he told her so frankly.

‘It is living in town that has done it,’ he said. ‘When you come back to the country you will soon be all right.’

‘It is only a cold,’ said Cara. ‘I don’t know now when we shall go to the country. Aunt Cherry leaves us to-morrow.’

‘But you are coming too? Yes, you are! Miss Charity told my mother so. In a few days----’

‘Ah, that was before papa changed his plans; he is not going abroad now--so I stay at home,’ said Cara.

The young man started up from his seat in the sudden sting of his disappointment. He was too unsophisticated to be able to control his feelings. Still, he managed not to swear or rave, as Nature suggested. ‘Good Heavens!’ was the only audible exclamation he permitted himself, which, to be sure, is merely a pious ejaculation; though a lower ‘Confound!’ came under his breath--but this Cara was not supposed to hear.

‘Home?’ he said, coming back after a walk to the window, when he had partially subdued himself. ‘I should have thought the Hill, where you have lived all your life, and where everybody cares for you, would have seemed more like _home_ than the Square.’

‘Do not be cross, Roger,’ said Cara. ‘Why should you be cross?’ Something of the ease of conscious domination was in her treatment of him. She did not take the same high ground with Oswald or Edward; but this poor boy was, so to speak, under her thumb, and, like most superior persons, she made an unkind use of her power, and treated her slave with levity. ‘You look as if you meant to scold me. There is a little red here,’ and she put up her hand to her own delicate cheek, to show the spot, ‘which means temper, and it is not nice to show temper, Roger, especially with an old friend. I did not choose my home any more than my name. You might as well say you should have thought I would prefer to be May, rather than Cara.’

‘It is you who are unkind,’ said the poor young fellow. ‘Oh, Cara, if you remember how we have played together, how long you have known me! and this is my last summer in England. In six months--less than six months--I shall be gone.’

‘I am very sorry,’ she said. ‘But why should you get up and stamp about? That will not make things any better. Sit down and tell me about it. Poor Roger! are you really going away?’

Now, this was not the tone he wished or expected; for he was far from feeling himself to be poor Roger, because he was going away. Offended dignity strove with anxious love in his mind, and he felt, with, perhaps, a vulgar yet very reasonable instinct, that his actual dignity and importance made the best foundation for his love.

‘It is not so much to be regretted, Cara, except for one thing. I shall enter upon good pay at once. That is worth sacrificing something for; and I don’t care so much, after all, for just leaving England. What does it matter where a fellow is, so long as he is happy? But it’s about being happy that I want to speak to you.’

‘I think it matters a great deal where one is,’ said Cara; but she refrained, out of politeness to him, who had no choice in the matter, to sing the praises of home. ‘I have been so used to people wandering about,’ she said, apologetically; ‘papa, you know; but I am glad that you don’t mind; and, of course, to have money of your own will be very pleasant. I am afraid they will all feel it very much at the Rectory.’

‘Oh, _they_! they don’t care. It will be one out of the way. Ah, Cara, if I only could think _you_ would be sorry.’

‘Of course I shall be sorry, Roger,’ she said, with gentle seriousness. ‘There is no one I shall miss so much. I will think of you often in the woods, and when there are garden parties. As you are going, I am almost glad not to be there this year.’

‘Ah, Cara! if you would but say a little more, how happy you might make me,’ said the young man, self-deceived, with honest moisture in his eyes.

‘Then I will say as much more as you like,’ she said, bending forward towards him with a little soft colour rising in her cheeks. ‘I shall think of you always on Sundays, and how glad we used to be when you came; and if you have time to write to me, I will always answer; and I will think of you at that prayer in the Litany for those who travel by land and water.’

‘Something more yet--only one thing more!’ cried poor Roger, getting down upon one knee somehow, and laying his hand on the arm of her chair. His eyes were quite full, his young face glowing: ‘Say you love me ever so little, Cara! I have never thought of anyone in my life but you. Whenever I hoped or planned anything it was always for you. I never had a penny: I never could show what I felt, anyhow: but now I shall be well enough off, and able to keep----’

‘Hush!’ said Cara, half frightened; ‘don’t look so anxious. I never knew you so restless before; one moment starting up and walking about, another down on your knees. Why should you go down on your knees to me? Of course I like you, Roger dear; have we not been like brother and sister?’

‘No!’ he said; ‘and I don’t want to be like brother and sister. I am so fond of you, I don’t know what to say. Oh, Cara! don’t be so quiet as if it didn’t matter. I shall be well off, able to keep a wife.’

‘A wife?--that is a new idea,’ she said, bewildered; ‘but you are too young, Roger.’

‘Will you come with me, Cara?’ he cried, passing over, scarcely hearing, in his emotion, the surprise yet indifference of this question. ‘Oh, Cara! don’t say no without thinking! I will wait if you like--say a year or two years. I shall not mind. I would rather wait fifty years for you than have anyone else, Cara. Only say you will come with me, or even to me, and I shall not mind.’

Cara sat quite upright in her chair. She threw her white shawl off in her excitement. ‘_Me?_’ she said; ‘me?’ (That fine point of grammar often settles itself summarily in excitement, and on the wrong side.) ‘You must be dreaming,’ she said; ‘or am I dreaming, or what has happened? I don’t know what you mean.’

