Chapter XLIV: Clearing Up

Mr. Burchell was brought upstairs with some solemnity. Though Mrs. Meredith’s mind was very full of all that had been passing, and with no small amount of personal feeling, a father in such a case could not be put off. They were all agitated in different ways, the elder people painfully, the young ones happily. As for Edward, his energy and satisfaction knew no bounds. He even jarred upon the feelings of the others, though most innocently, his heart was so light. ‘You are like Oswald,’ his mother said to him, with a sigh of anxiety; ‘you are not like yourself.’ ‘I feel like Oswald,’ said Edward. He did not seem able to put his self-gratulation into fitter words. The sense of being second, of being the shadow to Oswald’s sunshine, went out of his mind; and, with it, all sense of grudging and everything like envy, which, however deeply repressed and disapproved, had been in his heart hitherto, an involuntary weakness. All that was over now. That Cara loved him he scarcely ventured to believe; but she was free; she was not swept up like every other good thing by his elder brother. What an ease diffused itself through his heart! And with Cara, too, the sensation was that of ease; her bonds were broken. She might have stood faithful still as the Screen (for indeed that poor lady was in the _Vita Nuova_, and it was not kind of great Dante, great as he was!) but circumstances had broken her bonds. Cara had not been intimate with Agnes Burchell that she should be much disturbed by finding out her identity with Oswald’s Agnes. And after the first shock she was confident that nothing amiss could have happened to her while Oswald was there. And her own pre-occupations made the whole matter but secondary in her mind. Was it selfish of her? But she could not help it. She had cast off more than one burden; her young frame was tingling with the excitement of the two disclosures she had made, one of which had brought her father to her, the other--well, the other at least had set her free; it had set her right with others, if nothing more. It was Edward who went to the dining-room to conduct Mr. Burchell upstairs, feeling such a friendliness towards him as words could not express. Had not he been the occasion of it all? ‘My mother begs that you will come upstairs,’ he said, feeling an inclination to hug his visitor, though he was little captivating. Mr. Burchell had a feeling of disapproval of the house and all that were in it. It was the house Roger had given an account of, where he had dined on Sunday, and where the lady lived who was so intimate with Mr. Beresford. The Rector disapproved of all such intimacy. But he was anxious and rather unhappy about his daughter, and it was his duty to take Agnes back out of this doubtful, perhaps polluted house. So he followed his conductor upstairs, looking about him with involuntary criticism. These kind of people had so many comforts that did not fall to the lot of their superiors in every moral sense. Large comfortable houses, many servants, the _Times_ every day (he found it on the table in the dining-room), and many other luxuries. He could not help making this remark to himself; he could not afford such pleasures; and now his child, his daughter, not theirs who perhaps deserved it, had gone away. Matters were not mended when Mrs. Meredith, with all her usual sweetness, but with a thrill of agitation still about her, came up to him holding out her hand.

‘Cara tells me that you are anxious about your daughter, and that my son--knows her,’ she said faltering. It was so difficult to know what to say.

‘So she tells me,’ said the Rector. ‘You will understand it is not from me; I know nothing of it. Agnes has said nothing; and perhaps,’ he added, looking round with a little natural defiance, ‘her absence may turn out to be quite simple; there may be nothing in it. She is not a good correspondent. But we are anxious, her mother and I.’

‘I do not know where Oswald is. Oh! heaven knows, if my son has anything to do with it, I shall be grieved, grieved and ashamed to the heart! But no harm will happen to her in Oswald’s company,’ said Mrs. Meredith, raising her head in her turn with tearful pride. ‘I know my boy.’

‘It is what I would not say of any child of mine, or of myself, for that matter,’ said the Rector. ‘Who can tell what a moment may bring forth? But if there should be anything in it, and you have any clue to your son’s movements----’

‘I have none. Thursday or Friday he said he would come back. Cara, if you can tell us anything----’

