CHARLIE was not in his rooms at College, he had not been there for some
days, and nobody could furnish any information as to where he was.
Colonel Kingsward had left Bee in the hotel while he went on to make his
inquiries. He was very guarded in the questions he asked, for though he
was himself very angry with his son, he was still careful for Charlie’s
reputation, explaining even to the college porter, who was very well
acquainted with the eccentricities of the gentlemen, that he had no
doubt his son had returned home, though they had unfortunately crossed
each other on the way. The Colonel tried to keep up this fiction even
with the sympathetic Don, who made matters so much worse by his
compassion, but who was very full and detailed in his relation of poor
Charlie’s backslidings, the heaviness of whose gate bill and the amount
of whose sins and penalties were terrible to hear. He had attended no
lectures, he had written no essays, he had been dumb and blank in every
examination.
“Out of consideration to you, Colonel Kingsward, the College has been
very forbearing, and shut its eyes as long as possible.”
“I wish, sir, the College had shown more common sense and let me know,”
the Colonel cried, in wrath; but that did not throw any light upon the
subject.
As it turned out, Charlie had not “gone in” for his “schools” at all. He
had done nothing that he ought to have done. What things he had done
which he ought not to have done remained to be discovered. His stern
father did not doubt that a sufficient number of these actual offences
would soon be found to add to the virtues omitted. He went back to the
hotel where Bee had been spending a miserable morning, and they sat
together in gloom and silence.
“You had better go home,” he said to her. “He may have got home by this
time, and I don’t see what use you can be here.”
Bee was very submissive, yet begged hard to return as far as London, at
least, with her father; to wait for another day, in case some trace of
the prodigal might be found. Many such parties have occupied the dreary
hotel rooms and stared in vain out of the windows, and watched with sick
hearts the passing throng, the shoals of undergraduates, to their eyes
all dutiful and well-doing, while the one in whom they are concerned is
absent, in what evil ways they know not. Poor Bee was too young to feel
the full weight of such alarms but she was as miserable as if she had
known everything that could happen in the vagueness of her consciousness
of despair and pain. What Charlie could have done, what would become of
him, what his father would do or could do, were all hidden from Bee. But
there was in it all a vague misery which was almost worse than clear
perception. Colonel Kingsward, with all his knowledge of the world, was
scarcely less vague. He did not know how to find out the secrets of an
under-graduate. Charlie had friends, but all of them protested that
they had seen very little of him of late. He had fallen off from sports
and exercise as much as from study. He had scarcely been on the cricket
ground all the summer; he had given up football; “boating on the river
with ladies,” he had been seen, but not recently, for the floods were
out and such amusements were no longer practicable. At night the Colonel
knew almost as little about his son as when he had arrived full of
certainty that the whole matter could be cleared up in a few hours.
Next day began gloomily with another visit to the Don, whom Colonel
Kingsward hoped to have seen the last of on their former exasperating
interview. As he had discovered nothing elsewhere, he went back again to
the authority, who had also hoped on his side to be free from the
anxious but impatient father, and they had another long talk, which
ended like the first in nothing. The college potentate had no idea where
the youth could have gone. Charlie had left most of his property still
in his rooms; he had gone out with only a little bag, nobody suspecting
him of an intention to “go down.” After they had gone over the question
again, the Don being by no means as sympathetic as the first time, and
contributing a good deal to Colonel Kingsward’s acquaintance with his
son’s proceedings--a sudden light was for the first time thrown upon the
question by a chance remark. “You know, of course, that he had friends
in Oxford?”
“Like other young men, I suppose. I have seen several of them, and they
can give me no information.”
“I don’t mean undergraduates: people living in the town--ladies,” said
the Don, who was a young man, almost with a blush. And after sending for
Charlie’s scout, and making other inquiries, Colonel Kingsward was
furnished with an address. He went back to the hotel quickly, in some
excitement, to inform Bee of the new clue he had obtained, but he
scarcely reached the room where she was awaiting him when he was told
that a lady had just asked for him downstairs. Bee was sent off
immediately to her room while her father received this unexpected
visitor. Bee had been watching at the window all the morning, looking
down upon that world of young men, all going about their work or their
pleasure, all in their fit place, while Charlie was no one knew where.
The poor girl had been breaking her heart over that thought, wistfully
watching the others among whom he ought to have been, feeling the pang
of that comparison, sometimes imagining she saw a figure like his in the
distance, and watching, as it approached, how every trace died away.
