AND yet all this time there lay upon Betty’s table, concealed under the
pretty laced handkerchiefs which she had pulled out of their sachet to
choose one for the party, Bee’s little tremulous letter, expressing a
state of mind more agitated than that of Betty, and full of wonderings
and trouble. It was found there by the maid who put things in order next
morning, when she called the young visitor.
“Here’s a letter that came last night, and you have never opened it,”
said the maid, half reproachfully. She, at least, she was anxious to
note, had not been to blame.
Betty took it with great _sang froid_. She saw by the writing it was
only Bee’s--and Bee’s news was never imperative. There could not be
much to disclose to her of the state of affairs at Kingswarden that was
new, since the night before last.
But the result was that Betty went downstairs in her hat and gloves, and
that Mr. Lyon and Gerald, who were both sitting down to that substantial
breakfast which is the first symbol of good health and a good conscience
in England, had much ado to detain her long enough to share that meal.
Mrs. Lyon did not come downstairs in the morning, so that they used the
argument of helplessness, professing themselves unable to pour out their
own tea.
“And what business can Betty have of such importance that she must run
out without her breakfast?” said the old gentleman.
“Oh, it is news I have heard which I must take at once to papa!”
The two gentlemen looked at each other, and Mr. Lyon shook his big, old
head.
“I would not trouble your papa, my dear, with anything you may have
heard. Depend upon it, he will let you know anything he wishes you to
know--in his own time.”
“But it is news--news,” said Betty; “news about Charlie!”
Then she remembered that very little had been said even to the Lyons
about Charlie, and stopped with embarrassment, and her friends could not
but believe that this was a hasty expedient to conceal from them that
she had heard something--some flying rumour which had set her little
impetuous being on fire. When she had escaped from their sympathetic
looks and Gerald’s magnanimous proposal to accompany her--without so
much as an egg to fortify him for the labours of the day!--Betty set
out, crossing the Park in the early glory of the morning, which feels at
nine o’clock what six o’clock feels in the country, to carry the news to
her father.
Charlie found, and ill; and demanding to see Miss Lance, his health and
recovery depending upon whether he should see her or not! Betty’s first
instinct had been to hasten at once to George Street, Hanover Square,
but then she remembered that papa presumably was the one who was most
anxious about Charlie and had the best right to know, and it was perhaps
better not to explain to the friends in Portman Square why Miss Lance
should go to Charlie. Indeed, when she had set out, a great many
questions occurred to Betty, circulating through her lively little mind
without any possibility of an answer to them. Why should Charlie be so
anxious to see Miss Lance? Why had he been so long there, ill, and
nobody come to tell his people of it? And what was Bee doing in Curzon
Street, in Aubrey Leigh’s house, which was the last house in the world
where she had any right to be? But she walked so fast, and the sunny air
with all its movement and lightness so carried her on and filled her
with pleasant sounds and images, that these thoughts, blowing like the
wind through her little intelligence, had not much effect on Betty
now--though there was incipient trouble in them, as even she could see.
Colonel Kingsward was seated at his breakfast when his little girl burst
in upon him in all the freshness of the morning. Her youth and her
bloom, and her white frock, notwithstanding its black accoutrements,
made a great show in the dark-coloured, solemn, official-looking room,
with its Turkey carpets and morocco chairs. The Colonel was evidently
startled by the sight of her. He said, “Well?” in that tone of
self-defence, and almost defiance, with which a man prepares for being
called upon to give an account of himself; as if anything so absurd
could be possible as that Betty, little Betty, could call upon her
father to give an account of himself! But then it is very true that when
there is something to be accounted for, the strongest feel how
“conscience doth make cowards of us all.”
“Oh,” she cried, breathless, “Papa--Charlie! Bee has found Charlie, and
he’s been very ill--typhoid fever; he’s getting better, and he’s in
London, and she’s with him; and he wants but to see Miss Lance. Oh,
papa, that’s what I came about chiefly--he wants to see Miss Lance.”
Colonel Kingsward’s face changed many times during this breathless
deliverance. He said first, “He’s at Mackinnon’s, I know;” then, “In
London!” with no pleasure at all in his tone; and finally, “Miss Lance!”
angrily, his face covered with a dark glow.
“What is all this?” he cried, when she stopped for want of breath.
“Charlie--in town? You must be out of your senses. Why, he is in
Scotland. I heard from--, eh? Well, I don’t know that I had any letter,
but--. And ill--and Bee with him? What is the meaning of all this? Are
you both mad, or in a conspiracy to make yourselves disagreeable to me?”
“Papa!” cried Betty, very ready to take up the challenge; but on the
whole the news was too important to justify a combat of self-defence.
She produced Bee’s note out of its envelope, and placed it before him,
running on with a report of it while the Colonel groped for his eyeglass
and arranged it upon his nose.
“A lady came and fetched her,” cried Betty, hurriedly, to forestall the
reading, “and brought her up to town and took her to him--oh, so
bad--where he had been for weeks; and she told him you had been to
Oxford, and something about Miss Lance; and he wants to see Miss Lance,
and calls and calls for her, and won’t be satisfied. Oh, papa!”
