‘It is not that,’ said Cara, with tears in her voice. What a break was this of the calm happiness of the evening, the pleasure of being together, the charm of the poetry, all those ‘influences of soul and sense’ that had been stealing into the girl’s innocent soul and transforming her unawares! No doubt she might have outlived it all and learnt to look back upon that first shock with a smile—but nevertheless it was the first shock, and at the moment it was overwhelming. She looked at Edward again amazed, appealing to him, asking his sympathy; ought he to thrust in Oswald between them once more? Between love and honour the young man did not know what to do or say. His heart was wrung with the thought of parting, but it was not to him the same shock and unforeseen, unbelievable calamity—under which she turned appealing to earth and heaven.
‘And I am going to India,’ he said, with a kind of despairing smile and quivering lips.
The elder pair on the other side of the wall were not moved by these ineffable visionary pangs. They did not stand aghast at the strange thought that their happiness was being interfered with, that heaven and earth had ceased to favour them—nor did they think that everything was over and life must come to a standstill. Their feelings were less full of the rapture of anguish; yet perhaps the heavy oppression of pain that troubled them was more bitter in its way. They knew very well that life would go on just as before, and nothing dreadful happen. They would only miss each other—miss the kind look and kind word, and simple daily consolation and quiet confidence each in the other. Nobody else could give them that rest and mutual support which they were thus forced to give up without cause. It was a trouble much less to be understood by the common eye, and appealing a great deal less to the heart than those pangs of youth which we have all felt more or less, and can all sympathise with—but it was not a less real trouble. After the interval of silence which neither of them broke, because neither of them had anything to say, James Beresford sank upon his knees and took her hands into his—not in any attitude of sentimental devotion, but only to approach her as she sat there. They looked at each other through tears which to each half blurred the kind countenance which was the friendliest on earth. Then he kissed the hands he held one after the other. ‘God bless you,’ she sobbed, her tears falling upon his sleeve. Why was it? Why was it? yet it had to be. And then they parted; he going back to his gloomy library, she sitting still where he had left her in her lonely drawing-room, wiping away the tears, few but bitter, which this unlooked-for parting had brought to her eyes. They would not complain nor resist—nor even say what the separation cost them—but the young ones would cry out to heaven and earth, sure at least of pity, and perhaps of succour. That made all the difference. While her father came in with his latch-key, and shut his door, shutting himself up with his thoughts, Cara was lifting the mute anguish of her sweet eyes to Edward, disturbing his very soul, poor fellow, with the question, whether it was only his sympathy she asked as a spectator of her misery in parting with his brother, whether it was—— When he said that about going to India, with that tremulous smile and attempt to mock at his own pain, the tears fell suddenly in a little shower, and a sob came from Cara’s oppressed bosom. For whom? Such distracting tumults of excitement do not rise in the maturer being—he was almost out of himself with wonder and anxiety, and hope and dread, dismay and terror. Was it for Oswald? Was it only his sympathy she asked for—was it but a pang of sisterly pity intensified by her own suffering, that she gave to him?
The same roof, divided only by a partition, stretched over all those agitated souls, old and young. The only quite light heart it covered was that of Oswald, who came in rather late from a merry party, and lingered still later, smoking his cigar, and thinking what was the next step to be taken in his pursuit of that pretty frightened Agnes, who was no doubt suffering for his sake. It did not hurt Oswald to think that she was suffering for him—rather it brought a smile on his face, and a pleasurable sensation. He had got a hold on her which nothing else could have given him. When they met again he would have a right to inquire into it, to give her his tender sympathy. After all, a scolding from Sister Mary Jane was not very tragical suffering. On the score of that it might be permitted to him to say a great many things that otherwise he could not have said, to suggest conclusions more momentous. And he did not think Agnes would be hard to move. He believed that she would pardon him, and not take away her favour from him—rather perhaps, even in her own despite, look upon him with eyes more kind. Oswald smoked at least two cigars in her honour, wondering if perhaps she was crying over the catastrophe of the evening, and feeling assured that there would be sweetness in her tears. He was apt to be very sure of the favour of all he cared to please, and that everything would go well with him. And as for the troubles that were under the same roof with him, he knew nothing of them, and would not have thought much had he known. He would have laughed—for of course each of these commotions had its ludicrous side, and Oswald would have made fun of them quite successfully. But they were much less important anyhow than his own preoccupations—full of which, with confidence in his heart, and a smile on his lips, he went cheerfully upstairs, past the door within which his mother lay awake in the dark, thinking over all her life, which had not been, in external circumstances, a very bright one; and that which was closed upon Edward’s conflict and confusion. Neither conflict nor confusion was in the mind of Oswald as he went smiling upstairs with his candle. All was likely to turn out well for him at least, whatever might happen to the rest of the world.
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.’