Where was he? Bee’s young heart was very sore. The vacancy was appalling
to her, filling itself with all kinds of visionary shapes of terror. She
could not think of him only as wandering away in misery and despair,
feeling himself to have failed, ashamed and afraid to look anyone in the
face. She scarcely understood her father when he hurried her out of the
sitting-room, but obeyed him with a sense of trouble and injury though
without knowing why.
Bee spent a very forlorn hour in her room. She heard the sound of the
voices next door. Her father’s well known tones, and a low voice which
she felt must be a woman’s. She would have been much tempted to listen
to what they said if it had been possible, but there was no door between
the rooms, and she could only hear that a long and close conversation
was going on, without making out a word of it. She was very restless in
her anxiety, wandering from the window to the door, which she opened
with a desire to hear better, which defeated itself--and to see better,
though there was nothing to be seen. It seemed to Bee that half the day
was over before the sound of movement in the sitting-room warned her
that the conference was breaking up. Even after that there was a long
pause, and the talking went on, though it moved closer to the door. Bee
had gradually grown in excitement as those sounds went on. She stole to
her own half-open door, as the one next to it was opened, and the
visitor came forth attended with the greatest courtesy by Colonel
Kingsward, who accompanied her to the stairs. There the lady turned
round and gave him her hand, turning her face towards the spot where the
unsuspected watcher stood gazing with eyes of wonder and terror.
“Not another step,” she said, with a sweet but decided voice. “The only
thing I will ask from you, Colonel Kingsward, will be a line, a single
line, to say that all is well.”
“You may rely upon that,” the Colonel said, bowing over the hand he
held, “but may not I see you to your carriage, call your servant?”
“I am walking,” she said, “and I am alone; come no further, please; one
line to say that all is well.” He still held her hand and she gave it a
little, significant pressure, adding in a low tone: “And happy--and
forgiven!”
Bee stood as if she had been turned to stone; a little, clandestine
figure within the shelter of the door. It was a beautiful face that was
thus turned towards her for a minute, unconscious of her scrutiny, and
the voice was sweet. Oh, not a woman like any other woman! She said to
herself that she remembered the voice and would have known it anywhere;
and the look, half kind, yet with a touch of ridicule, of mockery in it.
This was evidently not what the Colonel felt. He descended a few of the
stairs after her, until turning again with a smile and with her hands
extended as if to drive him back, she forbade his further attendance. He
returned to the sitting-room thoughtfully, yet with a curious, softened
expression upon his face, and a few minutes afterwards, not at once, he
came to the door again and called Bee. There was still a smile lingering
about his lips, though his mouth had stiffened back into its usual
somewhat stern composure.
“Come in,” he said, “I have something to tell you. I have had a very
strange visit--a visit from a lady.”
“I saw her,” said Bee, under her breath, but her father was too much
pre-occupied to hear.
“If this was, as I suppose, the lady whom you and your brother met, you
are right, Bee, in thinking her very remarkable. She is one of the
handsomest women I ever saw, and with a charm about her, which--. But,
of course what you want to hear is about Charlie. I am glad to tell you
that she has very much relieved my mind about Charlie, Bee.”
Bee stood before her father with her hands folded, with the most
curious sense of revolt and opposition in her mind--looking at him, a
spectator would have said, with something of the sternness that was
habitual to him, but so very inappropriate on her soft brow. She made no
reply to this. Her countenance did not relax. Relieved about Charlie?
No! Bee did not believe it. Pity and terror for Charlie seemed to take
stronger and stronger possession of her heart.
“It is a long story,” he said. “Sit down, you have got a way of standing
staring, my dear. I wish you had more womanly models like the lady I
have just been talking to--perfectly clear and straightforward in what
she said, but with a feminine grace and sweetness. Well, it appears that
Charlie had the good luck to get introduced to this lady about a year
ago. Sit down, I tell you, I won’t have you staring at me in that rude
way.”
There was a little pause, and Bee sat down abruptly, and not very
gracefully. Colonel Kingsward could not but remark the difference. He
followed her movements for a moment with his eyes, and then he began
again--
“For all I can make out, he has been treated with a kindness which
should have done everything for a young man. He has been invited to the
house of these ladies--he has met all sorts of people who ought to be of
use to him, whom it was a distinct advantage to meet--he has been kept
out of the usual foolish diversions of young men. So far as I can make
out, there is nothing against his character except what these
Don-fellows call idleness--a thing that scarcely tells against a young
man in after-life, unless he is a parson, or a schoolmaster, or
something of that kind. Even the missing of his degree,” said the
Colonel, pulling his moustache reflectively, “is of little importance
among practical men. So long as he can get through in his modern
languages, and so forth, of what importance are the classics? I am very
much relieved in my mind about Charlie. She thinks he must have gone
straight down to London, instead of going home.”
