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--”