“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.
Portman Squarehad 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 knowthey 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 permittedto 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 herwhite 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 likeCharlie 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 aclaim 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——” Hestopped 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.
Theyear 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 beingone 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 ofthe 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 anxiousand 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 intothe 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 generallythe 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. “Hewas 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,” saidColonel 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 commonperson, 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 thedoor 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 veryknowing, 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 softenedstep 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 movementher 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! Itwas 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.
Charliewas 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 muchworse 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, nobodysuspecting 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 watchingat 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 handsfolded, 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 themoment. 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 muchalready. 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, theenchantress 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.
Todo 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 lefthim, 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,niceboy—and finding in a moment, without the least warning, that he had mistaken me likethat!”
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 notcome 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 thestory 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 suchvanities 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 havejust 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 “theangel, 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 bemore 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 looksencountered 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 feltvery 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.
END OF SECOND VOLUME.
TILLOTSON AND SON, PRINTERS, BOLTON.