CHAPTER XLIV
Bee saw no more of Charlie that night. When she came out of his room, where there was a certain meaning in her presence, she seemed to pass into the region of dreams. She was taken upstairs to refresh herself and rest, into the smaller of two bedrooms which were over Charlie’s room, the other of which was occupied by Mrs. Leigh. And she was taken downstairs to dine with that lady tête-à-tête at the small shining table. There was something about the little house altogether, a certain conciseness, an absence of drapery, and of the small elegant litter which is so general nowadays, which gave it a masculine character – or, at least, Bee, not accustomed to æsthetic young men, accustomed rather to big boys and their scorn of the decorative arts, thought so with a curious flutter of her being. This perhaps was partly because the ornamental part of the house was devoted to Charlie, and the little dining-room below seemed the sole room to live in. It had one or two portraits hung on the walls, pictures almost too much for its small dimensions. The still smaller room behind was clothed with books, and had for its only ornament a small portrait of Mrs. Leigh over the mantel-piece. Whose rooms were these? Who had furnished them so gravely, and left behind an impression of serious character which almost chilled the heart of Bee? He was nowhere visible, nor any trace of him. No allusion was made as to an absent master of the house, and yet it bore an air so individual that Bee’s sensitive being was moved by it, with all the might of something stranger than imagination. She stood trembling among the books, looking at the mother’s portrait over the mantel-piece, feeling as if the very mantel-shelf on which she rested her arm was warm with the touch of his. But not a word was said, not an allusion made to Aubrey.
What had she to do with Aubrey? Nothing – less than with any other man in the world – any stranger to whom she could speak with freedom, interchanging the common coin of ordinary intercourse. He was the only man in the world whom she must not talk of, must not see – the only one of whose presence it was necessary to obliterate every sign, and never to utter the name where she was. Poor Bee! Yet she felt him near, his presence suggested by everything, his name always latent in the air. She slept and waked in that strange atmosphere as in a dream. In Aubrey’s house, yet with Aubrey obliterated – the one person in existence with whom she had nothing, nothing to do.
It was late before she was allowed to see her brother next day, and Bee, in the meantime, left to her own devices, had not known what to do. She had taken pen and paper two or three times to let her father know that Charlie was found, but her mind revolted, somehow, from making that intimation. What would happen when he knew? He would come here immediately; he would probably attempt to remove Charlie; he would certainly order Bee away at once from a place so unsuitable for her. It was unsuitable for her, and yet – She scarcely saw even Mrs. Leigh after breakfast, but was left to herself, with the door open into that sanctuary which was Aubrey’s, with all his books and the newspapers laid out upon the table. Bee sat in the dining-room and looked into that other secluded place. In the light of day she dared not go into it. It seemed like thrusting herself into his presence who had no thought of her, who did not want her. Oh, not for Aubrey! Aubrey would not for the world disturb her, or bring any embarrassment into her mind. Aubrey would rather disappear from his own house, as if he had never existed, than remind her that he did exist, and perhaps sometimes thought of her still. Did he ever think of her? Bee knew that it would be wrong and unlike Aubrey if he kept in these rooms the poor little photograph of her almost childish face which he had once prized so much. It would have been indelicate, unlike a gentleman; and yet she made a hasty and furtive search everywhere to see if, perhaps, it might be somewhere, in some book or little frame. She would have been angry had she found it, and indignant; yet she felt a certain desolate sense of being altogether out of the question, steal into her heart, when she did not find it – in the inconsistencies of which the heart is full.
It was mid-day when she was called upstairs, to find Charlie established in the room which should have been the drawing-room, and round which she threw another wistful look as she came into it in full daylight. Oh, not a woman’s room in any way, with none of those little photograph frames about which strew a woman’s table – not one, and consequently none of Bee. She took this in at the first glance, as she made the three or four little steps between the door and Charlie’s couch. He was more hollow-eyed and worn in the daylight than he had been even on the night before, his appearance entirely changed from that of the commonplace young Oxford man to an eager, anxious being, with all the cares of a troubled soul concentrated in his eyes. Mrs. Leigh sat near him, and the nurse was busy with cushions and pillows arranging his couch.
“My dear, you will be thankful to hear that the doctor gives a very good report to-day. He says that, though he would not have sanctioned it, my remedy has done wonders. You are my remedy, Bee. I am proud of so successful an idea – though, to be sure, it was a very simple one. Now you must go on and complete the cure, and I give you carte blanche. Ask anyone here, anyone you please, so long as it is not too much for Charlie. He may see one or two people if nurse sanctions it. I am going out myself for the day. I shall not return till late in the afternoon, and you are mistress in the meantime – absolute mistress,” said Mrs. Leigh, kissing her. Bee felt that Aubrey’s mother would not even meet her eyes lest she should throw too much meaning into these words. Oh, there was no meaning in them, except so far as Charlie was concerned.