Cara told at once what she knew; how he had heard that Agnes was going somewhere, she did not remember where, and that he had made up his mind to go too, and explain himself. ‘Limpet Bay; she is not there,’ said Mr. Burchell. He took no interest in the rest of the story, which excited the others so much, that half of them spoke together. Edward, however, had the _pas_ as being most energetic. ‘I will go at once to Limpet Bay,’ he said, ‘and find out if anything is known of them; that seems the best thing.’ Mr. Burchell looked at him with a half-suspicion in his eyes. But this was how it was finally arranged. The Rector himself seemed to have greater confidence in wandering about town. He was going now to his sister’s at Notting Hill, and then to the House. Then he would come back again to the Square, to see if any news had come. ‘My son Roger will be in London in an hour or two,’ he added, with a kind of vague trust in that. But he neither sanctioned nor objected to Edward’s mission. He had no notion himself what to do. He had no faith in his own child, and even thought worse of Mrs. Meredith--if there could be a worse or a better about such a person--for thinking well of hers. When he went away at last in his heavy distress they were all relieved. He was to come back in a few hours to see if any news had been received. As for Edward, he was like a man transformed. He ran upstairs with airy energy, thrust what he wanted into a bag, tossed a heap of notebooks on the floor (where his mother found them, and picking them up carefully, put them away behind his bureau where he could not find them), and came down again swiftly and lightly, ready for anything. Then it was arranged that Cara and her father should walk with him to the House to see if anything had been heard there. This new chapter of anxiety was a relief to all of them, strange as it may seem to say so. Even Mrs. Meredith was comforted, after all the personal excitement of the afternoon, to have this outlet to her emotion. She was not afraid that anything very dreadful could have happened to Oswald, nor, though Mr. Burchell thought her confidence wicked, to anyone else, through her boy. She knew Oswald’s faults, she said to herself--who better? but Agnes would get no harm from him. On the other hand, the fact that they had disappeared together was in itself active harm. The boy was safe enough, but the girl--that was a more difficult matter; and even a young man who decoyed away, or could be said to have decoyed away, not a poor milliner or housemaid, but a girl in his own rank--society would look but darkly, there could be no doubt, on such a man. It was evident that in any point of view to find Oswald was the chief thing to be thought of. In the meantime, however, they had been reckoning without their train. There was not one going to Limpet Bay till six o’clock, and a pause perforce had to be made. And people began to come in, to call in the midst of their agitation, the first being actually shown up into the drawing-room while they still stood together talking in their scarcely subsiding excitement. This was more than the others could bear. Mrs. Meredith indeed met her visitors with her usual smiles, with hands stretched out, with all the air of soft and kind interest in them which bound her friends so close to her; the air of agitation about her only increased the kindness of her looks; but the three others were not so courageous. They all forsook her, stealing away one by one. Mr. Beresford went to his library, where he had so many things to think of. Cara and Edward, stealing away one after the other, met on the stairs. ‘Will you come into the Square,’ he said, ‘till it is time for my train?’ The Square was a spot where they had played together when they were children. It had been avoided by both of them without any reason given: now they went out and took refuge in it, where the little ladies and gentlemen of the Square were still playing. They wandered demurely under the flowery shrubs and those kind trees which do not despise London, their hearts beating softly yet loud, their young lives in a tender harmony. They seemed to be walking back into the chapter of their childhood and to see themselves playing hide and seek among the bushes. ‘You used to look just like that,’ Edward said, pointing to a pretty child in a white sun-bonnet with her lap full of daisies, who looked up at them with serious blue eyes as they passed. Cara was not so very much older, and yet what a world of youthful experience lay between her and this child. Then naturally they began to talk of what had happened to their knowledge, and of what might have happened which they did not know.

‘And you think he really loved her,’ Edward said, his voice at this word taking a reverential tone. ‘He must indeed--or else----. But was he in earnest--he was always so full of levity? And where can they have gone?’

‘He did not mean to have gone for more than the day. It must have been some accident. He would not have done anything again to get her scolded. _I_ scolded him for it before.’

‘You scolded him. I wish you would scold me, Cara,’ said Edward, looking at her. ‘You never talk to me as you used to talk to him. What bad feelings you used to rouse in my mind--you who are as good as an angel! hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness. I went very near to hating my brother. Poor Oswald, I shall stand by him now through thick and thin.’

‘I am glad of that,’ said Cara, thankfully ignoring what went before.

‘That is your doing too, like the other; Cara--there seems so many things that I want to say to you.’

‘Oh, we must not talk of anything to-day, but how to get this settled,’ cried the girl, with a nervous shiver. ‘What a trouble for your mother, to see all these people to-day. I could not stay to help her--it seemed impossible; but she--she could not be unkind to anyone,’ said Cara, with generous fervour; though indeed Mrs. Meredith, unwittingly, had strewn a few thorns in Cara’s pathway too.

‘Yes,’ said Edward; ‘I don’t think my mother is a humbug--at least, yes, she is, in the way of kindness. She can’t bear that anyone should feel neglected--and yet she means it, too,’ he added, doubtfully looking up at the window, at which some of her visitors showed, for the day was very warm. Her friends had flooded back upon her, notwithstanding her recent widowhood. It was not like going into society, they all said. Society, indeed, went to her instead. To desert her in her troubles was not a friend’s part. The consequence of this doctrine was that her receptions were almost as crowded as ever, and that all who considered themselves her intimates were more punctual than ever they had been.

