SHE left Charlie’s room, having soothed him and reduced him to quiet in
this inconceivable way, with a smile on her face and the look of one who
was perfectly mistress of the situation. But when she had gone down
half-a-dozen steps and reached the landing, she stood still and leaned
against the wall, clasping her hands tight as if there was something in
them to hold by. She had carried through this part of her ordeal with a
high hand. She had made it look the kindest yet the most decisive
interview in the world, crushing the foolish young heart, without
remorse, yet tenderly, kindly, with such a force of sense and reason as
could not be resisted--and all so naturally, with so much apparent ease,
as if it cost her nothing. But she was after all, merely a woman, and
she knew that only half, nay, not half, not the worst half of her trial
was over. She lay back against the wall, having nothing else to rest
upon, and closed her eyes for a moment. The two girls had followed her
instinctively out of Charlie’s room, and stood on the stairs one above
the other, gazing at her. The long lines of her figure seemed to relax,
as if she might have fallen, and in their wonder and ignorance they
might still have stood by and looked on letting her fall, without
knowing what to do. But she did not do so. The corner of the walls
supported her as if they had made a couch for her, and presently she
opened her eyes with a vague smile at Betty, who was foremost. “I was
tired,” she said, and then, “it isn’t easy”--drawing a long breath.
At this moment the trim figure of Mrs. Leigh’s maid appeared on the
stairs below, so commonplace, so trim, so neat, the little apparition of
ordinary life which glides through every tragedy, lifting its everyday
voice in announcements of dinner, in inquiries about tea, in all the
nothings of routine, in the midst of all tumults of misery and passion.
“If you please, madam--my lady would be glad if you would step into the
dining-room,” she said.
Miss Lance raised herself in a moment from that half-recumbent position
against the wall. She recovered herself, got back her colour and the
brightness of her eyes, and that look of being perfectly natural, at her
ease, unstrained, spontaneous, which she had shown throughout the
interview with Charlie. “Certainly,” she said. There did not seem to be
time for the twinkling of an eyelid between the one mood and the other.
She required no preparation or interval to pull herself together. She
looked at the two sisters as if to call them to follow her, and then
walked quietly downstairs to be tried for her life--like a martyr--oh,
no, for she was not a martyr, but a criminal. She had no confidence of
innocence about her. She knew what indictment was about to be brought
against her, and she knew it was true. This knowledge, however, gives a
certain strength. It gives courage such as the innocent who do not know
what charge may be brought against them or how to meet it, do not
possess. She had rehearsed the scene. She knew what she was going to be
accused of, and had thought over, and set in order, all the pleas. She
knew exactly what she had done and what she had not, which was a tower
of strength to her, and she knew that on her power of fighting it out
depended her life. It is difficult altogether to deny our sympathy to a
brave creature fighting for bare life. However guilty he may be, human
nature takes sides with him, hopes in the face of all justice that there
may be a loophole of escape. Even Bee, coming slowly downstairs after
her, already thrown into a curious tumult of feeling by that scene in
Charlie’s room, began to feel her breath quicken with excitement even in
the hostility of her heart.
There was one thing that Miss Lance had not foreseen, and that burst
upon her at once when the maid opened the door--Colonel Kingsward,
standing with his arm upon the mantel-piece and his countenance as if
turned to stone. The shock which this sight gave her was very difficult
to overcome or conceal, it struck her with a sudden dart as of despair;
her impulse was to fling down her arms, to acknowledge herself
vanquished, and to retreat, a defeated and ruined adventuress, but she
was too brave and unalterably by nature too sanguine to do this. She
gave him a nod and a smile, to which he scarcely responded, as she went
towards Mrs. Leigh.
“How strange,” she said, “when I come to see a new friend to find so old
a friend! I wondered if it could be Mr. Leigh’s house, but I was not
sure--of the number.”
“I am afraid I cannot say I am glad to see you, Laura,” said Mrs. Leigh.