Colonel Kingsward had arranged his _pince-nez_ very carefully; he had
taken up Bee’s note, and went over it word by word while Betty made her
breathless report. When he came to the first mention of Miss Lance he
struck his hand upon the table like any other man in a passion, making
all the cups and plates ring.
“The little fool!” he said, “the little fool! What right had she to
bring in that name? It was this that called forth Betty’s exclamation,
but no more was said by either till he read it out to the end. Then he
flung the letter from him, and getting up, paced about the room in rage
and dismay.
“A long illness,” said the Colonel, “was perhaps the best thing that
could have happened to him to sweep all that had passed before out of
his mind; and here does this infernal little idiot, this little demon
full of spite and malice, get at the boy at his worst moment and bring
everything back. What right had she, the spiteful, envious little fool,
to bring in the name of a lady--of a lady to whom you all owe the
greatest respect?”
“Papa!” cried Betty, overwhelmed, “Bee couldn’t have meant any harm.”
Colonel Kingsward was out of himself and he uttered words which
terrified his daughter, and which need not be recorded against him--for
he certainly did not in cold blood wish Bee to fall under any celestial
malediction. He stormed about the room, saying much that Betty could not
understand; that it was just the thing of all others that should not
have happened, and the time of all others; that if it had been a little
later, or even a little earlier, it would not have mattered; that it was
enough to overturn every arrangement, increase every difficulty. He was
not at all a man to give way to his feelings so. His children, indeed,
until very lately, had never seen him excited at all, and it was an
astonishment beyond description to little Betty to be a spectator of
this scene. Indeed, Colonel Kingsward awoke presently to a sense of the
self-exposure he had been making, and calmed down, or, at least,
controlled himself, upon which Betty ventured to ask him very humbly
what he thought she had better do.
“May I go to Miss Lance and tell her? She is not angry now, nor unhappy
about him like--like _us_,” said Betty, putting the best face upon it
with instinctive capacity, “and she might know what to do. She is so
very kind and understanding, don’t you know, papa?--and she would know
what to do.”
For the first time Colonel Kingsward gave his agitated little visitor a
smile. “You seem to have some understanding, too, for a little girl,” he
said, “and it looks as if you would be worthy of my confidence, Betty.
When I see you this afternoon I shall, perhaps, have something to tell
you that----”
There came over Colonel Kingsward’s fine countenance a smile, a
consciousness, which filled Betty with amaze. She had seen her father
look handsome, commanding, very serious. She had seen him wear an air
which the girls in their profanity had been used in their mother’s happy
days to call that of the _père noble_. She had seen him angry, even in a
passion, as to-day. She had heard him, alas! blaspheme, which had been
very terrible to Betty. But she had never, she acknowledged to herself,
seen him look _silly_ before. Silly, in a girl’s phraseology, was what
he looked now, with that fatuity which is almost solely to be attributed
to one cause; but of this Betty was not aware. It came over his
countenance, and for a moment Colonel Kingsward let himself go on the
flood of complacent consciousness, which healed all his wounds. Then he
suddenly braced himself up and turned to Betty again.
“Perhaps,” he said, in his most fatherly tone, for it seemed to the man
in this crisis of his life that even little Betty’s support was
something to hold by, “my dear child, your instinct is right. Go to Miss
Lance and tell her how things are. Don’t take this odious letter,
however,” he said, seizing Bee’s note and tearing it across with
indignant vehemence, “with all its prejudices and assumptions. Tell her
in your own words; and where they are--and---- Where are they, by the
way?” he said, groping for the fragments of the letter in his
waste-paper basket. “I hope you noted the address.”
He had not then, it was evident, noted the address, nor the name of Mrs.
Leigh, nor in whose house Charlie was. Betty’s heart beat high with the
question whether she should call his attention to these additional
facts, but her courage failed her. He had cooled down, he was himself
again: and after a moment he added, “I will write a little note which
you can take,” with once more the smile that Betty thought silly
floating across his face. She was standing close by the writing-table,
and Betty was not aware that there was any harm in the natural glimpse
which her keen eyes took, before she was conscious of it, of the note he
was writing. It was not like a common note. It did not begin “Dear Miss
Lance,” as would have been natural. In short, it had no beginning at
all, nor any signature--or rather it was signed only with his initial
“F.” How very extraordinary that papa should sign “F.” and should not
put any beginning to his letter. A kind of wondering consternation
enveloped the little girl. But still she did not in the least understand
what it meant.
Betty walked away along Pall Mall and Piccadilly, and by the edge of the
Park to George Street, Hanover Square. It is not according to the
present fashion that a girl should shrink from walking along through
those busy London streets, where nobody is in search of adventures, at
least at that hour of the morning. Her white morning frock and her black
ribbons, and her early bloom, like the morning, though delightful to
behold, did not make all the passers by stand and stare as the movements
of a pretty girl used to do, if we are to credit the novels, in the
beginning of the century. People, perhaps, have too much to do nowadays
to give to that not unusual sight the attention which the dandies and
the macaroni bestowed upon it, and Betty was so evidently bent on her
own little business, whatever it was, that nothing naturally occurred to
detain her.
