CHAPTER XXI.
BROTHERLY COUNSEL.
scar, now that we are alone, now that nobody can interrupt us, I want to talk to you about my plan.”
Sheila’s face was flushed, her big eyes were sparkling. She looked less the child, Oscar thought, and more the woman than when he had seen her last. He had been struck by this when he first saw her on board the boat. He had thought the same thing many times that day as the thundering express bore them from Plymouth to London. Now they were alone in Sheila’s room in the hotel where they were to spend the night. A big fire blazed on the hearth. The curtains were drawn, and brother and sister were alone together. The rumble in the streets below made a ceaseless murmur, but it was different from the rattle and roar of the train. They could talk at their ease now.
On the way up to town Sheila had poured her whole history into Oscar’s ears, and had heard the story of his own trouble at home, and the shadow which rested upon him. She had not said much, there had been no excited outburst such as he had expected. Perhaps the presence of other people in the carriage was a check upon her, or perhaps she had learned something of the lesson of self-control and reticence.
Anyway she had been unwontedly quiet during the last hours of the journey, and Oscar, who had felt very weary after his long hasty night journey down to Plymouth, had dozed in his corner. But now, after their arrival here, after their substantial meal below, they had come upstairs for a confidential talk which had been impossible before.
“Oscar, I have thought it all out. It came to me first on ship-board, even before I knew anything about you and what had happened in the office. (Why didn’t you tell me in your letters?) I made up my mind then and there that I would never, never, never live at Cossart Place again. Aunt Cossart has behaved infamously to me. She has tried to spoil my life and make me always wretched and miserable. I will never forgive her. I will never see her again!”
Oscar looked straight at his sister, but said nothing, for Sheila was proceeding with her old impetuosity.
“You can’t understand what it was like there. Even Mrs. Reid understood and was indignant. Oh, yes, I know she was, by the little things she said, though, of course, she would not say much. Everybody knew. I feel as though I could never bear to see any of them again. She is a hateful woman. The Barretts told me how furious people were with her when they knew she was going to send me home. Everybody guessed why—that was the horridest part of it. And I had been so happy. Everybody was so kind, and I had to go without even saying good-bye, but I felt I couldn’t—I couldn’t! The Barrett girls declared they believed everybody would cut them for it. I’m sure I hope they will! Oh, I can’t help being angry—I can’t indeed!”
“Sheila dear, don’t get excited,” said Oscar soothingly. “I can understand that it was very hard. It is very hard to be misunderstood, and to have things put down to us that we know we have not done, but we have talked over all that before. Tell me about this plan of yours.”
“Oh, yes. Oscar, you will be twenty-one soon, won’t you?”
“Yes. What has that to do with it?”
“Everything, for you will have command over our money then.”
“Yes; at least over my half, anyway, perhaps over it all. But it is not much, Sheila.”
“I know it is not; but it is enough to make us a little home. Now listen, Oscar, for I have it all planned out. You shall go on at the office if you must, because it’s something to do, and Uncle Tom has been kind in a way, though if he suspects you—however, we won’t talk any more about that. But we won’t go on living with the Cossarts any more, I’m quite determined on that. We shall have enough to have a little home of our own, even if it’s only a lodging; and you will go to the office, and I’ll try and get some music pupils, or little children to teach in the mornings, or something to help. And I’ll keep our home as nice as possible, and we’ll have cosy evenings together, and we’ll have nothing to do with the people who have behaved so badly to us. Oh, I don’t mean that we’ll cut them or anything, but we won’t go on living with them and eating their bread. I couldn’t possibly dream of going back to Cossart Place ever; and they don’t want me at Uncle Tom’s, and besides, how could I go on living in the same house with that Cyril? I can’t think how you can do it, Oscar, I really can’t.”
Sheila leant forward with flushed cheeks and shining eyes. Oscar was leaning back in his chair, his face a little in the shadow. Sheila had been struck on first seeing him with the sharpened look of his features, and the tired expression in his eyes; the same thing struck her again more forcibly at this moment, although she spoke no word of it.
