Mrs. Oliphant

“ It ought to be something pure, something noble, something to make your heart rise——’
‘Why, Cara!’ cried Oswald, aghast, yet half-laughing. ‘Poetry and stuff! is it you who are speaking, or someone else? This is quite a new outbreak for you.’
‘I did not mean that,’ cried Cara, with the hot blush of youthful shame; ‘still, if poetry does not make you more—a man—does not make you stronger and better, and more noble and true——’
‘My dear little girl! Poetry is not morals and the Ten Commandments. You have got confused in your reasonings. Come, never mind scolding me, Cara. ”

“ Oswald, have you, Miss Cara, dear? He has grown up that handsome you would not know him. He was always a fine boy; but now—I don’t know as I’ve ever seen a nicer-looking young man.’
‘I will have my plain white frock, please, nurse—the one I wore last night,’ said Cara, absolutely unaware of any connection that could exist between Oswald Meredith’s good looks and her second-best evening dress—a dress that might do for a small dance, as Aunt Cherry had impressed upon her. It never occurred to the girl that her own simple beauty could be heightened by this frock or that. ”

“ He can and He will—or, oh, Cara! we hope He will,’ cried Miss Cherry, with tears. ‘And you can help by always praying, and always being cheerful. Look at your poor papa, how he smiles and jokes, and his heart is breaking all the time.’
‘His heart is breaking!’ said Cara, under her breath.
‘But if we all do what we can, and are cheerful, and trust in God, she may get better, dear. There is so much we can do. That is how I try to keep up my heart. We must never look frightened, never let her get alarmed. ”

“ Poor little Emmy! She had a beautiful dream, and thought herself in heaven.’
‘While you were there?’ said Oswald, with a significance in the simple question which covered her face with a sudden blush. Then she blushed deeper still to think what foolish, unpardonable vanity this was—vanity the most extraordinary, the most silly! What he meant, of course, was a simple question, most natural—an inquiry about a fact, not any wicked compliment. How Agnes hated and despised herself for the warm suffusion of shy pleasure which she had felt in her heart and on her face! ”

“ Cara, is it quite right, dear? I thought you would have told me that day that Oswald came and wanted to see you alone; of course, we know what that meant; but you evaded all my questions; you never would tell me.’
‘Aunt Cherry, it was because there was nothing to tell. I told you there would be nothing.’
‘Then there ought to have been something, Cara. One sees what Edward feels, poor boy, and I am very sorry for him. And it is hard upon him—hard upon us all to be so treated. Young people ought to be honest in these matters. Yes, dear, it is quite true. I am not pleased. ”

“ Some men are so happy as to retain those best things of life till old age—but he was not one of those blessed men——. And he was no longer wretched and a wanderer on the face of the earth. Time had brought him a softening quiet, a dim pleasantness of tranquillity and friends—good, tender, soothing, kindest friends.
Someone coming in broke suddenly this strange revival of memory—and of all people in the world it was the doctor, Maxwell, whose name was so linked to the recollections of the old life, but who, Beresford felt, had never been the same to him since Annie died. ”

“ You are a great deal too old for your age. Before you are eighteen, people will be taking you for five-and-twenty. To hear you talk, one would think you were eighteen now.’
‘I wish they would,’ said Cara; ‘I don’t like to be always thought a child. I have often things I want to say just on my very lips. I know I could set the people right if I might but speak. But mamma holds up her finger, and I dare not. If I were eighteen, I should be grown up, and I might give my opinion—and twenty-five! Is Agnes twenty-five?’
‘Agnes! you spiteful little thing!’ cried the mother, getting redder and redder. ”

“ Burchell went on in her daughter’s ear: ‘She is an old fool—look at her. Blushing! as if she were a young girl.’
‘I can’t blush when I please, mamma,’ said Agnes; ‘neither, I suppose, can she. Lean on me a little heavier; we shall soon get to the top now.’
‘Why, she runs actually,’ said poor Mrs. Burchell. ‘She is as light as Dolly; she doesn’t mind the hill. So, Cara, your papa and mamma have gone away again? Why don’t they take you with them? I should think you are old enough now to go too. How different people are! Now, I can never bear to be separated from my children. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Better than staying at home! What would be better than staying at home would be to take this Perugino away to see the other Peruginos in the world, to carry her off to the loveliest places that could be thought of, to wander with her alone by riversides and in green woods and by summer seas. Italy! that would be better than staying at home, better than the ‘House’ with its orphans. Such an idea as this had never crossed Oswald’s mind before. He had thought that he had been in love—indeed, he was in love (was not he?) with Cara even now, and could not be content without her sympathy. ”

