THERE was a great deal of commotion next morning in the house in
Mayfair.
Bee was startled by having a tray brought to her bedroom with her
breakfast when she was almost ready to go downstairs. “Mrs. Leigh
thought, Miss, as you had been so tired last night, you might like to
rest a little longer,” said the maid; and Bee divined with a sharp pang
through all the trouble and confusion of her mind that she was not
wanted--that probably Aubrey was coming to consult with his mother what
was to be done. It may be imagined with what scrupulousness she kept
within her room, her pride all up in arms though her heart she thought
was broken. Though the precaution was so natural, though it was taken at
what was supposed to be her desire, at what was really her desire--the
only one she would have expressed--yet she resented it, in the
contradiction and ferment of her being. If Mrs. Leigh supposed that she
wanted to see Aubrey! He was nothing to her, he had no part in her life.
When she had been brought here, against her will, it had been expressly
explained that it was not for Aubrey, that he would rather go away to
the end of the world than disturb her. And she had herself appealed to
his mother--her last action on the previous night--to bring him back,
not to banish him on account of the girl who was nothing to him, and
whose part it was, not his, to go away. All this, however, did not make
it seem less keen a wound to Bee that she should be, so to speak,
imprisoned in her own room, because Aubrey was expected downstairs. She
had never, she declared to herself vehemently, felt at ease under the
roof that was his; nothing but Charlie’s supposed want of her would have
induced her to subject herself to the chances of meeting him, and the
still more appalling chance of being supposed to wish to meet him. And
now this insult of imprisonment in her bedroom, lest she should by any
chance come under his observation, offend his eye!--Bee was
contradictory enough at all times, a rosebud set about with wilful
thorns; but everything was in tumult about her, and all her conditions
nothing but contradictions now.
Thus it happened that while Betty was setting out with much excitement,
but that all pleasurable, walking lightly among undiscovered dangers,
Bee was suddenly arrested, as she felt, imprisoned in the little room
looking out upon roofs and backs of houses, thrust aside into a corner
that she might not be seen or her presence known--imperceptibly the
force of the description grew as she went on piling up agony upon agony.
It was some time before, in the commotion of her feelings, she could
bring herself to swallow her tea, and then she walked about the room,
gazed out of the window from which, as it was at the back of the house,
she saw nothing, and found the position more and more intolerable every
minute. A prisoner! she who had been brought here against her will, on
pretence that her presence might save her brother’s life, or something
equally grandiose and impossible--save her brother’s life, bring him
back from despair by the sight of some one that he loved. These were the
sort of words that Mrs. Leigh had said. As if it mattered to Charlie one
way or the other what Bee might think or do! As if he were to be
consoled by her, or stimulated, or brought back to life! She had
affected him involuntarily, undesirably, by her betrayal of the vicinity
of that woman, that witch, who had warped his heart and being. But as
for influencing in her own person her brother’s mind or life, Bee knew
she was as little capable as baby, the little tyrant of the nursery. Oh!
how foolish she had been to come at all, to yield to what was said, the
flattering suggestion that she could do so much, when she knew all along
in her inmost consciousness that she could do nothing! The only thing
for her to do now was to go back to the dull life of which in her
impatient foolishness she had grown so weary, the dull life in which she
was indeed of some use after all, where it was clearly her duty to get
the upper hand of baby, to preserve the discipline of the nursery, to
train the little ones, and keep the big boys in order. These were the
elder sister’s duties, with which nobody could interfere--not any
ridiculous, sentimental, exaggerated idea, as Charlie had said, of what
a woman’s ministrations could do. “Oh, woman, in our hours of ease!”
that sort of foolish, foolish, intolerable, ludicrous kind of thing,
which it used to be considered right to say, though people knew better
now. Bee felt bitterly that to say of her that she was a ministering
angel would be irony, contumely, the sort of thing people said when they
laughed at women and their old-fashioned sham pretences. She had never
made any such pretence. She had said from the beginning that Charlie
would care for none of her ministrations. She had been brought here
against her judgment, against her will, and now she was shut up as in a
prison in order that Aubrey might not be embarrassed by the sight of
her! As if she had wished to see Aubrey! As if it had not been on the
assurance that she was not to see Aubrey that she had been beguiled
here!