It was so unusual for her to have a grave piece of business in hand that
she was a little elated by it, even though so sorry for Charlie who was
so ill, and for Bee who was so perturbed about everything. Betty herself
was not perturbed; she was full of the pleasure of the morning and the
long, interesting walk, and the sense of her own importance as a
messenger. If there did occasionally float across her mind the idea
that her father’s demeanour was strange, or that it was odd that he
should have signed his note to Miss Lance with an F., it was merely a
momentary idea and she did not question it or detain it. And poor
Charlie! Ill--not able to get out this fine weather; but he was getting
better, so that there was really nothing to be troubled about.
Miss Lance was up, but had not yet appeared when Betty was shown into
her little drawing-room. She was not an early riser. It was one of her
vices, she frankly allowed. Betty had to wait, and had time to admire
all her friend’s knick-knacks, of which there were many, before she came
in, which she did at last, with her arms put out to take Betty
maternally to her bosom. She looked in the girl’s face with a very
intent glance before she took her into this embrace.
“My little Betty, so early,” she said, and kissed the girl, and then
looked at her again, as if in expectation of something; but as Betty
could not think of anything that Miss Lance would be expecting from her,
she remained unconscious of any special meaning in this look.
“Yes, I am early,” she said; “it is because I have something to tell
you, and something to ask of you, too.”
“Tell, my dear little girl, and ask. You may be sure I shall be at your
service. But what is this in your hand--a note for me?”
“Yes, it is a note for you, but may I tell you first what it is about?”
Betty went on quickly with her story, though Miss Lance, without waiting
for it, took the note and opened it. “Miss Lance, Charlie is found; he
has been very ill, and he wants to see you.”
“To see me?” Miss Lance looked with eyes of sympathy, yet great
innocence, as if at an impossible proposal, at the breathless girl so
anxious to get it out. “But, Betty, if he is with your friends, the
Mackinnons, in Scotland--?”
“Oh, Miss Lance, I told you he was not there, don’t you remember? He has
never been anywhere all this time. He has had typhoid fever, and on
Thursday Bee was sent for, and found him still ill, but mending. And
when he heard you were in town he would give her no peace till she wrote
and asked you to come and see him. And she did not know your address so
she wrote to me. I went to tell papa first, and then I came on here. Oh,
will you come and see Charlie? Bee said he wanted to get into a hansom
and come to you as soon as he heard you were here.”
“What induced them to talk of me, and why did she tell him I was here?”
Miss Lance cried, with a momentary cloud upon her face, such as Betty
had never seen there before. She sat down suddenly in a chair, with a
pat of her foot upon the carpet, which was almost a stamp of impatience,
and then she read Colonel Kingsward’s note for the second time, with her
brows drawn together and a blackness about her eyes which filled Betty
with alarm and dismay. She looked up, however, next minute with her
countenance cleared. “Your father says I am to use my own discretion,”
she said, with a half laugh; “that is not much help to me, is it, in
deciding what is best to do? So he has been ill--and not in Scotland at
all?”
“I told you he was not in Scotland,” cried Betty, a little impatient in
her turn. “Oh, Miss Lance, he has been ill, he is still ill, and won’t
you come and see him when he wants you so? Oh, come and see him, please!
He looks so ill and wretched, Bee says, and weak, and cannot get back
his strength; and he thinks if he could see you----”
“Poor boy--silly boy!” said Miss Lance; “why does he think it will do
him good to see me? I doubt if it would do him any good; and your father
says I am to use my discretion. I would do anything for any of you,
Betty, but perhaps I should do him harm instead of good. Have you got
your sister’s letter?”
“I left it with papa--that is, he threw it into the waste paper basket,”
said the too truthful Betty, growing red.
“I understand,” said Miss Lance, “it was not a letter to show me. Bee
has her prejudices, and perhaps she is right. I cannot expect that all
the family should be as nice to me as you. Have they taken him to
Kingswarden? Or where is he, poor boy?”
“He is at No. 1000, Curzon Street,” Betty said.
“What!” said Miss Lance. “Where?” Her brow curved over her eyes, her
face grew dark as if the light had gone out of the morning, and she
spoke the two monosyllables in a sharp imperative tone, so that they
seemed to cut like a knife.
“At No. 1000; Curzon Street,” Betty repeated with great alarm, not
knowing what to think.
Miss Lance rose quickly, as if there had been something that stung her
in the innocent words. She looked as if she were about to pace the room
from end to end, as Colonel Kingsward did when he was disturbed. But
either she did not mean this, or she restrained herself, for what she
did was to walk to her writing-table and put Colonel Kingsward’s note
away in a drawer, and then she went to the window and looked out, and
said it was a fine morning but dusty for walking--and then she returned
to her chair and sat down again and looked at Betty. She was pale, and
there were lines in her face that had not been there before. Her eyes
were almost piteous as she looked at the surprised girl.
“I am in a very strait place,” she said, “and I don’t know what to do.”
Something like moisture seemed to come up into her eyes. “This is always
how it happens to me,” she said, “just at the moment, just at the
moment! What am I to do?”