“No? Perhaps it would have been too much to expect. We were, so to
speak, on different sides. Poor Amy, I know, was never satisfactory to
you, and I don’t wonder. Of course you only thought of me as her
friend.”
“If that were all!” Mrs. Leigh said.
“Was there more than that? May I sit down? I have had a long walk, and
rather an exhaustive interview--and I did not expect to be put on my
trial. But it is always best to know what one is accused of. I think it
quite natural--quite natural that you should not like me, Mrs. Leigh. I
was Amy’s friend and she was trying to you. She put me in a very false
position which I ought never to have accepted. But yet--I understand
your attitude, and I submit to it with respect--but, pardon
me--sincerely, I don’t know what there was more.”
Miss Lance had taken a chair, a perfectly upright one, on which few
people could have sat gracefully. She made it evident that it was mere
fatigue which made her subside upon it momentarily, and lifted her fine
head and limpid eyes with so candid and respectful an air towards Mrs.
Leigh’s comfortable, unheroic face, that no contrast of the oppressed
and oppressor could have been more marked. If anyone had suffered in the
matter between these two ladies, it certainly was not the one with the
rosy countenance and round, well-filled-out figure; or so, at least, any
impartial observer certainly would have felt.
Mrs. Leigh, for her part, was almost speechless with excitement and
anger. She had intended to keep perfectly calm, but the look, the tone,
the appearance of this personage altogether, brought before her
overpoweringly many past scenes--scenes in which, to tell the truth,
Miss Lance had not been always in the wrong, in which the other figure,
now altogether disappeared, of Aubrey’s wife was the foremost, an
immovable gentle-mannered fool, with whom all reason and argument were
unavailing, whom everybody had believed to be inspired by the companion
to whom she clung. All Amy’s faults had been bound upon Laura’s
shoulders, but this was not altogether deserved, and Miss Lance did not
shrink from anything that could be said on that subject. It required
more courage to say, “Was there anything more?”
“More!” cried Mrs. Leigh, choking with the remembrance. “More! My boy’s
house was made unsafe for him, it was made miserable to him, he was
involved in every kind of danger and scandal, and she asks me if there
was more?”
“Poor Amy,” said Miss Lance, with a little pause on the name, shaking
her head gently in compassion and regret. “Poor Amy put me in a very
false position. I have already said so, I ought not to have accepted it,
I ought not to have promised; but it was so difficult to refuse a
promise to the dying. Let Colonel Kingsward judge. She was very unwise,
but she had been my friend from infancy and clung to me more, much more
than I wished. She exacted a promise from me on her death-bed that I
would never leave her child--which was folly, and, perhaps more than
folly, so far, at least, as I was concerned. You may imagine, Colonel
Kingsward,” she added, steadfastly regarding him. He had kept his head
turned away, not looking at her, but this gaze compelled him against his
will to shift his position, to turn towards the appellant who made him
the judge. He still kept his eyes away, but his head turned by an
attraction which he could not withstand. “You may imagine, Colonel
Kingsward--that I was the person who suffered most,” Miss Lance said
after that pause, “compelled to stay in a house where I had never been
welcome, except to poor Amy, who was dead; a sort of guardian, a sort of
nurse, and yet with none of their rights, held fast by a promise which
I had given against my will, and which I never ceased to regret. You are
a man, Colonel Kingsward, but you have more understanding of a woman’s
feelings than any I know. My position was a false one, it was cruel--but
I was bound by my word.”
“No one ought to have given such a promise,” he said, coldly, with
averted eyes.
“You are always right, I ought not to have done so; but she was dying,
and I was fond of her, poor girl, though she was foolish--it is not
always the wisest people one loves most--fond of her, very fond of her,
and of her poor little child.”
The tears came to Miss Lance’s eyes. She shook her head a little as if
to shake them from her eyelashes. “Why should I cry? They have been so
long happy, happier far than we----”
Mrs. Leigh, the prosecutor, the accuser, gave a gulp, a sob; the child
was her grandchild, her only one--and besides anger in a woman is as
prone to tears as sorrow. She gave a stifled cry, “I don’t deny you
were good to the child; oh, Laura, I could have forgiven you
everything! But not--not----”
“What?” Miss Lance said.
