PORTMAN SQUARE had seemed to Bee the first step into the world, after
all that had happened, but when she was there this gentle illusion
faded. It was not the world, but only another dry and faded corner out
of the world, more silent and recluse than even Kingswarden had become,
for there were no voices of children within, and no rustle of trees and
singing of birds without. The meeting with Betty was sweet, but the air
of the little old-fashioned tea-table, the long, solemn dinner, with the
butler and the footman stealing like ghosts about the table, which was
laid out with heavy silver and cut glass, with only one small bunch of
flowers as a sacrifice to modern ideas in the middle, and the silence
of the great drawing-room afterwards, half lighted and dreary, came with
a chill upon the girl who had been afraid of being dazzled by too much
brightness. There were only the old lady and the old gentleman, Betty
and herself, around the big table, and only the same party without the
old gentleman afterwards. Mrs. Lyon asked Bee questions about her
excellent father, and she examined Bee closely about her dear mother,
wishing to know all the particulars of Mrs. Kingsward’s illness.
“I can’t get a nice serious answer from Betty. She is such a little
thing; and she tells me she was not at home through the worst,” Mrs.
Lyon said.
It was not a subject to inspire Bee, or enable her to rise above the
level of her home thoughts. Betty did not seem to feel it in the same
way. She was in a white frock with black ribbons, for Mrs. Lyon did not
like to see her in black, “such a little thing, you know.” Bee wondered
vaguely whether she herself, only a year-and-a-half the elder, was
supposed to be quite middle-aged and beyond all the happier surroundings
of life. Mrs. Lyon gave her a great deal of advice as to what she ought
to do, and talked much of the responsibilities of the elder sister. “You
must teach them to obey you, my dear. You must not let down the habit of
obedience, you must be very strict with them; a sister has more need
even than a mother to be very strict, to keep them in a good way.” Bee
sat very still, while the old lady prosed. It was so silent but for that
voice, that the ticking of the clock became quite an important sound in
the large dim room. And Bee strained her ears for the sound of a hansom
drawing up, for Charlie’s step on the pavement. Many hansoms stopped at
neighbouring houses, and footsteps sounded, but Charlie did not make his
appearance. “My brother said he would look in later,” she had told Mrs.
Lyon when she arrived. “Well, my dear, we shall hope he will,” the old
lady had said, “but a young man in London finds a hundred engagements.”
And Betty, who had been so serious, who had been so sweet, a perfect
companion at the time of their mother’s death, more deeply penetrated by
all the influences of the time than Bee herself, now flitted about in
her white frock, with all her old brightness, and sang her little song
without faltering, to show Bee what progress she had made since she had
been taking lessons. Bee could scarcely yet sing the hymns in church
without breaking down, though to be sure a girl who was having the best
lessons would be obliged to get over that. After the long evening when
they were at last alone together, Betty did not respond warmly to Bee’s
suggestion that she should now be thinking of returning home. “You seem
to think of nothing but the children,” she said; “you can’t want me,” to
which Bee could only reply that there were more things than the children
to think of, and that she was very lonely and had no one to talk to----
“But you have Charlie,” said Betty.
“Charlie is very full of his own concerns. He has not much sympathy with
me. All that he wants is to get back to Oxford.”
“To Oxford in the vacation? What would he do there?”
“He says he would work,” said Bee.
“Oh, Bee, how nice of Charlie! I know they do sometimes, Gerald Lyon
tells me; but I never thought that Charlie----”
“No,” said Bee, “and I don’t feel very sure now, there is someone---- to
whom he writes such long letters----”
“Oh, Bee! This is far, far more interesting than reading! Do you know
who she is? Does he tell you about her?”
“Her name is Laura,” said Bee, “that is all I know.”
“Oh,” cried Betty, “Charlie too!” And then a flush came over the girl’s
uplifted face. Bee, poor Bee, absorbed in the many things which had
dawned upon her which were beyond Betty, did not observe the colour nor
even that significant “too” which had come to Betty’s lips in spite of
herself.
“I think he met her or someone belonging to her--at the Academy to-day;
and that’s why he hasn’t come---- Oh, Betty, I am not happy about it--I
am not happy at all!”
Betty put her arms round Bee and kissed her. She thought it was the
remembrance of her own disappointment and disaster which made her sister
cry out in this heart-broken way. Betty looked very wistfully in Bee’s
eyes. She was more sorry than words could say. If she could have done
anything in the world “to make it all come right” she would have done
so, and in the bottom of her heart she still had a conviction that all
would “come right.” “Oh, Bee, Bee!” she cried, “cannot anything be done?
If only--only you would have listened to his mother!--Bee----”
Bee held up a warning finger. “Do you think it is myself I am thinking
of?” she said, and then, wringing her hands, she added, “I don’t know
what harm we have done to bring it on, but, oh! I think we are in the
hands of fate.”
What did this mean? Betty thought her sister had gone out of her mind,
and Bee would make no explanation. But I think this strange conversation
made Betty rather less willing to return home. She was the darling of
the house in Portman Square; though they did not go into society, they
had all manner of indulgences for Betty, and took her to the Park, and
encouraged the visits of their nephew, Gerald, who was a very merry
companion for the girl. He was permitted to take her to see various
sights, and the old people, as usual, did not perceive what was
beginning to dawn under their very eyes. Betty was such a little thing.
