‘You!’ Cara said, with (he thought) a gleam of annoyance. Roger jumped up, wild with rage and jealousy, but then he sat down again, which was certainly the best thing for him to do.
CHAPTER XVI.
SUNDAY EVENING.
To sit down in your morning clothes, painfully conscious of a blue tie with a pin it, at a decorous dinner-table with three men in correct evening dress, and two ladies—not indeed bare-shouldered according to ancient use, but yet arrayed in all the niceties of that demi-toilette which is the despair of the vulgar—is in itself no small trial to a sensitive and thin-skinned youth. Roger Burchell had not been able to resist the spell which Mrs. Meredith exercised upon everybody who came near her, nor had he been able to count the cost of that evening spent in Cara’s society, and to strike a balance between the pain it would cause him and the pleasure to be procured from it. He was not calm enough to do this. He had not thought of any pain involved, but snatched at the chance of carrying out his hopes and spending the evening in her society without thinking of any results. To be sure, instinctive dislike and repugnance had moved him at the first sight of the two young men. What did they want here? What had Cara to do with them? But that was all; and he had not realised how hard it would be to sit by and see these natural enemies so much nearer and more intimate with Cara than himself, linked to her by ties even of older friendship than he could boast of, poor fellow. All this was unthought-of misery. It was true that after the Merediths went away in the short interval before dinner he had half-an-hour with Cara by herself—but she asked him questions about his aunt and about his little sisters, showing no interest in himself, and at last begged him to excuse her, as she must get ready for dinner. Even then he did not know how dark his fate was to be; but he could not get ready for dinner. He looked at himself in the glass, and at his blue tie which he had thought so well of in the morning. The best that anyone could say for poor Roger was that he looked like a respectable mechanic in his Sunday costume, and a consciousness of this fact impressed itself upon his own mind for the first time. Yes—the long glass in the glimmering half-lighted drawing-room showed him his own image as no glass at home had ever done—like an engineer in his Sunday clothes, one of his practical ‘mates’ in the workshop, who showed him how to make boilers and screws, and asked him for beer—exactly like one of them. While this latter thought was in his mind, Cara came softly into the room in her white dress, the most perfect dainty creature, tearing poor Roger’s heart in two. How unlike she was to himself in his blue tie! he felt as if he could never leave her, and yet wished himself with his aunt in Notting Hill; for what had he to do here?
The dinner was not, perhaps, the abundant meal which Roger had been used to see on occasions when there was company. There was no huge joint, no pair of visible fowls, with a tongue placed between them, which was his mother’s grand dish, but a succession of small matters handed round, which Roger tried to despise. He tried hard to despise everything—the over-dress (as he felt it to be), the flowers on the dainty table, the ready flow of talk. How could these fellows find so much to say? He could have talked to Cara (perhaps) had they been alone together; but to chatter as these fellows did—he could as soon fly, he said to himself. There were no decorous silences, no long pauses, such as he had been used to, but a constant, easy flow of this, which, no doubt, they called conversation! It could not be said that he himself added much to it. Now and then, after considerable pondering, he would fire off a remark, but this seldom happened till after the subject had been dismissed by the others, and when it required a polite effort on their parts to make out what he meant; and he discovered this with a hot blush of shame as soon as his little speech was made. The only comfort he had was that Cara did not talk very much either; but then she listened with pleased looks while the Meredith family chattered. How they all chattered, mother and sons! Roger did not think they could be quite—he did not know what word to use—not quite—. Perfectly respectable people did not, so far as he knew, indulge in such streams of conversation. He felt there was something wrong in so much talk.
And when they went upstairs after dinner it was still worse. Mr. Beresford and the others did not sit over their wine, which Roger would have thought the best thing possible had he found themselves satisfactory; but as this was not the case, and he was sure that the only object of the young Merediths in not staying below and drinking themselves stupid was anxiety to be with Cara, too, he took their quick move as another sign of depravity. It was new-fashioned, it was unEnglish, it was almost wicked. He followed upstairs with a protest in his soul. Cara and Mrs. Meredith were sitting together over the fire. They drew a little apart as the others came in, and Mr. Beresford placed himself by the elder lady, and Oswald by Cara. So! Roger said to himself, that was the habitual way in which they arranged themselves—nothing could be more clear; flirtation, nothing but flirtation, between the old people and between the young people. It was more than wrong, it was monstrous. He supposed such things did happen in London society, where everything that was bad happened; but to think of poor little, innocent Cara being thrown into the midst of such a set of people! Roger could scarcely command his feelings. After standing about behind-backs for a time with Edward, who, to tell the truth, seemed a little ‘out of it’ too, Roger’s sense of horror forced him forward to the front of the fire, where he suddenly placed himself with that temerity of enraged shyness which is bolder than assurance. At all events, there could be no particular conversation between Oswald and Cara while he stood there.
This made a little break in the low-voiced talk. Mrs. Meredith, who sat on the other side in a low chair, with a little table by her elbow, on which stood a lamp, turned from Mr. Beresford to look at him. He could not easily think ill of this soft-smiling lady; but he made an effort, and succeeded even in this.
‘Are you at the University, Mr. Burchell?’ she said, smiling upon him.
There was some work lying upon her little table. He jumped at this evidence of Sabbath-breaking and profanity with inward satisfaction as a sign that she must be bad too.
‘No,’ he said, with unnecessary explanatoriness, ‘I am not so lucky. I have got my own way to make in the world. I have to start work at once. I was afraid you would give me credit for more than I deserved. My brother’s at Cambridge, for he is going into the Church; but as for me, I’ve got my own way to make in the world.’