And then she was left alone with her brother, the most natural, the only suitable arrangement. Nurse gave the last pat to his cushions, the last twist to the coverlet, which was over his gaunt limbs, appealed to him the last time in dumb show whether he wanted anything, and then withdrew. It was most natural that his sister, whose appearance had done him so much good, should be left with him as his nurse; but she was frightened, and Charlie self-absorbed, and it was some time before either found a word to say. At last he said, “Bee!” calling her attention, and then was silent again for some time, speaking no more.
“Yes, Charlie!” There was a flutter in Bee’s voice as in her heart.
“I say, I wasn’t, perhaps, very nice to you last night; I couldn’t bear to be brought back; but they say I’m twice as well since you came. So I am. I’ve got something to keep me up. Bee, look here. Am I dreadful to look at? I know I haven’t an ounce of flesh left on my bones, but some don’t mind that; and then, my beard. I’ve heard it said that a beard that never was shaved was – was – an embellishment, don’t you know. Do you think I’m dreadful to look at, Bee?”
“Oh, Charlie,” said the girl, from the depths of her heart, “what does it matter how you look? The more ill you look the more need you have for your own people about you, who never would think twice of that.”
Charlie’s gaunt countenance was distorted with a grin of rage and annoyance. “I wish you’d shut up about my own people. The governor, perhaps, with his grand air, or Betty, as sharp as a needle – as if I wanted them! – or to be told that they would put up with me.”
“Charlie,” said Bee, trembling, “I don’t want to vex you, you are a little – but couldn’t you have a barber to come, and perhaps he could take it off.”
There came a flash of fire out of Charlie’s eyes; he put up his hand to his face, as if to protect that beard in which he at least believed – “I might have known,” he said, “that you were the last person! A fellow’s sister is always like that: just as we never think anything of a girl’s looks in our own families. Well, you’ve given your opinion on that subject. And you think that people who care for me wouldn’t think twice of that?”
“Oh, no,” said Bee, clasping her hands, “how should they? But only feel for you far, far more.”
Charlie took down his hand from his young beard. He looked at her with his hollow eyes full of anxiety, yet with a certain complacence. “Interesting?” – he said, “is that what you meant to say?”
“Oh, yes,” cried Bee, her eyes full of pity, “for they can see what you have gone through, and how much you have been suffering, – if there was any need of making you more interesting to us.”
Charlie stroked down his little tufts of wool for some time without speaking, and then he said in a caressing tone unusual to him, “I want you to do me a favour, Bee.”
“Anything – anything, whatever you wish, Charlie.”
“There is just one thing I wish, and one person I want to see. Sit down and write a note – you need not do more than say where I am,” said Charlie, speaking quickly. “Say I am here, and have been very ill, but that the hope she’d come, and to hear that she had forgiven me, was like new life. Well! what is the meaning of your ‘anything, anything,’ if you break down at the first thing I ask you? Look here, Bee, if you wish me to live and get well you’ll do what I say.”
“Oh, Charlie, how can I? – how can I? – when you know what I feel – about – ”
“What you feel – about? Who cares what you feel? You think perhaps it was you that did me all that good last night. That’s all conceit, like the nonsense in novels, where a woman near your bed when you’re ill makes all the difference. Girls,” said Charlie, “are puffed up with that folly and believe anything. You know I didn’t want you. It was what you told me about her that did me good. And your humbug, sitting there crying, ‘anything, anything!’ Well, here’s something! You need not write a regular letter, if you don’t like it. Put where I am – Charlie Kingsward very ill; will you come and see him? A telegram would do, and it would be quicker; send a telegram,” he cried.
“Oh, Charlie!”
“Give me the paper and pencil – I’m shaky, but I can do that much myself – ”
“Charlie, I’ll do it rather than vex you; but I don’t know where to send it.”
“Oh, I can tell you that – Avondale, near the Parks, Oxford.”
“She is not there now – she is in London,” said Bee, in a low tone.
“In London?” Again the long, gaunt limbs came to the ground with a thump. “Bee, if you could get me a hansom perhaps I could go.”
The nurse at this moment came in noiselessly, and Charlie shrank before her. She put him back on the sofa with a swift movement. “If you go on like this I’ll take the young lady away,” she said.
“I’ll not go on – I’ll be as meek as Moses; but, nurse, tell her she mustn’t contradict a man in my state. She must do what I say.”
Nurse turned her back upon the patient, and made the usual grimaces; “Humour him,” her lips and eyebrows said.
“Charlie, papa knows the address, and Betty – and I ought, oh, I ought to let them know at once that you are here.”
“Betty!” he said, with a grimace, “what does that little thing know?”