The consequence was that, though Bee thought Portman Square still duller
than Kingswarden, her little sister was not of that opinion. Bee
accordingly went back alone next day, Betty accompanying her to the
railway station. Neither at Portman Square nor at the railway station
did Charlie appear, and it was with a heavy heart that Bee went home. It
seemed to her as she travelled alone, for, I think, the first time in
her life--she was not yet quite twenty--that everyone was following his
or her own way, and that only she was bearing the whole burden of the
family. Her father had returned to his own world, his club, his dinners,
official and otherwise. It was indispensable that he should do so. Bee
had understood, it being impossible for a man in his position to
withdraw from the world on account of any private feeling of his own.
And Betty had flashed back again into her music, and her white frock,
and was seeing everything as of old. And Charlie--oh, what was Charlie
doing, drifting off into some tragic enchantment? The poor girl’s heart
was very heavy. There seemed only herself to think of them all in their
separate paths, one here and another there, going further and further
off in so many different directions from the event which had broken the
unity of the family, yet surely should have held them together in their
common trouble. That event had gone into the regions of the past. The
time of the mother was over, like a tale that is told. There were still
the children in the nursery, and Bee, their guardian, watching over
them--but the others all going off, each at their separate angle. It is
hard enough to realise this, even when age has gained a certain
insensibility, but to the girl, this breaking up of the family was
terrible. “I--even I alone remain,” she was inclined to say with the
prophet, and what could she do to stop the closing of these toils of
Fate? Her mind gradually concentrated on that last and most alarming
theme of all--the woman, the lady, without a name or history, or any
evident link with the family, who had thus, for the second time,
appeared in the path. Bee tried to fall back upon her reason, to
represent to herself that she had no real cause for assuming that the
stranger of whom she knew nothing, who might simply have been walking
through that German wood, and have stopped by chance to speak to the
little English girl with her stupid sketch, had anything to do with the
disaster which so soon overtook that poor little English girl in the
midst of her happy love. She had no reason, none, for thinking so. She
tried to represent to herself how foolish she had been to entertain such
a notion, how natural and without meaning the incident had been. And now
again, for the second time, what reason had she to believe that anything
fatal or even dangerous to Charlie was in this lady’s appearance now?
She was a distinguished-looking woman, much older than Charlie. What was
more likely than that such a woman, probably by her looks a married
lady, a person of importance, should have a great deal of influence over
a youth like Charlie if she took notice of him at all? All this was
very reasonable. There was far more sense in it than in that foolish
terror and alarm which had taken possession of her mind. She had almost
persuaded herself that these apprehensions were foolish before she
reached home, and yet the moment after she had succeeded in reasoning it
all out, and convincing herself how foolish they had been, they had
risen up in a crowd and seized her anxious mind again.
It was some days beyond the week which Charlie had been allowed in town
when he came back. He was in agitated spirits, with a look of mingled
excitement and exhaustion, which gave Bee many alarms, but which she was
not sufficiently skilled or experienced to interpret. Colonel Kingsward
had not come home in the interval, having gone somewhere else to spend
his weekly holiday, and when he did come there were various colloquies
between him and his son, which were evidently of a disturbing kind. Some
of these were about money, as was to be made out by various allusions.
Charlie had either been spending too much, or had set up a claim to
more in the future, a claim which his father was reluctant to allow. But
it seemed that he had come out triumphant in the end, to judge by their
respective looks, when they issued from the library together, just
before Colonel Kingsward left for town.
“I hope, at least, you’ll make good use of it,” were the father’s last
words--and “you may trust me, sir,” said Charlie, with all the elation
of victory.
He was in great spirits all day, teasing the children, and giving Bee
half confidences as to the great things he meant to do.
“They shan’t put me off with any of their beastly Governorships at the
end of the world,” said Charlie. “I shall play for high stakes, Bee, I
can’t afford to be a mere attaché long, but they shan’t shelve me at
some horrible African station, I can tell you. That’s not a kind of
promotion that will suit me.”
“But you will have to go where you are sent,” said Bee.
“Oh, shall I?” cried Charlie, “that is all you know about it. Besides,
when a man has a particularly charming wi----” He stopped and coughed
over the words, and laughed and grew red.
“Do you think your manners are so particularly charming?” said Bee, with
familiar scorn, upon which Charlie laughed louder than ever and walked
away.
Next day he left home hurriedly, saying he was going to make a run for a
day or two to “see a man,” and came back in the same excited, exhausted
state on Saturday morning, before his father returned--a process which
was repeated almost every week, to the great consternation and trouble
of Bee. For Charlie never mentioned these absences to his father, and
Bee felt herself spell-bound, as if she were incapable of doing so. How
could she betray her brother? And the letters to Laura ceased. He had no
time now to write these long letters. Neither did he receive them as
used to be the case. Had the correspondence ceased, or was there any
other explanation? But Charlie talked but little to his sister now, and
not at all on this subject, and thus the web of mystery seemed to be
woven more and more about his feet--Bee alone suspecting or fearing
anything, Bee alone entirely unable to make it clear.