THE YOUNG PEOPLE.
Cara’s second evening at home was passed much more happily than the
first, thanks to Mrs. Meredith, and her spirits rose in consequence; but
next morning there ensued a fall, as was natural, in her spiritual
barometer. She went to the window in the drawing-room when she was all
alone, and gazed wistfully at as much as she could see of the step and
entrance of the house next door. Did they mean her to ‘run in
half-a-dozen times a day,’ as Mrs. Meredith had said? Cara had been
brought up in her aunt’s old-fashioned notions, with strenuous
injunctions not ‘to make herself cheap,’ and to cultivate ‘a proper
pride.’ She had often been told that running into sudden intimacy was
foolish, and that a girl should be rather shy than eager about overtures
of ordinary friendship. All these things restrained her, and her own
disposition which favoured all reserves. But she could not help going to
the window and looking out wistfully. Only a wall between them! and how
much more cheerful it was on the other side of that wall. Her heart beat
as she saw Oswald come out, not because it was Oswald--on the whole she
would have preferred his mother; but solitude ceased to be solitude when
friendly figures thus appear, even outside. Oswald glanced up and saw
her. He took off his hat--he paused--finally, he turned and came up the
steps just underneath where she was standing. In another moment he came
in, his hat in his hand, his face full of brightness of the morning.
Nurse showed him in with a sort of affectionate enthusiasm. ‘Here is Mr.
Oswald, Miss Cara, come to see you.’
The women servants were all the slaves of the handsome young fellow.
Wherever he went he had that part of the community on his side.
‘I came to see that you are not the worse for your dull dinner last
evening,’ he said. ‘It used to be etiquette to ask for one’s partner at
a ball; how much more after a domestic evening. Have you a headache?
were you very much bored? It is for my interest to know, that I may be
able to make out whether you will come again.’
‘Were _you_ bored that you ask me?’ said Cara. ‘I was very happy.’
‘And, thanks to you, _I_ was very happy,’ he said. ‘Clearly four are
better company than three. Your father and my mother have their own kind
of talking. Why, I have not been in this room since I was a child; how
much handsomer it is than ours! Come, Cara, tell me all about the
pictures and the china. Of course you must be a little connoisseur.
Should one say connoisseuse? I never know. _Virtuosa_, that is a
prettier word, and we are all in the way of the cardinal virtues here.’
‘But I am not at all a _virtuosa_. I don’t know. I was a child, too,
when I used to be at home, and I suppose it hurts papa to come into
this room. He has never been here since I came; never at all, I think,
since mamma died.’
‘Does he leave you by yourself all the evening? what a shame!’ said
Oswald. ‘Is he so full of sentiment as that? One never knows people.
Come, Cara, if that is the case, it is clear that I must spend the
evenings with you.’
Cara laughed frankly at the suggestion. She did not understand what he
meant by a slight emphasis upon the pronouns, which seemed to point out
some balance of duties. She said, ‘I have only been here for two
evenings. The first was very dull. I had nothing to read but that book,
and I was not happy. The second was last night. Oh, I am not accustomed
to much company. I can be quite happy by myself, when I am used to
things.’
‘That means you don’t want me,’ said Oswald; ‘but I shall come all the
same. What is the book about? You don’t mean to say you understand that!
What is unconscious cerebration, Cara? Good heavens! how rash I have
been. Are you an F.R.S. already, like the rest of your father’s
friends?’
‘I don’t know what it means,’ said Cara, ‘no more than I know about the
china. But I read a chapter that first night; it was always something.
You see there are very few books in this room. They have been taken
away, I suppose. Nobody, except mamma, has ever lived here.’
She gave a little shiver as she spoke, and looked wistfully round. Even
in the morning, with the sunshine coming in, how still it was! Oswald
thought he would like to break the china, and make a human noise, over
the head of the father who was sitting below, making believe to think so
much of the memory of his dead wife, and neglecting his living child.
The young man had a grudge against the elder one, which gave an edge to
his indignation.
‘You shall have books,’ he said, ‘and company too, if you will have me,
Cara: that will bring them to their senses,’ he added to himself in a
half-laughing, half-angry undertone.
What did he mean? Cara had no idea. She laughed too, with a little
colour starting to her face, wondering what Aunt Charity would think if
she knew that Oswald meant to spend his evenings with her. Cara herself
did not see any harm in it, though she felt it was a joke, and could not
be.
‘You were going out,’ she said, ‘when you saw me at the window. Had you
anything to do? for if you had you must not stay and waste your time
with me.’
‘Why should I have anything to do?’
