‘Alas! we cannot help ourselves now; when a thing is said, it cannot be unsaid. After this we could not be the same. We should remember, and be conscious.’
‘Of what?’
‘Oh, of—nothing, except what has been said. Don’t be angry with me. I have so many things to think of—the boys first of all; there must be no talking for them to hear. Don’t you think,’ she said, with tears in her eyes, which glistened and betrayed themselves, yet with an appealing smile, ‘that least said is soonest mended? To discuss it all is impossible. If you could come—now and then—as other people come.’
Then there was a pause. To come down to the level of other people—to confess that their intercourse must be so restricted—was not that of itself a confession that the intercourse was dangerous, impossible, even wrong? ‘Other people!’ Mr. Beresford repeated, in a low tone of melancholy mockery, with a resenting smile. If it had come to that, indeed!—and then he stood with his head bent down, holding his hands to the fire. She was silent, too: what could they say to each other? So many times they had sat in this room in tranquil companionship, sometimes talking, sometimes silent, no bond of politeness upon them to do one thing or the other, understanding each other. And now all at once this comradeship, this brotherhood (are all these nouns of alliance masculine?) had to be dropped, and these two friends become as other people. Not a word was said now—that was the tolling of the dead bell.
‘I think I shall go away,’ he said, after a pause. ‘Life has not so much in it now-a-days, that it can have the best half rent off, and yet go on all the same. I think I shall go away ‘Where will you go to?’ she asked softly.
‘What do I care?’ he said, and then there was another long pause.
All this time, on the other side of the wail, by the fire which corresponded like one twin to another with this, Edward was reading to Cara and Miss Cherry. There is no time in his life in which a young man is so utterly domestic, so content with the little circle of the fireside, as when he is in love. All the amusements and excitements of life were as nothing to Edward in comparison with the limited patch of light in which Miss Cherry and her niece did their needlework. He was very unhappy, poor young fellow; but how sweet it was to be so unhappy! He thought of all that Oswald was relinquishing, with a sense of semi-contempt for Oswald. Nothing would he have done against his brother’s interests, however his own were involved: but he could not help the rising sense that in this case at least it was he who was worthy rather than his brother. And it was a never-ceasing wonder to him that Cara took it so placidly. Oswald went to her in the morning and held long conversations with her, but in the evening he pursued his ordinary course, and in the present disorganised state of the two houses all the mutual dinners and evening meetings being made an end of, they scarcely saw each other except in the morning. This, however, the girl seemed to accept as the natural course of affairs. She was not gay, for it was not Cara’s habit to be gay; but she went seriously about her little world, and smiled upon Edward with absolute composure as if Oswald had no existence. It was a thing which Edward could not understand. He sat at the other side of the table and read to her, whatever she chose to place before him, as long as she chose. He was never weary; but he did not derive much intellectual advantage from what he read. While he was giving forth someone else’s sentiments, his own thoughts were running on a lively under-current. Why was Oswald never here? and why did Cara take his absence so quietly? These were the two leading thoughts with which he perplexed himself; and as he never made out any sort of answer to them, the question ran on for ever. That evening on which Mr. Beresford had gone to have his parting interview with Mrs. Meredith, Miss Cherry was more preoccupied than usual. She sighed over her crewels with more heaviness than could be involved in the mere difficulties of the pattern. To be sure, there was enough in that pattern to have driven any woman out of her senses. And as she puckered her brows over it, Miss Cherry sighed; but this sigh told of a something more heavy which lay upon her mind, the distracted state of which may be best described by the fact that when they were in the middle of their reading, Cara hemming on with a countenance absorbed, Miss Cherry made the communication of which she was full, all at once, without warning, breaking in, in the middle of a sentence, so that Edward’s voice mingled with hers for a line or so, before he could stop himself—
‘Your papa is thinking of going away.’
‘What?’ cried Cara and Edward in a breath.
‘Your papa,’ said Miss Cherry, with another great sigh, ‘is thinking of shutting up his house again, and going away.’