“Who is the lady, papa?”
Bee’s interest in Charlie seemed to have dropped, as the Colonel’s had
done, for the moment. His advocate had made herself the first person on
the horizon.
“The lady? So far as I can make out she is living here with some
friends, up in the district called the Parks, where a great many people
now live. She says she has always taken an interest in the
undergraduates, who are left so sadly to themselves, and that, being of
an age to make it possible, she has wished very much to devote herself
to do what she could for these boys. Unfortunately, with her unusual
personal attractions----.” The Colonel stopped short and bit his
moustache. “After all her kindness to your brother, encouraging him in
his work and setting his duty before him--and no elder sister, no
mother, could have been kinder, from all she tells me--the foolish boy
repaid her good offices by--what do you think? But you will never
guess.”
“And I will never, never believe it,” cried Bee, “if it was
anything--anything that was not nice on Charlie’s part!” Her voice was
quite hoarse in her emotion, her secret fury against this woman, of whom
she knew nothing, rising more and more.
“You little fool!” her father said, rising and standing up against the
mantel-piece. He laughed angrily, and looked at her with his most
contemptuous air. “One would think that even in their cradles women must
begin to hate women,” he said.
Bee, who hated no one unless it was this woman whom she feared but did
not know, grew angry red. Her blue eyes flashed and shone like northern
lights. The cruel and contemptuous assumption which touched her pride of
sex, added vehemence to the other emotion which was already strong
enough, and roused her up into a kind of fury.
“If she says anything bad of Charlie I don’t believe it,” she cried,
“not a word, not a word! Whatever he has done she has driven him to it!”
Then Bee was suddenly silent, panting, terrified or afraid that her
little outburst of passion would close all further revelations.
“It seems unnecessary to add another word in face of such fierce
prejudice!”
“Oh, papa, forgive me. Tell me; I shall say nothing more.”
“You have said a great deal too much already. After this,” he said,
sarcastically, “you will perhaps think that your brother--of three and
twenty, without a penny or a prospect--did Miss Lance honour by forcing
a proposal upon her, making love to her at the end of all----”
“Miss Lance!” Bee said, with a sharp cry.
The Colonel took no notice of the interruption. He went on with a kind
of disdainful comment to himself rather than to her.
“After all, there are things which a lady has to put up with, which we
don’t take into consideration. A young fool whom she has been kind to,
knowing he has nobody near to look after him, no mother”--his voice even
grew a little tender at this point--“and by way of reward the idiot
falls in love with her, asks a woman like that to share his
insignificant little life! Jove! What a piece of impertinence!” the
Colonel said, with an angry laugh.
“Did you say,” said Bee, with faltering lips, “Miss Lance, papa?”
He turned upon her with a look of extreme surprise.
“Why shouldn’t I have said Miss Lance? What is there unusual in the
name?”
Bee looked at him with a dumb rebellion, an almost scorn and passion far
greater than his own. He had forgotten the name--but Bee had not
forgotten it. The fact that Bee’s own young life had suffered shipwreck
had perhaps escaped from his memory altogether, though it was she who
had done it. Bee looked at him with her blue eyes blazing, remembering
everything that he had forgotten. Her brother had gone out of her mind,
and all the history of his Laura, and the way in which he had been
enfolded in this fatal web. She went back to her own wrongs--forgetting
that she had keenly confirmed her father’s decision and rejected Aubrey
on what she thought to be other and sufficient grounds. She thought only
of the moment when sudden darkness had fallen upon her in the first
sunshine of her life, and she had struggled against the rigid will of
her father, who would listen to no explanations--who would not
understand. And all for the sake of this woman--the spider who dragged
fly after fly into her net; the witch, the enchantress of whom all
poems and stories spoke! Her exasperation was so intense that she forgot
all the laws of respect and obedience in which her very being had been
bound, and looked at her father as at an equal, an enemy whom she
scorned as well as feared.
“What is the meaning of these looks,” he said, “I am altogether at a
loss to understand you, Bee. Why this fury at a name--which you have
never heard before, so far as I know.”
“You think I have never heard it before?” said Bee, in her passion. “It
shows how little you think of me, or care for anything that has happened
to me. Oh, I have heard it before, and I shall hear it again, I know. I
know I shall hear it again. And you don’t mind, though you are our
father! You don’t remember!” Bee was still very young, and she had that
fatal woman’s weakness which spoils every crisis with inevitable tears.
Her exasperation was too great for words. “You don’t remember!” she
cried, flinging the words at him like a storm; and then broke down in a
passion of choking sobs, unable to say more.