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Title: The Sorceress (complete)

Author: Mrs. Oliphant

Release date: May 13, 2016 [eBook #52060]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
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Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
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                             THE SORCERESS



                             THE SORCERESS

                                  BY

                             MRS. OLIPHANT

                               AUTHOR OF

       "THE SON OF HIS FATHER," "THE CHRONICLES OF CARLINFORD,"
        "THE ROSE IN JUNE," "THE GREATEST HEIRESS IN ENGLAND,"
           "WHITELADIES," "WITHIN THE PRECINCTS," "IT WAS A
                  LOVER AND HIS LASS," "ADAM GRAEME,"
                              ETC., ETC.

                               NEW YORK
                      JOHN A. TAYLOR AND COMPANY
                          119 POTTER BULDING


                          COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY
                      JOHN A: TAYLOR AND COMPANY




THE SORCERESS




CHAPTER I.


It was the most exciting event which had ever occurred in the family,
and everything was affected by it.

Imagine to yourselves such a young family, all in the very heyday of
life, parents and children alike. It is true that Mrs. Kingsward was
something of an invalid, but nobody believed that her illness was
anything very serious, only a reason why she should be taken abroad, to
one place after another, to the great enjoyment of the girls, who were
never so happy as when they were travelling and gaining, as they said,
experience of life. She was not yet forty, while Charlie was twenty-one
and Bee nineteen, so that virtually they were all of the same age, so to
speak, and enjoyed everything together--mamma by no means put aside into
the ranks of the dowagers, but going everywhere and doing everything
just like the rest, and as much admired as anyone.

To be sure she had not been able to walk about so much this time, and
had not danced once, except a single turn with Charlie, which brought on
a palpitation, so that she declared with a laugh that her dancing days
were over. Her dancing days over! Considering how fond she had always
been of dancing, the three young people laughed over this, and did not
take the least alarm. Mamma had always been the ringleader in
everything, even in the romps with the little ones at home. For you must
not think that these three were all of the family by any means.

Bee and Betty were the eldest of I can’t at this moment tell how many,
who were safe in the big nursery at Kingswarden under the charge (very
partial) of papa, and the strict and steady rule of nurse, who was a
personage of high authority in the house. Papa had but lately left “the
elder ones,” as he called them, including his pretty wife--and had gone
back to his work, which was that of an official at the Horse Guards, in
some military department of which I don’t even know the name, for I
doubt whether the Intelligence Department, which satisfies all the
necessities of description, had been invented in those days.

Colonel Kingsward was a distinguished officer, and the occasion of great
_éclat_ to the little group when he showed himself at their head,
drawing round him a sort of cloud of foreign officers wherever he went,
which Bee and Betty appreciated largely, and to which Mrs. Kingsward
herself did not object; for they all liked the clank of spurs, as was
natural, and the endless ranks of partners, attendants in the gardens,
and general escort and retinue thus provided. It was not, however, among
these officers, red, blue, green, and white--of all the colours in the
rainbow--that Bee had found her fate. For I need scarcely say it was a
proposal which had turned everything upside down and filled the little
party with excitement.

A proposal! The first in the family! Mamma’s head was as much turned by
it as Bee’s. She lay on the sofa in her white dressing gown, so flushed
with happiness and amusement and excitement, that you would have
supposed it was she who was to be the bride.

And then it was so satisfactory a thing all round. If ever Mrs.
Kingsward had held anyone at arm’s length in her life it was a certain
captain of Dragoons who had clanked about everywhere after her daughters
and herself for three weeks past. The moment they had appeared anywhere,
even at the springs, where she went to drink her morning glass of
disagreeable warm water, at the concert in the afternoon, in “the rooms”
at night, not to speak of every picnic and riding party, this tall
figure would jump up like a jack-in-a-box. And there was no doubt that
the girls were rather pleased than otherwise to see him jump up. He was
six foot two at least, with a moustache nearly a yard long, curling in a
tawny and powerful twist over his upper lip. He had half-a-dozen medals
on his breast; his uniform was a compound of white and silver, with a
helmet that literally blazed in the sun, and his spurs clanked louder
than any other spurs in the gardens. The only thing that was wanting to
him was a very little thing--a thing that an uninstructed English person
might not have thought of at all--but which was a painful thing in his
own troubled consciousness, and in that of the regiment, and even was
doubtful to the English friends who had picked up, as was natural, all
the prejudices of the class into which their own position brought them.

Poor Captain Kreutzner, I blush to say it, had no “Von” to his name.
Nobody could deny that he was a distinguished officer, the hope of the
army in his branch of the service; but when Mrs. Kingsward thought how
the Colonel would look if he heard his daughter announced as Madame
Kreutzner _tout court_ in a London drawing-room, her heart sank within
her, and a cold perspiration came out upon her forehead. “And I don’t
believe Bee would care,” she cried, turning to her son for sympathy.

Charlie was so well brought up a young man that he cared very much, and
gave his mother all the weight of his support. His office it was to
beguile Captain Kreutzner as to the movements of the party, to keep off
that bold dragoon as much as was possible; when, lo! all their
precautions were rendered unnecessary by the arrival of the real man
from quite another quarter, at once, and in a moment cutting the Captain
out!

There was one thing Mrs. Kingsward could never be sufficiently thankful
for in the light of after events, and that was, that it was Colonel
Kingsward himself who introduced Mr. Aubrey Leigh to the family. He was
a young man who was travelling for the good of his health, or rather for
the good of his mind, poor fellow, as might be seen at a glance. He was
still in deep mourning when he presented himself at the hotel, and his
countenance was as serious as his hatband. Nevertheless, he had not been
long among them before Bee taught him how to smile, even to laugh,
though at first with many hesitations and rapid resuming of a still
deeper tinge of gravity, as if asking pardon of some beloved object for
whom he would not permit even himself to suppose that he had ceased to
mourn. This way he had of falling into sudden gravity continued with him
even when it was evident that every decorum required from him that he
should cease to mourn. Perhaps it was one of the things that most
attracted Bee, who had a touch of the sentimental in her character, as
all young ladies had in those days, when Mrs. Hemans and L. E. L. were
the favourite poets whom young ladies were expected to read. Well
brought up girls were not permitted, I need not say, to read Byron.
Shelley was a name of fear, and the poems of Mr. Thomas Campbell, not to
say Mr. Thomas Moore (carefully selected) were likely to promote that
quality.

The pale young man, with his black coat, his hatband, his look of
melancholy, drove out the image of the Captain at once from Bee’s mind.
She had perhaps had enough of captains, fine uniforms, spurs, and all.
They had become what modern levity calls a drug in the market. They made
_Fenster_ parade all day long under her windows; they thronged upon her
steps in the gardens; they tore the flounces from her tarlatan into
pieces at the balls. It was something far more original to sit out in
the moonlight and look at the moon with a sorrowful young hero, who
gradually woke up into life under her hand. Poor, poor boy!--so young
and so melancholy!--who had gone through so much!--who was really so
handsome when the veil of grief began to blow away!--who had such a
pretty name!

Bee was only nineteen. She had mocked and charmed and laughed at a whole
generation of young officers, thinking of nothing but picnics and dinner
parties and balls. She wanted something new upon which to try her little
hand--and now it was thrown, just when she felt the need, in her way.
She had turned a young fool’s head several times, so that the operation
had lost its charm. But to bring a sad man back to life, to drive away
sorrow, to teach him to hold up his head again, to learn how sweet it
was to live and smile, and ride and run about this beautiful world, and
wake every day to a new pleasure--that was something she felt worthy of
a woman’s powers. And she did it with such effect that Mr. Aubrey Leigh
went on improving for three weeks more, and finally ended up with that
proposal which was to the Kingsward family in general the most amusing,
the most exciting, the most delightful incident in the world.

And yet, of course, it was attended with a certain amount of anxiety
which in her--temporarily--invalid state was not very good for mamma.
Everybody insisted on all occasions that it was a most temporary state,
and that by the end of the summer she would be all right--the
palpitations quite calmed down, the flush--which made her so pretty--a
little subdued, and herself as strong as ever. But in the meantime this
delightful romantic incident, which certainly acted upon her like a
glass of champagne, raising her spirits, brought her some care as well.
Her first interview was of course with Bee, and took place in the
privacy of her chamber, where she cross-examined her daughter as much as
was compatible with the relations between them--- which indeed were
rather those of companions and comrades than of mother and daughter.

“Now, Bee, my dear child,” she said, “remember you have always been a
little rover, and Mr. Leigh is so quiet. Do you think you really,
really, can devote yourself to him, and never think of another man all
your life?”

“Mamma,” said Bee, “if you were not such a dear I should think you were
very insulting. Another man! Why, where should I find another man in the
world that was fit to tie Aubrey’s shoe?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Kingsward, dubiously; but she added, after a moment,
“You know, darling, that’s not quite the question. If you did find in
the after ages a man that perhaps was--fit to tie Mr. Leigh’s shoe?”

“Why in all this world, _petite mère_, will you go on calling him Mr.
Leigh?”

“Well, well,” said Mrs. Kingsward; “but I don’t feel,” she said again,
after a moment’s hesitation, “that I ought to go so far as to call him
Aubrey until we have heard from papa.”

“What could papa find to object to?” said Bee. “Why, it was he who
introduced him to us! We should not have known Aubrey, and I should
never have been the happiest girl in the world, if it had not been for
papa. Dear papa! I know what he’ll say: ‘I can’t understand, my dear,
why you should hesitate for a moment. Of course, you don’t suppose I
should have introduced Mr. Leigh to my family without first
ascertaining, &c., &c.’ That, of course, is what papa will say.”

“I dare say you are right, Bee. It is quite what I expect, for, of
course, a man with girls knows what it is, though for my part I confess
I always thought it would be a soldier--Captain Kreutzner or Otto
von----”

“Mamma!” cried Bee, almost violently, light flashing out of the blue
eyes, which were so bright even on ordinary occasions as to dazzle the
beholder--you may imagine what fire came out of them now--“as if I
should ever have looked twice at one of those big, brainless, clinking
and clanking Germans. (N.B.--Mr. Aubrey Leigh was not tall.) No! Though
I may like foreigners well enough because it’s amusing to talk their
language and to feel that one has such an advantage in knowing German
and all that--yet, when it comes to be a question of spending one’s
life, an Englishman for me!”

Thus, it will be seen, Bee forestalled the patriotic sentiments of a
later generation by resolving, in spite of all temptations, to belong to
other nations--to select an Englishman for her partner in life. It is
doubtful, however, how far this virtuous resolution had existed in her
mind before the advent of Aubrey Leigh.

“I am sure I am very glad, Bee,” said her mother, “for I always had a
dread that you would be snatched off somewhere to--Styria or Dalecarlia,
or heaven knows where--(these were the first out-of-the-way names that
came to Mrs. Kingsward’s mind; but I don’t know that they were
altogether without reference or possibilities), where one would have had
no chance of seeing you more than once in two or three years. I am very
thankful it is to be an Englishman--or at least I shall be,” she added,
with a sigh of suspense, “as soon as I have heard from papa----”

“One would think, _Mütterchen_, that you were frightened for papa.”

“I shouldn’t like you ever to try and go against him, Bee!”

“Oh, no,” said Bee, lightly, “of course I shouldn’t think of going
against him--is the inquisition over?--for I promised,” she said, with a
laugh and a blush, “to walk down with Aubrey as far as the river. He
likes that so much better than those noisy blazing gardens, with no
shade except under those stuffy trees--and so do I.”

“Do you really, Bee? I thought you thought it was so nice sitting under
the trees----”

“With all the _gnadige_ Fraus knitting, and all the _wohlgeborne_ Herrs
smoking. No, indeed, I always hated it!” said Bee.

She jumped up from where she had been sitting on a stool by her mother’s
sofa, and took her hat, which she had thrown down on the table. It was a
broad, flexible, Leghorn hat, bought in Florence, with a broad blue
ribbon--the colour of her eyes, as had often been said--floating in two
long streamers behind. She had a sash of the same colour round the
simple waist of her white frock. That is how girls were dressed in the
early days of Victoria. These were the days of simplicity, and people
liked it, seeing it was the fashion, as much as they liked crinolines
and chignons when such ornamental arrangements “came in.” It does not
become one period to boast itself over another, for fashion will still
be lord--or lady--of all.

Mrs. Kingsward looked with real pleasure at her pretty daughter,
thinking how well she looked. She wore very nearly the same costume
herself, and she knew that it also looked very well on her. Bee’s eyes
were shining, blazing with brightness and happiness and love and fun and
youth. She was not a creature of perfect features, or matchless beauty,
as all the heroines were in the novels of her day, and she was conscious
of a great many shortcomings from that high standard. She was not tall
enough--which, perhaps, however, in view of the defective stature of Mr.
Aubrey Leigh was not so great a disadvantage--and she was neither fair
enough nor dark enough for a Minna or a Brenda, the definite and
distinct blonde and brunette, which were the ideal of the time; and she
was not at all aware that her irregularity, and her mingling of styles,
and her possession of no style in particular, were her great charms. She
was not a great beauty, but she was a very pretty girl with the
additional attraction of those blue diamonds of eyes, the sparkle of
which, when my young lady was angry or when she was excited in any more
pleasurable way, was a sight to see.

“All that’s very well, my dear,” said Mrs. Kingsward, “but you’ve never
answered my question: and I hope you’ll make quite, quite sure before
it’s all settled that you do like Aubrey Leigh above everybody in the
world.”

“_A la bonne heure_,” said Bee; “you have called him Aubrey at last,
without waiting to know what papa will say;” with which words she gave
her mother a flying kiss, and was gone in a moment, thinking very
little, it must be allowed, of what papa might say.

Mrs. Kingsward lay still for a little, and thought it all over after Bee
was gone. She knew a little better than the others what her Colonel was,
and that there were occasions on which he was not so easy to deal with
as all the young ones supposed. She thought it all over from the moment
that young Mr. Leigh had appeared on the scene. What a comfort it was
to think that it was the Colonel himself who had introduced him! Of
course, as Bee said, before presenting anyone to his wife and family,
Colonel Kingsward would have ascertained, &c., &c. It was just how he
would write no doubt. Still, a man may introduce another to his wife and
family without being ready at once to accept him as a son-in-law. On the
other hand, Colonel Kingsward knew well enough what is the possible
penalty of such introductions. Young as Bee was, she had already
attracted a good deal of attention, though this was the first time it
had actually come to an offer. But Edward must surely have thought of
that. She was, though it seemed so absurd, and though Bee had laughed at
it, a little afraid of her husband. He had never had any occasion to be
stern, yet he had it in him to be stern; and he would not hesitate to
quench Bee’s young romance if he thought it right. And, on the other
hand, Bee, though she was such a little thing, such a child, so full of
fun and nonsense, had a spirit which would not yield as her mother’s
did. Mrs. Kingsward drew another long fluttering sigh before she got up
reluctantly in obedience to her maid, who came in with that other white
gown, not unlike Bee’s, over her arm, to dress her mistress. She would
have liked to lie still a little longer, to have finished the book she
was reading, to have thought over the situation--anything, indeed, to
justify her in keeping still upon the couch and being lazy, as she
called it. Poor little mother! She had not been lazy, nor had the chance
of being lazy much in her life. She had not begun to guess why it was
she liked it so much now.




CHAPTER II.


I have now to explain how it was that Mr. Aubrey Leigh was so
interesting and so melancholy, and thus awoke the friendship and
compassion, and secured the ministrations of the Kingsward family. He
was in deep mourning, for though he was only eight-and-twenty he was
already a widower, and bereaved beside of his only child. Poor young
man! He had married with every appearance of happiness and prosperity,
but his wife had died at the end of the first year, leaving him with a
baby on his inexperienced hands. He was a young man full of feeling,
and, contrary to the advice of all his friends, he had shut himself up
in his house in the country and dedicated himself to his child.
Dedicated himself to a baby two months old!

There was nobody who did not condemn this unnecessary self-sacrifice. He
should have gone away; he should have left the child in the hands of its
excellent nurse, under the supervision of that charming person who had
been such a devoted nurse to dear Mrs. Leigh, and whom the desolate
young widower had not the courage to send away from his house. Her
presence there was a double reason, people said, why he should have gone
away. For though his sorrow and trouble was so great that nobody for a
moment supposed that he had any idea of such a thing, yet the presence
of a lady, and of a lady still called by courtesy a young lady, though
older than himself, and who could not be treated like a servant in his
house, was embarrassing and not very seemly, everybody said. Suggestions
were made to her that she should go away, but then she answered that she
had nowhere to go to, and that she had promised to dear Amy never to
forsake her child. The country ladies about who took an interest in the
young man thought it was “just like” dear Amy, who had always been a
rather silly young woman, to exact such a promise, but that Miss Lance
would be quite justified in not keeping it, seeing the child had plenty
of people to look after her--her grandmother within reach and her father
dedicating himself to her.

Miss Lance, however, did not see her duty in the same way; indeed, after
the poor little child died--and there was no doubt she had been
invaluable during its illness, and devoted herself to it as she had done
to its mother--she stayed on still at Leigh Court, though now at last
poor Aubrey was persuaded to go away. The mind of the county was
relieved beyond description when at last he departed on his travels.
These good people did not at all want to get up any scandal in their
midst. They did not very much blame Miss Lance for declining to give up
a comfortable home. They only felt it was dreadfully awkward and that
something should be done about it, though nobody knew what to do. He had
left home nearly six months before he appeared at the Baths with that
letter to Mrs. Kingsward in his pocket, and the change and the travel
had done him good.

A young man of twenty-eight cannot go mourning all the days of his life
for a baby of eight months old, and he had already begun to “get over”
the death of his wife before the second event occurred. This troublous
beginning of his life had left him very sad, with something of the
feeling of a victim, far more badly treated than most in the beginning
of his career. But this is not like real grief, which holds a man’s
heart with a grip of steel. And he was in the stage when a man is ready
to be consoled when Bee’s blue eyes first flashed upon him. The
Kingswards had received him in these circumstances with more _abandon_
than they would have done in any other. He was so melancholy; his
confidences, when he began to make them, were so touching; his waking up
to interest and happiness so delightful to see. And thus, before anyone
had thoroughly realized it, the deed was done. They knew nothing about
Miss Lance--as how should they?--and what could she have had to do with
it if they had known?

So there really was nothing but that doubt of Colonel Kingsward’s
approval to alloy the pleasure of the party, and it was only Mrs.
Kingsward who thought of it. Charlie pooh-poohed the idea altogether. “I
think I should know my father better than anyone,” the young man said,
with much scorn of his mother’s hesitation. He was very fond and very
proud of his mother, but felt that as a man himself, he probably
understood papa better than the ladies could. “Of course he will
approve; why shouldn’t he approve? Leigh is a very decent fellow, though
I don’t think all the world of him, as you girls do. Papa, of course,
knew exactly what sort of a fellow he was; a little too quiet--not Bee’s
sort at all. No, you may clamour as you like, but he’s not in the least
Bee’s sort----”

“I’m supposed to prefer a noisy trooper, I believe,” said Bee.

“Well, I should have said that was more like it--but mind you, the
governor would never have sent us out a man here who was not good enough
for anything. Oh, I understand the old boy!”

“Charlie, how dare you?” cried his mother; but the horror was modified
by a laugh, for anything more unlike an old boy than Colonel Kingsward
it would not have been very easy to conceive.

“Well, mamma, you wouldn’t have me call him my honoured father, would
you?” the young man said. He was at Oxford, and he thought himself on
the whole not only by far the most solid and serious member of the
present party, but on the whole rather more experienced in the world
than the gentleman whom in the bosom of the family he still condescended
to call “papa.”

As for little Betty, who up to this time had been Bee’s shadow, and who
had not yet begun to feel herself _de trop_, she, no more than her
sister, was moved by any of these cares. She was wholly occupied in
studying the new thing which had suddenly started into being before her
eyes. Betty was of opinion that it was entirely got up for her amusement
and instruction. When she and Bee were alone, she never ceased in her
interrogatory. “Oh, Bee, when did you first begin to think about him
like that? Oh, Bee, how did you first find out that he was thinking
about you? Oh, Bee, don’t you mind that he was once in love before?”
Such were the questions that poured in an incessant stream into Bee’s
ears. That young lady was equal to them all, and she was not unwilling
to let her sister share more or less in the new enlightenment that had
come to herself.

“When did I first begin to think of him?” she said. “Oh, Betty, the
first minute I saw him coming through the garden with Charlie to speak
to mamma! There were all those horrid men about, you remember, in those
gaudy uniforms, and their swords and spurs, and so forth--such dreadful
bad taste in foreigners always to be in uniform----”

“But, Bee,” cried Betty, “why, I’ve heard you say----”

“Oh, never mind what you’ve heard me say! I’ve been silly, I suppose, in
my day, like almost everybody. Aubrey says he cannot think how they can
live, always done up in those hot, stiff clothes--none of the ease of
Englishmen about them.”

“Papa says they are such soldier-like men,” says little Betty, who had
not been converted from the _regime_ of the officers, like Bee.

“Oh, well, papa--he is an officer himself, but he never wears his
uniform when he can help it, you know.”

“Well,” said Betty, “you may say what you like--for my part, I do love a
nice uniform. I don’t want ever again to dance with a man in a black
coat. But Bee, you’re too bad--you won’t say a word, and I want so to
know how it all came about. What put it into your head? And what did you
say to one another? And was it he that began first--or was it you?”

“You little dreadful thing,” said Bee; “how could a girl ever begin? It
shows how little you know! Of course he began; but we didn’t begin at
all,” she said, after a pause, “it just came--all in a moment when I
wasn’t thinking, and neither was he.”

“Do you mean to say that he didn’t intend to propose to you?” said
Betty, growing pale.

“Oh!” said Bee, impatient, “as if proposing was all! Do you think he
just came out with it point blank--‘Miss Kingsward, will you marry me?’”

“Well,” said Betty: “what did he say then if he didn’t say that?”

“Oh, you little goose!” said Bee.

“I am sure if he had said ‘Oh, you little goose’ to me,” said Betty, “I
should never have spoken a word to him again.”

“It is no use talking to little girls,” said Bee, with a sigh. “You
don’t understand; and, to be sure, how could you understand--at your age
and all?”

“Age!” said Betty, indignant, “there is but fifteen months between us,
and I’ve always done everything with you. We’ve always had on new things
together, and gone to the same places and everything. It is you that are
very unkind now you have got engaged; and I do believe you like this big
horrid man better than me.”

“Oh, you little goose!” said Bee, again.

“No, it isn’t a big but a little, horrid man. I made a mistake,” said
Betty, “not like Captain Kreutzner that you used to like so much. It’s
small people you care for now; not your own nice people like me and
mamma, but a man that you had never heard the name of when you
first came here, and now you quote and praise him, and make
the most ridiculous fuss about him, even to Charlie, who is far
nicer-looking!--and won’t even tell your sister what he says!”

This argument came to so high a tone that mamma called out from her room
to know what was amiss. “It does not become you girls to carry on your
old scuffles and quarrels,” she said, “now that one of you, at least, is
so grown up and about to take upon herself the responsibilities of
life.”

“Is Aubrey a responsibility?” Betty whispered in her sister’s ears.

“Oh, you little silly thing!” Bee replied; and presently Mrs.
Kingsward’s maid came in to say that Mr. Leigh was in the sitting-room,
and would Miss Bee go to him as her mistress was not ready; for this was
the little fiction that was kept up in those days before Colonel
Kingsward’s letter had been received. It will be seen, however, that it
was but a fiction, and that as a matter of fact there was very little
restraint put on the young people’s intercourse. “You must not consider
that anything is settled; you must not think there’s any engagement,”
Mrs. Kingsward had said. “Indeed, indeed, I cannot take upon me to
sanction anything till I hear from her papa.” But virtually they met as
much as they liked, and even indulged in little talks apart, and
meetings by themselves, before Mrs. Kingsward was ready; so that as a
matter of fact this restriction did very little harm.

And in due time Colonel Kingsward’s letter was received, and it was not
unfavourable. The Colonel said that, on the whole, he should have
preferred it had Mr. Leigh waited till they had all returned home. It
would have been a seemly forbearance, and saved Mrs. Kingsward a great
deal of anxiety; but as matters stood and as his dear wife approved, and
he heard nothing but good of Mr. Leigh, he would not withdraw the
provisional consent which she seemed to have given. “It will be
expedient in the circumstances that you should all return home as soon
as possible, that I may go into matters with the young man,” the Colonel
added in that part of his letter which was not intended to be read to
Aubrey Leigh. And he added, as Bee had prophesied, “You might have been
sure that I should not introduce a young man to my family, and to
yourself, my dear, without ascertaining previously,” etc., etc., just as
Bee had said. He added, “Of course I never contemplated anything of this
sort: but one can never tell what may happen when young people are
thrown together. The property is a good one, and the young man
unexceptionable, from all I can hear.” Then Mrs. Kingsward’s mind was
set at ease. It seemed to Bee that her father might have said something
on the subject of her happiness, and acknowledged Aubrey to be something
more than an unexceptionable young man. It was inconceivable, she
thought to herself, how cool people are when they come to that age. The
property good, and the young man unexceptionable--was that all? Did papa
take no more interest than that? But at all events the engagement was
now quite permitted and acknowledged, and they might walk out together
all day, and dance together all night, without a word said; for which
Bee forgave and instantly forgot--it was really of so little
importance--the coolness of papa.

Mrs. Kingsward’s “cure” was over, and by this time most people were
leaving the Bath. Our party made their preparations for leaving too, in
the pleasantest way. It was not to be at all a rapid journey, which
would not have been good for Mrs. Kingsward. They were to make their way
at leisure from one beautiful old city to another across the breadth of
Germany, staying a day here and a day there, travelling for the most
part in a large, old-fashioned carriage, such as was the custom then,
with a wide-hooded seat in front, like the _banquette_ of a French
diligence, in which two people could be extremely happy, seeing the
scenery much better than those inside could do, or perhaps not seeing
the scenery at all, but occupying each other quite as agreeably with the
endless talk of lovers, which is not interesting to anybody but
themselves. Before they set out upon this journey, however, which was to
hold so great a place in Bee’s life, a little incident occurred to her
which did not appear to be of very much consequence, but which made some
impression on her mind at the time, and vaguely appeared afterwards to
throw light on various other events. The German Bath at which the
little story of her love took place is surrounded with woods--woods of a
kind that are never seen anywhere else, though they are the special
feature of German Baths. They are chiefly composed of fir trees, and
they are arranged upon the most strictly mathematical principles, with
that precision which is dear to the German mind, row upon row standing
close together, as if they had been stuck in so at their present height,
with so many cubit feet of air to each, as in the London lodging-houses.
They are traversed by broad roads, with benches at intervals, and at
each corner there is a wooden board on which is painted indications how
to find the nearest _restauration_ where beer is to be had, and the veal
of the country--for the German, in his hours of ease and amusement, has
continual occasion to be “restored.”

Bee had gone out early in the morning to make a little sketch of an
opening in the trees through which a village spire was visible. There
were not many points for the artist in landscape, especially one of such
moderate powers as Bee, and she was very anxious to finish this to
present it, I need scarcely say, to Aubrey, as a memento of the place.
Probably there was some other sentimental reason--such as that they had
first spoken words of special meaning there, or had first exchanged
looks that were of importance in their idyll, or some other incident of
equal weight. She was seated on one of the benches, with her little
colour box and bottle of water, giving the finishing touches to her
sketch. Sooth to say, Bee was no great performer, and the ranks of the
dark trees standing arithmetically apart to permit of that little
glimpse of distance, were too much for her. They looked in her sketch
like two dark green precipices rather than like trees, and had come to a
very difficult point, when a lady coming along by one of the side walks,
round the corner past the _restauration_, suddenly sat down by Bee’s
side and startled her a little. She was not a girl who was easily
frightened, but the suddenness of the apparition out of the silent
morning when she had thought nobody was in sight was a little startling
and made her hand shake.

“I hope I am not intruding upon you,” the lady said.

“Oh, no!” said Bee, looking up with her bright face. She was as fresh as
the morning in her broad Leghorn hat with the blue ribbon, and her eyes
that danced and sparkled. The stranger by her side was much older than
Bee. She was a handsome woman; dark, with fine eyes, too, a sidelong
look in them, and a curious half smile which was like La Gioconda, that
famous picture Bee had seen in the Louvre, as we all have. She thought
of La Gioconda at once, when she looked up into the lady’s face. She was
entirely dressed in black, and there could not have been found anywhere
a more perfect contrast to Bee.

They got into conversation quite easily, for Bee was a girl who loved to
talk. The lady gave her several hints about her little picture which Bee
knew enough to know were dictated by superior knowledge, and then they
got talking quite naturally about the place and the people who were
there. After they had discussed the society and the number of English
people at the Bath, and Bee had disclosed the hotel at which she was
staying, and many details of her innocent life, which she was not at all
conscious of disclosing--the stranger began to inquire about various
people. It was not by any means at once that she introduced the name of
Leigh; not indeed till she had been over the Reynoldses, and the
Gainsboroughs, and the Collinses, under Bee’s exultant guidance and fine
power of narrative; then she said tentatively, that there was she
believed, at one of the hotels, a family of Leighs.

“Oh!” cried Bee, her countenance flushing over with a sudden brilliant
delightful blush, which seemed to envelop her from top to toe. She had
been looking up into her companion’s face so that the stranger got the
full benefit of this sudden resplendent change of colour. She then
turned very demurely to her sketch, and said meekly, “I don’t know any
family, but there is a Mr. Leigh at our hotel.”

“Oh,” said the lady, but in a very different tone from Bee’s startled
“oh!” She said it coldly, as if recording a fact. “I thought,” she said,
“it was the Leighs of Hurstleigh, friends of mine. I may have been
deceived by seeing the name in the lists.”

“But I think, indeed I am sure, that Mr. Aubrey Leigh is connected with
the Leighs of Hurstleigh,” Bee said.

“Oh, a young man, a widower, an inconsolable; I think I remember hearing
of him. Is that the man?”

“I don’t know if he is an inconsolable,” cried Bee, with a quick
movement of anger and then she thought how foolish that was, for of
course a stranger like this could have no unkind meaning. She added with
great gravity, “It is quite true that he has been married before.”

Poor little Bee, she was not at all aware how she was betraying herself.
She was more vexed and indignant than words can say, when the woman (who
after all could not be a lady) burst into a laugh. “Oh! I think I can
see how matters stand with Aubrey Leigh,” this impertinent intruder
cried.




CHAPTER III.


It was just two days after the interview in the wood described above,
that the Kingsward party got under weigh for home, accompanied, I need
not say, by Aubrey Leigh. Bee had not told him of that chance meeting,
restrained I do not know by what indefinite feeling that he would not
care to hear of it, and also by the sensation that she had as good as
told the lady, who was so disagreeable and impertinent as to laugh, what
change had taken place in Aubrey’s sentiments, and what she had herself
to do with that change. It was so silly, oh, so silly of her, and yet
she had said nothing, or next to nothing. And there was no reason why
she should not have said whatever she pleased, now that the engagement
was fully acknowledged and known; indeed, if that woman were in any
society at all, she must have heard of it, seeing that, as Bee was
aware, not without pleasure, it had afforded a very agreeable diversion
to the floating community, a pleasant episode in the tittle-tattle of
the gardens and the wells. Bee had no absurd objection to being talked
of. She knew that in her condition of life, which was so entirely
satisfactory as a condition, everything that concerned a family was
talked over and universally known. It was a thing inevitable to a
certain position, and a due homage of society to its members. But
somehow she did not mention it to Aubrey, nor, indeed, to anyone, which
was a very unusual amount of reticence. She did not even give him the
sketch, though it was finished. She had been quite grateful for that
person’s hints at the time, and eagerly had taken advantage of them to
improve her drawing; but it seemed to her, when she looked at it now,
that it was not her own at all, that the other hand was so visible in it
that it would be almost dishonest to call it hers. This, of course, was
wholly fantastic, for even supposing that person to have given valuable
hints, she had never touched the sketch, and Bee alone had carried them
out. But, anyhow, her heart sickened at it, and she thrust it away at
the very bottom of the box that Moulsey was packing. She had no desire
to see the horrid thing again.

In a day or two, however, Bee had altogether forgotten that interview in
the wood. She had so many things to occupy her mind. There were few
railways in those days, and the party had a long way to travel before
they came to Cologne, where that method of travelling began. They all
felt that common life would re-commence there and their delightful
wandering would be over. In the meantime, there was a long interval of
pleasure before them. The early breakfast at the hotel in the first
hours of the autumnal morning, the fun of packing everyone away in the
big coach, the books to be brought out to fill up corners, both of time
and space, and “Murray” then alone in his glory, with no competitive
American, no Badæker, no Joanne, to share his reign--spread out open at
the right place, so that mamma inside should be able to lay her finger
at once upon any village or castle that struck her--and above all the
contrivances to be carried out for securing the _banquette_, as Bee
said, for “ourselves,” made a lively beginning. Charlie and Betty
sometimes managed to secure this favourite place if the attention of the
others flagged for a moment, and though mamma generally interposed with
a nod or a whisper to restore it to the privileged pair, sometimes she
was mischievous too, and consented to their deprivation, and desired
them for once to keep her company inside. She generally, however,
repented of this before the day was over, and begged that their
favourite seat might be restored to them.

“For they are really no fun at all,” the poor lady said. “I might as
well have two images from Madame Tussaud’s.”

“It had been a little hard upon Aubrey at the moment of their departure
to find half the garrison round the carriage, and bouquets enough to
fill a separate vehicle thrust into every corner, the homage of those
warriors to the gracious ladies. He had been very cross, and had made a
great exhibition of himself, especially when Captain Kreutzner’s faggot
of forget-me-nots, tied with a ribbon like that on Bee’s hat, had been
presented with indescribable looks. What did the fellow mean by bringing
forget-me-nots? He wanted to pitch it out of the window as soon as they
were fairly started.

“What an idiotic custom!” he cried. “What do the fools think you want
with such loads of flowers when you are starting on a journey?”

“Why, it is just then you do want them,” cried Betty, who had a dozen or
so to her own share, “to smell sweet and show us how much our friends
think of us.”

“They will not smell sweet very long, and then what will your friends
think of you?” said the angry lover.

Was it possible that Bee was detaching a little knot of the blue flowers
to put in her waistband? Bee, Bee! his own property, who had no right so
much as to look at another man’s flowers! And what did she do, seeing
the cloud upon his face, but arrange another little bouquet, which,
with her sweetest smile--the little coquette--she endeavoured to put
into his, Aubrey’s, button-hole! He snatched them out of her hand in a
sort of fury. “Do you want me never to forget that heavy brute of a
German?” he cried, in his indignation. “You may put him near your heart,
but I should like to kick him!” These very natural sentiments made Bee
laugh--which was cruel: but then poor Captain Kreutzner had been blotted
out of her life some time ago, and knew his fate, and had really no
right whatever to present her with these particular flowers. His lovely
bouquet with its blue ribbon was given to a girl in the first village,
and awakened the still more furious jealousy of another swain who was
less easily appeased than Aubrey; but this _ricochet_ was not thought of
by the first and principal pair.

There was not perhaps so many remarkable features in that journey as if
it had been through Italy. There were great plains to traverse, where
the chief sights were cottages and farmhouses, women going by with great
loads of freshly cut grass full of flowers on their heads, fodder for
the home-dwelling cows--or men carrying their hops clinging to the
pole, to be picked at home, or long straggling branches of the tobacco
plant; and in the evening the postillion would whip up his horses, and
Charlie in the _banquette_, or John, the manservant, in the rumble,
would tootle upon a horn which the former had acquired clandestinely
before the party set out--as they dashed through a village or little
town with lighted windows, affording them many a flying peep of the
domestic life of those tranquil places. And in the middle of the day
they stopped to rest somewhere, where the invariable veal was to be
found at some Guest-house a little better than the ordinary, where
perhaps a bigger village stood with all its high peaked stream: and at
night rattled into an old walled town with shadowy high houses which
belonged to the fourteenth century, and had not changed a whit since
that time. There they stayed a day or two, varying the confinement of
the coach by a course through everything that was to be seen, setting
out in a party through the roughly-paved streets, but parting company
before long, so that Aubrey and Bee would find themselves alone in the
shelter of a church or in an insignificant corner by the walls, while
the others pursued their sightseeing conscientiously.

“As for me, what I like is the general aspect,” said Bee, with an air of
superiority. “I don’t care to poke into every corner, and Aubrey knows
the history, which is the chief thing.”

“Are they talking all the time of the history?” said Betty, overawed.

But this perhaps, was not the opinion of Charlie and mamma. No, they did
not care very much for the history. People are bad travellers in that
stage of life. They are too much interested in their own history. They
went about like a pair of Philistines through all these ancient streets,
talking of nothing but the things of to-day. The most serious part of
their talk was about the home in the depths of England in which they
were henceforth to spend their lives. Aubrey had ideas about
re-furnishing--about making everything new. It would be impossible to
tell the reader how bad was the taste of the time, and with what
terrible articles of furniture he proposed to replace the spindle legs
and marquetry of his grandfathers. But then these things were the
fashion, and supposed to be the best things of the time. To hear them
talking of sofas and curtains, and of the colour for the boudoir and the
hangings of the drawing-room in the midst of all those graceful old
places, was inconceivable. You would have said the stupidest,
unimpressionable pair, talking of ugly modern English furniture, when
they should have been noting the old world of Nuremberg--the unchanging
mediæval city. But you must remember that the furniture was only a
symbol of their love and their new life, and all the blessedness of
being together, and the endless delights of every day. The sofas and the
curtains meant the _Vita Nuova_, and the refurnishing of the old house a
beautiful fabric of all the honour and the joy of life.

Then came the great river, and the progress down its shining stream, and
between those beautiful banks, where again they made several pauses to
enjoy the scenery. The Rhine is not now the river it was then. It was
still the great river of romance in those days--Byron had been there,
and the young people remembered Roland and his tower, with his love in
the white convent opposite, and felt a shudder at the thought of the
Lorelei as they floated under the high and gloomy bank. I doubt,
however, whether the lovers thought much even of these things. They were
busy just now about the gardens, which Bee was fully minded to remodel
and fill with everything that was new and delightful in the way of
flowers.

“I shall have masses of colour about the terrace, and every spot
covered. I wonder which you like best, majolica vases or rustic
baskets?” Bee was saying, when her mother called her to point out the
Platz and Bishop Hatto’s tower.

“Oh, yes, mamma, it’s very pretty. But you like clematis, Aubrey, for
the balustrade--to wind in and out of the pillars. Yes, yes, I can see
it well enough. I like every kind of clematis, even the common one, the
traveller’s joy--and it would hang down, you know, over that old bit of
wall you told me of. Do go forward, Aubrey, and let them see you are
taking an interest. I do see it all quite well, and it is very romantic,
and we are quite enjoying it I can assure you, mamma.”

This was how they made their way down stream; in the moonlight nights
they ceased to talk of practical matters, and went back to the history
of their loves.

“Do you remember, Bee, that first time in the wood----?”

“Oh, Aubrey, don’t you recollect that drive coming back in the
dark--before I knew----?”

“But you always did know from the very beginning, Bee?”

“Well, perhaps I suspected--and used to think----”

“You darling, what did you think?--and did you really care--as early as
that?”

They went on like this whatever happened outside, giving a careless
glance at the heights, at the towers, at the robbers’ castle above and
the little villages below; not so much as looking at them, and yet
remembering them ever after, enclosing the flow of their young lives, as
it were, in that strong flowing of the Rhine, noting nothing and yet
seeing everything with the double sight which people possess at the
highest moment and crisis of their career. They came at length to
Cologne, where this enchanted voyage was more or less to end. To be
sure, they were still to be together; but only in the railway, with all
the others round them, hearing more or less what they said. They said
good-bye to the Rhine with a little sentiment, a delightful little
sadness full of pleasure.

“Shall we ever be so happy again?” said Bee, with a sigh.

“Oh, yes, my sweet, a hundred times, and happier, and happier,” said the
young man; and thus they were assured it was to be.

I don’t think any of them ever forgot that arrival at Cologne. They came
into sight of the town just in the evening, when the last glow of sunset
was still burning upon the great river, but lights beginning to show in
the windows, and glimmering reflected in the water. The Cathedral was
not completed then, and a crane, like some strange weird animal stood
out against the sky upon the top of the tower. The hotel to which they
were going had a covered terrace upon the river with lights gleaming
through the green leaves. They decided they would have their table
there, and dine with all that darkling panorama before their eyes
through the veil of the foliage, the glowing water, the boats moving and
passing, with now and then a raft coming down from the upper stream, and
the bridge of boats opening to give passage to a fuming fretting
steamboat. Aubrey and Bee went hand in hand up the steps; nobody noticed
in the half dark how close they were together. They parted with a close
pressure of warm hands.

“Don’t be long, darling,” he said, as they parted, only for a moment,
only to prepare a little for the evening, to slip into a fresh dress, to
take out a new ribbon, to make one’s youthful self as fair as such
unnecessary adjuncts permitted.

But what did Aubrey care for a new ribbon? The only blue he thought of
was that in Bee’s eyes.

I do not think she was more than ten minutes over these little changes.
She dressed like a flash of lightning, Betty said, who could not find
her own things half so quickly, Moulsey being occupied with mamma. Such
a short moment not worth counting, and yet enough, more than enough, to
change a whole life!

Bee ran down as light as air to the sitting-room which had been engaged
for the party. She felt sure that Aubrey would hurry, too, so as to have
a word before dinner, before the rest were ready--as if the whole day
had not been one long word, running through everything. She came lightly
to the door of the room in her fresh frock and her blue ribbons, walking
on air, knowing no shadow of any obstacle before her or cloud upon the
joyful triumphant sky. She did not even hear the sound of the subdued
voices, her faint little sob, strangest of all sounds at such a moment,
which seemed to come out to meet her as she opened the door. Bee opened
it wondering only if Aubrey were there, thinking of some jibe to address
to him about the length of time men took to their toilettes, if she
happened to be ready first.

She was very much startled by what she saw. Her mother, still in her
travelling dress, sat by the table with a letter open in her hands. She
had not made any preparation for dinner--she, usually so dainty, so
anxious to get rid of the cloaks and of the soils of the journey. She
had taken off her hat, which lay on the table, but was still enveloped
in the shawl which she had put on to keep off the evening chills. As for
Aubrey, he was exactly as he had been when they parted with him, except
that all the light had gone out of his face. He was very pale, and he,
too, had a letter in his hand. He uttered a stifled exclamation when he
saw Bee at the door, and, lifting his arms as though in protest against
something intolerable, walked away to the other end of the room.

“Oh, Bee,” said Mrs. Kingsward, “Oh, go away, my dear, go away! I
mean--get something to eat, you and Charlie, and Betty, and then get to
bed. Get to bed! I am too tired to take anything, and I am going
upstairs at once.”

“I thought you had been upstairs, mamma, half-an-hour ago. What is the
matter? You look like a ghost, and so does Aubrey. Has anything
happened? Mamma, you won’t look at me, and Aubrey turns his back. What
have I done? Is it anything about me?”

“What nonsense, child!” said Mrs. Kingsward, with a pretence at a smile.
“What could you have to do with it? We have both--Mr. Leigh and
myself--found letters, and we are busy reading them. I am sure the
dinner must be served. We ordered it in the balcony, don’t you remember?
Run away and make Charlie and Betty sit down at once. I am too tired.
Moulsey will run down in a little and get something for me.”

“Mamma,” said Bee, “you cannot make up a story. Something has happened,
I am sure of it; and it is something about me.”

“Nonsense, child! Go away and have your dinner. I would come if I could.
Don’t you see what a budget of letters I have got? And some of them I
must answer to-night.”

“Have you letters, too, Aubrey?” said Bee, in her amazement, standing
still as she had paused, arrested by the sight of them, just within the
door.

“Bee, I must beg you will not put any questions; go and do what I tell
you; your brother and sister will be coming downstairs. Yes, of course,
you can see that Mr. Leigh has his letters to read as well as I.”

“Mr. Leigh! I wonder if we have all gone mad, or what is the matter?
Aubrey! tell me--you, at least, if mamma won’t. You must have had a
quarrel. Mamma, why do you call him Mr. Leigh?”

“Oh, for goodness sake, Bee, go away.”

“I am not going away,” cried the girl. “You have had a quarrel about
something. Come, mamma, you must not quarrel with Aubrey--if he has done
something wrong or said something silly, I will answer for him, he never
intended it. Aubrey, what do you mean, sir, turning your back both on
mamma and me? Come here, quick, and ask her pardon, and say you will
never do it again.”

Poor little Bee’s heart was fluttering, but she would not allow herself
to believe there was anything really wrong. She went close up to her
mother and stood by her, with a hand upon her shoulder. “Aubrey!” she
said, “never mind if you are wrong or not, come and beg mamma’s pardon,
and she will forgive you. There must not--there must not--oh, it is too
ridiculous!--be anything wrong between mamma and you. Aubrey!”

He turned round slowly and faced them both with a face so pale that Bee
stopped short with a gasp, and could not say a word more. Mrs. Kingsward
had buried her face in her hands. Bee looked from one to the other with
a dismay which she could not explain to herself. “Oh, what is the
matter? What is the matter?” she said.




CHAPTER IV.


There was no merry dinner that night in the verandah of the hotel under
the clinging wreaths of green. Mrs. Kingsward went up to her room still
with her heavy shawl about her shoulders which she had forgotten, though
it added something to her discomfort--followed by Bee, pale and rigid,
offering no help, following her mother like an angry shadow. Charlie and
Betty met them on the stairs and stood aside in consternation, unable to
conceive what had happened. Mrs. Kingsward gave them a sort of troubled
smile and said: “Get your dinner, dears; don’t wait for us. I am too
tired to come down to-night.”

“But, mamma----” they both began in remonstrance.

“Go down and get your dinner,” said Mrs. Kingsward, peremptorily.

As for Bee, she did not look at them at all. Her eyes were fierce with
some sentiment which Betty could not divine, and angry, blazing, as if
they might have set light to the hotel.

Little Betty pressed against Charlie’s side as they went down, startled
and alarmed. “Bee has had a quarrel with mamma,” she whispered, in tones
of awe.

“That’s impossible,” said Charlie.

“Oh, no, it’s not impossible. There was once----”

It comforted them both a little in the awful circumstances that such a
thing had perhaps happened before. They went very silently and much cast
down to that table in the verandah, whither obsequious waiters beckoned
them, and contemplated with dismay all the plates laid, all the glitter
of the lamps and the glasses.

“I suppose we must not wait for them as they said so,” said Charlie,
sitting down in his place at the bottom of the table. “Tell Mr.
Leigh--that is the other gentleman--that we are ready.”

“The other gentleman, sir,” said the waiter, who was the pride of the
establishment for his English, “has gone out.”

“Gone out!” said Charlie. He could only stare at Betty and she at him,
not knowing what to think.

“He has had his letters, too, sir,” said the waiter in a significant
tone.

His letters! What could that have to do with it? Charlie also had had
his letters, one of them a bill which he did not view with any
satisfaction; but even at twenty-one a man already learns to disguise
his feelings, and sits down to dinner cheerfully though he has received
a bill by the post. Charlie’s mind at first could not perceive any
connection between Bee’s withdrawal upstairs and Aubrey’s disappearance.
It was Betty who suggested, sitting down very close to him, that it
looked as if Aubrey and Bee had quarrelled too.

“Perhaps that is what it is,” she said, as if she had found out a
satisfactory reason. “Lovers always quarrel; and mamma will have taken
Aubrey’s part, and Bee will be so angry, and feel as if she could never
forgive him. There, that is what it must be.”

“A man may quarrel with his sweetheart,” said Charlie, severely, “but he
needn’t spoil other people’s dinner for that;” however, they comforted
themselves that this was the most likely explanation, and that all would
come right in the morning. And they were very young and hungry, having
eaten nothing since the veal at one o’clock. And these two made on the
whole a very satisfactory meal.

The scene upstairs was very different. Mrs. Kingsward sent Moulsey away
on pretence of getting her some tea, and then turned to her daughter who
stood by the dressing-table and stared blankly, without seeing anything,
into those mysterious depths of the glass which are so suggestive to
people in trouble. She said, faintly, “Bee, I would so much rather you
would not ask me any more questions to-night.”

“That is,” said Bee, “you would like to send me away to be miserable by
myself without even knowing what it is, while you will take your
sleeping draught and forget it. How can you be so selfish, mamma? And
you have made my Aubrey join in the conspiracy against me--my Aubrey
who belongs to me as papa does to you. If you are against us it is all
very well, though I can’t imagine why you should be against us--but at
least you need not interfere between Aubrey and me.”

“Oh, my dear child, my poor darling!” said Mrs. Kingsward, wringing her
hands.

“It is all very well to call me your poor child, when it is you that are
making me poor,” said Bee.

She kept moving a little, first on one foot then on the other, but
always gazing into the glass which presented the image of an excited
girl, very pale, but lit up with a sort of blaze of indignation, and
unable to keep still. It was not that girl’s face, however, that Bee was
gazing at, but at the dim world of space beyond in which there were
faint far-away reflections of the light and the world. “And if you think
you will get rid of me like this, and hang me up till to-morrow without
knowing what it is, you are mistaken, mamma. I will not leave you until
you have told me. What is it? What has papa got in his head? What does
he say in that horrid--horrid letter? I wish I had known when I gave it
to you I should have thrown it into the river instead of ever letting it
come into your hands.”

“Bee, you must know that this passion is very wrong and very improper.
You ought not to face me like that, and demand an answer. I am your
mother,” said Mrs. Kingsward, but with a falter which was all unlike
that assumption of authority, “and I have no need to tell you anything
more than I think is for your good.”

“Ah! I know where that comes from,” cried Bee; “that’s papa’s thunder!
that’s what he has told you to say! You don’t believe, yourself, that
you have a right to hang up a poor girl over some dreadful, dreadful
abyss, when she was so happy and never suspected anything.” Here Bee’s
voice faltered for a moment, but she quickly recovered herself. “And to
drag her away from the one person that could support her, and to cut the
ground from under her feet, and never to tell her what it means!”

It was at this point that Moulsey, with a little discreet cough to
herald her approach, came into the room, bearing a tray with tea, and a
little cover from which came a faint but agreeable odour. Mrs. Kingsward
was in great trouble about her child, but she was much exhausted and in
want of physical support, and it did seem to her hard that she might not
be permitted to eat the smallest of cutlets before embarking on a scene
such as she knew this would be. Oh, why didn’t papa come and say it
himself, when there was so much that was dreadful to say?

“Shall I fetch something for Miss Bee, too?” said Moulsey. “It ain’t a
good thing for a young creature to go without her dinner. If she’s not
going down, ma’am, as would be much the best, I’ll just run and fetch a
little something for Miss Bee too.”

“Indeed, indeed, Bee, Moulsey is right. Think how miserable the others
will feel all alone, and thinking something has happened. Do go down,
darling, and strengthen yourself with a little food, and take a glass of
wine just for once to please me. And after that you shall be told
everything--all that I know.”

Bee grew paler and paler, standing there before the glass, and her eyes
blazed more and more. “It is as bad as that, then!” she said under her
breath to herself, and then went away from where she was standing to the
further end of the room. “I shall wait here, mamma, till you have had
your tea. I know you want it. Oh, go away Moulsey! Let me alone! No, you
shall not bring me anything! or, if you do, I will throw it out of the
window,” she said, stamping her foot. The dark end of the room seemed
suddenly lighted up by a sort of aurora borealis, with the fire of poor
Bee’s burning eyes and the flashes here and there of her white
frock--oh, poor white frock! put on in the sunshine of life and
happiness to please her love, and now turned into a sort of sacrificial
robe.

“Take it away, Moulsey; I can’t eat anything--I can’t, indeed--no more
than Miss Bee--”

“But you must, ma’am,” said Moulsey. “Miss Bee’s young; she’s had
nothing to drain away her strength. But it’s far different with you,
after all your family and so weak as you are. If Miss Bee were a real
good girl, as I always thought her, she’d go away and get something
herself just for her poor mamma’s sake, and leave you alone for a moment
to get a little peace and rest.”

“There is no rest for me,” murmured the poor lady. “Oh, papa, papa, why
didn’t you come and tell them yourself?”

These piteous tones went to Bee’s heart. They moved her half with
contempt, half with compassion--with something of that high indignant
toleration of weakness which is one kind of pity. If mamma could eat and
drink at such a moment, why shouldn’t she be left to do it? The girl
started up and left the room in the quick flashing impulse of her
passion. She walked up and down in the corridor outside, her arms folded
over her high-beating, tumultuous heart. Yes, no doubt she was going to
be miserable, all her happiness was cut down and withered away, but in
her present passionate impulse of resistance and gathering of all her
forces to resist the catastrophe, which she did not understand, it could
scarcely be said that she was wretched yet. What was it--what was it?
she was saying to herself. It might still be something that would pass
away, which would be overcome by the determined, impassioned stand
against it, which Bee felt that it was in her to make. The thing that
was worst of all, that stole away her courage, was that Aubrey had
failed her. He should have been there by her side whatever happened. He
ought not to have abandoned her. No doubt he thought it was more
delicate, more honourable, more something or other; and that it was his
duty to leave her to brave it alone. It must have been one of those
high-flown notions of honour that men have. Honour! to leave a girl to
fight for herself and him, alone--but, no doubt, that was what had
seemed right in his eyes. Bee walked up and down in the half-lighted
passage, sometimes almost pushing against someone going up or down,
waiters or chambermaids or surprised guests, who looked after her when
she had passed; but she did not take any notice of them, and she heard
as she passed her mother’s door little sounds of tea-cups and dishes,
and Moulsey’s voice saying “A little more,” and her mother’s faint
replies. Poor mamma! After all, what ever it was, it could not be her
affair as it was Bee’s. She would be unhappy about it, but not all
unhappy. She had the others, who were all right. She had papa. It would
not shatter her to pieces even if one of the children was to be
shipwrecked. It was the shipwrecked one only who would be broken to
pieces. For the first time in her life Bee felt the poignant sensation,
the jealous pride, the high, desolate satisfaction of suffering. The
others could all eat and do the ordinary things. She was elevated over
all that, silent as on a Peak in Darien. She felt almost a kind of
dreadful pleasure in the situation, smiling to herself at the sounds of
her mother’s little meal. She could dine while Bee was miserable. They
could all dine--Charlie (which was natural), Betty, even Aubrey. She had
no doubt that he, too, must be seated, feeling as a man does that dinner
must go on whatever happens, at the table downstairs.

After a while, which seemed a long time to Bee, Moulsey came out with
the tray. She was startled, and exclaimed under her breath at the
appearance of the girl walking up and down in the corridor: “I did
think you would have had the sense to go and join the others, Miss
Bee.” Bee was too much uplifted, too distant on her high pinnacle of
martyrdom, to make any reply, but when Moulsey ventured to add a word of
advice, to the effect that she must be careful of her mamma and not
weary her with questions and she so tired and so weak, the girl flashed
forth all her heart of indignation. “She has eaten her cutlet, it
appears,” cried Bee. “I should think she may answer my questions.”

“Oh!” cried the maid, who had the privileges of an old servant, “you
have got a heart without pity. You are just like your papa!”

Bee swept past her into the room, where poor Mrs. Kingsward, who after
all had eaten but a morsel, sat lying back in an easy chair awaiting the
dreadful conflict which she knew was coming. Poor lady, she had lost all
her brightness, that pretty grace of the young mother among her grown up
children, which prompted so many compliments. She lay back in her easy
chair, feeling as she said “any age”--as old as any woman on the edge of
the grave, not knowing how she was to bear the onslaught that was
coming, and how she was to say what had to be said. He had borne it far
better than Bee--poor Aubrey, poor Aubrey! whom she must not call Aubrey
any more. He had not denied anything, he had fallen as it were at her
feet, like a house that had been undermined and had no sound
foundations, but Bee was different. Bee was a tower that had
foundations--a girl that was able to stand up even to papa, and why--why
had he not come to give forth his sentence in his own way?

Bee came forward flashing into the light, in that white frock which
shone, and with those eyes that blazed through all the neutral tints in
the room. She did not sit down, which would have been a little relief,
but seized a chair and stood with her hand upon the back, leaning upon
it.

“I hope, mamma,” she said, pitiless, “that you liked your tea, and ate
something--and that you are better now.”

“Oh, Bee!” cried the poor lady; “if there is one reproach more dreadful
than another it is this of being able to eat when you ought to be
overwhelmed with trouble.” Mrs. Kingsward could scarcely keep from
crying at the imputation. And Bee, I fear, knew that it was the
unkindest thing that could be said.

“Now, mamma,” she resumed, almost stonily, “it is time that you should
tell me what has happened. We arrived here all quite happy--it is just
an hour ago----” here Bee’s voice shook a little, but she commanded it
with an effort--“I ran up to dress for dinner, and when I came back in
about ten minutes I found you and Aubrey--with your letters--looking as
if you had both been dead and buried while I was away. You wouldn’t
answer me, and he never said a word. You had done something to him in
that little time to make him turn away from me, and yet you will not
tell me what it is. Here I am alone,” said Bee, once more with a quiver
in her voice. “Aubrey ought to be standing by me. I suppose he is having
his dinner downstairs, too, and thinking no more of me. I just stand
alone, nobody caring in all the world. What is the meaning of it,
mamma?”

“Bee, you are very hard upon me. And poor Aubrey, he is having no
dinner--of that I am sure.”

“You called him Mr. Leigh downstairs.”

“So I did, and so I must, and all of us; but I cannot have you speaking
of him like that, poor, poor fellow; and just for this once---- Oh, Bee,
my darling, don’t stand and look at me so! I would rather have died than
say it either to him or to you. Your papa has been hearing I don’t know
what, and he has changed his mind about Mr. Leigh altogether, and says
it must not be.”

“What must not be?”

“Oh, Bee! Oh, don’t take it so hard! Don’t look like that!
Your--your--engagement, my darling. Have patience; oh, have patience! He
has heard something. Men hear things that we would never hear. And he
doesn’t deny it. Oh! he doesn’t deny it. I had a hope that he would
contradict it at once, and flare up in a rage like you, and say it
wasn’t true. But he doesn’t deny it--poor boy, poor boy! And after that,
how can I say one word to papa?”

“My engagement?” said Bee, in a hoarse voice. She had been staring at
her mother as in a dream--only partially hearing, not understanding at
all the rest that was said. “My engagement? He gave his consent. It was
all settled. You would not allow us till the letter came, but then it
was consent.”

“Yes, yes, dear. That was at first. He consented at first because--and
now it appears he has heard something--someone has called upon him--he
has discovered--and he writes to me that it must be broken off. Oh, Bee,
don’t think my heart doesn’t bleed for you. I think it will kill me. He
says it must be broken off at once.”

“Who says so?” said Bee, in her passion. “He! One would think you were
speaking of God--that can say ‘Yes’ to-day and ‘No’ to-morrow, and build
things up and then snatch them down. But I will not have it! I am not a
doll, to be put in one position and then in another, as anybody pleases.
My engagement! It is mine; it is not his.”

“Bee, think; it is papa you are speaking of. Dear, I feel for you--I
feel for you! but so does he. Oh, my darling, you don’t know what you
are saying. Do you think he would do anything to make you unhappy if he
could help it--your papa, Bee, who has been so good to you all your
life?”

“I do not care how good he has been. He is not good now. How will it
harm him? He sits at home, and he thinks he can do as he pleases. But
not with me. It is my affair more than it is his. He thinks he can break
his word and it doesn’t matter--but I have given my word, and it does
matter. Break my engagement!” cried Bee, her young bosom swelling, the
sob rising in her throat that would soon choke her voice. “It is mine
and not his; and nobody in the world shall break it. You can tell him
so, mamma, or I will write myself and tell him so. I am not a wax image
to take any shape he pleases. Who is he? He is not God----”

“Bee--he is your father----”

“Oh, my father! Yes, I do whatever he tells me. If he says I am to fetch
anything I run like a little dog. I have never been disobedient. But
this--this is different. I am not a child any longer. And, mamma, not
for him nor for anyone--not even for you will I take back my word.”

“Bee! You make me say a great deal more than I meant to say. I thought
you would have been a good child and seen that papa must know best. My
poor, poor little girl, there is worse behind. Mr. Leigh, whom we all
thought so much of----”

“Aubrey,” Bee managed to say, though for no other word could she command
her voice.

“Darling, he has deceived us. He is not what he seems. He has done, oh,
so wrong--there have been things--that you ought never to hear----”

“Stop!” said Bee. She had to speak in monosyllables with her labouring
breath. “Wait!--not behind his back.” She rushed to the bell and rung it
so wildly that both waiter and chambermaid appeared in alarm, with
Moulsey rushing in calling for a doctor, and saying that her lady was
going to faint. Bee pushed the woman aside and turned to the waiter, who
stood anxious at the door. “Mr. Leigh!” she cried, impatiently; “the
gentleman--who was with us: tell him--to come here.”

“The tall young gentleman?” said the waiter.

“No--the other: tell him he is to come here--instantly--this moment.”

“I beg your pardon, miss,” said the man. “The other gentleman? He have
been gone away this half-hour.”

“Gone away!” she cried. And it seemed to Bee that the blackness of
darkness closed over her and the room and everything in it. She did not
faint, oh no, no such happiness--but everything grew dark, and through
the dark she heard her own voice speaking--speaking, and did not know
what she said.




CHAPTER V.


But Aubrey had not gone away. He had gone out in the dizziness of a
great downfall, scarcely knowing how to keep his feet steady as he
wandered along the dark street, not knowing where he went. The landscape
that had charmed them all so much--was it scarcely an hour ago?--the
lamps reflected in the water; the verandah, with its wreaths of green;
the brilliant yet mysterious glimmer of the moon, made his heart sink to
look at them now. He strayed off into the darkest of the narrow streets,
into the great gloom of the cathedral shadow, where he could see nothing
but a poor light twinkling here and there, making the darkness visible.
Oh! how certain it is that, however sweet they may seem, your sins will
find you out! Oh! how more than certain if you have let yourself be
dragged down once, only once, in a spotless life, that the one fault
will be made into the central fact of your whole existence. If he had
been a bad, dissipated man, it would have been only fair. But this poor
young fellow was like the young man whom our Lord loved though he went
away. All good things he had kept from his youth up--but once, only
once, half distracted by grief, and by the desire which is so natural to
escape from grief, and by infernal temptation, he had fallen--oh, there
was no need to tell him how he had fallen! Had it not been the canker in
his soul ever since? And now this one thing, this miserable,
much-repented fault, which revolted, disgusted, horrified himself, was
brought up against him as if it were the pattern upon which he had
shaped his life.

And now, what was left for him but to fall down, down into the
unfathomable abyss? The distracted feelings with which he had broken
away from home, the horror and dismay that at once belonged to his
natural grief and made the burden of it a thousand times harder to bear,
all rushed back upon him, whirling him down and down to dimmer and more
awful depths. He had partially healed himself in the intolerableness of
his trouble by travel and change, and the arbitrary forgetfulness which
comes from absence and the want of any association which could call back
to him what was past; and then the touch of Bee’s soft, girlish hand,
the sound of her voice, had suddenly called him back into an enchanted
land where everything had again become possible. He had hesitated for
some time, wondering if he might dare--he who had a secret smirch upon
him which nobody suspected--to avail himself of this way of salvation.
The reader will think that he had not hesitated very long--poor
Aubrey--seeing that the introduction, the acquaintance, the love, the
engagement had all occurred within the small space of one month; but to
the brooding spirit the hours of one interminable day are long enough
for a chronicle. Something like the phenomena of love at first sight had
occurred in the bleeding yet young heart, which had felt itself cut
loose from all the best associations of life. Deliverance, recreation,
the new beginning of life and all its possibilities had gleamed upon him
in Bee’s blue eyes. Her appearance swept away everything that was dark
and ominous in his life. Did he dare to ask for her hand, to set out
again to make himself a new career? He had worked at that question
almost from the first day, discussing it with himself for the three
weeks preceding their engagement, waking and sleeping, almost without
intermission; and then in a moment he had forgotten all controversy, and
let forth without intention the words that had been lying, so to speak,
on the threshold of his lips--and in that moment all the clouds had been
swept away. He was only eight and twenty after all--so young to have
such a past behind him, and what so natural as that his life should
begin again--begin now as for the first time? He had hesitated in the
first fervour of his betrothal whether he should not tell all his story.
But there was no one to tell it to but Mrs. Kingsward--a lady, even a
young lady, not looking much older than Bee herself. That is one of the
drawbacks of a young mother. She was still in the sphere of the girls,
not in that of the old ladies whom Heaven has ordained to represent the
mothers of the race. How could he tell to her the story of that
entanglement? If Colonel Kingsward had been there, Aubrey was of opinion
that he would have made a clean breast of everything to him. But I think
it very likely that he might not have done so. He would have intended
it, and he would have put it off from day to day; and then he knew how
lightly men of the world look upon such matters. What would have
horrified Mrs. Kingsward would probably call forth nothing but a
pooh-pooh from her husband. Aubrey, as it proved, was mistaken there,
for Colonel Kingsward had ideas of his own, not always corresponding to
those of the ordinary man of the world; but no doubt had he heard the
story from that side and not from the other, he would have regarded it
in a very different light.

But it was too late--too late for these reflections now. The fiat had
gone forth, the sentence had been pronounced beyond appeal. Oh, Bee,
Bee, she was too good for him; too fresh, too bright, unsullied by the
world, for a man who had gone through so much already although he was
still young enough. He who had loved and married--though, oh, how
differently!--poor little Amy, who was nobody, whom he had liked for her
yielding sweetness, sweetness which had cost him so dear--he who had
been a father, who had lost his way in life amid the fogs of death and
grief--how had he now dared to think that such a girl as Bee should
dedicate her fresh young life to restore him again to the lost
possibilities of his? It seemed to him the greatest presumption, the
most dreadful, cynical, almost blasphemous attempt. It was the way of
the world--to think that any woman, however good, might be sacrificed to
the necessities of a man’s restoration whatever he had done; everybody
thought so, his own mother even. But he, Aubrey, should have known
better--he should have known that even at his best he could never have
been good enough for Bee, and to think that he had dared now when he was
no longer at his best! What a fool, what a fool he had been! He had come
to be able to endure the daylight and “get on” well enough when he had
arrived at the Bath and seen her first. Why had he not contented himself
with that, knowing that he had no right to expect more? And now there
was nothing--nothing before him but a plunge into the unutterable
darkness--darker than ever, without any hope--worse almost, if worse
were possible, than when he had fled from his home.

He did not know how long he had been roaming about the dark town
pondering all these dreadful thoughts. When he went back to the hotel,
which he finally did, worn out, not knowing where else to go, one
reproachful waiter, with eyes that said he ought to have been in bed
long ago, was waiting for him with a curt demand what he would have to
eat, and all the house, except that deserted eating-room, where one
light twinkled--reproachful, like the waiter--was shut up. He went to
his room when he had swallowed some brandy, which was the only thing he
could find to put a little warmth into his chilled limbs and despairing
heart, and threw himself miserable upon his bed, where I have no doubt
he slept, though he was not aware of it--as Bee did, though she had no
intention of doing so.

The only one who was really a sufferer in this respect was poor Mrs.
Kingsward, who was ill, and who had been far more agitated than her
feeble strength could bear. She it was who lay and wondered all through
the night what she must do. Was he really gone without a word, thus
proving how much he was in the wrong, and how right the Colonel was? It
would have saved her from a great deal of embarrassment, but I do not
think Mrs. Kingsward wished that Aubrey might have really gone. It was
too summary, it was not natural, it would show Colonel Kingsward to have
been too right. Oh! she believed he was right! She did not doubt that
his decision was for the best any more than she doubted that it was
inexorable: but still the heart revolted a little, and she hoped that he
might not be proved so unutterably right as that. And poor Bee--poor
little Bee! She did not know, poor child, that there were bitters in the
sweetest cup--that if she had twenty years of Aubrey she would not
probably have thought quite so much of him as now--that nobody was
perfect, which was a conviction that had been forced upon Mrs.
Kingsward’s own mind, though it was not a strong one, by the passage of
the years. And then the poor lady went off into perplexed considerations
of what she personally must do. Must he leave them all at once, travel
home in a different carriage, avoid them at the stations, not venture to
come near their table when they dined on the way? It would seem so
ridiculous, and it would be so embarrassing after their very close
intercourse. But men never thought of these little things. She felt sure
that the Colonel would expect her never to let the two meet again. And
how could she do that when they were both travelling the same way?
Besides, was it fair, was it just, would Bee endure it--never to see him
again?

Bee woke up in all the energy of despair. It burst upon her in the first
moment of her waking that he had gone away, that it was all over; but
her mind, when it had time to think, rejected that idea; he would not,
could not have gone without a word, without even saying farewell,
without asking her--anything, anything--to forgive him or to forget him,
or to be faithful to him, or not to believe what was said against him.
One or other of these things Aubrey must say to her before he went away.
Therefore, he could not have gone away, and everything was still
possible. In her passion and pride she had refused last night to let her
mother tell her what it was. She had resolved that Aubrey should be
present, that he should hear the accusation against him, that he should
give his own explanation--that was only just, she said to herself--the
poorest criminal had a right to that! And Aubrey should have it. He
should not, whatever papa said and whatever mamma said, be condemned
unheard. She dressed in great haste and rang the bell energetically to
ascertain if he had come back. But the chambermaid who answered Bee’s
bell was stupid and could not understand what Herr it was about whom the
young lady questioned her so closely. Had he come back? Oh, yes, she
believed all the Herren had come back; there was not a bed to be had in
the house. But what Herr was it whom the gracious young lady sought.
The old gentleman in the next room, who was so ill? She heard that he
was a little better this morning--or the young Herr in number ten, or
the Herr whose eyes were so bad, who was going to the great doctor at
Dusseldorf? Perhaps poor Bee’s German was at fault. She was still
attempting to make the matter clear when Moulsey came in with the news
that Mrs. Kingsward was very poorly, and had not slept at all, a
statement which Betty, rushing in half-dressed, confirmed anxiously.
“Mamma has had a very bad night; and what is the matter, Bee, that we
are all at sixes and sevens, and why did you lock your door? I came up
as soon as I could--as soon as Charlie would let me. He said it was
dreadful, nobody coming down; and that we must eat through the dinner
for the sake of appearances. And Aubrey never showing neither, and me
obliged to sleep in mamma’s room because you had locked the door.”

“I want to know,” said Bee, “whether Aubrey came back last night.”

“Oh, how should I know?” said Betty, “and why shouldn’t he come back?
Of course he must have come back. Is he going anywhere else but home? I
wish people would not get letters,” said the girl. “You are all so
ridiculous since those letters came last night. Letters are nice when
they are nice. But, oh! how much nicer it was yesterday morning when you
had none, and we were all quite happy, and mamma well, and Aubrey and
you as funny as you could be!”

There flashed upon Bee as she spoke the whole bright panorama of
yesterday. Not a cloud in the sky nor a trouble in the world. Mamma as
fresh as the morning, the river shining, the steamboat thrilling through
the water with a shiver of pleasure in its wooden sides, every group
adding amusement, and they themselves affording it, no doubt, to the
rest. How conscious they had been when they laughed under their breath
at the young German pairs, that they themselves were lovers too, quite
as happy, if not so demonstrative. Oh! yesterday--yesterday! You might
as well say last century for anything that resembled it now. Bee turned
almost fiercely to Moulsey, who stood looking on with that air of
knowing all about it which so often exasperated the girls, and requested
her to go downstairs immediately and ask if Mr. Leigh had come back.
Moulsey hesitated and protested that the chambermaid would know. “And
you that know the language, Miss Bee.”

“Go down directly and inquire if Mr. Leigh has come back. You know the
waiter that speaks such good English as well as I do,” said Bee,
peremptorily. And Moulsey could do nothing but obey.

Yes, Mr. Leigh had come back; he had occupied his room, but was not yet
up so far as the attendants knew. There came such a change on Bee’s face
at this news as startled both the curious observers. The light grew less
fierce, more like the usual sunny brightness in her eyes. A softening
came over her face. Her colour flashed back. “I want to know when mamma
is coming downstairs,” she said. “Moulsey--or no, stop. I’ll go myself
and see.”

Moulsey was so roused that she caught the young lady by the arm. “If it
was your papa himself, my lady shan’t be disturbed,” she said. “And not
by you, Miss Bee, as are the cause of it all; not if you should put a
knife into me afore her door.”

“How dare you say I am the cause of it all?”

“Because it’s the truth,” said the enraged maid. “She was worrited
enough before by those letters, and you coming in like the wind, like
your papa himself, as I always said you were his living image; and
stopping her in the middle of her little bit of cutlet that would have
given her strength, and questioning of her like a drum-major, and pacing
up and down outside the door like a wild beast. Mind my words: you don’t
know, none of you, how little strength my poor lady’s got. And you’re
all so masterful, every one, with mamma here and mamma there, and you’ll
not find out till it’s too late----”

“But mamma’s better,” cried Betty. “She has taken her cure, and she’s
all right till next year.”

“I only wish as you may all find it so, miss,” said Moulsey, folding her
arms across her broad chest and shaking her head.

Bee was awe-struck for a moment by this speech, but she knew that
Moulsey was always a croaker, and it was quite true about the cure. She
paused a little uncertain, and then she resumed in a subdued voice--

“I never want to disturb mamma. But Moulsey, we’ve got to leave here
to-day.”

“That can’t be,” said Moulsey, decisively. “My lady is not fit to travel
after such a bad night, and I won’t have it,” she said. “The doctor has
put my lady into my hands, and he says ‘She’s not to be overtired. Mind,
I don’t respond for nothing if she’s overtired.’ And she just shan’t
go--that’s flat. And you may all say what you like, and your papa, too.”

“Not to-day?” said Bee, with another change of countenance. It flashed
upon her that another day’s delay would give time for all the
explanations in which she could not help hoping. Her excited pulses
calmed down a little. She was not alarmed about her mother. Had she been
so, it would no doubt have given her thoughts another direction. But Bee
knew nothing of illness, much less anything of death. She was not
afraid of them. In her experience people might be ill occasionally, but
they always got better. Mamma, too, would be better presently, when she
got up; and then they could all meet, and the letters and the whole
matter could be discussed. And it seemed to be impossible--impossible
that from this some better conclusion could be arrived at. There had
been so much confusion last night, when it burst upon them like a
thunderstroke. When looked at calmly, without flurry or haste, the
better moment would bring better views, and who could say that all might
not yet be well?




CHAPTER VI.


Emboldened by this thought Bee went downstairs to breakfast, which was
spread again in the verandah in the warm sunshine of the autumnal
morning. The new hope, though it were a forlorn one, restored her
youthful appetite as well as her courage, and her coffee and roll were a
real restorative after the long fast and agitated night. But there was
no appearance of Aubrey, neither at the table nor in the passages, nor
anywhere about. He seemed to have disappeared as if he had never been.
When Charlie came down from his mother’s room, where he had been shut up
with her for some time, Bee, who had no particular respect for Charlie’s
opinion or inclination to allow him any authority over herself, such as
an elder brother is sometimes supposed to have, began at once to
question him. “Where is Aubrey?” she said. “Why doesn’t he come to
breakfast? Will you go and look for Aubrey, Charlie?”

“Indeed, I will do no such thing,” said Charlie, almost roughly. “I hope
he has had the sense to go away. I should just like to see him come
calmly down to breakfast as if nothing had happened. If he came, then I
can answer for it, you should not be allowed to say a word to him, Bee.”

“Who should prevent me?” cried Bee, looking up with her eyes on fire and
her nostrils dilating. She had not noticed before what a cloud was upon
Charlie’s face and how heavy and scowling were his brows. She added,
springing up, “We shall soon see about that. If you think I shall do
what you tell me, or condemn any man unheard----”

“The cad! He never denied it. You can ask mamma.”

“I will not ask anyone but Mr. Leigh,” said Bee, throwing back her head;
“and I advise you to mind your own business, and not to call names that
may come back upon yourself.”

“Stop where you are, Bee. I never went out into the world under false
pretences. A man is a cad when he does that.”

“I shall not stop for you, nor anyone but my parents,” said Bee, in a
splendid flush of anger, her countenance glowing, her eyes blazing.
“Stand out of my way. Oh, if that is all, and you want to make a scene
for the edification of the tourists, I can go in by the other door.”

And she did so, leaving Charlie standing flushed and angry, but quite
unable, it need scarcely be said, to coerce his sister. To make an
attempt of this kind, which comes to nothing, is confusing and
humiliating. He looked round angrily for a moment to see if it were
possible to intercept her, then, yielding to necessity, sat down where
Betty, eager and full of a thousand questions, sat calling for
explanations. That is the good of a family party, there is always
someone ready to hear what you have to say.

Bee went at once to the English-speaking waiter, and asked for Mr.
Leigh, whom the man, curious as all lookers-on are at a social drama
going on under their eyes, declared to be still in his room. She sent
him off instantly with a message, and stood in the hall awaiting his
return, angry and brave, like the rose in George Herbert’s poem, yet
soon getting shamefaced and troubled, as the people coming and going,
travellers, visitors, attendants, stared at her and brushed against her
as they passed. Bee never forgot all her life the gleam of the river at
the foot of the steps, of which she had a glimpse through the
doorway--the Rhine barges slowly crossing that little space of vision,
the little boats flitting across the gleam of the rosy morning, and the
strong flowing tide, the figures going up and down breaking the
prospect.

The man came back to her after a time, looking half sympathetic, half
malicious, with the message that the gentleman was just going out.

“Just going out!” She repeated the words half-consciously. “Was it
Aubrey that sent her that message? Aubrey--who yesterday would not let
her out of his sight, who followed her everywhere, saw every sign she
made, heard every word almost before it was spoken!” The surprise and
the pang together made her heart sick. She could not rush upstairs and
knock at his door and call him out imperatively, to tell her immediately
what it all meant--at least, though it occurred to her that this would
be the most natural thing to do, she did not. Intimidated by the
circumstances, by the half impertinence of the waiter, by the stare of
the people about, she reflected for a moment breathlessly that he must
come out this way, and that if she remained there she must see him. But
Bee’s instinct of a young woman, now for the first time awakened, made
her shrink from this. When she was only a little girl, so very short a
time ago, she did not mind who looked at her, who pushed past her. But
now everything was different!

She went away, still holding her head high that nobody (above all not
Charlie, who was watching her through the glass of the verandah) should
guess that her courage was drooping, and going into the deserted
sitting-room, where last night that blow had fallen upon her, sat down
and wrote to her lover a hurried little note:


     “Oh, Aubrey, what is the matter? Have you deserted me without a
     word? Do you think I am like them, to take up any report? I don’t
     know what report there is--I don’t know what it is, this terrible
     thing that has come between us. What is it? I will take your word
     and nobody else’s. I don’t believe you have done anything that is
     wrong. Aubrey! come and tell me out of your own mouth. I told mamma
     last night I would hear nothing unless you were there; but you were
     gone away, they said. And now you send me word that you are going
     out and can’t see me. Going out and can’t see _me_! What does it
     all mean?

     “If it is some fad of honour, of not seeing me against _their_
     will--though I do think your first duty is to me, Aubrey, before
     anyone else in the world--but if it should be so, mamma will be
     down here at twelve o’clock--and I invite you to meet her, to hear
     what is said, to answer for yourself and for me. If you have done
     anything wrong, what does that matter? Don’t we all do wrong? And
     why should it come between you and me? Am I without sin that I
     should throw stones at you? Aubrey, you can’t throw everything away
     without a word. You can’t desert me without a word. I can bear
     anything--anything, rather than this.

“Your BEE----.”



Bee, poor child, shrank from intrusting this to the impertinent waiter,
who had a leer in his eye as if he were defending his own side from the
importunities of the other. She went out furtively into the hall and
studied the numbers of the rooms and the names of the tenants upon the
board, necessity quickening her perceptions, and then she stole
upstairs and gave her poor little appeal into the hands of the stout
chambermaid who watched over that part of the hotel. It was for the Herr
in No. 10, and the answer was to be brought immediately to the little
salon No. 20 downstairs. “Eine Antwort,” she said over and over again in
her imperfect speech. “Schnell, schnell!” This, with the aid of a
thaler--for it was before the days of the mark--produced perfect
understanding in the mind of the maid, who with becks and wreathed
smiles accepted the commission, and in a short time brought her back the
answer for which she waited with feverish anxiety. It was very much
shorter than her own.

     “I am not worthy to stand before you. I cannot and I must not take
     advantage of your innocence; better I should disappear altogether
     than wound your ears with what they say. But I will not since you
     will it so. At twelve o’clock then, Bee, my darling, I will stand
     up before your mother, and say what I can for myself. Bee, my own
     dearest, my only hope!”

This last was scrawled across the paper as if he had put it in after the
despair of the former part. It was this that the poor little girl fixed
upon--the sweet words to which she had been accustomed, which her heart
was fainting for. It was not, one would have said, a very cheerful note
for a love-letter. But Bee was ridiculously cheered by it. So long as
she was his own dearest, his hope, his darling--so long as there was no
change in his love for her--why then, in the long run, whatever was
said, everything must come right.

I need not follow Bee to her mother’s bedside, when Mrs. Kingsward woke
and for the first moment did not remember what had happened.

“Is that you, Bee?” she said, smiling, not thinking.

“Are you better, mamma?”

“Oh, yes, just in my usual----,” said Mrs. Kingsward. And then she
caught a fuller sight of her daughter’s face. Bee had none of her usual
pretty colour, the light in her eyes was like fire. The mother gave a
little feeble cry, and in a moment was no longer in her usual, but lost
in the feverish mists of a trouble far too great for her to bear. “Oh,
Bee! Oh, Bee!”

“We had better not say anything about it, mamma, to agitate you. I have
told him you will be ready at twelve o’clock, that I may know what the
story is, and what he has to say.”

Mrs. Kingsward struggled up to a sitting position. “At twelve o’clock?
No! I cannot, I cannot!” Then she dropped back upon her pillows sobbing,
“Oh, Bee, spare me; I am not equal to it. There is Charlie can read your
papa’s letter. Bee! Bee!”