‘I thought young men had,’ said Cara. ‘Of course I don’t know very much
about them. I know only the Burchells _well_; they are never allowed to
come and talk in the morning. If it is Reginald, he always says he ought
to be reading; and Roger, he is of course at work, you know.’
‘I don’t know in the least,’ said Oswald; ‘but I should like to learn.
What does this revelation of Rogers and Reginalds mean? I never supposed
there were any such persons. I thought that Edward and myself were about
the limit of friendship allowed to little Cara, and here is a clan, a
tribe. I forewarn you at once that I put myself in opposition to your
Reginalds and Rogers. I dislike the gentlemen. I am glad to hear that
they have no time to talk in the mornings. I, for my part, have plenty
of time.’
‘Oh, you are not likely to know them,’ said Cara, laughing, ‘unless,
indeed, Roger comes on Sundays, as he said. They are probably not so
rich as you are. Their father is a clergyman, and they have to work. I
should like that myself better than doing nothing.’
‘That means,’ said Oswald, with great show of savagery, setting his
teeth, ‘that you prefer the said Roger, who must not talk o’ mornings,
to me, presumably not required to work? Know, then, young lady, that I
have as much need to work as your Roger; more, for I mean to be
somebody. If I go in for the bar it is with the intention of being Lord
Chancellor; and that wants work--work! such as would take the very
breath away from your clergyman’s sons, who probably intend to be mere
clergymen, and drop into a fat living.’
‘Roger is an engineer,’ said Cara; ‘he is at the College; he walks about
with chains, measuring. I don’t know what is the good of it, but I
suppose it is of some good. There are so many things,’ she added, with a
sigh, ‘that one is obliged to take for granted. Some day, I suppose, he
will have bridges and lighthouses to make. That one can understand--that
would be worth doing.’
‘I hate Roger!’ said Oswald. ‘I shall never believe in any lighthouses
of his making; there will be a flaw in them. Do you remember the
Eddystone, which came down ever so often? Roger’s will tumble down. I
know it. And when you have seen it topple over into the sea you shall
come and see me tranquilly seated on the woolsack, and recant all your
errors.’
Upon which they both laughed--not that there was much wit in the
suggestion, but they were both young, and the one lighted up the other
with gay gleams of possible mirth.
‘However,’ said Oswald, ‘that we may not throw that comparison to too
remote a period, where do you think I was going? Talk of me as an idler,
if you please. Does this look like idling?’ He took from his pocket a
little roll of paper, carefully folded, and breaking open the cover
showed her a number of MS. pages, fairly copied out in graduated lines.
Cara’s face grew crimson with sudden excitement.
‘_Poetry!_’ she said; but capital letters would scarcely convey all she
meant. ‘Oswald, are you a poet?’
He laughed again, which jarred upon her feelings, for poetry (she felt)
was not a thing to laugh at. ‘I write verses,’ he said; ‘that is
idling--most people call it so, Cara, as well as you.’
‘But I would _never_ call it so! Oh, Oswald, if there is anything in the
world I care for---- Read me some, will you? Oh, do read me something.
There is nothing,’ cried Cara, her lips trembling, her eyes expanding,
her whole figure swelling with a sigh of feeling, ‘nothing I care for so
much. I would rather know a poet than a king!’
Upon this Oswald laughed again, and looked at her with kind admiration.
His eyes glowed, but with a brotherly light. ‘You are a little
enthusiast,’ he said. ‘I called you _virtuosa_, and you are one in the
old-fashioned sense, for that is wider than bric-à-brac. Yes; I
sometimes think I might be a poet if I had anyone to inspire me, to keep
me away from petty things. I am my mother’s son, Cara. I like to please
everybody, and that is not in favour of the highest pursuits. I want a
Muse. What if you were born to be my Muse? You shall see some of the
things that are printed,’ he added; ‘not these. I am more sure of them
when they have attained the reality of print.’
‘Then they are printed?’ Cara’s eyes grew bigger and bigger, her
interest grew to the height of enthusiasm. ‘How proud your mother must
be, Oswald! I wonder she did not tell me. Does Edward write, too?’
‘Edward!’ cried the other with disdain; ‘a clodhopper; a plodding,
steady, respectable fellow, who has passed for the Civil Service. Poetry
would be more sadly in his way than it is in mine. Oh, yes, it is sadly
in mine. My mother does not know much; but instead of being
enthusiastic she is annoyed with what she does know. That is the kind of
thing one has to meet with in this world,’ he said, with a sigh over his
own troubles. ‘Sometimes there is one like you--one more generous, more
capable of appreciating the things that do not pay--with some people the
things that pay are everything. And poetry does not pay, Cara.’