Mrs. Leigh seized upon Bee by the arm and drew her forward--Aubrey’s
mother wanted words, she wanted eloquence, her arguments had to be
pointed by fact. She took Bee, who had been standing in proud yet
excited spectatorship, and held her by her own side. “Aubrey,” she said,
almost inarticulately, and stopped to recover her breath--“Aubrey--whom
you had driven from his home--found at last this dear girl, this nice,
good girl, who would have made him a new life. But you interfered, you
wrote to her father, you went--I don’t know what you did--and said you
had a claim, a prior claim. If you appeal to Colonel Kingsward, he is
the best judge. You went to him----”
“Not to me, I was not aware, I never even saw Miss Lance till long
after; forgive me for interrupting you.”
Miss Lance turned towards him again with that full look of faith and
confidence. “Always just!” she said. And this time for a tremulous
moment their eyes met. He turned his away again hastily, but he had
received that touch; an indefinable wavering came over his aspect of
iron.
“Yes,” she said, “I do not deny it--it is quite true. Shall I now
explain before every one who is here? I think,” she added, after a
moment, “that my little Betty, who has nothing particular to do with it,
may run away.”
“I!” said Betty, clinging to the back of a chair.
“Go,” said her father, impatiently, “go!”
“Yes, my dear, run away. Charlie must want some one. He will have got
over me a little, and he will want some one. Dear little Betty, run
away!”
Miss Lance rose from her seat--probably that too was a relief to
her--and, with a smile and a kiss, turned Betty out of the room. She
came back then and sat down again. It gained a little time, and she was
at a crisis harder than she had ever faced before. She had gained a
moment to think, but even now she was not sure what way there was out of
this strait, the most momentous in which she had ever been. She looked
round her at one after another with a look that seemed as secure and
confident, as easy and natural, as before; but her brain was working at
the most tremendous rate, looking for some clue, some indication. She
looked round as with a pause of conscious power, and then her gaze fixed
itself on Bee. Bee stood near Mrs. Leigh’s chair. She was standing firm
but tremulous, a deeply concerned spectator, but there was on her face
nothing of the eager attention with which a girl would listen to an
explanation about her lover. She was not more interested than she had
been before, not so much so as when Charlie was in question. When Mrs.
Leigh, in her indictment, said, “You interfered,” Bee had made a faint,
almost imperceptible movement of her head. The mind works very quickly
when its fate hangs on the balance of a minute, and now, suddenly, the
culprit arraigned before these terrible judges saw her way.
“I interfered,” Miss Lance said, slowly, “but not because of any prior
claim;”--she paused again for a moment--“that would have been as absurd
as in the case Colonel Kingsward knows of. I interfered--because I had
other reasons for believing that Aubrey Leigh was not the man to marry a
dear, good, nice girl.”
“You had--other reasons, Laura! Mind what you are saying--you will have
to prove your words,” cried Mrs. Leigh, rising in her wrath, with an
astonished and threatening face.
“I do not ask his mother to believe me. It is before Colonel Kingsward,”
said Miss Lance, “that I stand or fall.”
“Colonel Kingsward, make her speak out! You know it was because she
claimed my son--she, a woman twice his age; and now she pretends----
Make her speak out! How dare you? You said he had promised to marry
you--that he was bound to you. Colonel Kingsward, make her speak out!”
“That was what I understood,” he said, looking out of the window, his
head turned half towards the other speakers, but not venturing to look
at them. “I did not see Miss Lance, but that was what I understood.”
Laura sat firm, as if she were made of marble, but almost as pale. Her
nerves were so highly strung that if she had for a moment relaxed their
tension, she would have fallen to the ground. She sat like a rock,
holding herself together with the strong grasp of her clasped hands.
“You hear, you hear! You are convicted out of your own mouth. Oh, you
are cruel, you are wicked, Laura Lance! If you have anything to say
speak out, speak out!”