“Charlie!” cried Bee, with a flash of fury. “Who is Charlie, that he
should sit in judgment on Aubrey and me? If he has anything to do with
it, I tell you, mamma, I will go away. I will go with Aubrey. I will not
hear a word.”

“Oh, Bee,” cried Mrs. Kingsward, holding out her hot, feverish hands, “I
am not fit for it! I am not fit for it! If I am to travel to-morrow--ask
Moulsey--I ought to stop in bed and be quiet all day.”

“I don’t see that it matters,” said Bee, sternly, “whether we travel
to-morrow or in a week. To go home will be no pleasure to me.”

“If we were there, then papa could manage it all himself; he is the
proper person. On a journey is not the time to settle things so
important. I will write and tell him I have put it all off, and have not
said anything, till he could do it himself.”

“But that will not be true,” cried the young Rhadamanthus, inexorable,
with her blazing eyes.

“O Bee! you are dreadfully, dreadfully hard upon me!” the poor young
mother said. This is the drawback of being so young a mother, just as
young as your grown-up children. It is very delightful, when all is
sunny and bright, but in a great emergency like this it is trying for
all parties when a girl’s mother is only, so to speak, a girl like
herself. Bee lifted up her absolute young head, and gave forth her
ultimatum unmoved.

“Well, mamma, it must be as you choose. If you think my happiness is of
less consequence than the chance of a headache to yourself, I have
naturally nothing more to say.”

A headache! That was all she knew.

Mrs. Kingsward was ready by twelve o’clock, much against Moulsey’s will,
who dressed her mistress under protest. “I ain’t one to interfere with
what’s going on in a family,” said Moulsey, as she combed out the long
locks, tangled with the restlessness of a troubled night, which were as
silky and as smooth as Bee’s. “I’m only a servant, and I knows my place;
but you’re not fit to struggle among them young ones. The nursery
children, it’s all very well; if they’re naughty you whip them, or you
put them in a corner, and there’s a good cry and all right again. But
when it comes to a business with a young lady and a gentlemen, the
Colonel ought to have come himself, or he ought to have put it off till
we all got home.”

“Oh, I wish, I wish he had!” Mrs. Kingsward said, sighing. “I am not in
the least what I used to be, Moulsey; don’t you think I am very
different from what I used to be? I have not half the strength.”

“There often is,” said Moulsey, “a time when a lady isn’t so strong,
after all these children and everything. It takes a deal out of you, it
do. And I don’t hold much with them foreign cures. I’m one that stands
for home. And there’s where you ought to be, ma’am, whatever anyone may
say.”

“I am sure it is where I wish to be,” said the poor lady, “but we must
not be unjust, Moulsey. My cure did me a great deal of good, and I liked
being out and seeing everything just as much as the girls.”

“That is just it, ma’am,” said Moulsey; “you’re a deal too much the same
as the young ladies, and can’t make up your mind as you haven’t the
strength for it. I’m not one to ask any questions, but I can’t help
seeing there’s something wrong. Don’t you give in to Miss Bee in
everything. I wouldn’t go down to make up the quarrel if I was you.
Leave ’em to themselves, and it’ll all come right. Bless us, lovers’
quarrels is nothing--it wouldn’t be half the fun if it wasn’t for that.”

Moulsey knew very well this was no lovers’ quarrel; but it seemed to her
a good way of satisfying herself what it was.

“Oh, if that were all!” sighed the poor lady. “Moulsey, you are an old
friend, and take an interest in the family. You have known Miss Bee
since ever she was born. I don’t know why I shouldn’t tell you. It is
no quarrel; it’s something the Colonel has heard about Mr. Leigh.”

“All lies, ma’am, I don’t make no manner of doubt.”

“Do you think so, Moulsey; oh, do you think so? Have you heard anything?
You often know more, hearing the servants speak, than we do. If you have
any light to throw on the subject, oh, do so, do! I shall be grateful to
you all my life.”

“I don’t know as I have any light to throw. I knew as there was some
trouble at the time the poor young lady died--some friend of hers, as
Mr. Leigh, being a kind-hearted gentleman, couldn’t turn out of the
house--and it made a talk. But if there was anything wrong, you take my
word, ma’am, it was none of his fault.”

“Ah, it’s so easy to say that, Moulsey; but the man must bear the
blame.”

“I’ve always heard, ma’am, as it was the woman that got the blame; and
right enough, for they often deserve it the most,” Moulsey said.

“Oh, I wish--I wish, whoever was to blame, that it was not I that had
to clear it up,” poor Mrs. Kingsward said.

    “Oh, cursed spite,
     That ever I was born to set it right.”

She would not have said this, poor lady. She would have thought it
swearing and unbecoming for a woman’s lips; still, Hamlet’s sentiment
was hers, with much stronger reason. She looked like anything but a
strong representative of justice as she went downstairs. Charlie had
come to give her his arm, and though he was very tender to her, Charlie
had no idea of sparing her any more than Bee. He, too, thought that it
was only the risk of a headache, and that a headache was no such great
matter. Charlie’s idea was, however, that what the governor said was, of
all things on earth, the most important to be carried out--especially
when it did not concern himself.

Bee was sitting at the window looking out upon the river, seeing the
reflections flash and the boats pass. The steamer had just started with
its lively freight--the steamboat which had brought them down the stream
yesterday, with all its changing groups, and the pairs of German lovers
with their arms about each other in the beatitude of the betrothal. All
just the same, but how different, how different! She did not rise, but
only turned her head when her mother came in. She was on the other side.
She did not see, with so many other things in her head, how fragile Mrs.
Kingsward looked. Betty was the only one who perceived at all that mamma
was less strong than usual, and even Betty took no notice, for she, too,
was on the other side. As for Charlie, he stood behind her, a sort of
representative of executive force at the back of Justice, backing her
authority up. It was he who arranged her chair, her footstool, the shawl
Moulsey had insisted she should wear, and which Charlie, who knew
nothing about shawls, huddled up about her neck, not unlike the judge’s
ermine. He did it all, not with sympathetic touches as the girls would
have done had they not been on the other side, but rather with an eye to
her dignity as a representative of the law.

And then, just as the hour of noon sounded from all the church clocks,
Aubrey came in. He was very pale, but dressed with care, no symptoms of
neglect about him, with an air of preparation which became a man who was
going to stand his trial. Bee jumped up from her seat and went up to
him, putting her hand through his arm, and Betty, half-frightened, with
a glance at her mother, offered him a timid hand. She sat down behind
them, on a chair that was ranged against the wall. The defendant’s side
was her side. She wanted to show that, and yet not to go against mamma.
Charlie took no notice at all of the new comer, but stood scowling,
looking at nobody, behind his mother’s chair.

Mrs. Kingsward, frightened at her own dignity and breathless with
agitation, cried, “Oh, Mr. Leigh!” which was a kind of salutation. She
had some papers in her lap, over which her hands fluttered restlessly,
her husband’s letter, and something else beside, and she looked at the
group before her with a little dubious smile, asking pardon of the
culprit whom she had come here--oh, so much against her will--to try for
his life.

“Now, mamma,” said Bee, in a cheerful voice, “we are quite ready, Aubrey
and I--”




CHAPTER VII.


Mrs. Kingsward’s opening speech was a wonder to hear. She sat and looked
at them all for a moment, trying to steady herself, but there was
nothing to steady her in what she saw before her--Aubrey and Bee, the
pair who had been so sweet to see, such a diversion in all
circumstances, so amusing in their mutual absorption, so delightful in
their romance. It all flashed back to her mind; the excitement of Bee’s
first proposal, the pleasure of seeing “her bairn respected like the
lave,” though Mrs. Kingsward might not have understood what these words
meant, the little triumph it was to see her child engaged at nineteen,
when everybody said there was nobody for the girls to marry--and now to
have that triumph turned into humiliation and dismay! And to think of
Bee’s bright face overcast, and her happiness over, and poor Aubrey
thrown out into the uttermost darkness. Had she seen Charlie it might
have given her some support, for Charlie was the impersonation of
immovable severity; but Betty’s wistful little face behind the other
pair, coming out from Aubrey’s shadow by moments to fix an appealing
look upon her mother, was not calculated to make her any stronger. She
cleared her throat--she tried hard to steady her voice. She said, “Oh,
my dear children,” faltering, and then the poor lady ended in a burst of
sobbing and tears. It gave her a little sting and stimulant to see
through her weeping that though little Betty ran towards her with kisses
and soothing, Bee took no notice, but stood hard and unaffected in her
opposition, holding close to Aubrey’s arm. Mrs. Kingsward indeed got no
sympathy except from little Betty. Charlie put his hand imperatively
upon her shoulder, recalling her to herself, and Bee never moved,
standing by the side of Aubrey Leigh. The mother, thus deserted,
plucked up a little spirit in the midst of her weakness.

“Bee,” she said, “I do not think it is quite nice of you to stand there
as if your own people were against you. We are not against you. There
has been, I fear, a great mistake made, which Colonel Kingsward”--here
she turned her eyes to Aubrey--“has found out in--in time; though it is
a pity, a sad pity, that it was not found out before. If Mr. Aubrey had
only been frank and said at once--but I don’t see what difference that
would have made. Papa says that from what he has heard and discovered
things must not go any further. He is sorry, and so am I, that they have
gone so far, and the engagement must be broken off at once. You hear
what I say, Bee?”

“I heard you say so last night, mamma, but I say it is my engagement,
and I have a right to know why. I do not mean to break it off----”

“Oh, how can I make explanations--how can I enter into such a question?
I appeal to you, Mr. Aubrey--tell her.”

“She ought not to ask any explanations. She is a minor, under age. My
father has a right to do whatever he pleases--and she has none to ask
why.”

This was how Charlie reasoned on the height of his one-and-twenty years.
Charlie was the intolerable element in all this question. Aubrey cast a
look at him, and forcibly closed his own lips to keep in something that
was bursting forth. Bee defied him, as was natural, on the spot. “I will
not have Charlie put in his opinion,” she cried. “He has nothing to do
with me. Even if I obeyed papa, I certainly should not obey him.”

“Let Aubrey say, himself,” said Mrs. Kingsward, “whether you ought to be
told everything, Bee.”

“It is cruel to ask me,” said Aubrey, speaking for the first time. “If
Bee could know all--if you could know all, Mrs. Kingsward! But how could
I tell you all? Part of this is true, and part is not true. I could
speak to Colonel Kingsward more freely. I am going off to-night to
London to see him. It will free you from embarrassment, and it will give
me perhaps a chance. I did not want to put you to this trial. I am ready
to put myself unreservedly in Colonel Kingsward’s hands.”

“Then,” said Bee, hastily, “it seems I am of no sort of importance at
all to anyone. I am told my engagement is broken off, and then I am told
I am not to know why, and then----. Go, then, Aubrey, as that is your
choice, and fight it out with papa, if you please.” She loosed her arm
from his, with a slight impulse, pushing him away. “But just mind
this--everybody,” she cried; “you may think little of Bee--but my
engagement shall not be broken by anybody but me, and it shall not be
kept on by anybody but me; and I will neither give it up nor will I hold
to it, neither one nor the other, until I know why.”

Then the judge and the defendant looked each other in the face. They
were, as may be supposed, on opposite sides, but they were the only two
to consult each other in this emergency. Aubrey responded by a movement
of his head, by a slight throwing up of his hand, to the question in
Mrs. Kingsward’s eyes.

“Then you shall know as much as I can tell you, Bee. Your father had a
letter last week, from a lady, telling him that she had a revelation to
make. The letter alarmed your father. He felt that he must know what it
meant. He could not go himself, but he sent Mr. Passavant, the lawyer.
The lady said that she had lived in Mr. Leigh’s house for years, in the
time of his late wife. She said Mr. Leigh had--had behaved very badly to
her.”

“That I do not believe,” said Bee.

The words flashed out like a knife. They made a stir in the air, as if a
sudden gleam had come into it. And then all was still again, a strange
dead quiet coming after, in which Bee perceived Aubrey silent, covering
his face with his hand. It came across her with a sudden pang that she
had heard somebody say this morning or last night--“He did not deny it.”

“And that he had promised her--marriage--that he was engaged to her, as
good as--as good as married to her--when he had the cruelty--oh, my dear
child, my dear child!--to come to you.”

Aubrey took his hand away from his white face. “That,” he said, in a
strange, dead, tuneless voice, “is not true.”

“Oh, more shame to you, Aubrey, more shame to you,” cried Mrs.
Kingsward, forgetting her judicial character in her indignation as a
woman, “if it is not true!--” She paused a moment to draw her breath,
then added, “But indeed you were not so wicked as you say, for it is
true. And here is the evidence. Oh!” she cried, with tears in her eyes,
“it makes your conduct to my child worse; but it shows that you were not
then, not then, as bad as you say.”

Bee had dropped into the chair that was next to her, and there sat, for
her limbs had so trembled that she could not stand, watching him, never
taking her eyes from him, as if he were a book in which the
interpretation of this mystery was----

“Never mind about me,” he said, hoarsely. “I say nothing for myself.
Allow me to be as bad as a man can be, but that is not true. And what is
the evidence? You never told me there was any evidence.”

“Sir,” said Mrs. Kingsward, fully roused, “I told you all that was in my
husband’s letter last night.”

“Yes--that she,” a sort of shudder seemed to run over him, to the keen
sight of the watchers--“that she--said so. You don’t know, as I do, that
_that_ is no evidence. But you speak now as if there was something
more.”

She took a piece of folded paper from her lap. “There is this,” she
said, “a letter you wrote to her the morning you went away.”

“I did write her a letter,” he said.

Mrs. Kingsward held it out to him, but was stopped by Charlie, who put
his hand on her arm. “Keep this document, mother. Don’t put the evidence
against him into a man’s power. I’ll read it if Mr. Leigh thinks
proper.”

Once more Aubrey and Bee together, with a simultaneous impulse, looked
at this intruder into their story.

“Mamma! send him away. I should like to kill him!” said Bee within her
clenched teeth.

“Be quiet, Charlie. Mr. Leigh, I am ready to put this or any other
evidence against you into your hands.”

He bowed very gravely, and then stood once more as if he were made of
stone. Mrs. Kingsward faltered very much, her agitated face flushed. “It
begins,” she said, in a low fluttering voice, “My dear little wife----”

Then there came a very strange sound into the agitated silence, for
Aubrey Leigh, on trial for more than his life, here laughed. “What more,
what more?” he said.

“No, it is not that. It is--‘I don’t want my dear little wife to be
troubled about anything. It can all be done quite easily and quietly,
without giving an occasion for people to talk; a settlement made and
everything you could desire. I shall make arrangements about everything
to-day.’ It is signed A. L., and it is in your handwriting. Bee, you can
see it is in his handwriting; look for yourself.”

Bee would not turn her head. She thought she saw the writing written in
fire upon the air--all his familiar turns in it. How well she knew the
A. L.; but she did not look at it--would not look. She had enough to do
looking at his face, which was the letter--the book she was studying
now.

“No doubt it is my handwriting,” he said, “only it was addressed not to
any other woman, but to my wife.”

“Your wife died two years ago, Mr. Leigh; and that is dated
Christmas--this year.”

“That is a lie!” he cried; then restrained himself painfully. “You know
I don’t mean you--but the date and the assumption is entirely a lie.
Give me time, and I will tell you exactly when it was written. I
remember the letter. It was when I had promised Amy to provide for her
friend on condition that she should be sent away--for she made my house
miserable.”

“And yet--and yet, Mr. Leigh----. Oh, don’t you see how things
contradict each other? She made your house miserable, and yet---- when
your wife was dead, and you were free----”

He looked at her, growing paler and paler. “And yet!” he said. “I know
what you mean. That is the infernal art of it. My own folly has cut the
ground from beneath my feet, and put weapons into every hand against me.
I know--I know.”

Again there came into Bee’s mind the words she had heard last night--“He
does not deny it.” And yet he was denying it with all his might!
Denying, and not denying--what? The girl’s brain was all in a maze, and
she could not tell.

“You see?” said Mrs. Kingsward, gently. “Oh, I am sorry for you in my
heart. Perhaps you were led into--a connection that you feel not to
be--desirable. That I can understand. But that you should think you
could save yourself by means of an innocent girl, almost a child, and
impose yourself on a family that had no suspicions!--oh, Mr. Leigh, Mr.
Leigh! you ought to have died sooner than have done that!”

He looked at her piteously for a moment, and then a dreadful sort of
smile came upon his face. “I allow,” he said, “that that would have been
the best.”

And there fell a silence upon the room. The sun was shining outside, and
the sound of the water gurgling against the sides of boats, and of all
the commotion of the landing place, and of the hundreds of voices in the
air, and of the chiming of the clocks, came in and filled the place.
And just then there burst out a carillon from one of the steeples
setting the whole to music, harmonising all the discords, and sweeping
into this silence with a sudden rush of sound as if some bodily presence
had come in. It was the touch too much for all these excited and
troubled people. Mrs. Kingsward lay back in her chair and began to weep
silently. Aubrey Leigh turned away from where he was standing and leant
his head against the wall. As for Bee, she sat quite still, dazed, not
able to understand, but crushed out of all her youthful self-assertion
and determination to clear it all up. She to clear it up!--who did not
even understand it, who could not fathom what was meant. That there was
something more than met the eye, something that was not put into words,
seemed to show vaguely through the words that were said. But what it was
Bee could not tell. She could not understand it all. And yet that there
was a fatal obstacle rising up between her and her lover, something
which no one could disperse or clear away, not a mistake, not a
falsehood, not a thing that could be passed over triumphantly and
forgotten--not as youth is so quick to believe a mere severity, tyranny,
arbitrary conclusion of papa--she felt in every fibre of her frame. She
could not deny it or struggle against it; her very being seemed
paralysed. The meaning went out of her face, the absolute, certain,
imperious youthfulness died out of her. She who loved to have her own
way, who had just protested that she would neither give up nor hold fast
except by her own will and understanding, now sat dumb, vaguely staring,
seeing shadows pass before her and hearing of things which were
undeniable, mighty things, far more powerful than her little hot
resolutions and determinations. Bee had never yet come face to face with
any trouble which could not be smoothed away. There was her own
naughtiness, there were Charlie’s escapades at school and college--some
of which she had known were serious. But in a little while they had been
passed over and forgotten, and everything had been as before. One time
she remembered papa had threatened not to let Charlie go back to Harrow,
which was a dreadful thing, exposing him and his naughtiness to all the
world. But after a while papa had changed his mind, and everything had
gone smoothly as before. Could papa change his mind now? Would time make
it, even if he did, as it was before? Bee had not mental power enough to
think these things, or ask these questions of her own will. But they
went through her mind as people come in and go out by an open door.

It was Aubrey who was the first to speak. The carillon stopped, or else
they got used to the sound and took no further notice of it, and he
collected himself and came forward again to the middle of the room. He
said, “I know it will be a relief that I should go away. There is an
afternoon train which I shall take. It is slow, but it does not matter.
I shall be as well there as anywhere--or as ill. I shall go direct to
Colonel Kingsward and lay my whole case before him. He will perhaps
confront me with my accuser--I hope so--if not, he will at least hear
what I have to say for myself.”

“Oh, Mr. Leigh! Oh, Aubrey! I can’t wish you anything but well,
whatever--whatever may be done!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Kingsward, I looked for nothing less from your kind
heart. Will you give me that letter?”

She put it into his hands without the least hesitation, and he examined
it--with a sort of strained smile upon his face. “I should like to take
this back to Colonel Kingsward,” he said. Then added quickly with a
short laugh, “No, I forgot; there might be suspicions. Send it back to
him, please, by the first post, that he may have it when I get there.”
He gave the letter back, and then he looked round wistfully. “May I say
good-bye to Bee?”

She got up at the words, feeling herself vaguely called upon--yet quite
dull, dumb, with all sorts of thoughts going and coming through those
wide-open doors of her mind--thoughts like strays which she seemed to
see as they passed. Even Aubrey himself appeared a ghost. She got up and
stood awaiting him when he approached her, not putting out a finger.
Nobody interfered, not even Charlie, who was fuming internally yet
somehow did not move. Aubrey went up to her and put his hands upon her
shoulders. Her unresponsiveness sent a chill to his heart.

“Have you given me up, Bee?” he cried, “Already, already!” with anguish
in his voice.

She could not say a word. She shook her head like a mute, looking at him
with her dazed eyes.

“She does not understand it--not a word!” he said.

Bee shook her head again. It was all she could do. No, she did not
understand, except that it was a kind of dying, something against which
nobody could struggle. And then he kissed her on her forehead as gravely
as though he had been her father; and the next moment was gone--was it
only out of the room, or out of the world, out of life?




CHAPTER VIII.


It was a slow train. The slowest train that there is, is, of course,
far, far quicker than any other mode of conveyance practicable in a land
journey, but it does not seem so. It seems as if it were delay
personified to the eager traveller, especially on the Continent. In
England, when it stops at a multiplicity of stations at which there is
nothing to do, it at least goes on again in most cases after it has
dropped its half-passenger or taken in its empty bag of letters. But
this can never be said of a German or even of a brisker Belgian train.
The one in which Aubrey was meandered about Liege, for instance, till he
had mastered every aspect of that smoky but interesting place. It
stopped for what looked like an hour at every little roadside station,
in order, apparently, that the guard might hold a long and excited
conversation about nothing at all with the head man of the place. And
all the while the little electric bell would go tingling, tingling upon
his very brain. Thus he made his slow and weary progress through the
afternoon and evening, stopping long at last at a midnight station
(where everything was wrapped in sleep and darkness) for the arrival of
the express, in which the latter portion of the journey was to be
accomplished more quickly. If there had been anything wanted to complete
the entire overthrow of a spirit in pain it was such an experience. All
was dismal beyond words at the place where he had to wait--one poor
light showing through the great universe of darkness, the dark big world
that encompassed it around--one or two belated porters wandering through
the blackness doing mysterious pieces of business, or pretending to do
them. A poor little wailing family--a mother and two children, put out
there upon a bench from some other train, one of the babies wailing
vaguely into the dark, the other calling upon “mamma, mamma,” driving
the poor mother frantic--were waiting like himself. It gave Aubrey a
momentary consolation to see something that appeared at least to the
external eye more forlorn than he. He remembered, too, that there had
once been a baby cry that went to his heart, and though all the
associations connected with that had now turned into gall and
bitterness, so that the sound seemed like a spear penetrating his very
being, and he walked away as far as the bounds of the station would
allow, to get, if possible, out of hearing of it--yet pity, a better
inspiration, at last gained the day. He went up and spoke to the woman,
and found that she was an English workman’s wife making her way home
with her children to a mother who was dying. They had turned her out
here, with her babies, to wait--ah, not for the express train which was
to carry on the gentleman, but for the slow, slow-creeping third-class
which only started in the morning, and which would, after other long
waits at other places, reach England sometime, but she could scarcely
tell when.

“And must you pass the night here out in the cold?” said Aubrey.

“It isn’t not to call a cold night, sir,” said the woman, meekly, “and
they’ve got plenty on to keep them warm.”

“I’ll try and get them to open the waiting-room for you,” said Aubrey.

“Oh, no, sir; thank you kindly, but don’t take the trouble--the rooms
are that stuffy. It’s better for them in the open air, and they’ll go to
sleep in a little while. Baby will be quite warm on my lap, and Johnny’s
lying against me.”

“And what is to become of you in this arrangement?” said Aubrey, looking
pitifully, with eyes that had known the experiences both of husband and
father, upon this little plump human bed, which was to stand in the
place of down pillows for the children.

“Oh, I’ll do very well, sir, when they go to sleep,” she said, looking
up at him with a smile.

“And when does your train go?”

“Not till six in the morning,” she replied; “but perhaps that’s all the
better, for I’ll be able to get them some bread and milk, and a good
wash before we start.”

Well, it was not much of an indulgence for a man who was well off. He
might have thrown it away on any trifle, and nobody would have wasted a
thought on the subject. He got hold of one of the wandering ghosts of
porters, and got him, with a douceur, to change the poor woman’s cheap
ticket for her into one for the express, and commissioned him, if
possible, to get her a place in a sleeping carriage, where, I fear, she
was not likely to be at all a warmly welcomed addition to the luxurious
young men or delicate ladies in these conveyances. He saw that there was
one found for her which was almost empty when the train came up. He
scarcely knew if she were young or old--though indeed, as a matter of
fact, the poor little mother, bewildered by her sudden elevation among
the gentlefolks, and not quite sure that she would not have preferred to
remain where she was and pick up in the morning her natural third-class
train, was both young and pretty, a fact that was remarked by the one
young lady in the carriage, who saw the young man through the window at
her side, and recognised him in a flash of the guard’s lantern, with
deep astonishment to see him handing in such a woman and such children
to the privileged places. He disappeared himself into the dark, and
indeed took his place in the corner of a smoking carriage, where his
cigar was a faint soother of pain. In his human short-sightedness, poor
Aubrey also was consoled a little, I think, by the thought that this
poor fellow-passenger was comfortable--she and her children--and that
instead of slumbering uneasily on a bench, she was able to lay the
little things in a bed. It seemed to him a good omen, a little
relaxation of the bonds of fate, and he went away cheered a little and
encouraged by this simple incident and by the warmth of the kindness
that was in his heart.

He spoke to them again on one or two occasions on the way, sent the poor
woman some tea in the morning, bought some fruit for the children, and
again on the steamboat crossing, when he listened to the account of how
they were going on, from Dover, with a certain interest. When they
parted at the train he shook hands with the mother, hoping she would
find her relation better, and put a sovereign into Johnny’s little fat
hand. The lady who had been in the sleeping carriage kept her eye upon
him all the time. She was not by any means a malicious or bad woman, but
she did not believe the poor woman’s story of the gentleman’s kindness.
She was, I am sorry to say, a lady who was apt to take the worst view of
every transaction, especially between men and women. People who do so
are bound in many cases to be right, and so are confirmed in their
odious opinion; but in many cases they are wrong, yet always hold to it
with a faith which would do credit to a better inspiration. “I thought
young Mr. Leigh was going to marry again,” she said to a friend whom she
met going up to town.

“Oh, so he is! To the nicest girl--Bee Kingsward, the daughter of one of
my dearest friends--such a satisfactory thing in every way.”

“Wasn’t there something,” said the lady of the sleeping carriage, “about
a woman, down at his place in the country?”

“Oh, I don’t think there was ever anything against him. There was a
woman who was a great friend of his poor wife, and lived with them. The
wife was a goose, don’t you know, and could not be made to see what a
foolish thing it was. My opinion is that he never could abide the woman,
and I am sure she made mischief between them. But I believe that silly
little Mrs. Leigh--poor thing, we should not speak ill of those that are
gone--made him promise on her deathbed that this Miss Something-or-other
should not be sent away from the house. It was a ridiculous arrangement,
and no woman that respected herself would have done it. But she was
poor, and it’s a comfortable place, and, perhaps, as there was no
friendship between them she may have thought it was no harm.”

“Perhaps she thought she would get over him in time and make him marry
her.”

“Oh, I can’t tell what she thought! He rushed off in a hurry at a
moment’s notice, nobody knowing what he intended, after the poor baby
died, the very day of its funeral. Not much to be wondered at, poor
young man, after all he had gone through. I don’t know how things were
settled with Miss Lance, but I believe that she has gone at last. And I
am delighted to hear of his engagement. So will all his neighbours in
the county be.”

“I should not like a daughter of mine to marry a man like that.”

“Why? I wish a daughter of mine could have the chance. Everybody likes
him at home. Do you know anything of Aubrey Leigh?”

He did not know in the least that this talk was going on as the train
went rushing on to town; his ears did not tingle. He was in the next
carriage, divided only by a plank from these two ladies in their
compartment. The woman who took the bad view of everything did not wish
him any harm. She did not even think badly of him. She thought it was
only human nature, and that young men will do that sort of thing,
however nice they may be, and whatever you may say of morals and so
forth. I do not think, though she had made that little conventional
speech, that she would at all have hesitated to give her own daughter to
Aubrey, provided that she had a daughter. His advantages were so
evident, and the disadvantages, after all, had so little to do with
actual life.

Aubrey did not present himself before Colonel Kingsward that night. He
did not propose to follow him to Kingswarden, the old house in Kent,
which was the sole remnant of territorial property belonging to the
family. He wanted to have all his wits about him, to be cool and
self-possessed, and able to remember everything, when he saw the man who
had given him Bee and then had withdrawn her from his arms. He already
knew Colonel Kingsward a little, and knew him as a man full of
_bonhommie_, popular everywhere--a man of experience, who had been about
the world, who knew men. By this time Aubrey had recovered his spirits a
little. He thought it impossible that such a man, when a younger than
himself laid bare his heart to him, could fail to understand. It was
true that the Colonel was probably a martinet in morals as he was in his
profession, and Aubrey had that behind him which he could not deny. He
would not attempt to gloss it over, to make excuses for it. He would lay
his life in this man’s hand as if he had been his confessor. And
surely, surely the acknowledged sin would find absolution, the
extenuating circumstances would be considered, the lie with which that
accusation was accompanied would recoil upon the accuser. The young man
buoyed himself up with these thoughts through the long evening. He did
not go out or to his club, or anywhere where he was known. In September
there are not so many inducements to stray about London. He sat in his
room and thought of Bee, and wrote little letters to her, which were a
relief to his mind though he knew he could not send them. By this time
he reflected they must have started. They were beginning their journey
as he ended his. He hoped that Charlie, that lout, would have the sense
to take care of his mother, to see that she suffered as little as
possible, to prevent her from having any trouble--which I fear was not
the view at all that Charlie took of his duty to his mother. Aubrey,
like all outsiders, had a clearer view of Mrs. Kingsward’s condition
than her family had arrived at. He was very sorry for her, poor,
delicate, tender woman--and grieved to the bottom of his heart that this
trouble should have come upon her through him. Bee was different. There
would be so many ways, please God, if all went well--and he could not
bring himself to think that all would not go well--in which he could
make it up to his Bee. Finally, he permitted himself to write a little
letter to meet his darling on her return, and enclosed in it another to
Mrs. Kingsward, directed to Kingswarden. They would receive it when they
entered their house--and by that time, surely by that time, his letters
would not be any longer a forbidden thing.

That morning it rained, and the London skies hung very low. The world
had the effect of a room with a low roof, stifling and without air. He
set out to walk to Colonel Kingsward’s office. I forget whether the
Intelligence Department of the War Office was in existence at that time,
or if it has always been in existence only not so much heard of as in
our vociferous days. If it did exist then, it was, of course, in Pall
Mall, as we all know. Aubrey set out to walk, but soon recollected that
muddy boots detracted from a man’s appearance, especially in the eyes of
a spick and span person like Colonel Kingsward, who never had a speck
upon any garment, and accordingly he got into a hansom. It did not go
any faster than the beating of his heart, and yet he could have wished
that it should only creep along like the heavier cabs. He would have put
off this interview now had he been able. To think that you are within an
hour at most of the moment when your life shall be settled for you
absolutely by another person’s will, and that your happiness or
unhappiness rest upon the manner in which he will look at the question,
the perception he will have of your difficulties, the insight into your
heart, is a terrible thing--especially if you know little of the person
who has thus become endowed, as it were, with the power of life and
death over you--do not know if his understanding is a large or limited
one, if he has any human nature in him, or only mere conventionality and
the shell of human nature. It is seldom, perhaps, that one man is thus
consciously in the power of another--and yet it must come to that more
or less, every day.

Colonel Kingsward was in his room, seated at his writing table with
piles of books and maps, and masses of newspapers all round him. He was
an excellent linguist, and there were French papers and German papers,
Russian, Scandinavian--all kinds of strange languages and strange little
broadsheets, badly printed, black with excessive ink, or pale with
imperfect impression, on the floor and the table. He had a large paper
knife at his hand in ivory, with the natural brown upon it, looking like
a weapon which could cut a man, not to say a book, in pieces. He looked
up with an aspect which Aubrey, whose heart was in his mouth, could not
read--whether it was mere politeness or something more--and bade Mr.
Leigh be seated, putting aside deliberately as he did so the papers with
which he was engaged. And then he turned round with the air of a man who
says: Now you have my entire attention--and looked Aubrey in the face.
The young man was facing the light which came in from a large high
window reaching nearly to the roof. The elder man had his back half
turned from it, so that his regard was less easy to read. It was not
quite fair. Aubrey had everything against him; his agitation, his
anxiety, an expressive tell-tale face, and the light searching every
change that took place in it; whilst his opponent was calm as his own
paper knife, impassive, with a countenance formed to conceal his
emotions, and the light behind him. It was not an equal match in any
way.

“I have come direct from Cologne,” Aubrey said.

“Ah, yes. I believe my wife says so in her letter.”

“You have news from them to-day? I hope that Mrs. Kingsward is better.”

“My wife never at any time speaks much of her health. She was a little
fatigued and remained another day to rest.”

“She is very delicate, sir,” said Aubrey. He did not know why, unless it
was reluctance to begin what he had to say.

“I am perfectly acquainted with Mrs. Kingsward’s condition,” said the
Colonel, in a tone which was not encouraging. He added, “I don’t suppose
you took the trouble to come here, Mr. Leigh, in order to speak to me
about my wife’s health.”

“No. It is true. I ought not to waste the time you have accorded me. I
do not need to tell you, Colonel Kingsward, what I have come about.”

“I think you do,” said the Colonel, calmly. “My letter to my wife, which
I believe she communicated to you, conveyed all I had to say on the
matter. It was not written without reflection, nor without every
possible effort to arrive at the truth. Consequently, I have no desire
to re-open the subject. It is in my mind concluded and put aside.”

“But you will hear me?” said Aubrey. “You have heard one statement,
surely you will hear the other. No man is condemned unheard. I have come
here to throw myself upon your mercy--to tell you my story. However
prejudiced you may be against me----”

“A moment, Mr. Leigh. I have no prejudice against you. I am not the
judge of your conduct. I claim the right to decide for my daughter--that
is all. I have no prejudice or feeling against you.”

“Colonel Kingsward,” cried Aubrey, “for God’s sake listen! Hear what I
have to say!”

The Colonel looked at him again. Perhaps it was the passion of
earnestness in the young man’s face that touched him. Perhaps he felt
that it was unwise to leave it to be said that he had not heard both
sides. The end was that he waved his hand and said:

“My time is not my own. I have no right to spend it on merely private
interests; but if you will make your story as short as possible I will
hear what you have to say.”




CHAPTER IX.


The story which Aubrey Leigh had to tell was indeed made as short as
possible. To describe the most painful crisis in your life, the moment
which you yourself shudder to look back at, which awakens in you that
fury of self-surprise, horror and wonder which a sudden departure from
all the habits of your life brings after it when it is guilt, is not an
easy thing; but it supplies terse expressions and rapidity of narration.
There is no desire to dwell upon the details, and to tell a story so
deeply affecting one’s self to a politely unsympathetic listener who
does not affect to be much interested or at all moved by the subtle
self-defence which runs through every such statement, is still more
conducive to brevity. Aubrey laid bare the tempest that had swept over
him with a breathless voice and broken words. He could not preserve his
equanimity, or look as if it were an easy thing for him to do. He made
the most hurried description of the visitor who had taken possession of
his house, saying not a word beyond the bare fact. It had been deeply
embarrassing that she should be there, though at first in the melancholy
of his widowerhood he had not thought of it, or cared who was in the
house. Afterwards he was prevented from doing anything to disturb her by
his promise to his dying wife. Then had come the anxiety about the baby,
the wavering of that little life in which the forlorn young father had
come to take a little pleasure. She had been very kind to the child,
watching over it, and when the little thing died, when the misery of the
fresh desolation, and the pity of it, and the overwhelming oppression of
the sad house had quite overcome the spirit of its young master, then
she had thrown herself upon him, with all the signs of a sudden passion
of sympathy and tenderness. Had any confessor skilled in the accounts of
human suffering heard Aubrey’s broken tale he could have found nothing
but truth in it, and would have recognised the subtle sequence of events
which had led to that downfall. But Colonel Kingsward, though not
unlearned in men, listened like a man of wood, playing with the large
paper-knife, and never looking towards the penitent, who told his story
with such a strain of the labouring breast and agonised spirit. Had a
young officer in whom he had no particular interest thus explained and
accounted for some dereliction of duty he might have understood or
sympathised. But he had no wish to understand Aubrey; his only desire
was to brush him off as quickly as possible, to be done with his
ridiculous story, to hear of him no more. He might be as little guilty
as he described himself. What then? Aubrey’s character was nothing to
Colonel Kingsward, except as it affected his daughter. He had cut him
off from all connection with his daughter, and it was now quite
immaterial to him whether the man was a weak fool or a deceiver.
Probably from as much as he heard while thus listening as little as he
could, Leigh was in the former class, and certainly he did not intend
to take a weak fool, who had shown himself to be at the mercy of any
designing woman, into his family as the husband of Bee. Give him the
benefit of the doubt, and allow that it had happened so, that the woman
was much more to blame than the man, and what then? A sturdy sinner on
the whole was not less but more easily pardoned than a weak fool.

“This is all very well, Mr. Leigh,” Colonel Kingsward said, “and I am
sorry that you have thought it necessary to enter into these painful
details. They may be quite true. I will not offend you by doubting that
you believe them to be quite true. But how, then, do you account for the
letter which my wife, I believe, showed you, and which came direct from
the lady’s own hand to mine?”

“The letter was a letter which I wrote to my wife two years ago. There
had been discussions between us on this very subject. I promised, on
condition that Miss Lance should leave us, to make such arrangements for
her comfort as were possible to me--to settle a yearly income on her,
enough to live on.”

“Was that arrangement ever carried out?”

“No; my wife became ill immediately after. I found her on my return in
Miss Lance’s arms, imploring that so long as she lived her friend should
not be taken from her. What could I do? And that prayer was changed on
my poor Amy’s deathbed to another--that I would never send Miss Lance
away; that she should always have a home at Forest-leigh and watch over
the child.”

“I don’t wish to arouse any such painful recollections--especially as
they can be of no advantage to anyone--but how does this letter come to
have the date of last Christmas, more than a year after Mrs. Leigh’s
death?”

“How can I tell that, sir? How can I tell how the devilish web was woven
at all? The note had no date, I suppose, and the person who could use it
for this purpose would not hesitate at such a trifle as to add a date.”

“Mr. Leigh, I repeat the whole matter is too painful to be treated by
me. But how is it, if you regarded this lady with those sentiments,
that you should have in a moment changed them, and, to put the mildest
interpretation upon your proceedings, thus put yourself in her power?”

The young man’s flushed and anxious face grew deadly pale. He turned his
eyes from the inquisitor to the high blank light pouring in from the
large window. “God knows,” he said, “that is what I cannot explain--or
rather, I should say, the devil knows!” he cried with vehemence. “I was
entirely off my guard--thinking, heaven knows, of nothing less.”

“The devil is a safe sort of agency to put the blame on. We cannot in
ordinary affairs accept him as the scapegoat, Mr. Leigh--excuse me for
saying so. I will not refuse to say that I allow there may be excuses
for you, with a woman much alive to her own interests and ready for any
venture. You did write to her, however, on the day you left?”

“I wrote to her, telling her the arrangement I had proposed to my wife,
in the very letter which she has sent to you--that I would carry it out
at once, and that I hoped she would perceive, as I did, that it was
impossible we should remain under the same roof, or, indeed, meet
again.”

“That was on what date?”

“The evening before my child’s funeral. Next day, as soon as it was
over, I left the house, and have never set foot in it again.”

“Yet this lady, to whom you had, you say, sent such a letter, was at the
funeral, and stood at the child’s grave leaning on your arm.”

“More than that,” cried Aubrey, with a gasp of his labouring breath,
“she came up to me as I stood there and put her arm, as if to support
me, within mine.”

The Colonel could not restrain an exclamation. “By Jove,” he said, “she
is a strong-minded woman, if that is true. Do you mean to say that this
was after she had your letter?”

“I suppose so. I sent it to her in the morning. I was anxious to avoid
any scene.”

“And then, on your way to London, on that day, you went to your
solicitors, and gave instructions in respect to Miss Lance’s
annuity--which you say now had been determined on long before?”

“It was determined on long before.”

“But never mentioned to any one until that time.”

“I beg your pardon; on the day on which I wrote that letter to my
wife I went direct to my lawyer and talked the matter over freely
with Mr. Morell, who had known me all my life, and knew all the
circumstances--and approved my resolution, as the best of two evils, he
said.”

“This is the most favourable thing I have heard, Mr. Leigh. He will, of
course, be able to back you up in what you say?”

“Mr. Morell!” Aubrey sprang to his feet with a start of dismay. “I
think,” he cried, “all the powers of hell must be against me. Mr. Morell
is dead.”

They looked at each other for a moment in silence. A half smile came
upon the Colonel’s face, though even he was a little overawed by the
despair in the countenance of the young man.

“I don’t know that it matters very much,” he said, “for, after all, Mr.
Leigh, your anxiety to get rid of your wife’s companion might have two
interpretations. You might have been sincerely desirous to free yourself
from a temptation towards another woman, which would have given Mrs.
Leigh pain. A man does not sacrifice two hundred a year without a strong
motive. And subsequent events make this a far more likely reason than
the desire to get rid of an unwelcome inmate.”

“I cannot tell whether my motive was likely or not. I tell you, sir,
what it was.”

“Ah, yes--but unfortunately without any corroboration--and the story is
very different from the other side. It appears from that that you wished
to establish relationship during your poor wife’s life, and that it was
the lady who was moved by pity for you in a moment of weakness--which is
much more according to the rule in such matters.”

“It is a lie!” Aubrey cried. “Colonel Kingsward, you are a man--and an
honourable man. Can you imagine another man, with the same principles as
yourself, guilty of such villainy as that? Can you believe----”

“Mr. Leigh,” said the other, “it is unnecessary to ask me what I can
believe; nor can I argue, from what I would do, as to what you would do.
That may be of good Christianity, you know, but it is not tenable in
life. Many men are capable enough of what I say; and, indeed, I do you
the credit to believe that you were willing to keep the temptation at a
distance--to make a sacrifice in order to ease the mind of your wife. I
show a great deal of faith in you when I say that. Another man might say
that Mrs. Leigh had exacted it from you as a thing necessary to her
peace.”

Aubrey Leigh rose up again, and began to pace the room from one side to
the other. He could not keep still in his intolerable impatience and
scorn of the net which was tightening about his feet. Anger rose up like
a whirlwind in his mind; but to indulge it was to lose for ever the
cause which, indeed, was already lost. When he had gained control over
himself and his voice, he said, “We had neighbours; we had friends; our
life was not lived in a corner unknown to the world. There is my mother;
ask them--they all know----.”

“Does anyone outside know what goes on between a husband and wife?” said
Colonel Kingsward. “Such discussions do not go on before witnesses. If
poor Mrs. Leigh----”

“Sir,” cried Aubrey, stung beyond hearing, “I will not permit any man to
pity my wife.”

“It was beyond my province I allow, but one uses the word for those who
die young. I don’t know why, for if all is true that we profess to
believe they certainly have the best of it. Well, if Mrs. Leigh, to
speak by the book, had any such burden on her mind, and really felt her
happiness to depend on the banishment of that dangerous companion, it is
not likely that she would speak of it either to your neighbours or to
your mother.”

“Why not? My mother was of that mind, though not for that villainous
reason; my mother knew, everybody knew--everybody agreed with me in
wishing her gone. I appeal to all who knew us, Colonel Kingsward! There
is not a friend I have who did not compassionate me for Amy’s insensate
affection. God forgive me that I should say a word against my poor
little girl, but it was an infatuation--as all her friends knew.”

“Don’t you think we are now getting into the region of the extravagant?”
Colonel Kingsward said. “I cannot send out a royal commission to take
the evidence of your friends.”

Aubrey had to pause again to master himself. If this man, with his
contemptuous accents, his cool disdain, were not Bee’s father!---- but
he was so, and, therefore, must not be defied. He answered after a time
in a subdued voice. “Will you allow me--to send one or two of them to
tell you what they know. There is Fairfield, with whom you are
acquainted already, there is Lord Langtry, there is Vavasour, who was
with us constantly----”

“To none of these gentlemen, I presume, would Mrs. Leigh be likely to
unfold her most intimate sentiments.”

“Two of them have wives,” said Aubrey, determined to hold fast, “whom
she saw familiarly daily--country neighbours.”

“I must repeat, Mr. Leigh, I cannot send out a royal commission to take
the evidence of your friends.”

“Do you mean that you will not hear any evidence, Colonel
Kingsward?--that I am condemned already?--that it does not matter what I
have in my favour?”

Colonel Kingsward rose to dismiss his suitor. “I have already said, Mr.
Leigh, that I am not your judge. I have no right to condemn you. Your
account may be all true; your earnestness and air of sincerity, I allow,
in a case in which I was not personally involved, would go far to making
me believe it was true. But what then? The matter is this: Will I allow
my daughter to marry a man of whom such a question has been raised? I
say no: and there I am within my clear rights. You may be able to clear
yourself, making out the lady to be a sort of demon in human shape. My
friend, who saw her, said she was a very attractive woman. But really
this is not the question. I am not a censor of public morals, and on the
whole it is a matter of indifference to me whether you are guiltless or
not. The sole thing is that I will not permit my daughter to put her
foot where such a scandal has been. I have nothing to do with you but
everything with her. And I think now that all has been said.”

“That is, you will not hear anything more?”

“Well--if you like to put it so--I prefer not to hear any more.”

“Not if Bee’s happiness should be involved?”

“My daughter’s happiness, I hope, does not depend upon a man whom she
has known only for a month. She may think so now. But she will soon know
better. That is a question into which I decline to enter with you.”

“Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love,” said
Aubrey, with a coarse laugh. He turned as if to go away. “But you do not
mean that this is final, Colonel Kingsward---- not final? Not for ever?
Never to be revised or reconsidered---- even if I were as bad as you
think me?”

“How needless is all this! I have told you your character does not
concern me--and I do not say that you are bad--or think so. I am sorry
for you. You have got into a rather dreadful position, Mr. Leigh, for a
young man of your age.”

“And yet at my age you think I should be cut off for ever from every
hope of salvation!”

“Not so; this is all extravagant--ridiculous! And if you will excuse me,
I am particularly busy this morning, with a hundred things to do.”

Poor Aubrey would have killed with pleasure, knocked down and trampled
upon, the immovable man of the world who thus dismissed him; but to be
humble, even abject, was his only hope. “I will try, then, to find some
moment of leisure another time.”

“It is unnecessary, Mr. Leigh. I shall not change my mind; surely you
must see that it is better for all parties to give it up at once.”

“I shall never give it up.”

“Pooh! one nail drives out another. You don’t seem to have been a
miracle of constancy in your previous relationships. Good morning. I
trust to hear soon that you have made as satisfactory a settlement of
other claims.”




CHAPTER X.


Other claims! What other claims? Aubrey Leigh went out of the office in
Pall Mall with these words circling through his mind. They seemed to
have nothing to do with that which occupied him, which filled every
thought. His dazed memory and imagination caught them up as he went
forth in the fury of suppressed anger, and the dizzy, stifled sensation
of complete failure. He had felt sure, even when he felt least sure,
that when it was possible to tell his tale fully, miserable story as it
was, the man to whom he humbled himself thus, not being a recluse or a
mere formalist--a man of the world--would at least, to some degree,
understand and perceive how little real guilt there might be even in
such a fault as he had committed. It was not a story which could be
repeated in a woman’s ears; but a man, who knew more or less what was in
man--the momentary lapses, the sudden impulses, the aberrations of
intolerable trouble, sorrow, and despair----. Aubrey did not take into
account the fact that there are some men to whom such a condition as
that into which he himself had fallen in the desolation of his silent
house--when death came a second time within the sad year, and his young
soul felt in the first sensation of despair that he could not bear it;
that he was a man signalled out by fate, to whom it was vain to
struggle, to whom life was a waste and heaven a mockery--was
inconceivable. Colonel Kingsward was certainly not a man like that. He
would have said to himself that the mother being gone it was only a
blessing and advantage that the child should go too, and he would have
withdrawn himself decorously to his London lodgings and his club, and
his friends would all have said that it was on the whole a good thing
for him, and that he was young, and his life still before him. So,
indeed, they had said of Aubrey, and so poor Aubrey had proved for
himself. Had there not been that terrible moment behind him, that
intolerable blackness and midnight of despair, in which any hand that
gripped his could lead him till the light of morning burst upon him, and
showed him whither in his misery he had been led!

Satisfy other claims? The words blew like a noxious wind through his
brain. He laughed to himself softly as he went along. What claims had he
to satisfy? He had done all that honour and scorn could do to satisfy
the harpy who had dug her claws into his life. Should he try to
propitiate her with other gifts? No, no! That would be but to prolong
the scandal, to give her a motive for continuance, to make it appear
that he was in her power. He was in her power, alas, fatally as it
proved, if it should be so that she had made an end of the happiness of
his life. She had blighted the former chapter of that existence,
bringing out all that was petty in the poor little bride over whom she
had gained so complete an ascendancy, showing her husband Amy’s
worst side, the aspect of her which he might never have known but
for that fatal companion ever near. And now she had ruined him
altogether--ruined him as in old stories the Pamelas of the village were
ruined by a villain who took advantage of their simplicity. What lovely
woman who had stooped to folly could be more ruined than this unhappy
young man? He laughed to himself at this horrible travesty of that old
familiar eighteenth century tale. This was the _fin de siecle_ version
of it, he supposed--the version in which it was the designing woman who
seized upon the moment of weakness and the man who suffered shipwreck of
everything in consequence. There was a horrible sort of ridicule in it
which wrought poor Aubrey almost to madness. When the woman is the
victim, however sorely she may be to blame for her own disgrace, a sort
of pathos and romance is about her, and pity is winged with indignation
against the man who is supposed to have taken advantage of her weakness.
But when it is a man who is the victim! Then the mildest condemnation he
can look for is the coarse laugh of contempt, the inextinguishable
ridicule, to which even in fiction it is too great a risk to expose a
hero. He was no hero--but an unhappy young man fallen into the most
dreadful position in which man could be, shut out of all hope of ever
recovering himself, marked by the common scorn--no ordinary sinner, a
man who had profaned his own home, and all the most sacred prejudices of
humanity. He had felt all that deeply when he rushed from his house, a
man distraught not knowing where he went. And then morning and evening,
and the dews and the calm, and the freshness and elasticity inalienable
from youth had driven despair and horror away. He had felt it at last
impossible that all his life--a life which he desired to live out in
duty and kindness, and devotion to God and man--should be spoiled for
ever by his momentary yielding to a horrible temptation. He had thought
at first that he never could hold up his head again. But gradually the
impression had been soothed away, and he had vainly hoped that such a
thing might be left behind him and might be heard of no more.

Now he was undeceived--now he was convinced that for what a man does he
must answer, not only at the bar of God, where all the secrets of the
heart are revealed, but also before men. There are times in which the
former judgment is more easy to think of than the latter--for God knows
all, everything that is in favour of the culprit, while men only know
what is against him. A man with sorrow in his heart for all his
shortcomings, can endure, upon his knees, that all-embracing gaze of
infinite understanding and pity. But to stand before men who
misconstrue, mis-see, misapprehend, how different a thing it is--who do
not know the end from the beginning, to whom the true balance and
perfect poise of justice is almost impossible--who can judge only as
they know, and who can know only the husk and shell of fact, the
external aspect of affairs by the side which is visible to them. All
these thoughts went through Aubrey’s mind as he went listlessly about
those familiar streets in their autumnal quiet, no crowd about, nothing
to interrupt the progress of the wayfarer. He went across the Green
Park, which is brown in the decadence of summer, almost as solitary as
if he had been in his own desolate glades at home. London has a
soothing effect sometimes on such a still, sunny autumn day, when it
seems to rest after the worry and heat and strain of all its frivolity
and folly. The soft haze blurs all the outlines, makes the trees too
dark and the sky too pale; yet it is sunshine and not fog which wraps
the landscape, even that landscape which lies between Pall Mall and
Piccadilly. It soothed our young man a little in the despair of his
thoughts. Surely, surely at eight-and-twenty everything could not be
over. Bee would in a year or two be the mistress of her own actions. She
was not a meek girl, to be coerced by her father. She would judge for
herself in such a dreadful emergency. After all that had passed, the
whole facts of the case would have to be submitted to her, which was a
thought that enveloped him as in flames of shame. Yet she would judge
for herself, and her judgment would be more like that of heaven than
like that of earth. A kind of celestial ray gleamed upon him in this
thought.

And as for these other claims--well, if any claim were put forth he
would not shrink--would not try to compromise, would not try to hide
his shame under piles of gold. Now he had no motive for concealment, he
would face it out and have the question set straight in the eye of day.
To be sure, for a man to accuse a woman is against the whole
conventional code of honour. To accuse all women is the commonplace of
every day; but to put the blame of seduction upon one is what a man dare
not do save in the solitude of his chamber--or in such a private
inquisition as Aubrey had gone through that day. This is one of the
proofs that there is much to be said on both sides, and that it is the
unscrupulous of either side who has the most power to humble and to
destroy. But the bravado did him good for the moment--let her make her
claim, whatever that claim was, and he would meet it in the face of day!

Other ideas came rapidly into Aubrey’s mind when he strolled listlessly
into his club, and almost ran against the friend in whose house he had
first met Colonel Kingsward, and through whom consequently all that had
afterwards happened had come about. “Fairfield!” he cried, with a gleam
of sudden hope in his eyes.

“Leigh! You here?--I thought you were philandering on the banks of--some
German river or other. Well! and so I hear I have to congratulate you,
my boy--and I’m sure I do so with all my heart----”

“You might have done so a week ago, and I should have responded with all
mine. But you see me fallen again on darker days. Fate’s against me, it
seems, in every way.”

“Why, what’s the matter?” cried his friend. “I expected to see you
triumphant. What has gone wrong? Not settlements already, eh?”

“Settlements! They are free to make what settlements they like so far as
I am concerned.”

“Kingsward’s a very cool hand, Aubrey. You may lose your head if you
like, but he always knows what he is about. You are an excellent
match----”

“You think so,” said poor Aubrey, with a laugh. “Not badly off; a mild,
domestic fellow, with no devil in me at all.

“I should not exactly say that. A man is no man without a spice of the
devil. Why, what’s the matter? Now I look at you, instead of a
victorious lover, you have the most miserable hang-dog----”

“Hang-dog, that is it--a rope’s end, and all over. Hang it, no! I am not
going to give in. Fairfield, I don’t want to speak disrespectfully of
any woman.”

“Is it Mrs. Kingsward who is too young, herself, to think of enacting
the part of mother-in-law so soon as this?”

“Mrs. Kingsward is a sort of an angel, Fairfield, if it were not
old-fashioned to say so--and, alas, I fear, she will not enact any part
long, which is so much the worse for me.”

“You don’t say so! That pretty creature, with all her pretty ways, and
her daughter just the same age as she! Poor Kingsward. Aubrey, if a man
shows a little impatience with your raptures in such circumstances, I
don’t think you ought to be hard upon him.”

“I don’t believe he knows what are the circumstances, nor any of them.
It is not from that cause, Fairfield. You know Miss Lance, poor Amy’s
friend----”

Once more he grew hot all over as he named her name, and turned his face
from his friend’s gaze.

“Remember her! I should think so, and all you had to bear on that point,
old man. We have often said, Mary and I, that if ever there was a
hero----”

“Fairfield! they have got up a tale that it was I who kept her at
Forest-leigh against poor Amy’s will, and that my poor wife’s life was
made miserable by my attentions to that fi----.” Fiend he would have
said, but he changed it to “woman,” which meant to him at that moment
the same thing.

Fairfield stared for a moment--was he taking a new idea into his
commonplace mind? Then he burst into a loud laugh. “You can call the
whole county to bear witness to that,” he cried. “Attentions! Well, I
suppose you were civil, which was really more than anyone expected from
you.”

“You know, and everybody knows, what a thorn in the flesh it was. My
poor Amy! Without that, there would have been no cloud on our life, and
it all arose from her best qualities, her tender heart, her
faithfulness----”

A dubious shade came over Fairfield’s face. “Yes, no doubt; and Miss
Lance’s flattery and blandishments. Aubrey, I don’t mind saying it now
that you are well quit of her--that was a woman to persuade a fellow
into anything. I should no more have dared to keep her--especially
after--in my house, and to expose myself to her wiles----”

“They never were wiles for me,” said Aubrey, again turning his head
away. It was true, true--far more true than the fatal contradiction of
it, which lay upon his heart like a stone. “I never came nearer to
hating any of God’s creatures than that woman. She made my life a burden
to me. She took my wife from me----. She---- I needn’t get dithyrambic
on the subject; you all know.”

“Oh, yes, we all know; but you were too soft-hearted. You should have
risked a fit of tears from poor Mrs. Leigh--excuse me for saying so
now--and sent her away.”

“I tried it a dozen times. Poor Amy would have broken her heart. She
threatened even to go with her. And they say women don’t make
friendships with each other!”

Fairfield shrugged his shoulders a little. “I suffer myself from my
wife’s friends,” he said; “there’s always some ‘dear Clara’ or other
putting the table out of joint, making me search heaven and earth when
there’s anybody to dinner to find an odd man. But Mary has some----”
Sense, he was going to say, but stopped short. Mrs. Fairfield was one of
those who had concluded long ago that dear Amy was a little goose, taken
sad advantage of by her persistent friend.

“Fairfield,” said Aubrey, “you could do me a great service if you would.
Colonel Kingsward has just told me that he can’t send out a royal
commission to examine my friends on this subject. You see him sometimes,
I suppose. I know you belong to one of his clubs. Still more, he’s at
his office all the morning, and you know him well enough to look in upon
him there.”

“Well?” said Fairfield, dubiously.

“Couldn’t you stretch a point for my sake, and go--and tell him the real
state of affairs in respect to Miss Lance, and how untrue it is, how
ridiculously untrue, that she was kept at Forest-leigh by any will of
mine? Why, it was a thing, as you have just said, that all the county
knew! An infatuation--and nothing less than the bane of my whole
married life.”

“Yes, I know--everybody thought so,” Mr. Fairfield said. That new
idea--was it perhaps germinating faintly in his mind?--no one had
thought of any other explanation, but yet----”

“If you were only to say so--only as much as that--that all my friends
recognised the state of the case.”

“I could say that,” said Fairfield, with hesitation. “Don’t think me
unfriendly, Aubrey, but it’s a little awkward for a man to interfere in
another man’s affairs, and it’s not only your affairs that I know so
well, but you see Kingsward’s too----”

“I am aware of that, Fairfield; still, to break off what I believe in my
heart would be for his daughter’s happiness too----”

“To be sure there’s the young lady to be taken into consideration,” said
Fairfield, dubiously.

It will be as well to carry this incident to its completion at once. Mr.
Fairfield at the last allowed himself to be convinced, and he went that
afternoon to the club, to which he still belonged by some early
military experiences, and where Colonel Kingsward was one of those who
ruled supreme. He knew exactly when to find him at the club, where he
strolled in after leaving his office, to refresh himself with a cup of
tea, or something else in its place. The intercessor went up to the
table at which the Colonel sat with the evening paper, and conversed for
a little on the topics of the day. After these had been run over, and
the prospects of war slightly discussed--for Colonel Kingsward had not
much respect for Mr. Fairfield’s opinion on that subject--the latter
gentleman said abruptly--

“I say, Kingsward, I am very sorry to hear there is some hitch in the
marriage which I was so glad to hear of last week.”

“Ah, oh! So Leigh has been with you, I presume?” the Colonel replied.

“Yes; and, upon my life, Colonel, there is not a word of truth in any
talk you may have heard about that Miss Lance----. We all know quite
well the whole business. You should hear Mary on the subject. Of course,
he can’t say to you, poor fellow, that his first wife was a little
queer, and that that woman made her her slave.”

“No; it wasn’t to be expected that he would tell me that.”

“But it’s true. She got completely the upper hand of that poor little
thing. The husband had no influence. I believe he hated her--like the
devil.”

“You think so,” said the Colonel, with a strange smile, “yet it is a
curious thing that he endured her all the same, and also that a wife
should insist so in keeping another woman in her husband’s constant
company--and an attractive woman, as I hear.”

“Oh! a devil of a woman,” cried Fairfield. “I was telling Aubrey I
should no more have ventured to expose myself to her blandishments----.
One of those sort of women, you know, that you cannot abide, yet who can
turn you round their little finger.”

“And what did he say to that?” the Colonel asked, still with that smile.

“Oh, he said she never had any charm for him--and I believe it--for what
with poor little Mrs. Leigh’s whims and vagaries, and the other’s
flatteries and adulation and complete empire over her, his life was
made a burden to him. You should hear Mary on that subject--none of the
ladies could keep their patience.”

“Yet it appears Mr. Aubrey Leigh kept his---- until he got tired,” said
the Colonel. “Believe me, Fairfield, when there is such an unnatural
situation as that, there must be more in it than meets the eye.”

Fairfield, a good, steady soul, who generally had his ideas suggested to
him, went away very serious from that interview. It was very strange
indeed that a woman should prefer her friend to her husband, and make
things wretched for him in order to keep her comfortable--it was very
curious that with a woman so much superior to Amy in the house, a woman
of the kind that turn men’s heads, that mild Aubrey Leigh, who was not
distinguished for force of character, should have never sought a
moment’s relief with her from poor Mrs. Leigh’s querulousness. Fairfield
accelerated his departure by an hour or two in order not to meet Aubrey
again before he had poured those strange doubts and suggestions into his
own Mary’s ears.




CHAPTER XI.


The party of travellers whose progress had hitherto been like that of a
party of pleasure, who had been interested in everything they saw, and
hailed every new place with delight, as if that had been the haven of
all their hopes, travelled home from Cologne in a very different spirit.
For one thing, it could not be concealed that Mrs. Kingsward was ill,
which was a thing that she herself and the whole family stoutly, one
standing by another, had hitherto been able to deny. She had not gone
far, not an hour’s journey, when she had to abandon her seat by the
window--where it had always been her delight to “see the country,” and
point out every village to her children--and lie down upon the temporary
couch which Moulsey prepared for her with shawls and cushions along one
side of the carriage. She cried out against herself as “self-indulgent”
and “lazy,” but she did not resist this arrangement. It effectually took
any pleasure that there might have been out of the journey: for Bee, as
may be supposed, though she was not melancholy, and would not admit,
even to Betty, in the closest confidence, that she was at all afraid of
the ultimate issue, was certainly self-absorbed, and glad not to be
called upon to notice the scenery, but allowed to subside into a corner
with her own thoughts. Charlie was in the opposite corner, exceedingly
glum, and not conversible. Bee would not speak to him or look at him,
and even Betty, that little thing, had said, “Oh, Charlie, how could you
be so nasty to Aubrey?” for her sole salutation that morning. He was not
sure even that his mother, though he had stood on her side and backed
her up, was pleased with him for it. She talked to him, it is true,
occasionally, and made him do little things for her, but rather in the
way in which a mother singles out the pariah of the family, the one who
is boycotted for some domestic offence, to show him that all are not
against him, than in the tone which is used to a champion and defender.
So it was not wonderful that Charlie was glum; but to see him in one
corner, biting or trying to bite the few hairs that he called his
moustache, with his brows bent down to his chin, and his chin sunk in
the collar of his coat--and Bee in another, very different--indeed, her
face glorified with dreams, and her eyes full of latent light, ready to
flash out at any moment--was not cheerful for the others.

Mrs. Kingsward looked at them from one to another, and at little Betty
between busied in a little book, with that baffled feeling which arises
in the mind of a delicate woman when the strong individualities and
wills of her children become first developed before her, after that time
of their youth when all were guided by her decision, and mamma’s leave
was asked for everything. How fierce, how self-willed, how determined in
his opposition Charlie looked like his father, not to be moved by
anything! And Bee, how possessed by those young hopes of her own, which
the mother knew would be of no avail against the fiat gone forth against
her! Mrs. Kingsward knew her husband better than her children did. She
knew that having taken up his position he would not give in. And Bee,
with all that light of resistance in her eyes--Bee as little willing to
give in as he! The invalid trembled when she thought of the clash of
arms that would resound over her head--of the struggle which would rend
her cheerful house in two. She did not at all realise that the cheerful
days of that house were numbered--that soon it would be reduced into its
elements, as a somewhat clamorous, restless, too energetic brood of
children, with a father very self-willed, who hitherto had known nothing
of them but as happy and obedient creatures, whose individual
determinations concerned games and lessons, and who, so far as the
conduct of life was affected, were of no particular account. Mrs.
Kingsward was not yet aware that this was the dolorous prospect before
her household; she only thought, “How am I to manage them all?” and felt
her heart fail before Charlie’s ill humour and _parti pris_, and before
the bright defiance in Bee’s eyes. Poor Aubrey, whom she had learned to
look upon as one of her own, half a son, and half a brother--poor
Aubrey, who had gone so wrong, and yet had so many excuses for him, a
victim rather than a seducer--what was happening to Aubrey this fine
September morning? It made her heart sick in her bosom as she thought of
all these newly-raised conflicting powers, and she so little able to
cope with them. If she did not get strong soon, what would all these
children do? Charlie would go back to college, and would be out of it.
He had so strong a will, and was so determined to get on, that little
harm would happen to him--and besides, he was entirely in accord with
his father, which was a great matter. But Bee--Bee! It seemed to Mrs.
Kingsward that it was on the cards that Bee might take matters into her
own hands, and run away with her lover, if her father would not yield.
What else was there for these young creatures? Mrs. Kingsward knew that
she herself would have done so in the circumstances had _her_ lover
insisted; and she knew that he would no more have consented to such a
sentence--never, never!--than he had done to anything he disliked all
his life. And Bee was like him, though she had never hitherto been
anything but an obedient child. Mrs. Kingsward could not help picturing
to herself, as she lay there, the elopement--Bee’s room found empty in
the morning, the note left on the table, the so easy, so certain
explanation, which already she felt herself to be reading. And then her
husband’s wrath, his unalterable verdict on the criminal “never to enter
this house again!” Poor mother! She foresaw, as we all do, tortures for
herself, which she was never to be called upon to bear.

As for Betty, it was the most tiresome journey in all her little
experiences. A long journey was generally fun to Betty. The scuffle of
getting away, of seeing that all the little packets were right, of
abusing Moulsey for hiding away the luncheon basket under the rugs and
the books in some locked bag, the trouble of securing a compartment,
arranging umbrellas and other things in the vacant seats to make believe
that every place was full, the watch at every station to prevent the
intrusion of strangers, the running from one side to another to see the
pretty village or old castle, or the funny people at the country
stations and the queer names--the luncheon in the middle of the day,
which was as good as a pic-nic--all these things much diverted Betty,
who loved the rapid movement through the air, and to feel the wind on
her face; but none of these delights were to be had to-day. She was in
one of the middle places, between Charlie, so glum and in a temper, and
Bee, lost in her own thoughts and without a word to say, and opposite to
mamma, who was so much more serious than usual, giving little Betty a
smile from time to time, but not able to speak loud enough to be heard
through the din of the train. She tried to read her book but it was not
a very interesting book, and it was short too, and evidently would not
last out half the journey. Betty was the only member of the party who
had a free mind. The commotion of the romance between Bee and Aubrey had
been pure amusement to her. It would be a bore if it did not end in a
speedy marriage, with all the excitement of the presents, the
trousseau, the dresses (especially the bridesmaids’ dresses), the
wedding day itself, the increased dignity of Betty as Miss Kingsward,
the pleasure of talking of “my married sister,” the pleasure of visiting
Bee, in her own house, and sharing all her grandeur as a county lady. To
miss all this would be a real trial, but Betty had confidence in the
fitness of things, and felt it was impossible that she should miss all
this. And she was at ease in her little mind, and the present dreariness
of this unamusing, unattractive journey hung all the more heavy upon her
consciousness now.

They arrived next day, having slept at Brussels to break the journey for
Mrs. Kingsward, and the Colonel met them, as in duty bound, at Victoria.
He gave Charlie his hand, and allowed Bee and Betty to kiss him, but his
whole attention, as was natural, was for his wife.

“You look dreadfully tired,” he said, with that half-tone of offence in
which a man shows his disappointment at the aspect of an invalid. “You
must have been worried on the journey to look so tired.”

“Oh, no, I have not been at all worried on the journey--they have all
been so good, sparing me every fatigue; but it is a tiresome long way,
Edward, you know.”

“Yes, of course, I know: but I never saw you look so tired before.” He
cast a reproachful look round upon the young people, who were all ready
to stand on the defensive. “You must have bothered your mother to
death,” he said. “I am sorry I did not come out for her myself--undoing
all the effect of her cure.”

“Oh, you will see, I shall be all right when I get home,” Mrs. Kingsward
said, cheerfully. “As for the children, Edward, they have all been as
good as gold.”

“You had better see to the luggage and bring your sisters home in a cab.
I can’t let mamma hang about here,” said the Colonel, in his peremptory
way. “Moulsey will come with us. I suppose you three have brains enough
to manage by yourselves?”

Thus insulting his grown-up children, among whom a flame of indignation
lighted up, partially burning away their difficulties between
themselves, Colonel Kingsward half carried his wife to the carriage. “I
thought at first I should have waited at Kingswarden till you came back.
I am glad I changed my mind and came back to Harley Street,” he said.

“Oh, is it to Harley Street we are going?” said Mrs. Kingsward, faintly.
“I had rather hoped for the country, Edward.”

“You don’t look much like another twenty miles of a journey,” said her
husband.

“Well, perhaps not. I own I shall be glad to be quiet,” the poor lady
said. What he wished had always turned out after a moment to be just
what his wife wished for all the years of their union. She even meekly
accepted the fact that the children--the nursery children, as they were
called--the little ones, who were no trouble but only a refreshment and
delight, would have been too much for her that first night. Secretly,
she had been looking forward to the touch and sight of her placid
smiling baby as the one thing that would do her good--and all those
large wet kisses of Johnny and Tommy and Lucy and little Margaret, and
the burst of delighted voices at the sight of mamma. “Yes, I believe it
would have been too much for me,” she said, with a look aside at
Moulsey, who, as on many a previous occasion, would dearly have loved to
box her master’s ears. “And I _do_ believe it would have been too much
for me,” Mrs. Kingsward added, when that confidential attendant put her
to bed.

“Perhaps it would, ma’am,” Moulsey said. “They would have made a noise,
bless them--and baby will not go to anyone when he sees me--and
altogether I shall be more fit for them, Moulsey, after a good night’s
rest----”

“If you get that, you poor dear,” said Moulsey, under her breath. But
her mistress did not hear that remark any more than many others which
Moulsey made in her own mind, always addressed to that mistress whom she
loved. “If he said dying would be good for you, you would say you were
sure of it, and that was what you wanted most,” the maid said within
herself.

It must not, however, be supposed from this that Colonel Kingsward was
not a good husband. He had always been like a lover, though a somewhat
peremptory one, to his wife. And without him her young, gay,
pleasure-loving ways, her love of life and amusement might have made her
a much less successful personage, and not the example of every virtue
that she was. Had Mrs. Kingsward had the upper hand, the family would
have been a very different family, and its career probably a very
broken, tumultuous, happy-go-lucky career. It was that strong hand which
had controlled and guided her, which had been, as people say, the making
of Mrs. Kingsward; and though she feared his severity in the present
crisis, she yet felt the most unspeakable relief from the baffled,
helpless condition in which she had looked at her children, feeling
herself all unable to cope with them in the presence of papa.

“I wonder if he thinks we are cabbages,” was Bee’s indignant exclamation
as he turned his back upon them.

“Apparently,” said Charlie, coming a little out of his sullenness. “Look
here, you girls, get into this omnibus--happily we’ve got an
omnibus--with the little things, while I go to the Custom House to get
the luggage through.”

“Betty, you get in,” said Bee. “I will go with you, Charlie, for I have
got mamma’s keys.”

“Can’t you give them to me?” Charlie cast a gloomy look about, thinking
that Leigh might perhaps be somewhere awaiting a word, a thought which
now for the first time traversed Bee’s mind, too.

“Then, Betty, you had better go with him, for he doesn’t know half the
boxes,” she said.

“Oh, you can come yourself if you like,” said Charlie, feeling in that
case that this was the safest arrangement after all.

“No, Betty had better go. Betty, you know Moulsey’s box and that new
basket that mamma brought me before we left the Baths.”

“Come along yourself, quick, Bee.”

“No, I shall stop in the omnibus.”

“When you have made up your minds,” cried Betty, who had slipped out of
the vehicle at the first word. Betty thought it would be more fun to go
through the Custom House than to wait all the time cooped up here.

And Bee had her reward; for Aubrey was there, waiting at a distance
till the matter was settled. “I should have risked everything and come,
even if the penalty had been a quarrel with Charlie,” Aubrey said, “but
I must not quarrel with anyone if I can help it. We shall have hard work
enough without that.”

“You have seen papa?”

“Yes, I have seen him: but I have not done myself much good, I fear,”
said Aubrey, shaking his head. “Bee, you won’t give me up whatever they
may say?”

“Give you up? Never, Aubrey, till you give me up!”

“Then all is safe, my darling. However things look now they can’t hold
out for ever. Lies must be found out, and then--in time--you will be
able to act for yourself.”

“Do you think papa will stand to it like that, Aubrey?”

Aubrey shook his head. He did not make any reply.

“Tell me. Is it a lie?” she said.

He bent down his head upon her hand, kissing it.

“Not all,” he said, in an almost inaudible voice. “ I said that--at
Cologne----”

“I did not understand,” said Bee. “No; it does not matter to me,
Aubrey--not so very much; but if you promised----”

“I never promised--never! My only thought was to escape----”

“Then I can’t think what you have done wrong. Aubrey, is she tall, with
dark hair, and beautiful dark eyes, and a way of looking at you as if
she would look you through and through?”

“Bee!” he said, gripping her fast, as if someone had been about to decoy
her away.

“And a mouth,” said Bee, “that is very pretty, but looks as if it were
cut out of steel? Then, I have seen her. She sat down by me one day in
the wood, when I was doing that sketch, and gave me such clever hints,
telling me how to finish it, till she made me hate it, don’t you know.
Is she horribly clever, and a good artist? and like that----”

“Bee! What did that woman say to you?”

“Nothing very much. Asked me about the people at the hotel, and if there
were any Leighs--not you, she pretended, but the Leighs of Hurst-leigh,
whom she knew. I thought it very strange at the time why she should ask
about the Leighs without knowing anything--and then I forgot all about
it. But to-day it came back to my mind, and I have been thinking of
nothing else. Aubrey--she is older than you are?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And she made you promise to marry her?” said Bee, half unconscious yet
half conscious of that wile of the cross-examiner, coming back to the
point suddenly.

“Never, Bee, never for one moment in my misery! That I should have to
make such a confession to you!--but there was no promise nor thought of
a promise. I desired nothing--nothing but to escape from her. You don’t
doubt my word, Bee?”

“No; I don’t doubt anything you say. But I think she is a dreadful woman
to get anybody in her power, Aubrey. My little drawing was for you. It
was the place we first met, and she told me how to do it and make it
look so much better. I am not very clever at it, you know; and then I
hated the very sight of it, and tore it in two. I don’t know why.”

“I understand why. Bee, you will be faithful to me, whatever you are
told?”

“Till I die, Aubrey.”

“And never, never believe that for a moment my heart will change from
you.”

“Not till I hear it from yourself,” she said, with a woeful smile. The
despair in him communicated itself to her, who had not been despairing
at all.

“Which will never be--and when you are your own mistress, my
darling----”

“Oh, we shan’t have to wait for that!” she cried, with a burst of her
native energy. “Dear Aubrey, they are coming back; you must go away.”

“Till we meet again, darling?”

“Till we meet again!”




CHAPTER XII.


Bee stole into her mother’s room as she went upstairs before that first
dinner at home which used to be such a joyous meal. How they had all
enjoyed it--until now. The ease and space, the going from room to room,
the delight in finding everything with which they were familiar, the
flowers in the vases (never were any such flowers as those at home!),
the incursions of the little ones shouting to each other, “Mamma’s come
home!” Even the little air of disorder which all these interruptions
brought into the orderly house was delightful to the young people. They
looked forward as to an ideal life, to beginning all their usual
occupations again and doing them all better than ever. “Oh, how nice it
is to be at home!” the girls had said to each other. Instead of those
hotel rooms, which at their best are never more than hotel rooms, a
_genre_ not to be mistaken, how delightful was the drawing-room at home,
with all its corners--Bee’s little table where she muddled at her
drawings, mamma’s great basket of needlework where everything could be
thrown under charitable cover, Betty’s stool on which she sat at the
feet of her oracle of the moment, whoever that might be, and all the
little duties to be resumed--the evening papers arranged for papa (as if
he had not seen enough of them in the daytime in his office!), the
flowers to see after, the little notes to write, all the pleasant
common-places of the home life. But to-night, for the first time, dinner
was a silent meal, hurried over--not much better than a dinner at a
railway station, with a sensation in it of being still on the road, of
not having yet reached their destination. The drawing-room was in brown
holland still, for they were all going on to Kingswarden to-morrow. The
house felt formal, uninhabited, as if they had come home to lodgings.
All this was bad enough; but the primary trouble of all was the fact
that mamma was upstairs--gone to bed before dinner, too tired to sit up.
Such a thing had never happened before. However tired she was, she had
always so brightened up at the sensation of coming home.

And papa, though kind, was very grave. The happiness of getting his
family back did not show in his face and all his actions as it generally
did. Colonel Kingsward was very kind as a father, and very tender as a
husband; the severity of his character showed little at home. His wife
was aware of it, and so were the servants, and Charlie, I think, had
begun to suspect what a hand of iron was covered by that velvet glove.
But the girls had never had any occasion to fear their father. Bee
thought that the additional gravity of his behaviour was owing to
herself and her introduction of a new individual interest into the
family; so that, notwithstanding a touch of indignation, with which she
felt the difference, she was timid and not without a sense of guilt
before her father. Never had she been rebellious or disobedient before;
and she was both now, determined not to submit. This made her
self-conscious and rather silent; she who was always overflowing with
talk and fun and the story of their travels. Colonel Kingsward did not
ask many questions about that. What he did ask was all about “your
mother.”

“She is not looking so well as when she went away,” he said.

“Oh, papa, it’s only because she’s so tired,” cried little Betty. Betty
taking upon her to answer papa, to take the responsibility upon her
little shoulders! But Bee felt as if she could not say anything.

“Do you really think so?” he said, turning to that confident little
speaker--to Betty. As if Betty could know anything about it! But Bee
seemed paralysed and could not speak.

She stole, as I have said, into her mother’s room on her way upstairs,
but she had hardly time to say a word when papa came in to see if Mrs.
Kingsward had eaten anything, and how she felt now that she was
comfortably established in her own bed. It irritated Bee to feel herself
thus deprived of the one little bit of possible expansion, and stirred
her spirit. With her cheek to her mother’s, she said in her ear, “Mamma,
I saw Aubrey at the station,” with a thrill of pleasure and defiance in
saying that, though secretly, in her father’s presence.

“Oh, Bee!” said Mrs. Kingsward, with a faint cry of alarm.

“And he told me,” continued Bee, breathless in her whisper, “that papa
was firm against us.”

“Bee! Bee!”

“And we promised each other we should never, never give up, whatever
anyone might say.”

“Oh, child, how dare you, how dare you?” Mrs. Kingsward said.

How Bee’s heart beat! What an enlivening, inspiriting strain of
opposition came into her mind, making her cheeks glow and her eyes
flame! The whisper was, perhaps, a child’s device, perhaps a woman’s
weakness, but it exhilarated her beyond description to say all this in
the very presence of her father. There was a sensation of girlish
mischief in it as well as defiance, which relieved all the heavier
sentiments that had weighed down her heart.

“What are you saying to your mother, Bee? She must not be disturbed. Run
away and let her rest. If we are to go back to Kingswarden to-morrow she
must get all the rest that is possible now.”

“I was never the one to disturb mamma,” said Bee, bestowing another kiss
on her mother’s cheek.

“Oh, be a good child, Bee!” pleaded Mrs. Kingsward, almost without
sound; for by this time the Colonel was hovering over the bed, with a
touch of suspicion, wondering what was going on between these two.

“Yes, mamma dear, always,” said Bee, aloud.

“What is she promising, Lucy? And what were you saying to her? Bee
should know better at her age than to disturb you with talk.”

“Oh, nothing, Edward. She was only giving me a kiss, and I told her to
be a good child--as I am always doing; thinking to be heard, you know,
for so much speaking,” the mother said, with a soft laugh.

“Bee has always been a sufficiently good child. I don’t think you need
trouble yourself on that point. The thing is for you to get well, my
dear, and keep an easy mind. Don’t trouble about anything; leave all
that to me, and try and think a little about yourself.”

“I always do, Edward,” she said with a smile.

He shook his head, but agitation had brought a colour to her cheeks, and
to persuade one’s-self that it is only fatigue that makes a beloved face
look pale is so easy at first, before any grave alarm has been roused.
Yet, Colonel Kingsward’s mind was not an easy one that night. He was _au
fond_, a severe man, very rigid as to what he thought his duty, taking
life seriously on the whole. His young wife, who loved pleasure, had
made him far more a man of society than was natural or indeed pleasing
to him; but he had thus got into that current which it is so difficult
to get out of without a too stern withdrawal, and his large young family
had warmed his heart and dressed his aspect in many smiles and graces
which did not belong to him by nature. The mixture of the rigid and the
yielding had produced nothing but good effects upon his character till
now. But there is no telling what a man is till the first conflict of
wills arises in his own household. Hitherto there had been nothing of
the kind. His children had amused him and pleased him and made him
proud. Their health, their prettiness, their infantile gaiety and
delight in every favour accorded to them had been all so many tributes
to his own supreme influence and power. Their very health was a standing
compliment to his own health and vigour, from whom they took their
excellent constitutions, and to the wonderful care and attention to
every law of health which he enforced in his house. Not a drain escaped
trapping, not a gas was left undisposed of where Colonel Kingsward was.
He had every new suggestion in his nursery that sanitary science could
bring up. “And look at the result!” he was in the habit of saying. Not a
pale face, not a headache, not an invalid member there. And among the
children he was as the sun in his splendour. Every delight rayed out
from him. The hour of his coming home was watched for; it was the
greatest treat for the little boys to go in the dogcart with Simmons,
the groom, to fetch papa from the station, while the others assembled at
the door as at a daily celebration to see him arrive. Charlie was now a
man grown, but he was a good boy, full of all right impulses, and there
had never been any difficulty with him.

