‘No,’ he said, slowly. ‘I did not wish it; but, after all, if that seemed the best way to be good for something—to make some use of one’s life——’
He spoke to Miss Cherry, but his eyes were on Cara. If she had said anything; if she had even lifted her eyes; if she had made any sign to show that even as her brother—her husband’s brother—he could be of use to her! But Cara made no reply either by word or look. She put her hand nervously upon the book which lay on the table—the book he had been reading.
‘Oh, Cara, you must not think of that,’ said Miss Cherry; ‘we can’t be so selfish as to ask Edward to read to-night.’
‘Yes; let me read,’ he said. ‘Why should not I? I am glad to do anything after these two days. It seemed unkind to him, not to make some break in life—though I don’t know why; and there is nothing within reach to do. Let me read.’
Then Cara looked at him, with eyes like his own, suffused; her heart was melting, her mind satisfied. ‘But this is the one who does not care for me,’ she was saying to herself.
Next door there was less conversation between the elder people. Mr. Beresford tried, indeed, to take upon him the part of consoler—to talk to her and lessen her burden; but that change of all their relations did not answer. He fell silent after a while, and she dried her eyes and began to talk to him. The maid who brought up tea announced that Missis had picked up wonderful; while the other servants in the kitchen looked at each other, and shook their heads.
‘Anyhow, that’s better than the other way,’ the cook said, oracularly, ‘and we knows what we has before us—if the young gentlemen don’t find nothing to say.’
CHAPTER XXXIII.
LITTLE EMMY’S VISITORS.
Oswald had found his particular pursuit interrupted by his father’s death. He could not go that day, which happened to be the hospital day, to meet Agnes at the gate; indeed, for once, his own inclinations were, for the moment, driven out of his head; and, in the many things there were to think of, from hatbands upwards, he forgot that this was the day on which alone he could secure a little conversation with the object of his thoughts. When the recollection flashed upon him in the evening, he was more disturbed than was at all usual to his light-hearted nature. What would she think of him? that he had deserted her, after compromising her; an idea equally injurious to his pride and to his affection; for he had so much real feeling about Agnes, that he was not self-confident where she was concerned, and shrank from the idea of appearing in an unfavourable light. Ordinarily, Oswald did not suppose that anyone was likely to look at him in an unfavourable light. And then there was the fear which sprang up hastily within him that this day which he had missed might be the last hospital day. Little Emmy had been gradually getting better, and when she was discharged, what means would he have of seeing Agnes? This thought took away all the pleasure from his cigar, and made him pace back and forward in his room, in all the impatience of impotence, ready to upbraid his father with dying at such an inconvenient moment. Yesterday would not have mattered, or to-morrow—but to-day! How often, Oswald reflected, it happens like this in human affairs. Given an unoccupied day, when an anything might occur without disturbing your arrangement—when, indeed, you have no engagements, and are perfectly free and at the command of fate—nothing, even under the most favourable circumstances, happens; but let it be a moment when something very urgent is on your hands, when you have an opportunity that may never occur again, and immediately earth and heaven conspire to fill it with accidents, and to prevent its necessary use. At that hour, however, nothing could be done. It was nearly midnight, and the House, with all its swarms of children and kindly attendants, must be wrapped in the sleep of the innocent. Would Agnes, he asked himself, share that sleep, or would any troubled thoughts be in her mind touching the stranger who had so sought her society, and who had exposed her to reproof, and then left her to bear it as she might? This, it is to be feared, drove out of Oswald’s mind any feeling he might have had for his father. In any case, such feeling would have been short-lived. He had no visionary compunctions, such as Edward had, though it was Oswald, not Edward, who was supposed to be the poetical one of the brothers; but then Edward was not ‘in love,’ at least not in Oswald’s way.