He stumbled up to his feet red as the glow of the fire which had scorched him, poor boy, as if his unrequited passion was not enough. ‘If I am dreaming!’ he said, in the sharp sting of his downfall, ‘it is you who have made me dream.’

‘I?’ said Cara, in her surprise (the grammar coming right as the crisis got over); ‘what have I done? I don’t understand at all. I am not unkind. If there was anything I could do to please you, I would do it.’

‘To please me, Cara?’ he cried, sinking again into submission. ‘To make me happy, that is what you can do, if you like. Don’t say no all at once; think of it at least; the hardest-hearted might do that.’

‘I am not hard-hearted,’ she said. ‘I begin to see what it is. We have both made a mistake, Roger. I never thought _this_ was what you were thinking; and you have deceived yourself, supposing I knew. I am very, very sorry. I will do anything--else----’

‘I don’t want anything else,’ he said, sullenly. He turned his back upon her in the gloom and blackness of his disappointment. ‘What else is there between young people like us,’ he said, bitterly. ‘My mother always says so, and she ought to know. I have heard often enough of girls leading men on--enticing them to make fools of themselves--and I see it is true now. But I never thought it of you, Cara. Whatever others did, I thought you were one by yourself, and nobody like you. But I see now you are just like the rest. What good does it do you to make a fellow unhappy--to break his heart?’ Here poor Roger’s voice faltered, the true feeling in him struggling against the vulgar fibre which extremity revealed. ‘And all your smiling and looking sweet, was it all for nothing?’ he said--‘all meaning nothing! You would have done just the same for anybody else! What good does it do you? for there’s nobody here to see how you have made a laughing-stock of me.’

‘Have I made a laughing-stock of you? I am more ready to cry than to laugh,’ said Cara, indignantly, yet with quivering lip.

‘I know what you will do,’ he said; ‘you will tell everybody--that is what you will do. Oh, it’s a devilish thing in girls! I suppose they never _feel_ themselves, and it pleases their vanity to make fools of us. You will go and tell those fellows, those Merediths, what a laugh you have had out of poor Roger. _Poor_ Roger! but you shan’t have your triumph, Miss Beresford,’ said the poor lad, snatching up his hat. ‘If you won’t look at me, there are others who will. I am not so ridiculous as to be beneath the notice of someone else.’

He made a rush to the door, and Cara sat leaning forward a little, looking after him,--her blue eyes wide open, a look of astonishment, mingled with grief, on her face. She felt wounded and startled, but surprised most of all. _Roger!_--was it Roger who spoke so? When he got to the door he turned round and looked back upon her, his lips quivering, his whole frame trembling. Cara could scarcely bear the pitiful, despairing look in the lad’s eyes.

‘Oh, Roger!’ she said; ‘don’t go away so. You can’t imagine I ever laughed at you, or made fun of you--I?--when you were always the kindest friend to me. Won’t you say “good-by” to me kindly? But never mind--I shall see you often before you go away.’

And then, while he still stood there irresolute, not knowing whether to dart away in the first wrathful impulse, or to come back and throw himself at her feet, all these possibilities were made an end of in a moment by Miss Cherry, who walked softly up the stairs and came in with her prayer-book still in her hand. Roger let go his hold of the door, which he had been grasping frantically, and smiled with a pale countenance as best he could to meet the new-comer, standing out into the room to let her pass, and doing all he could to look like any gentleman saying ‘good-by’ at the end of a morning call. Cara drew the shawl again upon her shoulders, and wrapped herself closer and closer in it, as if that was all she was thinking of. If they had not been so elaborate in their precautions they might have deceived Miss Cherry, whose mind was taken up with her own thoughts. But they played their parts so much too well that her curiosity was aroused at once.

‘Are you going, Roger? You must stop first and have some tea. I daresay Cara had not the good sense to offer you some tea; but John will bring it directly when he knows I have come in. Is it really true, my dear Roger, that you are going away? I am sure I wish you may have every advantage and good fortune.’

She looked at him curiously, and he felt that she read him through and through. But he could not make any attempt to make-believe with Miss Cherry, whom he had known ever since he could remember. He muttered something, he could not tell what, made a hurried dash at Cara’s hand, which he crushed so that her poor little fingers did not recover for half an hour; and then rushed out of the house. Miss Cherry turned to Cara with inquiring eyes. The girl had dropped back into her chair, and had almost disappeared in the fleecy folds of the shawl.

‘What have you been doing to Roger?’ she said. ‘Poor boy! If I had known I would have warned him. Must there always be some mischief going on whenever there are two together? Oh, child! you ought to have let him see how it was; you should not have led him on!’

‘Did I lead him on? What have I done? He said so too,’ cried poor Cara, unable to restrain her tears. She cried so that Miss Cherry was alarmed, and from scolding took to petting her, afraid of the effect she had herself produced.

‘It’s only a way of speaking,’ she said. ‘No, my darling, I know you did not. If he said so, he was very unkind. Do not think of it any more.’

But this is always so much easier to say than to do.