Thus Colonel Kingsward had been kept from all knowledge of those
contrarieties of nature which appear even in the most favoured regions.
He was of opinion that he surrounded his wife with every care, bore
everything for her, did not suffer the winds of heaven to visit her
cheek too roughly. And it was true. But he was not at all aware that she
saved him anything, or that his joyful omnipotence and security from
every fret and all opposition depended upon her more than on anything
else in the world. He did not know the little inevitable jars which she
smoothed away, the youthful wills growing into individuality which she
kept in check. Which was a pity, for the strong man was thus deprived of
the graces of precaution, and knew no more than the merest weakling
what, as his children grow into men and women, every man has to face and
provide against. If Colonel Kingsward was too arbitrary, too trenchant
in his measures, too certain that there was no will but his own to be
taken into account, the blame must thus be partially laid upon those
natural fictions of boundless love and duty and sweet affectionate
submission, which grow up in the nursery and reign as long as childhood
lasts--until a more potent force of self or will or love, comes in to
put the gentle dream to flight.

It was thus that Colonel Kingsward considered the matter about Bee. It
had been, of course, necessary to cross Bee two or three times in her
life before. It had been necessary, or at least he had thought it
necessary, to send her to school; it had been thought expedient to keep
her back a year longer than she wished from appearing in the world.
These decisions had cost tears and a little struggle, but in a few days
Bee had forgotten all about them--or so, at least, her father thought.
And a lover--at nineteen--what was that but another plaything, a
novelty, a compliment, such as girls love? How could it mean anything
more serious? Why, Bee was a child--a little girl, an ornamental adjunct
to her mother, a sort of reflection, not to be detached for a long time
from that source of all that was delightful in her. Colonel Kingsward
had felt with a delighted surprise that the child and the mother did
“throw up” each other when he began to go out with them together. Bee’s
young beauty showing what mamma’s had been, and Mrs. Kingsward’s beauty
(so much higher and sweeter than any girl’s wild-rose bloom could be)
showing what in the after days her child would grow to. To cut these two
asunder for a stranger--another man, an intruding personality thrusting
himself between the child and her natural allegiance--was oppressive in
any shape. At the first word, indeed, and in the amusement furnished him
by the letters that had been poured upon him, Colonel Kingsward’s
consent had been given almost without thought. Aubrey Leigh was a good
match, he had a fine place, a valuable estate, and was well spoken of
among men. If Lucy was so absurd as to wish her daughter to marry; if
Bee, the silly child, was so foolish as to think of leaving her father’s
house for another, that was probably as good a one as she could have
chosen. I don’t know if fathers generally feel it a sort of desecration
when their young daughters marry. Some fathers do, and some brothers, as
if the creature pure by nature from all such thoughts were descending to
a lower place, and becoming such an one as themselves. Colonel Kingsward
was not, perhaps, visionary enough for such a view, yet he was slightly
shocked in his sentiment about the perfection of his own house by this
idea on his child’s part of leaving it for another. However, it was true
he had a very large family, and to provide so well for one of them at
the very outset of her career was a thing which was not to be despised.

But when the second chapter of this romance, all so simple, so natural
in its first phase, opened out, and there appeared a dark passage
behind--a woman wronged who had a claim upon the man, a story, a
scandal--whether it were true or untrue!--Colonel Kingsward, in his
knowledge of the world, knew that it did not so much matter whether a
story was true or untrue. It stuck, anyhow; and years, generations
after, when, if false, it had been contradicted and exploded, and
acknowledged to be false, people still would shake their heads and say,
“Wasn’t there some story?” For this reason he was not very rigid about
the facts, part of which, at least, the culprit admitted. There was a
woman and there was a story, and all the explanations in the world could
not do away with these. What did it matter about the man? He, Colonel
Kingsward, was not Aubrey Leigh’s keeper. And as for Bee, there would be
some tears, no doubt, as when she was sent to school--a little passion
of disappointment, as when she was kept back for a whole year, from
seventeen to eighteen, in her “coming out”--but the tears and the
passion once over, things would go on the same as before. The little
girl would go back to her place, and all would be well.

This was the man’s delusion, and perhaps it was a natural one, and he
was conscious of wishing to do the best thing for her, of saving her
from the after tortures which a wife has to endure whose husband has
proclivities towards strange women, and capabilities of being “led
away.” That was a risk that he could understand much better than she
could, at her age. The fellow might be proud of her, small blame to
him--he might strive to escape from disgraceful entanglements by such an
exceptionable connection as that of Colonel Kingsward, of Kingswarden,
Harley Street, and the Intelligence Department; he might be very much in
earnest and all that. He did not altogether blame the man; indeed, he
was willing enough to allow that he was not a bad fellow, and that he
was popular among his friends.

But these were not enough in the case of a girl like Bee. And it was
certainly for her good that her father was acting. She had known the man
a month, what could he be to her in so short a time? This is the most
natural of questions, constantly asked, and never finding any sufficient
answer. Why should a girl in three or four weeks be so changed in all
her thoughts as to be ready to give up her father’s house, the place in
which she has all her associations, the company in which she has been
so happy, and go away to the end of the world, perhaps with a man whom
she has known only for a month? It is the commonest thing in the world,
but also the most mysterious, and Colonel Kingsward refused to believe
in it, as so many other fathers have done. Bee would cry, and her mother
would console her. She would fly into a childish passion, and struggle
against her fate--for a few days. She would swear that she would never,
never give up that new plaything, and the joy of parading it before the
other girls, who perhaps had not such toys to play with--but all that
nonsense would give way in a little to firm guidance and considerate
care, and the fresh course of amusement and pleasure which the winter
would bring.

The winter is by no means barren to those who spend it habitually in
town. It has many distractions. There is the theatre, there are
Christmas gatherings without number, there are new dresses also to be
got for the same, perhaps a pretty new bonnet or two thrown in by a
penitent father, very sorry even in his own interests to give his
little girl pain. If all these pleasant things could not make up for the
loss of a man--of doubtful character, too--whom she had only known for a
month, Colonel Kingsward felt that it would be a strange thing indeed,
and altogether beyond his power to explain.




CHAPTER XIII.


It was not possible, however, to remove Mrs. Kingsward to Kingswarden
next day. She was too much fatigued even to leave her bed, and the
doctor who came to see her, her own familiar doctor who had sent her to
Germany to the celebrated bath, looked a little grave when he saw the
condition in which she had come home. “No fatigue, no excitement,” was
what he enjoined. She was to have nothing to excite, nothing to disturb
her--to go to the country? Oh, yes, but not for some days. To see the
children? Certainly, the children could not be kept from their mother;
but all in moderation, with great judgment, not too long at a time, not
too often. And above all she must not be worried. Nothing must be done,
nothing said to cross or vex her. When he heard from the Colonel a very
brief and studiously subdued version of a little family business which
had disturbed her--“I need not keep any secrets from you, doctor. The
fact is that someone wanted to marry my girl Bee, and that I made some
discoveries about him which obliged me to withdraw my consent.” The
doctor formed his lips into a whistle, to which he did not give vent.
“That accounts for it,” he said.

“That accounts for--what?” cried Colonel Kingsward, not without
irritation.

“For the state in which I find her. And mind my words, Kingsward, you’d
better let your girl marry anybody that isn’t a blackguard than risk
that sort of shock with your wife. Never forget that her life---- I mean
to say that she’s very delicate. Don’t let her be worried--stretch a
point--have things done as she wishes. You will find it pay best in the
end.”

“For once you are talking nonsense, my dear fellow,” said Colonel
Kingsward; “my wife is not a woman who has ever been set upon having her
own way.”

“Let her have it this time,” said the doctor, “and you’ll never repent
it. If she wants Bee to marry, let her marry. Bee is a dear little
thing, but her mother, Kingsward, her mother--is of far more consequence
to you than even she--”

“That is a matter of course,” said Colonel Kingsward. “Lucy is of more
importance to me than all the world beside; but neither must I neglect
the interests of my child.”

“Oh, bother the child,” cried the doctor, “let her have her lover; the
mother is what you must think of now.”

“You seem tremendously in earnest, Southwood.”

“So I am--tremendously in earnest. And don’t you work your mind on the
subject, but do what I say.”

“Do you mean to say that my wife is in a--state of danger?”

“I mean that she must be kept from worry--she must not be
contradicted--things must not be allowed to go contrary to her wishes.
Poor little Bee! I don’t say you are to let her marry a blackguard. But
don’t worry her mother about it--that is the chief thing I’ve got to
say.”

“No, I shan’t worry her mother about it,” said the Colonel, shutting his
mouth closely as if he were locking it up. When Dr. Southwood was gone,
however, he stopped the two girls who were lingering about to know the
doctor’s opinion, and detaching Betty’s arm from about Bee’s waist drew
his eldest daughter into his study and shut the door. “I want to speak
to you, Bee,” he said.

“Yes, papa.” In this call to her alone to receive some communication,
Bee, as may be imagined, jumped to a conclusion quite different from
what her father intended, and almost for the moment forgot mamma.

“The doctor tells me that above everything your mother must be kept from
worry. Do you understand? In the circumstances it is extremely important
that you should know this.”

“Papa,” she cried, half in indignation half in disappointment, “do you
think that I would worry her--in any circumstances?”

“I think that girls of your age often think that no affairs are so
important as your own, and it is very likely that you may be of that
opinion, and I wish you to know what the doctor says.”

“Is mamma--very ill?” Bee asked, bewildered.

“He does not say so--only that she is not to be fretted or contradicted,
or disturbed about anything. I feel it necessary to warn you, Bee.”

“Why me above the rest?” she cried. “Am I likely to be the one to worry
mamma?”

“The others have no particular affairs of their own to worry her with.
There must be no private talks, no discussions, no endeavours to get her
upon what you may suppose to be your side.”

Bee gave her father a glance of fire, but she felt that a little
prudence was necessary, and kept the tumult of feeling which was within
her as much as possible in her own breast. “I have always talked to
mamma of everything that was in my mind,” she said, piteously. “I don’t
know how I am to stop. She would wonder so if I stopped talking; and how
can I talk to her except of things that are in my mind?”

“You must learn,” said the Colonel, “to think of her more than of
yourself.” He did not at all mean to prescribe to her a course of
conduct more elevated than that he meant to pursue himself, but then it
was only in action that he meant to carry out his purposes, he was not
afraid of committing himself in speech.

Bee looked at him again with a gaze that asked a great many questions,
but she only answered, “I will try my very best, papa.”

“If you do, I am sure you will succeed, my dear,” he said, in a gentler
tone.

“Is that all?” she asked, hesitating.

“That is all I want with you just now.”

Bee turned away towards the door, and then she paused and made a step
back.

“Papa!”

“Yes, Bee.”

“Would you mind telling me--I will not say a word to her--but oh, please
tell me--”

“What is it?” said the Colonel. He went to his writing table, and
sitting down began to turn over his papers. His tone was slightly
impatient, his eyebrows slightly raised, as if in surprise.

“Papa, you must know what it is. I know that you have seen--Mr. Leigh!”

“How do you know anything about it? What have you to do with whom I have
seen? Run away. I do not mean to enter into any explanations on this
subject with you.”

“Then with whom will you enter into explanations? You cannot speak to
mamma; she must not be worried. Papa, I am not a little girl now, to be
told to run away.”

“You seem to be determined not to lose a moment in telling me so.”

“I should not have told you so,” said Bee, looking at him over the high
back of his writing-table, “if you had not told me I was not to talk to
mamma.”

He looked up at her, and their eyes met; both of them keenly, fiercely
blue, lit up with fires of combat. It is often imagined that blue eyes
are the softest eyes--but not by those who are acquainted with the kind
which belonged to the Kingswards, which might have been called
sapphires, if sapphires ever flash and cut the air as diamonds do. They
were not either so dark as sapphires--they were like nothing but
themselves, two pairs of blue eyes that might have been made to order,
so like were they to each other, and both blazing across that table as
if they would have set the house on fire.

“That’s an excellent point,” he said. “I can’t deny it. What made you so
terrifically clever all at once?”

There is nothing more stinging than to be called clever in the midst of
a discussion. Bee’s eyes seemed to set fire to her face, at least, which
flashed crimson upon her father’s startled sight.

“When one has someone else to think of, someone’s interests to take care
of----”

“Which are your own interests--and vastly more important than anything
which concerns your father and mother.”

“I never said so--nor thought so, papa--but if they are different from
yours, that’s no reason,” said Bee, bold in words but faltering in
manner, “is it, why I should not think of them, if, as you say, they’re
my own interests, papa?”

“You are very bold, Bee.”

“What am I to do if I have no one to speak for me? Papa, Aubrey----”

“I forbid you to speak with such familiarity of a man whom you have
nothing to do with, and whom you scarcely know.”

“Papa, Aubrey--” cried Bee, with astonishment.

Colonel Kingsward jumped up from his table in a fury of impatience. “How
dare you come and besiege me here in my own room with your Aubrey?--a
man whom you have not known a month; a stranger to the family.”

“Papa, you must let me speak. You allowed me to be engaged to him. If
you had said ‘no’ at first, there might, perhaps, have been some reason
in it.”

“Perhaps--some reason!” he repeated, with an angry laugh.

“Yes, for even then it was not your own happiness that was in question.
It was I, after all, that was to marry him.”

“And you think that is a reason for defying me?”

“It is always said to be a reason--not for defying anybody--but for
standing up for what you call my own interests, papa--when they are
somebody else’s interests as well. You said we might be engaged--and we
were. And how can I let anyone, even you, say he is a stranger? He is my
_fiancé_. He is betrothed to me. We belong to each other. Whatever
anyone may say, that is the fact,” cried Bee, very rapidly, to get it
all out before she was interrupted.

“It is not at all a cheerful or pleasant fact--if it changes my little
Bee, whom I thought I knew, to this flushed and brazen woman, fighting
for her----. Go, child, and don’t make an exhibition of yourself. Your
mother’s daughter! It is not credible--to assault me, your father, in my
own room, for the sake of----”

“Papa! don’t you remember that it is said in the Bible you are not to
provoke your children to wrath? Mamma would have stood up for you, I
suppose, when she was engaged to you. I may be flushed,” cried Bee,
putting her hands to her blazing cheeks, “how could I help it? Forced to
talk to you, to ask you--on a subject that gives you a right to speak to
me, your own child, like that----”

“I am glad you think I have a right to speak as the circumstances demand
to my own child,” said the Colonel, cooling down; “but why you should
be forced, as you say, to take up such an unbecoming and unwomanly
position is beyond my guessing.”

“It is because I have no longer mamma to speak for me,” Bee said.

The creature was not without skill. Now she came back to the point that
was not to be gainsaid.

“We have had quite enough of this,” Colonel Kingsward replied. “Your
mother, as you are quite aware, never set up her will against mine. She
was aware, if you are not, that I knew the world better than she did,
and was more competent to decide. Your mother would never have stood up
to me as you have done.”

“It would have been better, perhaps, sometimes, if she had,” cried Bee,
carried away by the tide of her excitement. Colonel Kingsward was so
astounded that he had scarcely power to be angry. He gazed at his
excited child with a surprise that was beyond words.

“Oh, papa, papa! Forgive me! I never meant that; it came out before I
was aware.”

“The thought must have been there or it could not have come out,” he
said.

“Oh, no; there was no thought there. It may be so with you, but not with
us, papa. Words come into our mouths. We don’t think them; we don’t mean
to say--they only seem to--hook on to--something that went before; and
then they come out with a crash. Oh, forgive me, forgive me, papa!”

“I suppose,” he said, with a half laugh, “that may be taken as a woman’s
exposition of her own style of argument.”

“Don’t call me a woman,” she said, with her soft small voice, aggrieved
and wounded, drawing closer to him. “Oh, papa! I am only your little
girl after all.”

“A naughty little girl,” he said, shaking his head.

“And without mamma to speak for me,” added Bee.

The Colonel laughed aloud. “You wily little natural lawyer!” he said;
but immediately became very grave, for underneath this burst of half
angry amusement Bee had given him a shock she did not know of. All
unaware of the edge of the weapons which she used with a certain
instinctive deftness, it did not occur to her that these words of hers
might penetrate not only deeper than she thought, but far deeper than
her own thoughts had ever gone. His wife’s worn face seemed suddenly to
appear before Colonel Kingsward’s eyes in a light which he had never
seen before, and the argument which this child used so keenly, yet so
ignorantly, pierced him like a knife. “Without mamma to speak for me!”
These words sounded very simple to Bee, a mischievous expedient to trap
him in the snare he had laid for her. But if the time should ever come
when they should be true! The Colonel was struck down by that arrow
flown at a venture. He went back to his table subdued, and sat down
there. “That will do,” he said, “that will do. Now run away and leave me
to my work, Bee.”

She came up to him and gave him a timid kiss, which the Colonel accepted
quietly in the softening of that thought. She roamed about the table a
little, flicking off an imperceptible speck of dust with her
handkerchief, arranging some books upon the upper shelf of his bureau,
sometimes looking at him over that row of books, sometimes lingering
behind him as if doing something there. He did not interfere with her
movements for a few minutes, in the _attendrissement_ of his thoughts.
Without a mother to speak for her! Poor little girl, if that should ever
be so! Poor little children unconscious in their nursery crying for
mamma; and, oh, worse than all, himself without his Lucy, who had made
all the world sweet to him! He was a masterfull man, who would stand to
his arms in any circumstances, who would not give in even if his heart
was broken; but what a strange, dull, gloomy world it would be to him if
the children had no mother to speak for them! He made a sudden effort to
shake off that thought, and the first thing that recalled him to himself
was to hear Bee, having no other mischief, he supposed, to turn her hand
to, heaping coals upon the little bit of fire which had been lighted for
cheerfulness only.

“Bee,” he cried, “are you still there? What are you doing? The room is
like an oven already, and you are making up a sort of Christmas fire.”

“Oh, I am so sorry--I forgot,” cried Bee, putting down the shovel
hastily. “I thought it wanted mending--for you always like a good fire.”

“Not in September,” he said, “and such weather; the finest we have had
since July. Come, cease this fluttering about--you disturb me--and I
have a hundred things to do.”

“Yes, papa.” Bee’s little figure stole from behind him in the meekest
way. She stopped in her progress towards the door to give a touch to the
flowers on a side table; and then she went slowly on, going out. She had
got her hand upon the handle of the door, and Colonel Kingsward thanked
heaven he had got rid of her for the moment, when she turned round,
eyeing him closely again though keeping by that means of escape. “Papa,”
she said, softly, “after all the talk we have been having--you perhaps
don’t remember that--you have never--answered my question yet.”

“What question?” he said sharply.

Bee put her hands together like a child, she looked at him beseechingly,
coaxingly, like that child returning to its point, and then she said
still more softly, “About Aubrey, dear papa!”




CHAPTER XIV.


I will not attempt to follow in detail the course of that autumn. It was
a fine season, and Mrs. Kingsward was taken to her home in the country
and recovered much of her lost health in the serene ending of the month
and the bright days of October, which was a model October--everything
that month ought to be. The trees had scarcely begun to take any
autumnal colouring upon them when they reached Kingswarden--a house
which stood among the Surrey hills; an old house placed not as modern
houses are, pitched upon hillsides, or at points where there is “a
view.” The old Kingswards had been moved by no such ridiculous modern
sentiments. They had planted their mansion in a sheltered spot, where it
would be safe from the winds that range over the country and all the
moorland heights. The gates opened upon a wild country road with an
extravagant breadth of green pathway and grassy bank on either
side--enough to have made a farmer swear, but very pleasant to the eye
and delightful to a horse’s feet, as well as to the pedestrians, whether
they were tramps or tourists, who walked or rode on bicycles--the latter
class only--from London to Portsmouth. The house was old, red, and
straggling, covered with multitudes of creepers. Sheets of purple
clematis--the Jackmanni, if anybody wishes to know; intolerable name for
such a royal garment of blossom--covered half-a-dozen corners, hanging
down in great brilliant wreaths over old ivy and straggling Virginia
creeper and the strong stalks of the climbing roses, which still bore
here and there a flower. Other sheets of other flowers threw themselves
about in other places as if at their own sweet will, especially the wild
exuberance of the Traveller’s Joy; though I need not say that this
wildness was under the careful eye of the gardener, who would not let it
go too far. I cannot attempt to tell how many other pleasant and
fragrant and flowery things there were which insisted on growing in that
luxurious place, even to the fastidious Highland creeper, which in that
autumn season was the most gay, luxuriant, and delightful of all. The
flowers abounded like the children, not to be checked, as healthy and as
brilliant, in the fine, peaty soil and pure air. The scent of the
mignonette, which in this late season straggled anywhere, seemed to fill
half the country round. The borders were crowned with those autumn
flowers which make up as well as they can for their want of sweetness by
lavish wealth of colour--the glowing single dahlias, which this
generation has had the good sense to re-capture from Nature after the
quilled and rosetted artificial things which the gardeners had
manufactured out of them, and the fine scarlet and blue of the salvias,
and the glory of all those golden tribes of the daisy kind that now make
our borders bright, instead of the old sturdy red geranium, which once
sufficed for all the supplies of autumn, an honest servant but a poor
lord. I prefer the sweetness of the Spring, when every flower has a soul
in it, and breathes it all about in the air, that is full of hope. But
as it cannot always be Spring, that triumph of bright hues is something
to mask the face of winter with until the time when the tortured and
fantastic chrysanthemum reigns alone.

This was the sort of garden they had at Kingswarden; not shut off in a
place by itself, but bordering all the lawns, which were of the velvet
it takes centuries to perfect. The immediate grounds sloped a little to
the south, and beyond them was a very extensive, if somewhat flat,
prospect, ending on the horizon in certain mild blue shadows which were
believed to be hills. There was not much that could be called a park at
Kingswarden. The few farms which Colonel Kingsward possessed pressed his
little circle of trees rather close; but as long as the farms were let
the family felt they could bear this. It gave them a comfortable feeling
of modest natural wealth and company; the yeomen keeping the squire
warm, they in their farmsteadings, he in the hall.

And the autumn went on in its natural course, gaining colour as it began
to lose its greenness and the days their warmth. The fruit got all
gathered in after the corn, the apple trees that had been such a sight,
every bough bent down with its balls of russet or gold, looked shabby
and worn, their season done, the hedges ran over with their harvest,
every kind of wild berry and feathery seedpod, wild elderberries, hips
and haws, the dangerous unwholesome fruit of the nightshade, the
triumphant wreaths of bryony of every colour, green, crimson, and
purple. The robins began to appear about Kingswarden, hopping about the
lawns, and coming very near the dining-room windows after breakfast,
when the little tribe of the nursery children had their accustomed
half-hour with mamma, and delighted in nothing so much as to crumble the
bread upon the terrace and tempt the redbreasts nearer and nearer. When,
quite satisfied and comforted about his wife’s looks, Colonel Kingsward
went off to the shooting, this little flock of children trailed after
mamma wherever she went, a little blooming troop. By this time Charlie
had gone back to Oxford, and the little ones liked to have the run of
the lawns outside and the sitting rooms within, with nothing more
alarming than Betty to keep them in order. It is to be feared that the
relaxation of discipline which occurred when papa was absent was
delightful to all those little people, and neither was Mrs. Kingsward
sorry now and then to feel herself at full ease--with no necessity
anywhere of further restraint than her own softened perceptions of
family decorum required. It was a moment in which, if that could be
said, she was self-indulgent--sometimes not getting up at her usual
hour, but taking her breakfast in her room, with clusters of little boys
and girls all over her bed, and over the carpet, sharing every morsel,
climbing over her in their play. And when she went out to drive she had
the carriage full of them; and when she took her stroll about the
grounds they were all about, shouting and racing, nobody suggesting that
it would be “too much for her,” or sending them off because they
disturbed mamma. She was disturbed to her heart’s content while the
Colonel was away. She said, “You know this is very nice for a time, but
it would not do always,” to her elder daughter: but I think that she saw
no necessity, except in the return of her husband, why it should not
do, and she enjoyed herself singing to them, dancing (a very little)
with them, playing for them as only the mother of a large family ever
can play, that simple dance music which is punctuated and kept in
perfect time by her heart as much as by her ear. For myself, I know the
very touch upon the piano of a woman who is the orchestra of the
children, who makes their little feet twinkle to the music. There is no
band equal to it for harmony, and precision, and go. They enjoyed the
freedom of having no one to say, “Hush, don’t make such a noise in the
house,” of the absence of all the disturbable people, “the gentlemen,”
as the servants plainly said, “being away” more, Mrs. Kingsward
sometimes thought, with a faint twinge of conscience, than it was right
they should enjoy anything in the absence of papa. Charlie was quite as
bad as papa, and declared that they made his head ache, and that no
fellow could work with such a row going on; it made the little carnival
all the more joyous that he was out of the way.

Bee had spent the six weeks since their return in a sort of splendour of
girlish superiority and elation, of which her mother had not been
unobservant, though nothing had been said between them. I am not sure
that Bee did not enjoy the situation more than if Aubrey had been at
Kingswarden wooing her all day long, playing tennis with her, riding
with her--in every way appearing as her accepted lover. Circumstances
had saved her from this mere vulgarity of beatitude, and she felt that
in the very uncertainty of their correspondence, which was
private--almost secret, and yet not clandestine--there was a wonderful
charm, a romance and tinge of the unhappy and desperate, while yet
everything within herself was happy and triumphant. It had never been
said, neither by the Colonel nor by his wife (who had said nothing at
all), that Bee was not to write letters to Aubrey nor to receive letters
from him. I cannot imagine how Colonel Kingsward, in bidding her
understand that all was over between Aubrey and herself, did not make a
condition of this. But probably he thought her too young and simple to
maintain any such correspondence, and her lover too little determined,
too persuadeable, to begin it. When Bee had received her lover’s first
letter it had been under her father’s very eyes. It had come at
breakfast between two girl-epistles, and Colonel Kingsward would not
have been guilty of the pettiness of looking at his daughter’s
correspondence for any inducement yet before him. She had the tremendous
thrill and excitement of reading it in his very sight, which she did not
hesitate to do, for the sake of the bravado, feeling her ears tingle and
the blood coursing in her veins, never imagining that he would not
observe, and setting her young slight strength like a rock in momentary
expectation of a question on the subject. But no question came. Colonel
Kingsward was looking at the papers, and at the few letters which came
to him at his house. The greater part of his correspondence went to the
office. He took it very quietly, and he never remarked Bee at all, which
was little less than a miracle, she thought. And it was very well for
her that this was one of the mornings on which mamma did not come
downstairs.

This immense excitement was a little too strong for ordinary use, and
Bee so arranged it afterwards that her letters came by a later post,
when she could read them by herself in her room. The servants knew
perfectly well of this arrangement--the butler who opened the post bag
at Kingswarden, and the maid who carried Miss Bee’s letters
upstairs--but neither father nor mother thought of it. That is, I will
not answer for Mrs. Kingsward. She perhaps had her suspicions; but, if
her husband did not forbid correspondence, she said to herself that it
was not her business to do so. It seemed to her that nothing else could
keep Bee so bright. Her disappointment, the shock of the severance, must
have affected her otherwise than appeared if she had not been buoyed up
by some such expedient. As for the Colonel, he thought nothing about it.
He thought that, as for love, properly so called, the thing was
preposterous for a girl of her years, and that the foolish business had
been all made up of imaginative novelty, and the charm of the position,
which had flattered and dazzled the girl. Now that she had returned to
all her old associations and occupations, the pretty bubble had floated
away into the air. It had not been necessary even to burst it--it had
dispersed of itself, as he said to himself he always knew it would. Thus
he deceived himself with the easiest mind and did not interfere.

Mrs. Kingsward had come upon her daughter seated out on the lawn under
the great walnut tree, reading one of these letters, one morning when
she had gone out earlier than usual, on an exceptionally fine day. Bee
had thrust it away hastily into her pocket and came forward with burning
cheeks when she heard her mother’s voice--but it was not till some time
later that Mrs. Kingsward spoke. The day had kept up its morning
promise. It was one of those warm days that sometimes come in October,
breathing the very spirit of that contented season, when all things have
come to fruition and the work of the year is done, and its produce
garnered into the barns. Now we may sit and rest, is the sentiment of
the much toiling earth--all the labour being over, the harvest done,
and no immediate need yet to rise again and plough. The world hangs
softly swaying in space, the fields are fallow, the labourer rests. The
sunshine lay warm upon the velvet grass, the foliage, thinned by one
good blast a week ago, gave just shade enough, not too much; the
tea-table was set out upon the lawn--the little horde had gone off
shouting and skirmishing through the grounds, Betty at the head of them,
supposed captain and controller, virtually ringleader, which comes to
much the same thing. The air so hushed and silent in itself, half drowsy
with profound peace, was just touched and made musical by their shouts,
and Bee and her mother, with this triumphant sound of a multitude close
by, were alone.

“Bee,” Mrs. Kingsward said, “I have long wanted an opportunity to speak
to you.”

“Yes, mamma,” she said, looking up with a rush of blood to her heart,
feeling that the moment had come. But she would not have been Bee if she
had not put a little something of her own into the thick of the crisis.
“There were plenty of opportunities--we have been together all day.”

“You know what I mean,” said Mrs. Kingsward. “Bee, I saw you reading a
letter this morning.”

“Yes, mamma.”

“Who was it from?”

Bee looked her mother in the face. “I have never made any secret of it,”
she said. “I have read them openly before papa--I never would pretend
they were anything different. Of course it was from Aubrey, mamma.”

“Oh, Bee!” said her mother. “You have never told me what your father
said to you that morning. He told me that it was all over and done
with--that he would never listen to another word on the subject.”

“That was what he told me.”

“Oh, Bee, Bee! and yet----”

“Stop a moment, mamma! He never said I was not to write; he never said
there was to be no correspondence. Had he said so, I should have, at
least, considered what it was best to do.”

“Considered what was best! But you were not the judge. I hope you would
have obeyed your father, Bee.”

“I cannot say, mamma. You must remember that it is my case and not his.
I don’t know what I should have done. But it was not necessary, for he
said nothing about it.”

“Bee, my dear child, he may have said nothing; but you know very well
that when he said it was entirely broken off he meant what he said.”

“Papa is very capable of saying what he means,” said Bee. “I did not
think it was any business of mine to inquire what might be his secret
meaning. Mamma, dear, don’t be vexed; but, oh, that would have been too
hard! And for Aubrey, too.”

“I think much less of Aubrey that he should carry on a clandestine
correspondence with a girl like you.”

“Clandestine!” cried Bee, with blazing eyes. “No more clandestine than
your letters that come by the post with your own name upon them. If
Aubrey did not scorn anything that is clandestine, I should. There is
nothing like that between him and me.”

“I never supposed you would be guilty of any artifice, Bee; but you are
going completely against your father--making a fool of him,
indeed--making it all ridiculous--when you carry on a correspondence, as
if you were engaged, after he has broken everything off.”

“I am engaged,” said Bee, very low.

“What do you say? Bee, this is out of the question. I shall have to tell
your father when he comes back. “Oh! child, child, how you turn this
delightful time into trouble. I shall be obliged to tell your father
when he comes back.”

“Perhaps it will be your duty, mamma,” said Bee, the colour going out of
her face; “and then I shall have to consider what is mine,” she said.

“Oh, Bee, Bee! Oh! how hard you make it for me. Oh! how I wish you had
never seen him, nor heard of him,” Mrs. Kingsward cried.




CHAPTER XV.


This communication made a little breach between Bee and her mother and
planted a thorn in Mrs. Kingsward’s breast. She had been getting on so
well; the quiet (which meant the riot of the seven nursery children and
all their troublesome ways) had been doing her so much good, and the
absence of every care save that Johnny should not take cold, and Lucy
eat enough dinner--that it was hard upon her thus to be brought back in
a moment to another and a more pressing kind of care. However, after an
hour or two’s estrangement from Bee, which ended in a fuller expansion
than ever of sympathy between them--and a morning or two in which Mrs.
Kingsward remembered as soon as she awoke that it would be her duty to
tell her husband and break up the pleasant peace and harmony of the
household--the sweetness of that _dolce far niente_ swept over her again
and obliterated or at least blurred the outline of all such troublous
thoughts. Colonel Kingsward sent a hasty telegram to say that he was
going on somewhere else for another ten days’ shooting, and that, though
she exclaimed at first with a countenance of dismay, “Oh, children, papa
is not coming home for another week!” in reality gave a pang of relief
to her mind. Gliding into her being, she scarcely knew how, was an
inclination to take every day as it came without thinking of
to-morrow--which was perfectly natural, no doubt, and yet was an
unconscious realisation of the fact, which as yet she had never put into
words, nor had suggested to her, that those gentle days were numbered.
Her husband’s delay was in one way like a reprieve to her. She had, like
all simple natures, a vague faith in accident, in something that might
turn up--“perhaps the world may end to-night”--something at least might
happen in another ten days to make it unnecessary for her to disturb
the existing state of affairs and throw new trouble into the house. She
did not waver at first as to her duty, though nothing in the world could
be more painful; and Bee did not say a word to change her mother’s
resolution. Bee had always been aware that as soon as it was known the
matter must come to another crisis--and the scorn with which she
regarded the idea of doing anything clandestine prevented her even from
asking that her secret should be kept. It was not in her mind but in her
mother’s that those faint doubtings at last arose--those half
entertained thoughts that a letter or two could do no harm; that the
correspondence would drop of itself when it was seen between the two
that there was no hope in it; and that almost anything would be better
than a storm of domestic dispeace and the open rebellion in which Mrs.
Kingsward felt with a shudder Bee would place herself. How are you to
break the will of a girl who will not be convinced, who says it is not
your, but her affair?

No doubt that was true enough. It was Bee, not Colonel Kingsward, whose
happiness was concerned. According to all the canons of poetry and
literature in general, which in such matters permeate theoretically the
general mind when there is no strong personal instinct to crush them,
Bee had right on her side--and her mother’s instinct was all on the side
of poetry and romance and Bee. She had not the courage to cut short that
correspondence, not clandestine though unrevealed, which kept the girl’s
heart alive, and was not without attractions to the mother also, into
whose ear it might be whispered now and then (with always a faint
protest on her part) that Aubrey had better hopes, that he had a
powerful friend who was going to speak for him. If they really meant to
be faithful to each other--and there was no doubt that was what they
meant--they must win the day in the end; and what harm would it do in
the meantime that they should hear of each other from time to time?
Whereas, if she betrayed the secret, there would at once be a dreadful
commotion in the house, and Bee would confront her father and tell him
with those blazing eyes, so like his, that it was her affair. Mrs.
Kingsward knew that her husband would never stoop to the manœuvre of
intercepting letters, or keeping a watch upon those that his daughter
received; and what can you do to a girl who says that? She shrank more
than any words could say from the renewal of the conflict. She had been
so thankful to believe that it had passed over and all things settled
into peace while she was ill. Now that she was better her heart sank
within her at the thought of bringing it all on again, which would also
make her ill again she was convinced. Yet, at the same time, if she
could not persuade Bee to give it up of herself (of which there was no
hope whatever), then she must, it was her duty, inform her husband. But
her heart rose a little at that ten days’ reprieve. Perhaps the world
might end to-night. Something might happen to make it unnecessary in
those ten days.

And something did happen, though not in any way what Mrs. Kingsward
could have wished.

Colonel Kingsward’s return was approaching very near when on one of
those bright October afternoons a lady from the neighbourhood--nay, it
was the clergywoman of the parish, the Rector of Kingswarden’s wife, the
very nearest of all neighbours--came to call. She had just returned from
that series of visits which in the autumn is--with all who respect
themselves--the natural course of events. Mrs. Chichester was a woman of
good connection, of “private means,” and more or less “in society,” so
that she carried out this programme quite as if she had been a great
lady. She had an air of importance about her, which seemed to shadow
forth from her very entrance something that she had to say--an unusual
gravity, a look of having to make up her mind to a certain action which
was not without difficulty. There passed a glance between Mrs. Kingsward
and Bee, in which they said to each other, “What is it this time?” as
clearly as words could have said; for, to be sure, they were well
acquainted with this lady’s ways. She sat for a little, and talked of
their respective travels since they had last met; and of the pleasant
weeks she had passed at Homburg, where so many pleasant people were
always to be met after the London season; and then she lightly touched
on the fact that she had come over early in September, and since then
had been staying at a number of country places, with the dear Bishop,
and at Lady Grandmaison’s, and with old Sir Thomas down in Devonshire,
and so on.

“Or,” she concluded, with a disproportionate emphasis on that apparently
unimportant word, “I should have been to see you long ago.”

There was a significance in this which again made Mrs. Kingsward and Bee
exchange a look--a laughing glance--as of those who had heard the phrase
before. When, however, she had asked some questions about Mrs.
Kingsward’s health, and expressed the proper feeling--sorry to hear she
had been so poorly; delighted that she was so much better--Mrs.
Chichester departed from her established use and wont. Instead of
beginning upon the real object of her visit, after she had taken her cup
of tea, with a “Now,” (also very emphatic) “I want to interest you in
something I have very much at heart,”--which was generally a
subscription, a society, a bazaar, a missionary meeting, or something of
the sort--Mrs. Chichester bent forward and said, in a half whisper, “I
have something I want very much to talk to you about. Could I speak to
you for a moment--alone?”

Bee was much surprised, but took her part with promptitude. “You want to
get rid of me,” she said. “I shall go out on to the terrace, mamma, and
you can call me from the window when you want me. I shall be sure to
hear.”

There was another look between them, always with a laugh in it, as she
stepped out of the open window, with a book in her hand, a look which
repeated, “What can it be, now?” with the same amusement as at first,
but with more surprise. Bee made a circuit round the lawn with her book,
one finger shut in it to mark the place; looking at the flowers, as one
does who knows every plant individually, and notes each bud that is
opening, and which are about to fall. She calculated within herself how
long the dahlias would last, and that the Gloire de Dijon roses must be
cut to-morrow, as she pursued her way towards the walnut tree, under
which she meant to place herself. But Bee had not been there many
minutes before she felt a little shiver creep over her. It was getting
rather cold in this late October to sit out of doors, when the sun was
already off the garden, and she had, as girls say, “nothing on.” She got
up again, and made her way round to a garden bench which was set against
the wall of the house, at the spot where the sunshine lasted longest.
There was still a level ray of ruddy light pouring on that seat, and Bee
forgot, or rather never thought, that it was close to the drawing-room
window. Her mind was not much exercised about Mrs. Chichester’s secret,
which probably concerned the mothers and babies of the parish, and which
she certainly had no curiosity to hear. Besides, no doubt, the visitor
had told by this time all the private details there were to tell. Bee
sat down upon the bench, taking no precautions to disguise the sound of
her footsteps, and opened her book. She was not an enthusiastic student,
though she liked a novel as well as anyone; but her eyes strayed from
it to the great width of the horizon in front of her, and the ruddy
glory in the west, in which was just about to disappear that last long
golden ray of the sun.

Then she heard a low cry--an exclamation, stifled, yet full of horror.
Was it mamma? What could the clergywoman be saying to bring from mamma’s
lips such a cry? Bee--I cannot blame her--pricked up her ears. Mrs.
Kingsward was not strong enough to be disturbed by horrors with which
she had nothing to do.

“Oh, I cannot believe it; I cannot believe it!” she said.

“But,” said the other voice, with that emphasis at which Bee had laughed
so often, “I can assure you it is true. I saw him myself shaking hands
with the woman at the station. I might not have believed Miss Tatham’s
story, but I saw with my own eyes that it was Mr. Leigh. I had met him
at Sir Thomas’s the year before--when he was still in deep mourning for
his wife, you know.”

“Mr. Leigh! So it was something about Aubrey! Then it was Bee’s
business still more than her mother’s, and she listened without any
further thought.

“But,” said Mrs. Kingsward, as if taking courage, “you must be mistaken;
oh, not about seeing him shake hands with a woman--why shouldn’t he
shake hands with a woman? He is very friendly with everybody. Perhaps he
knew her, and there is nothing to find fault with in that.”

“Now,” said Mrs. Chichester, solemnly, “should I have mentioned it had
it been confined to that? I only told you of that as a proof. The thing
is that he put in this woman--a common woman, like a servant--into a
sleeping carriage--you know what those sleeping carriages cost; a
perfect fortune; far too much for any comfort there is in them--in the
middle of the night, with her two children. The woman behaved quite
nicely, Miss Tatham says, and looked shocked to be put in with a lady,
and blushed all over her face, and told that ridiculous story to account
for it. Poor thing! One can only be sorry for her. Probably some poor
thing deceived, and thinking she was to be made a lady of. But I know
what you must think of the man, Mrs. Kingsward, who could do such a
thing on his way from staying with your own family, even if there had
been no more in it than that.”

“But Mr. Leigh is very kind--kind to everybody--it might have been
nothing but charity.”

“Charity--in an express train sleeping carriage! Well, I confess I never
heard of charity like that. Gentlemen generally know better than to
compromise themselves for nothing in that sort of way. They are more
afraid of risking themselves in railway carriages and that kind of thing
than girls are--much more afraid. And if you remember, Mrs. Kingsward,
what kind of reputation Mr. Leigh had in his poor wife’s time--keeping
that Miss Lance all the time in her very house under her eyes.”

“I have always heard that it was Mrs. Leigh who insisted upon keeping
Miss Lance----”

“Is it likely?” said Mrs. Chichester. “I ask you, knowing what you do of
human nature? And then a thing to happen like this on his very way
home--when he had just left you and poor little Bee. Oh, it is
shameless, shameless! I could not contain myself when I heard of it. And
then it was said that the Colonel had broken off the engagement, and I
thought it would be a comfort to you to know that other things were
occurring every day, and that it was the only thing to do.”

“It is no comfort to me--and I cannot--I cannot believe it!”

“Dear Mrs. Kingsward, you always take the best view; but if you had seen
him, as I did, holding the woman’s hand, bending over her with such a
look!--I was afraid he would kiss her, there, before everybody. And I,
knowing of the engagement, and that he had just left you--before Miss
Tatham said a word--I sat and stared, and couldn’t believe my eyes. It
was the tenth of September, and he had left Bee, hadn’t he, the night
before?”

“I never remember dates,” said Mrs. Kingsward, querulously.

“I do,” replied the visitor, “and I took the trouble to find out. At
least, I found out by accident, through someone who saw him at the
club, and who had just discovered the rights of that story about Miss
Lance. Oh, I trust you will not be beguiled by his being a good _parti_,
or that sort of thing, to trust dear Bee in such hands! Marriage is
always rather a disenchantment; but think what it would be in such a
case--a man that can’t be trusted to travel between Cologne and London
without----”

“I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!” said Mrs. Kingsward; and Bee
heard that her mother had melted into tears.

“That is as good as saying you don’t believe me, who saw it with my own
eyes,” said the visitor, getting up. “Indeed, I didn’t mean at all to
distress you, for I thought that, as everything was broken off--I
thought only if you had any doubts, as one has sometimes after one has
settled a thing--that to know he was a man like that, with no respect
for anything, who could leave his _fiancée_, and just plunge,
plunge--there is no other word for it----”

It was evident that Mrs. Kingsward, reduced to helplessness, here made
no effort either to detain her visitor or to contradict her further, or
indeed to make any remark. There was a step or two across the room, and
then Mrs. Chichester said again--“Good-bye, dear. I am very sorry to
have distressed you--but I couldn’t leave you in ignorance of such a
thing for dear Bee’s sake; that is the one thing to be thankful for in
the whole matter, that Bee doesn’t seem to mind a bit! She looks just as
bright and just as nice as if nothing had happened. She can’t have cared
for him! Only flattered, I suppose, and pleased to have a proposal--as
those little things are, poor things. We should all thank heaven on our
knees that there’s no question of a broken heart in Bee’s case----”

She might not have been so sure of that had she seen the figure which
came through the window the moment the door had closed upon her--Bee
with her blue eyes blazing wildly out of her white face, and strange
passion in every line both of features and form.

“What is the meaning of it?” she said, briefly, with dry lips.

“Oh, Bee, you have heard it all!”

“I have heard enough--what does it mean, mamma?”

Mrs. Kingsward roused herself, dried her eyes, and went forward to Bee
with outstretched arms; but the girl turned away. “I don’t want to be
petted. I want to know what--what it means,” she said.

“I don’t believe it,” cried Mrs. Kingsward.

“Give a reason; don’t say things to quiet me. Oh, keep your arms away,
mamma! Don’t pet me as if I wanted that! Why don’t you believe it? And
if you did believe it--what does it mean--what does it mean?”




CHAPTER XVI.


Bee’s look of scared and horrified misery was something new in Mrs.
Kingsward’s experience. The girl had not known any trouble. Her father’s
rejection of her lover and the apparent break between them had been in
reality only another feature in the romance. She had almost liked it
better so. There had been no time to pine, to feel the pain of
separation. It was all the more like a poem, like what every love story
should be, that this breaking off should have come.

And now, all at once, without any warning! The worst of it was that Bee
had only heard a part of the story, the recapitulation of it. Mrs.
Chichester had given the accused more or less fair play. She had given
an imperfect account of the explanation, the story the woman had
told--as was almost inevitable to a third party, but she had given it to
the best of her ability, not meaning to deceive, willing enough that he
should have the benefit of the doubt, or perhaps that the judgment upon
him should be all the more hard, because of his attempt to mingle deceit
with his sin, and throw dust in the eyes of any possible spectators.
This was the way in which it had appeared to herself, but she was not
unfair. She told the story which had been told to the astonished lady
upon whose solitude the little party had been obtruded in the middle of
the night, and who had heard it perhaps even imperfectly at first hand
mingled with the jolting and jarring of the train and the murmur of the
children. And yet Mrs. Chichester had repeated it honestly.

But Bee had not heard that part of the tale. She had heard only the
facts of the case which had presented to her inexperienced young mind
the most wild and dreadful picture. Her lover, who had just left her,
whom she had promised to stand by till death, suddenly appeared to her
in the pale darkness of the midnight with a woman and children hanging
on to him--belonging to him, as appeared. Where had he met them? How had
he arranged to meet them? When her hand had been in his, when he had
been asking from her that pledge till death, had he just been arranging
all that--giving them that rendezvous--settling how they were to meet,
and where? A horror and sickness came over poor Bee. It made her head
swim and her limbs tremble. To leave her with her pledge in his ears,
and to meet, perhaps at the very outset of his journey, the woman with
the children--a common sort of woman, like a servant. As if that made
any difference! If she had been a duchess it would have been all the
same. He must have met her fresh from Bee’s presence, with his farewell
to the girl whom he had pretended to love still on his lips. She could
not think so clearly. Was this picture burnt in upon her mind? She
seemed to see the dim, half-lighted carriage, and Aubrey at the door
putting the party in. And then at Dover, in the daylight, shaking hands
with his companion, bending over her as if he meant to kiss her! These
two pictures took possession of Bee’s mind completely. And all this just
when he had left Bee--between his farewell to her and his interview with
her father! If she had heard of the story which the woman had told to
the startled Miss Tatham in the dim sleeping carriage, from which,
looking out, she had recognised Aubrey Leigh, it might have made a
difference. But that story had not been told in Bee’s hearing. And Mrs.
Kingsward did not know this, but supposed she had heard the whole from
beginning to end.

Bee’s mother, to tell the truth, after the first shock, was glad of that
unconscious eaves-dropping on Bee’s part; for how could she have told
her? Indeed, the story was too gross, too flagrant to be believed by
herself. She felt sure that there must be some explanation of it other
than the vulgar one which was put upon it by these ladies; but she knew
very well that the same interpretation would be put upon it by her
husband, and many other people to whom Aubrey’s innocent interference in
such a case would have seemed much less credible than guilt. Guilt is
the thing that generally rises first as the explanation of everything,
to the mind, both of the man and woman of the world. The impossibility
of a man leaving a delicate flower of womanhood like Bee, whose first
love he had won, in order to fall back at once into the bonds of a
common intrigue, and provide for the comfort of his paramour, who had
been waiting for him on the journey, would not prove so great to most
people as the impossibility that he, as a stranger, would step out of
his way to succour a poor little mother and children whom he had never
seen before, and risk thereby a compromising situation.

The latter was the thing which would have seemed unutterably ridiculous
and impossible to Colonel Kingsward. A first-class sleeping carriage
secured for a mere waif upon his way, whom he had never seen before and
never would see again! The fellow might be a fool, but he was not such a
fool as that. Had the woman even been old and ugly the Colonel would
have laughed and shrugged his shoulders at Aubrey’s bad taste; but the
woman was pretty and young. A long-standing affair, no doubt; and, of
course, it was quite possible, nay likely, that she was being sent, poor
creature, to some retreat or other, where she would be out of the way
with her children.

Mrs. Kingsward knew, as if she had heard him say these words, how her
husband would speak. And who was she, with not half his experience of
the world, to maintain a different opinion? Yet she did so. She thought
it was like Aubrey to turn the poor woman’s lingering, melancholy
journey into a quick and comfortable one, out of pure kindness, without
thought of compromising himself any more than of having any recompense
for what he did. But she did not know that Bee knew nothing of this
explanation of the story. When she found that her child evidently
thought nothing of that, but received at once the darker miserable tale
into her mind, she was startled, but not perhaps astonished. Bee was
young to think the worst of anybody, but at the same time it is by far
the commonest way of thinking, and the offence was one against herself,
which gives a sharper edge to everything. And then she knew what was
going on in Bee’s mind chiefly by guesswork, for the girl said little.
The colour went out of her face, her eyes sometimes gave a gleam of
their old fire, but mostly had a strange set look, as if they were fixed
on something not visible to the ordinary spectator. She sat all the
evening through and never spoke. This was not so noticeable while the
children were still about with their perpetual flow of observations and
flood of questions; but when they went off in detachments to bed, and
the two elder girls were left alone with their mother, Bee’s silence
fell upon the others like a cloud. Betty, who knew nothing, after a few
minutes rushed away upstairs to find refuge in the nursery, and then
Mrs. Kingsward was left alone, face to face with this silent figure, so
unlike Bee, which neither moved nor spoke. She had scarcely the courage
to break the dreadful silence, but yet it had to be broken. Poor Mrs.
Kingsward’s heart began to beat violently against her breast as it had
not done since her return home.

“Bee!” she said. “Bee!”

Already the pumping of her heart had taken away her breath.

“Yes, mamma.”

“Oh! Bee, what--what are you going to do?”

“To do, mamma?”

“Oh! don’t repeat my words after me, but give me some sort of an answer.
Betty may be back again in a moment. What are you going to do?”

“What can I do?” the girl said, in a low voice.

“I can’t suppose but that you have been thinking about it--what else
could you be thinking of, poor child? For my part, I don’t believe it.
Do you hear me, Bee?”

“Yes--I heard you say that before, mamma.”

“And that is all you think of what I say! My darling, you can’t remain
like this. The first thing your father will ask will be, ‘What has
happened?’ I cannot bear that you should give up--without a word.”

Mrs. Kingsward had disapproved of the correspondence, had felt that it
would be incumbent upon her to tell her husband of it, but yet in this
unforeseen emergency she forgot all that.

“Without a word! What words could I say? You don’t suppose I could
discuss it with him--ask if it was true? If it’s true, there isn’t a
word to say, is there? And if it isn’t true it would be an insult to ask
him. And so one way or another it is all just done with and over. And I
wish you would leave me quiet, mamma.”

“Done with and over! Without a word--on a mere story of something that
took place on a journey!”

“Oh! leave me quiet, mamma. Do you think I need to be reminded of that
journey? As if I did not see it, and the lamps burning, and hear the
very wheels!”

“Bee, dear, how can I leave you quiet? Do you mean just to let it break
off like that, without a word, without giving him the chance to
explain?”

“I thought,” said Bee, with a faint satirical smile, for, indeed, her
heart was capable of all bitterness, “that it was broken off completely
by papa, and all that remained was only--what you called clandestine,
mamma.”

“I did not call it clandestine. I knew you would do nothing that was
dishonourable. And it is true that it was--broken off. But, Bee! Bee!
you don’t seem to feel the dreadful thing this is. After all that has
passed, to let it drop in a moment, without saying a word!”

“I thought it was what I ought to have done, as soon as papa’s will was
made known.”

“Oh! Bee, you will drive me mad. And I have got no breath to speak. So
you ought, perhaps--but you have not, when perhaps there was a reason.
And now, for a mere chance story, and without giving him--an
opportunity--to speak for himself.”

Bee raised her face, now crimson as it had before been pale.

“How could I put any questions on such a thing? How could it be
discussed between him and me? To think of it is bad enough, but to speak
of it--mamma! How do I know, even, what words to say?”

“In that case, every engagement would be at the mercy of any slanderer,
if the girl never could bring herself to ask what it meant.”

“I am not any girl,” cried poor Bee, with a quiver of her lip. “I am
just myself. I don’t think very much of myself any more than you do, but
I can’t change myself. Oh, let me alone, let me alone, mamma!”

Mrs. Kingsward was very much excited. Her nostrils grew pinched and
dilated in the struggle for breath; her lips were open and panting from
the same cause. She was caught in that dreadful contradiction of
sentiment and feeling which is worse than any unmingled catastrophe. She
had been rent asunder before this by her desire to shield her daughter,
yet the sense of her duty to her husband remained, and now it was the
correspondence which she seemed to be called upon to defend almost at
peril of her life; that actually clandestine, at least secret
correspondence, of which she could not approve, which she was bound to
cut short. And yet to cut it short like this was something which she
could not bear. She threw aside the work with which she had been
struggling and fixed her eyes on Bee, who did not look at her nor see
how agitated her expression was.

“If you can do this, I can’t,” she said. “I will write to him. The
other dreadful story may be true, for anything I know. And that, of
course, is enough. But this one I don’t believe, if an angel from Heaven
told it me. He shall at least have the chance of clearing himself!”

“I don’t know,” said Bee, “what the other dreadful story was. I thought
it was only pretending to love--some other woman; and then--pretending
to love _me_”--she broke off into a little hoarse laugh. The offence of
it was more than Bee could bear. The insult--to suffer (she said to
herself) was one thing--but to be insulted! She laughed to think what a
fool she had been; how she had been taken in; how she had said--oh, like
the veriest credulous fool--“Till death.”

“He was not pretending to love you. What went before I know not, but
with you he was true.”

“One before--and one after,” said Bee, rising in an irrepressible rage
of indignation. “Oh, mamma, how can we sit quietly and discuss it, as
if--as if it were a thing that could be talked about? Am I to come in
between--two others--two---- I think it will make me mad,” the girl
cried, stamping her foot. How does a man dare to do that--to insult a
girl--who never sought him nor heard of him, wanted nothing of him--till
he came and forced himself into her life!”

“Oh! Bee, my darling,” cried the mother, going up to her child with
outstretched arms.

“Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t pet me; I cannot bear it. Let me
stand by myself. I am not a little thing like Lucy to be caught up and
kissed till I forget. I don’t want to forget. There is nothing that can
ever be done to me, if I were to live to an hundred, to put this out of
my head.”

“Bee, be patient with me for a moment. I have lived longer than you
have. What went before could be no offence to you, whatever it was. It
might be bad, but it was no offence to you. And this--I don’t believe
it----”

Bee was far too much self-absorbed to see the labouring breath, the pink
spot on each cheek, the panting which made her mother’s fine nostrils
quiver and kept her lips apart, or that she caught at the back of a
chair to support herself as she stood.

“I don’t know why--you shouldn’t believe it. I don’t believe it; I see
it, I hear it,” cried Bee. “It’s like a story--and I thought these
things were always stories, things made up to keep up the interest in a
book---- I’m the--deceived heroine, the one that’s disappointed, don’t
you know, mamma? We’ve read all about her dozens of times. But she
generally makes a fuss over it,” the girl said, with her suffocating
laugh. “I shall make--no fuss---- Mamma! What is the matter, mamma?”

Nothing more was the matter than the doctor could have told Mrs.
Kingsward’s family long ago--a spasm of the heart. She stumbled backward
to the sofa, and flung herself down before consciousness forsook her.
Did consciousness forsake her at all? Bee rushing to the bell, making
its violent sound peal through the house, then flinging herself at her
mother’s feet, and calling to her in the helplessness of utter
ignorance, “Mamma, mamma!” did not think that she was unconscious.
Broken words fell from her in the midst of her gasps for breath, then
there was a moment of dread stillness. By this time the room seemed to
be full of people--Bee did not know who was there--and then there
suddenly appeared out of the mist Moulsey with a glass and teaspoon in
her hands.

“Go away, all of you,” cried Moulsey, “she’ll be better directly--open
all the windows and take a fan and fan her, Miss Bee.”

The blast of the cold October night air came in like a flood, Bee seemed
to come out of a horrible dream in the waft of air brought by the fan
which she was herself waving to and fro--and in a little time, as
Moulsey said, Mrs. Kingsward was better. The labouring breath which had
come back after that awful moment of stillness gradually calmed down and
became softer with an occasional long drawn sigh, and then she opened
her eyes and said, with a faint smile, “What is it? What is it?” She
looked round her for a moment puzzled--and then she said, “Ah! you are
fanning me,” with a smile to Bee, but presently, “How cold it is! I
don’t think I want to be fanned, Moulsey.”

“No, ma’am, not now. And White is just a-going to shut all the windows.
The fire was a bit too hot, and you know you never can bear it when the
room gets too hot.”

“No, I never can bear it,” Mrs. Kingsward said, in a docile tone. She
followed the lead of any suggestion given to her. “I must have got
faint--with the heat.”

“That was just it,” said Moulsey. “When you have a fire in the
drawing-room so early it looks so cheerful you’re apt to pile it too
high without thinking--for it ain’t really cold in October, not cold
enough to have a fire like that. You want it for cheerfulness, ma’am,
more than for heat. A big bit of wood that will make a nice blaze, and
very little coal, as is too much for the season, is what your
drawing-room fire should be.”

Mrs. Kingsward gradually came to herself during this long speech, which
no doubt was what Moulsey intended. But she said she felt a little weak,
and that she would keep on the sofa until it was time to go to bed. The
agitation she had gone through seemed to have passed from her mind.
“Read me a little of that story,” she said, pointing to a book on the
table. “We left off last night at a most interesting part. Read me the
next chapter, Bee.”

Bee sat down beside her mother’s sofa and opened the book. It was not a
book of a very exciting kind it may be supposed, when it was thus read a
chapter at a time, without any one of the party opening it from evening
to evening to see how things went on. But as it happened at this point
of the story, the heroine had found out that her lover was not so
blameless as she thought, and was making up her mind to have nothing to
do with him. Bee began to read with an indignation beyond words for both
hero and heroine, who were so pale, so colourless, beside her own story.
To waste one’s time reading stuff like this, while the tide of one’s own
passion was ten times stronger! She did not think very much of her
mother’s faint. It was, no doubt, the too large fire, as Moulsey said.




CHAPTER XVII.


IT was perhaps a very good thing for Bee at this distracting and
distracted moment of her life, that her mother’s illness came in to fill
up every thought. Her own little fabric of happiness crumbled down about
her ears like a house of cards, only as it was far more deeply founded
and strongly built, the downfall was with a rumbling that shook the
earth and a dust that rose up to the skies. Heaven was blurred out to
her by the rising clouds, and all the earth was full of the noise, like
an earthquake, of the falling walls. She could not get that sound out of
her ears even in Mrs. Kingsward’s sick room, where the quiet was
preternatural, and everybody spoke in the lowest tone, and every step
was hushed. Even then it went on roaring, the stones and the rafters
flying, the storms of dust and ruin blackening the air, so that Bee
could not but wonder that nobody saw them, that the atmosphere was not
thick and stifling with those _debris_ that were continually falling
about her own ears. For everything was coming down; not only the idol
and the shrine he abode in, but heaven and earth, in which she felt that
no truth, no faith, could dwell any longer. Who was there to believe in?
Not any man if not Aubrey; not any goodness, any truth, if not his--not
anything! For it was without object, without warning, for nothing at
all, that he had deserted her, as if it had been of no importance: with
the ink not dry on his letter, with her name still upon his lips. A
great infidelity, like a great faith, is always something. It is tragic,
one of the awful events of life in which there is, or may be, fate; an
evil destiny, a terrible chastisement prepared beforehand. In such a
case one can at least feel one’s self only a great victim, injured by
God himself and the laws of the universe, though that was not the common
fashion of thought then, as it is now-a-days. But Bee’s downfall did not
mean so much as that it was not intended by anyone--not even by the
chief worker in it. He had meant to hold Bee fast with one hand while he
amused himself with the other. Amused himself--oh, heaven! Bee’s heart
seemed to contract with a speechless spasm of anguish and rage. That she
should be of no more account than that! Played with as if she were
nobody--the slight creature of a moment. She, Bee! She, Colonel
Kingsward’s daughter!

At first the poor girl went on in a mist of self-absorption, through
which everything else pierced but dully, wrapped up and hidden in it as
in the storm which would have arisen had the house actually fallen about
her ears, perceiving her mother through it, and the doctor, and all the
accessories of the scene--but dimly, not as if they were real. When,
however, there began to penetrate through this, strange words, with
strange meanings in them: “Danger”--danger to whom?--“Strength
failing”--but whose strength?--a dull wonder came in, bringing her back
to other thoughts. By-and-by, Bee began to understand a little that it
was of her mother of whom these things were being said. Her mother? But
it was not her mother’s house that had fallen; what did it mean? The
doctor talked apart with Moulsey, and Moulsey turned her back, and her
shoulders heaved, and her apron seemed to be put to her eyes. Bee, in
her dream said, half aloud, “Danger?” and both the doctor and Moulsey
turned upon her as if they would have killed her. Then she was beckoned
out of the room, and found herself standing face to face with that grave
yet kindly countenance which she had known all her life, in which she
believed as in the greatest authority. She heard his voice speaking to
her through all the rumbling and downfall.

“You must be very courageous,” it said, “You are the eldest, and till
your father comes home----”

What did it matter about her father coming home, or about her being the
eldest? What had all these things to do with the earthquake, with the
failure of truth, and meaning, and everything in life? She looked at him
blankly, wondering if it were possible that he did not hear the sound of
the great falling, the rending of the walls, and the tearing of the
roof, and the choking dust that filled all earth and heaven.

“My dear Beatrice,” he said, for he had known her all his life, “you
don’t understand me, do you, my poor child?”

Bee shook her head, looking at him wistfully. Could he know anything
more about it, she wondered--anything that had still to be said?

He took her hand, and her poor little hand was very cold with emotion
and trouble. The good doctor, who knew nothing about any individual
cause little Bee could have for agitation, thought he saw that her very
being was arrested by a terror which as yet her intelligence had not
grasped; something dreadful in the air which she did not understand. He
drew her into the dining-room, the door of which stood open, and poured
out a little wine for her. “Now, Bee,” he said, “no fainting, no
weakness. You must prove what is in you now. It is a dreadful trial for
you, my dear, but you can do a great deal for your dear mother’s sake,
as she would for yours.”

“I have never said it was a trial,” cried Bee, with a gasp. “Why do you
speak to me so? Has mamma told you? No one has anything to do with it
but me.”

He looked at her with great surprise, but the doctor was a man of too
much experience not to see that here was something into which it was
better not to inquire. He said, very quietly, “You, as the eldest, have
no doubt the chief part to play; but the little ones will all depend
upon your strength and courage. Your mother does not herself know. She
is very ill. It will require all that we can do--to pull her through.”

Bee repeated the last words after him with a scared look, but scarcely
any understanding in her face--“To pull her--through?”

“Don’t you understand me now? Your mother--has been ill for a long time.
Your father is aware of it. I suppose he thought you were too young to
be told. But now that he is absent, and your brother, I have no
alternative. Your mother is in great danger. I have telegraphed for
Colonel Kingsward, but in the meantime, Bee--child, don’t lose your
head! Do you understand me? She may be dying, and you are the only one
to stand by her, to give her courage.”

Bee did not look as if she had courage for anyone at that dreadful
moment. She fell a-trembling from head to foot and fell back against the
wall where she was standing. Her eyes grew large, staring at him yet
veiled as if they did not see--and she stammered forth at length,
“Mother, mother!” with almost no meaning, in the excess of misery and
surprise.

“Yes, your mother; whatever else you may have to think of, she is the
first consideration now.”

He went on speaking, but Bee did not hear him; everything floated around
her in a mist. The scenes at the Bath, the agitations, Mrs. Kingsward’s
sudden pallors and flushings, her pretence, which they all laughed at,
of not being able to walk; her laziness, lying on the sofa, the
giddiness when she made that one turn with Charlie, she who had always
been so fond of dancing; the hurry of bringing her to Kingswarden when
Bee had felt they would have been so much better in London, and her
strange, strange new fancy, mutely condemned by Bee, of finding the
children too much for her. Half of these things had been silently
remarked and disapproved of by the daughters. Mamma getting so
idle--self-indulgent almost, so unlike herself! Had they not been too
busily engaged in their own affairs, Bee and Betty would both have been
angry with mamma. All these things seem to float about Bee in a mist
while she leaned against the wall and the doctor stood opposite to her
talking. It was only perhaps about a minute after all, but she saw
waving round her, passing before her eyes, one scene melting into
another, or rather all visible at once, innumerable episodes--the whole
course of the three months past which had contained so much. She came
out of this strange whirl very miserable but very quiet.

“I think it is chiefly my fault,” she said, faltering, interrupting the
doctor who was talking, always talking; “but how could I know, for
nobody told me? Doctor, tell me what to do now? You said we should--pull
her through.”

She gave him a faint, eager, conciliatory smile, appealing to him to do
it. Of course he could do it! “Tell me--tell me only what to do.”

He patted her kindly upon the shoulder. “That is right,” he said. “Now
you understand me, and I know I can trust you. There is not much to do.
Only to be quiet and steady--no crying or agitation. Moulsey knows
everything. But you must be ready and steady, my dear. Sit by her and
look happy and keep up her courage--that’s the chief thing. If she gives
in it is all over. She must not see that you are frightened or
miserable. Come, it’s a great thing to do for a little girl that has
never known any trouble. But you are of a good sort, and you must rise
to it for your mother’s sake.”

Look happy! That was all she had to do. “Can’t I help Moulsey,” she
asked. “I could fetch her what she wants. I could--go errands for her.
Oh, doctor, something a little easier,” cried Bee, clasping her hands,
“just at first!”

“All that’s arranged,” he said, hastily, “Come, we must go back to our
patient. She will be wondering what I am talking to you about. She will
perhaps take fright. No, nothing easier, my poor child--if you can do
that you may help me a great deal; if you can’t, go to bed, my dear,
that will be best.”

She gave him a look of great scorn, and moved towards her mother’s room,
leading the way.

Mrs. Kingsward was lying with her face towards the door, watching, in a
blaze of excitement and fever. Her eyes had never been so bright nor her
colour so brilliant. She was breathing quickly, panting, with her heart
very audible to herself, pumping in her ears, and almost audible in the
room, so evident was it that every pulse was at fever speed. “What have
you been telling Bee, doctor? What have you been telling Bee? What----”
When she had begun this phrase it did not seem as if she could stop
repeating it again and again.

“I have been telling her that she may sit with you, my dear lady, on
condition of being very quiet, very quiet,” said the doctor. “It’s a
great promotion at her age. She has promised to sit very still, and talk
very little, and hush her mamma to sleep. It is you who must be the baby
to-night. If you can get a good long quiet sleep, it will do you all the
good in the world. Yes, you may hold her hand if you like, my dear, and
pat it, and smooth it--a little gentle mesmerism will do no harm. That,
my dear lady, is what I have been telling Miss Bee.”

“Oh, doctor,” said Mrs. Kingsward, “don’t you know she has had great
trouble herself, poor child? Poor little Bee! At her age I was married
and happy; and here is she, poor thing, plunged into trouble. Doctor,
you know, there is a--gentleman----”

Mrs. Kingsward had raised herself upon her elbow, and the panting of her
breath filled all the room.

“Another time--another time you shall tell me all about it. But I shall
take Miss Bee away, and consign you to a dark room, and silence, if you
say another word----”

“Oh, don’t make my room dark! I like the light. I want my child. Let me
keep her, let me keep her! Who should--comfort her--but her mother?”

“Yes, so long as you keep quiet. If you talk I will take her away. Not a
word--not a word--till to-morrow.” In spite of himself there was a
change in the doctor’s voice as he said that word--or Bee thought so--as
if there might never be any to-morrow. The girl felt as if she must cry
out, shriek aloud, to relieve her bursting brain, but did not, overborne
by his presence and by the new sense of duty and self-restraint. “Come
now,” he went on, “I am very kind to let you have your little girl by
you, holding your hand--don’t you think so? Go to sleep, both of you. If
you’re quite, quite, quiet you’ll both doze, and towards the morning
I’ll look in upon you again. Now, not another word. Good-night,
good-night.”

Bee, whose heart was beating almost as strongly as her mother’s, heard
his measured step withdraw on the soft carpets with a sense of wild
despair, as if the last hope was going from her. Her inexperienced
imagination had leaped from complete ignorance and calm to the last
possibilities of calamity. She had never seen death, and what if that
awful presence were to come while she was alone, incapable of any
struggle, of giving any help. She listened to the steps getting fainter
in the distance with anguish and terror unspeakable. She clasped her
mother’s hand tightly without knowing it. That only aid, the only man
who could do anything, was going away--deserting them--leaving her alone
in her ignorance to stand between her mother and death. Death! Every
pulse sprang up and fluttered in mortal terror. And she was put there to
be quiet--ready and steady, he had said--to look happy! Bee kept silent;
kept sitting upon her chair; kept down her shriek after him with a
superhuman effort. She could do no more.

“Listen--he’s talking to Moulsey now,” said Mrs. Kingsward, “about me;
they’re always--whispering, about me--telling the symptoms--and how I
am. That is the worst of nurses----”

“Mamma! Oh, don’t talk, don’t talk!” cried Bee; though she was more
comforted than words can tell by the sound of her mother’s voice.

“Whispering: can’t you hear them? About temperature--and things.
I can bear talking--but whispering. Bee--don’t you hear
’em--whis--whispering----”

“Oh, mamma,” cried Bee, “I love to hear you speak! But don’t, don’t,
don’t, or they’ll make me go away.”

“My baby,” said the mother, diverted in her wandering and weakness to a
new subject, “my little thing! He said we were to go to sleep. Put your
head there--and I’ll sing you--I’ll sing you--to sleep--little Bee,
little Bee, poor little Bee!”




CHAPTER XVIII.


THIS night was the strangest in Bee Kingsward’s life. She had never
known what it was to remain silent and awake in the darkness and warmth
of a sick room, which of itself is a strange experience for a girl, and
shows the young spirit its own weakness, its craving for rest and
comfort, the difficulty of overcoming the instincts of nature--with such
a sense of humiliation as nothing else could give. Could you not watch
with me one hour? She believed that she had lain awake crying all night
when her dream of happiness had so suddenly been broken in upon at
Cologne; but now, while she sat by her mother’s side, and the little
soft crooning of the song, which Mrs. Kingsward supposed herself to be
singing to put her child to sleep, sank into a soft murmur, and the poor
lady succeeded in hushing herself into a doze by this characteristic
method. Bee’s head dropped too, and her eyelids closed. Then she woke,
with a little shiver, to see the large figure of Moulsey like a ghost by
the bed, and struggled dumbly back to her senses, only remembering that
she must not start nor cry to disturb Mrs. Kingsward, whose quick
breathing filled the room with a sensation of danger and dismay to which
the girl was sensible as soon as the film of sleep that had enveloped
her was broken. Mrs. Kingsward’s head was thrown back on the pillow; now
and then a faint note of the lullaby which she had been singing came
from the parted lips, through which the hot, quick breath came so
audibly. Now and then she stirred in her feverish sleep. Moulsey stood
indistinguishable with her back to the light, a mass of solid shadow by
the bedside. She shook her head. “Sleep’s best,” she said, in the
whisper which the patient hated. “Sleep’s better than the best of
physic.” Bee caught those solid skirts with a sensation of hope, to
feel them so real and substantial in her hand. She did not care to
speak, but lifted her face, pale with alarm and trouble, to the
accustomed nurse. Moulsey shook her head again. It was all the
communication that passed between them, and it crushed the hope that was
beginning to rise in Bee’s mind. She had thought when she heard the
doctor go away that death might be coming as soon as his back was
turned. She had felt when her mother fell asleep as if the danger must
be past. Now she sank into that second stage of hopelessness, when there
is no longer any immediate panic, when the unaccustomed intelligence
dimly realises that the sufferer may be better, and may live through the
night, or through many nights, and yet there may be no real change. Very
dim as yet was this consciousness in Bee’s heart, and yet the first
dawning of it bowed her down.

In the middle of the night--after hours so long!--more like years, when
Bee seemed to have sat there half her life, to have become used to it,
to be uncertain about everything outside, but only that her mother lay
there more ill than words could say--Mrs. Kingsward awoke. She opened
her eyes without any change of position with the habit of a woman who
has been long ill, without acknowledging her illness. It was Moulsey who
saw a faint reflection of the faint light in the softly opening eyes,
and detected that little change in the breathing which comes with
returning consciousness. Bee, with her head leant back upon her chair
and her eyes closed, was dozing again.

“You must take your cordial, ma’am, now you’re awake. You’ve had such a
nice sleep.”

“Have I? I thought I was with the children and singing to baby. Who’s
this that has my hand--Bee?”

“Mamma,” cried the girl, with a little start, and then, “Oh! I have
waked her, Moulsey, I have waked her!”

“Is this her little hand? Poor little Bee! No, you have not waked me,
love; but why, why is the child here?”

“The doctor said she might stay--to send for him if you wanted
anything--and--and to satisfy her.”

“To satisfy her, why so, why so? Am I so bad? Did he think I would
die--in the night?”

“No, no, no,” said Moulsey, standing by her, patting her shoulder, as if
she had been a fretful child. “What a thing to fancy! As if he’d have
sent the child here for that!”

“No,” said the poor lady, “he wouldn’t have sent the child, would
he--not the child--for that--to frighten her! But Bee must go to bed.
I’m so much better. Go to bed. Moulsey; poor Moulsey, never tires, she’s
so good. But you must go to bed.”

“Oh, mother, let me stay. When you sleep, I sleep too; and I’m so much
happier here.”

“Happier, are you? Well--but there was something wrong. Something had
happened. What was it that happened? And your father away! It never does
for anything to happen when--my husband is away. I’ve grown so silly. I
never know what to do. What was it that happened, Bee?”

“There was--nothing,” said Bee, with a sudden chill of despair. She had
forgotten everything but the dim bed-chamber, the faint light, the
quick, quick breathing. And now there came a stab at her poor little
heart. She scarcely knew what it was, but a cut like a knife going to
the very centre of her being. Then there came the doctor’s words, as if
they were written in light across the darkness of the room--“Ready, and
steady.” She said in a stronger voice, “You have been dreaming. There
was nothing, mamma.”

Mrs. Kingsward, who had raised herself on her elbow, sank back again on
her pillow.

“Yes,” she said, “I must have been dreaming. I thought somebody
came--and told us. Dreams are so strange. People say they’re things
you’ve been--thinking of. But I was not thinking of that--the very last
thing! Bee, it’s a pity--it’s a great pity--when a woman with so many
children falls into this kind of silly, bad health.”

“Oh, mamma,” was all that poor Bee could say.

“Oh--let me alone, Moulsey--I want to talk a little. I’ve had such a
good sleep, you said; sometimes--I want to talk, and Moulsey won’t let
me--nor your father, and I have it all here,” she said, putting her
hand to her heart, “or here,” laying it over her eyebrows, “and I never
get it out. Let me talk, Moulsey--let me talk.”

Bee, leaning forward, and Moulsey standing over her by the bedside,
there was a pause. Their eyes, accustomed to the faint light, saw her
eyes shining from the pillow, and the flush of her cheeks against the
whiteness of the bed. Then, after a while, there came a little faint
laugh, and, “What was I saying?” Mrs. Kingsward asked. “You look so big,
Moulsey, like the shadows I used to throw on the wall to please the
children. You always liked the rabbit best, Bee. Look!” She put up her
hands as if to make that familiar play upon the wall. “But Moulsey,” she
added, “is so big. She shuts out all the light, and what is Bee doing
here at this hour of the night? Moulsey, send Miss Bee to bed.”

“Oh, mother, let me stay. You were going to tell me something.”

“Miss Bee, you must not make her talk.”

“How like Moulsey!” said the invalid. “Make me talk! when I have wanted
so much to talk. Bee, it’s horrid to go on in this silly ill way,
when--when one has children to think of. Your father’s always good--but
a man often doesn’t understand. About you, now--if I had been a little
stronger, it might have been different. What was it we heard? I don’t
think it was true what we heard.”

“Oh, mamma, don’t think of that, now.”

“It is _so_ silly, always being ill! And there’s nothing really the
matter. Ask the doctor. They all say there’s nothing really the matter.
Your father--but then he doesn’t know how a woman feels. I feel as if I
were sinking, sinking down through the bed and the floor and everything,
away, I don’t know where. So silly, for nothing hurts me--I’ve no
pain--except that I always want more air. If you were to open the
window, Moulsey; and Bee, give me your hand and hold me fast, that I
mayn’t sink away. It’s all quite silly, you know, to think so,” she
added, with again a faint laugh.

Bee’s eyes sought those of Moulsey with a terrified question in them;
the great shadow only slightly shook its head.

“Do you remember, Bee, the picture--we saw it in Italy, and I’ve got a
photograph--where there is a saint lying so sweetly in the air, with
angels holding her up? They’re flying with her through the blue sky--two
at her head, and other two--and her mantle so wrapped round her, and she
lying, oh! so easy, resting, though there’s nothing but the air and the
angels. Do you remember, Bee?”

“Yes, mamma. Oh, mamma, mamma!”

“That’s what I should like,” said Mrs. Kingsward; “it’s strange, isn’t
it? The bed’s solid, and the house is solid, and Moulsey there, she’s
very solid too, and air isn’t solid at all. But there never was anybody
that lay so easy and looked so safe as that woman in the air. Their arms
must be so soft under her, and yet so strong, you know; stronger than
your father’s. He’s so kind, but he hurries me sometimes; and
soft--you’re soft, Bee, but you’re not strong. You’ve got a soft little
hand, hasn’t she, Moulsey? Poor little thing! And to think one doesn’t
know what she may have to do with it before she is like me.”

“She’ll have no more to do with it, ma’am, than a lady should, no more
than you’ve had. But you must be quiet, dear lady, and try and go to
sleep.”

“I might never have such a good chance of talking to her again. The
middle of the night and nobody here--her father not even in the house.
Bee, you must try never to begin being ill in any silly way, feeling not
strong and that sort of foolish thing, and say out what you think. Don’t
be frightened. It’s--it’s bad for him as well as for you. He gets to
think you haven’t any opinion. And then all at once they find out--And,
perhaps, it’s too late--.”

“Mamma, you’re not very ill? Oh, no; you’re looking so beautiful, and
you talk just as you always did.”

“She says am I very ill, Moulsey? Poor little Bee! I feel a great deal
better. I had surely a nice sleep. But why should the doctor be here,
and you made to sit up, you poor little thing. Moulsey, why is the
doctor here?”

“I never said, ma’am, as he was here. He’s coming round first thing in
the morning. He’s anxious--because the Colonel’s away.”

“Ah! you think I don’t know. I’m not so very bad; but he thinks--he
thinks--perhaps I might die, Bee.”

“Mamma, mamma!”

“Don’t be frightened,” said Mrs. Kingsward, drawing the girl close to
her. “That’s a secret; he doesn’t think I know. It would be a curious,
curious thing, when people think you are only ill to go and die. It
would surprise them so. And so strange altogether--instead of worries,
you know, every day, to be all by yourself, lying so easy and the angels
carrying you. No trouble at all then to think whether he would be
pleased--or anything; giving yourself to be carried like that, like a
little child.”

“But mamma,” cried Bee, “you could not, would not leave us--you
wouldn’t, would you, mamma?--all the children, and me; and I with nobody
else, no one to care for me. You couldn’t, mother, leave us; you
wouldn’t! Say you wouldn’t! Oh! Moulsey! Moulsey! look how far away she
is looking, as if she didn’t see you and me!”

“You forget, Bee,” said Mrs. Kingsward, “How easy it looked for that
saint in the picture. I always liked to watch the birds floating down
on the wind, never moving their wings. That’s what seems no trouble, so
easy; not too hot nor too cold, nor tiring, neither to the breath nor
anything. I shouldn’t like to leave you. No--But then:” she added, with
a smile, “I should not require to leave you. I’d--I’d--What was I
saying? Moulsey, will you please give me some--more--”

She held out her hand again for the glass which Moulsey had just put
down.

“It makes me strong--it makes me speak. I’m--sinking away again, Bee.
Hold me--hold me tight. If I was to slip away--down--down--down to the
cellars or somewhere.” The feeble laugh was dreadful for the listeners
to hear.

“Run,” cried Moulsey, in Bee’s ear, “the doctor--the doctor! in the
library.”

And then there was a strange phantasmagoria that seemed to fill the
night, one scene melting into another. The doctor rousing from his doze,
his measured step coming back; the little struggle round the bed;
Moulsey giving place to the still darker shadow; the glow of Mrs.
Kingsward’s flushed and feverish countenance between; then the quiet,
and then again sleep--sleep broken by feeble movements, by the quick
panting of the breath.

“She’ll be easier now,” the doctor said. “You must go to bed, my dear
young lady. Moulsey can manage for the rest of the night.”