‘I don’t like you even to say so.’
‘Thanks for caring what I say; you have an eye for the ideal. I should
like to be set on a pedestal, and to have something better expected from
me. That is how men are made, Cara. To know that someone--a creature
like yourself--expects something, thinks us capable of something. I am
talking sentiment,’ he said, with a laugh; ‘decidedly you are the Muse I
am looking for. On a good pedestal, with plenty of white muslin, there
is not a Greek of them all would come up to you.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Oswald. Now you are laughing at me.’
‘Well, let us laugh,’ he said, putting his papers into his pocket again.
‘Are you coming to my mother’s reception this afternoon? I hear you were
there yesterday. What do you think of it? Was old Somerville there with
his wig? He is the guardian angel; he comes to see that we all go on as
we ought, and that no one goes too far. He does not approve of me. He
writes to India about me that I will never be of much use in the world.’
‘To India.’
‘Yes; all the information about us goes out there. Edward gives
satisfaction, but not the rest of us. It is not easy to please people so
far off who have not you to judge, but only your actions set down in
black and white. Well, I suppose I must go now--my actions don’t tell
for much: “Went into the house next door, and got a great deal of good
from little Cara.” That would not count, you see; not even if I put
down, “Cheered up little Cara, who was mopish.” Might I say that?’
‘Yes, indeed; you have cheered me up very much,’ said Cara, giving him
her hand. Oswald stooped over her a moment, and the girl thought he was
going to kiss her, which made her retreat a step backwards, her
countenance flaming, and all the shy dignity and quick wrath of her age
stirred into movement. But he only laughed and squeezed her hand, and
ran downstairs, his feet ringing young and light through the vacant
house. Cara would have gone to the window and looked after him but for
that--was it a threatening of a visionary kiss? How silly she was! Of
course he did not mean anything of the kind. If he did, it was just as
if she had been his sister, and Cara felt that her momentary alarm
showed her own silliness, a girl that had never been used to anything.
How much an only child lost by being an only child, she reflected
gravely, sitting down after he left her by the fire. How pleasant it
would have been to have a brother like Oswald. And if he should be a
poet! But this excited Cara more when he was talking to her than after
he was gone. He did not fall in with her ideas of the poet, who was a
being of angelic type to her imagination, not a youth with laughter
glancing from his eyes.
That evening Cara sat solitary after dinner, the pretty silver lamp
lighted, with its white moon-orb of light upon the table by her; the
fire burning just bright enough for company, for it still was not cold.
She had said, timidly, ‘Shall you come upstairs this evening, papa?’ and
had received a mildly evasive answer, and she thought about nine o’clock
that she heard the hall door shut, just as John came into the room with
tea. She thought the man looked at her compassionately, but she would
not question him. The room looked very pretty in the fire, light and
lamplight, with the little tray gleaming in all its brightness of china
and silver, and the little white figure seated by the fire; but it was
very lonely. She took up a book a little more interesting than the one
which had been her first resource, but presently let it drop on her knee
wondering and asking herself would Oswald come? Perhaps he had
forgotten; perhaps he had noticed her shrink when he went away, and,
meaning nothing by his gesture, did not know why she had retreated from
him--perhaps----. But who could tell what might have stopped him? A boy
was not like a girl--he might have been asked somewhere. He might have
gone to the theatre. Perhaps he had a club, and was there among his
friends. All this passed through her head as she sat with the book in
her hand, holding it open on her knee. Then she began to read, and
forgot for the minute; then suddenly the book dropped again, and she
thought, with a sort of childish longing, of what might be going on next
door, just on the other side of the wall, where everything was sure to
be so cheerful. If she could only pierce that unkindly wall, and see
through! That made her think of Pyramus and Thisbe, and she smiled, but
soon grew grave again. Was this how she was to go on living--lonely all
the evening through, her father seeking society somewhere else, she
could not tell where. She thought of the drawing-room at the Hill, and
her eyes grew wet; how they would miss her there! and here nobody wanted
Cara. Her father, perhaps, might think it right that his child should
live under his roof; but that was all he cared apparently; and was it to
be always thus, and never change? At seventeen it is so natural to think
that everything that is, is unalterable and will never change. Then
Cara, with a gulp, and a determination to be as happy as she could in
the terrible circumstances, and above all, to shun Oswald, who had not
kept his word, opened her book again, and this time got into the story,
which had been prefaced by various interludes of philosophising, and
remembered no more till nurse came to inquire if she did not mean to go
to bed to-night. So the evening did not hang so heavy on her hands as
she thought.
