‘Then why must not I go with her?’ said Miss Cherry. The old lady shrugged her shoulders, but said no more. And Cara got her way. As she was to go alone, she was packed, with all her belongings, into the carriage; nurse going with her, who was to help in the housekeeping, and take care of the young mistress of the old familiar house. The railway, it is true, would have carried them there in half the time; but Cara liked the preparation of the long, silent drive, and it pleased the elder ladies that their darling should make her solitary journey so to her father’s house. The road led through beautiful royal parks, more than one, and by glimpses of the pleasant river. It was like an old-fashioned expedition made in the days before railways, with full time for all the anticipations, all the dreams, of what was to come. Though her mind was full of natural excitement and sadness, Cara could not help feeling herself like one of the heroines of Miss Austen’s novels as she drove along. She had plenty of grave matters to think about, and was very much in earnest as to her life generally; yet, with the unconscious doubleness of youth, she could not help feeling only half herself, and half Elizabeth Bennet or Catherine Moreland going off into the world. And, indeed, without sharing the difficulties of these young ladies, Cara Beresford in her own person had no small problem before her. To fill the place of her mother, an accomplished woman, she who was only a girl; to make his home pleasant to her father; to set agoing once more something like family life. And she only seventeen, and so differently situated, she said to herself, from other girls! Had she not enough to think of? The trees and the bridges, the gleams of shining river, the great stretches of wooded country, all glided past her like things in a dream. It was they that were moving, not she. Nurse talked now and then; but nurse’s talking did not disturb Cara; she knew by long experience just how to put in convenient ayes and noes, so as to keep the good woman going. And thus she went on, her head full of thoughts. Her difficulties were more grave than those which generally fall to the lot of so young a girl—but, nevertheless, with the frivolity of youth, she could feel herself something like Catherine Moreland, hurrying along to Northanger Abbey, and all the wonders and mysteries there.
She had expected to find her father already arrived and awaiting her; but he did not come until she had been an hour or two in the house—which was half a relief and half an offence to her. She was received with a kind of worship by John and cook, to whom their young mistress, whom they had only known as a child, was a wonder and delight, and who mingled a greater degree of affectionate familiarity with the awe they ought to have felt for her than was quite consistent with Cara’s dignity. They were anxious to pet and make much of her on her arrival—cook hurrying upstairs, unnecessarily Cara thought, to show how prettily her room had been prepared; and John bringing her tea, with cake and the daintiest bread and butter, and a broad smile of pleasure on his face. Cara thought it incumbent upon her to send away the cake and bread and butter, taking only the tea, to prove beyond all power of misconception that she was no longer a child—but she was sorry for it after, when John, protesting and horrified, had carried it away downstairs again. Still, though one is slightly hungry, it is best to keep up one’s dignity, and ‘begin,’ as Aunt Cherry said, ‘as you meant to go on.’ Cara would not let herself be governed by old servants, that she had determined—and it was best to show them at once that this could not be.
Then she went up with some shrinking, feeling like a sea-bather making the first plunge, into the drawing-room, which no one had used for the last five years. She was obliged to confess that it was very pretty, notwithstanding that it frightened her. She half expected some one to rise from the chair before the first newly-lighted October fire to receive her as she went in. The little cabinets, the pretty brackets for the china, the scraps of old lace upon the velvet, the glimmer of old, dim, picturesque mirrors, the subdued yet brilliant colour in the bits of tapestry, all moved her to admiration. At Sunninghill they had, as became a lady’s house, many pretty things, but with as little idea of art as it is possible in the present day to succeed in having. Miss Cherry knew nothing of art; and it had been invented, Miss Charity thought, since her days, which was the time when people liked to have respectable solid furniture, and did not understand æsthetics. The graceful balance and harmony of this new old house gave Cara a new sensation of admiring pleasure—and yet she did not like it. It would be hard to tell what was the cause of the painful impression which prejudiced her mind—yet there it was. Her own mother—her dead mother—that visionary figure, half nurse, half goddess, which gives a quite visionary support and consolation to some motherless children, did not exist for Cara. She remembered how she had been sent off to the Hill when they went away to enjoy themselves, and how she had been sent off to the nursery when they sat talking to each other. It had been a happy home, and she had been petted and made much of by times—but this was what she recollected most