“Doctor,” said Bee, with something in her throat that stopped the words,
“doctor--will she--must she? Oh, doctor, say that is not what it means?
One of us, it would not matter, but mother--mother!”

“It is not in our hands,” the doctor said. “It is not much we can do.
Don’t look at me as if I were God. It is little, little I can do.”

“They say,” cried poor Bee, “that you can do anything. It is when there
is no doctor, no nurse that people---- Oh, my mother--my mother! Doctor,
don’t let it be.”

“You are but a child,” said the doctor, patting her kindly on the
shoulder, “you’ve not forgotten how to say your prayers. That’s the
only thing for you to do. Those that say such things of doctors know
very little. We stand and look on. Say your prayers, little girl--if
they do her no good, they’ll do you good. And now she’ll have a little
sleep.”

Bee caught him by the arm. “Sleep,” she said, looking at him
suspiciously. “Sleep?”

“Yes, sleep--that may give her strength for another day. Oh, ask no
more, child. Life is not mine to give.”

What a night! Out of doors it was moonlight as serene as heaven--the
moon departing in the west, and another faint light that was day coming
on the other side, and the first birds beginning to stir in the
branches; but not even baby moving in the house. All fast asleep, safe
as if trouble never was, as if death could not be. Bee went upstairs to
her chill, white room, where the white bed, unoccupied, looked to her
like death itself--all cold, dreadful, full of suggestion. Bee’s heart
was more heavy than could be told. She had nothing to fall back upon, no
secret strength to uphold her. She had forgotten how wretched she had
been, but she felt it, nevertheless, behind the present anguish.
Nevertheless, she was only nineteen, and when she flung herself down to
cry upon her white pillow--only to cry, to get her passion
out--beneficent nature took hold of the girl and made her sleep. She did
not wake for hours. Was it beneficent? For when she was roused by the
opening of the door and sat up in her bed, and found herself still
dressed in her evening frock, with her little necklace round her throat,
there pressed back upon Bee such a flood of misery and trouble as she
thought did not exist in the world.

“Miss Bee, Miss Bee! Master’s come home. He’s been travelling all
night--and I dare not disturb Mrs. Moulsey in Missis’s room; and he
wants to see you this minit, please. Oh, come, come, quick, and don’t
keep the Colonel waiting,” the woman said.

Half awakened, but wholly miserable, Bee sprang up and rushed downstairs
to her father. He came forward to meet her at the door, frowning and
pale.

“What is this I hear?” he said. “What have you been doing to upset your
mother? She was well enough when I went away. What have you been doing
to your mother? You children are the plague of our lives!”




CHAPTER XIX.


THE week passed in the sombre hurry yet tedium of a house lying under
the shadow of death--that period during which when it is night we long
for morning, and when it is morning we long for night, hoping always for
the hope that never comes, trembling to mark the progress which does go
on silently towards the end.

Colonel Kingsward was rough and angry with Bee that first morning, to
her consternation and dismay. She had never been the object of her
father’s anger before, and this hasty and imperious questioning seemed
to take all power of reply out of her. “What had she been doing to her
mother?” She! to her mother! Bee was too much frightened by his
threatening look, the cloud on his face, the fire in his eyes, to say
anything. Her mind ran hurriedly over all that had happened, and that
last terrible visit, which had changed the whole aspect of the earth to
herself. But it was to herself that this stroke of misfortune had come,
and not to her mother. A gleam of answering anger came into Bee’s eyes,
sombre with the unhappiness which had been pushed aside by more
immediate suffering, yet was still there like a black background, to
frame whatever other miseries might come after. As for Colonel
Kingsward, it was to him, as to so many men, a relief to blame somebody
for the trouble which was unbearable. The blow was approaching which he
had never allowed himself to believe in. He had blamed his wife
instinctively, involuntarily, at the first hearing of every
inconvenience in life; and it had helped to accustom him to the
annoyance to think that it was her fault. He had done so in what he
called this unfortunate business of Bee’s, concluding that but for Mrs.
Kingsward’s weakness, Mr. Aubrey Leigh and his affairs would never have
become of any importance to the family. He had blamed her, too, and
greatly, for that weakening of health which he had so persistently
endeavoured to convince himself did not mean half so much as the doctors
said. Women are so idiotic in these respects. They will insist on
wearing muslin and lace when they ought to wear flannel. They will put
on evening dresses when they ought to be clothed warmly to the throat,
and shoes made of paper when they ought to be solidly and stoutly shod,
quite indifferent to the trouble and anxiety they may cause to their
family. And now that Mrs. Kingsward’s state had got beyond the
possibility of reproach, he turned upon his daughter. It must be her
fault. Her mother had been better or he should not have left her. The
quiet of the country was doing her good; if she had not been agitated
all would have been well. But Bee, with all her declarations of devotion
to her mother; Bee, the eldest, who ought to have had some sense; Bee
had brought on this trumpery love business to overset the delicate
equilibrium which he himself, a man with affairs so much more important
in hand, had refrained from disturbing. It did him a little good,
unhappy and anxious as he was, to pour out his wrath upon Bee. And she
did not reply. She did not shed tears, as her mother had weakly done in
similar circumstances, or attempt excuses. Even if he had been
sufficiently at leisure to note it, an answering fire awoke in Bee’s
eyes. He had not leisure to note, but he perceived it all the same.

Presently, however, every faculty, every thought, became absorbed in
that sick chamber; things had still to be thought of outside of it, but
they seemed strange, artificial things, having no connection with life.
Then Charlie was summoned from Oxford, and the younger boys from school,
which increased the strange commotion of the house, adding that restless
element of young life which had no place there, nothing to do with
itself, and which roused an almost frenzied irritation in Colonel
Kingsward when he saw any attempt on the part of the poor boys to amuse
themselves, or resume their usual occupations. “Clods!” he said; “young
brutes! They would play tennis if the world were falling to pieces.” And
again that glance of fire came into Bee’s eyes, marked unconsciously,
though he did not know he had seen it, by her father. The boys hung
about her when she stole out for a little air, one at each arm. “How is
mother, Bee? She’s no worse? Don’t you think we might go over to
Hillside for that tournament? Don’t you think Fred might play in the
parish match with Siddemore? They’re so badly off for bowlers. Don’t you
think----”

“Oh, I think it would be much better for you to be doing something,
boys; but, then, papa might hear, and he would be angry. If we could but
keep it from papa.”

“We’re doing mother no good,” said Fred.

“How could we do mother good? Why did the governor send for us, Bee,
only to kick our heels here, and get into mischief? A fellow can’t help
getting into mischief when he has nothing to do.”

“Yes,” repeated Fred, “what did he send for us for? I wish mother was
better. I suppose as soon as she’s better we’ll be packed off again.”

They were big boys, but they did not understand the possibility of their
mother not getting better, and, indeed, neither did Bee. When morning
followed morning and nothing happened, it seemed to her that getting
better was the only conclusion to be looked for. If it had been Death
that was coming, surely it must have come by this time. Her hopes rose
with every new day.

But Mrs. Kingsward had been greatly agitated by the sight of Charlie
when he was allowed to see her. “Why has Charlie come home?” she said.
“Was he sent for? Was it your father that brought him? Charlie, my dear,
what are you doing here? Why have you come back? You should have been
going on with---- Did your father send for you? Why--why did your father
send for you, my boy?”

“I thought,” said Charlie, quite unmanned by the sight of her, and by
this unexpected question, and by all he had been told about her state,
“I thought--you wanted to see me, mother.”

“I always like to see you--but not to take you away from---- And why
was he sent for, Moulsey? Does the doctor think?--does my husband
think?----”

Her feverish colour grew brighter and brighter. Her eyes shone with a
burning eagerness. She put her hot hand upon that of her son. “Was it to
say good-bye to me?” she said, with a strange flutter of a smile.

At the same time an argument on the same subject was going on between
the doctor and the Colonel.

“What can the children do in a sick room? Keep them away. I should never
have sent for them if you had consulted me. It is bad enough to have let
her see Charlie, summoned express--do you want to frighten your wife to
death?”

“There can be no question,” said the Colonel, “if what you tell me is
true, of frightening her to death. I think, Benson, that a patient in
such circumstances ought to know. She ought to be told----”

“What?” the doctor said, sharply, with a harsh tone in his voice.

“What? Do you need to ask? Of her state--of what is imminent--that she
is going to----”

Colonel Kingsward loved his wife truly, and he could not say those last
words.

“Yes,” said the doctor, “going to----? Well, we hope it’s to One who has
called her, that knows all about it, Kingsward. Doctors are not supposed
to take that view much, but I do. I’d tell her nothing of the sort. I
would not agitate her either with the sight of the children or those
heathenish thoughts about dying. Well, I suppose you’ll take your own
way, if you think she’s in danger of damnation; but you see I don’t. I
think where she’s going she’ll find more consideration and more
understanding than ever she got here.”

“You are all infidels--every one of you,” said Colonel Kingsward; “you
would let a soul rush unprepared into the presence of--”

“Her Father,” said Doctor Benson. “So I would; if he’s her Father he’ll
take care of that. And if he’s only a Judge, you know, a Judge is an
extraordinarily considerate person. He leaves no means untried of coming
to a right decision. I would rather trust my case in the hands of the
Bench than make up my own little plea any day. And, anyhow you can put
it, the Supreme Judge must be better than the best Bench that ever was.
Leave her alone. She’s safer with Him than either with you or me.”

“It’s an argument I never would pardon--in my own case. I shudder at the
thought of being plunged into eternity without the time to--to
think--to--to prepare----”

“But if your preparations are all seen through from the beginning? If
it’s just as well known then, or better, what you are thinking, or
trying to think, to make yourself ready for that event? You knew
yourself, more or less, didn’t you, when you were in active service, the
excuses a wretched private would make when he was hauled up, and how he
would try to make the worse appear the better cause. Were you moved by
that, Colonel Kingsward? Didn’t you know the man, and judge him by what
you knew?”

“It seems to me a very undignified argument; there’s no analogy between
a wretched private and my--and my--and one of us--at the Judgment Seat.”

“No--it’s more like one of your boys making up the defence--when brought
before you--and the poor boy would need it too,” Dr. Benson added
within himself. But naturally he made no impression with his argument,
whether it was good or bad, upon his hearer. Colonel Kingsward was in
reality a very unhappy man. He had nobody to blame for the dreadful
misfortune which was threatening him except God, for whom he entertained
only a great terror as of an overwhelming tyrannical Power ready to
catch him at any moment when he neglected the observances or rites
necessary to appease it. He was very particular in these
observances--going to church, keeping up family prayers, contributing
his proper and carefully calculated proportion to the charities, &c.
Nobody could say of him that he was careless or negligent. And now how
badly was his devotion repaid!--by the tearing away from him of the
companion of his life. But he felt that there was still much more that
the awful Master of the Universe might inflict, perhaps upon her if she
was not prepared to meet her God. He was wretched till he had told her,
warned her, till she had fulfilled everything that was necessary, seen
a clergyman, and got herself into the state of mind becoming a dying
person. He had collected all the children that she might take leave of
them in a becoming way. He had, so far as he knew, thought of everything
to make her exit from the world a right one in all the forms--and now to
be told that he was not to agitate her, that the God whom he wished to
prepare her to meet knew more of her and understood her better than he
did! Agitate her! When the alternative might be unspeakable miseries of
punishment, instead of the acquittal which would have to be given to a
soul properly prepared. These arguments did not in the least change his
purpose, but they fretted and irritated him beyond measure. At the
bottom of all, the idea that anybody should know better than he what was
the right thing for his own wife was an intolerable thought.

He went in and out of her room with that irritated, though
self-controlled look, which she knew so well. He had never shown it to
the world, and when he had demanded of her in his angry way why this was
and that, and how on earth such and such things had happened, Mrs.
Kingsward had till lately taken it so sweetly that he had not himself
suspected how heavy it was upon her. And when she had begun to show
signs of being unable to bear the responsibility of everything in earth
and heaven, the Colonel had felt himself an injured man. There were
signs that he might eventually throw that responsibility on Bee. But in
the meantime he had nobody to blame, as has been said, and the burden of
irritation and disturbance was heavy upon him.

The next morning after his talk with Dr. Brown he came in with that
clouded brow to find Charlie by her bedside. The Colonel came up and
stood looking at the face on the pillow, now wan in the reaction of the
fever, and utterly weak, but still smiling at his approach.

“I have been telling Charlie,” she said, in her faint voice, “that he
must go back to his college. Why should he waste his time here?”

“He will not go back yet,” said Colonel Kingsward; “are you feeling a
little better this morning, my dear?”

“Oh, not to call ill at all,” said the sufferer. “Weak--a sort of
sinking, floating away. I take hold of somebody’s hand to keep me from
falling through. Isn’t it ridiculous?” she said, after a little pause.

“Your weakness is very great,” said the husband, almost sternly.

“Oh, no, Edward. It’s more silly than anything--when I am not really
ill, you know. I’ve got Charlie’s hand here under the counterpane,” she
said again, with her faint little laugh.

“You won’t always have Charlie’s hand, or anyone’s hand, Lucy.”

She looked at him with a little anxiety.

“No, no. I’ll get stronger, perhaps, Edward.”

“Do you feel as if you were at all stronger, my dear?”

She loosed her son’s hand, giving him a little troubled smile. “Go away
now, Charlie dear. I don’t believe you’ve had your breakfast. I want to
speak to--papa.” Then she waited, looking wistfully in her husband’s
face till the door had closed. “You have something to say to me, Edward.
Oh, what is it? Nothing has happened to anyone?”

“No, nothing has happened,” he said. He turned away and walked to the
window, then came back again, turning his head half-way from her as he
spoke. “It is only that you are, my poor darling--weaker every day.”

“Does the doctor think so?” she said, with a little eagerness, with a
faint suffusion of colour in her face.

He did not say anything--could not perhaps--but slightly moved his head.

“Weaker every day, and that means, Edward!” She put out her thin, hot
hands. “That means----”

The man could not say anything. He could do his duty grimly, but when
the moment came he could not put it into words. He sank down on the
chair Charlie had left, and put down his face on the pillow, his large
frame shaken by sobs which he could not restrain.

These sobs made Mrs. Kingsward forget the meaning of this communication
altogether. She put her hands upon him trying to raise his head.
“Edward! Oh, don’t cry, don’t cry! I have never seen you cry in all my
life. Edward, for goodness’ sake! You will kill me if you go on sobbing
like that. Oh, Edward, Edward, I never saw you cry before.”

Moulsey had darted forward from some shadowy corner where she was and
gripped him by the arm.

“Stop, sir--stop it,” she cried, in an authoritative whisper, “or you’ll
kill her.”

He flung Moulsey off and raised his head a little from the pillow.

“You have never seen me with any such occasion before,” he said, taking
her hands into his and kissing them repeatedly.

He was not a man of many caresses, and her heart was touched with a
feeble sense of pleasure.

“Dear!” she said softly, “dear!” feebly drawing a little nearer to him
to put her cheek against his.

Colonel Kingsward looked up as soon as he was able and saw her lying
smiling at him, her hand in his, her eyes full of that wonderful liquid
light which belongs to great weakness. The small worn face was all
illuminated with smiles; it was like the face of a child--or perhaps an
angel. He looked at first with awe, then with doubt and alarm. Had he
failed after all in the commission which he had executed at so much cost
to himself, and against the doctor’s orders? He had been afraid for the
moment of the sight of her despair--and now he was frightened by her
look of ease, the absence of all perturbations. Had she not understood
him? Would it have to be told again, more severely, more distinctly,
this dreadful news?




CHAPTER XX.


MRS. KINGSWARD said nothing of the communication her husband had made to
her. Did she understand it? He went about heavily all day, pondering the
matter, going and coming to her room, trying in vain to make out what
was in her mind. But he could not divine what was in that mind, hidden
from him in those veils of individual existence which never seemed to
him to have been so baffling before. In the afternoon she had heard,
somehow, the voices of the elder boys, and had asked if they were there,
and had sent for them. The two big fellows, with the mud on their boots
and the scent of the fresh air about them, stood huddled together,
speechless with awe and grief, by the bedside, when their father came
in. They did not know what to say to their mother in such circumstances.
They had never talked to her about herself, but always about themselves;
and now they were entirely at a loss after they had said, “How are you,
mamma? Are you very bad, mamma? Oh, I’m so sorry;” and “Oh, I wish you
were better.” What could boys of twelve and fourteen say? For the moment
they felt as if their hearts were broken; but they did not want to stay
there; they had nothing to say to her. Their pang of sudden trouble was
confused with shyness and awkwardness, and their consciousness that she
was altogether in another atmosphere and another world. Mrs. Kingsward
was not a clever woman, but she understood miraculously what was in
those inarticulate young souls. She kissed them both, drawing each close
to her for a moment, and then bade them run away. “Were you having a
good game?” she said, with that ineffable, feeble smile. “Go and finish
it, my darlings.” And they stumbled out very awkwardly, startled to meet
their father’s look as they turned round, and greatly disturbed and
mystified altogether, though consoled somehow by their mother’s look.

They said to each other after a while that she looked “jolly bad,” but
that she was in such good spirits it must be all right.

Their father was as much mystified as they; but he was troubled in
conscience, as if he had not spoken plainly enough, had not made it
clear enough what “her state” was. She had not asked for the
clergyman--she had not asked for anything. Was it necessary that he
should speak again? There was one thing she had near her, but that so
fantastic a thing!--a photograph--one of the quantities of such rubbish
the girls and she had brought home--a woman wrapped in a mantle floating
in the air.

“Take that thing away,” he said to Moulsey. It irritated him to see a
frivolous thing like that--a twopenny-halfpenny photograph--so near his
wife’s bed.

“Don’t take it away,” she said, in the whisper to which her voice had
sunk; “it gives me such pleasure.”

“Pleasure!” he cried; even to speak of pleasure was wrong at such a
moment. And then he added, “Would you like me to read to you? Would you
like to see--anyone?”

“To see anyone? Whom should I wish to see but you, Edward, and the
children?”

“We haven’t been--so religious, my dear, as perhaps we ought,” stammered
the anxious man. “If I sent for--Mr. Baldwin perhaps, to read the
prayers for the sick and--and talk to you a little?”

She looked at him with some wonder for a moment, and then she said, with
a smile, “Yes, yes; by all means, Edward, if you like it.”

“I shall certainly like it, my dearest; and it is right--it is what we
should all wish to do at the----” He could not say at the last--he could
not say when we are dying--it was too much for him; but certainly she
must understand now. And he went away hurriedly to call the clergyman,
that no more time might be lost.

“Moulsey,” said Mrs. Kingsward, “have we come then quite--to the end
now?”

“Oh, ma’am! Oh, my dear lady!” Moulsey said.

“My husband--seems to think so. It is a little hard--to leave them all.
Where is Bee?”

“I am here, mamma,” said a broken voice; and the mother’s hand was
caught and held tight, as she liked it to be. “May Betty come too?”

“Yes, let Betty come. It is you I want, not Mr. Baldwin.”

“Mr. Baldwin is a good man, ma’am. He’ll be a comfort to them and to the
Colonel.”

“Yes, I suppose so; he will be a comfort to--your father. But I don’t
want anyone. I haven’t done very much harm----”

“No! oh, no, ma’am, none!” said Moulsey, while Betty, thrown on her
knees by the bedside, tried to smother her sobs; and Bee, worn out and
feeling as if she felt nothing, sat and held her mother’s hand.

“But, then,” she said, “I’ve never, never, done any good.”

“Oh! my dear lady, my dear lady! And all the poor people, and all the
children.”

“Hush! Moulsey. I never gave anything--not a bit of bread, not a
shilling--but because I liked to do it. Never! oh, never from any good
motive. I always liked to do it. It was my pleasure. It never cost me
anything. I have done no good in my life. I just liked the poor
children, that was all, and thought if they were my own---- Oh, Bee and
Betty, try to be better women--different from me.”

Betty, who was so young, crept nearer and nearer on her knees, till she
came to the head of the bed. She lifted up her tear-stained face,
“Mother! oh, mother! are you frightened?” she cried.

Mrs. Kingsward put forth her other arm and put it freely round the
weeping girl. “Perhaps I ought to be, perhaps I ought to be!” she said,
with a little thrill and quaver.

“Mother,” said Betty, pushing closer and closer, almost pushing Bee
away, “if I had been wicked, ever so wicked, I shouldn’t be frightened
for you.”

A heavenly smile came over the woman’s face. “I should think not,
indeed.”

And then Betty, in the silence of the room, put her hands together and
said very softly, “Our Father, which art in Heaven--”

“Oh, children, children,” cried Moulsey, “don’t break our hearts! She’s
too weak to bear it. Leave her alone.”

“Yes, go away, children dear--go away. I have to rest--to see Mr.
Baldwin.” Then she smiled, and said in gasps, “To tell the
truth--I’m--I’m not afraid; look--” She pointed to the picture by her
bedside. “So easy--so easy! Just resting--and the Saviour will put out
his hand and take me in.”

Mr. Baldwin came soon after--the good Rector, who was a good man, but
who believed he had the keys, and that what he bound on earth was bound
in Heaven--or, at least, he thought he believed so--with Colonel
Kingsward, who felt that he was thus fulfilling all righteousness, and
that this was the proper way in which to approach the everlasting doors.
He put away the little picture in which Catherine of Siena lay in the
hold of the angels, in the perfect peace of life accomplished, the rest
that was so easy and so sweet--hastily with displeasure and contempt. He
did not wish the Rector to see the childish thing in which his wife had
taken pleasure, nor even that she had been taking pleasure at all at
such a solemn moment; even that she should smile the same smile of
welcome with which she would have greeted her kind neighbour had she
been in her usual place in the drawing-room disturbed her husband. So
near death and yet able to think of that! He watched her face as the
Rector read the usual prayers. Did she enter into them--did she
understand them? He could scarcely join in them himself in his anxiety
to make sure that she felt and knew what was her “state,” and was
preparing--preparing to meet her God. That God was awaiting severely the
appearance of that soul before him, the Colonel could not but feel. He
would not have said so in words, but the instinctive conviction in his
heart was so. When she looked round for the little picture it hurt him
like a sting. Oh, if she would but think of the things that concerned
her peace--not of follies, childish distractions, amusements for the
fancy. On her side, the poor lady was conscious more or less of all that
was going on, understood here and there the prayers that were going over
her head, prayers of others for her, rather than anything to be said by
herself. In the midst of them, she felt herself already like St.
Catherine, floating away into ineffable peace, then coming back again to
hear the sacred words, to see the little circle round her on their
knees, and to smile upon them in an utter calm of weakness without pain,
feeling only that they were good to her, thinking of her, which was
sweet, but knowing little more.

It was the most serene and cloudless night after that terrible day. A
little after Colonel Kingsward had left the room finally and shut
himself up in his study, Moulsey took the two girls out into the garden,
through a window which opened upon it. “Children, go and breathe the
sweet air. I’ll not have you in a room to break your hearts. Look up
yonder--yonder where she’s gone,” said the kind nurse who had done
everything for their mother. And they stole out--the two little ghosts,
overborne with the dreadful burden of humanity, the burden which none of
us can shake off, and crept across the grass to the seat where she had
been used to sit among the children. The night was peace itself--not a
breath stirring, a young moon with something wistful in her light
looking down, making the garden bright as with a softened ethereal day.
A line of white cloud dimly detached from the softness of the blue lay
far off towards the west amid the radiance, a long faint line as of
something in the far distance. Bee and Betty stood and gazed at it with
eyes and hearts over-charged, each leaning upon the other. Their young
souls were touched with awe and an awful quiet. They were too near the
departure to have fallen down as yet into the vacancy and emptiness of
re-awakening life. “Oh,” they said, “if that should be her!” And why
should it not be? Unless perhaps there was a quicker way. They watched
it with that sob in the throat which is of all sounds and sensations the
most overwhelming. It seemed to them as if they were watching her a
little further on her way, to the very horizon, till the soft distance
closed over, and that speck like a sail upon the sea could be seen no
more. And when it was gone they sank down together upon her seat, under
the trees she loved, where the children had played and tumbled on the
grass about her, and talked of her in broken words, a little phrase now
and then, sometimes only “Mother,” or “Oh, mamma, mamma,” now from one,
now from another--in that first extraordinary exaltation and anguish
which is not yet grief.

They did not know how long they had been there when something stirred in
the bushes, and the two big boys, Arthur and Fred, came heavily into
sight, holding each other by the arm. The boys were bewildered, heavy
and miserable, not knowing what to do with themselves nor where to go.
But they came up with a purpose, which was a little ease in the trouble.
It cost them a little convulsion of reluctant crying before they could
get out what they had to say. Then it came out in broken words from both
together. “Bee, there’s someone wants to speak to you at the gate.”

“Oh! who could want to speak to me--to-night? I cannot speak to anyone;
you might have known.”

“Bee,” said Arthur, the eldest, “it isn’t just--anyone; it’s--we thought
you would perhaps--”

“He told us,” said Fred, “who he was; and begged so hard--”

Then there came back upon poor Bee all the other trouble that she had
pushed away from her. Her heart seemed to grow hard and cold after all
the softening and tenderness of this dreadful yet heavenly hour. “I will
see no one--no one,” she said.

“Bee,” said the boys, “we shut the gate upon him; but he took hold of
our hands, and--and cried, too.” They had to stop and swallow the sob
before either could say any more. “He said she was his best friend. He
said he couldn’t bear it no more than us. And if you would only speak to
him.”

Bee got up from her mother’s seat; her poor little heart swelled in her
bosom as if it would burst. Oh! how was she to bear all this--to bear it
all--to have no one to help her! “No, no, I will not. I will not!” she
said.

“Oh, Bee,” cried Betty, “if it is Aubrey--poor Aubrey! She was fond of
him. She would not like him to be left out. Oh, Bee, come; come and
speak to him. Suppose one of us were alone, with nobody to say mother’s
name to!”

“No, I will not,” said Bee. “Oh! Betty, mother knows why; she knows.”

“What does she know?” cried Betty, pleading. “She was fond of him. I am
fond of him, without thinking of you, for mother’s sake.”

“Oh, let me go! I am going in; I am going to her. I wish, I wish she had
taken me with her! No, no, no! I will never see him more.”

“I think,” said Betty to the boys, pushing them away, “that she is not
quite herself. Tell him she’s not herself. Say she’s not able to speak
to anyone, and we can’t move her. And--and give poor Aubrey--oh, poor
Aubrey!--my love.”

The boys turned away on their mission, crossing the gravel path with a
commotion of their heavy feet which seemed to fill the air with echoes.

Colonel Kingsward heard it from his study, though that was closed up
from any influence outside. He opened his window and came out, standing
a black figure surrounded by the moonlight. “Who is there?” he said.
“Are there any of you so lost to all feeling as to be out in the
garden, of all nights in the world on this night?”




CHAPTER XXI.


AUBREY LEIGH had been living a troubled life during the time which had
elapsed since the swallowing up in the country of the family in which he
had become so suddenly interested, of which, for a short time, he had felt
himself a member, and from which, as he felt, he could never be
separated, whatever arbitrary laws might be made by its head. When they
disappeared from London, which was done so suddenly, he was much cast
down for the moment, but, as he had the fullest faith in Bee, and was
sustained by her independence of character and determined to stand by
him whatever happened, he was, though anxious and full of agitation,
neither despairing nor even in very low spirits. To be sure there were
moments in which his heart sank, recalling the blank countenance of the
father, and the too gentle and yielding disposition of the mother, and
Bee’s extreme youth and habits of obedience to both. He felt how much
there was to be said against himself--a man who had been forced into
circumstances of danger which nobody but himself could fully understand,
and against which his whole being had revolted, though he could say but
little on the subject. And, indeed, who was to understand that a man
might yield to a sudden temptation which he despised and hated, and that
he could not even explain that this was so, laying the blackest blame
upon another--to a man, and still less to a woman; which last was
impossible, and not even to be thought of. He might tell it, perhaps, to
his mother, and there was a possibility of help there; though even there
a hundred difficulties existed. But he was not wound up to that last
appeal, and he felt, at first, but little fear of the eventual result He
was assured of Bee’s faithfulness, and how could any parent stand out
against Bee? Not even, he tried to persuade himself, the stern Colonel,
who had so crushed himself. And she had received his first letters, and
had answered them, professing her determination never to be coerced in
this respect.

He was agitated, his life was full of excitement, and speculation, and
trouble. But this is nothing dreadful in a young man’s life. It was
perhaps better, more enlivening, more vivid, than the delights of an
undisturbed love-making, followed by a triumphant marriage. It is well
sometimes that the course of true love should not run smooth. He thought
himself unhappy in being separated from Bee; but the keen delight of her
determination to stand by him for good or evil, her faith in him, her
championship, and the conviction that this being so all must come right
in the end, was like a stream of bright fresh water flowing through the
somewhat sombre flat of his existence. It had been very sombre in the
early days of what people thought his youthful happiness--very flat,
monotonous, yet with ignoble contentions in it. Bee’s sunshiny nature,
full of lights and shadows, had changed the whole landscape, and now
the excitement of this struggle for her, changed it still more. It might
be a hard battle, but they would win in the end. Whether he, a somewhat
unlucky fellow, would have done so was very doubtful--but for her the
stars would fight in their courses. Everything would be overturned in
the world, rather than that Bee should be made miserable, and since she
had set her dear heart on him, on his behalf too the very elements would
fight, for how otherwise could Bee be made happy? The argument was
without a flaw.

This was his reasoning, never put, I need not say, into any formula of
words, yet vaguely believed in, and forming a source of the brightest
exhilaration in his life, rousing all combative influences by the power
of that hope of success which was a certainty in such a case. This
exhilaration was crossed by the blackest of disappointments, and
threatened to become despair when for days he had no sign of existence
from Bee: but that after all was only a keener excitement--the sting of
anxiety which makes after satisfaction more sweet. And then he was
consoled to hear of Mrs. Kingsward’s illness, which explained
everything. Not that Aubrey was selfish enough to rejoice in that poor
lady’s suffering. He would have been shocked and horrified by the
thought. But then it was no unusual thing for Mrs. Kingsward to be ill;
it is not unusual, a young man so easily thinks, for any middle-aged
person to be ill--and in so many cases it does not seem to do them much
harm; whereas it did him much good--for it explained the silence of Bee!

And then it came to Aubrey’s ears that Mrs. Kingsward was very
ill--worse than she had ever been before; and then that all the family
had been summoned that she was dying. Such rumours spread like
wildfire--they get into the air--nobody knows how they come. He went
down to the village nearest Kingswarden, and found a lodging there, when
this news reached him, and endeavoured to send a note to Bee, to let her
know he was at hand. But in the trouble of the house this note, sent by
a private hand--always in these days an unsafe method--was somehow lost
and never reached her. He hung about the house in the evenings,
avoiding on various occasions an encounter with Charlie, who was not
friendly, and with the Colonel, who was his enemy. These two were the
only members of the family visible outside the gates of
Kingswarden--until he managed to identify the two boys, whose
disconsolate wanderings about pointed them out to him, and who did not
know, therefore had no hostility or suspicion of the stranger who
inquired after their mother so anxiously. Everybody inquired after their
mother. It was nothing strange to them to be stopped on the road with
this question. It was thus at last, hearing the final blow had fallen,
Aubrey had ventured to send a message, to ask for a word from Bee. The
thought of what the girl must be suffering in her first grief, and to
feel himself so near her--almost within hearing--yet altogether shut
out, was more than he could bear. He pushed in within the gate, into the
shelter of the shrubbery, and there he stopped short, bound by invisible
restraints. It was the home of his love, and yet it was the house of his
enemy. He could not take advantage of the darkness of the night and of
the misery of the moment to violate the sanctuary of a man soul-stricken
by such trouble. But from where he stood he could see the little group
of shadows under the tree. And how could he go away and not say a word
to her--not take her in his arms, tell her his heart was with her, and
that he was a mourner too? “Ask Bee to speak to me. Ask her to speak to
me--only for a moment. I am Aubrey Leigh,” he said to the two brothers,
taking an arm of each, imploring them. The boys did not know much about
Aubrey Leigh, but still they had heard the name. And they were overawed
by his earnestness; the sound of his voice which, full of passion and
feeling as it was, was strange to their undeveloped consciousness. They
took his message, as we have seen, and then there came a mysterious
moment which Aubrey could not understand. He could not hear what was
said, but he was conscious of a resistance, of denial, and that Bee did
not make a step towards him; that she recoiled rather than advanced.
Though he could scarcely see anything distinctly, he could see
that--that there was no impulse towards him, but rather the reverse;
that Bee did not wish to come. And then the harsh voice of the Colonel
broke the spell of the quiet, of the mournful, tranquil night, which it
was so easy for a roused imagination to think was penetrated, too, by
the sentiment of sorrow and of peace. The Colonel’s voice put every
gentler vision to flight. “Is it possible that any of you are out here
in the garden--of all nights in the world on this night?” Oh! the very
night of all nights to be there--in the first awe and silence, watching
her pass, as it were, to the very gates of Heaven! Perhaps, it was
unawares from Bee’s mind that this idea came to his--“to watch her
ascending, trailing clouds of glory,” as the poet said; but that was the
spirit coming and not going. These thoughts flew through his mind in the
shock and irritation of the Colonel’s voice. And then the shadows under
the tree seemed to fly away and disperse, and silence fell upon all
around, the great ghostly trees standing up immovable like muffled
giants in the moonlight, their shadows making lines and heavy clumps of
blackness on the turf, the late roses showing pale in the distance, the
garden paths white and desolate. A moment more, and the harsh sound,
almost angry, of the Colonel’s window shutting, of bolts and bars, and a
final closing up of everything came unkindly upon the hushed air. And
then the moonlight reached the shut up house, all unresponsive, with
death in it, with one faint light burning in the large window upstairs,
showing where the gentle inmate lay who needed light no more. Strange
prejudice of humanity that put out all the lights for sleep, but
surrounds death with them, that no careless spirit may mistake for a
common chamber the place where that last majesty lies.

Aubrey stood alone in this hushed and silent world. His heart was as
heavy as a stone, heavy with grief for the friend who had passed for
ever out of his life. He had not known perhaps till now what he too had
lost--a friend, who would not have forsaken him not a very strong
champion to fight for him; but a friend that never, whatever might be
said, would have refused to hear him, refused to give him her sympathy.
Had Bee, his own Bee, refused? The young man was bewildered beyond the
power of thought. Was it his fault to have come too soon? Was it an
outrage to be there on the night of the mother’s death? But there was no
outrage in his thoughts, not even any selfishness. It was her he had
been thinking of, not himself; that she might feel there was someone
whose thoughts were all hers, who was herself, not another, feeling with
her, mourning with her, her very own to take the half of her burden. He
had felt that he could not be far away while Bee was in trouble--that
even to stand outside would be something, would somehow lighten her
load, would make her feel in the very air a consciousness of the mighty
love that would

            cleave in twain
    The lading of a single pain
    And part it giving half to him.

His heart, which had so gone out to her, seemed to come back confused,
with all the life out of it, full of wonder and dismay. Had she rejected
him and his sympathy? Was it the fault of the others, the boys who did
not know what to say? Was she angry that he should come so soon? But it
was now, immediately on the very stroke of the distress, that love
should come. He stood for a long time silent, bewildered, not knowing
what to think. Was it possible that she could have misunderstood him,
have thought that he had come here only to beguile her into his arms, to
take advantage of an opportunity? It pained poor Aubrey to the heart to
think that she might have thought so. Ah! Mrs. Kingsward would not have
done it, would not have let Bee do it. But she lay there, where the
light was, never to say anything more: and Bee--Bee!

He got out of the little park that surrounded Kingswarden by the stile
near the village, some time after, he did not know how long. He thought
it was in the middle of the night. The moon had set, everything was
dark, and all the cottagers asleep. But time is long to watchers
unaccustomed to long vigils, and the lights were not out at the small
inn in the village where he was lodging. He found the master of the
house and his wife talking at the door in subdued tones, over the event
of the evening. “She was always a weakly body, but she’ll be sore
missed,” the woman said. “She kept everything going. The Colonel, he’ll
not have a servant left as will put up with him in three months. You
take my word. She kept all straight. Lord, that’s how women mostly
is--no account as long as they’re living--and then you finds the want o’
them when they’re gone.”

“Here you are, mister,” said the landlord; “we thought as you was lost.
It was a fine night, tempting for a walk. But it’s clouding over now.”

“Oh, no, sir, nought of the sort,” said the woman. “My master here, he
never goes to bed afore the middle of the night, he don’t, and it’s an
excuse for not getting up in the mornin’. But you’ll have to be early
to-morrow, Gregg, you take my word, for there’ll be undertakers’ men and
that sort down from London, and I’ll not be bothered with them, mind you
that.”

“I suppose you’re right this time,” said the man. “They drinks a deal to
keep up their spirits, being as it is a kind of depressing trade.”

“If I hear you laugh again like that!--and the missis lying in her
coffin! Don’t you think, sir, as he’s got no feeling. He puts it off
like with a laugh not to cry. I was kitchen-maid up there, and he was
groom in the old days, and many and many’s the kindness she done to me
and mine. Oh, and such a pretty lady and sweet--and a young family left
just at the ages that most need a mother’s care.”

“They’re all ages, Molly, if you come to that.”

“Well, and don’t they want a mother’s care at all ages? What would you
do with my children if I was took, John Gregg? And the Colonel, he’s
just a helpless man like you are. The only hope is as Miss Bee will turn
out like her mother. I always thought she favoured Missis, though some
said it was the Colonel she was like. It’s a dreadful charge for her,
poor thing, at her age; but if she takes after the Missis there will be
some hope for them,” the woman said.

“I thought as Miss Bee was going to be married?” said the landlord.

“Oh, that’s all broken off,” she said, “and a good thing too, seeing
what’s happened, for what could ever little Miss Betty do?”

Aubrey, who had lingered listening, went slowly up the narrow wooden
stair to his shabby little room as the pair locked the door and put out
their lights. He heard them carrying on the conversation in the kitchen
underneath for a few minutes before they, too, in their turn clambered
upstairs to bed. “Oh, that’s all broken off, and a good thing too.” He
kept saying these words over and over miserably, as if they had been the
chorus of some dreadful song of fate.




CHAPTER XXII.


AUBREY stayed at the village public-house day after day, hoping for some
sign or message. He wrote to Bee, this time by the post; but he had no
better success. Was it only because of her grief that she took no
notice? Terrible as that grief must be, and rigorous as evidently were
the rules of the closed-up house, from which no one came forth, even for
a mouthful of air, it did not seem to him that this was reason enough
for putting him from her--he who was to share her life, and whose
sympathy was so full and overflowing. Surely it was the moment when all
who loved her should gather round her, when she most wanted solace and
support. It could not be that her heart was so wrapped up in sorrow
that she should push from her the man who had the best right to share
her tears--whom her mother approved and liked, whose acceptance she had
ratified and confirmed. It could not be that. He felt that, had he been
in the same circumstances, his cry would have been for Bee to stand by
him, to comfort him. Was she so different, or was she overwhelmed by
what was before her--the charge of her father’s house, the dreadful
suggestion that it was to him and the children she should dedicate
herself henceforward, giving up her own happiness? It seemed to Aubrey,
after long thinking, that this must be the cause of her silence; the
burden which surely was not for her young shoulders, which never could
be intended for her, must have come down upon her, crushing her. She was
the eldest girl. She must have, like so many girls, an exaggerated sense
of what was her duty. Her duty! Could anything be more fantastic, more
impossible? To take her mother’s place--and her mother had been killed
by it!--to humour the stern father--to take care of the tribe of
children, to be their nurse, their ruler--everything that a creature of
nineteen could not, should not be! And for this she would throw aside
her own life--and him, whose life it was also. He would never, never
consent to such a sacrifice, he said to himself. Bee was not soft and
yielding, like their mother. She was a determined little thing. She
would stand to it, and sacrifice him as she sacrificed herself, unless
he made a bold stand from the first. No, no, no! Whatever was to be
done, that must not be done. He would not have it--he must let her know
from the very first--if it were not that she knew already, and that this
was the reason why she was silent, feeling that if ever they met she
could not hold out against him. Poor little Bee! Poor, poor little Bee!
Her mother dead, and her father so stern; and thinking it her duty--her
duty, God bless her!--to take all that household upon her little
shoulders. The tears came into his eyes with a sudden softening. She
thought it better to keep him at arm’s length, the darling, knowing that
she never could stand against him, that he would never, never consent;
the little, sublime, unreasonable girl! The things they took into their
heads, these inexperienced, generous creatures! But, thank heaven, he
was here; even though she held him at bay--here, to make all right.

The reader knows that poor Bee was not actuated by such lofty feelings,
but then Aubrey had no knowledge in his mind of that strange story which
had destroyed her faith in him. When a man is guilty he knows all that
can be brought against him, in which, in its way, there is a certain
advantage. He cannot be taken by surprise. He knows that this or that is
lying ready like a secret weapon apt to be picked up by any man who may
wish to do him harm. But the innocent man has not that safeguard. It is
not likely to occur to him that harmless circumstances may be so twisted
as to look like guilt. For his own part he had forgotten all about that
little episode on the railway--or if he remembered it, it was with a
smile and a glow of momentary pleasure, to think how, with a little
money--so small a matter--he had been able to make comfort take the
place of misery to the poor little family, whom perhaps he would never
have noticed at all had not his thoughts been full of Bee. He had done
that for her with the feeling with which he might have given her an
ornament or a basket of flowers; the only drawback to the pleasure of it
being that he could not tell her off-hand, and get the smile of thanks
she would give him for it--far more than he deserved, for he liked doing
it--kindness coming natural to this young man. It was hard on Aubrey in
the complications of fate that this innocent, nay praiseworthy, incident
should be made the occasion of his trouble. But he had no suspicion of
it--forgot the fact, indeed, altogether--and would have laughed at the
idea that such an accidental occurrence could in any way influence his
fate.

He went to the funeral, unnoticed in the crowd of people who were
there--some for love and some for conventional necessity, but almost all
with a pang of natural sympathy to see the train of children who
followed their mother to her last rest. The Colonel, rigid in all
things, had insisted at last, that all, except the very youngest, should
be there--having wavered for a moment whether it would not be more in
order that the girls should remain at home, and only the boys be present
at the melancholy ceremony. To see the little wondering faces
two-and-two that followed the elder children up the aisle, and were
installed in the mourners’ places, some of them scarcely tall enough to
see over the edge of the pew, brought many a gush of tears to
sympathetic eyes. Bee and Betty, the two inseparable “eldest,”--slim,
black figures--drooping under the heavy veils that covered them from the
daylight, almost touched Aubrey with their clinging black garments as
they passed. Did they see him? He saw, wherever he was, at whatever
distance, any movement they made. He saw that Bee never raised her head;
but Betty was younger, and less self-restrained--that she had seen him
at least he felt sure. And he felt the Colonel’s eyes upon him,
penetrating the thickest of the crowd. Colonel Kingsward had a glance
that saw everything. He was a man bereaved, the light of his eyes taken
from him, and the comfort of his life--and yet he saw everything at his
wife’s funeral, saw and noted the faces that were dull and tired of the
tension, and those that were alive with sympathy--making notes for or
against them in his memory, and, above all, he saw Aubrey Leigh. Charlie
saw him more accidentally, without any conscious observation, and the
boys who had cried all they were capable of, and now could not help
their eyes straying a little, conscious of the spectacle, and of the
important part they played in it, everybody looking at them. All of them
saw him, but Bee. Was it only Bee who was so little in sympathy with him
that she did not know he must be there?

He went back to his lodging a little angry through his emotion. It was
too much. Even in the interval between her mother’s death and funeral he
felt that a girl who loved him should not be so obdurate as that, and he
listened with a very sombre face to all the landlady’s discussion of the
proceedings. “It was a shame,” she said, “to bring those little children
there, not much more than babies--what could they know? I’d have kept
them safe in the nursery with some quiet game to play, the poor little
innocents! And so would Missis. Missis would have thought what was best
for them, not for making a display. But God knows what will become of
them children now.”

“What should become of them?” said the husband. “They’ll get the best of
everything and servants to wait on them hand and foot. The Colonel, he
ain’t like a poor man who could do nothing for them. When the mother’s
gone the children had better go too--in a poor man’s house.”

“It’s little you know about it,” said the woman with contempt. “Rich
house or poor house, it don’t make no such great difference. Nurses is a
long way different from mothers. Not as I’m saying a word against Sarah
Langridge, as is a good honest woman, that would wrong her master not by
a candle end or a boot lace, not she. But that’s not like being a
mother. The Lord grant that if I die and there’s a baby it may go too,
as you say. You’re more than a nurse, you’re their father, and you’re
part of them; but Lord forbid that I should leave a poor little baby on
your hands.”

The man turned on his heel with a tremulous laugh. “Well, I ain’t
wishing it, am I?” he said.

“But,” said Aubrey, “there are the--elder sisters--the young ladies.”

“Miss Bee! Lord bless us, sir, do ye know the age that child is?
Nineteen, and no more. Is that an age to take the charge of a nursery
full of children? Why, her mother was but forty as has been laid in her
grave to-day. I wish to goodness as that marriage hadn’t been broke off.
He was a widower--and I don’t much hold with widowers--but I wish that I
could give him a sign to come back, if he has any spirit in him, and try
and get that poor young lady away.”

“If he has been sent about his business,” said Aubrey, forcing a smile,
“he could have no right to come back.”

“I don’t know whose fault it was,” said the landlady. “None o’ missis’s,
you take my word; but, Lord, if a gentleman loves a young lady, what’s
to hinder him putting his pride in his pocket? A man does when he’s real
fond of a woman in our rank of life.”

“I don’t know about that,” said her husband. “If I had been sent away
with a cuff on the side of my head, blessed if I’d ever have come back.”

“You’re a poor lot, all of you,” the woman said.

Aubrey could not but smile at the end of the argument, but he asked
himself when he was alone--Was he a poor lot? Was he unwilling to put
his pride in his pocket? Walking about his little room, turning over and
over the circumstances, remembering the glare from Colonel Kingsward’s
eye, which had recognised him, he at last evolved out of his own
troubled feelings and imagination the idea that it was his part to offer
sympathy, to hold out an olive branch. Perhaps, after all, the stern
man’s heart was really touched; perhaps it would soothe him in his grief
to hear that “when the eye saw her, then it blessed her,” which was
Aubrey’s sincere feeling at this moment in respect to Bee’s mother. It
seemed to him that it was best to act upon this impulse before other
arguments came in; before the sense of wounding and pain in Bee’s
silence got the upper hand. He spent most of the afternoon in writing a
letter, so carefully put together, copied over and over again, that
there might be nothing in it to wound the most sensitive feelings;
offering to Colonel Kingsward his profound sympathy, telling him with
emotion of her kindness to himself, her sweetness, her beauty, with that
heightening of enthusiastic admiration, which, if it is permissible
anywhere, is so over a new-made grave. And at the end he asked, with all
the delicacy he could, whether in these new circumstances he might not
ask a hearing, a renewed consideration, for her dear sake who had been
so good to him, and who was gone.

I am not sure that his judgment went fully with this renewed effort, and
his landlady’s remarks were but a poor reason for any such step. But his
heart was longing after Bee, angry with her, impatient beyond words,
disturbed, miserable, not knowing how to support the silence and
separation while yet so near. And to do something is always a relief,
even though it may be the worst and not the best thing to do. In the
evening after dark, when there was no one about, he went up to
Kingswarden, and himself put his letter into the hands of the butler,
who did not know him, and therefore knew no reason why the letter should
either be carried in haste to his master or delayed. Aubrey heard that
the young ladies were quite as well as could be expected, and the
Colonel very composed, considering--and then he returned to the village.
How silent the house was! Not a creature about, and how disturbing and
painful to the anxious spirit even the simple noises and commotion of
the village street.

Next morning a letter came, delivered by the postman, from Kingswarden.
It contained only a few words.

     “Colonel Kingsward is obliged to Mr. Aubrey Leigh for his message
     of sympathy, but, on consideration of the whole circumstances,
     thinks it better that no pretence at intercourse should be resumed.
     It could be nothing but painful to both parties, and Colonel
     Kingsward, with his compliments, takes the liberty to suggest that
     Mr. Aubrey Leigh would do well to remain in the neighbourhood as
     short a time as suits his convenience.

“Kingswarden, October 15.”



Inside were the two or three notes which Aubrey on different
occasions--twice by post and once by a private messenger--had sent to
Bee. They had not been opened. The young man’s colour rose with a fiery
indignation--his heart thumped in his ears. This was an explanation of
which he had not thought. To keep back anyone’s letters had not occurred
to him as a thing that in the end of the eighteenth century any man
would dare to do. It seemed to bring him back face to face with
old-fashioned, forgotten methods, of all sorts of antiquated kinds. He
put down the papers on the table with a sort of awe. How was he to
struggle against such ways of warfare? Bee might think he had not
written at all--had shown no sympathy with her in her trouble. How
likely that it was this that had made her angry, that kept her from
saying a word, from vouchsafing a look! She might think it was he who
was deficient, who showed no feeling. What was he to do? The landlady
coming up with his breakfast broke in upon this distracting course of
thought.

“I didn’t know, sir, as you were acquainted with the Colonel’s family,”
the woman said.

“A little,” said poor Aubrey. The letters were all lying on the table,
giving to a sharp observer a very good clue to the position. Mrs. Gregg
had noted the unopened letters returned to him in the Colonel’s
enclosure at the first glance.

“You didn’t ought to have let us talk. Why, we might have been saying,
without thinking, some ill of the Colonel or of Miss Bee.”

He smiled, though with little heart. “You were once in their service,”
he said, “do you ever go there now?”

“Oh, yes, now and again,” said Mrs. Gregg. “Sarah Langridge, as is in
the nursery, is a cousin of mine, and I do go just to see them all now
and again.”

“Would you venture to take a letter from me to--Miss Kingsward?”

“Sir,” said Mrs. Gregg, “is it about the marriage as was broke off? Is
it?” she added quickly, as he answered her by nodding his head, “likely
to come on again? That’s what I want to know.”

“If it does not,” said Aubrey, “it will not be my fault.”

“Then I will and welcome,” the landlady said. “It’s natural I should
want to go the day after the funeral, to see about everything. Give me
your letter, sir, and I’ll get it put safe into Miss Bee’s own hands.”

All that he sent was half-a-dozen words of appeal.

     “Bee, these have been sent back to me. Was it by your will? I have
     been here since ever I heard of her illness, longing to be with
     you, to tell you what I felt for her and you. And you would not
     speak to me! Bee, dearest, say you did not mean it. Tell me what I
     am to do.

“A.L.”



How long the woman was in getting ready--how long in going! Before she
came back it was almost night again of the lingering, endless day. She
brought him a little note, not returning the enclosures--that was always
something--with a reproach. “Oh, sir, and you very near got me into
terrible trouble! I’ll never, never carry anything from you again.” The
note was still shorter than his own:--

     “It was not by my will. I have never seen them till now. But
     please--please let this be the last. We can’t meet again. There can
     never more be anything between us--not from my father’s will, but
     my own. And this for ever--and your own heart will tell you why.

“BEE.”



“My own heart will tell me why! My heart tells me nothing--nothing!”
poor Aubrey said to himself in the silence of his little room. But there
was little use in repeating it to himself, and there was no other ear to
hear.




CHAPTER XXIII.


IT was with a sort of stupified bewilderment that Aubrey read over and
over the little letter of Bee’s. Letter! To call it a letter. Those
straggling lines without any beginning, no name of him to whom they were
addressed, nothing even of the most superficial courtesy, nothing that
marked the link that had been--unless it were, perhaps, the abruptness,
the harshness, which she would have used to no other. This was a kind of
painful comfort in its way, when he came to think of it. To nobody but
him would she have written so--this was the little gleam of light. And
she had retained his letters, though she had forbidden him from sending
more. These lights of consolation leaped into his mind with the first
reading, but the more he repeated that reading, the darker grew the
prospect, and the less comfort they gave him. “Not by my father’s will,
but my own; and your own heart will tell you why.” What did she mean by
his own heart? She had begun to write conscience, and then drew her pen
through it. Conscience! What had he done? What had he done? The real
trouble of his life Bee had forgiven. Her father had stood upon it, and
nothing had changed his standing ground so far as the Colonel was
concerned; but Bee, who did not understand--how should any girl
understand?--had forgiven him, had flung his reproach away and accepted
him as he was. How was it that she should thus go back on her decision
now? “Not my father’s will, but mine. And your conscience will tell you
why.” Aubrey’s conscience reproached him with nothing, with no thought
of unfaithfulness to the young and spotless love which had re-created
his being. He had never denied the old reproach. But what was it, what
was it which she bid him to remember, which would explain the change in
her? “Your heart will tell you why”--why his heart? and what was there
that could be told him, which could explain this? He walked about his
little room all night, shaking the little rickety little house with his
tread, asking himself, “What was it, what was it?” and finding no answer
anywhere.

When he got up from a troubled morning sleep, these disturbed and
unrefreshing slumbers, full of visions which turn the appearance of rest
into the most fatiguing of labour, Aubrey formed a resolution, which he
said to himself he should perhaps have carried out from the first. He
had an advocate who could take charge of his cause without any fear of
betrayal, his mother, and to her he would go without delay. Of all
things in the world to do, after the reception of Bee’s note, giving in
was the last thing he could think of. To accept that strange and
agitated decision, to allow that there was something in his own heart
that would explain it to him, was what he would not and could not do.
There was nothing in his own consciousness, in his heart or conscience,
as she had said, that could explain it. Nothing! It was not to his
credit to accept such a dismissal, even if he had been unaffected by it.
He could not let a mystery fall over this, leaving it as one of those
things unexplained which tear life in pieces. That would be mere
weakness, not the mode of action of a man of sense who had no exposure
to face. But if his letters were intercepted--miserable folly!--by the
father, a man of the world who ought to have known that such proceedings
were an anachronism--and rejected by herself, it was little use that he
should continue writing. Against two such methods of silencing him no
man could contend. But there was still one other great card to play. He
went out and took a last view of the sheltered and flowery dwelling of
Kingswarden, as it could be seen among the trees at one part of the
road. The windows were open and all the blinds drawn up. The house had
come back out of the shadow of death into the every-day composure of
living. White curtains fluttered in the wind at the upper windows. The
late climbing roses and pretty bunches of clematis seemed again to look
in. It was still like summer, though the year was waning, and the sun
still shone, notwithstanding all sorrow. Aubrey saw no one, however, but
a housemaid, who paused as she passed to put up a window, and looked out
for a moment. That was all. He had not the chance of seeing any face
that he wished to see. In the village he met the two boys, who
recognised him sheepishly with their eyes, and a look from one to
another, but were about to shuffle past, Reginald on the heels of
Arthur, to escape his notice--when he stopped them, which was a fact
they were unprepared for, and had not calculated how to meet. He told
them that he was going away, a definite fact upon which they seized
eagerly. “Oh, so are we,” they said, both together, one of them adding
the explanation that there was always something going on at school. “And
there’s nothing to do here,” the other added. “I hope we’ll, sometime or
other, know each other better,” said Aubrey, at which the boys hung
their heads. “There is a good deal of shooting down at my little
place,” he added. He was not above such a mean act; whereupon the two
heads raised themselves by one impulse, as if they had been upon wires,
and two pairs of eyes shone. “Try if you can do anything for me, and
I’ll do everything I can for you,” this insidious plotter said. The boys
shook hands with him with a warmth which they never expected to have
felt for any such “spoon,” and said to each other that he didn’t seem
such a bad fellow at bottom--as if they had searched his being through
and through. Mr. Leigh met Charlie when on his way to the railway
station, but he had no encouragement to say anything to Charlie. They
passed each other with a nod, very surly on Charlie’s part, whose anger
at the sight of him--as if that man had anything to do with _our_
trouble--was perhaps not so unnatural. Charlie, too, was going back to
Oxford next day, and thankful to be doing so, out of this dreary place,
where there was nothing to do.

It was the afternoon of the next day when Aubrey arrived at his mother’s
house. It was at some distance from his own house, much too far to
drive, and only to be got at by cross-country railways, with an interval
of an hour or two of waiting at several junctions, facts which he could
not help remembering his poor little wife and her companion had
congratulated themselves upon in those old, strange days, which had
disappeared so entirely, like a tale that is told. He wondered whether
she would equally think it an advantage--if she ever was the partner of
his home. There seemed to him now something wrong in the thought, a mean
sort of petty feeling, unworthy of a fine nature. He wondered if
Bee--Bee! How unlikely it was that she would ever consider that
question, or know anything further about his house or his ways of
living--she who had thrust him away from her at the very moment when her
heart ought to have been most soft--when love was most wanted to
strengthen and uphold. Not her father’s will, but her own. And your own
heart will explain it. His own heart! in which there was nothing but
truth and devotion to her.

He arrived thus at his mother’s house very depressed in spirits. Mrs.
Leigh was not the ordinary kind of mother for a young man like Aubrey
Leigh. She was not one of those mothers wholly wrapped up in their
children, who are so general. She had all along made an attempt at an
independent life of her own. When Aubrey married she was still a
comparatively young woman, by no means disposed to sink her identity in
him or his household. Mrs. Aubrey Leigh might possess the first place in
the family as the queen regnant, but Mrs. Leigh, in her personality a
much more important person, had no idea of being swamped, and giving up
her natural consequence. She was still a considerable person, though she
was not rich, and inhabited only a sort of jointure-house, a “small
place” capable of holding very few visitors. Aubrey was her only son,
and she was, of course, very fond of him--_of course_, she was very fond
of him--but she had no intention of sinking into insignificance or
living only in the reflection of Aubrey, still less of his wife.

Hurstleigh, where Mrs. Leigh lived, was near the sea, and near also to
the county town, which was a brisk and thriving seaport. It was an old
house that had known many fluctuations, an ancient manor house,
inhabited once by the Leighs when they were of humbler pretentions than
now; then it became a farm-house, then was let to a hunting man, who
greatly enlarged the stables; and now it was a jointure-house, the
stables veiled by a new wing, the place in that trim order which denotes
a careful master, and more particularly mistress; with large lattice
windows, heavy mullions, and a terrace with stone balustrades running
all the length of the house. Mrs. Leigh generally sat in a room opening
upon this terrace, with the windows always open, except in the coldest
weather, and there it was that Aubrey made his way, without passing
through the house. His mother was sitting at one of her favourite
occupations--writing letters. She was one of those women who maintain a
large correspondence, chiefly for the reason that it amuses them to
receive letters and to feel themselves a centre of lively and varied
life; besides that, she was considered a very clever letter writer,
which is a temptation to everyone who possesses, or is supposed to
possess, that qualification. She rose quickly, with a cry of “Aubrey!”
in great surprise.

“You are the last person I expected to see,” she said, when she had
given him a warm welcome. “I saw the death in the papers, and I
supposed, of course, you would be there.”

“I have just come from Kingswarden,” he said, with a little nod of his
head in assent; “and yet I was not there.”

“Riddle me no riddles, Aubrey, for I never was good at guessing. You
were there and yet you were not there?”

“I am afraid--I am no longer a welcome visitor, mother,” he said, with a
faint smile.

“What!” Mrs. Leigh’s astonishment was so great that it seemed to disturb
the afternoon quiet which reigned over the whole domain. “What! Why,
Aubrey! It was only the other day I heard of your engagement.”

“It is quite true, and yet it has become ancient history, and nobody
remembers it any more.”

“What do you mean?” she cried. “My dear Aubrey, I do not understand you.
I thought you were dangling about after your young lady, and that this
was the reason why I heard so little of you; and then I was much
startled to see that announcement in the papers. But you said she was
always delicate. Well, but what on earth is the meaning of this other
change?”

“I told you, mother. For some time I was but half accepted, pending
Colonel Kingsward’s decision.”

“Oh, yes; one knows what that sort of thing means! And then Colonel
Kingsward generously consented--to one of the best matches in
England--in your condition of life.”

“I am not a young duke, mother.”

“No, you are not a young duke. I said in your condition of life, and the
Kingswards are nothing superior to that, I believe. Well--and then? That
was where your last letter left me.”

“I am ashamed not to have written, mother; but it wasn’t pleasant
news--and I always hoped to change their mind.”

“Well? I suppose there was some cause for it?” she said, after waiting a
long minute or two for his next words.

He got up and walked to the window, which, as has been intimated, was
also a door opening and leading out on to the terrace. “May I shut this
window?” he said, turning his back on her; and then he added, still
keeping that attitude, “it was of course because of that old affair.”

“What old affair?”

“You generally understand at half a word, mother; must I go into the
whole nauseous business?”

She came up to him and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Miss Lance,” she
said.

“What else? I haven’t had so many scandals in my life that you should
stand in any doubt.”

“Scandals!” she exclaimed; and again was silent for a moment. “Aubrey,
explain it to me a little. How did that business come to their ears?”

“Oh, in the easiest way, the simplest way!” he cried, “The injured woman
called on the father of the girl who was going to be given to such a
reprobate as me.” He laughed loudly and harshly, preserving the most
tragic face all the time.

“The injured woman! Good heavens! And was the man such an ass--such an
ass----?”

“He is not an ass, mother; he is a model of every virtue. My engagement,
if you like to call it so, lasted about a week, and then I was suddenly
turned adrift.”

“Aubrey, when did all this happen?”

“I suppose about three weeks ago. Pardon me, mother, for not having
written, but I had no heart to write. I left them at Cologne, and
travelled home by myself, and the first thing I did, of course, was to
go and see Colonel Kingsward.”

“Well?”

“No, it wasn’t well at all. He refused to listen to me. Of course, I got
it out from my side as well as I could, but it made no difference. He
would not hear me. He would understand no excuse.”

“And the ladies?”

“Mrs. Kingsward was too gentle and yielding. She never opposed him,
and--”

“Aubrey, the girl whom you loved, and had such faith in--Bee, don’t you
call her?--”

“Bee--stood by me, mother; never hesitated, gave me her hand, and stood
by me.”

“Ah, well,” said Mrs. Leigh, with a little sigh of relief, “then that’s
all right. The father will soon come round--”

“So I should have said yesterday. I left them in that full faith. But
since they came back to Kingswarden something has happened. I wrote to
her, but I got no answer--I supposed it was her mother’s illness--now I
have found that he stops my letters; but something far worse--wait a
moment--she, Bee herself, wrote to me yesterday, dismissing me without a
word of explanation--declaring she did it by her own will, not her
father’s--and adding, my conscience would tell me why.”

Mrs. Leigh looked her son straight in the face for a full minute.
“Aubrey--and does your conscience tell you why?”

“No, mother. I am too bewildered even to be able to think--I have not an
idea what she means. She knew all there was to know--without
understanding it in the least, it needn’t be said--and held fast to her
word; and now I know no more what she means than you do. Mother,
there’s only one thing to be done--you must take it in hand.”

“I---- take your love affairs in hand!” she said.




CHAPTER XXIV.


BUT though Mrs. Leigh said this it is by no means certain that she meant
it even at the first moment. It is only a very prudent woman who objects
to being asked to interfere in a young man’s love affairs. Generally the
request itself is a compliment, and not less, but perhaps more so, when
made to a mother by her son. And Mrs. Leigh, though a sensible and
prudent person enough in ordinary affairs, did not attain to the height
of virtue above indicated. When she went upstairs to change her gown for
dinner, after talking it over and over with Aubrey in every possible
point of view, her mind, though she had not yet consented in words, had
begun to turn over the best methods of opening the question with the
Kingswards, and what it would be wisest in the circumstances to do. That
Aubrey should be beaten, that he should have to give up the girl whom he
loved, and of whom he gave so exalted a description, seemed the one
thing that must not be permitted to be. Mrs. Leigh was very anxious that
her son should marry, if it were only to wipe out the episode of that
little, silly Amy, who was fonder of her friend than of her husband; and
the half ludicrous, half tragic chapter of _that_ woman, staying on,
resisting all efforts to dislodge her for so long, until she had as she
thought acquired rights over the poor young man, who was not
strong-minded enough to turn her out of his house. To obliterate these
circumstances from the mind of the county altogether, as could only be
done by a happy and suitable marriage, Mrs. Leigh would have done much,
and, to be sure, her son’s happiness was also dear to her. Poor Aubrey!
His first adventure into life had not been a happy one, and his
descriptions of Bee and all her belongings had been full of a young
lover’s enthusiasm, not tame and tepid as she had always felt his
sentiments towards Amy to be. What would it be best to do if I really
undertake this business, she said to herself. Herself replied that it
was not a business for her to meddle with, that she would do no good,
and many other dissuasions of the conventional kind; but, when her
imagination and feelings were once lit up, Mrs. Leigh was not a woman to
be smothered in that way. After dinner, without still formally
undertaking the mission, she talked with Aubrey of the best ways of
carrying it out. If she did interfere, how should she set about it?
“Mind, I don’t promise anything, but supposing----” Should she write?
Should she go? Which thing would it be best to do? If she made up her
mind to go, should she write beforehand to warn them? What, on the
whole, would it be most appropriate to do?

The method finally decided upon between them--“if I go--but I don’t say
that I will go--” was that Mrs. Leigh should first, without warning or
preparation, endeavour to see Bee, and ascertain whether any new
representations had been made to her to change her mind; and then,
according to her success or non-success with Bee, decide whether she
should ask an interview with her father. Aubrey slept under his mother’s
roof with greater tranquility and refreshment than he had known for some
time, and with something of the vague hope of his childhood that she
could set everything right, do away with punishment or procure pleasure,
when she took it in hand. It had always been so in the childish days,
which seemed to come near him in the sight of the old furniture, the
well-known pictures and ornaments and curiosities which Mrs. Leigh had
brought with her when she settled in this diminished house. How well he
remembered them all!--the old print of the little Samuel on his knees,
the attitude of which he used half-consciously to copy when he said his
prayers; the little old-fashioned books in blue and brown morocco on the
shelves, the china ornaments on the mantel-piece. He smiled at their
antiquity now-a-days, but he had thought them very grand and imposing
once upon a time.

In the morning Mrs. Leigh coquetted a little, or else saw the whole
subject in a colder light. “Don’t you think it is possible that I might
do more harm than good,” she said; “things might settle of themselves if
you only give them a little time. Colonel Kingsward would come to his
senses, and Miss Bee--”

“Mother,” cried Aubrey, pale with alarm, “on the contrary. Do you forget
the circumstances? Mrs. Kingsward is dead, there is a large family of
little children, and Bee is of the race of the Quixotes. Don’t you see
what will happen? She will get it into her mind, and everybody will
persuade her, that as the eldest daughter she is wanted at home. It will
be impressed upon her on all sides, and unless there is a strong
influence to counteract it, and at once, Bee is lost to me for ever.”

“My dear, don’t be so tragical. These dreadful things don’t happen in
our days.”

“You may laugh, mother, but it is no laughing matter to me.”

“I don’t laugh,” she said. “I see the strength of your argument; but, my
dear boy, nothing will be so effectual in showing your Bee the happiness
that is awaiting her as a little trial of the troubles of a large
family on her shoulders. I know what it is.”

Aubrey sprang from his seat though it was in the middle of his
breakfast. “Mother,” he said, “there is one thing that I believe you
will never know--and that is, Bee. The burden is exactly what will hold
her fast beyond any argument--the sense of duty--the feeling that she is
bound to take her mother’s place.”

What was in Mrs. Leigh’s mind was the thought: Ah, that’s all very well
at first, till she has tried it. But what she said was: “I beg your
pardon, Aubrey. Of course, that is a much more elevated feeling. Sit
down, my dear, and take your breakfast. It is not my fault that I don’t
know Bee.”

Upon which Aubrey had to beg her pardon and sit down, commiserating her
for that deficiency, which was indeed her misfortune and not her fault.

At the end Mrs. Leigh was wound up to take the strongest step possible.
She joined her son in London after about a week had elapsed. He chafed
at the delay, but allowed that to leave Bee in quiet for a few days
after all the storms that had gone over her head was necessary. Mrs.
Leigh went down early on a bright October morning to Kingswarden with
much more excitement than she had expected to feel. She was herself
inclined to take a lighter view, to laugh at the idea of interrupted
letters or parental cruelty, and to believe that poor Bee was worn out,
her nerves all wrong, and possibly her temper affected by the
irritability which is so apt to accompany unaccustomed grief, and that
in a little time she would of herself come round. Seeing, however, that
these suggestions only made Aubrey angry, she had given them up, and was
in fact more influenced than she cared to show by his emotion and
anxiety when she thus sallied forth into the unknown to plead her son’s
cause. They had ascertained that Colonel Kingsward had returned to his
office, so the coast was clear. Only the two girls and the little
children were at home. Mrs. Leigh said to herself as she walked to the
gate that it was a shame to take the little girl, poor little thing,
thus unprotected, with nobody to stand by her. If it were not that it
was entirely for her good--nobody that knew Aubrey would deny that he
would make the best husband in the world, and surely to have a good
house of her own, and a good husband, and distinct place in the world
was better than to grow to maturity a harassed woman at the head of her
father’s house, acting mother to a troop of children who would not obey
her, nor even be grateful for her kindness to them. Surely there could
not be two opinions as to what it would be best for the girl to do. Yet
she felt a little like a wolf going down into the midst of the lambkins
when she opened the unguarded gate.

Mrs. Leigh was a clever woman, and a woman of the world. She had a great
deal of natural understanding, and a considerable knowledge of life, but
she was not unlike in appearance the ordinary British matron, who is not
much credited with these qualities. That is to say, she was stout--which
is a calamity common with the kind. She had white hair, considerably
frizzed on the top of the forehead, as it is becoming to white hair to
be, and dark eyes and good complexion. These things were in her favour;
still, it is impossible to deny that when Bee and Betty saw coming
towards them, following the footman across the lawn, a stout figure, not
very tall, nor distinguishable from various ladies in both country and
town whom they knew, and with the natural impertinence of youth set down
as bores, they had both a strong revolt in their minds against their
visitor. “Oh, who is it--who is it?” they said to each other. “Why did
James let her in? Why did he let anyone in?”

It was a warm morning, though the season was far advanced, and they were
seated again on that bench under the tree where they had watched the
white cloud floating away on the night of their mother’s death. They
went there instinctively whenever they went out. “Mother’s tree,” they
began to call it, and sat as she had been used to do, with the children
playing near, and nurse walking up and down with the baby in her arms.
They had been talking more that morning than ever before. It was little
more than a week since Mrs. Kingsward’s funeral, but they were so young
that their hearts now and then for a moment burst the bondage of their
sorrow, and escaped the length of a smile or two. It was not much; and,
to be sure, for the children’s sake it was indispensable that they
should not be crying and miserable always, as at first they had felt as
if they must continually be. But it was another thing to receive
visitors and have perhaps to answer questions about the circumstances of
their loss.

“Mrs.--? what did James say?” Neither of them were sure, though a thrill
ran through Bee’s veins. It was a stranger. Who could it be?

“I have to apologise for coming--without knowing you--and at such a
time,” said Mrs. Leigh, making a little pause till the nurse had got to
the end of the gravel walk with the baby, and James was out of hearing.
“It is you who are Bee, is it not?” she said, suddenly taking the girl’s
hands. “I am the mother of Aubrey Leigh.”

All the colour went out of Bee’s face; she drew away her hands
hurriedly, and dropped upon her mother’s seat. She felt that she had no
power to say a word.

“Oh, I thought it was Mrs. Leigh he said,” cried Betty, “but I could not
suppose--oh, Mrs. Leigh, whatever Bee may say, I am so glad, so glad to
see you--perhaps you will be able to make things right.”

“I hope I shall,” said Mrs. Leigh, “and I shall always be obliged to
you, my dear, for giving me your countenance. But your sister does not
look as if she meant to let me put things right.”

“I am sorry if I seem rude,” said Bee, gathering herself together,
“but--I don’t think that papa would like us to receive visitors.”

“I am not a common visitor,” said Mrs. Leigh. “I hope you will do me the
credit to think that it is with a very different feeling I come. I am
very, very sorry for you, so young as you are--more sorry than I can
say. And, Bee, if indeed I am to hope to be one day your mother--”

Bee did not speak; but she fixed her blue eyes upon her visitor with a
sort of entreaty to be left alone, and mournfully shook her head.

“We can’t think just now of that name,” said little Betty, with the
tears standing in her eyes.

“My dear children, I came to try to comfort you, not to open your
wounds. Dear,” she said, putting her hand on Bee’s shoulder, “you would
not see Aubrey, nor let him have a word from you. But he said you had
heard everything an evil woman could say, and did not give him up for
that--and he is heart-broken. He thought perhaps you would tell me if he
had done anything to displease you--or if it was only the effect of your
grief, to which he would be submissive at once. All he wanted was to
share your trouble, my dear child.”

This was not at all what Mrs. Leigh intended to say. She had meant to
represent her visit as one of sympathy solely, without at first
referring to the hard case of Aubrey; but Bee’s looks had confused even
this experienced woman. The girl’s pale face put on an expression of
determined decision, or rather of that blank of resistance to entering
upon the question, which is a kind of defence which it is almost
impossible to break down.

“I would rather, if you please, not say anything of Mr. Leigh.”

“Dear child! Do not take that tone. If he has done anything that does
not please you, how is he ever to clear himself if you will not tell him
what it is.”

“She is like this all the time,” cried Betty; “she will not say what is
wrong--and yet she is just as miserable herself as anyone could be.”

Bee gave her sister a look in which Mrs. Leigh, closely watching, saw
the lightening of the glance, the brilliancy and splendour of the blue
eyes of which Aubrey had raved. Poor little Betty was illuminated as if
with a great flame. It was all that she could do to restrain a very
inappropriate smile. “You know nothing, and how do you dare to say
anything?” Bee said.

“I am sure that Bee is just,” said the older lady. “She would not
condemn anyone unheard. Aubrey Leigh is my son, but we have been
separated for many years, and I think I judge him impartially. He does
not always please me, and I am sure that at some time or other he has
much displeased you. Your eyes tell me, though you have not said a
word. But, my dear, I have never, since he was a child, found him out in
anything except the one thing you know, in which he was so sorely,
sorely tried. He has always been kind. He gets into trouble by his
kindness as other men do by ill-behaviour. I don’t know what you have
against him, but I feel sure that he will clear himself if you will let
him speak. Bee----”

“I do not want,” cried Bee, “to seem rude. Oh, I don’t want to be rude!
I am sure, quite sure, that you are kind; but I have nothing to say, oh!
nothing to say to anyone. I am not able to discuss any subject, or enter
into things. I have a great deal to think of, for I am the eldest and it
will not do for me to--to break down, or to have any more to bear. I am
very, very sorry--and you are so kind. But I must go in now--I must go
in now.”

“Bee, Bee----”

“You can stay, Betty, and talk to the lady. You can stay, but--oh,
forgive me--I cannot--cannot help it! I must go in now.”

This was the end of Mrs. Leigh’s embassy. She had a long talk with
Betty, who was but too glad to pour into this kind woman’s bosom all her
troubles. Betty could not tell what had happened to Bee. She was not the
Bee of old, and she did not know what it was that had happened about
Aubrey, or if Bee had heard anything against him. She was as much in the
dark as Mrs. Leigh herself. But she made it very evident that Bee had a
grievance, a real or supposed ground of complaint which made her very
angry, and which she resented bitterly. What was it? But this Betty did
not know.




CHAPTER XXV.


MRS. LEIGH went back to her son with a sense of humiliation which was
rare in her consciousness. She had been completely unsuccessful, which
was a thing which had very rarely happened to her. She had expected if
she got admission at all that anything which so young a girl might have
on her mind must have burst forth and all have been made clear. She had
expected at once to overawe and to soothe a young creature who loved
Aubrey, and who had some untold grievance against Aubrey. But she was
not prepared for the dual personality, so to speak, of Bee, or the power
she had of retreating, herself, and leaving her little sister as her
representative to fulfil all necessary civilities without the power of
betraying anything that the visitor wanted to know. She went back to
town very angry with Bee; turned against her; very little disposed to
sympathise with Aubrey, which she had so freely done before. “My dear
boy,” she said, “you have made a mistake, that’s all. The elder sister
has a temper like her father. Everybody will tell you that Colonel
Kingsward is a sharp-tempered man. But Betty is a little darling. It is
she that should have been the mistress of Forest-leigh.”

In answer to this, Aubrey simply turned his back upon his mother. He was
deeply disappointed, but this speech turned his disappointment into a
kind of rage. She had mismanaged the whole matter. That was as clear as
daylight, and such a suggestion was an added insult. Betty! a child--a
little girl--a nobody. His Bee seemed to tower over her in his
imagination, so different, so high above her, another species. It was
some minutes before he could trust himself to speak.

“Of course, you think me a fool,” said Mrs. Leigh, “and so I am, to
tell a young man that there is another in the world equal to the object
of his fancy.”

“Mother,” said Aubrey, in a choked voice, “you mistake the matter
altogether. That is not what is in question. What I want to know is,
what has been said against me, what new thing she has heard, or in what
new light she has been taught to see me. You might as well suggest,” he
cried, angrily, “that another person might have been better in your
place--as in hers.”

“If that is all I don’t mind allowing it,” said Mrs. Leigh, with an
aggravation peculiar to mothers. “You might have had some one who would
have been, all round, of more use to you as a mother--only it’s a little
late to think of that. However, without any persiflage, here is one
thing evident, that she has some grievance against you, something new,
something definite, which she believes you to be conscious of, which she
is too proud to discuss--I suppose?” said Mrs. Leigh, looking at him
with the look of the too-profoundly experienced, never sure how far
human weakness may go.

“Mother!” Aubrey cried. He was as indignant as she was unassured.

“Well, my dear, don’t be angry. I am not imagining anything. I only ask
whether you are quite sure that there is nothing which might be twisted
into a new accusation against you? There might be many incidents, in
which you were quite blameless, which an enemy might twist--”

“You need not be melo-dramatic, mother. I have nothing in the world that
could be an enemy--so far as I know.”

“Oh, as for that, there are people who make up stories out of pure
devilry. And I had no intention of being melo-dramatic,” said Mrs. Leigh
with displeasure. She added, after a moment, “Examine--I don’t say your
conscience, which probably has nothing to do with it--but what has
occurred for the last six months? See if there is anything which admits
of a wrong interpretation, which could be, as I say, twisted.”

Aubrey paused a moment to attempt to do as she said, but the little
episode of the railway station, the poor woman and her babies, he did
not think of. If truth must be told, he thought that incident was one
of the most creditable things in his life. He felt a little pleased with
himself when he thought of it. It was one of those things which to
mention might seem like a brag of his own generosity. He felt that it
was really one of the few incidents in his life which modesty kept him
from telling, one of the things in which the right hand should not know
what the left hand did. Had he thought of it that would have been his
feeling; but when he was asked suddenly to endeavour to recollect
something which might be twisted to his disadvantage, naturally this
good deed--a deed of charity if ever one was--did not come into his mind
at all. He shook his head. “You know whether I am that kind of man,
mother.”

“Don’t refer it to me, Aubrey--a young man’s mother probably is the very
last person to know. I know you, my dear, _au fond_. I know a great deal
about you; but I know, too, that you have done many things which I never
could have supposed you would have done: consult your own recollection.
Probably it is something so insignificant that you will have difficulty
in recalling it. One can never calculate what trifle may move a young
girl’s imagination. A grain of sand is enough to put a watch all wrong.”

Thus it will be seen that Mrs. Leigh’s long experience was after all
good for something. She divined the character of the dreadful obstacle
which had come in her son’s way and shattered all his hopes. If he had
recounted to her that incident which it would have seemed ostentation to
him to refer to, probably she would have pierced the _imbroglio_ at
once--or could she have seen into his life and his memory, she would, no
doubt, have put her finger at once on that place. But there they stood,
two human creatures in the closest relation to each other that nature
can make, anxious to find out between them the key to a puzzle which
neither of them could divine, but the secret of which lay certainly
between them, could they but find it--and could make out nothing. A word
from the son might have set the keen-witted mother, better acquainted
than he with the manner in which scandals arise, on the scent. But it
never occurred to him to say that word. They looked into each other’s
faces and made out nothing. Strange veil of individuality which is
between two human creatures, as the sea is between two worlds, and more
confusing, more impenetrable still than any distance! Aubrey made the
most conscientious efforts to lay bare his heart, to discover something
that might be twisted, as she said; but he found nothing. His thoughts
since he met the Kingswards first had been full of nothing but Bee--his
very dreams had been full of her. He wandered vaguely through his own
recollections, not knowing what to look for--what was there? There was
nothing. His mother sat by, and, notwithstanding her anxiety, could
scarcely refrain from smiling at his puzzled, troubled endeavour to find
out something against himself. But there was nothing to find out. He
shook his head at last, with a sort of appeal to her out of his troubled
eyes. He was distressed not to find what he sought. “I know nothing,” he
said, shaking his head. “One never does anything very good indeed--but
not very bad either. I have just been as I always am--not much to brag
of--but nothing to be ashamed of, between one man and another.”

“The question is between one man and one woman, Aubrey, which is
different.”

“Then,” he cried, with a short laugh, “I defy discovery. There has been
nothing in all my thoughts that need have been hidden. You do me
grievous wrong, mother, if you can think--even if I had been inclined
that way.”

“I don’t think. I have the most complete faith in you, Aubrey. I
say--anything that could be twisted by a malign interpretation?”

He shook his head again. “And who would take the trouble to make a
malign interpretation? I assure you, I have no enemy.”

“Colonel Kingsward is enemy enough.”

“Ah! Colonel Kingsward. I have no reason, however, to think that he
would do a dishonourable action.”

“What do you call intercepting letters, Aubrey?”

“It is very antiquated and out of date, but I don’t know that it need be
called dishonourable; and he has a high idea of his authority; but to
make a false representation of another man----”

“Aubrey, these distinctions are too fine for me. There is only one thing
that I can do. I will now go and interview Colonel Kingsward. If he
knows of anything new, he will soon reveal it to me. If he goes only
over the old ground, then we may be sure that your _fiancée_ has been
told something in her own ear--something apart from her father--which
she has betrayed to no one. Unless, perhaps, it was got from the
mother----”

“Not a word about the mother. She is dead, and she is sacred; and
besides she was the last, the very last----”

“You have yourself said she was very weak, Aubrey.”