“She knows – better than you think I do; and papa – Papa is never happy but when he is with that lady. He goes to see her every day; she writes to him and he writes to her; they go out together,” cried Bee, thinking of that invitation to Portman Square which had seemed the last insult which she could be called on to bear.
Charlie smiled – the same smile of ineffable self-complacence and confidence which had replaced in a moment the gloom of the previous night; and then he grew grave. He was not such a fool, he said to himself, as to be jealous of his own father; but still he grudged that anyone but himself should have her company. He remembered what it was to go to see her every day, to write to her, to have her letters, to be privileged to give her his arm now and then, to escort her here or there. If it had been another fellow! But a man’s father – the governor! He was not a rival. Charlie imagined to himself the conversations with him for their subject, and how, perhaps for the first time, the governor would learn to do him justice, seeing him through Laura’s eyes. It was true that she had rejected him, had almost laughed at him, had sent him away so completely broken down and miserable that he had not cared what became of him. But hope had sprung within him, all the more wildly from that downfall. It was like her to go to the old gentleman (it was thus he considered his father) to explain everything, to set him right. She would not have done so if her heart had not relented – her heart was so kind. She must have felt what it was to drive a man to despair – and now she was working for him, soothing down the governor, bringing everything back.
“Eh?” he said, vaguely, some time after; he had in the meantime heard Bee’s voice going on vaguely addressing somebody, in the air, “are you speaking to me?”
“There is no one else to speak to,” cried Bee, almost angrily. And then she said, “Charlie – how can you ask her to come here?”
“Why not here? She’ll go anywhere to do a kind thing.”
“But not to this house – not here, not here!”
“Why not, I should like to know – what’s here?” Then Charlie stared at her for a moment with his hollow eyes, and broke into a low, feeble laugh.
“Oh,” he said, “I know what you’ve got in your head – because of that confounded cad, Aubrey Leigh? That is just why she will come, to show what a lie all that was – as if she ever would have looked twice at a fellow like Leigh.”
“He seems to have saved your life,” said Bee, confused, not knowing what to think.
“You mean he gave me house-room when I was ill, and sent for a doctor. Why, any shop-keeper would have done that. And now,” said Charlie, with a grin, “he shall be fully paid back.”
CHAPTER XLV
Betty Kingsward lived in what was to her a whirl of pleasure at Portman Square, where everybody was fond of her, and all manner of entertainments were devised for her pleasure. And her correspondence was not usually of an exciting character. Her morning letters, when she had any, were placed by her plate on the breakfast-table. If any came by other posts, she got them when she had a spare moment to look for them, and she had scarcely a spare moment at this very lively and very happy moment of her young career. Besides, that particular evening when Bee’s note arrived was a very important one to Betty. It was the evening on which Miss Lance was to dine with the Lyons. And it was not a mere quiet family dinner, but a party – a thing which in her newness and inexperience still excited the little girl, who was not to say properly “out,” in consequence of her mourning; still wearing black ribbons with her white frocks, and only allowed to accept invitations which were “quiet.” A dinner of twenty people is not exactly an entertainment for a girl of her years, but Betty’s excitement in the debût of Miss Lance was so great that no ball could have occupied her more. There was an unusual interest about it in the whole house, even Mrs. Lyon’s maid, the most staid of confidential persons, had begged Betty to point out to her over the baluster “the lady, Miss Betty, that is coming with your papa.”
“Oh, she’s not coming with papa,” Betty had cried, with a laugh at Hobbs’ mistake, “she is only a great, great friend, Hobbs. You will easily know her, for there is nobody else so handsome.”
“Handsome is as handsome does,” said the woman, and she patted Betty on the shoulder under pretence of arranging her ribbon.
Betty had not the least idea why Hobbs looked at her with such compassionate eyes.
Miss Lance, however, did come into the room, to Betty’s surprise, closely followed by Colonel Kingsward, as if they had arrived together. She was like a picture, in her black satin and lace, dressed not too young but rather too old for her age, as Mrs. Lyon pointed out, who was as much excited about her new guest as Betty herself; and the unknown lady had the greatest possible success in a party which consisted chiefly, as Betty did not remark, of old friends of Colonel Kingsward, with whom she had been acquainted all her life. Betty did not remark it, but Gerald Lyon did, who was more than ever her comrade and companion in this elderly company.
“Why all these old fogies?” he had asked irreverently, as the gentlemen with stars on their coats and the ladies in diamonds came in.
