IN the afternoon of the next day, Bee was again alone. The old aunt had
come down for lunch, but gone up to her room again to rest after that
meal. It was a little chilly outside. The children, of course, wrapped
up in their warm things, and in the virtue of the English nursery, which
shrinks from no east wind, were out for their various walks. The big
boys, attended by such of the little boys as could be trusted with these
athletes, were taking violent exercise somewhere, and Bee sat by the
fire, alone. It is not a place for a girl of twenty. The little
pinafore, half made, was on the table beside her. She had a book in her
hand. Perhaps had she been a young wife looking for the return of her
young husband in the evening, with all the air of the bigger world about
him and an abundance of news, and plans, and life, a pretty enough
picture might have been made of that cosy fireside retirement.
But even this ideal has ceased to be satisfactory to the present
generation. And Bee’s spirits and heart were very low. She had
despatched a fiery letter to Betty, and with this all her anger had
faded away. She had no courage to do anything. She seemed to have come
to an end of all possibilities. She had no longer anyone to fall back
upon as a supporter and sympathiser--not even Betty. Even this closest
link of nature seemed to have been broken by that enemy.
To have an enemy is not a very common experience in modern life. People
may do each other small harms and annoyances, but to most of us the
strenuous appeals and damnations of the Psalmist are quite beyond
experience. But Bee had come back to the primitive state. She had an
enemy who had succeeded in taking from her everything she cared for.
Aubrey her betrothed, Charlie, her father, her sister, one after the
other in quick succession. It was not yet a year and a half since she
first heard this woman’s name, and in that time all these losses had
happened. She was not even sure that her mother’s death was not the work
of the same subtle foe; indeed, she brought herself to believe that it
was at least accelerated by all the trouble and contention brought into
the family by her own misery and rebellion--all the work of that woman!
Why, why, had Bee been singled out for this fate? A little girl in an
English house, like other girls--no worse, no better. Why should she
alone in all England have this bitterness of an enemy to make her
desolate and break her heart?
While she was thus turning over drearily those dismal thoughts, there
was a messenger approaching to point more sharply still the record of
these disasters and their cause. Bee had laid down her book in her lap;
her thoughts had strayed completely from it and gone back to her own
troubles, when the door of the drawing-room opened quietly and a servant
announced “Mrs. Leigh.” Mrs. Leigh! It is not an uncommon name. A Mrs.
Lee lived in the village, a Mrs. Grantham Lea was the clergyman’s wife
in the next parish. Bee drew her breath quickly and composed her looks,
but thought of no visitor that could make her heavy heart beat. Not even
when the lady came in, a more than middle-aged matron, of solid form and
good colour, dressed with the subdued fashionableness appropriate to her
age. It was not Mrs. Lee from the village, nor Mrs. Grantham Lea,
nor---- Yet Bee had seen her before. She rose up a little startled and
made a step or two forward.
“You do not know me, Miss Kingsward? I cannot wonder at it, since we met
but once, and that in circumstances---- Don’t start nor fly, though I
see you have recognised me.”
“Indeed I did not think of flying. Will you--will you--sit down.”
“You need not be afraid of me, my poor child,” said Mrs. Leigh.
Aubrey’s mother seated herself and looked with a kind yet troubled look
at the girl, who still stood up in the attitude in which she had risen
from her chair. “I scarcely saw you the other time,” she said. “It was
in the garden. You did not give me a good reception. I should like
much, sometime or other, if you would tell me why. I have never made out
why. But don’t be afraid; it is not on that subject I have come to you
now.”
Bee seated herself. She kept her blue eyes, which seemed expanded and
larger than usual, but had none of the former indignant blaze in them,
fixed on the old lady’s face.
“Your father is not here, the servant tells me--”
“No--he is in town,” she answered, faltering, almost too much absorbed
by anticipation to reply.
“And you are alone--nobody with you to stand by you?”
“Mrs. Leigh,” said Bee, catching her breath, “I don’t know why you
should ask me such questions, or--or be sorry for me. I don’t need
anybody to be sorry for me.”
“Poor little girl! We needn’t go into that question. I am sorry for any
girl who is motherless, who has to take her mother’s place. I would much
rather have spoken to your father had he been here.”
“After all,” said Bee, “my father could say nothing. It is I who must
decide for myself.”
She said this with an involuntary betrayal of her consciousness that
there could be but one subject between them, and it was not in the power
of Aubrey Leigh’s mother, however strongly aware she was of another
theme on which she had come to speak, not to note how different was
Bee’s reception of her from the other time, when the girl had fled from
her presence and would not even hear what she had to say. Bee’s eyes
were large and humid and full of an anxiety which was almost wistful.
She had the air of refusing to hear with her lips, but eagerly expecting
with her whole heart what was about to be said. And she looked so young,
so solitary, in her mother’s chair, with a mother’s work lying about,
the head of this silent house--that the heart of the elder woman was
deeply touched. If little Betty had been like a rose, Bee was almost as
white as the cluster of fragrant white narcissus that stood on the
table. Poor little girl, so subdued and changed from the little
passionate creature who would not hear a word, and whose indignation
was stronger than even the zeal of the mother who had come to plead her
son’s cause!
Mrs. Leigh drew a little nearer and took Bee’s hand. The girl did not
resist, but kept her eyes upon her steadily, watching, her mind in a
great turmoil, not knowing what to expect.
“My dear,” said the old lady, “don’t be alarmed. I have not come to
speak about Aubrey. I cannot help hoping that one day you will do him
justice; but, in the meantime, it is something else that has brought me
here. Miss Kingsward--your brother--”
Bee’s hand, in this lady’s clasp, betrayed her in spite of herself. It
became limp and uninterested when she was assured that Aubrey was not in
question; and then, at her brother’s name, was snatched suddenly away.