“Weak so far as resisting her husband was concerned, but incapable of an
unkind word; incapable of any treachery or falsehood; a creature, both
in body and soul, whom you could almost see through.”

Mrs. Leigh shook her head a little.

“I know those transparent people,” she said. “They are not always
so---- But never mind; I am going to interview Colonel Kingsward now.”

Colonel Kingsward was very courteous to his visitor. He received her
visit of sympathy with polite gratitude, accepting her excuse that so
nearly connected as the families had been about to be, she could not be
in town without coming to express her great regret and feeling for his
family left motherless. Colonel Kingsward was very _digne_. He had the
fullest sense of what was expected in his position, and he did not allow
any other feeling to come in the way of that. He thanked Mrs. Leigh for
her sympathy, and exaggerated his sense of her goodness in coming to
express it. It was more, much more, than he had any right to expect. If
there was any alleviation to his grief it was in the sense of the great
kindness of friends--“and even of strangers,” he said, with a grave bow,
which seemed to throw Mrs. Leigh indefinitely back into the regions of
the unknown. This put her on her mettle at once.

“I do not feel like a stranger,” she said. “I have heard so much of your
family--every member of it--through my son, Aubrey. I regret greatly
that the connection which seemed to be so suitable should hang at all in
doubt----”

“It does not hang in doubt,” said Colonel Kingsward, “I am sorry if you
have got that impression. It is quite broken off--once for all.”

“That is a hard thing to say to Aubrey Leigh’s mother,” she said; “such
a stigma should not be put upon a young man lightly.”

“I am sorry to discuss such matters with a lady. But I don’t know what
you call lightly, Mrs. Leigh. I do not believe for a moment that you
would give a daughter of your own--I do not know whether you have
daughters of your own----”

“Two--happily married, thank heaven, and off my hands.”

“You will understand me so much the better. (Colonel Kingsward knew
perfectly well all about Mrs. Leigh’s two daughters). I do not believe
that you would have given one of them to a man--to whom another lady put
forth a prior claim.”

“I am not at all sure of that. I should have ascertained first what
kind of person put forth the claim----”

“We need not go into these details,” said Colonel Kingsward, waving his
hand.

“It is most important to go into these details. I can give you every
particular about this lady, Colonel Kingsward; and so can a dozen
people, at least, who have no interest in the matter except to tell the
truth.”

“The question is closed in my mind, Mrs. Leigh. I have no intention of
opening it again.”

“And this is the sole ground upon which my son is rejected?” she said,
fixing her keen eyes upon his face.

“It is the sole ground; it is quite enough, I believe. Supposing even
that the lady was everything you allege, an intimacy between a woman of
that character and your son is quite enough to make him unsuitable for
my daughter.”

“Who is not of your opinion, however,” Mrs. Leigh said.

Colonel Kingsward was confused by this speech. He got up and stood
before the fire. He avoided meeting her eye. “My daughter is very young
and very inexperienced,” he said. “She is at present more moved by her
feelings than her reason. I believe that with an increase of maturer
judgment she will fully adopt my view.”

Colonel Kingsward believed that he had altogether crushed his visitor,
but he was not so right as he thought. Mrs. Leigh went back to her son
with triumph in her eyes. “He knows nothing more,” she said. “He does
not know that she has turned against you. Whatever is her reason, it is
something different from his, and she has not confided it to him. I
thought as much when you told me of the letters stopped. A man does not
intercept a girl’s letters when he knows she has come round to his way
of thinking. Now you have got to find out what she has heard, and to set
her right about it whatever it may be.”




CHAPTER XXVI.


TO set oneself to find out without any clue or guidance what it is which
has affected the thoughts of a girl for or against her lover--without
any knowledge of her surroundings, or from what quarter an adverse
influence, an ill report, could have come--who could have spoken to her
on the subject of Aubrey, or what kind of story to his disadvantage (for
this was what Mrs. Leigh convinced herself must have happened) she had
heard--to discover everything and counteract it, was a mission that
might well have frightened anyone who undertook it. And I don’t doubt
that Mrs. Leigh, to encourage her son, spoke a great deal more
confidently than she felt, and that she really intended to give herself
up to this discovery, and to take no rest until she had made it, and
cleared up the matter which threatened to separate these two young
people for ever, and make havoc in both their lives.

Aubrey himself shook his head and declared himself to have little hope;
but he was not really more hopeless than his mother was the reverse.
While he shook his head there was a warm sensation of comfort at his
heart. That she should have undertaken to find it out seemed like half
the battle. When a man retains any confidence in his mother at all,
which is by no means always the case, he is apt to be influenced more
than he is aware by the old prejudice of childhood that she can do
anything that is wanted. She by no means felt herself to be so powerful
as he did, though she professed her certainty of success, and he was
much more held up and supported by her supposed convictions than he
himself allowed to appear. Thus they separated, Aubrey remaining in
town, ready to take advantage of any occasion that might present itself,
while she returned to her home, to make every exertion to discover the
cause of Bee’s estrangement. Very easy words to say--but how to do it?
She had not a notion even what kind of story had been told to Bee. She
did not know any special point of weakness on the part of Aubrey which
could have been exaggerated or made to appear worse than it was. There
was no inclination towards dissipation about him; he did not gamble; he
was not addicted to bad company. What was there to say about him? The
episode of Miss Lance--and that was all. And it was not the episode of
Miss Lance which had revolted Bee. Had Mrs. Leigh ever heard of Aubrey’s
adventure at the railway station, it is possible that her mind, excited
in that direction, would have been keen enough to have divined that the
mystery was somehow connected with that; for it was certainly Quixotic
of a young man to put a poor woman and her children into a
sleeping-carriage--the most expensive mode of travelling, and wholly
beyond her condition--by a mere charitable and kindly impulse. And the
world, which believes that nothing is given without an equivalent, might
easily have made a story out of it. But then, Mrs. Leigh was quite
ignorant on this point, which, as has been said, had never occurred
again to Aubrey himself, except as one of the few actions in his life
which he could look back upon with entire satisfaction and even a little
complacence. And thus the only way of setting things right was
hermetically closed.

Mrs. Leigh went back to her jointure-house. It was near the sea, as has
been said, and near a lively seaside town, where, in the summer, there
were many visitors and a great deal going on, strangers appearing and
disappearing from all parts of the country. But in winter there was
nothing of the kind; the world closed up without, leaving only the
residents, the people who were indigenous, the contracted society of
neighbours who knew all about each other, and were acquainted with the
same pieces of news, and, excepting by long intervals, heard but little
of the outside gossip, or the doings of other circles. Mrs. Leigh
returned to her natural surroundings, which knew no more of Colonel
Kingsward and his family than people in what is called “a certain
position” know of each other--something of his name, something of his
connections, but nothing of his immediate circumstances. There were
indeed many questions about Aubrey’s marriage which she had to answer as
she could. The news of his engagement had been received with many
congratulations. Everybody felt that poor Aubrey’s first essay at
matrimony had been a very unfortunate one. The sooner he brings a nice
wife to Forest-leigh the better, everybody had said. And when Mrs. Leigh
returned after her brief absence, the many callers whom she received
daily were full of inquiries about the marriage. It was generally
supposed that his mother’s hasty expedition had been in some way
connected with it. She had gone about the refurnishing, about the
household linen, which perhaps wanted renewing, and which was not in a
man’s sphere--about something in the settlements; at all events,
whatever it was, her object must have been connected with the
approaching marriage. They came down upon her full of the most eager
questions. “I suppose the day is fixed? I suppose all the arrangements
are made? How nice it will be to see the house opened, and
a new, lively, young married couple to put a little life in
everything”--matrons and little maids all concurred in this speech.

“You have not heard then?” said Mrs. Leigh, with a very grave
countenance--“everything, alas, is postponed for the moment. Mrs.
Kingsward, a most charming woman, adored by her family, died last week.”

“I told you it was those Kingswards!” one of the ladies said to another.

“There are no other Kingswards that I know of,” said Mrs. Leigh, who
always held her head so high. “I went up with Aubrey to pay them a visit
of sympathy. There is a very large young family. I found them quite
broken down with grief. Of course we had not the heart, either Aubrey or
I, to press an arrangement in these dreadful circumstances. I confess I
am rather down about it altogether. Poor little Bee, my future
daughter-in-law, is the eldest. I am quite terrified to hear that she
has taken some tragic resolution, such as girls are so apt to do
now-a-days, and think it her duty to dedicate herself to her little
brothers and sisters.”

“Oh, but surely she would not be permitted to do that--when everything
was settled!”

“I hope not. I most sincerely hope not,” said Mrs. Leigh. “Naturally, I
have not said a word to Aubrey. But girls now-a-days are so full of
their ideas, their missions, and their duty, and all that!”

“Not when they are engaged to be married,” said a scoffing lady.

“I wish I could be sure of that. Miss Kingsward is only nineteen, just
the self-sacrificing age. I wish I could be sure----. There was
something in her eye. But, however, not a word, not a word about this. I
still hope that as soon as a reasonable time has passed----”

“It is such a pity,” said another, “where unnecessary delays are made. I
am sure no mother would wish her daughter’s marriage to be put
off--things are so apt to happen. I think it’s tempting Providence when
there is unnecessary delay.”

“Colonel Kingsward is a very particular man. He will allow nothing to
be done that the most punctilious could object to. He will not have
anything spoken of even. All the arrangements are in abeyance. It is
most trying. Of course, I am very sorry for the family, and for him, who
has lost so excellent a wife. But, at the same time, I can’t help
thinking of my own son kept hanging in suspense, and all his plans
broken up.”

There was a chorus of regrets from all the visitors, one party after
another; but from more than one group of ladies as they drove away there
arose the most gloomy auguries, spoken amid much shaking of heads. “I
don’t believe it will ever come to a marriage after all,” some said, “if
Colonel Kingsward is so very particular a man, and if he hears of all
that took place at Forest-leigh in the first wife’s time.” “Whatever
took place,” said another, “it was her fault, as everybody knows.” “Ah,
yes,” said the first speaker, who represented more or less the common
voice, “I know the first wife was a little fool, and whatever happened,
brought it all on herself. But there is never any business of that sort
without blame on both sides.” Thus the world generally judges, having
half forgotten what the facts of the case were, though most of the
individuals who constitute the world could have recalled them very
easily with an effort of memory. Still, the blurred general view is the
one that prevails after a time, and works out great injustices without
any evil intention at all.

It was thus that Mrs. Leigh thought it prudent to forestall all remarks
as to the postponement of her son’s marriage. She succeeded well enough,
perhaps too well. Mrs. Kingsward’s death accounted for everything.
Still, the impression got abroad that Aubrey Leigh, that unlucky fellow,
had somehow broken down again. And as the days went on and silence
closed around, further and further did Aubrey’s mother find herself from
making any discovery. Indeed, she did not try, strong as her resolves to
do so had been. For, indeed, she did not know what to do. How was she to
clear up such a mystery? Had she known the neighbours about Kingswarden,
and heard their talk among themselves, she might have been able to form
some plan of action. But her own neighbours, who did not even know of
Mrs. Kingsward’s death--how could she find out anything from them? She
thought it over a great deal, and when any friend of her son’s drifted
near her expended a great deal of ingenuity in endeavouring to ascertain
whether there was anything in Aubrey’s life which could have injured him
in Bee’s estimation. But Mrs. Leigh was perfectly aware, even while
cautiously making these inquiries, that whatever his friends might know
against him, his mother was the last person who was likely to be told.
As a matter of fact, however, there was nothing to tell, and gradually
this very fruitless quest died from her mind, and she did not even dream
of pursuing it any more.

And Aubrey remained in town disconsolately getting through the
winter as best he could, neglecting all his duties of hospitality,
keeping his house shut up, and leaving his game to be shot by the
gamekeepers--indifferent to everything. He could not bear the place with
which he had so many painful associations, sharpened now by the loss of
all the hopes that had fallen so quickly of taking Bee to it, and
beginning a real life of happiness and usefulness. What he wanted most
in life was to fulfil all his duties--in the happiest way in which such
duties can be fulfilled, after the methods of an English country
gentleman with sufficient, but not too great position, money, and all
that accompanies them. He was not an _enragé_ foxhunter, or sportsman,
but he was quite disposed to follow all the occupations and recreations
of country life, to maintain a hospitable house, to take his part of
everything that was going on in the county, and above all, to efface the
recollection of that first chapter of his life which had not been happy.
But all these hopes and intentions seemed to have been killed in him by
the cutting off of his new hopes. He kept up his confidence in his
mother until he went to her at Christmas to spend with her those days of
enforced family life which, when they are not more, are so much less
happy than the ordinary course of life. He went down still full of hope,
and though Mrs. Leigh received him with professions of unimpaired
confidence, he was quick to see that she had in reality done
nothing--for that best of all reasons, that there was nothing to do.
“You don’t seem to have made progress, however,” he said, on the first
night.

“No, perhaps I have not made much progress. I don’t know that I expected
to make much progress--at this time of the year. You know in winter one
only sees one’s neighbours, who know nothing. Later on, when the weather
improves, when there is more coming and going, when I have more
opportunities----”

This did not sound very cheerful, but it was still less cheerful when he
saw how little even his mother’s mind was occupied with his affairs. It
was not her fault; all the thinking in the world could not make Bee’s
motives more clear to a woman living at a distance of three or four
broad counties from Bee. And one of Aubrey’s married sisters was in some
family difficulty which occupied all her mother’s thoughts. Aubrey did
not refuse to be interested in his sister. He was willing to give
anything he could, either of sympathy or help, to the solving of her
problem; but, conscious of so much in his own fate that was harder than
could fall to the lot of any comfortable, middle-aged person, it must be
allowed that he got very tired of hearing of Mary’s troubles. He
answered rather curtly on one or two occasions, and chilled his mother,
whose heart was full of Mary, and who was already disposed to blame
herself in respect to Aubrey, yet to be irritated by any suspicion of
blame from him. On the last morning of his stay he had begged her, if
she could abstract her thoughts for a moment from Mary, to think of him.
“I don’t want to trouble you further, mother. I only want you to tell me
if you think my whole business so hopeless that I had better give every
expectation up?”

“Think your business hopeless, Aubrey? Oh, no; I don’t think that.”

“But we know just as much now as we did in October. I do not think we
have advanced a step----”

“If you mean to reproach me with my want of success, Aubrey!”

“No--I don’t mean to reproach you with anything, mother. But I think it
seems just as hopeless as ever--and not a step nearer.”

“Things cannot be done in a moment,” she said, hurriedly. “I never
expected--When the summer comes round, when one sees more people, when
one can really pursue one’s inquiries----.” Mrs. Leigh was very
conscious that she had pursued few inquiries, and the thought made her
angry. “Rome,” she added, “was not built in a day.”

Aubrey Leigh said no more--but he went back to London feeling that he
was a beaten man, and the battle once more lost.




CHAPTER XXVII.


THERE is nothing more curious in life than the way in which it closes
over those great incidents that shape its course. Like a stone
disappearing in a pool, the slow circles of commotion widen and melt
away, the missile sinks into the depths of the water, and tranquility
comes back to its surface. Every ripple is gone, and yet the stone is
always there.

This curious calm came into the life of Bee Kingsward after the
incidents related above. The man with whom she had expected to share
everything disappeared from her existence as if he had never entered
into it, and a dead peace fell over her, and all things around her. It
was at once better for Bee and worse that the mourning for her mother
swept her away out of all the coming and going of ordinary life for a
time--better because she was saved the torment of a perpetual struggle
with her trouble, and worse because it shut her up to a perpetual
recollection of that trouble. The Kingsward family remained at
Kingswarden for the whole of that winter and spring. When the season
began there was some question of removing to town, which Bee opposed
strongly. “I have no wish to go out,” she said. “I could not, papa, so
soon---- And we have no one to take us.”

“You will find plenty of people ready to take you,” he said.

And then Bee took refuge in tears. “Nobody--that we could endure to go
with--so soon, so soon!--not yet a year,” she said. Betty followed her
sister dubiously. It was natural that she should always echo what Bee
said, but this time she was not quite so sure as usual. Not to balls?
Oh, not to balls! was Betty’s secret comment, but--Betty felt that to
speak occasionally to some one who was not of her own family--not the
Rector or the Rector’s wife, the Curate or the Doctor--would be an
advantage; but she did not utter that sentiment. After all, what was one
season to the measureless horizon of eighteen? Bee renounced her season
eagerly, and uttered exclamations of content when Colonel Kingsward
announced that, in those circumstances, he had let their house in town.
But I am not sure that she was so completely satisfied as she professed
to be. She had dismissed Aubrey “for ever”--and yet, when the deed was
done, a longing seized her sometimes to hear his name, that someone
should speak of him in her presence, that she should hear accidentally
where he was, and what he was doing. She had imagined little scenes to
herself in which she had heard strangers saying to each other that
Aubrey Leigh had soon got over his disappointment, that he was going to
be married to So-and-So; or that he was going to make the tour of the
world, or to shoot big game in Africa; or, anything in short, so long as
it was about him. Even when she had been so determined against going
out, there had been a hope in her mind that somehow, she did not know
how, some news of him and what he was doing might be wafted her way
accidentally. She did not want, she said to herself passionately, ever
to hear his name again! Yet she had calculated on hearing as much as
that, hearing quite accidentally, at the Royal Academy, perhaps, or
somewhere where she might happen to be calling, that he was going to the
ends of the earth, or that he was going to be married--things which the
speakers might suppose were not of the slightest interest to her. She
said all the same that she was delighted when Colonel Kingsward informed
them that he had let the house in town--very glad! before it had time to
get shabby, the poor old house; yet, when she retired to her room for
the night, Bee cried, shedding many salt tears.

But nothing of this was apparent in her life. The circles had all melted
away from the still bosom of the pool. The household resumed its former
regularity, quickened a little, perhaps, by the energetic sweeping of
the new broom. Mrs. Kingsward had been an easy mistress about many
trifles, which Bee, new to authority, and more enterprising than her
mother, exacted a rigid account of. At the beginning she set all the
servants by the ears, each of them being anxious to show that their own
conscientiousness was perfect, and their desire to consider their
master’s interests; but, by degrees, matters settled down with an
increased strictness of order. “As mamma would have wished it,” Bee
said; and she herself changed in a way that would be almost miraculous
were it not a transformation commonly visible from time to time, from a
light-hearted girl, full of little amusing misdemeanours and mistakes,
into that sweet serious figure of the eldest daughter, the
mother-sister, so often visible in England when the mistress of the
household has been removed in early life. There is no more beautiful or
more tender vision; it is fine at all ages, but in the first bloom of
youth it has a pathetic grace which goes to the heart. Bee underwent
this change quite suddenly, after a period of trouble and agitation and
over activity. It might not perhaps have come but for the letting for
the season of the town house, which seemed to make so complete a
severance between her and the ordinary current of life.

It was perhaps this that opened what might almost be called a new
relationship between Bee and her brother Charlie, who was the nearest to
her in the family, though there had not been hitherto an unusual
sympathy between them. For one thing, Betty feeling herself a little
forlorn in the country with all the echoes of London, which occasionally
came to her ears, had been permitted to accept an invitation to Portman
Square to visit a quiet elderly family, not likely to lead her into any
dissipation out of keeping with her black frock, and Bee was virtually
alone with the children, to whom she gave herself up with a devotion
which was the very quintessence of motherhood. Colonel Kingsward also
was in town--a man cannot shut himself up (this was what he said)
whatever his private griefs may be. He must keep a calm face before the
world, he must not allow himself to be hustled out of the way. For this
reason, he remained in London, living in chambers, to which he had an
official right, in the dingy official grandeur of Pall Mall, and coming
to Kingswarden only now and then from Saturday to Monday. This sundered
Bee still more completely from the world. And when Charlie came back
from Oxford she was more eager to meet him, more pleased with his
company than ever before. This was not perhaps entirely the young man’s
mind. That he should choose to shut himself up in the country in June
was perhaps scarcely to be expected. According to the curious rule which
prevails in England he “did not mind” the country in January. But in
June! However, it was soon apparent that there were other things than
the season in Charlie’s mind. He began a series of lamentations to Bee
upon the situation of the family and things in general, by the usual
complaint of a young man in the country of having “nothing to do.”

“A man cannot sit at home and dot up the accounts like you,” he said,
“though I don’t say but that it’s hard upon you, too. Still, women like
to tie up children’s sashes and that sort of thing, and calculate how
much their boots cost in a year. I say, mother can’t have had half such
an easy life as we all thought.”

“I never thought she had an easy life,” said Bee, which was perhaps not
exactly true, but the things that Bee had thought a year ago were so
unlike the things she thought now that she did not believe life had ever
appeared to her in a different light.

“Well,” said Charlie, “she had a way of making it appear so. Do you
remember that last time at the Baths? What a little thing you seemed
then, Bee, and now here I am talking to you quite seriously, as if you
were mother. Look here, I want you to speak to the governor for me. I am
doing no good here. In fact, there’s nothing to do--unless I am to drop
into drinking and that sort of thing in the village.”

“Charlie!”

“Well,” he said, “I can’t sit and sew strings on pinafores like you. A
man must do something at my age.”

“And what should you do at Oxford? And why do you want to go there when
everybody is away?”

“Everybody away! That is all you know. The dons are away, if that is
what you mean. There are no lectures going on. But lectures are a mere
loss of time. There are lots of fellows up there reading. If you want to
read hard, now is the best time.”

“How curious,” said Bee, in genuine surprise, “when all the people who
teach are away! And I never knew that you wanted to read hard.”

“No. I never was made to think that I ought to,” said Charlie, with
rising colour. “In this house nobody thinks of anything more than just
getting through.”

Bee was a little angry as well as surprised by this censure upon the
family. She said, “The rest of us may not be clever--but everybody says
there are few men that know as much as papa.”

“Oh, in his special subjects, I suppose, but I am not going in for the
army, Bee,” said Charlie, the colour rising higher on his young face,
which was still an ingenuous face, though not of a very high order. “It
is such a wonderful thing to have your duty set before you, and how you
ought to make the best of your life. I, for one, never thought of it
before. I was always quite satisfied to get through and to have plenty
of time to amuse myself; but if you come to think of it that’s a very
poor sort of ideal for a life.”

Bee looked up at Charlie with more and more surprise. He was pulling his
young moustache nervously, and there was a great deal of emotion in his
face. It seemed amazing to his sister that Charlie--Charlie who had
always been on the unemotional side, should take this heroic tone, or do
anything but laugh at the suggestion of an ideal in life. She gazed at
him in some bewilderment. “What are you going to read?” she asked, with
doubt and wonder in her voice.

“It is just like a girl to ask a man what he is going to read! Why,
everything. I just pushed through my mods., you know--a pass--which it
covers me with shame to think of now. I must do something better than
that. I don’t know that I’m very good at anything, but work, after all,
steady work, is the great thing; and if work can do it----!” cried
Charley, breaking off, a little breathless, with a strange light in his
eyes.

“You almost frighten me, Charlie. You were never meant for honours or a
high degree, were you? Papa said you need not go in for honours, it
would lose time; and you thought so, too.”

“I have changed my mind,” said Charlie, nervously. “I thought, like
other asses, that in diplomacy you don’t want much; but now I think
differently. How are you to understand how to conduct national affairs
and all that, and reconcile conflicting claims, and so forth, and settle
the real business of the world----”

“But Charlie, I thought it was languages, and great politeness, and--and
even dancing, and that sort of thing, that was wanted in an attaché----”

“Attachés,” said the young man, with a gravity which, serious as she
also was, almost made Bee laugh, “are the material out of which
ambassadors are made. Of course, it takes time----”

Here Bee burst, without meaning it, into a nervous laugh.

“You are so dreadfully serious about it,” she cried.

“And what should a man be serious about, if not that?” the young man
replied.

Here for the moment, in great impatience on his part, and in the call
of some little household necessity on hers, the conversation closed; but
it was resumed as soon as the brother and sister were together again.
The big boys were still at school, the little ones engaged with their
lessons, and baby walking up and down in his nurse’s arms, did not
interrupt the talk which went on between the elders of the family. And
there is nothing with which it is so easy to indoctrinate a girl than
enthusiasm about an ideal, whatever that may be, or sympathy in a lofty
view of duty such as this, which had dawned, it seemed, upon her
brother. Bee took fire, as was so natural. She said to herself, that in
the utter downfall of her own life, it would be a fine thing to be able
to further his, and kept to the idea of Charlie as ambassador, settling
all sorts of difficulties and deciding the fortunes of the world for war
or for peace, as easily as if the question had been one of leading a
cotillion. How splendid it would be! She thought of herself as an old
lady, white-haired, in a cap and shawl--for, in an imagination of
twenty, there are few gradations between youth and that pathetic, yet
satisfactory ultimate period--seated in a particular corner of a
magnificent room at the Embassy, looking on at her brother’s triumph.
These sort of reflected successes were the only ones she thought that
would ever come to Bee.




CHAPTER XXVIII.


“CHARLIE wishes to go up to Oxford to read. Why does he wish to go up to
Oxford to read? And what reading is it necessary to do there?”

“He says, papa, that it is easier to get on when you have all your books
about you--and when you can arrange all your way of living for that,
instead of the interruptions at home.”

“Oh, there are too many interruptions at home? I should have thought you
were quiet enough here. I hope you have not thrown yourself into lawn
tennis parties, and tea parties, and that sort of thing--so soon, Bee.”

Her father looked at her with a seriously reproachful air. He had begun
to dine out pretty freely, though only in serious houses, and where, he
explained, it would be prejudicial to him in his profession not to
appear.

The undeserved reproach brought quick tears to Bee’s eyes. “I have
thrown myself into no parties,” she said, hastily. “Nobody has been
here. What Charlie means is the meal times, and hours for everything,
and all the children about. I have often heard you say that you couldn’t
work when the children were playing about.”

“My work and Charlie’s are rather different,” Colonel Kingsward said,
with a smile.

“Well, papa! but to read for a good degree, so that you may distinguish
yourself, must want a great deal of application----”

“Oh, he wants a good degree, does he? He should have thought of it a
little earlier. And what use will that be to him in the Foreign Office?
Let him learn French and German--that’s what he has got to do.”

“But even for French and German,” said Bee. “German is dreadfully
difficult, and Charlie does not pick up a language easily; and,
besides,” she added, “he has nobody to teach him at home----”

“And who would he have at Oxford? Why, in the Long, even the shopkeepers
go away!”

“But that is just the time for good, hard reading,” said Bee, acting on
her instructions, “when there are no lectures or anything formal to
interrupt you.”

“He means, I suppose, when he can do whatever he likes, and there are no
proctors nor gate bills to keep him right.”

“Papa,” said Bee, earnestly, “I don’t think that is at all what Charlie
means. I am sure that he has a real desire to get on. He says that he
feels he has been wasting his time, and--and not--not responding
properly to all you have done for him. He wants to make himself fit for
anything that may happen. If you will think, papa,” she added, with the
deepest gravity, “what a great deal of study and reading an ambassador
must require----”

“An ambassador!” Colonel Kingsward was not given to laughter, but he
laughed now. “He may think himself fortunate if he is anything but an
unpaid attaché for the next ten years--which is an office which does not
require a great deal of study.”

“But, papa----”

“Nonsense, Bee. He wants, I suppose, complete freedom, and to amuse
himself as he pleases, with no control. I know what it means to stay up
at Oxford to read during the Long. Oh, yes. I don’t doubt men who know
how to grind, grind, but Charlie is not one of them. Let him stay at
home. You are a great deal sharper than he is at languages; you can help
him with his German as well as anyone.”

“Oh,” cried Bee, from the bottom of her heart, “not with German, not
with German, papa!”

And there came over her a sudden vision of the gardens at the Baths, the
murmur of talk in the air, the German officers with their spurs, and one
Englishman coming forward among them, an Englishman without spurs,
without uniform, so much more distinguished, it had been Bee’s pride to
think, in his simplicity, than all these bedizened warriors--and now! A
gush of hot tears came to her eyes. There was reason enough for them
without Aubrey Leigh, and Colonel Kingsward, whose heart was still
tender to every recollection of his wife, did not think of the other
memory that thrilled poor Bee’s heart. He walked up and down through the
room for a moment saying nothing, and then he paused by her side and put
his hand with an unusual caress upon his daughter’s bowed head.

“You are right, you are right,” he said. “I could not ask that of you,
Bee.”

Oh! if I had but known! Bee felt not only miserable, but guilty, when
her father’s touch came upon her hair. To think how little the dear
mother’s presence told in that picture, and how much, how much! that of
the man--who had been vulgarly untrue to her, a man without sense of
purity or honour! One whose name she never desired to hear again. She
could hardly accept the imputation of so much higher and nobler feeling
which her father’s touch conveyed. The dear mother! who never condemned,
who was always kind. She was moved to cry out in self-abasement, “It
was not mamma I was thinking of, it was him! him!” But she did not do
this. She raised her head and took up her work again with a trembling
hand.

“I suppose,” said Colonel Kingsward, as anxious as his daughter was to
get away from a subject which was too moving for discussion, “that
Charlie finds Kingswarden dull. It is not unnatural at his age, and I
shall not object if he wishes to come to town for a week or so. His own
good feeling, I hope, would keep him from anything unbecoming in the
circumstances. But I must hear no more of this going to Oxford. It is
quite out of the question. If he had shown any desire to go in for
honours at the right time----. But now it is worse than folly. He must
get through as quickly as he can, and take advantage of his nomination
at once. Who can tell how soon it may be of no value? The Foreign Office
may be thrown open, like all the rest, to every costermonger in the
country, in a year or two, for anything one knows.”

Charlie received this conclusion with disappointment, rapidly turning
into rage and rebellion. “I should have thought the most old-fashioned
old fogey in the world would have known better,” he cried. “What,
prevent a man from reading when he is at the University! Did you ever
hear of such a thing, Bee? Why, even a military man, though they are the
most obstinate in the world, must know that to be really educated is
everything in these days. A week in town! What do I care for a week in
town? It is exactly like the man in the Bible who, being asked for
bread, gave a stone.”

Bee was greatly impressed by her brother’s anxiety to continue his
studies. It filled her with a respect and admiration which up to this
time she had never entertained for Charlie, and occupied her mind much
with the question how, if her father were obdurate, he might be aided at
home in those studies. She remembered suddenly that Mr. Burton’s curate
had been spoken of as a great scholar when he came first to the parish.
He had taken tremendous honours she had heard. And why might not he be
secured as an aid to Charlie in his most laudable ambition? She thought
this over a great deal as she moved about her household duties. Bee as a
housekeeper was much more anxious than her mother had been for many
years. She thought that everything that was done required her personal
attention. She had prolonged interviews every morning with the cook, who
had been more or less the housekeeper for a long time, and who (with a
secret sense of humour) perplexed Bee with technicalities which she
would not allow that she did not understand. The girl ordered everything
minutely for dinner and lunch and breakfast, and decided what was to be
for the nursery as if she knew all about it, and reproved cook gravely
when she found that certain alterations had been made in the menu when
those meals were served. “I assure you as that is what you ordered,
miss,” cook said, with a twinkle in her eye. All this Bee did, not only
because of her strong determination to do her duty, but also because
preoccupation with all these details was her great salvation from
thoughts which, do what she would, claimed her attention more than
nursery puddings and the entrées that pleased papa. But while she
pursued these labours there was still time for other thoughts, and she
occupied herself very much with this question about Charlie. Why could
not Mr. Delaine come to read with him? Mr. Delaine had shown an
inclination to flirt with Betty, but Betty was now absent, so that no
harm could be done in that direction. She thought it all out during the
somewhat gloomy days which Colonel Kingsward spent with his family in
the country. It rained all the Sunday, which is a doleful addition to
the usual heaviness of a day in which all usual occupations are put
away. Colonel Kingsward himself wrote letters, and was very fully
occupied on Sunday afternoon, after the Church parade on Sunday morning,
which was as vigorously maintained as if the lessening rows of little
ones all marshalled for morning service had been a regiment--but he did
not like to see Bee doing anything but “reading a book” on Sunday. And
it had always been a rule in that well-ordered house that the toys
should be put away on Saturday evening, so that the day hung rather
heavily, especially when it rained, on the young ones’ heads. Colonel
Kingsward did not mean to be a gloomy visitor. He was always kind to his
children, and willing to be interested in what they did and said; but,
as a matter of fact, those three days were the longest and the most
severe of any that passed over the widowed and motherless house. When
Bee came downstairs from the Sunday lesson, which she gave in the
nursery, she found her brother at the writing-table in the drawing-room,
composing what seemed a very long letter. His pen was hurrying over the
page; he was at the fourth side of a sheet of large paper--and opened
out on the table before him were several sheets of a very long,
closely-written letter, to which he was evidently replying. When Bee
appeared, Charlie snatched up this letter, and hastily folding it,
thrust it into its envelope, which he placed in his breast pocket. He
put the blotting paper hastily over the letter which he was himself
writing, and the colour mounted to his very forehead as he turned half
round. It was not any colour of guilt, but a glow of mingled enthusiasm
and shamefacedness, beautiful upon the face of a youth. Bee was too
young herself to admire and appreciate this flush of early feeling, but
she was so far sympathetic in her own experience, that she divined
something at least of what it meant.

“Oh, Charlie!” she said, “you are writing to someone----”

“Most assuredly, I am writing to someone,” he said, with the half pride,
half shame of a young lover.

“Who is she?” cried Bee. “Oh, Charlie, tell me! Oh, tell me! Do I know
who it is?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “what you are making such a fuss about. I am
writing to--a friend.” He paused a moment, and then said with
fervour--“the best friend that ever man had.”

“A friend,” cried Bee, a little disappointed. “But isn’t it a lady?” she
asked.

“I hope,” he said, with a haughty air, “that you are not one of those
limited people that think there can be no friendship between a man and a
woman, for if that’s so I’ve got nothing to say.”

Bee was scarcely philosophical enough to take up this challenge. She
looked at him, bewildered, for a moment, and then said, “Oh, tell me
about her, Charlie! It would do me good--it would, indeed, to hear about
somebody whom there could not be any objection to, who would be,
perhaps, happier than me,” cried poor little Bee, the tears coming to
her eyes.

“Happier than you? And why shouldn’t you be happy?” said the elder
brother. He made an effort to turn away in dignified silence, but the
effort was too much for the young man, longing to talk of the new thing
in his life. “There is no comparison at all between a little thing like
you and--and the lady I was writing to,” he said, holding his head high.
“If you think it is any sort of nonsense you are very much mistaken.
Why, she--she is as much above me as heaven is from earth. That she
should take the trouble to show any interest in me at all, just proves
what an angel she is. I, an idle, ordinary sort of fellow, and she!--the
sort of woman that one dreams of. Bee, you can’t think what she has done
for me already,” Charlie cried, forgetting his first defiance. “I’m
another fellow ever since she began to take notice of me.”

Bee stole to her brother’s side and gave him a sympathetic stroke upon
his shoulder. “Oh! Charlie! what is her name?”

“You wouldn’t know her name if I were to tell you,” he said. And then,
after a moment’s hesitation: “Her name,” he went on, “her real name as I
call it, is Laura, like Petrarch’s Laura, don’t you know, Bee? But I
don’t suppose you do know.”

“Yes, indeed, I do,” said Bee, eagerly. She added in her turn, “I
shouldn’t have thought you would know anything like that.”

“No; I’m not up to it,” said Charlie, with unexpected humility; “but I
read it all up as soon as she said it. Don’t you think it’s a beautiful
name?”

“Yes,” said Bee, yet not with enthusiasm. “But, oh!” she added, “I hope
she is not married, Charlie; for that would not be nice at all.”

“Married!” cried Charlie. “I wish you were not such a horrid
little--Philistine. But she is not married, if that is any satisfaction
to you.”

“And is she--beautiful, Charlie? and are you very, very fond of her? Oh,
Charlie!” Bee clasped his arm in both her hands and sobbed. It made her
feel wretched, yet filled her with a delicious tender sense of
fellow-feeling. If he would only tell her all! It would be hard upon
her, and yet it would be a sort of heavenly pang to hear another, and,
oh! surely, this time, a happy love tale. Bee sat down close by him, and
clasped his arm, and sometimes leaned her head upon it in the warmth of
her tenderness and sympathy. And Charlie was persuaded, by degrees, to
speak. But his tale was not like Bee’s. It was a tale of a lady who had
stooped as from her throne to the young fellow of no account--the
ordinary young man, who could not understand how she had come to think
of him at all. It was she who had inspired him with his new ambition,
who had made him so anxious to distinguish himself, to make something of
his life. She had taken the trouble to write to him, to keep him up to
it since he had come “down.” She had promised to let him come to see her
when he came “up” again, to inspire him and encourage him. “One look at
her is better than a dozen coaches,” Charlie cried, in the fervour of
his heart.

“Do you mean that you are going to see her--in town?” asked Bee,
doubtfully.

“In town? No. She detests town. It’s all so vain and so hollow, and such
a rush. She came to live in Oxford at the beginning of last term,”
Charlie said.

“Oh,” said Bee, and she found no more to say. She did not herself
understand how it was that a little chill came upon her great sympathy
with Charlie and this unknown lady of his--friendship, if not love.




CHAPTER XXIX.


COLONEL KINGSWARD, however, could not be moved either by Bee’s
representations or by anything said by his son to grant to Charlie the
permission, and the funds necessary, to pursue his studies in Oxford by
going “up” to read “in the Long.” It was indeed very little that Charlie
said to his father on the subject. He responded somewhat sullenly to the
Colonel’s questions.

“So I hear you want to go back to Oxford to read?”

“Yes,” said the young man.

“You have generally found before this that by the end of the term you
had had too much reading.”

No reply.

“I suppose you want to be free of supervision and do exactly what you
please. And you find it dull at home?”

“I have never said so,” said Charlie.

“You ought to feel that in the circumstances it was appropriate that it
should be dull. Good heavens! Were you contemplating amusing yourself,
rioting with your comrades, when your poor mother--”

“I have never thought of rioting with comrades,” said Charlie, with
averted head.

“One knows what that means--going up to read in the Long: boats and
billiards and hotels, bands of young men in flannels lounging about, and
every decorum thrown to the winds.”

The Colonel looked severely at his son, who stood before him turning
over the pages of a book in his hand, with lowering brows and closed
mouth.

“You think I don’t know,” he said, sharply; “but you are mistaken. What
would have been best for you would have been the discipline of a
regiment. I always thought so, but at least I’m not going to permit
every decent bond to be broken through.”

“I think, sir,” said Charlie, “that it’s enough to say ‘No,’ without
accusing me of things I never thought of.”

“I am the best judge of what is enough,” said the angry father. “If you
want a week or so in town, I don’t object; but Oxford in the Long--No. I
only hope,” he added severely, “that there’s no woman in the case.”

Charlie’s countenance flushed crimson. He gave his father a furious
glance. “If that’s all,” he said, “I may now go, perhaps?”

“Yes, go,” said the Colonel, angrily. He was himself sorry for that last
insinuation as soon as his son had left the room. His angry
suspiciousness had carried him too far. Not that he blamed himself for
the suspicion, but he was aware that to speak of it was a false step and
could do no good. If there was a woman in the case, that flying dart
would not move the young man to penitence or turn him from any dangerous
way. Colonel Kingsward, however, quickly forgave himself for this
inadvertence, and reflected with satisfaction that, at least, he had
prevented the young fool from making an ass of himself for this summer.
And in such cases absence is the best remedy and hinders much mischief.
Charlie rejected with indignation the week in town which his father
offered. “A week in town!” he said to Bee, contemptuously, “to waste my
time and debase all my ideas! What does he think I want with a week in
town? That’s the way a fellow’s father encourages him to do the best he
can. Cuts off all inspiration, and throws one on the dregs of life! It’s
enough to make a man kick over the traces altogether.”

“But, Charlie,” said Bee, with timidity, “don’t you think it’s very,
very quiet here. We have nothing to disturb us. If you were to try to do
your work at home?--you would have the library to sit in all the week
while papa is in town.”

“Out of reach of books, out of reach of any coach--it’s like telling a
mason to build a wall without any stone.”

“The library is full of books,” said Bee, with a little indignation.

“What kind of books? Military books, and travels, and things for
reference--old peerages, and so forth--and some of the heavy old
reviews, and a few novels. Much good a man who is going in for real
reading would get out of those!”

“But you have your own books--all those that you carry about with you,
Charlie.”

“Oh!” he said, with impatience, “What are they? Horrible cribs and
things, that I promised not to use any more.”

“Does Laura,” said Bee, with a little awe, “say you are not to use
cribs?”

“And as for the quiet,” said Charlie, continuing his strain of
complaint, “if you call that quiet! When you never know that next moment
there may not be a rush down the nursery stairs like wild horses let
loose, and shrieks all over the house for Bee or for nurse, sending
every idea out of a man’s head; or else baby screaming fit to bring down
the house. You know nothing about it, to be sure; it is like talking to
the wind to talk to a little thing like you. A man can’t work unless
he’s in the right place for working. If any difficulty arises in a
passage, for instance, what do you think I am to do here?”

“Do you go to---- Laura, when there is a difficulty about a passage,
Charlie?”

“No, you little fool!” With a flush of anger and shame he begged her
pardon next minute. “But it is so hard to explain things to you, Bee.
You are so ignorant--naturally, for, of course, you never were taught
anything. Don’t you know that Oxford is full of coaches?” he said.

“That was just what I was thinking of, Charlie--if you will not be
angry, but let me speak.”

“Speak away,” he said. This was on Monday, after Colonel Kingsward had
left. The days which he spent at Kingswarden were the heaviest, as has
been said, to the young party; nevertheless when he went away the blank
of that long world of a week, without any communication to speak of from
without, closed down alarmingly upon the elders of the family. Even when
papa was cross, when he was dissatisfied with his dinner or found fault
with the noise of the children, it was more or less an event. But when
he departed there was a sense of being cut off from all events,
separated from the world altogether, shut out from the news and the hum
of society, which was very blank and deadening. Bee and Charlie dined
alone, and it was dreary; they spent the evening together, or else--one
in the library, one in the garden, where the beauty of the summer
evening was terrible to the one poor little girl with her recollections,
incapable of shutting them out in that utter stillness, and trying very
ineffectually not to be unhappy. When Charlie threw open the window of
the library and strolled forth to join her, as he generally did, it was
a little better. Bee had just done very conscientiously all her duties
in the nursery--had heard the children say their prayers, in which they
still, with a little pause of awe, prayed God to bless dear mother--and
had made all the valorous little efforts she could to keep down the
climbing sorrow. When she heard the sound of the library window she
quickly dried her eyes and contrived to smile. And she was a very good
listener. She suffered Charlie to talk about himself as much as he
pleased, and was interested in all he said. She made those little
allusions to Laura which pleased him, though he generally answered with
a scornful word, as who should say that “a little thing like you” was
incapable of comprehending that lady. But this was the sole diversion of
these young people in the evening. People called in the afternoon, and
there was occasionally a game of tennis. But in the evening they were
almost invariably alone.

They were strolling about the garden on this occasion when the young man
bewailed himself. Bee, though she made those allusions to Laura, had
never got over that little chill in respect to her which had arisen in
the most capricious, causeless way when she knew that Laura lived in
Oxford. Nothing could be more unreasonable, but yet it was so. It
suggested something fictitious in her brother’s eagerness to get back,
and in his supposed devotion to his work. Had his Egeria been anywhere
else Bee would not have felt this; but she did feel it, though she could
not tell why. She was very anxious to please him, to content him, if
possible, with his present life, to make her sympathy sweet to him,
seeing that he had nobody but herself to console him, and must be
separated from Laura until October. Poor Charlie! It was hard indeed
that this should be the case, that he should have so dull a home and no
companion but his sister. But it could not be helped; his sister, at
least, must do what she could.

“You must not be angry,” said Bee, very humbly. “It is only an idea that
has come into my head--there may be nothing at all in it--but don’t
please shut me up as you do sometimes--hear me out. Charlie! there is
Mr. Delaine.”

“Mister--what?” said Charlie, which indeed did not show a very
complaisant frame of mind--but a curate in the country is of less
importance in the horizon of the son of a house who is at Oxford than he
is in that of the daughter at home.

“Mr. Delaine,” repeated Bee. “You don’t remember him, perhaps, at all.
He is the curate. When he came first he was said to be a great scholar.
He took a first class. You need not say, pooh! Everybody said so, and it
is quite true.”

“A first in theology, I suppose,” said Charlie, disdainfully.

“No, not that--that’s not what people call a first. Mr. Burton, I have
always heard, is a good scholar himself, and he said a first; of course
you know better than I do what that means.”

“Well,” said Charlie, “and supposing for the sake of argument that he
took a first--what then?”

“Why, Charlie dear! He is an Oxford man too; he must know all the things
you want to know--difficult passages and all that. Don’t you think,
perhaps----”

“Oh, a coach!” cried Charlie. Then he paused, and with withering satire,
added “No doubt, for little boys--your curate might do very well, Bee.”

“He is not my curate,” said Bee, with indignation; “but I have always
heard he was a great scholar. I thought that was what you wanted.”

“It is not to be expected,” said her brother, loftily, “that you should
know what I want. It is not a coach that is everything. If that were
all, there need be no such things as universities. What a man needs is
the whole machinery, the ways of thinking, the arrangements, the very
atmosphere.”

He strolled along the walk with his hands in his pockets and his
shoulders up to his ears.

“I do not think it is possible,” he added, turning to her with a
softened tone, “that I could make you understand; for it is so different
from anything you have ever known.”

“I hope I am not so dreadfully stupid!” said Bee, incensed. “If Laura
understands, why should it be so impossible for me?”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake talk of things you can know something about; as
if there was any comparison between her and you.”

“I think you are very uncivil,” said Bee, ready to weep. “I may not be
clever, but yet I am your sister, and it is only because I wanted to
help you that I took the trouble to speak at all.”

“You are very well meaning, Bee, I am sure,” said Charlie, with
condescension; “I do full justice to your good intentions. Another
fellow might think you wanted to have Delaine here for yourself.”

“Me!” cried Bee, with a wild pang of injured feeling and a sense of the
injustice, and inappropriateness, the cruel wrong of such a suggestion.
And that Charlie could speak like that--who knew everything! It was
almost more than she could bear.

“But I don’t say that,” he went on in his lofty tones. “I know you mean
well. It is only that you don’t--that you can’t understand.” How should
she? he said to himself with amusing superiority, and a nod of his head
as if agreeing to the impossibility. Bee resented the tone, the
assumption, the comparison that was implied in every word.

“I wonder,” she cried, “if you ever tell Laura that she doesn’t and
can’t understand?”

He stopped short opposite to her, and grasped her arm. “Bee,” he said
almost solemnly, “Don’t! If you knew her you would know what folly it is
and presumption to compare yourself for one moment!--and do me the
favour not to profane that name, as if it were only a girl’s name like
your own.”

“Is she a princess, then?” cried Bee, “or an angel? Or what is she?”

“She is both, I think,” said Charlie, in a voice full of awe, “at least
to me. I wish you wouldn’t talk of her in that way. I am sorry I ever
told you her name. And please just let my affairs alone. You haven’t
been able to do anything for me with my father, which is the only thing
you might have done--and I don’t want to discuss other things with you.
So please just let my concerns alone from this day.”

“It was not I that ever wished to interfere!” cried Bee, with great
mortification and resentment, and after a few minutes’ silent walk
together in much gloom and stateliness the brother and sister bade each
other an offended and angry good-night.




CHAPTER XXX.


THIS made, however, but a very temporary breach between Bee and her
brother. They were a little stiff next morning at breakfast, and
elaborately refrained from talking on any but the most trivial things,
but by noon this reserve had broken down, and in the evening, though Bee
proudly refrained from any reference to Laura, they were as confidential
as ever. Bee’s mind had passed through various vicissitudes in respect
to the object of Charlie’s adoration. Her first overwhelming interest
had given way to a little doubt, and this was naturally strengthened by
the overweaning estimate of the unknown which Charlie thrust upon her. A
girl is very willing to admire at second-hand her brother’s love, but
when she is told that it is presumption to compare herself with that
divinity, her sympathy is strained too far. Bee began to have an uneasy
feeling about this unknown Laura. It was one thing to stimulate Charlie
to work, to stir up all that was best in him, to urge him to distinguish
himself, for Charlie’s sake or for their joint sakes, if they married
and became one--which was the only thing that could happen in Bee’s
idea--but it was quite another thing to pretend an enthusiasm for this
in order that Charlie should be kept within her reach and at her feet
during that quiet time of the long vacation. Bee knew enough to know
that severe work is not compatible with much love-making. She imagined
her brother strolling away from his books to take Laura out on the
river, or lie at her feet in the garden, which had become the habit of
his life, as he betrayed to her accidentally. Bee thought, with a little
indignation, that the lofty intentions which would probably end in these
proceedings were of the nature of false pretences, and that the girl
whom Charlie endowed with the most superlative qualities should not
attempt to take him from his home for such reason; or, at least, if she
did should do it frankly for love’s sake--which was always a thing to be
forgiven--and not on any fictitious pretence.

For Charlie, being refused that heroic way of working, “going up to
read,” did not read at all, as was apparent to his sister’s keen eyes.
He did not attempt to do the best he could, being prevented from doing
what he desired. He settled himself, it is true, in the library after
breakfast, with his books, as if with the intention of working, but
before Bee got through the little lesson which she gave every morning to
the little ones, Charlie was out strolling about the garden, or lying on
the grass in the shade with a book, which was usually a novel, or one
which lay closed by his side while he abandoned himself to thought--to
thought, not about his books it was to be feared, for Bee, with tremors
of sympathy in her heart, recognised too well the dreamy look, the
drooped eyelids, the air astray from anything going on around. From
questions of study, as far as Bee had perceived in her short experience,
the merest footstep on a path, the dropping of a leaf, was enough to
rouse the student. Charlie’s thoughts were of a far more absorbing kind.

Colonel Kingsward suggested once more the week in town, when he came on
another Saturday evening to Kingswarden. He was a man not very open to a
perception of the wants of others, but as time went on, and he himself
became more and more sensible of the ameliorating influences of society
and occupation, the stagnant atmosphere at home, where his two elder
children were vegetating, so much against all their previous habits,
struck him with a sensation which he could not wholly get the better of.
It was only right that Bee, at least, should remain in the country and
in retirement the first summer after her mother’s death. It would have
been most unbecoming had she been in town seeing people, and
necessarily, more or less, been seen by the world. But yet he felt the
stillness close round him like a sensible chill, and was aware of the
great quiet--aggravated by his own presence, though of this he was
scarcely aware--as if it had been a blight in the air. It made him angry
for the moment. In other times his house in the country had always been
refreshing and delightful to him. Now, the air, notwithstanding that it
was full summer, chilled him to the bone.

When you are escaping from the atmosphere of grief, anything that draws
you back to it feels like an injury. He was very cross, very impatient
with the silence at table, the subdued looks of the young people, and
that they had nothing to say. Was it not worse for him than for them? He
was the one who had lost the most, and to whom all ministrations were
due, to soften the smart of sorrow. But afterwards his thoughts towards
his children softened. It was very dull for them. On the Sunday evening
he took the trouble to press that week in town upon Charlie. “There’s a
spare closet you can have at my rooms at the office,” he said. “It’s
very central if not much else, and I daresay your friends will ask you
out quietly as they do me. I think even you might bring up Bee for the
day to see the pictures. She could stay the night with the Hammonds and
see Betty.”

“Oh, don’t think of me, papa,” cried Bee. “I would rather, far rather,
stay at home. I don’t care for the pictures--this year.”

“That is foolish, my dear,” said the Colonel. “There is nothing in the
least unbecoming to your mourning in going there. Indeed, I wish you to
go. You ought not to miss the pictures, and it will be a little change.
Of course, I cannot go with you myself, but Charlie will take you, and
you can go to Portman Square to sleep. You will see Betty, who must be
thinking of coming home about now; indeed, it is quite necessary you
should settle that with her. She can’t stay there all the season, and it
is rather heartless leaving you like this alone.”

“Oh, no, papa. It is I that wish her to stay. She would have come back
long ago but for me.”

Bee’s generous assumption of the blame, if there was any blame, excited
her father’s suspicion rather than admiration. He looked at her somewhat
severely. “I cannot conceive what object you can have in preferring to
be alone,” he said. “It is either morbid, or--In either case it makes it
more desirable that Betty should come back. You can arrange that. We
will say Wednesday. I suppose you will not be nervous about returning
home alone?”

“But, papa--”

“I consider the question settled, Bee,” said Colonel Kingsward, and
after that there was nothing more to be said.

Poor Bee wept many tears over this compulsory first step back into the
world--without her mother, without---- She did not mean (as she said in
her inmost thoughts) _anyone else_; but it made the whole world vacant
around her to think that neither on one side nor the other was there
anyone to walk by her side, to take her hand, to make her feel that she
was not alone. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that, in the morning,
this was the first thought that came into her mind, with a faint
expansion of her young being. The change, though it was not joyful, was
still something; and when she set out with Charlie on Wednesday morning
her heart, in spite of herself, rose a little. To see the pictures! The
pictures are not generally very exciting, and there was not, as it
happened, a sensation in any one of them in this particular year, even
had Bee been capable of it, which she was not. But yet she had a
sensation, and one of the most startling description. As she was going
languidly along, looking at one picture after another, mechanically
referring to the catalogue, which conveyed very little idea to her mind,
her attention was suddenly attracted by a lady standing in front of one
of the chief pictures of the year. She was talking with great animation
to some friends who surrounded her, pointing out the qualities and
excellencies (or non-excellencies, for Bee was not near enough to hear)
of the picture. She was picturesquely dressed in black, a tall and
commanding figure, with a great deal of lace about her, and a fine
profile, clearly cut and impressive. Bee’s whole attention was called to
her as by a charm. Where had she seen her before? She seemed acquainted
with every detail of her figure, and penetrated by a vague reminiscence
as of someone who had been of personal importance to herself, though she
could not tell when or how. “Who is she? Oh, who is she?” Bee asked
herself. She was very handsome--indeed Bee thought her a beautiful
woman; not young, which is a thing always noted with a certain pain and
compassion by a young girl--but full of grace and interest. While Bee
gazed, open-eyed, forgetful of herself--a young figure, very
interesting, too, to behold, in her deep mourning, and with the complete
forgetfulness of herself involved in that wistful, inquiring, and
admiring gaze--the lady turned round, presenting her full face to the
girl’s troubled vision. Bee felt her breath come short, her heart beat.
She fell back hurriedly upon a vacant place on one of the benches which
someone had charitably left empty. Bee did not know who the woman was,
nor what possible connections she could have with her own fate, and yet
there was a conviction in the girl’s heart that she had to do with it,
that somehow or other her life was in this woman’s hands. It was the
lady whom she had met that autumn morning last year in the firwoods
round the Baths, where Bee had gone to finish her sketch--the lady who
had appeared suddenly from among the trees, who had sat down by her, and
pointed out the errors in the little picture, and advised her how to
put them right. The black lace which was so conspicuous in the
stranger’s dress, seemed to sweep over Bee as she passed, with the same
faint, penetrating odour, the same thrill of unaccountable sensation.
Bee could not take her eyes from this figure as it moved slowly along,
pausing here and there with the air of a connoisseur. Who was she? Who
was she? Bee turned as she turned, following her with her eyes.

And then there occurred the most wonderful incident, so strange, so
unsuspected, so unaccountable, that Bee could scarcely suppress a cry of
astonishment. Charlie had been “doing” the pictures in his way, going
faster than his sister, and had been roaming down the whole side of the
long gallery while Bee occupied herself with one or two favourites. He
appeared now at a little distance, having made the round of the room,
and Bee was the involuntary, much surprised witness of the effect
produced upon Charlie by the sudden appearance which had so much excited
herself. He stopped short, with it seemed a sudden exclamation, let the
book in his hands drop in his amazement, then, cleaving the crowd,
precipitated himself upon the group in which the lady stood. Bee watched
with consternation the hurried, eager greeting, the illumination of his
boyish face, even the gesture--both hands put forth, and the quiver of
his whole eager figure. She even heard a little cry of surprise from the
lady, who presently separated herself from her friends and went on with
Charlie in the closest conversation. It seemed to Bee as she watched,
following them as well as she could through the crowd which got between
her and these two figures, that there were no two heads so close
together in all the throng. They seemed to drift into a corner where the
pictures were of no importance, where they were comparatively
undisturbed as if for the most confidential talk. It was not mere
acquaintanceship, a chance meeting with some one he knew, it was utter
forgetfulness of everything else, complete absorption in this new
interest that seemed to move her brother. For a time Bee formed no
conclusion, thought of no explanation, but watched them only with all
her faculties. The catalogue which Charlie had dropped was shuffled and
kicked to her feet by the passers by, a visible sign that something
unusual had happened. What was it? Who was she?

And then there darted into Bee’s mind a suggestion, an idea which she
could not, would not entertain. Laura! Was it possible that this could
be Laura? The thought sent a thrill through and through her. But no! no!
no! she cried within herself; impossible! This lady was years older than
Charlie--of another generation altogether--not a girl at all. She gazed
through the crowd at the two heads in the corner of the room, standing
as if they were looking at the pictures. They had their backs to Bee,
and she could see nothing but occasionally a side glimpse of Charlie’s
cheek and the lace bonnet, with the unusual accompaniment of a floating
veil, which covered his companion’s head. She had remembered the veil at
once--not primly fastened over her face, as most ladies wore them, but
thrown back and falling behind, a head-dress such as nobody else wore.
It distinguished from every other head that of the woman who, Bee now
felt sure, was like somebody in a tragedy of Fate--somebody who had to
do, she could not tell how, with the shipwreck of her own life--for had
she not appeared mysteriously, from she knew not where, on the very eve
of misery and ruin?--and now was overshadowing Charlie’s, bringing him
some calamity. Bee shivered and trembled among all the crowding people
on the seat which so many people envied her, and felt that she was
retaining far longer than her share. She was too much frightened to do
as she could have wished to do, to rush after them, to draw her brother
away, to break the spell. Such a dark lady had been known in story long
before Bee was born. Could it be true that hateful beings were permitted
to stray about even in the brightest scenes, bringing evil augury and
all kinds of trouble with them? Many a time had Bee thought of this
lady--of her sudden appearance, and of her questions about the Leighs;
of something in her look, an air of meaning which even at the moment had
confused the unsuspicious, unalarmed girl. And now, What was she? Who
was she? Laura? Oh, no, no; a hundred times no. If Bee could have
supposed that her respectable father or any member of her innocent
family could have wronged anyone, she would have thought it was a
ghost-lady ominous of trouble. Oh, what a silly thought in broad
daylight, in the Academy of all places in the world! There was very
little that was visionary or superstitious in such a place.

Charlie came back to join his sister after a considerable time with a
glowing face. “Oh, you are there!” he cried. “I’ve been looking
everywhere for you. I couldn’t think where you could have gone----”

“I should have seen you had you been looking for me,” said Bee.

“Well, never mind, now that I have found you. Have you seen as much as
you wish? It’s time to be moving off if you mean to get to Portman
Square in time for tea.”

“Charlie,” said Bee, very gravely, getting up and moving with him
towards the door, “who is that lady you were talking to with the black
lace about her head?”

“What lady?” said Charlie, with a very fictitious look of surprise, and
the colour mounting all over his face. “Oh, the lady I met--that lady?
Well, she is a lady--whom I have met elsewhere----”

“I have met her, too,” cried Bee, breathless, “down at the Baths just
before---- Oh, who is she--who is she, Charlie? I think she is one of
the Fates.”

“You little goose,” cried her brother, and then he laughed in an
unsteady way. “Perhaps she is--if there was a good one,” he cried. “She
is,” he added, in a different tone, and then paused again; “but I
couldn’t tell you half what she is if I were to talk till next week--and
never in such a noisy, vulgar place as this.”

Then Bee’s mind, driven from one thought to another, came suddenly back
with a jar and strain of her nerves to the question about Laura; was it
possible that this should be she?--for it was the tone sacred to Laura
in which her brother now spoke. “Oh! tell me about her, tell me about
her!” she cried, involuntarily clasping her hands--“she isn’t--is she?
Oh, Charlie, you will have time to tell me when we get into the park.
Didn’t she want to speak to me? Why didn’t you introduce me to her if
she is such a great friend of yours?”

“Hush! for goodness’ sake, now; you are making people stare,” said
Charlie. He hurried down the stairs and across the road outside, making
her almost run to keep up with him. “I say, Bee,” he cried hurriedly,
when he had signalled to a hansom, “should you mind going by yourself? I
hate driving when I can walk. Why, you’ve been in a hansom by yourself
before! You’re not going to be such a little goose as to make a fuss
about it now.”

“Oh, but Charlie--I’d rather walk too, and then you can tell me--”

“Oh, nonsense,” he cried, “you’re tired already. It would be too much
for you. Portman Square, No.--. Good-bye, Bee. I’ll look up later,” he
cried, as, to Bee’s consternation, the wheels of the hansom jarred upon
the curb and she felt herself carried rapidly away.




CHAPTER XXXI.


PORTMAN SQUARE had seemed to Bee the first step into the world, after
all that had happened, but when she was there this gentle illusion
faded. It was not the world, but only another dry and faded corner out
of the world, more silent and recluse than even Kingswarden had become,
for there were no voices of children within, and no rustle of trees and
singing of birds without. The meeting with Betty was sweet, but the air
of the little old-fashioned tea-table, the long, solemn dinner, with the
butler and the footman stealing like ghosts about the table, which was
laid out with heavy silver and cut glass, with only one small bunch of
flowers as a sacrifice to modern ideas in the middle, and the silence
of the great drawing-room afterwards, half lighted and dreary, came with
a chill upon the girl who had been afraid of being dazzled by too much
brightness. There were only the old lady and the old gentleman, Betty
and herself, around the big table, and only the same party without the
old gentleman afterwards. Mrs. Lyon asked Bee questions about her
excellent father, and she examined Bee closely about her dear mother,
wishing to know all the particulars of Mrs. Kingsward’s illness.

“I can’t get a nice serious answer from Betty. She is such a little
thing; and she tells me she was not at home through the worst,” Mrs.
Lyon said.

It was not a subject to inspire Bee, or enable her to rise above the
level of her home thoughts. Betty did not seem to feel it in the same
way. She was in a white frock with black ribbons, for Mrs. Lyon did not
like to see her in black, “such a little thing, you know.” Bee wondered
vaguely whether she herself, only a year-and-a-half the elder, was
supposed to be quite middle-aged and beyond all the happier surroundings
of life. Mrs. Lyon gave her a great deal of advice as to what she ought
to do, and talked much of the responsibilities of the elder sister. “You
must teach them to obey you, my dear. You must not let down the habit of
obedience, you must be very strict with them; a sister has more need
even than a mother to be very strict, to keep them in a good way.” Bee
sat very still, while the old lady prosed. It was so silent but for that
voice, that the ticking of the clock became quite an important sound in
the large dim room. And Bee strained her ears for the sound of a hansom
drawing up, for Charlie’s step on the pavement. Many hansoms stopped at
neighbouring houses, and footsteps sounded, but Charlie did not make his
appearance. “My brother said he would look in later,” she had told Mrs.
Lyon when she arrived. “Well, my dear, we shall hope he will,” the old
lady had said, “but a young man in London finds a hundred engagements.”
And Betty, who had been so serious, who had been so sweet, a perfect
companion at the time of their mother’s death, more deeply penetrated by
all the influences of the time than Bee herself, now flitted about in
her white frock, with all her old brightness, and sang her little song
without faltering, to show Bee what progress she had made since she had
been taking lessons. Bee could scarcely yet sing the hymns in church
without breaking down, though to be sure a girl who was having the best
lessons would be obliged to get over that. After the long evening when
they were at last alone together, Betty did not respond warmly to Bee’s
suggestion that she should now be thinking of returning home. “You seem
to think of nothing but the children,” she said; “you can’t want me,” to
which Bee could only reply that there were more things than the children
to think of, and that she was very lonely and had no one to talk to----

“But you have Charlie,” said Betty.

“Charlie is very full of his own concerns. He has not much sympathy with
me. All that he wants is to get back to Oxford.”

“To Oxford in the vacation? What would he do there?”

“He says he would work,” said Bee.

“Oh, Bee, how nice of Charlie! I know they do sometimes, Gerald Lyon
tells me; but I never thought that Charlie----”

“No,” said Bee, “and I don’t feel very sure now, there is someone---- to
whom he writes such long letters----”

“Oh, Bee! This is far, far more interesting than reading! Do you know
who she is? Does he tell you about her?”

“Her name is Laura,” said Bee, “that is all I know.”

“Oh,” cried Betty, “Charlie too!” And then a flush came over the girl’s
uplifted face. Bee, poor Bee, absorbed in the many things which had
dawned upon her which were beyond Betty, did not observe the colour nor
even that significant “too” which had come to Betty’s lips in spite of
herself.

“I think he met her or someone belonging to her--at the Academy to-day;
and that’s why he hasn’t come---- Oh, Betty, I am not happy about it--I
am not happy at all!”

Betty put her arms round Bee and kissed her. She thought it was the
remembrance of her own disappointment and disaster which made her sister
cry out in this heart-broken way. Betty looked very wistfully in Bee’s
eyes. She was more sorry than words could say. If she could have done
anything in the world “to make it all come right” she would have done
so, and in the bottom of her heart she still had a conviction that all
would “come right.” “Oh, Bee, Bee!” she cried, “cannot anything be done?
If only--only you would have listened to his mother!--Bee----”

Bee held up a warning finger. “Do you think it is myself I am thinking
of?” she said, and then, wringing her hands, she added, “I don’t know
what harm we have done to bring it on, but, oh! I think we are in the
hands of fate.”

What did this mean? Betty thought her sister had gone out of her mind,
and Bee would make no explanation. But I think this strange conversation
made Betty rather less willing to return home. She was the darling of
the house in Portman Square; though they did not go into society, they
had all manner of indulgences for Betty, and took her to the Park, and
encouraged the visits of their nephew, Gerald, who was a very merry
companion for the girl. He was permitted to take her to see various
sights, and the old people, as usual, did not perceive what was
beginning to dawn under their very eyes. Betty was such a little thing.
The consequence was that, though Bee thought Portman Square still duller
than Kingswarden, her little sister was not of that opinion. Bee
accordingly went back alone next day, Betty accompanying her to the
railway station. Neither at Portman Square nor at the railway station
did Charlie appear, and it was with a heavy heart that Bee went home. It
seemed to her as she travelled alone, for, I think, the first time in
her life--she was not yet quite twenty--that everyone was following his
or her own way, and that only she was bearing the whole burden of the
family. Her father had returned to his own world, his club, his dinners,
official and otherwise. It was indispensable that he should do so. Bee
had understood, it being impossible for a man in his position to
withdraw from the world on account of any private feeling of his own.
And Betty had flashed back again into her music, and her white frock,
and was seeing everything as of old. And Charlie--oh, what was Charlie
doing, drifting off into some tragic enchantment? The poor girl’s heart
was very heavy. There seemed only herself to think of them all in their
separate paths, one here and another there, going further and further
off in so many different directions from the event which had broken the
unity of the family, yet surely should have held them together in their
common trouble. That event had gone into the regions of the past. The
time of the mother was over, like a tale that is told. There were still
the children in the nursery, and Bee, their guardian, watching over
them--but the others all going off, each at their separate angle. It is
hard enough to realise this, even when age has gained a certain
insensibility, but to the girl, this breaking up of the family was
terrible. “I--even I alone remain,” she was inclined to say with the
prophet, and what could she do to stop the closing of these toils of
Fate? Her mind gradually concentrated on that last and most alarming
theme of all--the woman, the lady, without a name or history, or any
evident link with the family, who had thus, for the second time,
appeared in the path. Bee tried to fall back upon her reason, to
represent to herself that she had no real cause for assuming that the
stranger of whom she knew nothing, who might simply have been walking
through that German wood, and have stopped by chance to speak to the
little English girl with her stupid sketch, had anything to do with the
disaster which so soon overtook that poor little English girl in the
midst of her happy love. She had no reason, none, for thinking so. She
tried to represent to herself how foolish she had been to entertain such
a notion, how natural and without meaning the incident had been. And now
again, for the second time, what reason had she to believe that anything
fatal or even dangerous to Charlie was in this lady’s appearance now?
She was a distinguished-looking woman, much older than Charlie. What was
more likely than that such a woman, probably by her looks a married
lady, a person of importance, should have a great deal of influence over
a youth like Charlie if she took notice of him at all? All this was
very reasonable. There was far more sense in it than in that foolish
terror and alarm which had taken possession of her mind. She had almost
persuaded herself that these apprehensions were foolish before she
reached home, and yet the moment after she had succeeded in reasoning it
all out, and convincing herself how foolish they had been, they had
risen up in a crowd and seized her anxious mind again.

It was some days beyond the week which Charlie had been allowed in town
when he came back. He was in agitated spirits, with a look of mingled
excitement and exhaustion, which gave Bee many alarms, but which she was
not sufficiently skilled or experienced to interpret. Colonel Kingsward
had not come home in the interval, having gone somewhere else to spend
his weekly holiday, and when he did come there were various colloquies
between him and his son, which were evidently of a disturbing kind. Some
of these were about money, as was to be made out by various allusions.
Charlie had either been spending too much, or had set up a claim to
more in the future, a claim which his father was reluctant to allow. But
it seemed that he had come out triumphant in the end, to judge by their
respective looks, when they issued from the library together, just
before Colonel Kingsward left for town.

“I hope, at least, you’ll make good use of it,” were the father’s last
words--and “you may trust me, sir,” said Charlie, with all the elation
of victory.

He was in great spirits all day, teasing the children, and giving Bee
half confidences as to the great things he meant to do.

“They shan’t put me off with any of their beastly Governorships at the
end of the world,” said Charlie. “I shall play for high stakes, Bee, I
can’t afford to be a mere attaché long, but they shan’t shelve me at
some horrible African station, I can tell you. That’s not a kind of
promotion that will suit me.”

“But you will have to go where you are sent,” said Bee.

“Oh, shall I?” cried Charlie, “that is all you know about it. Besides,
when a man has a particularly charming wi----” He stopped and coughed
over the words, and laughed and grew red.

“Do you think your manners are so particularly charming?” said Bee, with
familiar scorn, upon which Charlie laughed louder than ever and walked
away.

Next day he left home hurriedly, saying he was going to make a run for a
day or two to “see a man,” and came back in the same excited, exhausted
state on Saturday morning, before his father returned--a process which
was repeated almost every week, to the great consternation and trouble
of Bee. For Charlie never mentioned these absences to his father, and
Bee felt herself spell-bound, as if she were incapable of doing so. How
could she betray her brother? And the letters to Laura ceased. He had no
time now to write these long letters. Neither did he receive them as
used to be the case. Had the correspondence ceased, or was there any
other explanation? But Charlie talked but little to his sister now, and
not at all on this subject, and thus the web of mystery seemed to be
woven more and more about his feet--Bee alone suspecting or fearing
anything, Bee alone entirely unable to make it clear.




CHAPTER XXXII.


THE year went on in its usual routine, the boys came back from school,
there was the usual move to the seaside, all mechanically performed
under the impulse of use, and when the anniversary came round of the
mother’s death, it passed, and the black dresses were gradually laid
aside. And everything came back, and everybody referred to Bee as if
there had always been a slim elder sister at the head of affairs. Betty
came home at the end of the season with a sentiment in respect to Gerald
Lyon, and with the prospect of many returns to Portman Square, but
nothing final in her little case, nothing that prevented her from being
one of the ringleaders in all the mischief which inevitably occurred
when the family were gathered together. Bee had become so prematurely
serious, so over-wrought with the cares of the family, that Betty, who
was too energetic to be suppressed, gradually came to belong rather to
the faction of the boys than to share the responsibilities of the elder
sister, which might have been her natural place. The second Christmas,
instead of being forlorn, like the first, was almost the gayest that had
been known in Kingswarden for many years. For the boys were growing, and
demanded invitations for their friends, and great skating while the
frost lasted, which, as the pond at Kingswarden was the best for a great
number of miles round, brought many cheerful youthful visitors about the
house. Colonel Kingsward was nothing if not correct; he did not neglect
the interests of any of his children. He perceived at once that to have
Bee alone at the head of affairs, without any support, especially when
his own time at home was so much broken by visits, would be bad at once
for her “prospects,” and for the discipline of the family. He procured
a harmless, necessary aunt accordingly, a permanent member of the
household, yet only a visitor, who could be displaced at any time, to
provide for all necessary proprieties, an arrangement which left him
very free to go and come as he pleased. And thus life resumed its usual
lightness, and youth triumphed, and things at Kingswarden went on as of
old, with a little more instead of less commotion and company and
entertainment as the young people developed and advanced.

It was perhaps natural enough, too, in the circumstances that Charlie,
though the oldest son, should be so little at home. He came for
Christmas, but he did not throw himself into the festivities with the
spirit he ought to have shown. He was in a fitful state of mind,
sometimes in high spirits, sometimes overclouded and impatient,
contemptuous of the boys, as having himself reached so different a line
of development, and indifferent to all the family re-unions and
pleasures. Sometimes it seemed to Bee, who was the only one in the
family who concerned herself about Charlie’s moods, that he was anxious
and unhappy, and that the air of being bored which he put on so readily,
and the hurried way in which he rushed out and in, impatient of the
family calls upon him, concealed a secret trouble. He complained to her
of want of money, of his father’s niggardliness, of the unhappy lot of
young men who never had any “margin,” who dared not spend an extra
shilling without thinking where it was to come from. But whether this
was the only trouble, or how it came about that he had discovered
himself to be so poor, Bee, poor child, who knew so little, could not
divine. How miserable it was that it was she who was in the mother’s
place! Mamma would have divined, she would have understood, she would
have helped him through that difficult passage, but what could Bee do,
who knew nothing about life, who thought it very likely that she was
making mountains out of molehills, and that all young men were bored and
uneasy at home--oh, if people would only be all good, all happy with
each other, all ready to do what pleased the whole, instead of merely
what pleased themselves!

To Bee, so prematurely introduced into the midst of those jars and
individual strivings of will and fancy, it seemed as if everything might
be made so easy in life by this simple method. If only everybody would
be good! The reader may think it was a nursery view of human life, and
yet what a solution it would give to every problem! Colonel Kingsward
then would have been more at home, would have been the real father who
commanded his children’s confidence, instead of papa, whose
peculiarities had to be studied, and in whose presence the children had
to be hushed and every occasion of disturbance avoided, and of whom they
were all more or less afraid. And Charlie would have been more or less a
second to him, thoughtful of all, chivalrous to the girls, fond of home,
instead of, as he was, pausing as it were on one foot while he was with
his family, anxious only to get away. And Bee--well, Bee perhaps would
have been different too had that new, yet old, golden rule come into
full efficacy. Oh, if everybody, including always one’s own self, would
only be good!

It makes the head go round to think what a wonderful revolution in the
world generally the adoption of that simplest method would produce. But
in poor Bee’s experience it was the last rule likely to be adopted in
Kingswarden, where, more and more to the puzzled consciousness of the
girl not able to cope with so many warring individualities, everyone was
going his own way.

It was in the early spring that Colonel Kingsward came down from town to
Kingswarden, looking less like the adoption of this method than ever
before. The children were in the hall when he came, busy with some great
game in which various skins which were generally laid out there were in
use as properties, making, it must be allowed, a scene of confusion in
that place. The Colonel was not expected. He had walked from the
station, and the sound of his voice stopped the fun with a sudden horror
of silence and fright, which, indeed, was not complimentary to a father.
Instead of greetings, he asked why the children were allowed to make
such a confusion in the place, with a voice which penetrated to the
depths of the house and brought Bee and Betty flying from the
drawing-room.

“Papa!” they both cried, in surprise, mingled with alarm. Colonel
Kingsward walked into the room they had left, ordering peremptorily the
children to the nursery, but finding certain friends of Betty’s there,
in full enjoyment of talk and tea, retreated again to his library, Bee
following nervously.

“Is your brother here?” he asked, harshly, establishing himself with his
back to the fire.

“My brother?” echoed Bee, for indeed there were half-a-dozen, and how
was she to know on the spur of the moment which he meant.

Colonel Kingsward looked, in the partial light (for a lamp which smoked
had been brought in hurriedly, to make things worse), as if he would
have liked to seize his daughter and wring her slender neck. He went on
with additional irritation: “I said your brother. The others, I have no
doubt, will provide trouble enough in their turn. For the moment it is,
of course, Charlie I mean. Is he here?”

“Papa! Why, he is at Oxford, you know, in the schools----”

Colonel Kingsward laughed harshly. “He was going in for honours, wasn’t
he? Wanted to go up to read in the long vacation--was full of what he
was going to do? Well, it has all ended in less than nothing, as I might
have known it would. Read that!” he cried, tossing a letter on the
table.

Bee, with her heart sick, took up and opened the letter, and struggled
to read, in her agitation, an exceedingly bad hand by an indifferent
light. She made out enough to see that Charlie had not succeeded in his
“schools,” that he had not even secured a “pass,” that he had incurred
the continual censure of his college authorities by shirking lectures,
failing in engagements, and doing absolutely no work. So far as was
known there was nothing against his moral character, but---- Bee, to
whom the censure of the college sounded like a sentence of death, put
down the dreadful letter carefully, as if it might explode, and raised
large eyes, widened with alarm and misery, to her father’s face.

“Oh, papa!” was all that she could say.

“I telegraphed to him to come home at once and meet me here. The fool,”
said Colonel Kingsward, pacing about the room, “is capable of not doing
that--of going away--of----”

“Papa, they say there is nothing against his character. Oh! you couldn’t
think that he would--do anything dreadful; not disappear, not----” Bee
said the rest in an anguish of suspicion and ignorance with her eyes.

“God knows what an idiot like that may do! Things are bad enough, but he
will, of course, think them worse than they are. There is one thing we
may be sure of,” he said, with a fierce laugh, “Charlie will do nothing
to make himself uncomfortable. He knows how to take care of himself.”
Colonel Kingsward walked up and down the room, gnawing the end of his
moustache. The lamp smoked, but he took no notice of it. “There is one
thing certain,” he said, “and that is, there’s a woman in it. I remember
now, he was always thinking of something; like an ass, I supposed it was
his studies. No doubt it was some Jezebel or other.”

“Papa,” said Bee.

“Speak out! Has he told you anything?” He stopped in front of her, and
stood looking with threatening eyes into her face. “If you keep back
anything from me,” he said, “your brother’s ruin will be on your head.”

“Papa,” said Bee, faltering, “it is not much I know. I know that there
was a lady who lived in Oxford----”

“Ah! The long vacation,” he exclaimed, with another angry laugh.

“He used to write long letters to her, and he told me her name.”

“That is something to the purpose. What was her name?”

“He said,” said Bee, in a horror of betraying her brother, yet impelled
to speak, “he said that she was called--Laura, papa.”

“What?” he cried, for Bee’s voice had sunk very low; and then he turned
away again with an impatient exclamation, calling her again a little
fool. “Laura, confound her! What does that matter? I thought you had
some real information to give.”

“Papa,” said Bee, timidly, “there is a little more, though perhaps it
isn’t information. When he took me to the Academy in summer I saw him
meet a lady. Oh, not a common person, a beautiful, grand-looking lady.
But it could not be the same,” Bee added, after a pause, “for she was
much older than Charlie--not a young lady at all.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this at the time?” cried Colonel Kingsward. “Can
one never secure the truth even from one’s own children? I should have
sent him off at once had I known. What do you mean by not young at all?”

“I should think,” said Bee, with diffidence and a great anxiety not to
exaggerate such a dreadful statement, “that she might perhaps have
been--thirty, papa.”

“You little idiot,” her father kindly replied.

Why was she a little idiot? But Bee had not time to go into that
question. The evening was full of agitation and anxiety. The poor little
girl, unused to such sensations, sat through dinner in a quiver of
anxious abstraction, listening for every sound. There were several
trains by which he might still come, and at any moment when the door
opened Charlie might present himself, pale with downfall and distress,
to meet his father’s angry look, whose eyes were fixed on the door
whenever it opened with as much preoccupation as Bee’s--with this
difference, that Bee’s eyes were soft with excuses and pity, while those
brilliant steely eyes which shone from beneath her father’s dark brows,
and which were the originals of her own, blazed with anger. When dinner
was over, which he hurried through, disturbing the servants in their
leisurely routine, Colonel Kingsward again called Bee to him into the
library. She was the only person to whom he could talk of the subject of
which his mind was full, which was the sole reason for this great
distinction, for he had very little patience with Bee’s trembling
remarks. “Don’t be a little fool,” was the answer he made to any timid
suggestion upon which she ventured; but yet there was a necessity upon
him to discuss it with someone, and Bee, however inadequate, had this
burden to bear.

“If the woman is the kind you say, and if she thinks there’s anything to
be made by it--why the fool may have married her,” he cried. “Heavens!
Think of it; married at three and twenty, without a penny! But,” he
added, colouring a little, “they are very knowing, these women. She
would find out that he was not worth her while, and probably throw him
off in time.”

“Oh, papa!” cried Bee, horrified by the thought that her brother might
be deserted in the moment of his downfall.

“That is the best we can hope. He will have Kingswarden, of course, when
I die, but not a penny--not a penny in the meantime to keep up any such
ridiculous--Listen! Is that the train?”

There was a cutting near Kingswarden through which the thundering of the
train was heard as it passed. This had been a great grievance at first,
but it was not without its conveniences to the accustomed ears of the
household now. They both listened with anxiety, knowing that by this
time it must have stopped at the station and deposited any passenger,
and for the next half-hour watched and waited; Bee, with all her being
in her ears, listened with an intensity of attention such as she had
never known before, holding her breath; while Captain Kingsward himself,
though he kept walking up and down the room, did so with a softened
step which made no sound on the thick carpet, not uttering a word,
listening too. To describe all the sounds they heard, or thought they
heard, how often the gate seemed to swing in the distance, and the
gravel start under a quick foot, would be endless. It was the last
train; if he did not come now it would be clear that he did not mean to
come. And it was now too late for any telegram. When it was no longer
possible to believe that he could have been detained on the way, Colonel
Kingsward drew a long breath of that disappointment which, in the
yielding of nervous tension, is almost for the moment a relief.