When a message came to her that she was to go to her brother, Bee did
not know what to do. It seemed to her that Aubrey might be lurking
somewhere on the stairs, that he might be behind Charlie’s sofa, or
lying in wait on the other side of the curtain, notwithstanding her
offence at the quite contradictory idea that she was imprisoned in her
room to be kept out of his way. These two things were entirely contrary
from each other, yet it was quite possible to entertain and be disturbed
by both in the tumult and confusion of a perverse young mind. She
stepped out of her room as if she were about to fall into an ambush,
notwithstanding that she had been thrilling in every irritated nerve
with the idea of being imprisoned there.
Charlie had insisted on getting up much earlier than usual. He had not
waited for the doctor’s visit. He was better; well, he said, stimulated
into nervous strength and capability, though his gaunt limbs tottered
under him and his thin hand trembled. When he got into his sitting-room
he flung away all his cushions and wrappings as soon as his nurse left
him and went to the mirror over the mantel-piece and gazed at himself in
the glass, smoothing down and stroking into their right place those
irregular soft tufts growing here and there upon his chin, which he
thought were the beginnings of a beard.
Would she think it was a beard, that sign of manhood? They were too
downy, fluffy, unenergetic, a foolish kind of growth, like a colt’s,
some long, some short, yet Charlie could not help being proud of them.
He felt that they would come to something in time, and remembered that
he had often heard it said that a beard which never had been shaved
became the finest--in time. Would she think so? or would she laugh and
tell him that this would not do, that he must get himself shaved?
He would not mind that she should laugh. She might do anything, all she
did was delightful to poor Charlie, and there would be a compliment even
in being told that he must get shaved. Charlie had stroked his upper lip
occasionally with a razor, but it had never been necessary to suggest to
him that he should get shaved before.
He had to be put back upon his sofa when nurse re-appeared, but he only
remained there for the time, promising no permanent obedience. When
Laura came he certainly should not receive her there.
“When did your letter go? When would Betty receive it?” he said, when
Bee, breathless and pale, at last, under nurse’s escort, was brought
downstairs.
“She must have got it last night. But there was a dinner party,” said
Bee, after a pause, “last night at Portman Square.”
“What do I care for their dinner parties? I suppose the postman would go
all the same.”
“But Betty could not do anything till this morning.”
“No,” said Charlie, “I suppose not. She would be too much taken up with
her ridiculous dress and what she was to wear”--the knowledge of a young
man who had sisters, pierced through even his indignation--“or with some
nonsense about Gerald Lyon--that fellow! And to think,” he said, in an
outburst of high, moral indignation “that one’s fate should be at the
mercy of a little thing like Betty, or what she might say or do!”
“Betty is not so much younger than we are; to be sure,” said Bee, with
reflective sadness, “she has never had anything to make her think of all
the troubles that are in the world.”
Charlie turned upon her with scorn.
“And what have you had to make you think, and what do you suppose you
know? A girl, always protected by everybody, kept out of the battle,
never allowed to feel the air on your cheek! I must tell you, Bee, that
your setting yourself up for knowing things is the most ridiculous
exhibition in the world.”
Bee’s wounded soul could not find any words. She kept out of the battle!
She setting up for knowing things! And what was his knowledge in
comparison with hers? He had but been deluded like the rest by a woman
whom Bee had always seen through, and never, never put any faith in;
whereas she had lost what was most dear, all her individual hopes and
prospects, and been obliged to sacrifice what she knew would be the only
love of her life.
She looked at Charlie with eyes that were full of unutterable things.
He was reckless with hope and expectation, self-deceived, thinking that
all was coming right again; whereas Bee knew that things would never
more be right with her. And yet he presumed to say that she knew
nothing, and that to think she had suffered was a mere pretence! “How
little, how little,” Bee thought, “other people know.”
The house seemed full that morning of sounds and commotions, unlike
ordinary times. There were sounds of ringing bells, of doors opened and
shut, of voices downstairs. Once both Charlie and Bee held their breath,
thinking the moment had come, for a carriage stopped at the door, there
was the sound of a noisy summons, and then steps coming upstairs.
Alas! it was nothing but the doctor, who came in, ushered by nurse, but
not until she had held a private conference with him, keeping them both
in the most tremendous suspense in the bedroom. It is true this was a
thing which happened every morning, but they had both forgotten that in
the tension of highly-wrought feeling.
