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.