“If there is no letter to-morrow morning I shall go up to Oxford,” he
said, “and, Bee, if you like, you can come with me. You might be of use.
Don’t say anything to Betty or your aunt. Say you are going with me to
town by the early train, and that you may possibly not return till next
day. There is no need for saying any more.”

“Yes, papa,” said Bee, submissively. That was all he knew! No need for
saying any more to Betty, who had known every movement her sister made
since ever she was born! But, at all events, Bee made up her mind to
escape explanation so far as she could to-night. She paused for a moment
at the door of the drawing-room as she passed. No more peaceful scene
could have been presented. Betty was at the piano singing one song after
another, half for practice, half to amuse the aunt, who sat dozing in
her chair by the fire. The others had gone to bed, and careless youth
and still more careless age, knowing nothing of any trouble, pursued
their usual occupations in perfect composure and calm. The aunt knitted
mechanically, and dozed in the warmth and quiet which she loved, and
Betty went on singing her songs, indifferent to her audience, yet
claiming attention, breaking off now and then in the middle of a line to
ask “Do you like that, Aunt Ellen? Are you paying any attention, Aunt
Ellen?” “Yes, my dear, I like it very much,” the old lady said, and
dozed again. Bee turned away with a suppressed sob. Where was Charlie?
In disgrace, perhaps heart-broken, deserted by his love, afraid to meet
his father! It was foolish to think that he was out in the night,
wandering without shelter, without hope, for there was no need of any
such tragic circumstances, but this was the picture that presented
itself to Bee’s aching and inexperienced heart.




CHAPTER XXXIII.


CHARLIE was not in his rooms at College, he had not been there for some
days, and nobody could furnish any information as to where he was.
Colonel Kingsward had left Bee in the hotel while he went on to make his
inquiries. He was very guarded in the questions he asked, for though he
was himself very angry with his son, he was still careful for Charlie’s
reputation, explaining even to the college porter, who was very well
acquainted with the eccentricities of the gentlemen, that he had no
doubt his son had returned home, though they had unfortunately crossed
each other on the way. The Colonel tried to keep up this fiction even
with the sympathetic Don, who made matters so much worse by his
compassion, but who was very full and detailed in his relation of poor
Charlie’s backslidings, the heaviness of whose gate bill and the amount
of whose sins and penalties were terrible to hear. He had attended no
lectures, he had written no essays, he had been dumb and blank in every
examination.

“Out of consideration to you, Colonel Kingsward, the College has been
very forbearing, and shut its eyes as long as possible.”

“I wish, sir, the College had shown more common sense and let me know,”
the Colonel cried, in wrath; but that did not throw any light upon the
subject.

As it turned out, Charlie had not “gone in” for his “schools” at all. He
had done nothing that he ought to have done. What things he had done
which he ought not to have done remained to be discovered. His stern
father did not doubt that a sufficient number of these actual offences
would soon be found to add to the virtues omitted. He went back to the
hotel where Bee had been spending a miserable morning, and they sat
together in gloom and silence.

“You had better go home,” he said to her. “He may have got home by this
time, and I don’t see what use you can be here.”

Bee was very submissive, yet begged hard to return as far as London, at
least, with her father; to wait for another day, in case some trace of
the prodigal might be found. Many such parties have occupied the dreary
hotel rooms and stared in vain out of the windows, and watched with sick
hearts the passing throng, the shoals of undergraduates, to their eyes
all dutiful and well-doing, while the one in whom they are concerned is
absent, in what evil ways they know not. Poor Bee was too young to feel
the full weight of such alarms but she was as miserable as if she had
known everything that could happen in the vagueness of her consciousness
of despair and pain. What Charlie could have done, what would become of
him, what his father would do or could do, were all hidden from Bee. But
there was in it all a vague misery which was almost worse than clear
perception. Colonel Kingsward, with all his knowledge of the world, was
scarcely less vague. He did not know how to find out the secrets of an
under-graduate. Charlie had friends, but all of them protested that
they had seen very little of him of late. He had fallen off from sports
and exercise as much as from study. He had scarcely been on the cricket
ground all the summer; he had given up football; “boating on the river
with ladies,” he had been seen, but not recently, for the floods were
out and such amusements were no longer practicable. At night the Colonel
knew almost as little about his son as when he had arrived full of
certainty that the whole matter could be cleared up in a few hours.

Next day began gloomily with another visit to the Don, whom Colonel
Kingsward hoped to have seen the last of on their former exasperating
interview. As he had discovered nothing elsewhere, he went back again to
the authority, who had also hoped on his side to be free from the
anxious but impatient father, and they had another long talk, which
ended like the first in nothing. The college potentate had no idea where
the youth could have gone. Charlie had left most of his property still
in his rooms; he had gone out with only a little bag, nobody suspecting
him of an intention to “go down.” After they had gone over the question
again, the Don being by no means as sympathetic as the first time, and
contributing a good deal to Colonel Kingsward’s acquaintance with his
son’s proceedings--a sudden light was for the first time thrown upon the
question by a chance remark. “You know, of course, that he had friends
in Oxford?”

“Like other young men, I suppose. I have seen several of them, and they
can give me no information.”

“I don’t mean undergraduates: people living in the town--ladies,” said
the Don, who was a young man, almost with a blush. And after sending for
Charlie’s scout, and making other inquiries, Colonel Kingsward was
furnished with an address. He went back to the hotel quickly, in some
excitement, to inform Bee of the new clue he had obtained, but he
scarcely reached the room where she was awaiting him when he was told
that a lady had just asked for him downstairs. Bee was sent off
immediately to her room while her father received this unexpected
visitor. Bee had been watching at the window all the morning, looking
down upon that world of young men, all going about their work or their
pleasure, all in their fit place, while Charlie was no one knew where.
The poor girl had been breaking her heart over that thought, wistfully
watching the others among whom he ought to have been, feeling the pang
of that comparison, sometimes imagining she saw a figure like his in the
distance, and watching, as it approached, how every trace died away.
Where was he? Bee’s young heart was very sore. The vacancy was appalling
to her, filling itself with all kinds of visionary shapes of terror. She
could not think of him only as wandering away in misery and despair,
feeling himself to have failed, ashamed and afraid to look anyone in the
face. She scarcely understood her father when he hurried her out of the
sitting-room, but obeyed him with a sense of trouble and injury though
without knowing why.

Bee spent a very forlorn hour in her room. She heard the sound of the
voices next door. Her father’s well known tones, and a low voice which
she felt must be a woman’s. She would have been much tempted to listen
to what they said if it had been possible, but there was no door between
the rooms, and she could only hear that a long and close conversation
was going on, without making out a word of it. She was very restless in
her anxiety, wandering from the window to the door, which she opened
with a desire to hear better, which defeated itself--and to see better,
though there was nothing to be seen. It seemed to Bee that half the day
was over before the sound of movement in the sitting-room warned her
that the conference was breaking up. Even after that there was a long
pause, and the talking went on, though it moved closer to the door. Bee
had gradually grown in excitement as those sounds went on. She stole to
her own half-open door, as the one next to it was opened, and the
visitor came forth attended with the greatest courtesy by Colonel
Kingsward, who accompanied her to the stairs. There the lady turned
round and gave him her hand, turning her face towards the spot where the
unsuspected watcher stood gazing with eyes of wonder and terror.

“Not another step,” she said, with a sweet but decided voice. “The only
thing I will ask from you, Colonel Kingsward, will be a line, a single
line, to say that all is well.”

“You may rely upon that,” the Colonel said, bowing over the hand he
held, “but may not I see you to your carriage, call your servant?”

“I am walking,” she said, “and I am alone; come no further, please; one
line to say that all is well.” He still held her hand and she gave it a
little, significant pressure, adding in a low tone: “And happy--and
forgiven!”

Bee stood as if she had been turned to stone; a little, clandestine
figure within the shelter of the door. It was a beautiful face that was
thus turned towards her for a minute, unconscious of her scrutiny, and
the voice was sweet. Oh, not a woman like any other woman! She said to
herself that she remembered the voice and would have known it anywhere;
and the look, half kind, yet with a touch of ridicule, of mockery in it.
This was evidently not what the Colonel felt. He descended a few of the
stairs after her, until turning again with a smile and with her hands
extended as if to drive him back, she forbade his further attendance. He
returned to the sitting-room thoughtfully, yet with a curious, softened
expression upon his face, and a few minutes afterwards, not at once, he
came to the door again and called Bee. There was still a smile lingering
about his lips, though his mouth had stiffened back into its usual
somewhat stern composure.

“Come in,” he said, “I have something to tell you. I have had a very
strange visit--a visit from a lady.”

“I saw her,” said Bee, under her breath, but her father was too much
pre-occupied to hear.

“If this was, as I suppose, the lady whom you and your brother met, you
are right, Bee, in thinking her very remarkable. She is one of the
handsomest women I ever saw, and with a charm about her, which--. But,
of course what you want to hear is about Charlie. I am glad to tell you
that she has very much relieved my mind about Charlie, Bee.”

Bee stood before her father with her hands folded, with the most
curious sense of revolt and opposition in her mind--looking at him, a
spectator would have said, with something of the sternness that was
habitual to him, but so very inappropriate on her soft brow. She made no
reply to this. Her countenance did not relax. Relieved about Charlie?
No! Bee did not believe it. Pity and terror for Charlie seemed to take
stronger and stronger possession of her heart.

“It is a long story,” he said. “Sit down, you have got a way of standing
staring, my dear. I wish you had more womanly models like the lady I
have just been talking to--perfectly clear and straightforward in what
she said, but with a feminine grace and sweetness. Well, it appears that
Charlie had the good luck to get introduced to this lady about a year
ago. Sit down, I tell you, I won’t have you staring at me in that rude
way.”

There was a little pause, and Bee sat down abruptly, and not very
gracefully. Colonel Kingsward could not but remark the difference. He
followed her movements for a moment with his eyes, and then he began
again--

“For all I can make out, he has been treated with a kindness which
should have done everything for a young man. He has been invited to the
house of these ladies--he has met all sorts of people who ought to be of
use to him, whom it was a distinct advantage to meet--he has been kept
out of the usual foolish diversions of young men. So far as I can make
out, there is nothing against his character except what these
Don-fellows call idleness--a thing that scarcely tells against a young
man in after-life, unless he is a parson, or a schoolmaster, or
something of that kind. Even the missing of his degree,” said the
Colonel, pulling his moustache reflectively, “is of little importance
among practical men. So long as he can get through in his modern
languages, and so forth, of what importance are the classics? I am very
much relieved in my mind about Charlie. She thinks he must have gone
straight down to London, instead of going home.”

“Who is the lady, papa?”

Bee’s interest in Charlie seemed to have dropped, as the Colonel’s had
done, for the moment. His advocate had made herself the first person on
the horizon.

“The lady? So far as I can make out she is living here with some
friends, up in the district called the Parks, where a great many people
now live. She says she has always taken an interest in the
undergraduates, who are left so sadly to themselves, and that, being of
an age to make it possible, she has wished very much to devote herself
to do what she could for these boys. Unfortunately, with her unusual
personal attractions----.” The Colonel stopped short and bit his
moustache. “After all her kindness to your brother, encouraging him in
his work and setting his duty before him--and no elder sister, no
mother, could have been kinder, from all she tells me--the foolish boy
repaid her good offices by--what do you think? But you will never
guess.”

“And I will never, never believe it,” cried Bee, “if it was
anything--anything that was not nice on Charlie’s part!” Her voice was
quite hoarse in her emotion, her secret fury against this woman, of whom
she knew nothing, rising more and more.

“You little fool!” her father said, rising and standing up against the
mantel-piece. He laughed angrily, and looked at her with his most
contemptuous air. “One would think that even in their cradles women must
begin to hate women,” he said.

Bee, who hated no one unless it was this woman whom she feared but did
not know, grew angry red. Her blue eyes flashed and shone like northern
lights. The cruel and contemptuous assumption which touched her pride of
sex, added vehemence to the other emotion which was already strong
enough, and roused her up into a kind of fury.

“If she says anything bad of Charlie I don’t believe it,” she cried,
“not a word, not a word! Whatever he has done she has driven him to it!”
Then Bee was suddenly silent, panting, terrified or afraid that her
little outburst of passion would close all further revelations.

“It seems unnecessary to add another word in face of such fierce
prejudice!”

“Oh, papa, forgive me. Tell me; I shall say nothing more.”

“You have said a great deal too much already. After this,” he said,
sarcastically, “you will perhaps think that your brother--of three and
twenty, without a penny or a prospect--did Miss Lance honour by forcing
a proposal upon her, making love to her at the end of all----”

“Miss Lance!” Bee said, with a sharp cry.

The Colonel took no notice of the interruption. He went on with a kind
of disdainful comment to himself rather than to her.

“After all, there are things which a lady has to put up with, which we
don’t take into consideration. A young fool whom she has been kind to,
knowing he has nobody near to look after him, no mother”--his voice even
grew a little tender at this point--“and by way of reward the idiot
falls in love with her, asks a woman like that to share his
insignificant little life! Jove! What a piece of impertinence!” the
Colonel said, with an angry laugh.

“Did you say,” said Bee, with faltering lips, “Miss Lance, papa?”

He turned upon her with a look of extreme surprise.

“Why shouldn’t I have said Miss Lance? What is there unusual in the
name?”

Bee looked at him with a dumb rebellion, an almost scorn and passion far
greater than his own. He had forgotten the name--but Bee had not
forgotten it. The fact that Bee’s own young life had suffered shipwreck
had perhaps escaped from his memory altogether, though it was she who
had done it. Bee looked at him with her blue eyes blazing, remembering
everything that he had forgotten. Her brother had gone out of her mind,
and all the history of his Laura, and the way in which he had been
enfolded in this fatal web. She went back to her own wrongs--forgetting
that she had keenly confirmed her father’s decision and rejected Aubrey
on what she thought to be other and sufficient grounds. She thought only
of the moment when sudden darkness had fallen upon her in the first
sunshine of her life, and she had struggled against the rigid will of
her father, who would listen to no explanations--who would not
understand. And all for the sake of this woman--the spider who dragged
fly after fly into her net; the witch, the enchantress of whom all
poems and stories spoke! Her exasperation was so intense that she forgot
all the laws of respect and obedience in which her very being had been
bound, and looked at her father as at an equal, an enemy whom she
scorned as well as feared.

“What is the meaning of these looks,” he said, “I am altogether at a
loss to understand you, Bee. Why this fury at a name--which you have
never heard before, so far as I know.”

“You think I have never heard it before?” said Bee, in her passion. “It
shows how little you think of me, or care for anything that has happened
to me. Oh, I have heard it before, and I shall hear it again, I know. I
know I shall hear it again. And you don’t mind, though you are our
father! You don’t remember!” Bee was still very young, and she had that
fatal woman’s weakness which spoils every crisis with inevitable tears.
Her exasperation was too great for words. “You don’t remember!” she
cried, flinging the words at him like a storm; and then broke down in a
passion of choking sobs, unable to say more.




CHAPTER XXXIV.


TO do Colonel Kingsward justice, he was taken entirely by surprise by
Bee’s outburst. He had no remembrance of the name. The name had been
wholly unimportant to him even at the time when it had come under his
notice. The previous claimant to Aubrey Leigh’s affections had been “the
woman,” no more, to his consciousness. He did not remember anything
about the business now, except that there was a story about a woman, and
that he would not permit his young daughter to marry a man concerning
whom such a story existed. Even after Bee had left him, when he really
made an effort to pursue into the recesses of his mind anything that was
connected with that name, he could not make it out. Was it perhaps a
tyrannical governess? but that would not explain the girl’s vehement
outcry. He had not thought for a long time of Bee’s interrupted love,
and broken-off engagement. Of what consequence is such an episode to so
young a girl? And there were other matters in his mind of what seemed a
great deal more importance. Whatever was the source of Bee’s previous
knowledge of Miss Lance, she hated that singularly attractive woman, as
it is usual for the sex--Colonel Kingsward thought--to hate
instinctively every other woman who is endowed with unusual attractions.

What a magnificent creature that woman was! How finely she had talked of
the undeveloped boy to whom she had hoped to be of service, and with
what genuine feeling, half-abashed, distressed, yet not without a gleam
of amusement, she had told him of the wonderful scene at the end, when
Charlie had asked her to marry him.

“Me! A woman who might be his mother!” she had said, with beautiful
candour; though it was not candour, it was more like jest, seeing that
she was still young--young enough to turn any man’s head. And she had
added hastily, “It must have been my fault. Somehow I must have led him
astray, though I was so far from intending it. A boy like your son would
not have done such a wild thing had he not supposed----” She put up her
hands to her face to hide a blush. “That is the worst of us, poor
women,” she had said, “we cannot show an interest even in a boy but he
supposes--oh, Colonel Kingsward, can’t you imagine what I felt, wishing
solely to be of use to your son, who is such a good, ingenuous, _nice_
boy--and finding in a moment, without the least warning, that he had
mistaken me like _that_!”

Colonel Kingsward was of opinion, and so was everybody who knew him,
that he was by no means an impressionable man; but it would be
impossible to say how touched he had been by that explanation. And she
was so sorry for Charlie. She avowed that, after what had happened, she
would have considered herself inexcusable if she had not come to his
father, however unpleasant it might be to herself, to show him how
little, how very little, Charlie was to blame.

“You must not--must not be angry with him,” she had said, joining her
hands in appeal. “Oh, forgive him; it is so much my fault. If I could
but bear the penalty! But I cannot endure to think that the poor boy
should be punished when all the time I, who am so much older than he is,
am the one to blame. I ought to have known better. I am at your mercy,
Colonel Kingsward. You cannot say anything worse to me than I have done
to myself; but he, poor boy, is really not to blame.”

The Colonel had no wish to say anything to her that was uncomplimentary.
He entered into her position with the most unusual sympathy. Perhaps he
had never had so warm a feeling of understanding and affection for
anyone before. The compassion and the appeal was something quite new and
original to him. He was not a man to be sympathetic with the troubles of
a middle-aged spinster--an elderly flirt, as he would probably have
called her, had he heard the story at second hand; in such a case he
would have denounced the mature siren in the terms usual to men of
experience. But the presence of this lady made all the difference. She
was not like anyone else. The usual phrases brought forward on such
occasions were meaningless or worse in respect to her. He was softened
to Charlie, too, by the story, though he could have raved at his son’s
folly. The puppy!--to think a woman like that could care for him! And
yet, as she said, there was no harm in the boy; only absurdity,
presumption, the last depths of fatuity. Poor young fool! But it was a
different thing from racing towards the bottomless pit for the mere
indulgence of his own appetites, as so many young men did, and if this
was the only reason of Charlie’s downfall it involved no loss of
character and need make no breach in his career, which was the chief
thing. He could make up his lost ground, and the F.O. would care very
little for what the Dons said. The idleness of a boy in love (the puppy!
inexcusable in his presumption, but yet with plenty of justification at
least) could do him no more than temporary harm in any case.

These thoughts passed through the Colonel’s mind with a great sense of
relief. It did not occur to him that Charlie, when he saw his folly,
could have much difficulty in getting over such a misplaced sentiment.
It must be done, and the boy must feel that such a hope was as much
above him as was the moon in the skies. He must make up his mind to
apply himself, to get through his examination, to begin his real
life--which his father would certainly impress upon him was not mere
amusement or happiness, if he liked to call it so, but work and a sharp
struggle to secure his standing. As for his degree, that was a matter of
complete indifference to Colonel Kingsward. The boy had his experience
of Oxford life to talk of and fall back upon; he was a University man
all the same, though he had not been crowned by any laurels he had made
some friends, and he had gained the necessary familiarity with that
phase of a young man’s existence. What did the details matter, and who
would ever ask about his degree? An attaché does not put B.A. or M.A.
(which was which, or if there was any difference, or on what occasion
such vanities should be displayed the Colonel was quite unaware) to his
name like a schoolmaster. Nothing could be of less importance than this.
He dismissed Charlie from his mind accordingly with much relief. It was
not at all unnatural that the boy should have gone to town instead of
going to Kingswarden. No doubt by this time he had made his way home,
and this reminded the Colonel that it would be as well to send his
sister off at once to meet Charlie there. He called Bee again
accordingly from her room, where she had taken refuge, and instructed
her in what he desired.

“There is a train in an hour,” he said. “You had better get ready. I
wish you to go home at once. Charlie will be there by this time, I have
no doubt, and I should like you to let him know that if he is reasonable
and drives all folly from his mind, and addresses himself at once to his
preparation for the exam., he shall hear no more from me about the
Oxford business. It depends upon himself whether it is ever alluded to
again.”

“Papa,” said Bee, faltering a little, “am I to go alone?”

“Why shouldn’t you go alone? Are you afraid of getting into a cab at
Paddington and driving to Victoria, the most ordinary everyday business?
Why, I thought the girls of your period revolted against being
protected, and were able to take care of themselves wherever they went?”

Now Colonel Kingsward had always insisted on surrounding his daughters
with quite unnecessary care, being, as he prided himself, on all
questions in respect to women, of the old school.

“Oh, no,” said Bee, very tremulous, looking at him with eyes full of
meaning, “I am not afraid.”

“Then why do you make any fuss about it?” he said. “I shall stay behind
for a few hours, perhaps for another night. I must see whether he has
left any debts, and square accounts with the College, and--settle
everything.” Bee was still looking at him with that troubled air of
meaning, and he looked at her with a stern look, putting her down; but
there was in his eyes a certain understanding of her meaning and a
shrinking from her scrutiny all the same. “You have just time to get
ready,” he said, pulling out his watch and holding it up to her. And Bee
had nothing to do but to obey. It was not the drive from Paddington to
Victoria, the change from one railway to another, which frightened her,
though for a girl who had never done anything alone, that was not a
pleasant thought; but the girl was deeply disturbed to leave her father
there within the power of the woman whom more than ever she looked upon
with terror as if she had been an embodied Fate. How ludicrous was the
idea that a girl of twenty should be disturbed and anxious at the
thought of leaving her father unprotected by her poor little
guardianship--and such a father as Colonel Kingsward! Bee saw at once
the folly and futility of such a notion, but she could not rid herself
of the alarm. Her terror of this woman, now fully evident as the same
who had wrecked her own life, was more than ever a superstitious panic.

Bee’s mind was wholly possessed with this idea. She thought of the
beautiful, dreadful lady in Christabel. She thought of that other
shuddering image in the poem, of “the angel, beautiful and bright,” who
looked the hero in the face; “And how he knew it was a fiend, that
miserable knight----” Aubrey had not known she was a fiend, nor Charlie;
and now papa! What could such a woman do to papa? He was old (Bee
thought) beyond the reach of the influences which had moved the others.
What could Fate do to him? She asked herself this question in her great
alarm, trying to beat down the terror in her bosom, and persuade herself
that it was foolishness. But the more she thought the more her heart
beat with fright and apprehension. It seemed to her, somehow, as if the
former dangers had been nothing in comparison with this, although she
did not know what it was that she feared.

Colonel Kingsward walked with his daughter to the station, and he was
very affable and kind to her, taking unusual pains to make her feel that
there was nothing to fear. He selected carefully a carriage which was
reserved for ladies, and put her into the charge of the guard, whom he
desired to find a cab for her at Paddington, and look after her in every
way. Nothing could be more fatherly, more thoughtful than he was; but
all these precautions, instead of reassuring Bee, increased her
sensation of danger. For the Colonel, though he had always insisted upon
every precaution, had not been in the habit of personally seeing to the
comfort of his children. She followed him with her eyes as he occupied
himself with all these little cares, and explained to the guard what was
to be done. And then he went to the bookstall and bought her illustrated
papers and a book to amuse her on the journey, Bee watching all the time
with growing wonder. She gave a hurried glance now and then around her,
sweeping the station from one end to another, with a terror of seeing
somewhere appear the woman who had brought such pain and trouble into
her life--though this, too, was folly, as she was aware. And when at
last the carriage door was closed, and the train almost in motion, Bee
gave her father a last look, in which there were unutterable things. He
had not met her eyes hitherto, whether by chance or precaution. But now
he was off his guard and did so. Their looks encountered with a clash,
as if they had been meeting swords, the same eyes, brilliant with that
blue blaze, flashing like lightning. But it was the father’s fiery eyes
which gave way. The girl’s look penetrated into his very being; his
dropped, almost abashed. How did this strange change of position come
about? It was anything but reassuring to Bee. It seemed to her as if
already a new chapter of misery and dismay had opened in life, although
her fears had taken no shape, and she could not tell what calamity was
possible. The very vagueness made it all the more appalling to her
inexperienced heart.

As for Colonel Kingsward, he saw his little daughter go away with a
relief which he felt to be ridiculous. That Bee’s looks should affect
his movements one way or another was beyond measure absurd, and yet he
was relieved that she was gone, and felt himself more at ease. He had a
great many things to do--to settle his son’s accounts, to take his name
off the college books, to wind up that early unsuccessful chapter of
Charlie’s life. But he now felt very little real anger against
Charlie--this shipwreck of his had suddenly introduced his father to
what seemed a new view and new objects, which indeed he did not in any
way define to himself, but of which he felt the stimulus with vague
exhilaration to the bottom of his heart.




CHAPTER XXXV.


WHEN Charlie Kingsward fled from Oxford, half mad with disappointment
and misery, he had no idea or intention about the future left in his
mind. He had come to one of those strange passes in life beyond which
the imagination does not go. He had been rejected with that deepest
contumely which takes the aspect of the sweetest kindness, when a woman
affects the most innocent suspicion at the climax to which, consciously
or unconsciously, she has been working up.

“Oh, my poor boy, was that what you were thinking of?” There is no way
in which a blow can be administered with such sharp and keen effect. It
made the young man’s brain, which was only an ordinary brain, and for
some time had exercised but small restraining power upon him in the
hurry and sweep of his feelings, reel. When he pulled the door upon him
of those gardens of Aminda, that fool’s paradise in which he had been
wasting his youth, and which were represented in his case by a very
ordinary suburban garden in that part of Oxford called the Parks, his
rejected and disappointed passion had every possible auxiliary emotion
to make it unbearable. Keen mortification, humiliation, the sharp sense
of being mocked and deceived; the sudden conviction of having given what
seemed to the half-maddened boy his whole life, for nothing whipped him
like the lashes of the Furies. In most of the crises of life the thought
what to do next occurs with almost the rapidity of lightning after a
great catastrophe, but Charlie felt as if there was nothing beyond. The
whole world had crumbled about him. There was no next step; his very
fooling had failed him. He rushed back to his rooms by instinct, as a
wounded creature would rush to its lair, but on his way was met by eager
groups returning from the “Schools,” in which he ought to have been,
discussing among each other the stiffness of the papers, and how they
had been done. This would scarcely add to his pain, but it added to that
sickening effort of absolute failure of the demolition of everything
around and before him, which was what he felt the most. They made the
impossible more impossible still, and cut off every retreat. When he
stood in his room, amid all the useless books which he had not opened
for days or weeks, and heard the others mounting the staircase outside
his locked door, it seemed to the unhappy young man as though the floor
under his feet was the last spot on which standing ground was possible,
and that beyond and around there was nothing but chaos. For what reason
and on what impulse he rushed to London it would be difficult to tell.
He had little money, few friends--or rather none who were not also the
friends of his family--no idea or intention of doing anything.

“Perhaps the world will end to-night.”

He did not even think so much as that, though perhaps it was in some
sort the feeling in his mind. Yet no suggestions of suicide, or of
anything that constitutes a moral suicide, occurred to him. These would
have been something definite, they would have provided for a future, but
Charlie was stupefied and had none. He had not so much sense of any
resource as consisted in a pistol or a plunge into the river. He flung
himself into the train and went to London, because after a time the
sound of his comrades, or of those who ought to have been his comrades,
became intolerable to him. They kept pacing, rushing up and down the
staircase, calling to each other. One or two, indeed, talked at his own
closed door, driving him into a silent frenzy. As soon as they were gone
he seized a travelling bag, thrust something, he did not know what, into
it, and fled--to the desert--to London, where he would be lost and no
one would drive him frantic by calling to him, by making believe that
there was something left in life.

It occurred to him somehow, by force of that secondary consciousness
which works for us when our minds are past all exertion, to fling
himself into the corner of a third-class carriage as the place where he
was least likely to meet anyone he knew, though indeed the precaution
was scarcely necessary, since he could not have recognised anyone, as he
sat huddled up in his corner, staring blankly at the landscape that flew
past the window and seeing nothing. When he arrived in the midst of the
din and bustle of the great railway station, he fled once more through
the crowd into the greater crowd outside, clutching instinctively at the
bag which lay beside him, but seeing no one, nor whither he went nor
where he was going. He walked fast, and in a fierce unconsciousness
pushing his way through everything, and though he had in reality no aim,
took instinctively the way to his father’s house--his home--though it
was at that time no home for him, being occupied by strangers. When he
got into the park a vague recollection of this penetrated through the
maze in which he was enveloped, and for a moment he paused, but then
went on walking at the same pace, making the circuit of the park which
lay before him in the mists of the afternoon, the frosty sun setting,
the hay taking a rosy tint. He went all round the silences of the
half-deserted walks, beginning to feel vaguely the strange desolate
sentiment of not knowing where to go, though only in the secondary phase
of his consciousness. Until all at once his strength seemed to fail him,
his limbs grew feeble, his steps slow, and he stopped short,
mechanically, as he had walked, not knowing why, and flung himself upon
a bench, where he sat long, motionless, as if that had now become the
only thing solid in the world and there was no step remaining to him
beyond.

A young man, though he may have numberless friends, may yet make a
despairing transit like this from one place to another through the midst
of a crowd without being seen by anyone who knows him; if the encounters
of life are wonderful, the failures to encounter, the manner in which we
walk alone with friends on all hands, and in our desperate moments, when
help is most necessary, do not meet or come within sight of any, is
equally wonderful. The Kingswards had a large circle of acquaintance,
and Charlie himself had the numberless intimates of a public school boy,
a young university man, acquainted with half the youth of his
period--yet nobody saw him, except one to whom he would scarcely have
accorded a salutation in ordinary circumstances. Aubrey Leigh, who had
been so strangely and closely connected for a moment with the Kingsward
family, and then so swiftly and peremptorily cut off, arrived in London
from a short visit to a suburban house by the same train which brought
Charlie, and caught sight of him as he jumped out of his compartment
with his bag in his hand. A very cool, self-possessed, and trim young
man young Kingsward had always appeared to the other, with whose
brightest and at the same time most painful recollections his figure was
so connected. To see him now suddenly, with that air of desperation
which had triumphed over all his natural habits and laws, that
abstracted look, clutching his bag, half leaping, half stumbling out of
the carriage, going off at a swift, unconscious pace, pushing through
every crowd, filled Aubrey with surprise which soon turned into anxiety.
Charlie Kingsward, with a bag in his hand, rushing through the London
streets conveyed an entirely new idea to the minds of the spectators.
What such an arrival would have meant in ordinary circumstances would
have been the rattling up of a hansom, the careless calling out of an
address, the noisy progress over the stones, of the driver expectant of
something more than his fare, and keenly cognisant of the habits of the
young gentlemen from Oxford.

Aubrey quickened his own pace to follow the other, whose arrival this
time was in such different guise. A sudden terror seized his mind,
naturally quite unjustified by the outward circumstances. Was anyone
ill?--which meant, was Bee ill? Had anything dreadful happened? A
moment’s reflection would have shown that in such a case the hansom
would be more needed than usual, as conveying her brother the more
quickly to his home. But Aubrey did not pause on probabilities. A moment
more would have made him sure of the unlikelihood that Charlie would be
sent for in case of Bee’s illness, unless, indeed, the question had been
one of life and death.

But he had not even heard of his love for many months. His heart was
hungry for news of her, and in that case he would have done his best to
intercept Charlie, to extract from him, if possible, some news of his
sister. He followed, accordingly, with something of the same headlong
haste with which Charlie was pushing through the streets, and for a long
time, up to the gates of the park, indeed, kept him in sight. At the
rate at which the young man was going it was impossible to do more.

Then Aubrey suddenly lost sight of the figure he was pursuing. There was
a group of people collected for some vulgar, unsupportable object or
other at that point, and it was there that Charlie deflected from the
straight road for home, which he had hitherto taken, and which his
pursuer took it for granted he would follow for the rest of the way.
When Aubrey had pushed his way through the little crowd Charlie was no
longer visible. He looked to left and to right in vain, scrutinised the
short cut over the park, and the broad road full of passing carriages
and wayfarers, but saw no trace of the figure he sought. Aubrey then
walked quickly to the point where Charlie, as he supposed, must be
going, and soon came to the gate on the other side and the street itself
in which the house of the Kingswards was. But he saw no sign of Charlie,
nor of anyone looking for him. He himself had no acquaintance with that
house, to which he had never been admitted, but he had passed it many
times in the vain hope of seeing Bee at a window, not knowing that it
was occupied by strangers. While he walked down the street, however,
anxiously gazing to see if there were any signs of illness, asking
himself whether he dared to inquire at the door, he saw a gentleman come
up and enter with a latch key, who certainly did not belong to the
Kingsward family. This changed the whole current of Aubrey’s thoughts.
It was not here then that Charlie was coming. His rapid and wild walk
could not mean any disaster to the family--any trouble to Bee.

The discovery was at once a disappointment and a relief; a relief from
the anxiety which had gradually been gaining upon him, a disappointment
of the hope of hearing something of her. For if Charlie was not going
home, who could trace out where such a young man might be going? To the
dogs, Aubrey thought, instinctively; to the devil, to judge by his
looks. Yet Charlie Kingsward, the most correct of modern young men, had
surely in him no natural proclivity towards that facile descent. What
could it be that had driven him along like a leaf before the wind?

Aubrey was himself greatly disturbed and stirred up by this encounter.
He had schooled himself to quiet, and the pangs of his overthrow, though
not quenched, had been kept under with a strong hand. The life which he
desired for himself, which he had so fully planned, so warmly hoped for,
had been broken to pieces and made an end of, leaving the way he had
chosen blank to him, as he thought, for evermore. He had been very
unfortunate in that way, his early venture ending in bitter
disappointment; his other, more wise, more sweet, cut off before it had
ever been. But he was a reasonable being, and knew that life had to be
put to other uses, even when that sole fair path which the heart desired
was closed. He had given it up definitely, neither thinking nor hoping
again for the household life, the patriarchal existence among his own
fields, his own people, under his own roof, and was now doing his best
to conform his life to a more grey and monotonous standard.

But the sight of Charlie, or rather the sight of Bee’s brother,
evidently under the influence of some strong feeling, and utterly
carried away by it so as to ignore all that regard for appearance and
decorum which had been his leading principle, came suddenly like a touch
upon a wound, reviving all the questions and impatiences of the past.
Aubrey felt that he could not endure the ignorance of her and all her
ways which had fallen over him like a pall, cutting off her being from
him as if they were not still living in the same world, still within
reach of each other. He might endure, he said to himself, to be parted
from her, to give up hope of her, since she willed it so--yet, at
least, he must know something of her, find out if she were ill or well,
what she was doing, where she was even; for that mere outside detail he
did not know. How was it possible he should bear this--not even to know
where she was? This thought took hold of him, and drove him into a fever
of sudden feeling. Oh! yes; he had resigned himself to live without her,
to endure his solitary existence far from her, since she willed it so;
but not even to know where she was, how she was, what she was doing!

Suddenly, in a moment, the fiery stinging came back, the sword plunged
into the wound. He had not for a moment deluded himself with the idea
that he was cured of it, but yet it had been subdued by necessity, by
the very silence which now he felt to be intolerable. He went back into
the park, where the long lines of the misty paths were now almost
deserted, gleams of the lamps outside shining through the dark tracery
of the branches, and all quiet except in the broad road, still sounding
with a diminished stream of carriages. He dived into the intersections
of the deserted paths, something as Charlie had done, seeking
instinctively a silent place where he could be alone with the
newly-aroused torment of his thoughts.

When he came suddenly upon the bench upon which Charlie had flung
himself, his first movement was to turn back. He had been walking over
the grass, and his steps were consequently noiseless, and he was in the
mood to which any human presence--the possible encounter of anyone who
might speak to him and disturb his own hurrying passions--was
intolerable. But as he turned, his eye fell on the bag--the dusty,
half-empty thing still clutched by a hand that seemed more or less
unconscious. This insignificant detail arrested Aubrey. He moved a
little way, keeping on the grass, to get a fuller view of the
half-reclining figure. And then he made out in the partial light that it
was the same figure which he had pursued so long.

What was Charlie doing here in this secluded spot--he, the most unlike
any such retirement, the well-equipped, confident, prosperous young man
of the world, subject to so few delusions, knowing his way so well, both
in the outer and the inner world?

Aubrey was more startled than tongue can tell. He thought no longer of
family disaster, of illness, or trouble. Whatever was amiss, it was
evidently Charlie who was the sufferer. He paused for a minute or more,
reflecting what he should do. Then he stepped forward upon the gravel,
and sitting down, put his hand suddenly upon that which held the
half-filled bag.

“Kingsward!” he said.




CHAPTER XXXVI.


MEANWHILE Colonel Kingsward had remained in Oxford. It was necessary
that he should regulate all Charlie’s affairs, find out and pay what
bills he had left, and formally sever his connection with the
University. It is a thing which many fathers have had to do, with pain
and sorrow, and a sense of premature failure, which is one of the
bitterest things in life; but Colonel Kingsward had not this painful
feeling to aggravate the annoyance and vexation which he actually felt.
The fact that his son had been idle in the way of books, and was leaving
Oxford without taking his degree, did not affect his mind much. Many
young fellows did that, especially in the portion of the world to which
Charlie belonged. The Colonel was irritated by having to interfere, by
the trouble he was having, and the deviation from salutary routine, but
he felt no humiliation either for himself or his son. And Charlie’s
liabilities were not large, so far as he could discover. The fellow, at
least, had no vices, he said to himself. Even the unsympathetic Don had
nothing to say against him but that charge of idleness, which the
Colonel rather liked than otherwise. Had he been able to say that it was
his son’s social or even athletic successes which were the causes of the
idleness he would have liked it altogether. He paid Charlie’s bills with
a compensating consciousness that these were the last that would have to
be paid at Oxford, and he was not even sorry that he could not get back
to town by the last train. Indeed, I think he could have managed that
very well had he tried. He remained for the second night with wonderful
equanimity, finding, as a matter of course, a man he knew in the hotel,
and dining not unpleasantly that day. Before he went back to town, he
thought it only civil to go out to the Parks to return, as politeness
demanded, the visit of the lady who had so kindly and courageously gone
to see him, and from whom he had received the only explanation of
Charlie’s strange behaviour. He went forth as soon as he had eaten an
early luncheon, in order to be sure to find Miss Lance before she went
out, and stopped only to throw a rapid glance in passing at a band of
young ruffians--mud up to their eyes, and quite undistinguishable for
the elegant undergraduates which some of them were--who were playing
football in the Parks. The Colonel had, like most men, a warm interest
in athletic sports, but his soldierly instincts disliked the mud. Miss
Lance’s house was beyond that much broken up and down-trampled green. It
was a house in a garden of the order brought into fashion by the late
Randolph Caldecott, red with white “fixings” and pointed roof, and it
bore triumphantly upon its little gate post the name of Wensleydale,
Oxford Dons, and the inhabitants of that district generally, being fond
of such extension titles. Colonel Kingsward unconsciously drew himself
together, settled his head into his collar, and twisted his moustache,
as he knocked at the door, and yet it was not an imposing door. It was
opened, not by a solemn butler, but by a neat maid, who showed Colonel
Kingsward into a trim drawing-room, very feminine and full of flowers
and knick-knacks. Here he waited full five minutes before anyone
appeared, looking about him with much curiosity, examining the little
stands of books, the work-tables, the writing-tables, the corners for
conversation. It was not a large room, and yet space had been found for
two little centres of social intercourse. There were, therefore, the
Colonel divined, two ladies who shared this abode. Colonel Kingsward had
never been what is called a ladies’ man. The feminine element in life
had been supplied to him in that subdued way naturally exhibited by a
yielding and gentle wife in a house where the husband is supreme. He was
quite unacquainted with it in its unalloyed state, and the spectacle
amused and pleasantly affected him with a sense at once of superiority
and of novelty. It was pleasant to see how these little known creatures
arranged themselves in their own private dominion, where they had
everything their own way, and the touch of the artificial which
appeared in all these dainty particulars seemed appropriate and
commended itself agreeably to the man who was accustomed to a broader
and larger style of household economy. A man likes to see the difference
well marked, at least a man who holds Colonel Kingsward’s ideas of life.
He had gone so far as to note the “Laura” with a large and flowing “L”
on the notepaper, which “L” was repeated on various pretty articles
about. When the door opened and Miss Lance appeared, she came up to him
holding out both her hands as to an old friend.

“Will you forgive me for keeping you waiting, Colonel Kingsward? The
fact is we have just come in, and you know that a woman has always a
toilette to make, not like you lucky people who put on or put off a hat
and all is done.”

“I did not think you were likely to be out so early,” the Colonel said.

“My friend has a son at Oriel,” replied Miss Lance. “He is a great
football player as it happens, and we are bound to be present when he
is playing; besides, the Parks are so near.”

“I did not think it was a game that would interest you.”

“It does not, except in so far that I am interested in everything that
interests my surroundings. My friend goes into it with enthusiasm; she
even believes that she understands what it is all about.”

“It seems chiefly mud that is about,” said the Colonel, with a slight
tone of disapproval, for it displeased him to think that a woman like
this should go to a football match, and also it displeased him after his
private amusement and reflections on the feminine character of the house
to find, after all, a man connected with it, even if that man were only
a boy.

“Come,” said Miss Lance, indicating a certain chair, “sit down here by
me, Colonel Kingsward, and let us not talk commonplaces any longer. You
have been obliged to stay longer than you intended. I had been thinking
of you as in London to-day.”

“It was very kind to think of me at all.”

“Oh, don’t say so--that is one of the commonplaces too. Of course, I
have been thinking of you with a great deal of interest, and with some
rather rebellious, undutiful sort of thoughts.”

“What thoughts?” cried the Colonel, in surprise.

“Well,” she said, “it is a great blessing, no doubt, to have
children--to women, perhaps, an unalloyed blessing; and yet, you know,
an unattached person like myself cannot help a grudge occasionally. Here
are you, for instance, in the prime of life; your thoughts about
everything matured, your reason more important to the world than any of
the escapades of youth, and yet you are depleted from your own grave
path in life; your mind occupied, your thoughts distracted; really your
use to your country interrupted by--by what are called the cares of a
family,” she concluded, with a short laugh.

She spoke with much use of her hands in graceful movement that could
scarcely be called gesticulation--clasping them together, spreading them
out, making them emphasise everything. And they were very white and
pretty hands, with a diamond on one, which sparkled at appropriate
moments, and added its special emphasis too.

The Colonel was flattered with this description of himself and his
capacities.

“There is great truth,” he said, “in what you say. I have felt it, but
for a father at the head of a family to put forth such sentiments would
shock many good people.”

“Fortunately there are no good people here, and if there were I might
still express them freely. It is a thing that strikes me every day. In
feeble specimens it destroys the individuality; in strong characters
like yourself----”

“You do me too much honour, Miss Lance. My position, you are aware, is
doubly unfortunate, for I have all upon my shoulders. Still, one must do
one’s duty at whatever cost.”

“That would be your feeling, of course,” said Miss Lance, with a sort of
admiring and regretful expression. “For my part, I am the most dreadful
rebel. I kick against duty. I think a man has a duty to himself. To
stint a noble human being for the sake of nourishing some half-dozen
secondary ones, is to me---- Oh, don’t let us talk of it! Tell me, dear
Colonel Kingsward, have you got everything satisfactorily settled, and
heard of the arrival----? Oh,” she cried, clasping those white hands,
“how can I sit here calmly and ask, seeing that I have a share in
causing all this trouble--though, heaven knows, how unintentionally on
my part!”

“Don’t say so,” said the Colonel, putting his hands for a second on
those clasped white hands. “I am sure that you can have done nothing but
good to my foolish boy. To be admitted here at all was too much honour.”

“I shall never be able to take an interest in anyone again,” she said,
drooping her head. “It is so strange, so strange to have one’s motives
misunderstood, but you don’t do so. I am so thankful I had the courage
to go to you. My friend dissuaded me strongly from taking such a step.
She said that a parent would naturally blame anyone rather than his own
son----”

“My dear Miss Lance, who could blame you? I don’t know,” said the
Colonel, “that I blame poor Charlie so much either. To be much in your
company might well be dangerous for any man.”

“You must not speak so--indeed, indeed, you must not! I feel more and
more ashamed! When a woman comes to a certain age--and has no children
of her own. Surely, surely----”

“Come!” he cried. “You said a parent’s cares destroyed one’s
individuality----”

“Not with a woman. What individuality has a woman? The only use of her
is to sink that pride in a better--the pride of being of some use. What
I regretted was for you--and such as you--if there are enough of such to
make a class--. Yes, yes,” she added, looking up, “I acknowledge the
inconsistency. I have not sense enough to see the pity of it in all
cases--but my real principle, my deep belief is that to draw a man like
you away from your career, to trouble and distress you about others, who
are not of half your value--is a thing that ought to be prevented by Act
of Parliament,” she cried, breaking off with a laugh. “But you have not
told me yet how everything has finished,” she added, in a confidential
low tone, after a pause.

Then he told her in some detail what he had done. It was delightful to
tell her, a woman so sympathising, so quick to understand, with that
approving, consoling, remonstrating action of her white hands which
seemed at the same moment to applaud and deprecate, with a constant
inference that he was too good, that really he ought not to be so good.
She laughed at his description of the Don, adding a graphic touch or two
to make the picture more perfect--till Colonel Kingsward was surprised
at himself to think how cleverly he had done it, and was delighted with
his own success. This gave a slightly comic character to his other
sketches of poor Charlie’s tradesmen, and scout, and an unutterable cad
of a young fellow who had met the Colonel leaving the college and had
told him of a small sum which Charlie owed him.

“The little beast!” the Colonel said.

“Worse!” cried Miss Lance, “I would not slander any gentlemanly dog by
calling him of the same species.”

Altogether, her interest and sympathy changed this not particularly
lively occasion into one of the brightest moments of Colonel
Kingsward’s life. He had not been used to a woman so clever, who took
him up at half a word, and enhanced the interest of everything. Had he
been asked, indeed, he would have said that he did not like clever
women. But then Miss Lance had other qualities. She was very handsome,
and she had an evident and undisguised admiration for him. She was so
very frank and sure of her position as a woman of a certain age--a
qualification which she appropriated to herself constantly, though most
women thought it an insult--that she did not find it needful to conceal
that admiration. When he thanked her for her kindness for the patient
hearing of all his story, and the interest she had shown, to which he
had so little claim, Miss Lance smiled and held out those white hands.

“I assure you,” she said, “the benefit is all on my side. Living here
among very young men, you must think what it is to talk to, to be
treated confidentially, by a man like yourself. It is like a glance into
another life.” She sighed, and added, “The young are delightful. I am
very fond of young people. Still, to meet now and then with someone of
one’s own age, of one’s own species, if I may say so--”

“You do me too much honour,” said Colonel Kingsward, feeling with a
curious elation, how superior he was. She went with him to the garden
gate, not afraid of the wintry air, showing no sense of the chill, and
though she had given him her hand before, offered it again with the
sweetest friendliness.

“And you promised,” she said, looking in his face while he held it,
“that you would send me one line when you got home, to tell me how you
find him--and that all is well--and forgiven.”

“I shall be too happy to be permitted to write,” Colonel Kingsward said.

“Forgiven,” she said, “and forgotten!” holding up a finger of the other
hand, the hand with the diamond. She stood for a moment watching while
he closed the low gate, and then, waving her hand to him, turned away.
Colonel Kingsward had never been a finer fellow, in his own estimation,
than when he walked slowly off from that closed door.




CHAPTER XXXVII.


I WILL not repeat the often described scene of anxiety which existed in
Kingswarden for some time after. Colonel Kingsward returned, as Bee had
done, to find that nothing had been seen or heard of Charlie, whom both
had expected to find defiant and wretched at home. It is astonishing how
quickly in such circumstances the tables are turned, and the young
culprit--whom parents and friends have been ready to crush the moment he
appears with well-deserved rebuke--becomes, when he does not appear, the
object of the most eager appeals; forgiveness, and advantages of every
kind all ready to greet him if only he will come back. The girls were
frightened beyond description by their brother’s disappearance, and
conjured up every dreadful image of disaster and misery. They thought of
Charlie in his despair going off to the ends of the earth and never
being seen more. They thought of him as in some wretched condition on
shipboard, sick and miserable, reduced to dreadful work and still more
dreadful privations, he who had lain in the lilies and fed on the roses
of life. They thought of him, Colonel Kingsward’s son, enlisted as a
private soldier, in a crowded barrack-room. They thought of him
wandering about the street, cold, perhaps hungry, without a shelter. The
most dreadful images came before their inexperienced eyes. The old aunt
who was their companion told them dreadful stories of family prodigals
who disappeared and were never heard of again, and terror took hold of
the girls’ minds.

Their constant walk was to the station, with the idea that he might
perhaps come as far as the village, and that there his heart might fail
him. Except for that melancholy indulgence, they would not be out of the
house at any time together, lest at that moment Charlie might arrive,
and no one be there to welcome him. There was always one who ran to the
door at every sound, scandalising the servant, who could never get there
so fast but one of the young ladies was before him. They had endless
conversations and consultations on the subject, forming a hundred plans
as to how they should go forth into the world to seek for him, all
rendered abortive by the reflection that they knew not where to go. Bee
and Betty were very unhappy during these lingering, chilly days of early
spring. The tranquillity of the family life seemed to be destroyed in a
moment. Where was Charlie? Was there any news of Charlie? This was the
question that filled their minds day and night.

Colonel Kingsward was not less affectionate, but he was more practical
and experienced. He knew that now and then it does happen that a young
man disappears, sinks under the stream, and goes, as people say, to the
dogs, and is heard of no more--or, at least, only in a shipwrecked
condition, the shame and trouble of his friends. It did not seem to him,
at first, that there could be any such danger for his son. He
anticipated nothing more than a few days’ sullenness, perhaps in some
friend’s house, who would make cautious overtures and intercede for the
rebellious but shame-stricken boy. When, however, the time passed on,
and a longer interval than any judicious friend would permit had
elapsed, a deep anxiety arose also in Colonel Kingsward’s mind. The
_esclandre_ of an Oxford failure did not trouble him much, but, in view
of Charlie’s future career, he could not employ detectives, or advertise
in the papers, or take any steps which might lead to a paragraph as to
the anxiety of a distinguished family on account of a son who had
disappeared. Colonel Kingsward might not be a very tender parent, but he
was fully alive to the advantage of his children, and would allow no
stigma to be attached to them which he could prevent. He went a great
deal about London in these days, going into many a spot where a man of
his dignity was out of place, with an anxious and troubled eye upon the
crowds of young men, the familiars of these confused regions, among
whom, however, no trace was to be found of his son.

Nobody ever knew how much the Colonel undertook, in how many strange
scenes he found himself, or half of what he really did to recover
Charlie, and save him from the consequences of his folly. The most
devoted father could scarcely have done more, and his mind was almost as
full of the prodigal as were the minds of the girls, who thought of so
many grievous dangers, yet did not think of those that filled their
father’s mind. Colonel Kingsward went about everywhere, groping, saying
not a word to betray his ignorance of Charlie’s whereabouts. To those
who had any right to know his family affairs, he explained that he had
decided not to press Charlie to undergo any examination beyond what was
necessary, that he had given up the thought of taking his degree, and
was studying modern languages and international law, which were so much
more likely to be useful to him. “He is a steady fellow--he has no
vices,” he said, “and I think it is wise to let him have his head.”
Colonel Kingsward was by nature a despotic man, and his friends were
very glad to hear that he was, in respect to Charlie, so amiable--they
said to each other that his wife’s death had softened Kingsward, and
what a good thing it was that he was behaving so judiciously about his
son.

A pause like this in the life of a family--a period of darkness in which
the life of one of its members is suspended, interrupted, as it were, in
mid career, cut off, yet not with that touch of death which stills all
anxieties--is always a difficult and miserable one. Some, and the number
increases of these uncontrolled persons, cry out to earth and heaven,
and make the lapse public and set all the world talking of their
affairs. But Colonel Kingsward sternly put down even the tears of his
young daughters.

“If you cannot keep a watch over yourselves before the servants, you had
better leave the house,” he said, all the more stern to them that he was
soft to Charlie; but indeed it was not so much that he was soft to
Charlie as that he was concerned and anxious about Charlie’s career.

“Betty, I suppose, can go back to the Lyons’ in Portman Square, and
Bee----”

“If you think that I can go visiting, papa, and no one with the
children, and poor Charlie----”

“I think--and, indeed, I know, that you can and will do what I think
best for you,” said Colonel Kingsward.

Bee looked up at him quickly and met her father’s eyes. The two looked
at each other suspiciously, almost fiercely. Bee saw in her father’s
look possibilities and dangers as yet undeveloped, mysteries which she
divined and feared, yet neither could nor would have put into words,
while he looked at her divining her divinations, defying unconsciously
the suspicion which he could not have expressed any more than she.

“Let it be understood once for all,” he said, “that the children have
their nurses and governess, and that your presence is by no means
indispensable to them. You are their eldest sister, you are not the
mistress of the house. Nothing will happen to the children. In
considering what is best for you----”

“Papa!” cried Bee, almost fiercely; but she did not pour out upon him
that bitterness which had been collecting in her heart. She paused in
time; but then added, “I have not asked you to consider what was best
for me.”

“That is enough to show that it is time for me to consider it,” he said.

And then, once more their looks met, and clashed like the encounter of
two armies. What did she suspect? What did he intend? They both breathed
short, as if with the impulse of battle, but neither, even to
themselves, could have answered that question. Colonel Kingsward cried
“Take care, Bee!” as he went away, a by no means happy man, to his
library, while she threw herself down upon a sofa, and--inevitable
result in a girl of any such rising of passion--burst into tears.

“Bee,” said the sensible Betty, “you ought not to speak like that to
papa.”

“I ought to be thankful that he has considered what was best for me, and
spoilt my life!” cried Bee, through her tears. “Oh, it is very easy for
you to speak. You are to go to the Lyons’, where you wish to go--to be
free of all anxiety--for what is Charlie to you but only your brother,
and you know that you can’t do him any good by making yourself miserable
about him? And you will see Gerald Lyon, who is doing well at
Cambridge, and listen to all the talk about him, and smile, and not hate
him for being so smug and prosperous, while poor Charlie----”

“How unjust you are!” cried Betty, growing red and then pale. “It is not
Gerald Lyon’s fault that Charlie has not done well--even if I cared
anything for Gerald Lyon.”

“It is you who ought to take care,” said Bee, “if papa thinks it
necessary to consider what is best for you.”

“There is nothing to consider,” said Betty, with a little movement of
her hands.

“But it can never be so bad for you,” said Bee, with a tone of regret.
“Never! To think that my life should be ruined and all ended for the
sake of a woman--a woman--who has now ruined Charlie, and whom papa--oh,
papa!” she cried, with a tone indescribable of exasperation and scorn
and contempt.

“What is it about papa? You look at each other, you and he, like two
tigers. You have got the same dreadful eyes. Yes, they are dreadful
eyes; they give out fire. I wonder often that they don’t make a noise
like an explosion. And Bee, you said yourself that there was something
else. You never would have given in to papa, but there was something of
your own that parted you from Aubrey--for ever. You said so, Bee--when
his mother----”

“Is there any need for bringing in any gentleman’s name?” cried Bee,
with the dignity of a dowager. And then, ignoring her own rule, she
burst forth, “What I have got against him is nothing to anyone--but that
Aubrey Leigh should be insulted and rejected and turned away from our
door, and that my heart should be broken because of a woman whom papa
and Charlie--whom papa----! He writes to her, and she writes to him--he
tells her everything--he consults her about us, us, my mother’s
children! And yet it was on her account that Aubrey Leigh was turned
from the door---- Oh, if you think I can bear that, you must think me
more than flesh and blood!” Bee cried, the tears adding to the fire and
sparkle of her blazing eyes.

“It isn’t very nice,” said little Betty, sagely, “but I am not so sure
that it was her fault, for if you had stuck to Aubrey as you meant to do
at first, your heart would not have been broken, and if Charlie had not
been very silly, a person of that age could not have done him any harm;
and then papa----. What can she do to papa? I suppose he thinks as she
is old he may write to her as a friend and ask her advice. There is not
any harm that I can see in that.”

Bee was too much agitated to make any reply to this. She resumed again,
after a pause, as if Betty had not spoken: “He writes to her, and she
writes to him, just as she did to Charlie, for I have seen them
both--long letters, with that ridiculous “Laura,” and a big L, as if she
were a girl. You can see them, if you like, at breakfast, when he reads
them instead of his papers, and smiles to himself when he is reading
them, and looks--ridiculous”--cried Bee, in her indignation.
“Ridiculous! as if he were young too; a man who is father of all of us;
and not much more than a year ago--. Oh, if I were not to speak I think
the very trees would, and the bushes in the shrubbery! It is more than
anyone can bear.”

“You are making up a story,” said Betty, wonderingly. “I don’t know what
you mean.” Then she cried, carrying the war into the enemy’s country,
“Oh, Bee, if you had not given him up, if you had been faithful to
him!--now we should have had somebody to consult with, somebody that
could have gone and looked for poor Charlie; for we are only two girls,
and what can we do?”

Bee did not make any reply, but looked at her sister with startled eyes.

“Mamma was never against Aubrey Leigh,” said Betty, pursuing her
advantage. “She never would have wished you to give him up. And it is
all your own doing, not papa’s doing, or anyone’s. If I had ever cared
for him I never, never should have given him up; and then we should have
had as good as another brother, that could have gone into the world and
hunted everywhere and brought Charlie home.”

The argument was taken up at hazard, a chance arrow lying in the young
combatant’s way, without intention--but it went straight to its mark.




CHAPTER XXXVIII.


THE house that had been so peaceful was thus full of agitation and
disturbance, the household, anxious and alarmed, turning their weapons
upon each other, to relieve a little the gnawing of that suspense which
they were so unaccustomed to bear. It was true what Bee’s keen and
sharply aroused observation had convinced her, that Colonel Kingsward
was in correspondence with Miss Lance, and that her letters were very
welcome to him, and read with great interest. He threw down the paper
after he had made a rush through its contents, and read eagerly the long
sheets of paper, upon which the great L, stamped at the head of every
page, could be read on the other side of the table. How did that woman
know the days he was to be at home, that her letters should always come
on those mornings and never at any other time? Bee almost forgot her
troubles, those of the family in respect to Charlie, and those which
were her very own, in her passionate hatred and distrust of the new
correspondent to whom Colonel Kingsward, like his son, had opened his
heart.

He was not, naturally, a man given to correspondence. His letters to his
wife, in those days which now seemed so distant, had been models of
concise writing. His opinions, or rather verdicts, upon things great and
small had been conveyed in terse sentences, very much to the purpose;
deliverances not of his way of thinking, but of the unalterable dogmas
that were to rule the family life; and her replies, though diffuse, were
always more or less regulated by her consciousness of the little time
there would be given to them, and the necessity of making every
explanation as brief as possible--not to worry papa, who had so much to
do.

Why it was that he found the long letters, which he read with a certain
defiant pride in the presence of his daughters at the breakfast table,
so agreeable, it would be difficult to tell. They were very carefully
adapted to please him, it is true; and they were what are called clever
letters--such letters as clever women write, with a _faux air_ of
brilliancy which deceives both the writer and the recipient, making the
one feel herself a Sevigné and the other a hero worthy the exercise of
such powers. And there was something very novel in this sudden inroad of
sentimental romance into an existence never either sentimental or
romantic, which had fallen into the familiar calm of family life so long
ago with a wife, who though sweet and fair enough to delight any man,
had become in reality only the chief of his vassals, following every
indication of his will, when not eagerly watching an opportunity of
anticipating his wishes. His new friend treated the Colonel in a very
different way. She expounded her views of life with all the adroitness
of a mind experienced in the treatment of those philosophies which touch
the questions of sex, the differences between a man’s and a woman’s
view, the sentiment which can be carried into the most simple subjects.
There is nothing that can give more entertaining play of argument, or
piquancy of intercourse, than this mode of correspondence when cleverly
carried out, and Miss Laura Lance was a mistress of all its methods. It
was all entirely new to Colonel Kingsward. He was as much enchanted with
it as his son had been, and thought the writer as brilliant, as
original, as poor Charlie had done, who had no way of knowing better.
The Colonel’s head, which generally had been occupied by professional or
public matters--by the intrigues of the service or the incompetencies of
the Department--now found a much more interesting private subject of
thought. He was a man full of anxiety and annoyance at this particular
crisis of his career, and his correspondent was by way of sharing his
anxiety to the utmost and even blaming herself as the cause of it; yet
she contrived to amuse him, to bring a smile, to touch a lighter key, to
relieve the tension of his mind from time to time, without ever allowing
him to feel that the chief subject of their correspondence was out of
her thoughts. He got no relief of this description at home, where the
girls’ anxious questions about Charlie, their eagerness to know what had
been done, seemed to upbraid him with indifference, as if he were not
doing everything that was possible. Miss Lance knew better the dangers
that were being run, the real difficulties of the case, than these
inexperienced chits of children; but she knew also that a man’s mind
requires relief, and that, in point of fact, the Colonel’s health,
strength and comfort, were of more importance than many Charlie’s. This
was a thing that had to be understood, not said, and the Colonel indeed
was as anxious and concerned about Charlie as it was almost possible to
be. He did not form dreadful pictures as Bee and Betty did of what the
boy might be suffering. The boy deserved to suffer, and this
consideration, had he dwelt upon it, would have afforded a certain
satisfaction. But what did make him wretched was the fear of any
exposure, the mention in public of anything that might injure his son’s
career. An opportunity was already dawning of getting him an
appointment upon which the Colonel had long kept his eye, and which
would be of double importance at present as sending him out of the
country and into new scenes. But of what use were all a father’s careful
arrangements if they were thus balked by the perversity of the boy?

Things were still in this painful suspense when Miss Lance announced to
Colonel Kingsward her arrival in town. She described to him how it was
that she was coming.

“My friend is absent with her son till after Easter, and I am understood
to be fond of town, and am coming to spend a week or two to see the
first of the season, the pictures, &c., as well as a few friends whom I
still keep up, the relics of brighter and younger days--this is the
reason I give, but you will easily understand, dear Colonel Kingsward,
that there is another reason far more near to my heart. Your poor boy!
Or may I for once say our poor boy? For you are aware that I have never
ceased to upbraid myself for what has happened, and that I shall always
bear a mother’s heart to Charlie, dear fellow, to whom, in wishing him
nothing but good, I have been so unfortunate as to do such dreadful
wrong. Every word you say about your hopes for him, and the great chance
which he is so likely to miss, cuts me to the heart. And it has occurred
to me that there are some places in which he may have been heard of, to
which I could myself go, or where I might take you if you wished, which
you would not yourself be likely to know. I wish I had thought of them
before. I come up now full of hope that we may hear something and find a
reliable clue. I shall be in George Street, Hanover Square, a place
which is luckily in the way for everything. Please come and see me. I
hope you will not think I am presuming in endeavouring to solve a
difficulty for which I am, alas, alas! partially to blame. To assure me
of this at least if no more, come, do come to see me to-morrow, Tuesday
afternoon. I shall do nothing till I have your approval.”

This letter had an exciting effect upon the Colonel, more than anything
he had known for years. He held it before him, yielding himself up to
this pleasurable sensation for some minutes after he had read it. The
Easter recess had left London empty, and he had been deprived of some of
the ordinary social solaces which, though they increased the difficulty
of keeping his son’s disappearance a secret, still broke the blank of
his suspense and made existence possible. Hard to bear was the point
blank shock which he had sometimes received, as when an indiscreet but
influential friend suddenly burst upon him, “I don’t see your son’s name
in the Oxford lists, Kingsward.” “No,” the Colonel had replied, with a
countenance from which all expression had been dismissed, “we thought it
better that he should keep to his special studies.” “Quite right, quite
right,” answered that great official, for what is a mere degree to F.
O.? Even to have such things as this said to him, with the chance of
putting in a response, was better than the stagnation, in which a man is
so apt to feel that all kinds of whispers are circulating in respect to
the one matter which it is his interest to conceal.

And his heart, though it was a middle-aged, and no longer nimble organ
given to leaping, jumped up in his breast when he read his letter. There
was the possible clue which it was good to hear of--and there was the
listener to whom he could tell everything, who took such an entire and
flattering share in his anxieties, with whom there was no need to invent
excuses, or to conceal anything. Perhaps there were other reasons, too,
which he did not put into words. The image which had dazzled him at
Oxford rose again before his eyes. It was an image which had already
often visited him. One of the handsomest women he had ever seen, and so
flattering, so confidential, so deeply impressed by himself, so candid
and anxious to blame herself, to place herself in his hands. He went
back to town with agreeable instead of painful anticipations. To share
one’s cares is always an alleviation--to be able openly to take a
friend’s advice. The girls, to whom alone he could be perfectly open on
this matter, were such little fools that he had ceased to discuss it
with them, if, indeed, he had ever discussed it. And to nobody else
could he speak on the subject at all. The opportunity of pouring forth
all his speculations and alarms, of hearing the suggestions of another
mind--and such a mind as hers--of finding a new clue, was balm to his
angry, annoyed and excited spirit. There were other douceurs involved,
which were not absent from his thoughts. The pleasure of the woman’s
society, who was so flatteringly pleased with his, her mature beauty,
which had so much attraction in it, the look of her eyes, which said
more than words, the touch--laid upon his for a moment with so much
eloquent expression, appeal, sympathy, consolation, provocation--of her
beautiful hands. All this was in the Colonel’s mind. He had scarcely
known what was the touch of a woman’s hand, at least in this way, during
the course of his long, calm domestic life. He had been very fond of his
wife, of course, and very tender, as well as he knew how, during her
illness, though entirely unconscious of how much he demanded from her
even in the course of that illness. But this was utterly different,
apart from everything he had ever known. Friendship--that friendship
between man and woman which has been the subject of so much sentimental
controversy. Somebody whom Miss Lance had quoted to him, some great man
in Oxford, had said it was the only real friendship; many others,
amongst whom Colonel Kingsward himself had figured when at any moment so
ridiculous an argument had crossed his path, denounced it as a mere
unfounded fiction to conceal other sentiments. Dolts! It was the Oxford
great man who was in the right of it. The only friendship!--with
sweetness in it which no man could give, a more entire confidence, a
more complete sympathy. He knew that he could say things to Laura--Miss
Lance--which he could say to no man, and that a look from her eyes would
do more to strengthen him than oceans of kind words from lips which
would address him as “old fellow.” He had her image before him all the
time as he went up in the train; it went with him into the decorous
dulness of his office, and when he left his work an hour earlier than
usual his steps were as light as a young man’s. He had not felt so much
exhilaration of spirit since----; but he could scarcely go back to a
date on which his bosom’s lord had sat so lightly on his throne. Truth
to tell, Colonel Kingsward had fallen on evil days. Even the course of
his ordinary existence, when he had gone through life with his pretty
wife by his side, dining out constantly, going everywhere, though
enjoyable in its way, and with the satisfaction of keeping up to the
right mark, had not been exciting. She no doubt told for a great deal in
his happiness, but there were no risks, no excitements, and not as much
as the smart of an occasional quarrel between them. He had known what to
expect of her in every emergency; there was nothing novel to be looked
for, no unaccustomed flavour in anything she was likely to do or say. He
did not make this comparison consciously, for indeed there was no
comparison at all between his late wife (he called her so already in his
mind) and Miss Lance--not the slightest comparison! The latter was a far
more piquant thing--a friend--and the most delightful friend, surely,
that ever man had!

He found her in a little drawing-room on the first floor of what looked
very much like an ordinary London lodging-house; but within it had
changed its character completely, and had become, though in a different,
more subtle way than that of the drawing-room in Oxford, the bower of
Laura, a special habitation marked with her very name, like the
notepaper on her table. He could not for the first moment avoid a
bewildering idea that it was the same room in which he had seen her in
Oxford transported thither. There seemed the same pictures on the walls,
the same writing-table, or at least one arranged in precisely the same
way, the same chairs placed two together for conversation. What a
wonderful creature she was, thus to put the stamp of her own being upon
everything she touched. Once more he had to wait for a minute or two
before she came, but she made no apology for her delay. She came in with
her hand extended, with an air of sympathy yet satisfaction at the sight
of him which went to Colonel Kingsward’s heart. If she had been sorry
only it would have displeased him, as showing a mind occupied wholly
with Charlie, but the delicate mingling of pleasure with concern was
exactly what the Colonel felt to be most fit.

“I am so glad to see you,” she said. “How kind of you to come so soon,
to pay such prompt attention to my wish.”

“Considering that it was my own wish,” he said, “and what I desired
most, I should say how good of you to come, but I can’t venture to hope
that it was entirely for me.”

“It was very much for you, Colonel Kingsward. You know what blame I take
to myself for all that has happened. And I think, perhaps, I may have it
in my power to make some inquiries that would not suggest themselves.
But we must talk of this after. In the meantime, I can’t but think first
of you. What an ordeal for you--what weary work! But what a pull over us
you men have! You keep your great spirit and command over yourself
through everything, while, whatever little trouble we may have, it shows
immediately. Oh,” said Miss Lance, clasping her hands, “a calm strong
man is a sight which it elevates one only to see.”

“You give me far too much credit. One is obliged to keep a good face to
the world. I don’t approve of people who wash their dirty linen in
public.”

“Don’t try to make yourself little with all this commonplace reasoning.
You need not explain yourself to me, dear Colonel Kingsward. I flatter
myself that I have the gift of understanding, if nothing else.”

“A great many things else,” he said; “and indeed my keeping up in this
emergency has been greatly helped by your great friendship and moral
support. I don’t know what you have done to this room,” he added,
changing the theme quickly, “did you bring it with you? It is not a mere
room in London--it is your room. I should have known it among a
thousand.”

“What a delightful compliment,” she said. “I am so glad you think so,
for it is one of the things I pride myself on. I think I can always make
even a lodging-house look a bit like home.”

“It looks like you,” he repeated. “I don’t notice such matters much, but
no one could help seeing. And I hope you are to be here for some time,
and that if I can be of any use--”

“Oh! Colonel Kingsward, don’t hold out such flattering hopes. You of
use! Of course, to a lone woman in town you would be far more than of
use--you would simply be a tower of strength. But I do not come here to
make use of you. I come--”

“You could not give me greater pleasure than by making use of me. I am
not going much into society, my house is not open--my girls are too
young to take the responsibilities of a season upon themselves; but
anything that a single individual can do to be of service--”

“Your dear girls--how I should like to see them, to be able to take them
about a little, to make up to those poor children as far as a stranger
could! But I can scarcely hope that you would trust them to me after the
trouble I have helped to bring on you all. Dear Colonel Kingsward, your
chivalrous offer will make all the difference in my life. If you will
give me your arm sometimes, on a rare occasion--”

“As often as you please--and the oftener the more it will please me,” he
cried, in tones full of warmth and eagerness. Miss Lance raised her
grateful eyes to him full of unspeakable things. She made no further
reply except by one of those light touches upon his arm less than
momentary, if that were possible, like the brush of a wing, or an
ethereal contact of ideas.

And then she said gravely, “Now about that poor, dear boy; we must find
him, oh, we must find him. I have thought of several places where he may
have been seen. Do you know that I met him once by chance in town last
year? It was at the Academy, where I was with some artist friends. I
introduced him to them, and you know there is great freedom among them,
and they have a great charm for young men. I think some of them may have
seen him. I have put myself in communication with them.”

“I would not for a moment,” said the Colonel, somewhat stiffly, “consent
to burden you with inquiries of this kind!”

“You do not think,” she said, sweetly, “that I would do anything, or say
anything to compromise him or you?”

The Colonel looked at her with the strangest sudden irritation. “I was
not thinking either of him or myself. Why should you receive men, who
must be entirely out of your way, for our sakes?”

“Oh,” she said, with a soft laugh, “you are afraid that I may compromise
myself.” She rose with an unspoken impulse, which made him rise also, in
spite of himself, with a feeling of unutterable downfall, and the sense
of being dismissed. “Don’t be afraid for me, Colonel Kingsward, I beg. I
shall not compromise anyone.” Then she turned with a sudden illumination
of a smile. “Come back and see me to-morrow, and you shall hear what I
have found out.”

And he went away humbly, relieved yet mortified, not holding his head as
high as when he came, but already longing for to-morrow, when he might
come back.




CHAPTER XXXIX.


COLONEL KINGSWARD had been flattered, he had been pleased. He had felt
himself for a moment one of the exceptional men in whom women find an
irresistible attraction, and then he had been put down and dismissed
with the calmest decision, with a peremptoriness which nobody in his
life had ever used to him. All these sweetnesses, and then to be, as it
were, huddled out of doors the moment he said a word which was not
satisfactory to that imperial person! He could not get it out of his
mind during the evening nor all the night through, during which it
occurred to him whenever he woke, as a prevailing thought does. And he
had been right, too. To send for men, any kind of men, artists whom she
herself described as having so much freedom in their ways, and have
interviews with them, was a thing to which he had a good right to
object. That is, her friend had a right to object to it--her friend who
took the deepest interest in her and all that she was doing. That it was
for Charlie’s advantage made really no difference. This gave a beautiful
and admirable motive, but then all her motives were beautiful and
admirable, and it must be necessary in some cases to defend her against
the movements of her own good heart. Evidently she did not sufficiently
think of what the world would say, nor, indeed, of what was essentially
right; for that a woman of her attractions, still young, living
independently in rooms of her own, should receive artists
indiscriminately, nay, send for them, admit them to sit perhaps for an
hour with her, with no chaperon or companion, was a thing that could not
be borne. This annoyance almost drove Charlie out of Colonel Kingsward’s
head. He felt that when he went to her next day he must, with all the
precautions possible, speak his mind upon this subject. A woman with
such attractions, really a young woman, alone; nobody could have more
need of guarding against evil tongues. And artists were proverbially an
unregulated, free-and-easy race, with long hair and defective linen, not
men to be privileged with access under any circumstances to such a
woman. Unquestionably he must deliver his soul on that subject for her
own sake.

He thought about it all the morning, how to do it best. It relieved his
mind about Charlie. Charlie! Charlie was only a young fellow after all,
taking his own way, as they all did, never thinking of the anxiety he
gave his family. And no doubt he would turn up of his own accord when he
was tired of it. That she should depart from the traditions which
naturally are the safeguards of ladies for the sake of a silly boy, who
took so little trouble about the peace of mind of his family, was
monstrous. It was a thing which he could not permit to be.

When he went into his private room at his office, Colonel Kingsward
found a card upon his table which increased the uneasiness in his mind,
though he could not have told why. He took it up with great surprise
and anger. “Mr. Aubrey Leigh.” He supposed it must have been a card left
long ago, when Aubrey Leigh was Bee’s suitor, and had come repeatedly,
endeavouring to shake her father’s determination. He looked at it
contemptuously, and then pitched it into the fire.

What a strange perversity there is in these inanimate things! It seemed
as if some malicious imp must have replaced that card there on that very
morning to disturb him.

Colonel Kingsward did not remember how it was that the name, the sacred
name, of Miss Lance was associated with that of Aubrey Leigh. He had
been much surprised, as well as angry, at the manner in which Bee
repeated that name, when she heard it first, with a vindictive jealousy
(these words came instinctively to his mind) which was not
comprehensible. He had refused indignantly to allow that she had ever
heard the name before. Nevertheless, her cry awakened a vague
association in his mind. Something or other, he could not recollect
what, of connection, of suggestion, was in the sound. He threw Aubrey’s
card into the fire, and endeavoured to dismiss all thought on the
subject. But it was a difficult thing to do. It is to be feared that
during those morning hours the work which Colonel Kingsward usually
executed with so much exactitude, never permitting, as he himself
stated, private matters--even such as the death of his wife or the
disappearance of his son--to interfere with it, was carried through with
many interruptions and pauses for thought, and at the earliest possible
moment was laid aside for that other engagement which had nothing to do
either with the office or the Service, though it was, he flattered
himself, a duty, and one of the most lofty kind.

To save a noble creature, if possible, from the over generosity of her
own heart; to convince her that such proceedings were inappropriate,
inconsistent with her dignity, as well as apt to give occasion for the
adversary to blaspheme--this was the mission which inspired him. If he
thought of a natural turning towards himself, the friend of friends, in
respect to whom the precautions he enforced were unnecessary, in
consequence of these remonstrances, he kept it carefully in the
background of his thoughts. It was a duty. This beautiful, noble woman,
all frankness and candour, had taken the part of an angel in
endeavouring to help him in his trouble. Could he permit her to sully
even the tip of a wing of that generous effort. Certainly not! On the
contrary, it became doubly his duty to protect her in every way.

This time Miss Lance was in her drawing-room, seated in one of the pair
of chairs which were arranged for intimate conversation. She did not
rise, but held out her hand to him, with a soft impulse towards the
other--in which Colonel Kingsward accordingly seated himself, with a
solemnity upon his brow which she had no difficulty in interpreting,
quick-witted as she was. She did not loose a shade upon that forehead, a
note of additional gravity in his voice. She knew as well as he did the
duty which he had come to perform. And she was a woman--not only
quick-witted and full of a definite aim, but one who took real pleasure
in her own dexterity, and played her _rôle_ with genuine enjoyment. She
allowed him to open the conversation with much dignified earnestness,
and even to begin, “My dear Miss Lance,” his countenance charged with
warning before she cut the ground from under his feet in the lightest,
yet most complete way.

“I know you are going to say something very serious when you adopt that
tone, so please let me discharge my mind first. Mrs. Revel kindly came
to me after you left yesterday, and she has made every inquiry--indeed,
as she compelled me to go back with her to dinner, I saw for myself----”

“Mrs. Revel?” said the Colonel.

“Didn’t you know he was married? Oh, yes, to a great friend of mine, a
dear little woman. It is in their house I meet my artists, whom I told
you of. Tuesday is her night, and they were all there. I was able to
make my investigations without any betrayal. But I am very, very sorry
to say, dear Colonel Kingsward, equally without any effect.”

“Without any effect,” Colonel Kingsward repeated, confused. He was not
so quick-witted as she was, and it took him some time to make his way
through these mazes. Revel, the painter, was a name, indeed, that he had
heard vaguely, but his wife, so suddenly introduced, and her “night,”
and the people described as my artists, wound him in webs of
bewilderment through which it was very difficult to guide his steps. It
became apparent to him, however, after a moment, that whatever those
things might mean, the ground had been cut from under his feet. “Does
Mrs. Revel know?” he added after a moment, in his bewilderment.

“Know--our poor dear boy? Oh, yes; I took him there--in my foolish
desire to do the best I could for him, and thinking that to see other
circles outside of his own was good for a young man. I couldn’t take him
the round of the studios, you know--could I? But I took him to the
Revels. She is a charming little woman, a woman whom I am very fond of,
and--more extraordinary still, don’t you think, Colonel Kingsward?--who
is fond of me.”

The Colonel was not up to the mark in this emergency. He did not give
the little compliment which is expected after such a speech. He sat
dumb, a dull, middle-aged blush rising over his face. He had no longer
anything to say; instead of the serious, even impassioned remonstrance
which he was about to address to her, he could only murmur a faint
assent, a question without meaning. And in place of the generous,
imprudent creature, following her own hasty impulses, disregarding the
opinion of the world, whom he had expected to find, here was female
dignity in person, regulated by all the nicest laws of propriety. He was
struck dumb--the ground was cut from beneath his feet.

“This is only an interruption on my part. You were going to say
something to me? And something serious? I prize so much everything you
say that I must not lose it. Pray say it now, dear Colonel Kingsward.
Have I done something you don’t like? I am ready to accept even
blame--though you know what women are in that way, always standing out
that they are right--from you.”

Colonel Kingsward looked at her, helpless, still without a word to say.
There was surely a laughing demon in her eyes which saw through and
through him and knew the trouble in his mind; but her face was serious,
appealing, a little raised towards him, waiting for his words as if her
fate hung upon them. The colour rose over his middle-aged countenance to
the very hair which was beginning to show traces of white over his high
forehead.

“Blame!” he stammered, scarcely knowing what he said, “I hope you don’t
think me quite a fool.”

“What,” she cried, picking him up as it were on the end of her lance,
holding him out to the scorn--if not of the world, yet of himself. “Do
you think so little of a woman, Colonel Kingsward, that you would not
take the trouble to find fault with her? Ah! Don’t be so hard! You would
not be a fool if you did that--you should find that I would take it with
gratitude, accept it, be guided by it. Believe me, I am worthy, if you
think me in the wrong, to be told so--I am, indeed I am!”

Were these tears in her fine eyes? She made them look as if they were,
and filled him with a compunction and a shame of his own superficial
judgment impossible to put into words.

“I--think you wrong!” he said, stammering and faltering. “I would as
soon think that--heaven was wrong. I--blame you! Dear Miss Laura, how,
how can you imagine such a thing? I should be a miserable idiot indeed
if----”

“Come,” she said, “I begin to think you didn’t mean--now that you have
called me by my name.”

“I beg you a thousand pardons. I--I--It was a slip of the tongue. It
was--from the signature to your letters--which is somehow so like
you----”

“Yes,” she said. “It pleases me very much that you should think so--more
like me than Lance. Lance! What a name! My mother made a mésalliance. I
don’t give up my father, poor dear, though he has saddled me with such a
family--but Laura is me, whereas Lance is only--an accident.”