clearly. And then there rose up before her, intensified by distance, that scene in her mother’s room, which she had never confided to any one. She resented this mystery that was in the past, which returned and wrapped her in a kind of mist when she came back. Why had not her parents been straightforward people, with no mysteries such, as Cara said to herself, she hated? Why was there a skeleton in the cupboard? All the things she had read in books about this had made Cara angry, and it vexed her to the heart to feel and know that there was one in her home. She had buried the secret so completely in her own bosom that it had made an aching spot all round it where it lay: like that bit of a garden which lies under a noxious shadow—like that bit of a field where a fire has been—was this place in her heart where her secret lay. She felt it, in all its force, when she came home. At the Hill there were no secrets; they lived with their windows open and their hearts, fearing no sudden appearance, no discovery. But here it seemed that the old trouble had been waiting all these years, till the girl went back who alone knew all about it, the father’s past and the mother’s past; and even the atmosphere of the long-shut-up house felt pernicious. Cara did not like to look round her as it came to be dark, lest she see some one sitting in the corner in the shadow. It seemed to her more than once that somebody moved in the distance, going out or coming in, with a sweep of a long skirt, just disappearing as she looked up. This meant, I suppose (or at least so many people would say), that her digestion was not in such good order as it should have been—but digestion was not a thing which came within Cara’s range of thought.
Her father arrived about half-past six by the Continental train. Cara stood at the door of the drawing-room, with her heart beating, wondering if she ought to run down and receive him, or if he would come to her. She heard him ask if she had come, and then he added, ‘I will go to my room at once, John. I suppose dinner is nearly ready. I did not expect to have been so late. Bring my things to my room.’
‘Shall I call Miss Cara, sir?’
‘No; never mind. I shall see her at dinner,’ he said.
And Cara instinctively closed the drawing-room door at which she had been standing, as she heard him begin to come up the stairs. She stood there, with her heart beating, in case he should call her; but he did not. Then she too went to dress, with a chilled and stifled sensation, the first sense of repulse which she had ever experienced. When she was ready, she went back again very quickly and noiselessly, leaving the door open. By-and-by her father’s step became audible coming down, and he paused when he got to the door; but then resumed and went on again, sending her word that she would find him in the dining-room. It was unreasonable, the high swelling of offence and injured pride that she felt in her heart—but there it was. Was this how he meant to use her—her, his only child—now the mistress of his house? She went down, after an interval of proud and painful reluctance, a slim, girlish creature, in her white dress, her blue eyes somewhat strained and large, more widely opened than was consistent with perfect composure. She was not beautiful, like her mother. A certain visionary youthful severity was in her looks. She was different altogether, different in every way, from the pet and darling of the ladies at the Hill. Her father had not seen her since she had leaped into long dresses and young-womanhood, and he was startled by the change. Involuntarily, as he looked at her, her mother’s description of the child Cara came back to his mind. Perhaps he was all the more quick to notice this that his eye had been caught as he paused at the drawing-room door by the last purchase he had made in bric-à-brac, the Buen Retiro cup, of which his wife had said playfully that Cara would insist that he should tell the dealer the exact value before he bought it. This strange idea brought a half smile to his face, and yet his memories were so far from smiling. The cup had been broken to bits in the careless packing of that last journey home, when bric-à-brac had lost all interest in the gathering mists of suffering and despondency—and then afterwards, in an interval of apparent improvement, had been carefully put together and placed on a shelf, high up, where its imperfections were not visible. It was the sight of it which had kept Beresford from going into the room. He would have made the effort for Cara’s sake, he thought, but that this relic, so connected with the last chapter of all, had thrust that recollection upon him. He had never entered poor Annie’s drawing-room since the week she died.
‘Well, Cara, my dear, I am glad to see you,’ he said, putting his arm round his daughter, and kissing her. ‘You must forgive me for not coming upstairs. How you have grown!—or rather, you have become a young lady all at once. I don’t know that you are much taller.’
‘No; I have not grown,’ said Cara. ‘I suppose the long dress makes a difference. It is that, perhaps.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sit down, my dear; dinner waits. I have had a long journey, and I want something. I never eat much when I am travelling. I came by Dieppe, which is a route I detest. Ah, I forgot! You have never been across the Channel, yet, Cara.’