“I will say nothing,” said Miss Lance. “I will leave another, a better
witness, to say it for me. Colonel Kingsward, ask your daughter if it
was because of my prior claim, as his mother calls it, that she broke
off her engagement with Aubrey Leigh.”
Colonel Kingsward turned, surprised, to his daughter, who, roused by the
sound of her own name, looked up quickly--first at the seemingly
composed and serious woman opposite to her, then at her father. He spoke
to her angrily, abruptly.
“Do you hear? Answer the question that is put to you. Was it because of
this lady, or any claim of hers, that you--how shall I say it?--a girl
like you had no right to decide one way or the other--that you broke
off--that your mind was changed towards Mr. Aubrey Leigh?”
It appeared to Bee suddenly as if she had become the culprit, and all
eyes were fixed on her. She trembled, looking at them all. What had she
done? She was surely unhappy enough, wretched enough, a clandestine
visitor, keeping Aubrey out of his own house, and what had she to do
with Aubrey? Nothing, nothing! Nor he with her--that her heart should
now be snatched out of her bosom publicly in respect to him.
“That is long past,” she said, faltering, “it is an old story. Mr.
Aubrey Leigh is--a stranger to me; it is of no consequence--now!”
“Bee,” her father thundered at her, “answer the question! Was it because
of--this lady that you changed your mind?”
Colonel Kingsward had always the art, somehow, of kindling the blaze of
opposition in the blue eyes which were so like his own. She looked at
him almost fiercely in reply, fully roused.
“No!” she said, “no! It was not because of--that lady. It was
another--reason of my own.”
“What was your reason?” cried Mrs. Leigh. “Oh, Bee, speak! What was it,
what was it? Tell me, tell me, my dear, what was your reason? that I may
prove to you it was not true.”
“Had it anything to do with--this lady?” asked Colonel Kingsward once
more.
“I never spoke to that lady but once,” cried Bee, almost violently. “I
don’t know her; I don’t want to know her. She has nothing to do with it.
It was because of something quite different, something that we
heard--I--and mamma.”
Miss Lance looked at him with a smile on her face, loosing the grip of
her hands, spreading them out in demonstration of her acquittal. She
rose up slowly, her beautiful eyes filled with tears. She allowed it to
be seen for the first time how she was shaken with emotion.
“You have heard,” she said, “a witness you trust more than me--if I put
myself into the breach to secure a pause, it was only such a piece of
folly as I have done before. I hope now that you will let me withdraw.
I am dreadfully tired, I am not fit for any more.”
She looked with that appeal upon her face, first at one of her judges,
then at the other. “If you are satisfied, let me go.” It seemed as if
she could not say a word more. They made no response, but she did not
wait for that. “I take it for granted,” she added, “that by that child’s
mouth I am cleared,” and then she turned towards the door.
Colonel Kingsward, with a little start, came from his place by the
mantel-piece and opened it for her, as he would have done for any woman.
She let it appear that this movement was unexpected, and went to her
heart; she paused a moment looking up at him--her eyes swimming in
tears, her mouth quivering.
“How kind you are!” she said, “even though you don’t believe in me any
more! but I have done all I can. I am very tired, scarcely able to
walk.” He stood rigid, and made no sign, and she, looking at him, softly
shook her head--“Let me see you at least once,” she said, very low, in a
pleading tone, “this evening, some time?”
Still he gave no answer, standing like a man of iron, holding the door
open. She gave him another look, and then walked quietly, but with a
slight quiver and half stumble, away. They all stood watching until her
tall figure was seen to pass the window, disappearing in the street,
which is the outer world.
“Colonel Kingsward--” said Mrs. Leigh.
He started at the sound of his name, as if he had but just awakened out
of a dream, and began to smooth his hat, which all this time he had held
in his hands.
“Excuse me,” he said, “excuse me, another time. I have some pressing
business to see to now.”
And he, too, disappeared into that street which led both ways, into the
monotony of London, which is the world.