“An accident that may be removed,” he said, involuntarily. It was a
thing that might be said to any unmarried woman, a conventional sort of
half compliment, which custom would have permitted him to put in even
stronger terms--but to her! When he had said it horror seized his soul.

“No,” she said, gently shaking her head. “No. At my age one does not
recover from an accident like that; one must bear the scar all one’s
days. And you really had nothing to find fault with me about?”

“How monstrous!” he cried, “to entertain such a thought.” Then, for he
was really uneasy in his sense of guilt, he plunged into a new snare.
“My little daughter, Betty,” he said, “is coming to town to-day to visit
some friends in Portman Square. I wonder if I might bring her to see
you.”

“Your daughter!” cried Miss Lance, clasping her hands, “a thing I did
not venture to ask--the very first desire of my heart. Your daughter! I
would go anywhere to see her. If you will be so nice, so sweet, so kind
as to bring her, Colonel Kingsward!”

“I shall, indeed, to-morrow. It will do her good to see you. At her
susceptible age the very sight of such a woman as you--”

“No compliments,” she cried, “if I am not to be blamed I must not be
praised either--and I deserve it much less. Is she the eldest?” There
was a gleam under her half-dropped eyelids which the Colonel was vaguely
aware of but did not understand.

“The second,” he said. “My eldest girl is Bee, in many respects a
stronger character than her sister, but on the other hand--”

“I know,” said Miss Lance, “a little wilful, fond of her own way and her
own opinion. Oh, that is a good fault in a girl! When they are a little
chastened they turn out the finest women. But I understand what a man
must feel for this little sweet thing who has not begun to have a will
of her own.”

It was not perhaps a very perfect characterisation of Betty, but still
it flattered him to see how she entered into his thoughts. “I think you
understand everything,” he said.




CHAPTER XL.


IT was not with any intention, but solely to deliver himself from the
dilemma in which he found himself--the inconceivable error he had made,
imagining that it was necessary to censure, however gently, and warn
against too much freedom of action, a woman so absolutely above
reproach, and so full of ladylike dignity as Miss Lance--that Colonel
Kingsward had named the name of Betty, his little daughter, just arrived
in that immaculate stronghold of the correct and respectable Portman
Square. He was a little uneasy about it when he thought of it
afterwards. He was not sure that he desired even Betty to be aware of
his intimacy with Miss Lance. He felt that her youthful presence would
change, in some degree, the character of his relations with the
enchantress who was stealing his wits away. The kind of conversation
that had arisen so naturally between them, the sentiment, the
confidences, the singular strain of mutual understanding which he felt,
with mingled pride and bashfulness--bashfulness sat strangely upon the
much-experienced Colonel, yet such was his feeling--to exist between
Laura and himself, must inevitably sustain certain modifications under
the sharp eyes of the child. She would not understand that subtle but
strong link of friendship. He would require to be more distant, to treat
his exquisite friend more like an ordinary acquaintance while under the
inspection of Betty, even though he was perfectly assured that Betty
knew nothing about such matters. And what, then, would Laura say?
Confident as she was in her own perfect honour and candour, would she
understand the subdued manner, the more formal address which would be
necessary in the presence of the child? It was true that she understood
everything without a word said; but then her own entire innocence of
any motive but those of heavenly kindness and friendship might induce
her to laugh at his precautions. Was it, perhaps, because he felt his
motives to be not unmingled that the Colonel felt this? Anyhow, the
introduction of Betty, whom he had snatched at in his haste to save him
from the consequences of his own folly, would be a trouble to the
intercourse which, as it was, was so consolatory and so sweet.

It must be added that Miss Lance, before he left her, had been very
consolatory to him on the subject of Charlie, which, though always lying
at the bottom of his thoughts, had begun in the midst of these new
developments to weigh upon him less, perhaps, than it was natural it
should have done. She had suggested that Charlie had friends in
Scotland, that he had most probably gone there to avoid for a time his
father’s wrath, that in all probability he was enjoying himself, and
very well cared for, putting off from day to day the necessity of
writing.

“He never was, I suppose, much of a correspondent?” she said.

“No,” Colonel Kingsward had replied, doubtfully; for indeed there never
had been anything at all to call correspondence between him and his son.
Charlie had written to his mother, occasionally to his sisters, but to
his father, save when he wanted money, scarcely at all.

“Then this is what has happened,” said Laura; “he has gone off to be as
far out of the way as possible. He is fishing in Loch Tay--or he is
playing golf somewhere--you know his habits.”

“And so it seems do you,” said the Colonel, a little jealous of his son.

“Oh, you know how a boy chatters of everything he does and likes.”

Colonel Kingsward nodded his head gloomily. He did not know how boys
chattered--no boy had ever chattered to him; but he accepted with a
moderate satisfaction the fact that she, Laura, from whom he felt that
he himself could have no secret, had taken, and did take, the trouble of
turning the heart even--of a boy--outside in.

“Depend upon it,” said Miss Lance, “that is where he has gone, and he
has not meant to make you anxious. Perhaps he thinks you have never
discovered that he had left Oxford, and he has meant to write day by
day. Don’t you know how one does that? It is a little difficult to
begin, and one says, ‘To-morrow,’ and then ‘To-morrow’; and the time
flies on. Dear Colonel Kingsward, you will find that all this time he is
quite happy on Loch Tay.” She held out her hand to emphasise these
words, and the Colonel, though all unaccustomed to such signs of
enthusiasm, kissed that hand which held out comfort to him. It was a
beautiful hand, so soft, like velvet, so yielding and flexible in his,
and yet so firm in its delicate pressure. He went away with his head
slightly turned, and the blood coursing through his veins. But when he
thought of little Betty he dropped down, down into a blank of decorum
and commonplace. Before Betty he certainly could not kiss any lady’s
hand. He would have to shake hands with Laura as he did with old Mrs.
Lyon in Portman Square, who, indeed, was a much older friend. This
thought gave him a little feeling of contrariety and uneasiness in the
contemplation of his promise to take his little girl to George Street,
Hanover Square.

And next morning when he went into his office, Colonel Kingsward’s
annoyance and indignation could not be expressed when he found once more
upon his writing-table, placed in a conspicuous position so that he
could not overlook it, the card of Mr. Aubrey Leigh. Who had fished it
out of the waste paper basket and placed it there? He rang his bell
hastily to overwhelm his attendant with angry reproof. He could not have
told, himself, why it made him so angry to see that card. It looked like
some vulgar interference with his most private affairs.

“Where did you find this card?” he said, angrily, “and why is it
replaced here? I threw it into the fire--or somewhere, yesterday--and
here it is again as if the man had called to-day.”

“The gentleman did call, sir, yesterday.”

“What?” cried Colonel Kingsward, in a voice like a trumpet; but the man
stood his ground.

“The gentleman did call, sir, yesterday. He has called two or three
times; once when you were in the country. He seemed very anxious to see
you. I said two o’clock for a general thing, but you have been leaving
the office earlier for a day or two.”

“You are very impertinent to say anything of the kind, or to give anyone
information of my private movements; see that it never occurs again. And
as for this gentleman,” he held up his card for a moment, looked at it
contemptuously and then pitched it once more into the fireplace, “be so
good as to understand that I will not see him, whether he comes at two
or at any other hour.”

“Am I to tell him so, sir?” said the man, annoyed.

“Of course you are to tell him so; and mind you don’t bring me any
message or explanation. I will not see him--that is enough; now you can
go.”

“Shall I---- say you’re too busy, Colonel, or just going out, or
engaged----?”

“No!” shouted Colonel Kingsward, with a force of breath which blew the
attendant away like a strong wind. The Colonel returned to his work and
his correspondence with an irritation and annoyance which even to
himself seemed beyond the occasion. Bee’s old lover, he supposed, had
taken courage to make another attempt; but nothing would induce him to
change his former decision. He would not hear a word, not a word! A kind
of panic mingled in his hasty impulse of rage. He would not so much as
see the fellow--give him any opportunity of renewing---- Was it his suit
to Bee? Was it something else indefinite behind? Colonel Kingsward did
not very well know, but he was determined on one thing--not to allow the
presence of this intruder, not to hear a word that he had to say.

And then about Betty--that was annoying too, but he had promised to do
it, and to break his word to Laura was a thing he could not do.
Laura--Miss Laura, if she pleased, though that is not a usual mode of
address--but not Lance--how right she was! The name of Lance did not
suit her at all, and yet how just and sweet all the same. Her mother had
made a mésalliance, but there was no pettiness about her. She held by
her father, though she was aware of his inferiority. And then he thought
of her as she shook her head gently, and smiled at his awkward
stumbling suggestion that the accident of the name was not irremediable.
“At my age,”--what was her age? The most delightful, the most
fascinating of ages, whatever it was. Not the silly girlhood of Bee and
Betty, but something far more entrancing, far more charming. These
thoughts interfered greatly with his correspondence, and made the mass
of foreign newspapers, and the military intelligence from all over the
world, which it was his business to look over, appear very dull,
uninteresting and confused. He rose hastily after a while, and took his
hat and sallied forth to Portman Square, where he was expected to
luncheon. He was relieved, on the whole, to be thus legitimately out of
the way in case that fellow should have the audacity to call again.

“I want you to come out with me, Betty,” he said, after that meal, which
was very solemn, serious and prolonged, but very dull and not
appetising. “I want to take you to see a friend--”

“Oh, papa! we are going to---- Mrs. Lyon was going to take me to see
Mr. Revel’s picture before he sends it in.”

“To-morrow will do, my dear, equally well, if your papa wants you to go
anywhere.”

“Mr. Revel’s picture? He is precisely a friend of the friend I am going
to take you to see.” For a moment Colonel Kingsward wavered thinking how
much more agreeable it would be to have his interview with Laura
undisturbed by the presence of this little chit with her sharp eyes. But
he was a soldier and faithful to his consignee. “If it will do as well
to-morrow, and will not derange Mrs. Lyon’s plans, I should like you to
come now.”

“Run and get ready, Betty,” cried the old lady, to whom obedience was a
great quality, “and there will still be time to go there, if you are not
very long, when you come back.”

The Colonel felt as if his foot was upon more solid ground; not that any
doubt of Laura had ever been in his mind--but yet---- He had not
suspected the existence of any link between her and Portman Square.

“Mr. Revel is a very good painter, I suppose?” he said.

“A great painter, we all think; and beginning to be really acknowledged
in the art world,” said the old lady, who liked it to be known that she
knew a great deal about pictures, and was herself considered to have
some authority in that interesting sphere.

“And--hasn’t he a wife? I think I heard someone talking of his wife.”

“Yes, a dear little woman!” cried Mrs. Lyon. “Her Tuesdays are the most
pleasant parties. We always go when we are able. Ah! here is Betty, like
a little rose. Now, acknowledge you are proud to have a little thing
like that, Colonel, to walk with you through the park on a fine day like
this?”

Colonel Kingsward looked at Betty. She was a pretty little blooming
creature. He did not regard her with any enthusiasm, and yet she was a
creditable creature enough to belong to one. He gave a little nod of
approving indifference. Betty was very much admired at Portman
Square--from Gerald, who kept up an artillery of glances across the big
table, to the old butler, who called her attention specially to any
dish that was nicer than usual, and carried meringues to her twice, she
was the object of everybody’s regards. Her father did not, naturally,
look at her from the same point of view, but he was sufficiently pleased
with her appearance. He was pleased, too, exhilarated, he could scarcely
tell why, by the fact that Mrs. Lyon knew the painter’s wife and spoke
of her as a “dear little woman,” the very words Laura had used. Did he
require any guarantee that Laura herself was of the same order, knew the
same sort of people as his other friends? Had such a question been put
to him, the Colonel would have knocked the man down who made it, as in
days when duelling was possible he would have called him out---- But
yet--at all events it gave him much satisfaction that the British matron
in the shape of Mrs. Lyon spoke no otherwise of the lady whom for one
terrible moment of delusion he had intended to warn against intercourse,
too little guarded, with such equivocal men as artists. He shuddered
when he thought of that extraordinary aberration.

“Who is it, papa, we are going to see?” said Betty’s little voice by his
side.

“It is a lady--who has taken a great interest in your brother.”

“Oh, papa, that I should not have asked that the first thing! Have you
any news?”

“Nothing that I can call news, but I think I may say I have reason to
believe that Charlie has gone up to the north to the Mackinnons. That
does not excuse him for having left us in this anxiety; but the idea,
which did not occur to me till yesterday, has relieved my mind.”

“To the Mackinnons!” said Betty, doubtfully, “but then I heard----” She
stopped herself suddenly, and added after a moment, “How strange, papa,
if he is there, that none of them should have written.”

“It is strange; but perhaps when you think of all things, not so very
strange. He probably has not explained the circumstances to them, and
they will think that he has written; they would not feel it
necessary--why should they?--to let us know of his arrival. That, as a
matter of course, they would expect him to have done. I don’t think, on
the whole, it is at all strange; on his part inexcusable, but not to be
expected from them.”

“But, papa!” cried Betty.

“What is it?” he said, almost crossly. “I don’t mind saying,” he added,
“that even for him there may be excuses--if such folly can ever be
excused. He never writes to me in a general way, and it would not be a
pleasant letter to write; and no doubt he has put it off from day to
day, intending always to do it to-morrow--and every day would naturally
make it more difficult.” Thus he went on repeating unconsciously all the
suggestions that had been made to him. “Remember, Betty,” he said, “as
soon as you see that you have done anything wrong, always make a clean
breast of it at once; the longer you put it off the more difficult you
will find it to do.”

“Yes, papa,” said little Betty, with great doubt in her tone. She did
not know what to think, for she had in her blotting book at Portman
Square a letter lately received from one of these same Mackinnons in
which not a word was said of Charlie. Why should not Helen have
mentioned him had he been there? And yet, if papa thought so, and if it
relieved his mind to think so, what was Betty to set up a different
opinion? Her mind was still full of this thought when she found herself
following her father up the narrow stairs into the little drawing-room.
There she was met by a lady, who rose and came forward to her, holding
out two beautiful hands. “Such hands!” Betty said afterwards. Her own
were plump, reddish articles, small enough and not badly shaped, but
scarcely free from the scars and smirches of gardening, wild-flower
collecting, pony saddling, all the unnecessary pieces of work that a
country girl’s, like a country boy’s, are employed for. She had at the
moment a hopeless passion for white hands. And these drew her close,
while the beautiful face stooped over her and gave her a soft lingering
kiss. Was it a beautiful face? At least it was very, very handsome--fine
features, fine eyes, an imposing benignity, like a grand duchess at the
very least.

“So this is little Betty,” the lady said, to whom she was presented by
that title, “just out of last century, with her grandmother’s name, and
the newest version of her grandmother’s hat. How pretty! Oh, it is your
hat, you know, not you, that I am admiring. Like a little rose!”

Betty had no prejudices aroused in her mind by this lady’s name, for
Colonel Kingsward did not think it necessary to pronounce it. He said,
“My little Betty,” introducing the girl, but he did not think it needful
to make any explanations to her. And she thus fell, all unprotected,
under the charm. Laura talked to her for full five minutes without
taking any notice of the Colonel, and drew from her all she wanted to
see, and the places to which she was going, making a complete conquest
of the little girl. It was only when Colonel Kingsward’s patience was
quite exhausted, and he was about to jump up and propose somewhat
sullenly to leave his daughter with her new friend, that Miss Lance
turned to him suddenly with an exclamation of pleasure.

“Did you hear, Colonel Kingsward? She was going to see Arthur Revel’s
picture this afternoon. And so was I! Will you come too? He is a great
friend of mine, as I told you, and he knew dear Charlie, and, of course,
he would be proud and delighted to see you. Shall we take Betty back to
Portman Square to pick up her carriage and her old lady, and will you go
humbly on foot with me? We shall meet them, and Mrs. Revel shall give us
tea.”

“Oh, papa, do!” Betty cried.

It was not perhaps what he would have liked best, but he yielded with a
very good grace. He had not, perhaps, been so proud of little Betty by
his side as the Lyons had expected, but Laura by his side was a
different matter. He could not help remarking how people looked at her
as they went along, and his mind was full of pride in the handsome,
commanding figure, almost as tall as himself, and walking like a queen.
Yet it made his head turn round a little when he saw Miss Lance seated
by Mrs. Lyon’s side in the studio, talking intimately to her of the
whole Kingsward family, while Betty clung to her new friend as if she
had known her all her life. Old Mrs. Lyon was still more startled, and
her head went round too. “What a handsome woman!” she said, in Colonel
Kingsward’s ear. “What a delightful woman! Who is she?”

“Miss Lance,” he said, rather stupidly, feeling how little information
these words conveyed. Miss Lance? Who was Miss Lance? If he had said
Laura it might have been a different matter.




CHAPTER XLI.


WHILE all these things were going on, Bee was left at Kingswarden alone.
That is to say, she was so far from being alone that her solitude was
absolute. She had all the children and was very busy among them. She had
the two boys home for the Easter holidays; the house was full of the
ordinary noise, mirth and confusion natural to a large young family
under no more severe discipline than that exercised by a young elder
sister. The big boys, were in their boyish way, gentlemen, and deferred
to Bee more or less--which set a good example to the younger ones; but
she was enveloped in a torrent of talk, fun, games and jest, which raged
round her from before she got up in the morning till at least the
twilight, when the nursery children got tired, and the big boys having
exhausted every method of amusement during the day, began to feel the
burden of nothing to do, and retired into short-lived attempts at
reading, or games of beggar-my-neighbour, or any other simple mode of
possible recreation--descending to the level of imaginary football with
an old hat through the corridor before it was time to go to bed.

In the evening Bee was thus completely alone, listening to the distant
bumps in the passage, and the voices of the players. The drawing-room
was large, but it was indifferently lighted, which is apt to make a
country drawing-room gloomy in the evening. There was one shaded lamp on
a writing-table, covered at this moment with colour boxes and rough
drawings of the boys, who had been constructing a hut in the grounds,
and wasting much vermillion and Prussian blue on their plans for it; and
near the fireplace, in which the chill of the Spring still required a
little fire, was another lamp, shining silently upon Bee’s white dress
and her hands crossed in her lap. Her face and all its thoughts were in
the shade, nobody to share, nobody to care what they were.

Betty was in town. Her one faithful though not always entirely
sympathetic companion, the aunt--at all times not much more than a piece
of still life--was unwell and had gone to bed; Charlie was lost in the
great depth and silence of the world; Bee was thus alone. She had been
working for the children, making pinafores or some other necessary, as
became her position as sister-mother; for where there are so many
children there is always a great deal to do; but she had grown tired of
the pinafores. If it were not a hard thing to say she was a little tired
of the children too, tired of having to look after them perpetually, of
the nurse’s complaints, and the naughtiness of baby who was spoilt and
unmanageable--tired of the bumping and laughing of the boys, and tired
too of bidding them be quiet, not to rouse the children.

All these things had suddenly become intolerable to Bee. She had a great
many times expressed her thankfulness that she had so much to do, and no
time to think--and probably to-morrow morning she would again be of
that opinion; but in the meantime she was very tired of it all--tired of
a position which was too much for her age, and which she was not able to
bear. She was only a speck in the long, empty drawing-room, her white
skirts and her hands crossed in her lap being all that showed
distinctly, betraying the fact that someone was there, but with her face
hidden in the rosy shade, there was nobody to see that tears had stolen
up into Bee’s eyes. Her hands were idle, folded in her lap. She was
tired of being dutiful and a good girl, as the best of girls are
sometimes. It seemed to her for the moment a dreary world in which she
was placed, merely to take care of the children, not for any pleasure of
her own. She felt that she could not endure for another moment the
bumping in the passage, and the distant voices of the boys. Probably if
they went on there would be a querulous message from Aunt Helen, or
pipings from the nursery of children woke up, and a furious descent of
nurse, more than insinuating that Miss Bee did not care whether baby’s
sleep was broken or not. But even with this certainty before her, Bee
did not feel that she had energy to get up from her chair and interfere;
it was too much. She was too solitary, left alone to bear all the
burden.

Then the habitual thought of Charlie returned to her mind. Poor Charlie!
Where was he, still more alone than she. Perhaps hidden away in the
silence of the seas, or tossing in a storm, going away, away where no
one who cared for him would ever see him more. The tears which had come
vaguely to her eyes dropped, making a mark upon her dress, legitimatised
by this thought. Bee would have been ashamed had they fallen for
herself; but for Charlie--Charlie lost!--none of his family knowing
where he was--she might indeed be allowed to cry. Where was he? Where
was he? If he had been here he would have been sitting with her, making
things more possible. Bee knew very well in her heart that if Charlie
had been with her he would not have been much help to her, that he would
have been grumbling over his own hard fate, and calling upon her to pity
him; but the absent, if they are sometimes wronged, have, on the other
hand, the privilege of being remembered in their best aspect. Then Bee’s
thoughts glided on from Charlie to someone else whom she had for a long
time refused to think of, or tried to refuse to think of. She was so
solitary to-night, with all her doors open to recollections, that he had
stolen in before she knew, and now there was quite a shower of round
blots upon her white dress. Aubrey--oh, Aubrey! who had betrayed her
trust so, who had done her such cruel wrong!--but yet, but yet----

She was interrupted by the entrance of a servant with the evening post.
Kingswarden was near enough to town to have an evening post, which is a
privilege not always desirable. But any incident was a good thing for
poor Bee. She drew the pinafore, at which she had been working, hastily
over her knee to hide the spots of moisture, and dashed the tears from
her eyes with a rapid hand. In the shade of the lamp not even the most
keen eyes could see that she had been crying. She even paused as she
took the letter to say, “Will you please tell the boys not to make so
much noise?” There were three letters on the tray--one for her father,
one for her aunt, one Betty’s usual daily rigmarole of little news and
nonsense which she never failed to send when she was away. Betty’s
letter was very welcome to her sister. But as Bee read it her face began
to burn. It became more and more crimson, so that the rose shade of the
lamp was overpowered by a deeper and hotter colour. Betty to turn upon
her, to take up the other side, to cast herself under that dreadful new
banner of Fate! Bee’s breath came quickly, her heart beat with anger and
trouble. She got up from her chair and began to walk quickly about the
room, a sudden passion sweeping away all the forlorn sentiment of her
previous thoughts. Betty! in addition to all the rest. Bee felt like the
forlorn _chatelaine_ of a besieged castle alone to defend the walls
against the march of a destroying invader. The danger which had been far
off was coming--it was coming! And the castle had no garrison at all--if
it were not perhaps those dreadful boys making noise enough to bring
down the house, who were precisely the partisans least to be depended
upon, who would probably throw down their arms without striking a blow.
And Bee was alone, the captain deserted of all her forces to defend the
sacred hearth and the little children. The little children! Bee stamped
her foot upon the floor in an appeal, not to heaven, but to all the
powers of Indignation, Fury, War, War! She would defend those walls to
her last gasp. She would not give way, she would fight it out step by
step, to keep the invader from the children. The nursery should be her
citadel. Oh, she knew what would happen, she cried to herself
inconsequently! Baby, who was spoilt, would be twisted into rigid shape,
the little girls would be subdued like little mice--the boys--

At this moment the old hat which served as a football came with a thump
from the corridor into the hall, followed by a louder shout than ever
from Arthur and Rex. Bee rushed forth upon them flinging the door open,
with her blue eyes blazing.

“Do you mean to bring down the house?” she said, in a sudden outburst.
“Do you mean to break the vases and the mirror and wake up the whole
nursery and bring Aunt Helen down upon us? For goodness sake try to
behave like reasonable creatures, and don’t drive me out of my senses!”
cried Bee.

The boys were so startled by this onslaught that Rex, with a final kick
sent the wretched old hat flying to the end of the passage which led to
the servants’ hall, as if it were that harmless object that was to
blame--while Arthur covered the retreat sulkily by a complaint that
there was nothing to do in this beastly old hole, and that a fellow
couldn’t read books all the day long. Bee was so inspired and thrilling
with the passion in her, that she went further than any properly
constituted female creature knowing her own position ought to do.

“You have a great deal more to do than I have,” she said, “far, far more
to do and to amuse yourselves with. Why should you expect so much more
than I do, because you are boys and I am a girl? Is it fair? You’re
always talking of things being fair. It isn’t fair that you should
disturb the whole house, the little babies, and everyone for your
pleasure; and I’m not so very much older than you are, and what
pleasure have I?”

The boys were very much cast down by this fiery remonstrance. There had
been a squall as of several babies from the upper regions, and they had
already been warned of the consequence of their horseplay. But Bee’s
representation touched them in their tenderest point. Was it fair? Well,
no, perhaps it was not quite fair. They went back after her, humbled,
into the drawing-room, and besought her to join them in a game. After
they had finally retired, having finished the evening to their own
partial content, Bee took out again Betty’s letter and read it with less
excitement than at first--or at least with less demonstration of
excitement; this was what it said--

“Bee, such a delightful woman, a friend of her papa’s! So handsome, so
nice, so clever, so well dressed, everything you can think except young,
which of course she is not--nor anything silly. Papa told me to get
ready to come out with him to see an old friend of his and I wasn’t at
all willing, didn’t like it, I thought it must be some old image like
old Mrs. Mackinnon or Nancy Eversfield, don’t you know. Mrs. Lyon had
settled to take me out to see some pictures, and Gerald was coming, and
we were to have a turn in the park after, and I had put on my new frock
and was looking forward to it, when papa came in with this order: ‘Get
on your things and come with me, I want to take you to see an old
friend.’ Of course I had to go, for Mrs. Lyon will never allow me to
shirk anything. But I was not in a very good humour, though they called
me as fresh as a rose and all that--to please papa; as if he cared how
we look! He took me to George Street, Hanover Square, a horrid little
lodging, such as people come to when they come up from the country. And
I had to look as serious and as steady as possible for the sake of the
old lady; when there rose up from the chair, oh, such a different
person, tall, but as slight as you are, with such a handsome face and
such a manner. She might have been--let us say a nice, sweet aunt--but
aunt is not a name that means anything delightful; and mother I must not
say, for there is only one mother in the whole world; oh, but something
I cannot give a name, so understanding, so kind, so nice, for that means
everything. She kissed me, and then she began to talk to me as if she
knew everyone of us and was very fond of us all. And then about Charlie,
whom she seemed to know very well. She called him dear Charlie, and
I wonder if it is she who has persuaded papa that he is with
the Mackinnons, in Scotland. But I know he is not with the
Mackinnons--however, I will tell you about this after.

“Dear Bee, what will you say when I tell you that this delightful woman
is Miss Lance? You will say I have no heart, or no spirit, and am not
sticking to you through thick and thin as I ought; but you must hear
first what I have got to say. Had I known it was Miss Lance I should
have shut myself close up, and whatever she had done or however nice she
had been, I should have had nothing to say to her. If she had been an
angel under that name I should have remembered what you had said, and I
should not have seen any good in her. But I never heard what her name
was till we were all in Mr. Revel’s studio, quite a long time after.
Papa did as he always does, introduced me to her, but not her to me. He
said: “My daughter Betty,” as if I must have known by instinct who she
was. And, dear Bee, though I acknowledge you have every reason not to
believe it, she is delightful, she is, she is! She may have done wrong.
I can’t tell, of course; but I don’t believe she ever meant it, or to
harm you, or Charlie, or anyone. Everybody is delighted with her. Mrs.
Lyon, who you know is very particular, says she has the manners of a
duchess--and that she is such a handsome, distinguished-looking woman.
She is coming to dine here next Saturday. The only one who does not seem
to be quite charmed with her is Gerald, who is prejudiced like you.

“Do try to get over your prejudice, Bee, dear--she is, she is, indeed
delightful! You only want to know her. By the way, about the Mackinnons:
papa has got it firmly into his head that Charlie is there; he says his
mind is quite relieved about him, and that the more he thinks of it, the
more he is certain it is so; now I know that it is not so. I got a
letter from Helen Mackinnon the day I came here, and there is not a
word about Charlie--and she would have been certain to have mentioned
him had he been there. I tried to say this to papa, but his head was so
full of the other idea that he did not hear me at first, and I couldn’t
go on. I whispered to Miss Lance in the studio, and asked her what I
should do? She was so troubled and distressed about Charlie that the
tears came into her eyes, but, after thinking a moment, she said, ‘Oh,
dear child, don’t say anything. Your young friend might have been in a
hurry, she might not have thought it necessary to speak of your brother.
Oh, don’t let us worry him now! Bad news always comes soon enough, and,
of course, he will find it out if it is so.’ Do you think she was right?
But, oh Bee, dear Bee, I am afraid you will not think anything she says
is right; and yet she is _delightful_. If only you knew her! Write
directly, and tell me all you think.”

Bee was not excited on this second reading. She did not spring to her
feet, nor stamp on the floor, or feel inclined to call upon all the
infernal gods. But her heart sank down as if it would never rise again,
and a great pain took possession of her. Who was this witch, this
magician, that everyone who belonged to Bee should be drawn into her
toils--even Betty. What could she want with Betty, who was only a little
girl, who was her sister’s natural second and support? Bee sat a long
time with her head in her hands, letting the fire go out, feeling cold
and solitary and miserable, and frightened to death.




CHAPTER XLII.


IN the afternoon of the next day, Bee was again alone. The old aunt had
come down for lunch, but gone up to her room again to rest after that
meal. It was a little chilly outside. The children, of course, wrapped
up in their warm things, and in the virtue of the English nursery, which
shrinks from no east wind, were out for their various walks. The big
boys, attended by such of the little boys as could be trusted with these
athletes, were taking violent exercise somewhere, and Bee sat by the
fire, alone. It is not a place for a girl of twenty. The little
pinafore, half made, was on the table beside her. She had a book in her
hand. Perhaps had she been a young wife looking for the return of her
young husband in the evening, with all the air of the bigger world about
him and an abundance of news, and plans, and life, a pretty enough
picture might have been made of that cosy fireside retirement.

But even this ideal has ceased to be satisfactory to the present
generation. And Bee’s spirits and heart were very low. She had
despatched a fiery letter to Betty, and with this all her anger had
faded away. She had no courage to do anything. She seemed to have come
to an end of all possibilities. She had no longer anyone to fall back
upon as a supporter and sympathiser--not even Betty. Even this closest
link of nature seemed to have been broken by that enemy.

To have an enemy is not a very common experience in modern life. People
may do each other small harms and annoyances, but to most of us the
strenuous appeals and damnations of the Psalmist are quite beyond
experience. But Bee had come back to the primitive state. She had an
enemy who had succeeded in taking from her everything she cared for.
Aubrey her betrothed, Charlie, her father, her sister, one after the
other in quick succession. It was not yet a year and a half since she
first heard this woman’s name, and in that time all these losses had
happened. She was not even sure that her mother’s death was not the work
of the same subtle foe; indeed, she brought herself to believe that it
was at least accelerated by all the trouble and contention brought into
the family by her own misery and rebellion--all the work of that woman!
Why, why, had Bee been singled out for this fate? A little girl in an
English house, like other girls--no worse, no better. Why should she
alone in all England have this bitterness of an enemy to make her
desolate and break her heart?

While she was thus turning over drearily those dismal thoughts, there
was a messenger approaching to point more sharply still the record of
these disasters and their cause. Bee had laid down her book in her lap;
her thoughts had strayed completely from it and gone back to her own
troubles, when the door of the drawing-room opened quietly and a servant
announced “Mrs. Leigh.” Mrs. Leigh! It is not an uncommon name. A Mrs.
Lee lived in the village, a Mrs. Grantham Lea was the clergyman’s wife
in the next parish. Bee drew her breath quickly and composed her looks,
but thought of no visitor that could make her heavy heart beat. Not even
when the lady came in, a more than middle-aged matron, of solid form and
good colour, dressed with the subdued fashionableness appropriate to her
age. It was not Mrs. Lee from the village, nor Mrs. Grantham Lea,
nor---- Yet Bee had seen her before. She rose up a little startled and
made a step or two forward.

“You do not know me, Miss Kingsward? I cannot wonder at it, since we met
but once, and that in circumstances---- Don’t start nor fly, though I
see you have recognised me.”

“Indeed I did not think of flying. Will you--will you--sit down.”

“You need not be afraid of me, my poor child,” said Mrs. Leigh.

Aubrey’s mother seated herself and looked with a kind yet troubled look
at the girl, who still stood up in the attitude in which she had risen
from her chair. “I scarcely saw you the other time,” she said. “It was
in the garden. You did not give me a good reception. I should like
much, sometime or other, if you would tell me why. I have never made out
why. But don’t be afraid; it is not on that subject I have come to you
now.”

Bee seated herself. She kept her blue eyes, which seemed expanded and
larger than usual, but had none of the former indignant blaze in them,
fixed on the old lady’s face.

“Your father is not here, the servant tells me--”

“No--he is in town,” she answered, faltering, almost too much absorbed
by anticipation to reply.

“And you are alone--nobody with you to stand by you?”

“Mrs. Leigh,” said Bee, catching her breath, “I don’t know why you
should ask me such questions, or--or be sorry for me. I don’t need
anybody to be sorry for me.”

“Poor little girl! We needn’t go into that question. I am sorry for any
girl who is motherless, who has to take her mother’s place. I would much
rather have spoken to your father had he been here.”

“After all,” said Bee, “my father could say nothing. It is I who must
decide for myself.”

She said this with an involuntary betrayal of her consciousness that
there could be but one subject between them, and it was not in the power
of Aubrey Leigh’s mother, however strongly aware she was of another
theme on which she had come to speak, not to note how different was
Bee’s reception of her from the other time, when the girl had fled from
her presence and would not even hear what she had to say. Bee’s eyes
were large and humid and full of an anxiety which was almost wistful.
She had the air of refusing to hear with her lips, but eagerly expecting
with her whole heart what was about to be said. And she looked so young,
so solitary, in her mother’s chair, with a mother’s work lying about,
the head of this silent house--that the heart of the elder woman was
deeply touched. If little Betty had been like a rose, Bee was almost as
white as the cluster of fragrant white narcissus that stood on the
table. Poor little girl, so subdued and changed from the little
passionate creature who would not hear a word, and whose indignation
was stronger than even the zeal of the mother who had come to plead her
son’s cause!

Mrs. Leigh drew a little nearer and took Bee’s hand. The girl did not
resist, but kept her eyes upon her steadily, watching, her mind in a
great turmoil, not knowing what to expect.

“My dear,” said the old lady, “don’t be alarmed. I have not come to
speak about Aubrey. I cannot help hoping that one day you will do him
justice; but, in the meantime, it is something else that has brought me
here. Miss Kingsward--your brother--”

Bee’s hand, in this lady’s clasp, betrayed her in spite of herself. It
became limp and uninterested when she was assured that Aubrey was not in
question; and then, at her brother’s name, was snatched suddenly away.

“My brother?” she cried, “Charlie!” Then, subduing herself, “What do you
know about him? Oh,” clasping her hands as new light seemed to break
upon her, “you have come to tell me some bad news?”

“I hope not. My son found him some time ago, disheartened and unhappy
about leaving Oxford. He persuaded him to come and share his rooms. He
has been with him more or less all the time, which I hope may be a
comfort to you. And then he fell ill. My dear Aubrey has tried to see
your father, but in vain, and poor Charlie is not anxious, I fear, to
see his father. Yes, he has been ill, but not so seriously that we need
fear anything serious. He has shaken off the complaint, but he wants
rousing--he wants someone whom he loves. Aubrey sent for me a fortnight
ago. He has been well taken care of, there is nothing really wrong. But
we cannot persuade him to rouse himself. It is illness that is at the
bottom of it all. He would not have left you without news of him, he
would not shrink from his father if he were not ill. Bee, I will confess
to you that it is Aubrey who has sent me; but don’t be afraid, it is for
Charlie’s sake--only for Charlie’s sake. He thinks if you would but come
to him--if you would have the courage to come--to your brother, Bee.”

“He--he thinks? Not Charlie--you don’t mean Charlie?” Bee cried.

“Charlie does not seem to wish for anything. We cannot rouse him. We
think that the sight of someone he loves----”

Bee was full of agitation. Her lips quivered; her hands trembled. “Oh,
me!” she said; “I am no one. It is not for his sister a boy cares. I do
not think I should do him any good. Oh, Charlie, Charlie! all this time
that we have been blaming him so, thinking him so cruel, he has been
lying ill! If I could do him any good!” she cried, wringing her hands.

“The sight of you would do him good. It is not that he wants a nurse--I
have seen to that; but no nurse could rouse him as the sight of some of
his own people would. Do not question, my dear, but come--oh, come! He
thinks he is cut off from everybody, that his father will never see him,
that you must all have turned against him. Words will not convince him,
but to see you, that would do so. He would feel that he was not
forsaken.”

“Oh, forsaken! How could he think it? He must know that we have been
breaking our hearts. It was he who forsook us all.”

Bee had risen again, and stood leaning upon the mantelpiece, too much
shaken and agitated to keep still. Though she had thought herself so
independent, she had in reality never broken the strained band of
domestic subjugation. She had never so much as gone, though it was
little more than an hour’s journey, to London on her own authority. The
thought of taking such a step startled her. And that she should do this
on the word and in the company of Aubrey’s mother--Aubrey, for whom she
had once been ready to abandon everything, from whom she had been
violently separated, whom she had cast off, flung away from her without
hearing a word he had to say! How could she put herself in his way
again--go with his mother, accept his services? Bee had acted quickly on
the impulse of passion in all that had happened to her before. But she
had not known the conflict, the rending asunder of opposite emotions. In
the whirl of her thoughts her lover, whom she had cast off, came between
her and the brother whom he had succoured. It was to Aubrey’s house, to
his very dwelling where he was, that she must go if she went to
Charlie. And Charlie wanted her, or at least needed her, lying weak and
despairing, waiting for a sign from home. It was difficult to realise
her brother so, or to believe, indeed, that he could want her very much,
that there was any yearning in his heart towards his own flesh and
blood. But Mrs. Leigh thought so, and how could she refuse? How could
she refuse? The problem was too much for her. She looked into Mrs.
Leigh’s face with an appeal for help.

“My dear,” her companion said, leaving a calm and cool hand upon Bee’s
arm, which trembled with nervous excitement, “If you are afraid of
meeting Aubrey, compose yourself. Aubrey would rather go to the end of
the world than give you any pain, or put himself in your way. We are
laying no trap for you--I should not have come if the case had not been
urgent. Never would I have come had it been a question of my son; I
would not beguile you even for his sake. It is for your brother, Bee;
not for Aubrey, not for Aubrey!”

Not for Aubrey! Was that any comfort, was there any strength in that
assurance? At all events, these were the words that rang through Bee’s
head, as she made her hurried preparations. She had almost repeated them
aloud in the hasty explanations she made to Moss upstairs, who was now
at the head of the nursery, and to the housekeeper below. To neither of
these functionaries did it seem of any solemn importance that Bee should
go away for a day or two. There was no objection on their part to being
left at the head of affairs. And then Bee felt herself carried along by
the whirl of strange excitement and feeling which rather than the less
etherial methods of an express train seemed to sweep her through the air
of the darkening spring night by Mrs. Leigh’s side. A few hours before
she had felt herself the most helpless of dependent creatures, abandoned
by all, incapable of doing anything. And now, what was she doing?
Rushing into the heart of the conflict, assuming an individual part in
it, acting on her own responsibility. She could scarcely believe it was
herself who sat there by Mrs. Leigh’s side.

But not for Aubrey, not for Aubrey! This kept ringing in her ears, like
the tolling of a bell, through all the other sounds. She sat in one
corner of the carriage, and listened to Mrs. Leigh’s explanations, and
to the clang of the engine and rush of the train, all mingled together
in bewildering confusion. But the other voice filled all space, echoing
through everything. Bee felt herself trembling on the edge of a crisis,
such as her life had never known. All the world seemed to be set against
her, her enemy, perhaps her father, and all the habitual authorities of
her young and subject life, now suddenly rising into rebellion. She
would have to do and say things which she would not have ventured so
much as to think of a little time ago; but whatever she might have to
encounter there was to be no renewal to Bee of her own story and
meaning. It was not for Aubrey that she was called or wanted--for the
succour of others, for sisterly help, for charity and kindness; but not
for her own love or life.




CHAPTER XLIII.


IT was to a house in one of the streets of Mayfair that Mrs. Leigh
conveyed her young companion; one of those small expensive places where
persons within the circle of what is called the world in London contrive
to live with as little comfort and the greatest expenditure possible. It
is dark and often dingy in Mayfair; nowhere is it more difficult to keep
furniture, or even human apparel, clean; the rooms are small and the
streets shabby; but it is one of the right places in which to live, not
so perfect as it was once, indeed, but still furnishing an unimpeachable
address.

It had half put on the aspect of the season by this time; some of the
balconies were full of flowers, and the air of resuscitation which
comes to certain quarters of London after Easter, as if, indeed, they
too had risen from the dead, was vaguely visible. To be sure, little of
this was apparent in the dim lamplight when the two ladies arrived at
the door. Bee was hurried upstairs through the narrow passage, though
she had been very keenly aware that someone in the lower room had
momentarily lifted the blind to look out as they arrived--someone who
did not appear, who made no sound, who had nothing to do with her or her
life.

The rooms, which are usually the drawing-rooms of such a house, were
turned evidently into the apartments of the sufferer. In the back room
which they entered first was a nurse who greeted the ladies in dumb
show, and whose white head-dress and apron had the strangest effect in
the semi-darkness. She said, half by gesture, half with whispered words
more visible than audible, “He is up--better--impatient--good
sign--discontented with everything. Is this the lady?”

Mrs. Leigh answered in the same way, “His sister--shall I go with
her?--you?--alone?”

“By herself,” said the nurse, laconic; and almost inaudible as this
conversation was, it occasioned a stirring and movement in the inner
room.

“What a noise you make,” cried a querulous, unsteady voice, “Who’s
there--who’s there?”

The nurse took Bee’s hat from her head, with a noiseless swift movement,
and relieved her of the little cloak she was wearing. She took her by
the arm and pushed her softly forward. “Nothing to worry. Soothe him,”
she breathed, holding up a curtain that Bee might pass. The room was but
badly lighted, a single lamp on a table almost extinguished by the
shade, a fire burning though the night was warm, and one of the long
windows open, letting in the atmosphere and sounds of the London street.
Bee stole in, an uncertain shadow into the shaded room, less eager than
frightened and over-awed by this sudden entrance into the presence of
sickness and misery. She was not accustomed to associate such things
with her brother. It did not seem anyone with whom she was acquainted
that she was about to see.

“Oh, Charlie!” the little cry and movement she made, falling down on her
knees beside him, raised a pale, unhappy face, half covered with the
down of an irregular fledgling beard from the pillow.

“Hallo!” he said, and then in a tone of disappointment and disdain,
“You!”

“Oh, Charlie, Charlie dear! You have been ill and we never knew.”

“How do you know now? They knew I never wanted you to know,” he said.

“Oh, Charlie--who ought to know but your own people? We have been
wretched, thinking all sorts of dreadful things--but not this.”

“Naturally,” he said, “my own people might be trusted never to think the
right thing. Now you do know you may as well take yourself off. I don’t
want you--or anybody,” he added, with an impatient sigh.

“Charlie--oh, please let me stay with you. Who should be with you but
your sister? And I know--a great deal about nursing. Mamma----”

“I say--hold your tongue, can’t you? Who wants you to talk--of anything
of that sort?”

Bee heard a slight stir in the curtains, and looking back hastily as she
dried her streaming eyes saw the laconic nurse making signs to her. The
sight of the stranger was more effectual even than her signs, and
restored Bee’s self-command at once.

“Why did they bring you here?” said Charlie. “I didn’t want you; they
know what I want, well enough.”

“What is it you want, oh, Charlie dear? Papa--and all of us--will do
anything in the world you want.”

“Papa,” he said, and his weakened and irregular voice ran through the
gamut from a high feeble tone of irritation to the quaver of that
self-pity which is so strong in all youthful trouble. “Yes, he would be
pleased to get me out of the way, and be done with me now.”

“Oh, Charlie! You know how wrong that is. Papa has been--miserable--”

Charlie uttered a feeble laugh. He put his hand upon his chin, stroking
down the irregular tufts of hair; even in his low state the poor boy had
a certain pride in what he believed to be his beard.

“Not much,” he said. “I daresay you’ve made a fuss--Betty and you. The
governor will crack up Arthur for the F. O. and let me drop like a
stone.”

“No, Charlie, no. He has no such thought--he has taken such trouble not
to let it be known. He would not advertise or anything.”

“Advertise!” A sudden hot flush came over the gaunt face. “For me!” It
did not seem that such a thought had ever occurred to the young man.
“Like the fellows in the newspapers that steal their master’s
money--‘All is arranged and you can return to your situation.’ By
George!”

There was again a faint rustle in the curtains. Bee sprang up with her
natural impatience, and went straight to the spot whence this sound had
come.

“If I am not to speak to my brother alone and in freedom, I will not
speak to him at all,” she said.

The laconic nurse remonstrated violently with her lips and eyes.

“Don’t excite him. Don’t disturb him. He’ll not sleep all night,” she
managed to convey, with much arching of the eyebrows and mouth, then
disappeared silently out of the bedroom behind.

“What’s that?” said Charlie, sharply. He moved on his sofa, and turned
his head round with difficulty. “Are there more of you to come?”

There seemed a kind of hope and expectation in the question, but when
Bee answered with despondency, “There’s only me, Charlie,” he broke out
harshly:

“I don’t want you--I want none of you; I told them so. You can go and
tell my father, as soon as they let me get out I’m going off to New
Zealand or somewhere--the furthest-off place I can get to.”

“Oh, Charlie!” cried Bee, taking every word as the sincerest utterance
of a fixed intention, “what could you do there?”

“Die, I suppose,” he said, with again that quaver of self-compassion in
his voice, “or go to the dogs, which will be easy enough. You may say,
why didn’t I die here and be done with it? I don’t know--I’m sure I
wanted to. It was that doctor fellow, and that woman that talks with her
eyebrows, and that confounded cad, Leigh--they wouldn’t let me. And
I’ve got so weak; if you don’t go away this moment I’ll cry like a
dashed baby!” with a more piteous quaver than ever in the remnant of his
once manly voice.

All that Bee could do was to throw her arms round his neck and draw his
head upon her shoulder, which he resisted fiercely for a moment, then
yielded to in the abandonment of his weakness. Poor Charlie felt,
perhaps, a momentary sweetness in the relaxation of all the bonds of
self-control, and all the well-meaning attempts to keep him from
injuring himself by emotion; the unexpected outburst did him good,
partly because it was a breach of all the discipline of the sick room.
Presently he came to himself and pushed Bee away.

“What do you come bothering about?” he said; “you ought to have left me
alone. I’ve made my bed, and I’ve got to lie on it. I don’t suppose that
anyone has taken the trouble to--ask about me?” he added, after a little
while, in what was intended for a careless tone.

“Oh, Charlie, everyone who has known; but papa would let nobody know:
except at Oxford. We--went to Oxford----”

He got up on his pillow with his eyes shining out of their hollow
sockets, his long limbs coming to the ground with a faint thump. Poor
Charlie was young enough to have grown during his illness, and those
gaunt limbs seemed unreasonably long.

“You went to Oxford!” he said, “and you saw--”

“Dear Charlie, they will say I am exciting you--doing you harm----”

“You saw?” he cried, bringing down his fist upon the table with a blow
that made the very floor shake.

“Yes,” said Bee, trembling, “we saw--or rather papa saw----”

He pushed up the shade of the lamp with his long bony fingers, and fixed
his eyes, bright with fever, on her face.

“Oh, Charlie, don’t look at me so!--the lady whom you used to talk to me
about--whom I saw in the academy----”

“Yes?”--he grasped her hand across the table with a momentary hot
pressure.

“She came and saw papa in the hotel. She told him about you, and that
you had--oh, Charlie, and she so old--as old as----”

“Hold your tongue!” he cried, violently, and then with a long-drawn
breath, “What more? She told him--and he was rude, I suppose. Confound
him! Confound--confound them all!”

“I will not say another word unless you are quiet,” said Bee, her spirit
rising; “put up your feet on the sofa and be quiet, and remember all the
risk you are running--or I will not say another word.”

He obeyed her with murmurs of complaint, but no longer with the languid
gloom of his first accost. Hope seemed to have come into his heart. He
subdued himself, lay back among his pillows, obeyed her in all she
stipulated. The light from underneath the raised shade played on his
face and gave it a tinge of colour, though it showed more clearly the
emaciation of the outlines and the aspect of neglect, rather than, as
poor Charlie hoped, of enhanced manly dignity, conveyed by the irregular
sick man’s growth of the infant beard.

“Papa was not rude,” said Bee, “he is never rude; he is a gentleman.
Worse than that--”

“Worse--than what?”

“Oh, I cannot understand you at all, you and--the rest,” cried the girl;
“one after another you give in to her, you admire her, you do what she
tells you--that woman who has harmed me all she can, and you all she
can, and now--Charlie!” Bee stopped with astonishment and indignation.
Her brother had raised himself up again, and aimed a furious but futile
blow at her in the air. It did not touch her, but the indignity was no
less on that account.

“Well,” he cried, again bringing down that hand which could not reach
her, on the table, “How dare you speak of one you’re not worthy to name?
Ah! I might have known she wouldn’t desert me. It is she who has kept
the way open, and subdued my father, and----” An ineffable look of
happiness came upon the worn and gaunt countenance, his eyes softened,
his voice fell. “I might have known!” he said to himself, “I might have
known!”

And what could Bee say? Though she did not believe in--though she hated
and feared with a child’s intensity of terror the woman who had so often
crossed her path--she could not contradict her brother’s faith, though
she considered it an infatuation, a folly beyond belief; it seemed,
after all, in a manner true that this woman had not deserted him. She
had subdued his father’s displeasure somehow, made everything easier.
Bee looked at him, the victim of those wiles, yet nevertheless indebted
to them, with the same exasperation which her father’s subjugation had
caused her. What could she say, what could she do, to reveal to them
that enchantress in her true colours? But Bee knew that she could do
nothing, and there began to rise in her heart a dreadful question, Was
it so sure that she herself was right? Was this woman, indeed, an evil
Fate, or was she, was she----? And the first story of all, the story of
Aubrey, was it perhaps true?

The nurse came in noiselessly, hurrying, while Bee’s mind ran through
those thoughts--evidently with the conviction that she would find the
patient worse. But Charlie was not worse. He turned his face towards
his attendant, still with something of that dreamy rapture in it.

“Oh, you may speak out,” he said; “I don’t mind noises to-night. Supper?
Yes, I’ll take some supper. Bring me a beefsteak or something
substantial. I’m going to get well at once.”

Nurse nodded at Bee, with much uplifting of her eyelids. “Put no faith
in you,” she said, working the machinery of her lips; “was wrong; done
him no end of good. Beefsteak; not exactly; but soon, soon, if you’re
good.”




CHAPTER XLIV.


BEE saw no more of Charlie that night. When she came out of his room,
where there was a certain meaning in her presence, she seemed to pass
into the region of dreams. She was taken upstairs to refresh herself and
rest, into the smaller of two bedrooms which were over Charlie’s room,
the other of which was occupied by Mrs. Leigh. And she was taken
downstairs to dine with that lady _tête-à-tête_ at the small shining
table. There was something about the little house altogether, a certain
conciseness, an absence of drapery, and of the small elegant litter
which is so general nowadays, which gave it a masculine character--or,
at least, Bee, not accustomed to æsthetic young men, accustomed rather
to big boys and their scorn of the decorative arts, thought so with a
curious flutter of her being. This perhaps was partly because the
ornamental part of the house was devoted to Charlie, and the little
dining-room below seemed the sole room to live in. It had one or two
portraits hung on the walls, pictures almost too much for its small
dimensions. The still smaller room behind was clothed with books, and
had for its only ornament a small portrait of Mrs. Leigh over the
mantel-piece. Whose rooms were these? Who had furnished them so gravely,
and left behind an impression of serious character which almost chilled
the heart of Bee? He was nowhere visible, nor any trace of him. No
allusion was made as to an absent master of the house, and yet it bore
an air so individual that Bee’s sensitive being was moved by it, with
all the might of something stranger than imagination. She stood
trembling among the books, looking at the mother’s portrait over the
mantel-piece, feeling as if the very mantel-shelf on which she rested
her arm was warm with the touch of his. But not a word was said, not an
allusion made to Aubrey.

What had she to do with Aubrey? Nothing--less than with any other man in
the world--any stranger to whom she could speak with freedom,
interchanging the common coin of ordinary intercourse. He was the only
man in the world whom she must not talk of, must not see--the only one
of whose presence it was necessary to obliterate every sign, and never
to utter the name where she was. Poor Bee! Yet she felt him near, his
presence suggested by everything, his name always latent in the air. She
slept and waked in that strange atmosphere as in a dream. In Aubrey’s
house, yet with Aubrey obliterated--the one person in existence with
whom she had nothing, nothing to do.

It was late before she was allowed to see her brother next day, and Bee,
in the meantime, left to her own devices, had not known what to do. She
had taken pen and paper two or three times to let her father know that
Charlie was found, but her mind revolted, somehow, from making that
intimation. What would happen when he knew? He would come here
immediately; he would probably attempt to remove Charlie; he would
certainly order Bee away at once from a place so unsuitable for her. It
was unsuitable for her, and yet--She scarcely saw even Mrs. Leigh after
breakfast, but was left to herself, with the door open into that
sanctuary which was Aubrey’s, with all his books and the newspapers laid
out upon the table. Bee sat in the dining-room and looked into that
other secluded place. In the light of day she dared not go into it. It
seemed like thrusting herself into his presence who had no thought of
her, who did not want her. Oh, not for Aubrey! Aubrey would not for the
world disturb her, or bring any embarrassment into her mind. Aubrey
would rather disappear from his own house, as if he had never existed,
than remind her that he did exist, and perhaps sometimes thought of her
still. Did he ever think of her? Bee knew that it would be wrong and
unlike Aubrey if he kept in these rooms the poor little photograph of
her almost childish face which he had once prized so much. It would have
been indelicate, unlike a gentleman; and yet she made a hasty and
furtive search everywhere to see if, perhaps, it might be somewhere, in
some book or little frame. She would have been angry had she found it,
and indignant; yet she felt a certain desolate sense of being altogether
out of the question, steal into her heart, when she did not find it--in
the inconsistencies of which the heart is full.

It was mid-day when she was called upstairs, to find Charlie established
in the room which should have been the drawing-room, and round which she
threw another wistful look as she came into it in full daylight. Oh, not
a woman’s room in any way, with none of those little photograph frames
about which strew a woman’s table--not one, and consequently none of
Bee. She took this in at the first glance, as she made the three or four
little steps between the door and Charlie’s couch. He was more
hollow-eyed and worn in the daylight than he had been even on the night
before, his appearance entirely changed from that of the commonplace
young Oxford man to an eager, anxious being, with all the cares of a
troubled soul concentrated in his eyes. Mrs. Leigh sat near him, and
the nurse was busy with cushions and pillows arranging his couch.

“My dear, you will be thankful to hear that the doctor gives a very good
report to-day. He says that, though he would not have sanctioned it, my
remedy has done wonders. You are my remedy, Bee. I am proud of so
successful an idea--though, to be sure, it was a very simple one. Now
you must go on and complete the cure, and I give you _carte blanche_.
Ask anyone here, anyone you please, so long as it is not too much for
Charlie. He may see one or two people if nurse sanctions it. I am going
out myself for the day. I shall not return till late in the afternoon,
and you are mistress in the meantime--absolute mistress,” said Mrs.
Leigh, kissing her. Bee felt that Aubrey’s mother would not even meet
her eyes lest she should throw too much meaning into these words. Oh,
there was no meaning in them, except so far as Charlie was concerned.

And then she was left alone with her brother, the most natural, the only
suitable arrangement. Nurse gave the last pat to his cushions, the last
twist to the coverlet, which was over his gaunt limbs, appealed to him
the last time in dumb show whether he wanted anything, and then
withdrew. It was most natural that his sister, whose appearance had done
him so much good, should be left with him as his nurse; but she was
frightened, and Charlie self-absorbed, and it was some time before
either found a word to say. At last he said, “Bee!” calling her
attention, and then was silent again for some time, speaking no more.

“Yes, Charlie!” There was a flutter in Bee’s voice as in her heart.

“I say, I wasn’t, perhaps, very nice to you last night; I couldn’t bear
to be brought back; but they say I’m twice as well since you came. So I
am. I’ve got something to keep me up. Bee, look here. Am I dreadful to
look at? I know I haven’t an ounce of flesh left on my bones, but some
don’t mind that; and then, my beard. I’ve heard it said that a beard
that never was shaved was--was--an embellishment, don’t you know. Do you
think I’m dreadful to look at, Bee?”

“Oh, Charlie,” said the girl, from the depths of her heart, “what does
it matter how you look? The more ill you look the more need you have for
your own people about you, who never would think twice of that.”

Charlie’s gaunt countenance was distorted with a grin of rage and
annoyance. “I wish you’d shut up about my own people. The governor,
perhaps, with his grand air, or Betty, as sharp as a needle--as if I
wanted them!--or to be told that they would put up with me.”

“Charlie,” said Bee, trembling, “I don’t want to vex you, you are a
little--but couldn’t you have a barber to come, and perhaps he could
take it off.”

There came a flash of fire out of Charlie’s eyes; he put up his hand to
his face, as if to protect that beard in which he at least believed--“I
might have known,” he said, “that you were the last person! A fellow’s
sister is always like that: just as we never think anything of a girl’s
looks in our own families. Well, you’ve given your opinion on that
subject. And you think that people who care for me wouldn’t think twice
of that?”

“Oh, no,” said Bee, clasping her hands, “how should they? But only feel
for you far, far more.”

Charlie took down his hand from his young beard. He looked at her with
his hollow eyes full of anxiety, yet with a certain complacence.
“Interesting?”--he said, “is that what you meant to say?”

“Oh, yes,” cried Bee, her eyes full of pity, “for they can see what you
have gone through, and how much you have been suffering,--if there was
any need of making you more interesting to us.”

Charlie stroked down his little tufts of wool for some time without
speaking, and then he said in a caressing tone unusual to him, “I want
you to do me a favour, Bee.”

“Anything--anything, whatever you wish, Charlie.”

“There is just one thing I wish, and one person I want to see. Sit down
and write a note--you need not do more than say where I am,” said
Charlie, speaking quickly. “Say I am here, and have been very ill, but
that the hope she’d come, and to hear that she had forgiven me, was like
new life. Well! what is the meaning of your ‘anything, anything,’ if
you break down at the first thing I ask you? Look here, Bee, if you wish
me to live and get well you’ll do what I say.”

“Oh, Charlie, how can I?--how can I?--when you know what I
feel--about----”

“What you feel--about? Who cares what you feel? You think perhaps it was
you that did me all that good last night. That’s all conceit, like the
nonsense in novels, where a woman near your bed when you’re ill makes
all the difference. Girls,” said Charlie, “are puffed up with that folly
and believe anything. You know I didn’t want you. It was what you told
me about _her_ that did me good. And your humbug, sitting there crying,
‘anything, anything!’ Well, here’s something! You need not write a
regular letter, if you don’t like it. Put where I am--Charlie Kingsward
very ill; will you come and see him? A telegram would do, and it would
be quicker; send a telegram,” he cried.

“Oh, Charlie!”

“Give me the paper and pencil--I’m shaky, but I can do that much
myself----”

“Charlie, I’ll do it rather than vex you; but I don’t know where to send
it.”

“Oh, I can tell you that--Avondale, near the Parks, Oxford.”

“She is not there now--she is in London,” said Bee, in a low tone.

“In London?” Again the long, gaunt limbs came to the ground with a
thump. “Bee, if you could get me a hansom perhaps I could go.”

The nurse at this moment came in noiselessly, and Charlie shrank before
her. She put him back on the sofa with a swift movement. “If you go on
like this I’ll take the young lady away,” she said.

“I’ll not go on--I’ll be as meek as Moses; but, nurse, tell her she
mustn’t contradict a man in my state. She must do what I say.”

Nurse turned her back upon the patient, and made the usual grimaces;
“Humour him,” her lips and eyebrows said.

“Charlie, papa knows the address, and Betty--and I ought, oh, I ought to
let them know at once that you are here.”

“Betty!” he said, with a grimace, “what does that little thing know?”

“She knows--better than you think I do; and papa---- Papa is never happy
but when he is with that lady. He goes to see her every day; she writes
to him and he writes to her; they go out together,” cried Bee, thinking
of that invitation to Portman Square which had seemed the last insult
which she could be called on to bear.

Charlie smiled--the same smile of ineffable self-complacence and
confidence which had replaced in a moment the gloom of the previous
night; and then he grew grave. He was not such a fool, he said to
himself, as to be jealous of his own father; but still he grudged that
anyone but himself should have her company. He remembered what it was to
go to see her every day, to write to her, to have her letters, to be
privileged to give her his arm now and then, to escort her here or
there. If it had been another fellow! But a man’s father--the governor!
He was not a rival. Charlie imagined to himself the conversations with
him for their subject, and how, perhaps for the first time, the governor
would learn to do him justice, seeing him through Laura’s eyes. It was
true that she had rejected him, had almost laughed at him, had sent him
away so completely broken down and miserable that he had not cared what
became of him. But hope had sprung within him, all the more wildly from
that downfall. It was like her to go to the old gentleman (it was thus
he considered his father) to explain everything, to set him right. She
would not have done so if her heart had not relented--her heart was so
kind. She must have felt what it was to drive a man to despair--and now
she was working for him, soothing down the governor, bringing everything
back.

“Eh?” he said, vaguely, some time after; he had in the meantime heard
Bee’s voice going on vaguely addressing somebody, in the air, “are you
speaking to me?”

“There is no one else to speak to,” cried Bee, almost angrily. And then
she said, “Charlie--how can you ask her to come here?”

“Why not here? She’ll go anywhere to do a kind thing.”

“But not to this house--not here, not here!”

“Why not, I should like to know--what’s here?” Then Charlie stared at
her for a moment with his hollow eyes, and broke into a low, feeble
laugh.

“Oh,” he said, “I know what you’ve got in your head--because of that
confounded cad, Aubrey Leigh? That is just why she will come, to show
what a lie all that was--as if she ever would have looked twice at a
fellow like Leigh.”

“He seems to have saved your life,” said Bee, confused, not knowing what
to think.

“You mean he gave me house-room when I was ill, and sent for a doctor.
Why, any shop-keeper would have done that. And now,” said Charlie, with
a grin, “he shall be fully paid back.”




CHAPTER XLV.


BETTY KINGSWARD lived in what was to her a whirl of pleasure at Portman
Square, where everybody was fond of her, and all manner of
entertainments were devised for her pleasure. And her correspondence was
not usually of an exciting character. Her morning letters, when she had
any, were placed by her plate on the breakfast-table. If any came by
other posts, she got them when she had a spare moment to look for them,
and she had scarcely a spare moment at this very lively and very happy
moment of her young career. Besides, that particular evening when Bee’s
note arrived was a very important one to Betty. It was the evening on
which Miss Lance was to dine with the Lyons. And it was not a mere
quiet family dinner, but a party--a thing which in her newness and
inexperience still excited the little girl, who was not to say properly
“out,” in consequence of her mourning; still wearing black ribbons with
her white frocks, and only allowed to accept invitations which were
“quiet.” A dinner of twenty people is not exactly an entertainment for a
girl of her years, but Betty’s excitement in the _debût_ of Miss Lance
was so great that no ball could have occupied her more. There was an
unusual interest about it in the whole house, even Mrs. Lyon’s maid, the
most staid of confidential persons, had begged Betty to point out to her
over the baluster “the lady, Miss Betty, that is coming with your papa.”

“Oh, she’s not coming with papa,” Betty had cried, with a laugh at
Hobbs’ mistake, “she is only a great, great friend, Hobbs. You will
easily know her, for there is nobody else so handsome.”

“Handsome is as handsome does,” said the woman, and she patted Betty on
the shoulder under pretence of arranging her ribbon.

Betty had not the least idea why Hobbs looked at her with such
compassionate eyes.

Miss Lance, however, did come into the room, to Betty’s surprise,
closely followed by Colonel Kingsward, as if they had arrived together.
She was like a picture, in her black satin and lace, dressed not too
young but rather too old for her age, as Mrs. Lyon pointed out, who was
as much excited about her new guest as Betty herself; and the unknown
lady had the greatest possible success in a party which consisted
chiefly, as Betty did not remark, of old friends of Colonel Kingsward,
with whom she had been acquainted all her life. Betty did not remark it,
but Gerald Lyon did, who was more than ever her comrade and companion in
this elderly company.

“Why all these old fogies?” he had asked irreverently, as the gentlemen
with stars on their coats and the ladies in diamonds came in.

Betty perceived that it was an unusually solemn party, but thought no
more of it. It was the evening of the first levee, and that, perhaps,
was the reason why the old gentlemen wore their orders. Old gentlemen!
They were the flower of the British army. Generals This and That, heads
of departments; impossible to imagine more grand people--in the flower
of their age, like Colonel Kingsward. But eighteen has its own ideas
very clearly marked on that subject. Betty and Gerald stood by, lighting
up one corner with a blaze of undeniable youth, to see them come in. The
young pair were like flowers in comparison with the substantial size and
well worn complexions of their seniors, and they were the only little
nobodies, the sole representatives of undistinguished and ordinary
humanity round the table. They were not by any means daunted by that. On
the contrary, they felt themselves, as it were, soaring over the heads
of all those limited persons who had attained, spurning the level
heights of realisation. They did not in the least know what was to
become of them in life, but naturally they made light of the others who
did know, who had done all they were likely to do, and had no more to
look to. The dignity of accomplished success filled the young ones with
impulses of laughter; their inferiority gave them an elevation over all
the grizzled heads; they felt themselves, nobodies, to be almost
ludicrously, dizzily above the heads of the rest. Only one of the
company seemed to see this, however; to cast them an occasional look,
even to make them the confidants of an occasional smile, a raising of
the eyebrows, a sort of unspoken comment on the fine company, which made
Betty still more lively in her criticisms. But this made almost a
quarrel between the two.

“Oh, I wish we were nearer to Miss Lance, to hear what she thinks of it
all,” Betty said.

“I can’t think what you see in that woman,” cried Gerald. “I, for one,
have no desire to know her opinion.”

Betty turned her little shoulder upon him with a glance of flame, that
almost set the young man on fire.

“You prejudiced, cynical, uncharitable, malicious, odious boy!” And they
did not say another word to each other for five minutes by the clock.

Miss Lance, however, there was no doubt, had a distinguished success.
She captivated the gentlemen who were next to her at table, and, what
was perhaps more difficult, she made a favourable impression upon the
ladies in the drawing-room. Her aspect there, indeed, was of the most
attractive kind. She drew Betty’s arm within her own, and said with a
laugh, “You and I are the girls, little Betty, among all these grand
married ladies;” and then she added, “Isn’t it a little absurd that we
shouldn’t have some title to ourselves, we old maids?--for Miss means
eighteen, and it’s hard that it should mean forty-two. Fancy the
disappointment of hearing this juvenile title and then finding that it
means a middle-aged woman.”

She laughed so freely that some of the other ladies laughed too. The
attention of all was directed towards the new comer, which Betty thought
very natural, she was so much the handsomest of them all.

“You mean the disappointment of a gentleman?” said one of the guests.

“Oh, no, of ladies too. Don’t you think women are just as fond of youth
as men are, and as much disgusted with an elderly face veiling itself
in false pretences? Oh, more! We think more of beauty than the men do,”
said Miss Lance, raising her fine head as if to expose its features to
the fire of all the glances bent upon her.

There was a little chorus of cries, “Oh, no, no,” and arguments against
so novel a view.

But Miss Lance did not quail; her own beauty was done full justice to.
She was so placed that more than one mirror in the old-fashioned room
reflected her graceful and not unstudied pose.

“I know it isn’t a usual view,” she said, “but if you’ll think of it a
little you’ll find it’s true. The common thing is to talk about women
being jealous of each other. If we are it is because we are always the
first to find out a beautiful face--and usually we much exaggerate its
power.”

“Do you know,” said Mrs. Lyon in her quavering voice, “I almost think
Miss Lance is right? Mr. Lyon instantly says ‘Humph!’ when I point out a
pretty person to him. And Gerald tells me, ‘You think every girl pretty,
aunt.’”

“That is because there is one little girl that he thinks the most pretty
of all,” said Miss Lance, with a sort of soft maternal coo in Betty’s
ear.

The subject was taken up and tossed about from one to another, while she
who had originated it drew back a little, listening with an air of much
attention, turning her head to each speaker, an attitude which was most
effective. It will probably be thought the greatest waste of effort for
a woman thus to exhibit what the newspapers call her personal advantages
to a group of her own sex; but Miss Lance was a very clever woman, and
she knew what she was about. After a time, when the first fervour of the
argument was over, she returned to her first theme as to the appropriate
title that ought to be invented for old maids.

“I have thought of it a great deal,” she said. “I should have called
myself Mrs. Laura Lance, to discriminate--but for the American custom of
calling all married ladies so, which is absurd.”

“I have a friend in New York who writes to me as Mrs. Mary Lyon,” said
the mistress of the house.

“Yes, which is ridiculous, you know; for you are not Mrs. Mary Lyon,
dear lady. You are Mrs. Francis Lyon, if it is necessary to have a
Christian name, for Lyon is your husband’s name, not yours. You are Mrs.
Mary Howard by rights--if in such a matter there are any rights.”

“What!” cried old Mr. Lyon, coming in after the long array of gentlemen,
“are you going to divorce my wife from me, or give her another name, or
what are you going to do? We thought it was we only who could change the
ladies’ names, Kingsward, eh?”

Colonel Kingsward had placed himself immediately in front of Miss Lance,
and Betty, looking on all unsuspicious, saw a glance pass between
them--or rather, she saw Miss Lance look up into her father’s face.
Betty did not know in the least what that look meant, but it gave her a
little shock as if she had touched an electric battery. It meant
something more than to Betty’s consciousness had ever been put into
words. She turned her eyes away for a moment to escape the curious
thrill that ran through her, and in that moment met Gerald Lyon’s eyes,
full of something malicious, mocking, disagreeable, which made Betty
very angry. But she could not explain to herself what all these looks
meant.

This curious sensation somehow spoiled the rest of the evening for
Betty. Everybody it seemed to her after this meant something--something
more than they said. They looked at her father, they looked at Miss
Lance, they looked even at Betty’s little self, embracing all three,
sometimes in one comprehensive glance. And all kinds of significant
little speeches were made as the company went away. “I am so glad to
have seen her,” one lady said in an undertone to Mrs. Lyon. “One
regrets, of course, but one is thankful it is no worse.” “I think,” said
another, “it will do very well--I think it will do very well; thank you
for the opportunity.” And “Charming, my dear Mrs. Lyon, charming,” said
another. They all spoke low and in the most confidential tone. What was
it they were all so interested about?

The last of the party to go were Miss Lance and Colonel Kingsward. They
seemed to go away together as they had seemed to come together.

“Your father is so kind as to see me home,” Miss Lance said, by way of
explanation. “I am not a grand lady with a carriage. I am old enough to
walk home by myself, and I always do it, but as Colonel Kingsward is so
kind, of course I like company best.”

She too had a private word with Mrs. Lyon, at the head of the stairs.
Betty did not want to listen, but she heard by instinct the repeated
“Thank you, thank you! How can I ever express how much I thank you?”
Betty was so bewildered that she could not think. She paid no attention
to her father, who put his hands on her shoulders when he said
“Good-night,” and said, “Betty, I’ll see you to-morrow.” Oh, of course,
she should see him to-morrow--or not, as circumstances might ordain.
What did it matter? She was not anxious to see her father to-morrow, it
could not be of the least importance whether they met or not; but what
Betty would really have liked would have been to find out what all these
little whisperings could mean.

Mrs. Lyon came up to her when the last, to wit, Colonel Kingsward
following Miss Lance, had disappeared, and put her arms round the little
girl. “You are looking a little tired,” she said, “just this last hour.
I did not think they would stay so late. It is all Miss Lance, I
believe, setting us on to argue with her metaphysics. Well, everybody
likes her very much, which will please you, my dear, as you are so fond
of her. And now, Betty, you must run off to bed. There’s hardly time for
your beauty sleep.”

“Mrs. Lyon,” said Betty, very curious, “was it to meet Miss Lance that
all those grand people came?”

“I don’t know what you call grand people. They are all great friends of
ours and also of your father’s, and I think you know them every one. And
they all know each other.”

“Except Miss Lance,” said Gerald, who was always disagreeable--always,
when anyone mentioned Miss Lance’s name.

“I know her, certainly, and better than any of them! And there is nobody
so delightful,” Betty cried, with fervour, partly because she believed
what she said, and partly to be disagreeable in her turn to him.

“And so they all seemed to think,” said old Mr. Lyon, “though I’m not so
fond of new people as the rest of you. Lay hands suddenly on no man is
what I say.”

“And I say the same as my uncle,” said Gerald, “and it’s still more true
of a woman than a man.”

“You are such an experienced person,” said the old lady; “they know so
much better than we do, Betty. But never you mind, for your friend has
made an excellent impression upon all these people--the most
tremendously respectable people,” Mrs. Lyon said, “none of your artists
and light-minded persons! Make yourself comfortable with that thought,
and good night, my little Betty. You must not stay up so late another
night.”

What nonsense that was of staying up late, when it was not yet twelve
o’clock! But Betty went off to her room with a little confusion and
bewilderment of mind, happy on the whole, but feeling as if she had
something to think about when she should be alone. What was it she had
to think about? She could not think what it was when she sat down alone
to study her problem. There was no problem, and what the departing
guests had said to Mrs. Lyon was quite simple, and referred to something
that was their own business, that had nothing to do with Betty. How
could it have anything to do with Betty?

Around the corner of the Park, Bee, too, was sitting alone and thinking
at the same time, and the two sets of thoughts, neither very clear,
revolved round the same circle. But neither of the sisters knew,
concerning this problem, whereabouts the other was.




CHAPTER XLVI.


AND yet all this time there lay upon Betty’s table, concealed under the
pretty laced handkerchiefs which she had pulled out of their sachet to
choose one for the party, Bee’s little tremulous letter, expressing a
state of mind more agitated than that of Betty, and full of wonderings
and trouble. It was found there by the maid who put things in order next
morning, when she called the young visitor.

“Here’s a letter that came last night, and you have never opened it,”
said the maid, half reproachfully. She, at least, she was anxious to
note, had not been to blame.

Betty took it with great _sang froid_. She saw by the writing it was
only Bee’s--and Bee’s news was never imperative. There could not be
much to disclose to her of the state of affairs at Kingswarden that was
new, since the night before last.

But the result was that Betty went downstairs in her hat and gloves, and
that Mr. Lyon and Gerald, who were both sitting down to that substantial
breakfast which is the first symbol of good health and a good conscience
in England, had much ado to detain her long enough to share that meal.

Mrs. Lyon did not come downstairs in the morning, so that they used the
argument of helplessness, professing themselves unable to pour out their
own tea.

“And what business can Betty have of such importance that she must run
out without her breakfast?” said the old gentleman.

“Oh, it is news I have heard which I must take at once to papa!”

The two gentlemen looked at each other, and Mr. Lyon shook his big, old
head.

“I would not trouble your papa, my dear, with anything you may have
heard. Depend upon it, he will let you know anything he wishes you to
know--in his own time.”

“But it is news--news,” said Betty; “news about Charlie!”

Then she remembered that very little had been said even to the Lyons
about Charlie, and stopped with embarrassment, and her friends could not
but believe that this was a hasty expedient to conceal from them that
she had heard something--some flying rumour which had set her little
impetuous being on fire. When she had escaped from their sympathetic
looks and Gerald’s magnanimous proposal to accompany her--without so
much as an egg to fortify him for the labours of the day!--Betty set
out, crossing the Park in the early glory of the morning, which feels at
nine o’clock what six o’clock feels in the country, to carry the news to
her father.

Charlie found, and ill; and demanding to see Miss Lance, his health and
recovery depending upon whether he should see her or not! Betty’s first
instinct had been to hasten at once to George Street, Hanover Square,
but then she remembered that papa presumably was the one who was most
anxious about Charlie and had the best right to know, and it was perhaps
better not to explain to the friends in Portman Square why Miss Lance
should go to Charlie. Indeed, when she had set out, a great many
questions occurred to Betty, circulating through her lively little mind
without any possibility of an answer to them. Why should Charlie be so
anxious to see Miss Lance? Why had he been so long there, ill, and
nobody come to tell his people of it? And what was Bee doing in Curzon
Street, in Aubrey Leigh’s house, which was the last house in the world
where she had any right to be? But she walked so fast, and the sunny air
with all its movement and lightness so carried her on and filled her
with pleasant sounds and images, that these thoughts, blowing like the
wind through her little intelligence, had not much effect on Betty
now--though there was incipient trouble in them, as even she could see.

Colonel Kingsward was seated at his breakfast when his little girl burst
in upon him in all the freshness of the morning. Her youth and her
bloom, and her white frock, notwithstanding its black accoutrements,
made a great show in the dark-coloured, solemn, official-looking room,
with its Turkey carpets and morocco chairs. The Colonel was evidently
startled by the sight of her. He said, “Well?” in that tone of
self-defence, and almost defiance, with which a man prepares for being
called upon to give an account of himself; as if anything so absurd
could be possible as that Betty, little Betty, could call upon her
father to give an account of himself! But then it is very true that when
there is something to be accounted for, the strongest feel how
“conscience doth make cowards of us all.”

“Oh,” she cried, breathless, “Papa--Charlie! Bee has found Charlie, and
he’s been very ill--typhoid fever; he’s getting better, and he’s in
London, and she’s with him; and he wants but to see Miss Lance. Oh,
papa, that’s what I came about chiefly--he wants to see Miss Lance.”

Colonel Kingsward’s face changed many times during this breathless
deliverance. He said first, “He’s at Mackinnon’s, I know;” then, “In
London!” with no pleasure at all in his tone; and finally, “Miss Lance!”
angrily, his face covered with a dark glow.

“What is all this?” he cried, when she stopped for want of breath.
“Charlie--in town? You must be out of your senses. Why, he is in
Scotland. I heard from--, eh? Well, I don’t know that I had any letter,
but--. And ill--and Bee with him? What is the meaning of all this? Are
you both mad, or in a conspiracy to make yourselves disagreeable to me?”

“Papa!” cried Betty, very ready to take up the challenge; but on the
whole the news was too important to justify a combat of self-defence.
She produced Bee’s note out of its envelope, and placed it before him,
running on with a report of it while the Colonel groped for his eyeglass
and arranged it upon his nose.

“A lady came and fetched her,” cried Betty, hurriedly, to forestall the
reading, “and brought her up to town and took her to him--oh, so
bad--where he had been for weeks; and she told him you had been to
Oxford, and something about Miss Lance; and he wants to see Miss Lance,
and calls and calls for her, and won’t be satisfied. Oh, papa!”

Colonel Kingsward had arranged his _pince-nez_ very carefully; he had
taken up Bee’s note, and went over it word by word while Betty made her
breathless report. When he came to the first mention of Miss Lance he
struck his hand upon the table like any other man in a passion, making
all the cups and plates ring.

“The little fool!” he said, “the little fool! What right had she to
bring in that name? It was this that called forth Betty’s exclamation,
but no more was said by either till he read it out to the end. Then he
flung the letter from him, and getting up, paced about the room in rage
and dismay.

“A long illness,” said the Colonel, “was perhaps the best thing that
could have happened to him to sweep all that had passed before out of
his mind; and here does this infernal little idiot, this little demon
full of spite and malice, get at the boy at his worst moment and bring
everything back. What right had she, the spiteful, envious little fool,
to bring in the name of a lady--of a lady to whom you all owe the
greatest respect?”

“Papa!” cried Betty, overwhelmed, “Bee couldn’t have meant any harm.”

Colonel Kingsward was out of himself and he uttered words which
terrified his daughter, and which need not be recorded against him--for
he certainly did not in cold blood wish Bee to fall under any celestial
malediction. He stormed about the room, saying much that Betty could not
understand; that it was just the thing of all others that should not
have happened, and the time of all others; that if it had been a little
later, or even a little earlier, it would not have mattered; that it was
enough to overturn every arrangement, increase every difficulty. He was
not at all a man to give way to his feelings so. His children, indeed,
until very lately, had never seen him excited at all, and it was an
astonishment beyond description to little Betty to be a spectator of
this scene. Indeed, Colonel Kingsward awoke presently to a sense of the
self-exposure he had been making, and calmed down, or, at least,
controlled himself, upon which Betty ventured to ask him very humbly
what he thought she had better do.

“May I go to Miss Lance and tell her? She is not angry now, nor unhappy
about him like--like _us_,” said Betty, putting the best face upon it
with instinctive capacity, “and she might know what to do. She is so
very kind and understanding, don’t you know, papa?--and she would know
what to do.”

For the first time Colonel Kingsward gave his agitated little visitor a
smile. “You seem to have some understanding, too, for a little girl,” he
said, “and it looks as if you would be worthy of my confidence, Betty.
When I see you this afternoon I shall, perhaps, have something to tell
you that----”

There came over Colonel Kingsward’s fine countenance a smile, a
consciousness, which filled Betty with amaze. She had seen her father
look handsome, commanding, very serious. She had seen him wear an air
which the girls in their profanity had been used in their mother’s happy
days to call that of the _père noble_. She had seen him angry, even in a
passion, as to-day. She had heard him, alas! blaspheme, which had been
very terrible to Betty. But she had never, she acknowledged to herself,
seen him look _silly_ before. Silly, in a girl’s phraseology, was what
he looked now, with that fatuity which is almost solely to be attributed
to one cause; but of this Betty was not aware. It came over his
countenance, and for a moment Colonel Kingsward let himself go on the
flood of complacent consciousness, which healed all his wounds. Then he
suddenly braced himself up and turned to Betty again.