“Say you think it a nice plan, Oscar, for I’m sure you do!” she cried eagerly.
“No, Sheila, I don’t think it would do,” he said slowly.
“Oh, Oscar, what do you mean? I’m sure it would. We should be so happy together, you and I. And it’s often so horrid being with people who misunderstand us. I think we’ve had enough of that. Oh, don’t say you won’t think of it!”
“I am thinking of it, Sheila, I’m thinking hard, for I hate to thwart you; but I don’t think it would do, and you would find that living in a very small way, and trying to earn something yourself, are two very difficult matters for people brought up as we have been.”
“But, Oscar, we should belong to ourselves and each other. We should be free from those horrid things that happen in other people’s houses.”
“But we should have other troubles and worries to face, Sheila. And do you know, I think it would not only be very ungrateful to our relations to take ourselves off like that, but I think it would be very bad for us ourselves.”
“Bad for us? I don’t understand.”
“I think it is always bad for people to rebel too much against the life which—well—which God seems to have arranged for them. Sheila, don’t you think that in the old days you and I had rather too much of our own way?”
“I never thought about it—did we?”
“I think so. Everything was made so smooth for us, and we had so few battles to fight. I sometimes think it might have been better for us if we had had more. Sheila, take my case; it is true I know nothing about this lost money, but in one sense the fault is mine. I always did the thing that was the easiest and pleasantest at the moment, though North warned me again and again that my easy-going ways were slovenly, and might lead to confusion and worse. I never quite believed him, and never seriously tried to conquer my tendencies, and you see what has happened. Whoever is to blame, the thing could not have been but for my fault.”
“Well, I think that’s a very hard way of looking at it; but what then?”
“I have not quite finished, Sheila; I want to talk about your case. It has been something the same with you, little sister. You have always liked to drift along easily with the current, doing what was pleasantest at the moment. If people were kind and made you welcome, you responded to all their overtures, without always stopping to think what Aunt Cossart would like, or if it were quite considerate to Effie. They were quite small things, but little by little they made trouble; and then came this great storm which has made you so miserable. You were not to blame, as I was; I don’t think you were ever warned, and it was difficult for you to see from day to day how things were going; but I think perhaps, Sheila, we have both been selfish in our own way, and have not thought enough——”
“You’re not selfish, you’re not careless,” cried Sheila interrupting excitedly. “I only wish I were one quarter as good. Oh, Oscar, I do believe I have been selfish, though I never meant it. I never thought of such a thing. We have always been used to being happy—to have people like us. It seemed so natural. I didn’t mean any harm.”
“No, Sheila, I am sure you didn’t; but you know life is not given to us just to enjoy for ourselves. We must try and think of other people too, to put them first. It is harder for you than for some, because father always spoiled you; and everybody likes you, and you are so pretty and fascinating.”
But Sheila jumped up and put her hand upon his lips.
“Don’t, Oscar! I don’t want to be praised; I begin to feel that I have been rather naughty and selfish, though I wouldn’t believe it when my conscience pricked now and then. I was wrong to be so furious with Aunt Cossart. Sometimes it made me a little frightened—when I wanted to say my prayers—and didn’t know how to get out ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive—’ Oh, Oscar, I don’t think I’ve forgiven Aunt Cossart yet. Suppose there had been a storm, and the vessel had sunk! How dreadful that would have been!”
“You will forgive everything, Sheila, when you think about it a little more. When we begin to understand how many faults we have ourselves, we see that we must forgive, we can’t help it. Everything seems to sink out of sight except the thought of His forgiveness of us, and what it cost to win it.”
Sheila suddenly fell upon her knees before Oscar, and looked anxiously into his face. It was seldom indeed he had spoken to her quite so openly. A quick thrill of anxiety ran through her.
“Oscar, have you forgiven Cyril?”