‘Ought we not to go?’ said Cara at last, and they turned and came out through the dusty bushes once more. The Square was not lovely in itself, but it looked like a garden of Eden to the two, when they had been walking in the cool of the day, like Adam and Eve, thinking of each other, talking, with little breaks and relapses into thoughts which were dangerous, but very sweet, of other things. Now they came out again, side by side. As they crossed the road, Roger Burchell joined them. He had been sent for, and had hurried up, poor fellow, to do his duty, and look for his lost sister. It was not a happy errand to begin with, nor was it exactly happiness for him to see Cara, though the thought of doing so had lent wings to his feet. He looked at her with a face full of suppressed agitation, longing and yet suspicious. This was not the Meredith he was afraid of--this was the one with whom he was rather in sympathy, the unfortunate one, like himself. But there was something in the looks of the two which hurt Roger and angered him, he could scarcely have told why.

He addressed Edward rather roughly. ‘If you are going after them, tell me,’ he said, with a hoarse tone in his voice, ‘or I will do it. There is no time to lose.’

‘I am waiting only for the train,’ said Edward. It was a valid excuse enough, and poor Roger felt that he might have waited hours for the train without being amused meantime in this heavenly fashion. The gate of the garden was at some little distance from the house, close to the thoroughfare which passed along the end of the Square. They could see along this line of road as they turned to go back.

‘We must go for Mr. Beresford,’ Edward was saying. ‘He was to go with us first to the House.’

Here he stopped short, open-mouthed, and the others stopped too, by that curious instinct which makes one man share in the startled sensations of his companion, without knowing what they mean. They were both startled like Edward. A carriage had drawn up within a little distance, and two people were getting out of it. Cara’s eye, following Edward’s, reached this little group. She ran forward, with a low cry. The new-comers, seeing nobody, occupied with themselves, advanced steadily. They came up to the corner of the Square. Just within that comparative stillness, they too started and stopped, he facing the others boldly, with smiles on his face, she drooping, blushing, trembling, with her hand on his arm.

‘Oswald! for heaven’s sake, who is this lady?’ cried Edward, stepping in advance. The others waited with equal eagerness, though they knew very well who she was.

‘Edward, my good fellow, you must make much of her,’ said Oswald. He was really moved, and his gay voice faltered. ‘You and Cara--We want you and Cara to make up our happiness. This is my wife.’

Though it was the public road, or, at least, the corner of the Square, Cara rushed forward and threw herself upon Agnes, who, red as a rose, with downcast face and eyes that could not bear the light, stood on her trial, as it were. Edward put out one hand to her and another to his brother, without saying a word. He came, unthinking, between Roger and his sister.

‘You and Cara.’ He and Cara; nothing to say to the brother, who stood behind, red and lowering, looking on, noticed by no one, like a stranger. The two pairs fell together as by nature; Roger was the one who was left out. Is it not the very essence of all youthful story, even of all childish games, that someone should be left out? The little girl in the sun-bonnet in the Square garden could have produced half a dozen instances--that there is no fun without this; from puss in the corner upwards, the situation is invariable. But the left-out one does not see the fun. Roger stood, and changed into all manner of colours. He was not wanted. He and Agnes--he and Cara; for himself nobody, no companion, no notice, no share in it all. To take it sentimentally and sadly, and turn away, in all the dignity of the neglected, is one way; to be angry and resent is another. Roger, who felt the hot blood tingling down to his very finger-points, chose the latter. He made a step forward, pushing Edward aside, even thrusting aside Cara, and seized his sister roughly by the arm.

‘What is the meaning of all this?’ he said. ‘Agnes, what do you want here? Where have you been? My father has come up to town in trouble about you; my mother is ill of it at home. Where have you been? These people have nothing to do with you. You’ve got to give me an explanation of it--and you too, sir!’ cried Roger, with natural inconsistency, turning fiercely upon Oswald. What! this fellow, who had appropriated Cara so calmly, was he to have Agnes too?

‘Oh, Roger! don’t quarrel--don’t quarrel! I went home this morning. Mamma knows,’ cried Agnes, flushed and tearful, clasping her hands.

‘And I am ready to give you every explanation,’ said Oswald. ‘You have a right to it. We were married on Tuesday. It was no doing of hers. The fault is all mine. And your mother is satisfied. Come in with us, and you shall have every detail. And come, Roger, shake hands with me. There is no harm done after all.’

‘Harm done!’ cried the young man in his bitterness; ‘harm done! Is it no harm that she has disgraced herself? I don’t know what greater harm is in the world.’

‘Oh, Roger, Roger!’

‘This has gone far enough,’ said Oswald; ‘take care what you say. Agnes, my darling, take my arm, and come to my mother. He does not know what he is saying; and Ned, come along, you and Cara. There are a hundred things to tell you. I want you to hear everything to-day.’

They passed him, while he stood fuming with bitter rage, not on account of Agnes, though she was the excuse for it. She took all the guilt to herself, however, looking at him pitifully, appealing to him as her husband led her to his mother’s door.

‘Roger, oh Roger, dear, come with us!’ she cried. She had spoken to no one but him.