“ She was no more afraid of life than the flowers are. Round about her the elders, who were her guides, and ought to have been her examples, were not, she might have perceived, had she paused to think, exuberantly happy. They had no blessedness to boast of, nor any exemption from common ills; but it no more occurred to Cara to think that she, she could ever be like her good Aunt Cherry, or Mrs. Burchell, than that she could be turned into a blue bird, like the prince in the fairy tale. The one transformation would have been less wonderful than the other. ”

“ All the nuns have a kind of beauty, not the pensive kind one expects; or perhaps it is the white head-dress and the calm life that give the Sisters such pretty complexions, and such clear eyes. Sister Mary Jane, for instance—you will allow that the Sisters are calm——’
‘But not indifferent!’ said Agnes, moved to an answering smile, as they reached the safe door of the House. She threw that smile at him as a farewell defiance as she went up to the locked door which opened to her with an alarming sound of keys turning, like the door of a true convent of romance, though it was in a London street. ”

“ Beresford was “very particular.” You do not mind my speaking of her? I remember her so well lying on the sofa, like a picture. You are like her, Cara, but not very like her—— ’
‘No; for she was beautiful,’ said Cara, simply; and Edward took her words as she said them, without interposing a laughing compliment, as Oswald would have done. ‘I do not mind; though sometimes I wonder, when I am sitting alone here——’
‘You wonder? what?’
‘All about her,’ said Cara, her voice dropping lower; ‘about her dying. Don’t you think it must be hard to die like that when everybody wishes you to live? ”

“ Five years is a long time in a life; how much it does! Makes ties and breaks them, gives life and withdraws it, finds you happy and leaves you miserable, builds you up or plucks you down; and at the same time how little it does! Buffets you, caresses you, plays at shuttlecock with you; yet leaves you the same man or woman, unchanged. Most of this time James Beresford had spent in absences, now here, now there; not travels according to the old happy sense, though in a real and matter-of-fact sense they were more travels than those he had made so happily in the honeymooning days. ”

“ Cara is not here yet to keep us in order. We can honeymoon yet for one more year.’
Was this only the caprice of her nature (she had always been capricious) going a little further than usual? Her husband liked her all the better for her quick changes of sentiment; the laughing and crying that were like an April sky. He said to himself that she had always been like that; always changing in a moment, quarrelling sometimes even, making him uncomfortable for mere variety. Monotony was the thing she hated; and now she had taken this fad, this fancy, and thought herself ill. ”

“ Who does know, of those who are most near to us, what is going on in our minds? And not a calm Sister, not a little orphan in the House, would have been more incapable of comprehending, than was Oswald—to whom it would have seemed impossible—that anything in the world could produce so much emotion. Not only was it incomprehensible to him, but he could not even have found it out; and that his conduct should move either Agnes or Cara to this passionate suffering was an idea out of his grasp altogether. ”

“ Edward was moved in a very different way. He would have been magnanimous and given up Cara—that is, having no real right to Cara, he might have given up the youthful imagination of her which had always been his favourite fancy, to his brother, with some wringing of the heart, but with that compensation which youth has in the sublime sense of self-sacrifice. But there is no bitterness greater in this world, either for young or old, than that of giving up painfully to another something which that other holds with levity and treats with indifference. ”

“ Maxwell made no direct reply. ‘If Miss Cherry has spoken to you, Beresford, you know your sister,’ he said. ‘She would not hurt a fly—much less you, whom she holds in such high respect; and she would not think evil readily—would she, now? If she has spoken, you must understand that there is something in it. Listen, my dear fellow. There are things that must be done and left undone in this world for the sake of the fools in it merely. You know that as well as I do. Say the fools ought to be defied and crushed if you like, but in reality we have all to consider them. ”

“ Meredith could not stand the climate, and of course there was the boys’ education to think of—children always must come home. Indeed, how anyone can settle in India knowing that their children must be sent away——’
‘Aunt Cherry, no one is to be trusted,’ said the girl, tears coming to her eyes; ‘there is no truth anywhere. We are all making a pretence one way or another; pretending to care for people who are living, pretending to mourn for people who are dead; pretending that one thing is our object, while we are trying for another; pretending to be merry, pretending to be sad. ”

“ She went about more and more like a person in a dream. To feel that when you lift your eyes you will most probably see a handsome face full of tender interest, anxiously waiting to secure your answering glance, and beautiful eyes full of love and eagerness watching you wherever you go, is not a thing which produces a very displeasing effect upon the mind of a girl. He could not approach her directly, had not a chance of speaking to her; but he never gave her time to forget him. The excitement of this pursuit delighted Oswald. ”

“ What did it matter that this type of nobleness was a handsome young man? Visionary Agnes, in the daring of her youth, saw no harm, but rather a beautiful fitness, in the fact that this revelation of the ideal should have all that was best in external as well as in more important things. He had stopped short—no doubt with all the brilliant world, which she did not know, waiting for him, arrested till he should rejoin it—to carry the wounded child to the hospital. He had left those mysterious glories of life, day after day and week after week, to go and ask for little Emmy. ”

