THOSE who were left behind were not very careful of what Colonel
Kingsward did. They were not thinking of his concerns; in the strain of
personal feeling the most generous of human creatures is forced to think
first of their own. Neither of the women who were left in the room had
any time to consider the matter, but if they had they would have made
sure without hesitation that nothing which could happen to Colonel
Kingsward could be half so important as that crisis in which his
daughter was involved.
Mrs. Leigh turned round upon the girl by her side and seized her hands.
“Bee,” she cried, “now we are alone and we can speak freely. Tell me
what it was, there is nobody here to frighten you, to take the words
from your mouth. What was it, what was it that made you turn from
Aubrey? At last, at last, it can be cleared up whatever it was.”
Bee turned away, trying to disengage her hands. “It is of no
consequence,” she said, “Oh, don’t make me go back to those old, old
things. What does it matter to Mr. Leigh? And as for me----”
“It matters everything to Aubrey. He will be able to clear himself if
you will give him the chance. How could he clear himself when he was
never allowed to speak, when he did not know? Bee, in justice, in mere
justice! What was it? You said your mother----”
“Yes, I had her then. We heard it together, and she felt it like me. But
we had no time to talk of it after, for she was ill. If you would please
not ask me, Mrs. Leigh! I was very miserable--mother dying, and nowhere,
nowhere in all the world anything to trust to. Don’t, oh! don’t make me
go back upon it! I am not--so very--happy, even now!”
The girl would not let herself be drawn into Mrs. Leigh’s arms. She
refused to rest her head upon the warm and ample bosom which was offered
to her. She drew away her hands. It was difficult, very difficult, to
keep from crying. It is always hard for a girl to keep from crying when
her being is so moved. The only chance for her was to keep apart from
all contact, to stand by herself and persuade herself that nobody cared
and that she was alone in the world.
“Bee, I believe,” said Mrs. Leigh, solemnly, “that you have but to speak
a word and you will be happy. You have not your mother now. You can’t
turn to her and ask her what you should do. But I am sure that she would
say, ‘speak!’ If she were here she would not let you break a man’s heart
and spoil his life for a punctilio. I have always heard she was a good
woman and kind--kind. Bee,” the elder lady laid her hand suddenly on the
girl’s shoulder, making her start, “she would say ‘speak’ if she were
here.”
“Oh, mamma, if you were here!” said Bee, through her tears.
She broke down altogether and became inarticulate, sobbing with her face
buried in her hands. The ordeal of the last two days had been severe.
Charlie and his concerns and the appearance of Miss Lance, and the
conflict only half understood which had been going on round her, had
excited and disturbed her beyond expression, as everybody could see and
understand. But, indeed, these were but secondary elements in the storm
which had overwhelmed Bee, which was chiefly brought back by that sudden
plunge into the atmosphere of Aubrey. The sensation of being in his
house, which she might in other circumstances have shared with him, of
sitting at his table, in his seat, under the roof that habitually
sheltered him--here, where her own life ought to have been passed, but
where the first condition now was that there should be nothing of him
visible. In Aubrey’s house, but not for Aubrey! Aubrey banished, lest
perhaps her eyes might fall upon him by chance, or her ears be offended
by the sound of his voice! Even his mother did not understand how much
this had to do with the passion and trouble of the girl, from whose
eyes the innocent name of her mother, sweetest though saddest of
memories, had let forth the salt and boiling tears. If Mrs. Leigh had
been anybody in the world save Aubrey’s mother, Bee would have clung to
her, accepting the tender support and consolation of the elder women’s
arms and her sympathy, but from Aubrey’s mother she felt herself
compelled to keep apart.
It was not until her almost convulsive sobbing was over that this
question could be re-opened, and in the meantime Betty having heard the
sound of the closing door came rushing downstairs and burst into the
room: perhaps she was not so much disturbed or excited as Mrs. Leigh was
by Bee’s condition. She gave her sister a kiss as she lay on the sofa
where Mrs. Leigh had placed her, and patted her on the shoulder.
“She will be better when she has had it out,” said Betty. “She has
worked herself up into such a state about Miss Lance. And oh, please
tell me what has happened. You are her enemy, too, Mrs. Leigh--oh, how
can you misjudge her so! As if she had been the cause of any harm! I was
sent away,” said Betty, “and, of course, Bee could not speak--but I
could have told you. Yes, of course, I knew! How could I help knowing,
being her sister? I can’t tell whether she told me, I knew without
telling; and, of course, she must have told me. This is how it was----”
Bee put forth her hand and caught her sister by the dress, but Betty was
not so easily stopped. She turned round quickly, and took the detaining
hand into her own and patted and caressed it.