“My brother?” she cried, “Charlie!” Then, subduing herself, “What do you
know about him? Oh,” clasping her hands as new light seemed to break
upon her, “you have come to tell me some bad news?”
“I hope not. My son found him some time ago, disheartened and unhappy
about leaving Oxford. He persuaded him to come and share his rooms. He
has been with him more or less all the time, which I hope may be a
comfort to you. And then he fell ill. My dear Aubrey has tried to see
your father, but in vain, and poor Charlie is not anxious, I fear, to
see his father. Yes, he has been ill, but not so seriously that we need
fear anything serious. He has shaken off the complaint, but he wants
rousing--he wants someone whom he loves. Aubrey sent for me a fortnight
ago. He has been well taken care of, there is nothing really wrong. But
we cannot persuade him to rouse himself. It is illness that is at the
bottom of it all. He would not have left you without news of him, he
would not shrink from his father if he were not ill. Bee, I will confess
to you that it is Aubrey who has sent me; but don’t be afraid, it is for
Charlie’s sake--only for Charlie’s sake. He thinks if you would but come
to him--if you would have the courage to come--to your brother, Bee.”
“He--he thinks? Not Charlie--you don’t mean Charlie?” Bee cried.
“Charlie does not seem to wish for anything. We cannot rouse him. We
think that the sight of someone he loves----”
Bee was full of agitation. Her lips quivered; her hands trembled. “Oh,
me!” she said; “I am no one. It is not for his sister a boy cares. I do
not think I should do him any good. Oh, Charlie, Charlie! all this time
that we have been blaming him so, thinking him so cruel, he has been
lying ill! If I could do him any good!” she cried, wringing her hands.
“The sight of you would do him good. It is not that he wants a nurse--I
have seen to that; but no nurse could rouse him as the sight of some of
his own people would. Do not question, my dear, but come--oh, come! He
thinks he is cut off from everybody, that his father will never see him,
that you must all have turned against him. Words will not convince him,
but to see you, that would do so. He would feel that he was not
forsaken.”
“Oh, forsaken! How could he think it? He must know that we have been
breaking our hearts. It was he who forsook us all.”
Bee had risen again, and stood leaning upon the mantelpiece, too much
shaken and agitated to keep still. Though she had thought herself so
independent, she had in reality never broken the strained band of
domestic subjugation. She had never so much as gone, though it was
little more than an hour’s journey, to London on her own authority. The
thought of taking such a step startled her. And that she should do this
on the word and in the company of Aubrey’s mother--Aubrey, for whom she
had once been ready to abandon everything, from whom she had been
violently separated, whom she had cast off, flung away from her without
hearing a word he had to say! How could she put herself in his way
again--go with his mother, accept his services? Bee had acted quickly on
the impulse of passion in all that had happened to her before. But she
had not known the conflict, the rending asunder of opposite emotions. In
the whirl of her thoughts her lover, whom she had cast off, came between
her and the brother whom he had succoured. It was to Aubrey’s house, to
his very dwelling where he was, that she must go if she went to
Charlie. And Charlie wanted her, or at least needed her, lying weak and
despairing, waiting for a sign from home. It was difficult to realise
her brother so, or to believe, indeed, that he could want her very much,
that there was any yearning in his heart towards his own flesh and
blood. But Mrs. Leigh thought so, and how could she refuse? How could
she refuse? The problem was too much for her. She looked into Mrs.
Leigh’s face with an appeal for help.
“My dear,” her companion said, leaving a calm and cool hand upon Bee’s
arm, which trembled with nervous excitement, “If you are afraid of
meeting Aubrey, compose yourself. Aubrey would rather go to the end of
the world than give you any pain, or put himself in your way. We are
laying no trap for you--I should not have come if the case had not been
urgent. Never would I have come had it been a question of my son; I
would not beguile you even for his sake. It is for your brother, Bee;
not for Aubrey, not for Aubrey!”
Not for Aubrey! Was that any comfort, was there any strength in that
assurance? At all events, these were the words that rang through Bee’s
head, as she made her hurried preparations. She had almost repeated them
aloud in the hasty explanations she made to Moss upstairs, who was now
at the head of the nursery, and to the housekeeper below. To neither of
these functionaries did it seem of any solemn importance that Bee should
go away for a day or two. There was no objection on their part to being
left at the head of affairs. And then Bee felt herself carried along by
the whirl of strange excitement and feeling which rather than the less
etherial methods of an express train seemed to sweep her through the air
of the darkening spring night by Mrs. Leigh’s side. A few hours before
she had felt herself the most helpless of dependent creatures, abandoned
by all, incapable of doing anything. And now, what was she doing?
Rushing into the heart of the conflict, assuming an individual part in
it, acting on her own responsibility. She could scarcely believe it was
herself who sat there by Mrs. Leigh’s side.
But not for Aubrey, not for Aubrey! This kept ringing in her ears, like
the tolling of a bell, through all the other sounds. She sat in one
corner of the carriage, and listened to Mrs. Leigh’s explanations, and
to the clang of the engine and rush of the train, all mingled together
in bewildering confusion. But the other voice filled all space, echoing
through everything. Bee felt herself trembling on the edge of a crisis,
such as her life had never known. All the world seemed to be set against
her, her enemy, perhaps her father, and all the habitual authorities of
her young and subject life, now suddenly rising into rebellion. She
would have to do and say things which she would not have ventured so
much as to think of a little time ago; but whatever she might have to
encounter there was to be no renewal to Bee of her own story and
meaning. It was not for Aubrey that she was called or wanted--for the
succour of others, for sisterly help, for charity and kindness; but not
for her own love or life.