“ A woman without a husband has just as much need to be circumspect as a woman with one. What are you insinuating, Cherry? I don’t understand you to-day?’
‘Why should I insinuate—and what can I say? James was going away, because he could not make up his mind to give up going to her; but now—he means to stay.’
‘So that is it!’ said Miss Charity. She was not quite decorous in all her ways, but took the privilege of her age, and often shocked her more scrupulous niece. She uttered a sound which was not unlike a low whistle of mingled astonishment and amusement. ‘So that is what it is! ”

“ Miss Cherry trembled a little, having some fear of false doctrine before her eyes. ‘Everybody, I hope, who loves God. There are bad people, Cara; but we don’t know them, you and I.’
‘Who love God? but I never think of God, Aunt Cherry. At least, I do now; I wonder. But if they did not do that, would they still go to heaven all the same?’
‘God loves us, dear,’ said Cherry, with the tears in her soft eyes. ‘Fathers and mothers love their children, whether their children love them or not. That is all we know.{70}’
‘Whatever they do? if they even laugh, and go wrong? ”

“ The little girl in the sun-bonnet in the Square garden could have produced half a dozen instances—that there is no fun without this; from puss in the corner upwards, the situation is invariable. But the left-out one does not see the fun. Roger stood, and changed into all manner of colours. He was not wanted. He and Agnes—he and Cara; for himself nobody, no companion, no notice, no share in it all. To take it sentimentally and sadly, and turn away, in all the dignity of the neglected, is one way; to be angry and resent is another. ”

“ The parish and its poor—and its rich, who were not much more attractive—had been all the world she had known; and the only beings who had crossed her horizon, who were not struggling like her own people, in the sordid race of existence, to get something, whatever it might be, were the Sisters in the House, and such a gentle retired person as Miss Cherry, who was not fighting for anything, who was ready to yield to anyone, and whose mild existence was evidently not pervaded by that constant recollection of self which filled up all the life of the others. ”

“ If she could but look through the partition and see into the drawing-room next door!—just a peep, to see her Cara with that charming young man beside her, bending over her. They were like a pair in a novel, Miss Cherry felt, or in a poem, which was better still—she, with those great blue eyes, which were Cara’s chief feature; he, dark and splendid, with a glow of manly colour. How nice that he should be so handsome! For indeed sometimes, girls are quite pleased and happy with those who are not handsome, so that this was something pardessus le marché, an exceptional advantage. ”

“ I am more ready to cry than to laugh,’ said Cara, indignantly, yet with quivering lip.
‘I know what you will do,’ he said; ‘you will tell everybody—that is what you will do. Oh, it’s a devilish thing in girls! I suppose they never feel themselves, and it pleases their vanity to make fools of us. You will go and tell those fellows, those Merediths, what a laugh you have had out of poor Roger. Poor Roger! but you shan’t have your triumph, Miss Beresford,’ said the poor lad, snatching up his hat. ‘If you won’t look at me, there are others who will. ”

“ And Oswald, you know, is a man, and would like to be master.’
‘He has no right to be master!’ said Cara, the colour rising on her cheeks. ‘Why should not she have her friends?’
‘That is exactly what I tell him; but most likely he will understand you better. He is not my ideal of a young man; so you have no call to be angry with me on account of Oswald.’
‘I—angry with—you; when I don’t know you—when I never saw you before! I beg your pardon,’ cried Cara, fearing that perhaps this might sound rude; but if it was rude it was true.
‘Must you go?’ said Mrs. Meredith to her visitor. ”

“ Monica? and all these crucifixes and things—and that ridiculous dress—I am glad to see you have the sense not to wear it here at least.’
‘I wear it when I go out; it is not ridiculous; one can go where one pleases, that is, wherever one is wanted, in a Sister’s dress, and the roughest people always respect it,’ said Agnes, warmly. ‘Oh, Roger, why should you be so prejudiced? Do you know what kind of people are here? Poor helpless, friendless children, that have got no home, and the Sisters are like mothers to them. ”

“ He hoped Miss Cherry would not be too hard upon Cara—but he took the idea of the scolding she would receive with a certain complacence as well as amusement. It was as good as a play; Miss Cherry’s look of horror, the blanched face of the virtuous Edward, and poor little Cara’s furious blush and overwhelming shame. What an innocent child it must be to feel such a trifle so deeply! But they were all rather tiresome people with their punctilios, Oswald felt, and the sooner he had emancipated himself, and settled independently, the better. ”