“It is far better to speak out,” she said, “it must be told now, and
though I am young and you call me little Betty, I cannot help hearing,
can I, what people say? Mrs. Leigh, this was how it was. Whatever
happened about dear Miss Lance--whom I shall stick to and believe in
whatever you say,” cried Betty, by way of an interlude, with flashing
eyes, “that had nothing, nothing to do with it. That was a story--like
Charlie’s, I suppose, and Bee no more made a fuss about it than I should
do. It was after, when Bee was standing by Aubrey, like--like Joan of
Arc; yes, of course I shall call him Aubrey--I should like to have him
for a brother, but that has got nothing to do with it. A lady came to
call upon mamma, and she told a story about someone on the railway who
had met Aubrey on the way home after that scene at Cologne, after he was
engaged to Bee, and was miserable because of papa’s opposition.” Betty
spoke so fast that her words tumbled over each other, so to speak, in
the rush for utterance. “Well, he was seen,” she resumed, pausing for
breath, “putting a young woman with children into one of the sleeping
carriages--a poor young woman that had no money or right to be there. He
put her in, and when they got to London he was seen talking to her, and
giving her money, as if she belonged to him. I don’t see any harm in
that, for he was always kind to poor people. But these ladies did, and I
suppose so did mamma, and Bee blazed up. That is just like her. She
takes fire, she never waits to ask questions, she stops her ears. She
thought it was something dreadful, showing that he had never cared for
her, that he had cared for other people even when he was pretending, I
should have done quite different. I should have said, ‘Now, look here,
Aubrey, what does it mean?’--or, rather, I should never have thought
anything but that he was kind. He was always kind--silly, indeed, about
poor people, as so many are.”
Mrs. Leigh had followed Betty’s rapid narrative with as much attention
as she could concentrate upon it, but the speed with which the words
flew forth, the little interruptions, the expressions of Betty’s matured
and wise opinions, bewildered her beyond measure.
“What does it all mean?” she asked, looking from one to another when the
story was done. “A sleeping carriage on the railway--a woman with
children--as if she belonged to him? How could a woman with children
belong to him?” Then she paused and grew crimson with an old woman’s
painful blush. “Is it vice, horrible vulgar vice, this child is
attributing to my boy?”
The two girls stared, confused and troubled. Bee got up from the sofa
and put her hands to her head, her eyes fixed upon Mrs. Leigh with an
appalled and horrified look. She had not asked herself of what Aubrey
had been accused. She had fled from him before the dreadful thought of
relationships she did not understand, of something which was the last
insult to her, whatever it might be in itself. “Vulgar vice!” The girls
were cowed as if some guilt had been imputed to themselves.
“You are not like anything I have known, you girls of the period,” cried
the angry mother. “You are acquainted with such things as I at my age
had never heard of. You make accusations! But now--he shall answer for
himself,” she said, flaming with righteous wrath. Mrs. Leigh went to the
bell and rang it so violently that the sound echoed all over the house.
“Go and ask your master to come here at once, directly; I want him this
moment,” she said, stamping her foot in her impatience. And then there
was a pause. The man went off and was seen from the window to cross the
street on his errand. Then Bee rose, her tears hastily dried up, pushing
back from her forehead her disordered hair.
“I had better go. If you have sent for Mr. Leigh it will be better that
I should go.”
Mrs. Leigh was almost incapable of speech. She took Bee by the shoulders
and put her back almost violently on the sofa. “You shall stay there,”
she said, in a choked and angry voice.
What a horrible pause it was! The girls were silent, looking at each
other with wild alarm. Betty, who had blurted out the story, but to whom
the idea of repeating it before Aubrey--before a man--was unspeakable
horror, made a step towards the door. Then she said, “No, I will not run
away,” with tremendous courage. “It is not our fault,” she added, after
a pause. “Bee, if I have got to say it again, give me your hand.”
“It is I who ought to say it,” said Bee, pale with the horror of what
was to come. “Vulgar vice!” And she to accuse him, and to stand up
before the world and say that was why!
It seemed a long time, but it was really only a few minutes, before
Aubrey appeared. He came in quickly, breathless with haste and suspense.
He expected, from what his mother had told him, to find Miss Lance and
Colonel Kingsward there. He came into the agitated room and found, of
all people in the world, Bee and Betty, terrified, and his mother,
walking about the room sounding, as it were, a metaphorical lash about
their ears, in the frank passion of an elder woman who has the most just
cause of offence and no reason to bate her breath. There was something
humorous in the tragic situation, but to them it was wholly tragic, and
Aubrey, seeing for the first time after so long an interval the girl he
loved, and seeing her in such strange circumstances, was by no means
disposed to see any humorous side.
“Here, Aubrey!” said his mother, “I have called upon you to hear what
you are accused of. You thought it was Laura Lance, but she has nothing
to do with it. You are accused of travelling from Germany, that time
when you were sent off from Cologne--the time those Kingswards turned
upon you”--(the girls both started, and recovered themselves a little at
the shock of this contemptuous description),--“travelling in sleeping
carriages and I know not what with a woman and children, who were
believed to belong to you! What have you to say?”
“That was not what I said, Mrs. Leigh.”
“What have you to say?” cried Mrs. Leigh, waving her hand to silence
Betty; “the accused has surely the right to speak first.”
“What have I to say? But to what, mother? What is it? Was I travelling
with a woman and children? I suppose I was travelling--with all the
women and children that were in the same train. But otherwise, of course
you know I was with nobody. What does it mean?”
Bee got up from the sofa like a ghost, her blue eyes wild, her face
pale. “Oh, let us go, let us go! Do not torment us,” she said. “I will
acknowledge that it was not true. Now that I see him I am sure that it
was not true. I was mad. I was so stung to think---- Mrs. Leigh, do not
kill me! I did him no harm; do not, do not go over it any more!”
“Go over what?” cried Aubrey. “Bee! She can’t stand, she doesn’t see
where she is going. Mother, what on earth does it matter what was
against me if it is all over? Mother! How dare you torture my poor
girl--?”
This was naturally all the thanks Mrs. Leigh got for her efforts to
unravel the mystery, which the reader knows was the most innocent
mystery, and which had never been cleared up or thought of since that
day. It came clear of itself the moment that Aubrey, only to support
her, took Bee into his arms.