‘When does your papa come in? Is he not late to-night?’ she said at last, when her endurance had nearly reached its limits. She would have suffered any hardship for her darling, but the habits of her early innocent country life were strong upon her, and to stay up till midnight seemed almost immoral to Miss Cherry; still more immoral it seemed to her, however, to go to bed, without bidding your host good-night.
‘I think he is always late; but no one waits up for him,’ said Cara. ‘I never see him after dinner. Have I tired you out talking? I go to bed early,’ said the little girl, with a forlorn look, ‘because it is so dull; but I am so happy to-night. Oh, I wish you would never go away any more.’
‘My darling, I thought you had a great deal better company than me.’
‘Ah, but you were mistaken, you see. Sometimes I have very nice company though, when we dine with the Merediths. She asks us every week, and sometimes I go out to parties with her, which are pleasant. But it is very dull the other nights,’ said Cara, with unconscious pathos; ‘and the only thing I can do to amuse myself is to go to bed.’
She laughed, but it was not a cheerful laugh. And was it possible that on the other side of the partition her father was sitting, whose poor little daughter had nothing better to do to amuse herself than to go to bed? What could James mean by such conduct? It was very hard for Cherry to be just in such strange circumstances, and not to blame, as most people would have done, the woman who was concerned. Visions of ill-names, such as ‘elderly siren,’ which innocent Miss Cherry had read in the papers, drifted into her simple brain in spite of herself. Why did she let him do it? Why did she encourage him to go to her? What were they talking about? Miss Cherry, though she was so sleepy, could not really rest, even after she went to bed, till she heard once more that dull sound through the house of the great door shutting. The houses in the Square were well built for London houses, and the corresponding sounds in the house next door, when the visitor departed, did not reach the watcher’s ears. But it was with some anxiety in her thoughts that Miss Cherry wondered how the sons liked it, and what they thought of their mother’s constant visitor: and she a married woman: and James still making believe to feel his wife’s loss so deeply that he could not enter his drawing-room without pain! Miss Cherry blushed in the darkness, throwing a warm reflection upon the pillow, if there had been any light to show it, over this thought.
CHAPTER XX.
THE PERUGINO.
Oswald Meredith had a new direction given to his thoughts. He was not, as may be easily divined, so clever as Cara gave him credit for being, nor, indeed, as his family supposed, who knew him better than Cara did; but he was full of fancy and a kind of gay, half-intellectual life which might be called poetic so far as it went. His head was full of the poets, if not of poetry; and a certain joyous consciousness of existence and of well-being which made his own pursuits and enjoyments beautiful and important to him, was in all he did and said. He was not so much selfish as self-occupied, feeling a kind of glory and radiance about his youth, and conscious freedom and conscious talents which elated him, without any absolute vanity or self-love. Naturally all the people who were equally self-occupied, or whose temperaments ran counter to Oswald’s, took it for granted that he was vain and selfish; and those who loved him best were often impatient with him for this happy contentment, which made him pleased with his own aimless ways, and indifferent to everything that demanded any exertion which would interfere with the smooth current of his enjoyable and enjoying life. For himself he was too good-natured to criticise or find fault with anyone—having no ideal himself to derange his satisfaction with his own circumstances and behaviour, he had no ideal for others, and was quite content that they, too, should enjoy themselves as they pleased, and find each for himself the primrose paths which suited him best; but he did not inquire into the primrose paths of others. He was so pleased with his own, so ready to tell everybody how delightful it was, how he enjoyed it, what pretty fancies it abounded in, and pleasant intercourse, and merry sunshiny ways. For Edward, who worked, he had the kindest toleration, as for an odd fellow who found his pleasure that way; and his mother, who sympathised with everybody, he regarded also with half-laughing, satisfied eyes as one whose peculiar inclinations laid her open to a charge of ‘humbug,’ which, perhaps, was not quite without foundation. Let everybody follow their own way: that was the way in which, of course, they found most pleasure, he said to himself, and in the lightness of his heart had no idea of any other rule. Cara had brought in a new and very pleasant element into his life; he liked to go to her and tell her what he was doing and receive that ready sympathy which was to him something like the perfume of flowers—a thing for which it was quite unnecessary to make any return, but which was delightful to receive, and which added a something more exquisite and delicate to the very atmosphere in which this young demi-god lived, caressed by gods and men. What more could he do for Cara or anyone but communicate his own satisfaction to her, make her a sharer in the pleasure he felt in himself and his life? He was ‘very fond’ of Cara. He would not, for a moment, have permitted anyone to take her companionship and sympathy from him. To tell Cara, was not that the first thing that occurred to him when anything happened, any new gratification or success? As for hearing from her in return what thoughts came into her little head, what happened in her quiet life—that did not occur to Oswald. To talk of himself seemed so much more natural and so much more interesting, to Cara as well as to himself. Was it not really so? He was a man, three-and-twenty, at the very most triumphant period of life, free to go anywhere he pleased, to do anything he liked, strong, clever, handsome, sufficiently rich. Could any circumstances be more delightful, more satisfactory? No woman, let alone a little girl, without freedom of action, could be so well off, so consciously at the ‘high top-gallant’ of mortal pleasantness. The sense of this suffused, so to speak, his whole being. It was not selfishness, any more than happiness is selfishness; there was even a kind of spontaneous unconscious gratitude in it for all the pleasant things in his lot.
It was with this feeling strong in his mind that he had walked along the streets the day of the accident to the little schoolgirl. It had been just his luck to meet with a true Perugino face. Little processions of school-children are the commonest things in the world, but you might have passed a hundred of them before you came upon anything like the soft Umbrian glow of that complexion, that tender roundness of the soft form, the devout, sweet eyes. The incident itself, it was true, was something of a break upon the general felicity; but Oswald was able to hope that the little girl whom he had carried with the utmost care and kindness to the hospital, with a sympathetic pallor on his handsome face, would turn out to be not so much hurt, or at least would mend rapidly and be none the worse. He felt very sorry for the poor little thing, yet felt there was a certain luck in the accident, for otherwise he could only have looked at the Perugino, not spoken to her as he did now. He found out the name of the house to which she belonged, and asked permission of the Sister who had been in charge of the procession to go and inquire for the little sufferer. ‘Alas, I am afraid for a long time inquiries must be made at the hospital,’ she said, but gave him her name, Sister Mary Jane, with natural pleasure in the kindness of so handsome a young man, and one who looked so comme il faut, so thoroughly a gentleman. It is just as good in an ugly and common person to be kind, but somehow nobody thinks so, and Oswald’s anxiety to hear of the child’s progress seemed exceptional virtue in the mind even of the good Sister. ‘Never say the upper classes are indifferent to other people’s welfare,’ said Sister Mary Jane. ‘I don’t believe a working man could have shown half so much feeling.’ And young Agnes, the teacher, said nothing against this, but admired secretly and wondered why he had looked at her so, and whether by any chance they might ever meet again. Oswald, for his part, went away from the hospital with his head full of that new ‘poem’ which he had begun on the spot even before the rapprochement of the accident—
From old Pietro’s canvas freshly sprung,
Fair face!——