“Yes,” he answered in a low voice. “Indeed, sometimes I think it is he who has to forgive me more than I him. For remember, Sheila, it was my carelessness that put in his way the opportunity—suggested, perhaps, the temptation. When I think of that, I feel that it is I who need the forgiveness.”
Sheila looked awed at the thought suggested—that terrible thought so often overlooked and set aside, that not alone to ourselves do we sin and do amiss; but that in some way or other our comrades and friends may become involved in our wrong-doing.
“‘Sic vos non vobis,’” quoted Oscar in a dreamy fashion. “I begin to understand those words, Sheila, as I never did before.”
“But it is rather dreadful, Oscar; it makes it seem as though our sins went on and on so!”
“Yes, that is what I want to understand better. Our sins are forgiven, but the effects of them so often go on and on. We must think of that, too, Sheila; it will help to make our faults hateful to us. It will make us more patient when we have to bear blame that we do not quite merit; for how much more blame do we deserve than we ever get!”
Sheila was silent a long time, looking up into Oscar’s face.
“And my plan?” she asked tentatively.
“Would be a selfish one,” answered Oscar quickly, “for it would hurt the feelings of our relations; and I think it would be a shirking of the discipline of life, which we both stand in so much need of, Sheila!”
“You don’t.”
“Yes, I do. It would be very much pleasanter for us to have a little independent crib of our own, where we should be able to indulge ourselves and each other, and get away from all the little frictions of life in a family where things are not done quite in the way we have been used to. But it would be like running away from what seems to have been given us to bear; and I expect we should find we soon had a big new crop of worries and bothers, quite as big as the old ones. So I think, Sheila, we will not force things ourselves. We will go back to Uncle Tom’s, and wait and see what turns up. We will both try and be patient, and do what is right, never minding whether or not it is what we like best ourselves. We must try and learn the lesson of not pleasing ourselves always. You know Who set us the example of that?”
Sheila subsided upon the floor, and laid her head on Oscar’s knee, taking his hand between hers.
“You are getting so good, Oscar,” she said, “I am almost afraid of you. You are not ill, are you?”
“Ill? No. Why do you ask?”
“Because you don’t look well, and when people are so very very good, one sometimes fancies they are——”
Sheila paused, and Oscar said with a little tone of mirth in his quiet voice—
“I am not going to die of goodness yet, Sheila! You need not be afraid on that score.”
It was with a good deal of shrinking that Sheila prepared to face the Cossarts on the morrow. She knew that they would by this time have received the letter her aunt must have written, and that Mrs. Cossart would not have drawn her picture with a very strict regard to truth. She would have thought more of justifying her precipitate action than of anything else; and Sheila was terribly sensitive where Ronald Dumaresq was concerned, and felt as though any mention of his name would be worse than the cut of a whip. And her cousins were not sensitive on these points. They would be almost certain to cross-question her and make a joke of everything.
It needed all her courage and resolution to face the meeting; but when they drew up at the door and were met by Ray in the passage, it was not of Sheila’s sudden return that the whole house was thinking. Indeed Ray only gave her a rather hurried kiss, warm and sisterly, but distinctly hasty, and then turned to Oscar and took him by the shoulders, bringing him into the strong light of the window.
“Oscar, how are you? Are you sure you feel well?”
“Y—yes, all right, just a little tired with all the travelling, you know. But what do you ask for?”
“Oh, we are in such a fright. Typhoid fever has broken out in the town. The little office-boy you have been visiting so often has it; and everybody was saying that you were looking ill. Five cases are reported to-day, and they say there will be more. You are quite sure you are well, Oscar? Sheila, did he eat his breakfast this morning?”
“He hardly ate anything either last night or to-day,” cried Sheila, in sudden anxiety. “He has a bad headache. We thought it was from the long journey.”
The girls stood looking at each other in dismay. The same fear was in both hearts. Oscar turned from them and began climbing the stairs with a strange languor in his movements.
“I think I’ll go to my room,” he said, “but don’t bother, I shall be all right there.”
“He’s got it!” cried Ray, under her breath; and Sheila turned white to the lips.
(To be continued.)