And when the doctor came he shook his head. “There has been too much
going on here,” he said. “You have been doing too much or talking too
much. Miss Kingsward, you helped us greatly with our patient yesterday,
but I am afraid you have been going too far, you have hurried him too
much. We dare not press recovery at railway speed after so serious an
illness as this.”
“Oh, I have not wished to do so,” said Bee. “It is some friends that we
are expecting.”
“Friends? I never said he was to see friends,” the doctor said.
“Come doctor,” said Charlie, “you must not be too hard upon me.
It’s--it’s my father and sister that are coming.”
“Your father and sister are different, but not too much even of them.
Recollect, nurse, what I say, not too much even of the nearest and
dearest. The machinery has been too much out of gear to come round all
in a moment. And, Miss Kingsward, you are pale, too. You had better go
out a little and take the air. There must not be too much conversation,
not too much reading either. I must have quiet, perfect quiet.”
“Am I to do nothing but think?” said Charlie. “Is that the best thing
for a fellow to do that has missed his schools and lost his time?”
“Be thankful that you are at a time of life when the loss of a few weeks
doesn’t matter, and don’t think,” said the doctor, “or we shall have to
stop even the father and sister, and send you to bed again. Be
reasonable, be reasonable. A few days’ quiet and you will be out of my
hands.”
“Oh, Charlie, then you have given up seeing anyone else,” said Bee, with
a cry of relief as the doctor, attended by the nurse, went downstairs.
“I have done nothing of the kind,” he cried, jumping up from the sofa
and going to the window. “And you had better tell that woman to go out
for a walk and that you will look after me. Do you think when Laura
comes that I will not see her if fifty doctors were to interfere? But if
you want to save me a little you will send that woman out of the way. It
is the worry and being contradicted that does me harm.”
“How can I, Charlie--oh, how can I, in the face of what the doctor
said?”
He turned back upon her flaming with feverish rage and excitement.
“If you don’t I’ll go out. I’ll have a cab called, and get away from
this prison,” he cried. “I don’t care what happens to me, but I shall
see her if I die for it.”
“Perhaps,” said Bee to herself, trembling, “she will not come. Oh!
perhaps she will not come!” But she felt that this was a very forlorn
hope, and when the nurse came back the poor girl, faltering and ill at
ease, obeyed the peremptory signs and frowns of Charlie, once more
established on the sofa and seeming to take no part in the negotiation.
“Nurse, I have been thinking,” said Bee, with that talent for the
circumstantial which women have, even when acting against their will,
“that you have far more need of a walk and a little fresh air than I
have, who have only been here for a day, and that if you will tell me
exactly what to do, I could take care of him while you go out a little.”
“Shouldn’t think of leaving him,” said nurse, with her eyebrows working
as usual and a mocking smile about her lips. “Too much talk; doctor not
pleased.”
“But if I promise not to talk? I shall not talk. You don’t want to talk,
do you, Charlie?”
Charlie launched a missile at her in his ingratitude, over his shoulder.
“Not with you,” he said.
“You hear?” cried Bee, now intent upon gaining her point, and terrified
lest other visitors might arrive before this matter were decided; “we
shall not talk, and I will do all you tell me. Oh, only tell me what I
am to do.”
“Nothing to do,” said the nurse, “not for the next hour; nothing, but
keep him quiet. Well, if you think you can undertake that, just for half
an hour--”
“I will--I will--for as long as you please,” cried Bee. It was better,
indeed, if there must be this interview with Laura, that there should be
as few spectators as possible. She hurried the woman away with
eagerness, though she had been alarmed at the first suggestion. But when
she was alone with him, and nobody to stand by her, thinking at every
sound she heard that this was the dreaded arrival, Bee crept close to
him with a sudden panic of terror and dismay.
“Oh, Charlie, don’t listen to her, don’t believe her; oh, don’t be led
astray by her again! I have done what you told me, but I oughtn’t to
have done it. Oh, Charlie, stand fast, whatever she says, and don’t be
led astray by her again.”
The only sign of Charlie’s gratitude that Bee received was to be hastily
pushed away by his shoulder. “You little fool, what do you know about
it?” her brother said.