“Perhaps,” he said, in his most fatherly tone, for it seemed to the man
in this crisis of his life that even little Betty’s support was
something to hold by, “my dear child, your instinct is right. Go to Miss
Lance and tell her how things are. Don’t take this odious letter,
however,” he said, seizing Bee’s note and tearing it across with
indignant vehemence, “with all its prejudices and assumptions. Tell her
in your own words; and where they are--and---- Where are they, by the
way?” he said, groping for the fragments of the letter in his
waste-paper basket. “I hope you noted the address.”

He had not then, it was evident, noted the address, nor the name of Mrs.
Leigh, nor in whose house Charlie was. Betty’s heart beat high with the
question whether she should call his attention to these additional
facts, but her courage failed her. He had cooled down, he was himself
again: and after a moment he added, “I will write a little note which
you can take,” with once more the smile that Betty thought silly
floating across his face. She was standing close by the writing-table,
and Betty was not aware that there was any harm in the natural glimpse
which her keen eyes took, before she was conscious of it, of the note he
was writing. It was not like a common note. It did not begin “Dear Miss
Lance,” as would have been natural. In short, it had no beginning at
all, nor any signature--or rather it was signed only with his initial
“F.” How very extraordinary that papa should sign “F.” and should not
put any beginning to his letter. A kind of wondering consternation
enveloped the little girl. But still she did not in the least understand
what it meant.

Betty walked away along Pall Mall and Piccadilly, and by the edge of the
Park to George Street, Hanover Square. It is not according to the
present fashion that a girl should shrink from walking along through
those busy London streets, where nobody is in search of adventures, at
least at that hour of the morning. Her white morning frock and her black
ribbons, and her early bloom, like the morning, though delightful to
behold, did not make all the passers by stand and stare as the movements
of a pretty girl used to do, if we are to credit the novels, in the
beginning of the century. People, perhaps, have too much to do nowadays
to give to that not unusual sight the attention which the dandies and
the macaroni bestowed upon it, and Betty was so evidently bent on her
own little business, whatever it was, that nothing naturally occurred to
detain her.

It was so unusual for her to have a grave piece of business in hand that
she was a little elated by it, even though so sorry for Charlie who was
so ill, and for Bee who was so perturbed about everything. Betty herself
was not perturbed; she was full of the pleasure of the morning and the
long, interesting walk, and the sense of her own importance as a
messenger. If there did occasionally float across her mind the idea
that her father’s demeanour was strange, or that it was odd that he
should have signed his note to Miss Lance with an F., it was merely a
momentary idea and she did not question it or detain it. And poor
Charlie! Ill--not able to get out this fine weather; but he was getting
better, so that there was really nothing to be troubled about.

Miss Lance was up, but had not yet appeared when Betty was shown into
her little drawing-room. She was not an early riser. It was one of her
vices, she frankly allowed. Betty had to wait, and had time to admire
all her friend’s knick-knacks, of which there were many, before she came
in, which she did at last, with her arms put out to take Betty
maternally to her bosom. She looked in the girl’s face with a very
intent glance before she took her into this embrace.

“My little Betty, so early,” she said, and kissed the girl, and then
looked at her again, as if in expectation of something; but as Betty
could not think of anything that Miss Lance would be expecting from her,
she remained unconscious of any special meaning in this look.

“Yes, I am early,” she said; “it is because I have something to tell
you, and something to ask of you, too.”

“Tell, my dear little girl, and ask. You may be sure I shall be at your
service. But what is this in your hand--a note for me?”

“Yes, it is a note for you, but may I tell you first what it is about?”
Betty went on quickly with her story, though Miss Lance, without waiting
for it, took the note and opened it. “Miss Lance, Charlie is found; he
has been very ill, and he wants to see you.”

“To see me?” Miss Lance looked with eyes of sympathy, yet great
innocence, as if at an impossible proposal, at the breathless girl so
anxious to get it out. “But, Betty, if he is with your friends, the
Mackinnons, in Scotland--?”

“Oh, Miss Lance, I told you he was not there, don’t you remember? He has
never been anywhere all this time. He has had typhoid fever, and on
Thursday Bee was sent for, and found him still ill, but mending. And
when he heard you were in town he would give her no peace till she wrote
and asked you to come and see him. And she did not know your address so
she wrote to me. I went to tell papa first, and then I came on here. Oh,
will you come and see Charlie? Bee said he wanted to get into a hansom
and come to you as soon as he heard you were here.”

“What induced them to talk of me, and why did she tell him I was here?”
Miss Lance cried, with a momentary cloud upon her face, such as Betty
had never seen there before. She sat down suddenly in a chair, with a
pat of her foot upon the carpet, which was almost a stamp of impatience,
and then she read Colonel Kingsward’s note for the second time, with her
brows drawn together and a blackness about her eyes which filled Betty
with alarm and dismay. She looked up, however, next minute with her
countenance cleared. “Your father says I am to use my own discretion,”
she said, with a half laugh; “that is not much help to me, is it, in
deciding what is best to do? So he has been ill--and not in Scotland at
all?”

“I told you he was not in Scotland,” cried Betty, a little impatient in
her turn. “Oh, Miss Lance, he has been ill, he is still ill, and won’t
you come and see him when he wants you so? Oh, come and see him, please!
He looks so ill and wretched, Bee says, and weak, and cannot get back
his strength; and he thinks if he could see you----”

“Poor boy--silly boy!” said Miss Lance; “why does he think it will do
him good to see me? I doubt if it would do him any good; and your father
says I am to use my discretion. I would do anything for any of you,
Betty, but perhaps I should do him harm instead of good. Have you got
your sister’s letter?”

“I left it with papa--that is, he threw it into the waste paper basket,”
said the too truthful Betty, growing red.

“I understand,” said Miss Lance, “it was not a letter to show me. Bee
has her prejudices, and perhaps she is right. I cannot expect that all
the family should be as nice to me as you. Have they taken him to
Kingswarden? Or where is he, poor boy?”

“He is at No. 1000, Curzon Street,” Betty said.

“What!” said Miss Lance. “Where?” Her brow curved over her eyes, her
face grew dark as if the light had gone out of the morning, and she
spoke the two monosyllables in a sharp imperative tone, so that they
seemed to cut like a knife.

“At No. 1000; Curzon Street,” Betty repeated with great alarm, not
knowing what to think.

Miss Lance rose quickly, as if there had been something that stung her
in the innocent words. She looked as if she were about to pace the room
from end to end, as Colonel Kingsward did when he was disturbed. But
either she did not mean this, or she restrained herself, for what she
did was to walk to her writing-table and put Colonel Kingsward’s note
away in a drawer, and then she went to the window and looked out, and
said it was a fine morning but dusty for walking--and then she returned
to her chair and sat down again and looked at Betty. She was pale, and
there were lines in her face that had not been there before. Her eyes
were almost piteous as she looked at the surprised girl.

“I am in a very strait place,” she said, “and I don’t know what to do.”
Something like moisture seemed to come up into her eyes. “This is always
how it happens to me,” she said, “just at the moment, just at the
moment! What am I to do?”




CHAPTER XLVII.


BEE had passed the whole day with Charlie, the Friday of the dinner
party at Portman Square. She had resisted as long as she could writing
the letter which had brought so much excitement to Betty, and the
passion with which he had insisted upon this--the struggle between them,
the vehemence with which he had declared that he cared for nothing in
the world but to see Laura once again, to thank her for having pleaded
for him with his father, to ask her forgiveness for his follies--had
been bad for Charlie, who lay for the rest of the day upon the sofa,
tossing from him one after the other the novels that were provided for
his amusement, declaring them to be “rot” or “rubbish,” growling at his
sister when she continued to speak to him, and reducing poor Bee to that
state of wounded imbecility which is the lot of those who endeavour to
please an unpleasable invalid, with the conviction that all the time
they are doing more harm than good.

Bee was not maladroit by nature, and she had the warmest desire to be
serviceable to her brother, but it appeared that she always did the
wrong thing, not only in the eyes of Charlie, but in those of the nurse,
who came in from time to time with swift movements, bringing
subordination and quiet where there had been nothing but irritation and
resistance. And in this house, where she had been brought entirely for
the service of Charlie, Bee did not know what to do. She was afraid to
leave the rooms that had been given up to him lest she should meet
someone on the stairs, or be seen only to be avoided, as if her presence
there was that of a ghost or an enemy. Poor Bee--wearing out the long
hours of the spring afternoon with poor attempts to be useful to the
invalid, to watch his looks--which he resented by frequent adjurations
not to watch him as a cat watches a mouse--to anticipate his
wishes--which immediately became the last thing in the world he wanted
as soon as she found out the drink or got the paper for which he was
looking, heard or thought she heard steps coming to the street door,
subdued voices in the hall, comings and goings half stealthily, noises
subdued lest she should hear. What did it matter whether she heard or
not? Why should the master of the house be banished that she, so
ineffectual as she had proved, should be brought to her brother’s side?
She had not done, and could not do, any good to Charlie. All that she
had done had been to remind him of Miss Lance, to be the medium of
calling that disastrous person, who had done all the harm, back into
Charlie’s life--nay, of bringing her back to this house, the inmates of
which she had already harmed to the utmost of her power.

That was all that had been done by Bee, and now her presence kept at a
distance the one individual in the world who had the best right to be
here. He came almost secretly, she felt sure, to the door in the dusk
to inquire after his patient, or to get his letters; or stole in,
subduing his step, that she might not be disturbed.

Poor Bee! It was very bitter to her to think that Aubrey Leigh should
leave his own house because she was there. Sometimes she wondered
whether it was some remnant of old, almost-extinguished feeling in his
breast which had made him think that the sight of Bee would do Charlie
good--the sight of Bee, for which her brother did not care at all, not
at all; which was an annoyance and a fatigue to him, except when she had
betrayed what was the last thing in the world she should have betrayed,
the possibility of seeing again that woman who had harmed them all. If
Aubrey had thought so, with some remnant of the old romance, how
mistaken he had been! And it was intolerable for the girl to think that
for the sake of this unsuccessful experiment he had been sent away from
his own house. She placed herself in the corner of the room in which
Charlie (to whom she was supposed to do good and bring pleasure) could
see her least, and bitterness filled her heart. There were times in
which she thought of stealing away, leaving a word for Mrs. Leigh to the
effect that she was doing Charlie no good, and that Betty, who would
come to-morrow, might perhaps be of more use--and returning forlorn to
Kingswarden to renew the life, where perhaps nobody wanted her very
much, but where, at least, there were so many things which she and no
one else was there to do.

She was still in this depressed state when Mrs. Leigh (who had evidently
gone away that the brother and sister might be alone and happy together)
came back, looking into Charlie’s room to ask how he was on her way
upstairs to dress for dinner.

“Better,” the nurse said, with her eyebrows. “Peevish--young lady
mustn’t cross him--must be humoured--things not gone quite so well
to-day.”

“You will tell me about it at dinner,” said Mrs. Leigh, and Bee went
downstairs with a heavy heart to be questioned. Aubrey’s mother looked
cheerful enough; she did not seem to be unhappy about his absence or to
dislike the society of the girl who had driven him away. And she was
very considerate even in her questions about the patient.

“We must expect these fluctuations,” she said; “you must not be cast
down if you are not quite so triumphantly successful to-day.”

“Oh, Mrs. Leigh, I am deceiving you. I have never been successful at
all. He did not want me--he doesn’t care for me, and to stay here is
dreadful, upsetting the house--doing no good.”

“My dear, this is a strange statement to make, and you must not expect
me to believe you in the face of facts. He was much better after seeing
you last night.”

“Doing no good,” said Bee, shaking her head, “but harm, oh, real harm!
It was not I that did him good, it was telling him of someone, of a
lady. Oh, Mrs. Leigh, how am I to tell you?”

“My dear child, anything that you yourself know can surely be told to
me. We were afraid that something about a woman was at the bottom of it,
but then that is always the thing that is said, and typhoid, you know,
means bad drains and not a troubled mind--though the one may make you
susceptible to the other. Don’t be so distressed, my dear. It seems more
to your inexperience than it is in reality. He will get over that.”

“Mrs. Leigh,” said Bee, very pale, “he has made me write to ask her to
come and see him here.”

It was now Mrs. Leigh’s turn to change colour. She grew red, looking
astonished in the girl’s despairing face.

“A woman to come and see him, here! But your brother would never insult
the house and you---- I am talking nonsense,” she said, suddenly
stopping herself, “and misconstruing him altogether. It is some lady who
has jilted him--or something of that kind.”

Bee had not understood what Mrs. Leigh’s first idea was, and she did not
see any cause for relief in the second.

“I don’t know what she did to him, or what she has done to them all,”
the girl said, mournfully. “They are all the same. Papa, even, who does
not care very much for ladies, generally---- But Charlie, poor Charlie!
Oh, I believe he is in love with her still, though she is twice as old
as he is and has almost broken his heart.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Leigh, “this must be something very different to
what we thought. We thought he had got into some very dreadful trouble
about a--an altogether inferior person. But as it seems to be a lady,
and one that is known to the family, and who can be asked to come
here--if you can tell me a little more clearly what the story is, I
shall be more able to give you my advice.”

Bee looked at her questioner helpless, half distracted, not knowing how
to speak, and yet the story must be told. She had written that fatal
invitation, and it could not be concealed who this possible visitor was.
She began with a great deal of hesitation to talk of the lady whom
Charlie had raved about at Oxford, and how he was to work to please her;
and how he did not work, but failed in every way, and fled from Oxford;
and how her father went to inquire into the story; and how the lady had
come to Colonel Kingsward at the hotel, to explain to him, to excuse
Charlie, to beg his father to forgive him.

“But, my dear, she can’t be so very bad,” said Mrs. Leigh, soothingly.
“You must not judge her hardly; if she thought she had been to blame in
the matter, that was really the right thing to do.”

“And since then,” resumed Bee, “I think papa has thought of nobody else;
he writes to her and tells her everything. He goes to see her; he
forgets about Charlie and all of us; he has taken Betty there, and Betty
adores her too. And to-night,” cried Bee, the angry tears coming into
her eyes, “she is dining in Portman Square, dining with the Lyons as a
great friend of ours--in Portman Square.”

Mrs. Leigh drew Bee to her and gave her a kiss of consolation. I think
it was partly that the girl in her misery should not see the smile,
which Mrs. Leigh, thinking that she now saw through this not uncommon
mystery, could not otherwise conceal.

“My poor child,” she said, “my dear girl! This is hard upon you since
you dislike her so much, but I am afraid it is quite natural, and a
thing that could not have been guarded against. And then you must
consider that your father may probably be a better judge than yourself.
I don’t see any harm this lady has done, except that perhaps it is not
quite good taste to make herself so agreeable both to the father and
son; but perhaps in Charlie’s case that was not her fault. And I see no
reason, my dear--really and sincerely as your friend, Bee--why you
should be so prejudiced against a poor woman whose only fault is that
everybody else likes her. Now isn’t it a little unreasonable when you
think of it calmly yourself?”

“Oh, Mrs. Leigh!” Bee cried. The situation was so intolerable, the
passion of injury and misconception so strong in her that she could only
gasp in insupportable anger and dismay.

“Bee! Bee! this feeling is natural but you must not let it carry you
away. Have you seen her? Let me come in when she is here and give my
opinion.”

“I have seen her three times,” said Bee, solemnly, “once at the Baths,
and once at the Academy, and once at Oxford;” and then once more
excitement mastered the girl. “Oh, when you know who she is! Don’t
smile, don’t smile, but listen! She is Miss Lance.”

“Miss Lance!” Mrs. Leigh repeated the name with surprise, looking into
Bee’s face. “You must compose yourself,” she said, “you must compose
yourself. Miss----? My dear, you have got over excited, you have mixed
things up.”

“No, I am not over-excited! I am telling you only the truth. It is Miss
Lance, and they all believe in her as if she were an angel, and she is
coming here.”

Mrs. Leigh was very much startled, but yet she would not believe her
ears. She had heard Charlie delirious in his fever not so long ago. Her
mind gave a little leap to the alarming thought that there might be
madness in the family, and that Bee had been seized like her brother.
That what she said was actual fact seemed to her too impossible to be
true. She soothed the excited girl with all her power. “Whoever it is,
my dear, you shall not take any harm. There is nothing to be frightened
about. I will take care of you, whoever it is.”

“I do not think you believe me,” said Bee. “I am not out of my mind, as
you think. It is Miss Lance--Miss Laura Lance--the same, the very same,
that--and I have written, and she will be coming here.”

“This is very strange,” said Mrs. Leigh. “It does not seem possible to
believe it. The same--who came between Aubrey and you? Oh, I never meant
to name him, I was never to name him; but how can I help it? Laura, who
was the trouble of his house--who would not leave him--who went to your
father? And now your father! I cannot understand it. I cannot believe
that it is true.”

“It is true,” said Bee. “But, Mrs. Leigh, you forget that no one cared
then, except myself; they have forgotten all that now, they have
forgotten what happened. It was only my business, it was not their
business. All that has gone from papa; he remembers nothing about it.
And she is a witch, she is a magician, she is a devil--oh, please
forgive me, forgive me--I don’t know what I am saying. It has all been
growing, one thing after another--first me--and then Charlie--and then
papa--and then Betty. And now, after bringing him almost to death and
destruction, here is Charlie, in this house, calling for her, raging
with me till I wrote to call her--me!” cried Bee, with a sort of
indignant eloquence. “Me! Could it go further than that? Could anything
be more than that? Me!--and in this house.”

“My dear child,” said Mrs. Leigh, “I don’t wonder, I don’t wonder--it is
like something in a tragedy. Oh, Bee! Forgive me for what is first in my
thoughts. Was she the reason, the only reason, for your breach with my
poor Aubrey? For at first you stood by him--and then you turned upon
him.”

“Do not ask me any more questions, please. I am not able to answer
anything. Isn’t it enough that all these things have happened through
this woman, and that she is coming here?”

Mrs. Leigh made no further question. She saw that the girl’s excitement
was almost beyond her control, and that her young mind was strained to
its utmost. She said, half to herself, “I must think. I cannot tell in a
moment what to do. I must send for Aubrey. It is his duty and mine to
let it go no further. You must try to compose yourself, my dear, and
trust us. Oh, Bee,” there were tears in her eyes as she came up to the
girl and kissed her, “if you could but have trusted us--in all things!
I don’t think you ever would have repented.”

But Bee did not make any response. Her hands were cold and her head hot.
She was wrapt in a strange passion and confusion of human chaos and
bewilderment--everything gone wrong--all the elements of life twisted
the perverse way; nothing open, nothing clear. She was incapable of any
simple, unmingled feeling in that confusion and medley of everything
going wrong.

Mrs. Leigh, a little disappointed, went into the inner room, the little
library, to write a letter--no doubt to consult or summon her son--from
which she was interrupted a few minutes later by a faint call, and Bee’s
white face in the doorway.

“Mrs. Leigh, papa will come to-morrow, and he will take us away; at
least he will take me away. I--I shan’t be any longer in anyone’s way.
Oh, don’t keep him apart from you--don’t send anyone out of the house
because of me!”




CHAPTER XLVIII.


THERE was a great deal of commotion next morning in the house in
Mayfair.

Bee was startled by having a tray brought to her bedroom with her
breakfast when she was almost ready to go downstairs. “Mrs. Leigh
thought, Miss, as you had been so tired last night, you might like to
rest a little longer,” said the maid; and Bee divined with a sharp pang
through all the trouble and confusion of her mind that she was not
wanted--that probably Aubrey was coming to consult with his mother what
was to be done. It may be imagined with what scrupulousness she kept
within her room, her pride all up in arms though her heart she thought
was broken. Though the precaution was so natural, though it was taken at
what was supposed to be her desire, at what was really her desire--the
only one she would have expressed--yet she resented it, in the
contradiction and ferment of her being. If Mrs. Leigh supposed that she
wanted to see Aubrey! He was nothing to her, he had no part in her life.
When she had been brought here, against her will, it had been expressly
explained that it was not for Aubrey, that he would rather go away to
the end of the world than disturb her. And she had herself appealed to
his mother--her last action on the previous night--to bring him back,
not to banish him on account of the girl who was nothing to him, and
whose part it was, not his, to go away. All this, however, did not make
it seem less keen a wound to Bee that she should be, so to speak,
imprisoned in her own room, because Aubrey was expected downstairs. She
had never, she declared to herself vehemently, felt at ease under the
roof that was his; nothing but Charlie’s supposed want of her would have
induced her to subject herself to the chances of meeting him, and the
still more appalling chance of being supposed to wish to meet him. And
now this insult of imprisonment in her bedroom, lest she should by any
chance come under his observation, offend his eye!--Bee was
contradictory enough at all times, a rosebud set about with wilful
thorns; but everything was in tumult about her, and all her conditions
nothing but contradictions now.

Thus it happened that while Betty was setting out with much excitement,
but that all pleasurable, walking lightly among undiscovered dangers,
Bee was suddenly arrested, as she felt, imprisoned in the little room
looking out upon roofs and backs of houses, thrust aside into a corner
that she might not be seen or her presence known--imperceptibly the
force of the description grew as she went on piling up agony upon agony.
It was some time before, in the commotion of her feelings, she could
bring herself to swallow her tea, and then she walked about the room,
gazed out of the window from which, as it was at the back of the house,
she saw nothing, and found the position more and more intolerable every
minute. A prisoner! she who had been brought here against her will, on
pretence that her presence might save her brother’s life, or something
equally grandiose and impossible--save her brother’s life, bring him
back from despair by the sight of some one that he loved. These were the
sort of words that Mrs. Leigh had said. As if it mattered to Charlie one
way or the other what Bee might think or do! As if he were to be
consoled by her, or stimulated, or brought back to life! She had
affected him involuntarily, undesirably, by her betrayal of the vicinity
of that woman, that witch, who had warped his heart and being. But as
for influencing in her own person her brother’s mind or life, Bee knew
she was as little capable as baby, the little tyrant of the nursery. Oh!
how foolish she had been to come at all, to yield to what was said, the
flattering suggestion that she could do so much, when she knew all along
in her inmost consciousness that she could do nothing! The only thing
for her to do now was to go back to the dull life of which in her
impatient foolishness she had grown so weary, the dull life in which she
was indeed of some use after all, where it was clearly her duty to get
the upper hand of baby, to preserve the discipline of the nursery, to
train the little ones, and keep the big boys in order. These were the
elder sister’s duties, with which nobody could interfere--not any
ridiculous, sentimental, exaggerated idea, as Charlie had said, of what
a woman’s ministrations could do. “Oh, woman, in our hours of ease!”
that sort of foolish, foolish, intolerable, ludicrous kind of thing,
which it used to be considered right to say, though people knew better
now. Bee felt bitterly that to say of her that she was a ministering
angel would be irony, contumely, the sort of thing people said when they
laughed at women and their old-fashioned sham pretences. She had never
made any such pretence. She had said from the beginning that Charlie
would care for none of her ministrations. She had been brought here
against her judgment, against her will, and now she was shut up as in a
prison in order that Aubrey might not be embarrassed by the sight of
her! As if she had wished to see Aubrey! As if it had not been on the
assurance that she was not to see Aubrey that she had been beguiled
here!

When a message came to her that she was to go to her brother, Bee did
not know what to do. It seemed to her that Aubrey might be lurking
somewhere on the stairs, that he might be behind Charlie’s sofa, or
lying in wait on the other side of the curtain, notwithstanding her
offence at the quite contradictory idea that she was imprisoned in her
room to be kept out of his way. These two things were entirely contrary
from each other, yet it was quite possible to entertain and be disturbed
by both in the tumult and confusion of a perverse young mind. She
stepped out of her room as if she were about to fall into an ambush,
notwithstanding that she had been thrilling in every irritated nerve
with the idea of being imprisoned there.

Charlie had insisted on getting up much earlier than usual. He had not
waited for the doctor’s visit. He was better; well, he said, stimulated
into nervous strength and capability, though his gaunt limbs tottered
under him and his thin hand trembled. When he got into his sitting-room
he flung away all his cushions and wrappings as soon as his nurse left
him and went to the mirror over the mantel-piece and gazed at himself in
the glass, smoothing down and stroking into their right place those
irregular soft tufts growing here and there upon his chin, which he
thought were the beginnings of a beard.

Would she think it was a beard, that sign of manhood? They were too
downy, fluffy, unenergetic, a foolish kind of growth, like a colt’s,
some long, some short, yet Charlie could not help being proud of them.
He felt that they would come to something in time, and remembered that
he had often heard it said that a beard which never had been shaved
became the finest--in time. Would she think so? or would she laugh and
tell him that this would not do, that he must get himself shaved?

He would not mind that she should laugh. She might do anything, all she
did was delightful to poor Charlie, and there would be a compliment even
in being told that he must get shaved. Charlie had stroked his upper lip
occasionally with a razor, but it had never been necessary to suggest to
him that he should get shaved before.

He had to be put back upon his sofa when nurse re-appeared, but he only
remained there for the time, promising no permanent obedience. When
Laura came he certainly should not receive her there.

“When did your letter go? When would Betty receive it?” he said, when
Bee, breathless and pale, at last, under nurse’s escort, was brought
downstairs.

“She must have got it last night. But there was a dinner party,” said
Bee, after a pause, “last night at Portman Square.”

“What do I care for their dinner parties? I suppose the postman would go
all the same.”

“But Betty could not do anything till this morning.”

“No,” said Charlie, “I suppose not. She would be too much taken up with
her ridiculous dress and what she was to wear”--the knowledge of a young
man who had sisters, pierced through even his indignation--“or with some
nonsense about Gerald Lyon--that fellow! And to think,” he said, in an
outburst of high, moral indignation “that one’s fate should be at the
mercy of a little thing like Betty, or what she might say or do!”

“Betty is not so much younger than we are; to be sure,” said Bee, with
reflective sadness, “she has never had anything to make her think of all
the troubles that are in the world.”

Charlie turned upon her with scorn.

“And what have you had to make you think, and what do you suppose you
know? A girl, always protected by everybody, kept out of the battle,
never allowed to feel the air on your cheek! I must tell you, Bee, that
your setting yourself up for knowing things is the most ridiculous
exhibition in the world.”

Bee’s wounded soul could not find any words. She kept out of the battle!
She setting up for knowing things! And what was his knowledge in
comparison with hers? He had but been deluded like the rest by a woman
whom Bee had always seen through, and never, never put any faith in;
whereas she had lost what was most dear, all her individual hopes and
prospects, and been obliged to sacrifice what she knew would be the only
love of her life.

She looked at Charlie with eyes that were full of unutterable things.
He was reckless with hope and expectation, self-deceived, thinking that
all was coming right again; whereas Bee knew that things would never
more be right with her. And yet he presumed to say that she knew
nothing, and that to think she had suffered was a mere pretence! “How
little, how little,” Bee thought, “other people know.”

The house seemed full that morning of sounds and commotions, unlike
ordinary times. There were sounds of ringing bells, of doors opened and
shut, of voices downstairs. Once both Charlie and Bee held their breath,
thinking the moment had come, for a carriage stopped at the door, there
was the sound of a noisy summons, and then steps coming upstairs.

Alas! it was nothing but the doctor, who came in, ushered by nurse, but
not until she had held a private conference with him, keeping them both
in the most tremendous suspense in the bedroom. It is true this was a
thing which happened every morning, but they had both forgotten that in
the tension of highly-wrought feeling.

And when the doctor came he shook his head. “There has been too much
going on here,” he said. “You have been doing too much or talking too
much. Miss Kingsward, you helped us greatly with our patient yesterday,
but I am afraid you have been going too far, you have hurried him too
much. We dare not press recovery at railway speed after so serious an
illness as this.”

“Oh, I have not wished to do so,” said Bee. “It is some friends that we
are expecting.”

“Friends? I never said he was to see friends,” the doctor said.

“Come doctor,” said Charlie, “you must not be too hard upon me.
It’s--it’s my father and sister that are coming.”

“Your father and sister are different, but not too much even of them.
Recollect, nurse, what I say, not too much even of the nearest and
dearest. The machinery has been too much out of gear to come round all
in a moment. And, Miss Kingsward, you are pale, too. You had better go
out a little and take the air. There must not be too much conversation,
not too much reading either. I must have quiet, perfect quiet.”

“Am I to do nothing but think?” said Charlie. “Is that the best thing
for a fellow to do that has missed his schools and lost his time?”

“Be thankful that you are at a time of life when the loss of a few weeks
doesn’t matter, and don’t think,” said the doctor, “or we shall have to
stop even the father and sister, and send you to bed again. Be
reasonable, be reasonable. A few days’ quiet and you will be out of my
hands.”

“Oh, Charlie, then you have given up seeing anyone else,” said Bee, with
a cry of relief as the doctor, attended by the nurse, went downstairs.

“I have done nothing of the kind,” he cried, jumping up from the sofa
and going to the window. “And you had better tell that woman to go out
for a walk and that you will look after me. Do you think when Laura
comes that I will not see her if fifty doctors were to interfere? But if
you want to save me a little you will send that woman out of the way. It
is the worry and being contradicted that does me harm.”

“How can I, Charlie--oh, how can I, in the face of what the doctor
said?”

He turned back upon her flaming with feverish rage and excitement.

“If you don’t I’ll go out. I’ll have a cab called, and get away from
this prison,” he cried. “I don’t care what happens to me, but I shall
see her if I die for it.”

“Perhaps,” said Bee to herself, trembling, “she will not come. Oh!
perhaps she will not come!” But she felt that this was a very forlorn
hope, and when the nurse came back the poor girl, faltering and ill at
ease, obeyed the peremptory signs and frowns of Charlie, once more
established on the sofa and seeming to take no part in the negotiation.

“Nurse, I have been thinking,” said Bee, with that talent for the
circumstantial which women have, even when acting against their will,
“that you have far more need of a walk and a little fresh air than I
have, who have only been here for a day, and that if you will tell me
exactly what to do, I could take care of him while you go out a little.”

“Shouldn’t think of leaving him,” said nurse, with her eyebrows working
as usual and a mocking smile about her lips. “Too much talk; doctor not
pleased.”

“But if I promise not to talk? I shall not talk. You don’t want to talk,
do you, Charlie?”

Charlie launched a missile at her in his ingratitude, over his shoulder.
“Not with you,” he said.

“You hear?” cried Bee, now intent upon gaining her point, and terrified
lest other visitors might arrive before this matter were decided; “we
shall not talk, and I will do all you tell me. Oh, only tell me what I
am to do.”

“Nothing to do,” said the nurse, “not for the next hour; nothing, but
keep him quiet. Well, if you think you can undertake that, just for half
an hour--”

“I will--I will--for as long as you please,” cried Bee. It was better,
indeed, if there must be this interview with Laura, that there should be
as few spectators as possible. She hurried the woman away with
eagerness, though she had been alarmed at the first suggestion. But when
she was alone with him, and nobody to stand by her, thinking at every
sound she heard that this was the dreaded arrival, Bee crept close to
him with a sudden panic of terror and dismay.

“Oh, Charlie, don’t listen to her, don’t believe her; oh, don’t be led
astray by her again! I have done what you told me, but I oughtn’t to
have done it. Oh, Charlie, stand fast, whatever she says, and don’t be
led astray by her again.”

The only sign of Charlie’s gratitude that Bee received was to be hastily
pushed away by his shoulder. “You little fool, what do you know about
it?” her brother said.




CHAPTER XLIX.


BUT the nurse went out for her walk and came in again and nothing
happened, and Charlie had his invalid dinner, which in his excitement he
could not eat, and Bee was called downstairs to luncheon, and yet nobody
came. The luncheon was a terrible ordeal for Bee. She attempted to eat,
with an eye on the window, to watch for the arrival of the visitors, and
an ear upon the subdued sounds of the house, through which she seemed to
hear the distant step, the distant voice of someone whose presence was
not acknowledged. She repeated with eagerness her little speech of the
night before. “Something must have detained papa,” she said, “I cannot
understand it, but he is sure to come, and he will take me away.”

“I don’t want you to be taken away, my dear,” said Mrs. Leigh. “I should
not let you go if I could help it.”

“Oh, but I must, I must,” said Bee, trembling and agitated. She could
not eat anything, any more than Charlie, and when the nurse came
downstairs, indignantly carrying the tray from which scarcely anything
had been taken, Bee could make no reply to her remonstrances. “The young
lady had better not come upstairs again,” said nurse; “she has done him
more harm than good, he will have a relapse if we don’t mind. It is as
much as my character is worth.” She talked like other people when there
was no patient present, and she was genuinely afraid.

“What are we to do?” said Mrs. Leigh. “If this lady comes he ought not
to see her! But perhaps she will not come.”

“That is what I have hoped,” said Bee, “but if she doesn’t come he will
go out, he will get to her somehow; he will kill himself with
struggling----”

At the suggestion of going out the nurse gave a shriek and thrust her
tray into the servant’s hands who was waiting. “He will have to kill me
first,” she said, rushing away.

And immediately upon this scene came Betty, fresh and shining in her
white frock, with a smile like a little sunbeam, who announced at once
that Miss Lance was coming.

“How is Charlie?” said Betty. “Oh, Mrs. Leigh, how good you have been!
Papa is coming himself to thank you. What a trouble it must have been to
have him ill here all the time. Mrs. Lyon, whom I am staying with,
thinks it so wonderful of you--so kind, so kind! And Bee, _she_ is
coming, though it is rather a hard thing for her to do. She says you
will not like to see her, Mrs. Leigh, and that it will be an intrusion
upon you; but I said when you had been so good to poor Charlie all
along, you would not be angry that she should come who is such a
friend.”

“Any friend, of course, of Colonel Kingsward’s----” Mrs. Leigh said
stiffly, while little Betty stared. She thought they all looked very
strange; the old lady so stiff, and Bee turning red and turning white,
and a general air as if something had gone wrong.

“Is Charlie worse?” she said, with an anxious look.

And then Bee was suddenly called upstairs. “Can’t manage him any
longer,” the nurse said on the landing. “I wash my hands of it. Your
fault if he has a relapse.”

“Who is that?” said Charlie, from within, “Who is it? I will see her!
Nobody shall interfere, no one--doctor, or nurse, or--the devil himself.
Bee!”

“It is only Betty,” said Bee, upon which Charlie ceased his raging and
flung himself again on his sofa.

“You want to torment me; you want to wear me out; you want to kill me,”
he said, with tears of keen disappointment in his eyes.

“Charlie,” said Bee, “she is coming. Betty is here to say so; she is
coming in about an hour or so. If you will eat your dinner and lie quite
quiet and compose yourself you will be allowed to see her, and nurse
will not object.”

“Oh, Miss Kingsward, don’t answer for me. It is as much as his life is
worth.”

“But not unless you eat your dinner and keep perfectly quiet.”

“Give us that old dinner,” said Charlie, with a loud, unsteady laugh,
and the tray was brought back and he performed his duty upon the
half-cold dishes with an expedition and exuberance that gave nurse new
apprehensions.

“He’ll have indigestion,” she said, “if he gobbles like that,” speaking
once more inaudibly over Charlie’s shoulder. But afterwards all was
quiet till the fated moment came.

I do not think if these girls had known the feelings that were within
Miss Lance’s breast that they would have been able to retain their
respective feelings towards her--Betty of adoration or Bee of hostility.
She had lived a life of adventure, and she had come already on various
occasions to the very eve of such a settled condition of life as would
have made further adventure unnecessary and impossible--but something
had always come in the way. Something so often comes in the way of such
a career. The stolid people who are incapable of any skilful
combinations go on and prosper, while those who have wasted so much
cleverness or much wit, so much trouble--and disturbed the lives of
others and risked their own--fail just at the moment of success. I am
sometimes very sorry for the poor adventurers. Miss Lance went to Curzon
Street with all her wits painfully about her, knowing that she was about
to stand for her life. It seemed the most extraordinary spite of fate
that this should have happened in the house of Aubrey Leigh. She would
have had in any case a disagreeable moment enough between Charlie
Kingsward and his father, but it was too much to have the other brought
in. The man whom she had so wronged, the family (for she knew that his
mother was there also) who knew all about her, who could tell
everything, and stop her on the very threshold of the new life--that new
life in which there would be no equivocal circumstances, nothing that
she could be reproached with, only duty and kindness. So often she
seemed to have been just within sight of that halcyon spot where she
would need to scheme no more, where duty and every virtuous thing would
be natural and easy. Was the failure to come all over again?

She was little more than an adventuress, this troubled woman, and yet it
was not without something of the exalted feeling of one who is about to
stand for his life, for emancipation and freedom to do well and all that
is best in existence, that she walked through the streets towards her
fate. Truth alone was possible with the Leighs, who knew everything
about her past, and could not be persuaded or turned from their
certainty by any explanations. But poor Charlie! Bare truth was not
possible with him, whom she had sacrificed lightly to the amusement of
the moment, whom she could never have married or made the instrument of
building up her fortune except in the way which, to do her justice she
had not foreseen, through the access he had given her to his father. How
was she to satisfy that foolish, hot-headed boy?--and how to stop the
mouths of the others in the background?--and how to persuade Colonel
Kingsward that circumstances alone were against her--that she herself
was not to blame? She did not conceal from herself any of these
difficulties, but she was too brave a woman to fly before them. She
preferred to walk, and to walk alone, to this trial which awaited her,
in order to subdue her nerves and get the aid of the fresh air and
solitude to steady her being. She was going to stand for her life.

It seemed a good augury that she was allowed to enter the house without
any interruption from the sitting-room below, where she had the
conviction that her worst opponents were lying in wait. She thought even
that she had been able to distinguish the white cap and shawl of Mrs.
Leigh through the window, but it was Betty who met her in the hall--met
her with a kiss and expression of delight.

“Oh, I am so glad you have come,” said Betty, “he is so eager to see
you.” The people in ambush in the ground floor rooms must have heard the
exclamation, but they made no sign. At the door upstairs they were met
by the nurse, excited and laconic, speaking without any sound.

“No worry--don’t contradict. Much as life is worth,” she said, with
emphatic, silent lips. Miss Lance, so composed, so perfect in her
manner, so wound up to everything, laughed a little--she was so
natural!--and nodded her head. And then she went in.

Charlie on the sofa was of course the chief figure. But he had jumped
up, flinging his wrappings about, and stood in his gaunt and tremulous
length, with his big hollow eyes and his ragged little beard, and his
hands stretched out. “At last!” he said, “at last---- Laura!” stumbling
in his weakness as he advanced to her. Bee was standing up straight
against the window in the furthest corner of the room, not making a
movement. How real, how natural, how completely herself and ready for
any emergency this visitor was! She took Charlie’s hands in hers,
supporting him with that firm hold, and put him back upon his couch.

“Now,” she said, “the conditions of my visit are these: perfect quiet
and obedience, and no excitement. If you rebel in any way I shall go. I
know what nursing is, and I know what common-sense is--and I came here
to help you, not to harm you. Move a toe or finger more than you ought,
and I shall go!”

“I will not move, not an eyelid if you tell me not. I want to do nothing
but look at you. Laura! oh, Laura! I have been dead, and now I am alive
again,” Charlie said.

“Ill or well,” said Miss Lance, arranging his cushions with great skill,
“you are a foolish, absurd boy. Partly it belongs to your age and partly
to your temperament. I should not have considered you like your father
at the first glance, but you are like him. Now, perfect quiet. Consider
that your grandmother has come to see you, and that it does not suit the
old lady to have her mind disturbed.”

He had seized her hand and was kissing it over and over again. Miss
Lance took those caresses very quietly, but after a minute she withdrew
her hand. “Now, tell me all about it,” she said; “you went off in such a
commotion--so angry with me--”

“Never angry,” he said, “but miserable, oh, more miserable--too
miserable for words. I thought that you had cut me off for ever.”

“You were right so far as your foolish ideas of that moment went, but I
hope you have learnt better since, and now tell me what did you do? I
hoped you had gone home, and then that you had gone to Scotland, and
then--. What did you do?”

“I don’t know,” said Charlie, “I can’t tell you. I suppose I must have
been ill then. I came up to town, but I don’t know what I did. And I was
brought here, and I’ve been ill ever since, and couldn’t seem to get
better until I heard you had been speaking for me. You speaking for me,
Laura! Thinking of me a little, trying to bring me back to life. I’ll
come back to life, dear, for you--anything, Laura, for you!”

“My dear boy, it is a pity you should not have a better reason,” she
said. The two girls had not gone away. Betty had retired to the corner
where Bee was, and they stood close together holding each other, ashamed
and scornful beyond expression of Charlie’s abandonment. Even Betty, who
was almost as much in love with Miss Lance as Charlie was, was ashamed
to hear him “going on” in this ridiculous way. What Miss Lance felt to
have these words of devotion addressed to her in the presence of two
such listeners I will not say. She was acutely sensible of their
presence, and of what they were thinking, but she did not shrink from
the ordeal. “And you must not call me Laura,” she said, “unless you can
make it Aunt Laura, or Grandmother Laura, which are titles I shouldn’t
object to. Anything else would be ridiculous between you and me.”

“Laura!” the young man said, raising himself quickly.

“Say Aunt Laura, my dear, and if you move another inch I will go away!”

“You are crushing me,” he cried, “you are driving me to despair!”

“Dear Charlie,” said Miss Lance, “all this, you know, is very great
nonsense--between you and me; I have told you so all along. Now things
have really become too serious to go on. I want to be kind to you, to
help you to get well, and to see as much of you as possible; for you are
a dear boy and I am fond of you. But this can’t be unless you will see
things in their true light and acknowledge the real state of affairs. I
am most willing and ready to be your friend, to be a mother to you. But
anything else is ridiculous. Do you hear me, Charlie?--ridiculous! You
don’t want to be laughed at, and you don’t want me to be laughed at, I
suppose?” She took his hands with which he had covered his face and held
them in hers. “Now, no nonsense, Charlie. Be a man! Will you have me for
your friend, always ready to do anything for you, or will you have
nothing to do with me? Come! I might be your mother, I have always told
you so. And look here,” she said, with a tone of genuine passion in her
voice and a half turn of her flexible figure towards the two girls, “I’m
worth having for a mother; whatever you may think in your cruel youth, I
am, I am!” Surely this was to them and not to him. The movement, the
accent, was momentary. Her voice changed again into the softness of a
caress. “Charlie, my dear boy, don’t make me ridiculous, don’t make
people laugh at me. They call me an old witch, trying to entrap a young
man. Will you let people--nay, will you _make_ people call me so?”

“_I_ make anyone call you--anything but what you are!” he cried.
“Nobody would dare,” said the unfortunate fellow, “to do anything but
revere you and admire you so long as I was there.”

“And then break out laughing the moment your back was turned,” she said.
“‘What a hold the old hag has got upon him!’ is what they would say. And
it would be quite true. Not that I am an old hag. No, I don’t think I am
that, I am worse. I’m a very well preserved woman of my years. I’ve
taken great care of myself to keep up what are called my personal
advantages. I have never wished--I don’t wish now--to be thought older
than I am, or ugly. I am just old enough--to be your mother, Charlie, if
I had married young, as your mother did----”

He drew his hands out of her cool and firm grasp, and once more covered
his face with them. “Don’t torture me,” he cried.

“No, my dear boy, I don’t want to torture you, but you must not make me,
nor yourself--whom I am proud of--ridiculous. I am going probably--for
nothing is certain till it happens,” she said, with a mournful tone in
her voice, slightly shaking her head, “and you may perhaps help to balk
me--I am probably going to make a match with a reasonable person suited
to my age.”

Poor Charlie started up, his hands fell from his face, his large
miserable eyes were fixed upon hers. “And you come--you come--to tell me
this!” he cried.

“It will be partly for you--to show how impossible your folly is--but
most for myself, to secure my own happiness.” She said these words very
slowly, one by one--“To secure my own happiness. Have I not the right to
do that, because a young man, who should have been my son, has taken it
into his foolish head to form other ideas of me? You would rather make
me ridiculous and wretched than consider my dignity, my welfare, my
happiness--and this is what you call love!” she said.

The girls listened to this conversation with feelings impossible to put
into words, not knowing what to think. One of them loved the woman and
the other hated her; they were equally overwhelmed in their young and
simple ideas. She seemed to be speaking a language new to them, and to
have risen into a region which they had never known.




CHAPTER L.


SHE left Charlie’s room, having soothed him and reduced him to quiet in
this inconceivable way, with a smile on her face and the look of one who
was perfectly mistress of the situation. But when she had gone down
half-a-dozen steps and reached the landing, she stood still and leaned
against the wall, clasping her hands tight as if there was something in
them to hold by. She had carried through this part of her ordeal with a
high hand. She had made it look the kindest yet the most decisive
interview in the world, crushing the foolish young heart, without
remorse, yet tenderly, kindly, with such a force of sense and reason as
could not be resisted--and all so naturally, with so much apparent ease,
as if it cost her nothing. But she was after all, merely a woman, and
she knew that only half, nay, not half, not the worst half of her trial
was over. She lay back against the wall, having nothing else to rest
upon, and closed her eyes for a moment. The two girls had followed her
instinctively out of Charlie’s room, and stood on the stairs one above
the other, gazing at her. The long lines of her figure seemed to relax,
as if she might have fallen, and in their wonder and ignorance they
might still have stood by and looked on letting her fall, without
knowing what to do. But she did not do so. The corner of the walls
supported her as if they had made a couch for her, and presently she
opened her eyes with a vague smile at Betty, who was foremost. “I was
tired,” she said, and then, “it isn’t easy”--drawing a long breath.

At this moment the trim figure of Mrs. Leigh’s maid appeared on the
stairs below, so commonplace, so trim, so neat, the little apparition of
ordinary life which glides through every tragedy, lifting its everyday
voice in announcements of dinner, in inquiries about tea, in all the
nothings of routine, in the midst of all tumults of misery and passion.
“If you please, madam--my lady would be glad if you would step into the
dining-room,” she said.

Miss Lance raised herself in a moment from that half-recumbent position
against the wall. She recovered herself, got back her colour and the
brightness of her eyes, and that look of being perfectly natural, at her
ease, unstrained, spontaneous, which she had shown throughout the
interview with Charlie. “Certainly,” she said. There did not seem to be
time for the twinkling of an eyelid between the one mood and the other.
She required no preparation or interval to pull herself together. She
looked at the two sisters as if to call them to follow her, and then
walked quietly downstairs to be tried for her life--like a martyr--oh,
no, for she was not a martyr, but a criminal. She had no confidence of
innocence about her. She knew what indictment was about to be brought
against her, and she knew it was true. This knowledge, however, gives a
certain strength. It gives courage such as the innocent who do not know
what charge may be brought against them or how to meet it, do not
possess. She had rehearsed the scene. She knew what she was going to be
accused of, and had thought over, and set in order, all the pleas. She
knew exactly what she had done and what she had not, which was a tower
of strength to her, and she knew that on her power of fighting it out
depended her life. It is difficult altogether to deny our sympathy to a
brave creature fighting for bare life. However guilty he may be, human
nature takes sides with him, hopes in the face of all justice that there
may be a loophole of escape. Even Bee, coming slowly downstairs after
her, already thrown into a curious tumult of feeling by that scene in
Charlie’s room, began to feel her breath quicken with excitement even in
the hostility of her heart.

There was one thing that Miss Lance had not foreseen, and that burst
upon her at once when the maid opened the door--Colonel Kingsward,
standing with his arm upon the mantel-piece and his countenance as if
turned to stone. The shock which this sight gave her was very difficult
to overcome or conceal, it struck her with a sudden dart as of despair;
her impulse was to fling down her arms, to acknowledge herself
vanquished, and to retreat, a defeated and ruined adventuress, but she
was too brave and unalterably by nature too sanguine to do this. She
gave him a nod and a smile, to which he scarcely responded, as she went
towards Mrs. Leigh.

“How strange,” she said, “when I come to see a new friend to find so old
a friend! I wondered if it could be Mr. Leigh’s house, but I was not
sure--of the number.”

“I am afraid I cannot say I am glad to see you, Laura,” said Mrs. Leigh.

“No? Perhaps it would have been too much to expect. We were, so to
speak, on different sides. Poor Amy, I know, was never satisfactory to
you, and I don’t wonder. Of course you only thought of me as her
friend.”

“If that were all!” Mrs. Leigh said.

“Was there more than that? May I sit down? I have had a long walk, and
rather an exhaustive interview--and I did not expect to be put on my
trial. But it is always best to know what one is accused of. I think it
quite natural--quite natural that you should not like me, Mrs. Leigh. I
was Amy’s friend and she was trying to you. She put me in a very false
position which I ought never to have accepted. But yet--I understand
your attitude, and I submit to it with respect--but, pardon
me--sincerely, I don’t know what there was more.”

Miss Lance had taken a chair, a perfectly upright one, on which few
people could have sat gracefully. She made it evident that it was mere
fatigue which made her subside upon it momentarily, and lifted her fine
head and limpid eyes with so candid and respectful an air towards Mrs.
Leigh’s comfortable, unheroic face, that no contrast of the oppressed
and oppressor could have been more marked. If anyone had suffered in the
matter between these two ladies, it certainly was not the one with the
rosy countenance and round, well-filled-out figure; or so, at least, any
impartial observer certainly would have felt.

Mrs. Leigh, for her part, was almost speechless with excitement and
anger. She had intended to keep perfectly calm, but the look, the tone,
the appearance of this personage altogether, brought before her
overpoweringly many past scenes--scenes in which, to tell the truth,
Miss Lance had not been always in the wrong, in which the other figure,
now altogether disappeared, of Aubrey’s wife was the foremost, an
immovable gentle-mannered fool, with whom all reason and argument were
unavailing, whom everybody had believed to be inspired by the companion
to whom she clung. All Amy’s faults had been bound upon Laura’s
shoulders, but this was not altogether deserved, and Miss Lance did not
shrink from anything that could be said on that subject. It required
more courage to say, “Was there anything more?”

“More!” cried Mrs. Leigh, choking with the remembrance. “More! My boy’s
house was made unsafe for him, it was made miserable to him, he was
involved in every kind of danger and scandal, and she asks me if there
was more?”

“Poor Amy,” said Miss Lance, with a little pause on the name, shaking
her head gently in compassion and regret. “Poor Amy put me in a very
false position. I have already said so, I ought not to have accepted it,
I ought not to have promised; but it was so difficult to refuse a
promise to the dying. Let Colonel Kingsward judge. She was very unwise,
but she had been my friend from infancy and clung to me more, much more
than I wished. She exacted a promise from me on her death-bed that I
would never leave her child--which was folly, and, perhaps more than
folly, so far, at least, as I was concerned. You may imagine, Colonel
Kingsward,” she added, steadfastly regarding him. He had kept his head
turned away, not looking at her, but this gaze compelled him against his
will to shift his position, to turn towards the appellant who made him
the judge. He still kept his eyes away, but his head turned by an
attraction which he could not withstand. “You may imagine, Colonel
Kingsward--that I was the person who suffered most,” Miss Lance said
after that pause, “compelled to stay in a house where I had never been
welcome, except to poor Amy, who was dead; a sort of guardian, a sort of
nurse, and yet with none of their rights, held fast by a promise which
I had given against my will, and which I never ceased to regret. You are
a man, Colonel Kingsward, but you have more understanding of a woman’s
feelings than any I know. My position was a false one, it was cruel--but
I was bound by my word.”

“No one ought to have given such a promise,” he said, coldly, with
averted eyes.

“You are always right, I ought not to have done so; but she was dying,
and I was fond of her, poor girl, though she was foolish--it is not
always the wisest people one loves most--fond of her, very fond of her,
and of her poor little child.”

The tears came to Miss Lance’s eyes. She shook her head a little as if
to shake them from her eyelashes. “Why should I cry? They have been so
long happy, happier far than we----”

Mrs. Leigh, the prosecutor, the accuser, gave a gulp, a sob; the child
was her grandchild, her only one--and besides anger in a woman is as
prone to tears as sorrow. She gave a stifled cry, “I don’t deny you
were good to the child; oh, Laura, I could have forgiven you
everything! But not--not----”

“What?” Miss Lance said.

Mrs. Leigh seized upon Bee by the arm and drew her forward--Aubrey’s
mother wanted words, she wanted eloquence, her arguments had to be
pointed by fact. She took Bee, who had been standing in proud yet
excited spectatorship, and held her by her own side. “Aubrey,” she said,
almost inarticulately, and stopped to recover her breath--“Aubrey--whom
you had driven from his home--found at last this dear girl, this nice,
good girl, who would have made him a new life. But you interfered, you
wrote to her father, you went--I don’t know what you did--and said you
had a claim, a prior claim. If you appeal to Colonel Kingsward, he is
the best judge. You went to him----”

“Not to me, I was not aware, I never even saw Miss Lance till long
after; forgive me for interrupting you.”

Miss Lance turned towards him again with that full look of faith and
confidence. “Always just!” she said. And this time for a tremulous
moment their eyes met. He turned his away again hastily, but he had
received that touch; an indefinable wavering came over his aspect of
iron.

“Yes,” she said, “I do not deny it--it is quite true. Shall I now
explain before every one who is here? I think,” she added, after a
moment, “that my little Betty, who has nothing particular to do with it,
may run away.”

“I!” said Betty, clinging to the back of a chair.

“Go,” said her father, impatiently, “go!”

“Yes, my dear, run away. Charlie must want some one. He will have got
over me a little, and he will want some one. Dear little Betty, run
away!”

Miss Lance rose from her seat--probably that too was a relief to
her--and, with a smile and a kiss, turned Betty out of the room. She
came back then and sat down again. It gained a little time, and she was
at a crisis harder than she had ever faced before. She had gained a
moment to think, but even now she was not sure what way there was out of
this strait, the most momentous in which she had ever been. She looked
round her at one after another with a look that seemed as secure and
confident, as easy and natural, as before; but her brain was working at
the most tremendous rate, looking for some clue, some indication. She
looked round as with a pause of conscious power, and then her gaze fixed
itself on Bee. Bee stood near Mrs. Leigh’s chair. She was standing firm
but tremulous, a deeply concerned spectator, but there was on her face
nothing of the eager attention with which a girl would listen to an
explanation about her lover. She was not more interested than she had
been before, not so much so as when Charlie was in question. When Mrs.
Leigh, in her indictment, said, “You interfered,” Bee had made a faint,
almost imperceptible movement of her head. The mind works very quickly
when its fate hangs on the balance of a minute, and now, suddenly, the
culprit arraigned before these terrible judges saw her way.

“I interfered,” Miss Lance said, slowly, “but not because of any prior
claim;”--she paused again for a moment--“that would have been as absurd
as in the case Colonel Kingsward knows of. I interfered--because I had
other reasons for believing that Aubrey Leigh was not the man to marry a
dear, good, nice girl.”

“You had--other reasons, Laura! Mind what you are saying--you will have
to prove your words,” cried Mrs. Leigh, rising in her wrath, with an
astonished and threatening face.

“I do not ask his mother to believe me. It is before Colonel Kingsward,”
said Miss Lance, “that I stand or fall.”

“Colonel Kingsward, make her speak out! You know it was because she
claimed my son--she, a woman twice his age; and now she pretends----
Make her speak out! How dare you? You said he had promised to marry
you--that he was bound to you. Colonel Kingsward, make her speak out!”

“That was what I understood,” he said, looking out of the window, his
head turned half towards the other speakers, but not venturing to look
at them. “I did not see Miss Lance, but that was what I understood.”

Laura sat firm, as if she were made of marble, but almost as pale. Her
nerves were so highly strung that if she had for a moment relaxed their
tension, she would have fallen to the ground. She sat like a rock,
holding herself together with the strong grasp of her clasped hands.

“You hear, you hear! You are convicted out of your own mouth. Oh, you
are cruel, you are wicked, Laura Lance! If you have anything to say
speak out, speak out!”

“I will say nothing,” said Miss Lance. “I will leave another, a better
witness, to say it for me. Colonel Kingsward, ask your daughter if it
was because of my prior claim, as his mother calls it, that she broke
off her engagement with Aubrey Leigh.”

Colonel Kingsward turned, surprised, to his daughter, who, roused by the
sound of her own name, looked up quickly--first at the seemingly
composed and serious woman opposite to her, then at her father. He spoke
to her angrily, abruptly.

“Do you hear? Answer the question that is put to you. Was it because of
this lady, or any claim of hers, that you--how shall I say it?--a girl
like you had no right to decide one way or the other--that you broke
off--that your mind was changed towards Mr. Aubrey Leigh?”

It appeared to Bee suddenly as if she had become the culprit, and all
eyes were fixed on her. She trembled, looking at them all. What had she
done? She was surely unhappy enough, wretched enough, a clandestine
visitor, keeping Aubrey out of his own house, and what had she to do
with Aubrey? Nothing, nothing! Nor he with her--that her heart should
now be snatched out of her bosom publicly in respect to him.

“That is long past,” she said, faltering, “it is an old story. Mr.
Aubrey Leigh is--a stranger to me; it is of no consequence--now!”

“Bee,” her father thundered at her, “answer the question! Was it because
of--this lady that you changed your mind?”

Colonel Kingsward had always the art, somehow, of kindling the blaze of
opposition in the blue eyes which were so like his own. She looked at
him almost fiercely in reply, fully roused.

“No!” she said, “no! It was not because of--that lady. It was
another--reason of my own.”

“What was your reason?” cried Mrs. Leigh. “Oh, Bee, speak! What was it,
what was it? Tell me, tell me, my dear, what was your reason? that I may
prove to you it was not true.”

“Had it anything to do with--this lady?” asked Colonel Kingsward once
more.

“I never spoke to that lady but once,” cried Bee, almost violently. “I
don’t know her; I don’t want to know her. She has nothing to do with it.
It was because of something quite different, something that we
heard--I--and mamma.”

Miss Lance looked at him with a smile on her face, loosing the grip of
her hands, spreading them out in demonstration of her acquittal. She
rose up slowly, her beautiful eyes filled with tears. She allowed it to
be seen for the first time how she was shaken with emotion.

“You have heard,” she said, “a witness you trust more than me--if I put
myself into the breach to secure a pause, it was only such a piece of
folly as I have done before. I hope now that you will let me withdraw.
I am dreadfully tired, I am not fit for any more.”

She looked with that appeal upon her face, first at one of her judges,
then at the other. “If you are satisfied, let me go.” It seemed as if
she could not say a word more. They made no response, but she did not
wait for that. “I take it for granted,” she added, “that by that child’s
mouth I am cleared,” and then she turned towards the door.

Colonel Kingsward, with a little start, came from his place by the
mantel-piece and opened it for her, as he would have done for any woman.
She let it appear that this movement was unexpected, and went to her
heart; she paused a moment looking up at him--her eyes swimming in
tears, her mouth quivering.

“How kind you are!” she said, “even though you don’t believe in me any
more! but I have done all I can. I am very tired, scarcely able to
walk.” He stood rigid, and made no sign, and she, looking at him, softly
shook her head--“Let me see you at least once,” she said, very low, in a
pleading tone, “this evening, some time?”

Still he gave no answer, standing like a man of iron, holding the door
open. She gave him another look, and then walked quietly, but with a
slight quiver and half stumble, away. They all stood watching until her
tall figure was seen to pass the window, disappearing in the street,
which is the outer world.

“Colonel Kingsward--” said Mrs. Leigh.

He started at the sound of his name, as if he had but just awakened out
of a dream, and began to smooth his hat, which all this time he had held
in his hands.

“Excuse me,” he said, “excuse me, another time. I have some pressing
business to see to now.”

And he, too, disappeared into that street which led both ways, into the
monotony of London, which is the world.




CHAPTER LI.


THOSE who were left behind were not very careful of what Colonel
Kingsward did. They were not thinking of his concerns; in the strain of
personal feeling the most generous of human creatures is forced to think
first of their own. Neither of the women who were left in the room had
any time to consider the matter, but if they had they would have made
sure without hesitation that nothing which could happen to Colonel
Kingsward could be half so important as that crisis in which his
daughter was involved.

Mrs. Leigh turned round upon the girl by her side and seized her hands.
“Bee,” she cried, “now we are alone and we can speak freely. Tell me
what it was, there is nobody here to frighten you, to take the words
from your mouth. What was it, what was it that made you turn from
Aubrey? At last, at last, it can be cleared up whatever it was.”

Bee turned away, trying to disengage her hands. “It is of no
consequence,” she said, “Oh, don’t make me go back to those old, old
things. What does it matter to Mr. Leigh? And as for me----”

“It matters everything to Aubrey. He will be able to clear himself if
you will give him the chance. How could he clear himself when he was
never allowed to speak, when he did not know? Bee, in justice, in mere
justice! What was it? You said your mother----”

“Yes, I had her then. We heard it together, and she felt it like me. But
we had no time to talk of it after, for she was ill. If you would please
not ask me, Mrs. Leigh! I was very miserable--mother dying, and nowhere,
nowhere in all the world anything to trust to. Don’t, oh! don’t make me
go back upon it! I am not--so very--happy, even now!”

The girl would not let herself be drawn into Mrs. Leigh’s arms. She
refused to rest her head upon the warm and ample bosom which was offered
to her. She drew away her hands. It was difficult, very difficult, to
keep from crying. It is always hard for a girl to keep from crying when
her being is so moved. The only chance for her was to keep apart from
all contact, to stand by herself and persuade herself that nobody cared
and that she was alone in the world.

“Bee, I believe,” said Mrs. Leigh, solemnly, “that you have but to speak
a word and you will be happy. You have not your mother now. You can’t
turn to her and ask her what you should do. But I am sure that she would
say, ‘speak!’ If she were here she would not let you break a man’s heart
and spoil his life for a punctilio. I have always heard she was a good
woman and kind--kind. Bee,” the elder lady laid her hand suddenly on the
girl’s shoulder, making her start, “she would say ‘speak’ if she were
here.”

“Oh, mamma, if you were here!” said Bee, through her tears.

She broke down altogether and became inarticulate, sobbing with her face
buried in her hands. The ordeal of the last two days had been severe.
Charlie and his concerns and the appearance of Miss Lance, and the
conflict only half understood which had been going on round her, had
excited and disturbed her beyond expression, as everybody could see and
understand. But, indeed, these were but secondary elements in the storm
which had overwhelmed Bee, which was chiefly brought back by that sudden
plunge into the atmosphere of Aubrey. The sensation of being in his
house, which she might in other circumstances have shared with him, of
sitting at his table, in his seat, under the roof that habitually
sheltered him--here, where her own life ought to have been passed, but
where the first condition now was that there should be nothing of him
visible. In Aubrey’s house, but not for Aubrey! Aubrey banished, lest
perhaps her eyes might fall upon him by chance, or her ears be offended
by the sound of his voice! Even his mother did not understand how much
this had to do with the passion and trouble of the girl, from whose
eyes the innocent name of her mother, sweetest though saddest of
memories, had let forth the salt and boiling tears. If Mrs. Leigh had
been anybody in the world save Aubrey’s mother, Bee would have clung to
her, accepting the tender support and consolation of the elder women’s
arms and her sympathy, but from Aubrey’s mother she felt herself
compelled to keep apart.

It was not until her almost convulsive sobbing was over that this
question could be re-opened, and in the meantime Betty having heard the
sound of the closing door came rushing downstairs and burst into the
room: perhaps she was not so much disturbed or excited as Mrs. Leigh was
by Bee’s condition. She gave her sister a kiss as she lay on the sofa
where Mrs. Leigh had placed her, and patted her on the shoulder.

“She will be better when she has had it out,” said Betty. “She has
worked herself up into such a state about Miss Lance. And oh, please
tell me what has happened. You are her enemy, too, Mrs. Leigh--oh, how
can you misjudge her so! As if she had been the cause of any harm! I was
sent away,” said Betty, “and, of course, Bee could not speak--but I
could have told you. Yes, of course, I knew! How could I help knowing,
being her sister? I can’t tell whether she told me, I knew without
telling; and, of course, she must have told me. This is how it was----”

Bee put forth her hand and caught her sister by the dress, but Betty was
not so easily stopped. She turned round quickly, and took the detaining
hand into her own and patted and caressed it.

“It is far better to speak out,” she said, “it must be told now, and
though I am young and you call me little Betty, I cannot help hearing,
can I, what people say? Mrs. Leigh, this was how it was. Whatever
happened about dear Miss Lance--whom I shall stick to and believe in
whatever you say,” cried Betty, by way of an interlude, with flashing
eyes, “that had nothing, nothing to do with it. That was a story--like
Charlie’s, I suppose, and Bee no more made a fuss about it than I should
do. It was after, when Bee was standing by Aubrey, like--like Joan of
Arc; yes, of course I shall call him Aubrey--I should like to have him
for a brother, but that has got nothing to do with it. A lady came to
call upon mamma, and she told a story about someone on the railway who
had met Aubrey on the way home after that scene at Cologne, after he was
engaged to Bee, and was miserable because of papa’s opposition.” Betty
spoke so fast that her words tumbled over each other, so to speak, in
the rush for utterance. “Well, he was seen,” she resumed, pausing for
breath, “putting a young woman with children into one of the sleeping
carriages--a poor young woman that had no money or right to be there. He
put her in, and when they got to London he was seen talking to her, and
giving her money, as if she belonged to him. I don’t see any harm in
that, for he was always kind to poor people. But these ladies did, and I
suppose so did mamma, and Bee blazed up. That is just like her. She
takes fire, she never waits to ask questions, she stops her ears. She
thought it was something dreadful, showing that he had never cared for
her, that he had cared for other people even when he was pretending, I
should have done quite different. I should have said, ‘Now, look here,
Aubrey, what does it mean?’--or, rather, I should never have thought
anything but that he was kind. He was always kind--silly, indeed, about
poor people, as so many are.”

Mrs. Leigh had followed Betty’s rapid narrative with as much attention
as she could concentrate upon it, but the speed with which the words
flew forth, the little interruptions, the expressions of Betty’s matured
and wise opinions, bewildered her beyond measure.

“What does it all mean?” she asked, looking from one to another when the
story was done. “A sleeping carriage on the railway--a woman with
children--as if she belonged to him? How could a woman with children
belong to him?” Then she paused and grew crimson with an old woman’s
painful blush. “Is it vice, horrible vulgar vice, this child is
attributing to my boy?”

The two girls stared, confused and troubled. Bee got up from the sofa
and put her hands to her head, her eyes fixed upon Mrs. Leigh with an
appalled and horrified look. She had not asked herself of what Aubrey
had been accused. She had fled from him before the dreadful thought of
relationships she did not understand, of something which was the last
insult to her, whatever it might be in itself. “Vulgar vice!” The girls
were cowed as if some guilt had been imputed to themselves.

“You are not like anything I have known, you girls of the period,” cried
the angry mother. “You are acquainted with such things as I at my age
had never heard of. You make accusations! But now--he shall answer for
himself,” she said, flaming with righteous wrath. Mrs. Leigh went to the
bell and rang it so violently that the sound echoed all over the house.

“Go and ask your master to come here at once, directly; I want him this
moment,” she said, stamping her foot in her impatience. And then there
was a pause. The man went off and was seen from the window to cross the
street on his errand. Then Bee rose, her tears hastily dried up, pushing
back from her forehead her disordered hair.

“I had better go. If you have sent for Mr. Leigh it will be better that
I should go.”

Mrs. Leigh was almost incapable of speech. She took Bee by the shoulders
and put her back almost violently on the sofa. “You shall stay there,”
she said, in a choked and angry voice.

What a horrible pause it was! The girls were silent, looking at each
other with wild alarm. Betty, who had blurted out the story, but to whom
the idea of repeating it before Aubrey--before a man--was unspeakable
horror, made a step towards the door. Then she said, “No, I will not run
away,” with tremendous courage. “It is not our fault,” she added, after
a pause. “Bee, if I have got to say it again, give me your hand.”

“It is I who ought to say it,” said Bee, pale with the horror of what
was to come. “Vulgar vice!” And she to accuse him, and to stand up
before the world and say that was why!

It seemed a long time, but it was really only a few minutes, before
Aubrey appeared. He came in quickly, breathless with haste and suspense.
He expected, from what his mother had told him, to find Miss Lance and
Colonel Kingsward there. He came into the agitated room and found, of
all people in the world, Bee and Betty, terrified, and his mother,
walking about the room sounding, as it were, a metaphorical lash about
their ears, in the frank passion of an elder woman who has the most just
cause of offence and no reason to bate her breath. There was something
humorous in the tragic situation, but to them it was wholly tragic, and
Aubrey, seeing for the first time after so long an interval the girl he
loved, and seeing her in such strange circumstances, was by no means
disposed to see any humorous side.

“Here, Aubrey!” said his mother, “I have called upon you to hear what
you are accused of. You thought it was Laura Lance, but she has nothing
to do with it. You are accused of travelling from Germany, that time
when you were sent off from Cologne--the time those Kingswards turned
upon you”--(the girls both started, and recovered themselves a little at
the shock of this contemptuous description),--“travelling in sleeping
carriages and I know not what with a woman and children, who were
believed to belong to you! What have you to say?”

“That was not what I said, Mrs. Leigh.”

“What have you to say?” cried Mrs. Leigh, waving her hand to silence
Betty; “the accused has surely the right to speak first.”

“What have I to say? But to what, mother? What is it? Was I travelling
with a woman and children? I suppose I was travelling--with all the
women and children that were in the same train. But otherwise, of course
you know I was with nobody. What does it mean?”

Bee got up from the sofa like a ghost, her blue eyes wild, her face
pale. “Oh, let us go, let us go! Do not torment us,” she said. “I will
acknowledge that it was not true. Now that I see him I am sure that it
was not true. I was mad. I was so stung to think---- Mrs. Leigh, do not
kill me! I did him no harm; do not, do not go over it any more!”

“Go over what?” cried Aubrey. “Bee! She can’t stand, she doesn’t see
where she is going. Mother, what on earth does it matter what was
against me if it is all over? Mother! How dare you torture my poor
girl--?”

This was naturally all the thanks Mrs. Leigh got for her efforts to
unravel the mystery, which the reader knows was the most innocent
mystery, and which had never been cleared up or thought of since that
day. It came clear of itself the moment that Aubrey, only to support
her, took Bee into his arms.




CHAPTER LII.


THE SORCERESS walked away very slowly down the street.

She had the sensation of having fallen from a great height, after the
excitement of having fought bravely to keep her place there, and of
having anticipated every step of a combat still more severe which yet
had not come to pass after her previsions. It had been a fight lasting
for hours, from the moment Betty, all unconscious, had told her of the
house in which Charlie was. That was in the morning, and now it was late
afternoon, and the work of the day, the common work of the day in which
all the innocent common people about had been employed, was rounding
towards its end. It seemed to her a long, long time that she had been
involved, first in imagination, in severe thought, and then in actual
conflict--in this struggle, fighting for her life. From the beginning
she had made up her mind that she should fail. It was a consciously
losing game that she had fought so gallantly, never giving in; and
indeed she was not unaware, nor was she without a languid satisfaction
in the fact that she had indeed carried off the honours of the field,
that it would not be said that she had been beaten. But what did that
matter? Argument she knew and felt had nothing to do with such affairs.
She had known herself to have lost from the moment she saw Colonel
Kingsward standing there against the mantelpiece in the dining-room. It
had not been possible for her then to give in, to turn and go forth into
the street flinging down her arms. On the contrary, it was her nature to
fight to the last; and she had carried off an apparent victory. She had
marched off with colours flying from the field of battle, leaving every
enemy confounded. But she herself entertained no illusion in the matter.
It was possible no doubt that her spell might yet be strong enough upon
her middle-aged captive to make him ignore and pass over everything that
told against her--but, after considering the situation with a keen and
close survey of every likelihood, she dismissed that hope. No, her
chance was lost--again; the battle was over--again. It had been so near
being successful that the shock was greater perhaps than usual; but she
had now been feeling the shock for hours; so that her actual fall was as
much a relief as a pang, and her mind, full of resource, obstinately
sanguine, was becoming ready to pass on to the next chance, and had
already sprung up to think--What now?

I am sorry that in this story I have always been placed in natural
opposition to this woman, who was certainly a creature full of interest,
full of resource, and indomitable in her way. And she had a theory of
existence, as, it is my opinion, we all must have, making out to
ourselves the most plausible reasons and excuses for all we do. Her
struggle--in which she would not have denied that she had sometimes been
unscrupulous--had always been for a standing-ground on which, if once
attained, she could have been good. She had always promised herself that
she would be good when once she had attained--oh, excellent! kind, just,
true!--a model woman. And what, after all, had been her methods? There
had been little harm in them. Here and there somebody had been injured,
as in the case of Aubrey Leigh, of Charlie Kingsward. To the first she
had indeed done considerable harm, but then she had soothed the life of
Amy, his little foolish wife, to whom she had been more kind than she
had been unkind to him. She had not wanted to be the third person
between that tiresome couple. She had stayed in his house from a kind of
sense of duty, and had Aubrey Leigh indeed asked her to become his
second wife she would, of course, have accepted him for the sake of the
position, but with a grimace. She was not particularly sorry for having
harmed him. It served him right for--well, for being Aubrey Leigh. And
as for Bee Kingsward, she had triumphantly proved, much to her own
surprise it must be said, that it was not she who had done Bee any
harm. Then Charlie--poor Charlie, poor boy! He thought, of course, that
he was very miserable and badly used. Great heavens! that a boy should
have the folly to imagine that anything could make him miserable, at
twenty-two--a man, and with all the world before him. Miss Lance at this
moment was not in the least sorry for Charlie. It would do him good. A
young fellow who had nothing in the world to complain of, who had
everything in his favour--it was good for him to be unhappy a little, to
be made to remember that he was only flesh and blood after all.

Thus she came to the conclusion, as she walked along, that really she
had done no harm to other people. To herself, alas! she was always doing
harm, and every failure made it more and more unlikely that she would
ever succeed. She did not brood over her losses when she was thus
defeated. She turned to the next thing that offered with what would have
been in a better cause a splendid philosophy, but yet in moments like
this she felt that it became every day more improbable that she would
ever succeed.

Instead of the large and liberal sphere in which she always hoped to be
able to fulfil all the duties of life in an imposing and remarkable way,
she would have probably to drop into--what? A governess’s place, for
which she would already be thought too old, some dreadful position about
a school, some miserable place as housekeeper--she with all her schemes,
her hopes of better things, her power over others. This prospect was
always before her, and came back to her mind at moments when she was at
the lowest ebb, for she had no money at all. She had always been
dependent upon somebody. Even now her little campaign in George Street,
Hanover Square, was at the expense of the friend with whom she had lived
in Oxford, and who believed Laura was concerting measures to establish
herself permanently in some remunerative occupation. These accounts
would have to be settled somehow, and some other expedient be found by
which to try again. Well, one thing done with, another to come on--was
not that the course of life? And there was a certain relief in the
thought that it was done with.

The suspense was over; there was no longer the conflict between hope and
fear, which wears out the nerves and clouds the clearness of one’s
mental vision. One down, another come on! She said this to herself with
a forlorn laugh in the depths of her being, yet not so very forlorn.
This woman had a kind of pleasure in the new start, even when she did
not know what it was to be. There are a great many things in which I
avow I have the greatest sympathy with her, and find her more
interesting than a great many blameless people. Poetic justice is
generally in books awarded to such persons. But that is, one is aware,
not always the case in life.

While Miss Lance went on quietly along the long unlovely street, with
those thoughts in her mind, walking more slowly than usual, a little
languid and exhausted after her struggle, but as has been said frankly
and without _arrière pensée_ giving up the battle as lost, and accepting
her defeat--she became suddenly aware of a quick firm footstep behind,
sounding fast and continuous upon the pavement. A woman like this has
all her wits very sharply about her, the ears and the sight of a
savage, and an unslumbering habit of observation, or she could never
carry on her career. She heard the step and instinctively noted it
before her mind awoke to any sense of meaning and importance in it.
Then, all at once, as it came just to that distance behind which made it
apparent that this footstep was following someone who went before, it
suddenly slackened without stopping, became slow when it had been fast.
At this, her thoughts flew away like a mist and she became all ears, but
she was too wise to turn round, to display any interest. Perhaps it
might be that he was only going his own way, not intending to follow,
and that he had slackened his pace unconsciously without ulterior
motives when he saw her in front of him--though this Miss Lance scarcely
believed.

Perhaps--I will not affirm it--she threw a little more of her real
languor and weariness into her attitude and movements when she made this
exciting discovery. She was, in reality, very tired. She had looked so
when she left the house; perhaps she had forgotten her great fatigue a
little in the course of her walk, but it now came back again with
double force, which is not unusual in the most matter of fact
circumstances. As her pace grew slower, the footstep behind became
slower also, but always followed on. Miss Lance proceeded steadily,
choosing the quietest streets, pausing now and then at a shop window to
rest. The climax came when she reached a window which had a rail round
it, upon which she leaned heavily, every line of her dress expressing,
with a faculty which her garments specially possessed, an exhaustion
which could scarcely go further. Then she raised her head to look what
the place was. It was full of embroideries and needlework, a woman’s
shop, where she was sure of sympathy. She went in blindly, as if her
very sight were clouded with her fatigue.

“I am very tired,” she said; “I want some silk for embroidery; but that
is not my chief object. May I sit down a little? I am so very tired.”

“Certainly, ma’am, certainly,” cried the mistress of the shop, rushing
round from behind the counter to place a chair for her and offer a
glass of water. She sat down so as to be visible from the door, but
still with her back to it. The step had stopped, and there was a shadow
across the window--the tall shadow of a man looking in. A smile came
upon Miss Lance’s face--of gratitude and thanks to the kind people--also
perhaps of some internal satisfaction. But she did not act as if she
were conscious of anyone waiting for her. She took the glass of water
with many acknowledgments; she leant back on the chair murmuring,
“Thanks, thanks,” to the exhortations of the shop-woman not to hurry, to
take a good rest. She did not hurry at all. Finally, she was so much
better as to be able to buy her silks, and, declaring herself quite
restored, to go out again into the open air.

She was met by the shadow that had been visible through the window, and
which, as she knew very well, was Colonel Kingsward, stiff and
embarrassed, yet with great anxiety in his face. “I feared you were
ill,” he said, with a little jerk, the words coming in spite of him. “I
feared you were fainting.”

“Oh, Colonel Kingsward, you!”

“Yes--I feared you were fainting. It is--nothing, I hope?”

“Nothing but exhaustion,” she said, with a faint smile. “I was very
tired, but I have rested and I am a little better now.”

“Will you let me call a cab for you? You don’t seem fit to walk.”

“Oh, no cab, thanks! I would much rather walk--the air and the slow
movement does one a little good.”

She was pale, and her voice was rather faint, and every line of her
dress, as I have said, was tired--tired to death--and yet not
ungracefully tired.

“I cannot let you go like this alone.” His voice softened every moment;
they went on for a step or two together. “You had better--take my arm,
at least,” he said.

She took it with a little cry and a sudden clasp. “I think you are not a
mere man, but an archangel of kindness and goodness,” she said, with a
faint laugh that broke down, and tears in her eyes.

And I think for that moment, in the extraordinary revulsion of feeling,
Miss Lance almost believed what she said.




CHAPTER LIII.


WHAT more is there to say? It is better, when one is able to deal poetic
justice all round, to reward the good and punish the evil. Who are the
good and who are the evil? We have not to do with murderers, with
breakers of the law, with enemies of God or man. If Aubrey Leigh had not
been exceedingly imprudent, if Bee had not been hot-headed and
passionate, there would never have been that miserable breach between
them. And the Sorceress, who destroyed for a time the peace of the
Kingsward family, really never at any time meant that family any real
harm. She meant them indeed, to her own consciousness, all the good in
the world, and to promote their welfare in every way by making them her
own. And as a matter of fact she did so, devoting herself to their
welfare. She made Colonel Kingsward an excellent wife and adopted his
children into her sedulous and unremitting care with a zeal which a
mother could not have surpassed. Her translation from scheming poverty
to abundance, and that graceful modest wealth which is almost the most
beautiful of the conditions of life, was made in a way which was quite
exquisite as a work of art. Nobody could ever have suspected that she
had been once poor. She had all the habits of the best society. There
was nowhere they could go, even into the most exalted regions, where the
new Mrs. Kingsward was not distinguished. She extended the Colonel’s
connections and interest, and made his house popular and delightful; and
she was perfect for his children. Even the county people and near
neighbours, who were the most critical, acknowledged this. The little
girls soon learned to adore their step-mother; the big boys admired and
stood in awe of her, submitting more or less to her influence, though a
little suspicious and sometimes half hostile. As for baby, who had been
in a fair way of growing up detestable and a little family tyrant, his
father’s new marriage was the saving of him. He scarcely knew as he grew
up that the former Miss Lance was not his mother, and he was said in the
family to be her idol, but a very well disciplined and well behaved
idol, and the one of the boys who was likely to have the finest career.

Charlie, poor Charlie, was not so fortunate, at least at first. The
appointment which Colonel Kingsward declared he had been looking out for
all along was got as soon as Charlie was able to accept it, and he left
England when he was little more than convalescent. People said it was
strange that a man with considerable influence, and in the very centre
of affairs, should have sent his eldest son away to the ends of the
earth, to a dangerous climate and a difficult post. But it turned out
very well on the whole, for after a few years of languor and disgust
with the world, there suddenly fell in Charlie’s way an opportunity of
showing that there was, after all, a great deal of English pluck and
courage in him. I do not think it came to anything more than that--but
then that, at certain moments, has been the foundation and the saving
of the British Empire in various regions of the world. There was not one
of his relations who celebrated Charlie’s success with so much fervour
as his step-mother, who was never tired of talking of it, nor of
declaring that she had always expected as much, and known what was in
him. Dear Charlie, she said, had fulfilled all her expectations, and
made her more glad and proud than words could say. It was a poor return
for this maternal devotion, yet a melancholy fact, that Charlie turned
away in disgust whenever he heard of her, and could not endure her name.

Bee, whose little troubles have been so much the subject of this story,
accomplished her fate by becoming Mrs. Aubrey Leigh in the natural
course of events. There was no family quarrel kept up to scandalise and
amuse society, but there never was much intercourse nor any great
cordiality between the houses of Kingswarden and Forestleigh. I think,
however, that it was against her father that Bee’s heart revolted most.

THE END.








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