“ Never had the young man known such a soft climax of happiness; never had the young girl received out of the stepdame hands of Life, so bare and spare to her hitherto, anything at all resembling this hour. It was the first taste of the elixir and cordial which makes the fainting live, and transforms all heaven and earth to the young. Happiness! we can all live without it, and most of us manage to do so very fairly; but when it comes, what a change it makes! Agnes had never known that penetrating, exquisite touch from heaven, which transcends all vulgar things. ”

“ But he made another valorous effort before he would complain.
‘Yours, however, is not a commonplace life,’ he said. ‘We worldlings pay for our ease by the sense that we are living more or less ignobly, but it must be very different with you who are doing good always. Only, forgive me, is there not a want of a little pleasure, a little colour, a little brightness? The world is so beautiful,’ said Oswald, his voice slightly faltering, not so much from feeling, as from fear that he might be venturing on dubious ground. ”

“ Louisa, her next sister, answered better in every way than she did: when Louisa was scolded she scolded back again in a filial manner, having the last word always. She boxed the children’s ears, and pushed them about, and read a novel—when she could get one—in an untidy room, with unkempt brothers and sisters round, and took no notice; neither the disobedience, nor the untidiness, nor even unjust reproof when it came her way having any particular effect upon her. Louisa did what she was obliged to do, and knew nothing about the ideal. But Agnes did not know what to make of herself. ”

“ Miss Cherry thought no more of poor Roger than if he had been a cabbage. She thought it might be an amusement to her niece to hear his little gossip about home; and though she saw through his eagerness, and suspected his object, yet she was not alarmed for Cara. Poor blind moth, coming to scorch his wings, she said to herself, with a half-amused pity. She did not pay very much attention to what he might have to suffer. Indeed, unless one has a special interest in the sufferer, such pangs always awake more or less amusement in the mature bosom ”

“ Meredith herself sat in the drawing-room, crape from head to foot, in all the crispness of a fresh widow’s cap. Never was black so black, or white so white. She had an innocent satisfaction in heaping up this kind of agony. Already a design drawn by Oswald was in the hands of the goldsmith for a locket to hold her husband’s hair. She would not bate a jot of anything that the most bereaved mourner could do to show her ‘respect.’ Even the tears were ready, and they were sincere tears. ”

“ Cara was not vain—it was not to see how she looked that she gazed wistfully into that reflection of the room in which she was standing, so rich and full with all its pictures, its china, its tapestries and decorations confronting her like a picture, with one lonely little girl in it, in a dark blue dress and white collar, and big, sad, strained blue eyes. What a forlorn little thing that girl seemed! nobody to interchange looks with even, except herself in the glass ”

“ Is it not in that tender emotion, that swelling of the heart to all lofty and sorrowful, and beautiful things, that poetry takes its rise? Cara being truly the poet’s vision, even to her own touched and melting consciousness, was all Elaine in her young lover’s eyes.
‘But, my dear, my dear!’ said Miss Cherry, ‘if poor Elaine had only loved someone like herself, some young knight that could respond to her and make her happy, oh, how much better it would have been! It makes my heart ache: for Lancelot, you know, never could have loved her ”

“ HONEYMOONING. The real honeymoon is not always a delightful moment. This, which sounds like heresy to the romantic, and blasphemy to the young, is a fact which a great many people acknowledge readily enough when they have got beyond the stage at which it sounds like an offence to the wife or to the husband who is supposed to have made that period rapturous. The new pair have not the easy acquaintance with each other which makes the happiness of close companionship; perhaps they have not that sympathy with each other’s tastes which is almost a better practical tie than simple love. ”

“ Aunt Cherry, who had been like her mother to her, had gone away wounded and estranged. Edward—what a countenance his had been as he turned and went out of the room! And Oswald, who had dragged her into this false position and would not clear her, laughed! Cara hid her eyes from the light in one of those outbursts of youthful despair, which are more intolerable than heavier sorrows. Such pangs have before now driven young souls to desperation. ”

“ So Miss Cherry, whose life knew nothing more than this, who had no varied experiences to show how one affection pushed out another, and on what lines of natural progress the course of life was drawn, thought to herself as she waited by the side of the fire, slowly sipping her cup of tea, for Cara’s return. She thought no more of her brother and Mrs. Meredith—people who were old enough to manage their own concerns. Cara occupied all her thoughts. ”

“ He grew pale as Cara grew red, and felt as if all the blood was ebbing out of his heart.
‘It is not that we will not be happy—oh! happy beyond measure—to have you again, my darling,’ said Miss Cherry; ‘but I would be false if I did not say what a disappointment it is to think, after all our hopes for my poor James, that he is not able to settle down in his own house. I can’t tell you what a disappointment it is. So far as we are concerned—Aunt Charity and I—it will be new life to us to have you home. ”

“ 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. ”