But Roger paid no attention to Agnes. It was the other pair who had all his thoughts; he seemed to be supplanted over again, to have all the pangs of failure to bear over again. The idea of Oswald’s success with Cara had become familiar to him, and there was a little consolation in the fact that Edward, like himself, was unhappy. But at this new change, the poor young fellow ground his teeth. It was more than he could bear. Rage and anguish were in his eyes. Even Cara’s kind look at him, her little mute apology and deprecation of his wrath, increased it. Why should he go with them? What did it matter to him? His sister? Oh, there were plenty of people to look after his sister, and why should he follow them, who cared so little for him? But, after a while, he did follow them. There is something in this kind of suffering which attracts the sufferer to the rack. He is in course of healing when he has the courage to turn his back upon it, and go firmly away.

The whole young party went into the dining-room, where the _Times_ which Mr. Burchell had grudged to Mrs. Meredith was still on the table. A dining-room is an oppressive place for such a purpose. It looks like bad interviews with fathers when there are admonitions to be given, or those fearful moments when a young offender is detained after the others have left the cheerful table, to be told of his faults. Agnes went into the house of her husband’s mother, with her heart in her mouth, or, at least, in her throat, leaping wildly, ready to sink into the ground with shame and terror. How would Mrs. Meredith receive her? Her own mother had yielded only to the arguments which the poor girl despised the most, to the details of Oswald’s income, and the settlements, about which he had already written to his lawyer. This mollified her--not Agnes’s weeping explanations; and the bride’s heart was still sore from the pang of this forgiveness, which Oswald, not caring in the least for Mrs. Burchell, had been quite satisfied with. He did not care very much for anything except herself, she had already found out, and took all disapproval with the frankest levity of indifference, which made it burn all the more into the heart of Agnes. Perhaps it was necessary for her to have a burden of one kind or another. And his mother; how would his mother look upon her? Would she set her down, as it was so natural for mothers to do, as the guilty party, the chief offender? Agnes had felt that her own mother had done this. She had excused Oswald. ‘No man would ever think of such a thing, if he had not got encouragement.’ Even Sister Mary Jane had said so, in a modified and more generous way. Was it always the poor girl’s, the poor wife’s fault? Agnes shrank into a corner. She could not take any courage from Cara’s caressings, who came and hung about her, full of admiration and interest.

‘I was his confidante all the time,’ said Cara; ‘but how was I to know that his Agnes was you?’

Agnes did not get much comfort out of this; she was not quite sure even that she liked him to have had a girl confidante. Though she was ‘happy,’ in the ordinary sense of the word, as applied to brides, happy in the love of her new husband, and in her own love for him, yet the troubles of the moment had seized hold upon her at their worst. She trembled for the opening of the door. She was almost at the limit of her powers of endurance. Her ‘happiness’ had cost her dear. She had got it at the sacrifice of all her tender prejudices, all her little weaknesses of sentiment. She took Roger’s angry speech for true, and endorsed it. However happily it might all turn out, though everything should be better than she thought, still she would have disgraced herself. Nobody could be so much shocked at the whole business as she herself was. To everyone who censured her she was ready to say amen. It may be supposed, therefore, that the feelings with which she awaited Oswald’s mother were agitating enough. If Mrs. Meredith received her unkindly, or coldly--and how was it possible that a mother could receive otherwise than coldly such an unexpected bride?--it seemed to Agnes, in her discouragement and terror, that she must fall at her feet and die.

‘Go and tell my mother, Ned,’ said Oswald, who was himself rather breathless with suspense. ‘Go, you and Cara--take Cara with you. She will be kinder if you go together.’

‘Was she ever unkind?’ said Cara, half indignant.

‘Come all the same,’ said Edward, taking her hand in the freedom of the moment. ‘If I offer to make a sacrifice to her if she will forgive them?’ he whispered, as they went upstairs together--‘it will not be true--Cara, may I do it, not being true?’

‘Does she want to be paid for her kindness?’ said Cara, whispering back; but she smiled, notwithstanding, not knowing what he meant, yet knowing quite well what he meant. They went into the drawing-room thus, still for the moment hand in hand, which Mrs. Meredith perceiving, turned round from her guests with a little excitement. What had they come to tell her? She disengaged herself from the people whom she was talking to, and hurried towards them, breathless--‘Children, what is it?’ the conjunction had already had its effect.

‘Mother, Oswald and his wife are downstairs; come and speak to them--come and console her.’

‘His wife! Good heavens! has it gone so far?--and is that all?’ the mother said inconsistently in one breath.

Edward went up close to her, and whispered in her ear--‘And I no longer think of going to India. If that pleases you, forgive them.’

‘Traitor!’ said Mrs. Meredith; ‘that is not the reason;’ and then, ‘God bless you, my darling!’ she said, with tears in her eyes.