‘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.