Next day Oswald came again, and told her of a forgotten engagement which
he had been obliged to keep; and they chatted gaily as before; and he
brought her some poems, printed in a magazine, which sounded beautiful
when he read them, to her great delight, but did not seem so beautiful
when she read them over herself, as she begged she might be allowed to
do. After this there was a great deal of intercourse between the two
houses, and Cara’s life grew brighter. Now and then, it was true, she
would be left to spend an evening alone; but she got other friends, and
went to some parties with Mrs. Meredith, Oswald attending them. He was
always about; he came and had long private talks with her, reading his
verses and appealing to her sympathies and counsel; he walked with her
when she went out with his mother; he was always by her side wherever
they went. ‘I know Edward will cut me out when he comes, so I must make
the running now,’ he said often, and Cara no longer wondered what making
the running meant. She got so used to his presence that it seemed
strange when he was not there.
‘It’s easy to see what that will end in,’ said Nurse to John and Cook in
the kitchen.
‘I wish as one could see what the other would end in,’ Cook replied.
But the household watched the two young people with proud delight, going
to the window to look at them when they went out, and rejoicing over the
handsome couple.
‘I always said as our Miss Cara was one as would settle directly,’ her
faithful attendant said. ‘Seventeen! it’s too young, that is, for
anything.’
‘But he haven’t got a penny,’ said Cook, who was more prudent, ‘and he
don’t do nothing. I’d like a man as could work for me, if I was Miss
Cara.’
‘I’d like him better if he hadn’t no call to work,’ said Nurse, with
true patrician feeling.
But the chief parties knew nothing of these remarks. They were very
cheerful and full of mutual confidences. Oswald confiding to Cara his
doubts and difficulties, his aspirations (which were chiefly in verse)
and light-hearted anticipations, not going so far as to be called hopes,
of sitting one day on the woolsack. Cara, though she had a great respect
for Oswald, did not think much about the woolsack. But it was
astonishing how she got used to him, how she liked him, and,
notwithstanding the occasional dull evenings, how much more variety
seemed to have come into her life. Sometimes Mrs. Meredith herself would
talk to the girl about her son.
‘If he would work more steadily I should be happier, Cara,’ she would
say; ‘and perhaps if he had a strong inducement he would work. He is so
clever, and able to do what he likes.’
Cara did not know about this; but she liked his lively company. They
were the best of friends; they talked to each other of every foolish
thing that comes into the heads of young people; but she had a vague
idea that he did not talk to her as the others thought he did. He was
not like Roger even; though Roger was no more like him than night was
like day. Roger was--different. She could not have told how, and nobody
knew of this difference nor spoke to her on the subject. And thus life
floated on very pleasantly, with more excitement than had existed in
that placid schoolgirl life at the Hill. Miss Cherry came two or three
times on a day’s visit to her darling, and observed what was going on
and was puzzled; but Aunt Charity had her first attack of bronchitis
that year, and it was winter weather, not good for travelling.
‘Yes, I think she’s happy on the whole,’ was Miss Cherry’s report to the
elder aunt when she went home--which, as may be supposed, was not a
clear enough deliverance for Aunt Charity.
‘Is the young man in love with her?’ said the old lady; ‘is she in love
with him? James should not be such a fool as to let them be constantly
together, unless it is a match that would please him.’
‘James is not thinking of anything of the kind,’ said Miss Cherry,
impatiently. ‘James is taken up with his own affairs, and he thinks Cara
a little girl still.’
‘To be sure he does--that is where men always go wrong,’ said Aunt
Charity, ‘and James will always be a fool to the end of the chapter.’
Cherry winced at this, for she was the model of a good sister, and never
had seen any man who was so much her ideal as James--though in some
things he was foolish, she was obliged to allow. Perhaps, as Aunt
Charity was ill, and the house, as it were, shut up and given over to
invalidism for the winter, it was as well that Cara should be away,
getting some enjoyment of her young life. Had she been at home it would
have been dull for her, for Miss Cherry was in almost constant
attendance upon the old lady. Thus things had turned out very well, as
they so often do, even when they look least promising. Had Cara been at
the Hill, Miss Cherry would not have been so free to devote herself to
Aunt Charity, and both the child and the old lady would have suffered.
True, Miss Cherry’s own life might have had a little additional
brightness, but who thought of that? She did not herself, and you may be
sure no one else did. It was altogether a fortunate arrangement, as
things had turned out, and as for Cara, why, was there not Providence to
watch over her, if her father was remiss? Miss Cherry felt that there
was something like infidelity in the anxious desire she felt sometimes
to go and help Providence in this delicate task.