This did not ease Cara’s mind as Miss Cherry intended, but only bewildered her. She stood for a moment wondering, till the door was closed again and her aunt disappeared. What did she mean? Difficulties to be surmounted which could make it comforting to know that there was plenty for both had not occurred to Cara’s mind, which indeed went not a step beyond the present dilemma. Could it be true? Awe, wonder, fright, contended in her mind with a suppressed sense of amusement which Cara thought wicked. Could Oswald feel so gravely, so deeply as Aunt Cherry thought? It did not seem possible; and could it be homely Cara who was the object of so serious a sentiment? Her little head seemed to go round and round as she tried to think. She dropped upon the hearthrug before the fire, kneeling, putting out her small hands to the warmth. Emotion is always chilly, and the effort of thinking upon such a wonderful subject made Cara shiver. She began to put things together, to remember the unusual warmth with which Mrs. Meredith embraced her, the strange look Edward gave her. When she remembered Edward’s look Cara grew colder than ever, and felt disposed to cry, she could not tell why. That, then, was what they all believed, not Aunt Cherry alone, who was romantic, but everybody—and poor Edward! Cara felt a sudden pang go through her heart. Why did Edward look at her so seriously, so pitifully? Was it only sympathy for what was going to happen—was it? But Oswald? Then she felt disposed to laugh. Could Oswald have anything so serious, anything so solemn in his thoughts? To be sure he had spoken mysteriously of a revelation, a revolution. Cara did not know what to think. She was so young that the idea of anyone being ‘in love’ with her gave a strange thrill of half-alarmed, half-wondering excitement to her being—was it possible that someone thought of a little girl like herself, as of Una, or Rosalind? A little laugh, frightened and faltering, broke from her unawares—and then she blushed crimson and was horrified with herself. Laugh! on such a subject! Her heart began to beat; her head turned round. What could she say to him, what must she do, if it was this that was in Oswald’s thoughts?
CHAPTER XXII.
MYSTIFIED.
‘My dear boy,’ said Mrs. Meredith, ‘I see what you are thinking of. You are young to settle in life, and about means there might be some difficulty; but to see you happy I would make any sacrifice. Nothing is so important as to make a good choice, which you have done, thank God. That goes beyond every prudential consideration. Nothing else matters in comparison.’ And, as she said this, tears stood in her soft eyes. It was a long speech for Mrs. Meredith. Oswald had come back to the drawing-room in a loose jacket, with some lingering odour of his cigar about him, to bid his mother good-night. She was standing by the mantelpiece with her candle in her hand, while he stood close by, looking down into the fire, caressing the down, scarcely developed into a moustache, on his upper lip, and thus hiding a conscious smile.
‘So you think my choice a good one, mother?’ he said, with a laugh.
Mrs. Meredith did not think him serious enough for such a serious moment; but then how useless it is to go on contending with people because they will not feel as you think proper in every emergency! After all, everyone must act according to his nature; the easy man cannot be made restless, nor the light-hearted solemn. This was Mrs. Meredith’s philosophy. But she gave a little sigh, as she had often done, to the frivolity of her elder son. It was late, and the fire was very low upon the hearth—one of the lamps had burned out—the room was dimmer than usual; in a corner Edward sat reading or pretending to read, rather glum, silent, and sad. Oswald, who had come in, in a very pleasant disposition, as indeed he generally was, smoothed his young moustache with great complacency. He saw at once that it was Cara of whom his mother was thinking, and it was not at all disagreeable to him that she should think so. He was quite willing to be taken for Cara’s lover. There was no harm in a little mystification, and the thought on the whole pleased him.
‘Ah, Oswald, I wish you were a little more serious, especially at such a moment,’ said his mother; ‘there are so many things to think of. I wish you would try to realise that it is a very, very important moment in your life.’
‘It is a very pleasant one, at least,’ he said, smiling at her—with a smile which from the time of his baby naughtiness had always subdued his mother—and he lighted her candle, and stooped with filial grace to kiss her cheek. ‘Good-night, mother, and don’t trouble about me. I am very happy,’ he said, with a half-laugh at his own cleverness in carrying on this delusion. Oswald thought a great deal of his own cleverness. It was a pleasant subject to him. He stood for some time after his mother was gone, looking down into the waning fire, and smiling to himself. He enjoyed the idea reflected from their minds that he was an accepted lover, a happy man betrothed and enjoying the first sweetness of love. He had not said so; he had done nothing, so far as he was aware, to originate such a notion; but it rather amused and flattered him now that they had of themselves quite gratuitously started it. As for Cara herself being displeased or annoyed by it, that did not occur to him. She was only just a girl, not a person of dignity, and there could be no injury to her in such a report. Besides, it was not his doing; he was noway to blame. Poor dear little Cara! if it did come to that, a man was not much to be pitied who had Cara to fall back upon at the last.
Thus he stood musing, with that conscious smile on his face, now and then casting a glance at himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece. He was not thinking of his brother, who sat behind with the same book in his hands that he had been pretending to read all the evening. Edward rose when his mother was gone, and came up to the fire. He was no master of words befitting the occasion; he wanted to say something, and he did not know what to say. His elder brother, the most popular of the two—he who was always a little in advance of Edward in everything, admired and beloved and thought of as Edward had never been—how was the younger, less brilliant, less considered brother to say anything to him that bore the character of advice? And yet Edward’s heart ached to do so; to tell the truth, his heart ached for more than this. It had seemed to him that Cara confided in himself, believed in his affectionate sympathy more than she did in Oswald’s; and to see Oswald in the triumphant position of avowed lover, as they all thought him to be, was gall and bitterness to the poor young fellow, in whose heart for all these years a warm recollection of Cara had been smouldering. He was the poor man whose ewelamb his rich brother had taken, and the pang of surprised distress in his soul was all the bitterer for that consciousness which never quite left his mind, that Oswald was always the one preferred. But Edward, though he felt this, was not of an envious nature, and was rather sad for himself than resentful of his brother’s happiness. He went up to him, dragged by his tender heart much against the resistance of his will, feeling that he too must say something. He laid his hand, which quivered a little with suppressed agitation, on Oswald’s shoulder.
‘I don’t know what to say to you, old fellow,’ he said, with an attempt at an easy tone. ‘I needn’t wish you happiness, for you’ve got it——’