Betty perceived that it was an unusually solemn party, but thought no more of it. It was the evening of the first levee, and that, perhaps, was the reason why the old gentlemen wore their orders. Old gentlemen! They were the flower of the British army. Generals This and That, heads of departments; impossible to imagine more grand people – in the flower of their age, like Colonel Kingsward. But eighteen has its own ideas very clearly marked on that subject. Betty and Gerald stood by, lighting up one corner with a blaze of undeniable youth, to see them come in. The young pair were like flowers in comparison with the substantial size and well worn complexions of their seniors, and they were the only little nobodies, the sole representatives of undistinguished and ordinary humanity round the table. They were not by any means daunted by that. On the contrary, they felt themselves, as it were, soaring over the heads of all those limited persons who had attained, spurning the level heights of realisation. They did not in the least know what was to become of them in life, but naturally they made light of the others who did know, who had done all they were likely to do, and had no more to look to. The dignity of accomplished success filled the young ones with impulses of laughter; their inferiority gave them an elevation over all the grizzled heads; they felt themselves, nobodies, to be almost ludicrously, dizzily above the heads of the rest. Only one of the company seemed to see this, however; to cast them an occasional look, even to make them the confidants of an occasional smile, a raising of the eyebrows, a sort of unspoken comment on the fine company, which made Betty still more lively in her criticisms. But this made almost a quarrel between the two.
“Oh, I wish we were nearer to Miss Lance, to hear what she thinks of it all,” Betty said.
“I can’t think what you see in that woman,” cried Gerald. “I, for one, have no desire to know her opinion.”
Betty turned her little shoulder upon him with a glance of flame, that almost set the young man on fire.
“You prejudiced, cynical, uncharitable, malicious, odious boy!” And they did not say another word to each other for five minutes by the clock.
Miss Lance, however, there was no doubt, had a distinguished success. She captivated the gentlemen who were next to her at table, and, what was perhaps more difficult, she made a favourable impression upon the ladies in the drawing-room. Her aspect there, indeed, was of the most attractive kind. She drew Betty’s arm within her own, and said with a laugh, “You and I are the girls, little Betty, among all these grand married ladies;” and then she added, “Isn’t it a little absurd that we shouldn’t have some title to ourselves, we old maids? – for Miss means eighteen, and it’s hard that it should mean forty-two. Fancy the disappointment of hearing this juvenile title and then finding that it means a middle-aged woman.”
She laughed so freely that some of the other ladies laughed too. The attention of all was directed towards the new comer, which Betty thought very natural, she was so much the handsomest of them all.
“You mean the disappointment of a gentleman?” said one of the guests.
“Oh, no, of ladies too. Don’t you think women are just as fond of youth as men are, and as much disgusted with an elderly face veiling itself in false pretences? Oh, more! We think more of beauty than the men do,” said Miss Lance, raising her fine head as if to expose its features to the fire of all the glances bent upon her.
There was a little chorus of cries, “Oh, no, no,” and arguments against so novel a view.
But Miss Lance did not quail; her own beauty was done full justice to. She was so placed that more than one mirror in the old-fashioned room reflected her graceful and not unstudied pose.
“I know it isn’t a usual view,” she said, “but if you’ll think of it a little you’ll find it’s true. The common thing is to talk about women being jealous of each other. If we are it is because we are always the first to find out a beautiful face – and usually we much exaggerate its power.”
“Do you know,” said Mrs. Lyon in her quavering voice, “I almost think Miss Lance is right? Mr. Lyon instantly says ‘Humph!’ when I point out a pretty person to him. And Gerald tells me, ‘You think every girl pretty, aunt.’ ”
“That is because there is one little girl that he thinks the most pretty of all,” said Miss Lance, with a sort of soft maternal coo in Betty’s ear.
The subject was taken up and tossed about from one to another, while she who had originated it drew back a little, listening with an air of much attention, turning her head to each speaker, an attitude which was most effective. It will probably be thought the greatest waste of effort for a woman thus to exhibit what the newspapers call her personal advantages to a group of her own sex; but Miss Lance was a very clever woman, and she knew what she was about. After a time, when the first fervour of the argument was over, she returned to her first theme as to the appropriate title that ought to be invented for old maids.
“I have thought of it a great deal,” she said. “I should have called myself Mrs. Laura Lance, to discriminate – but for the American custom of calling all married ladies so, which is absurd.”
“I have a friend in New York who writes to me as Mrs. Mary Lyon,” said the mistress of the house.
“Yes, which is ridiculous, you know; for you are not Mrs. Mary Lyon, dear lady. You are Mrs. Francis Lyon, if it is necessary to have a Christian name, for Lyon is your husband’s name, not yours. You are Mrs. Mary Howard by rights – if in such a matter there are any rights.”
“What!” cried old Mr. Lyon, coming in after the long array of gentlemen, “are you going to divorce my wife from me, or give her another name, or what are you going to do? We thought it was we only who could change the ladies’ names, Kingsward, eh?”
Colonel Kingsward had placed himself immediately in front of Miss Lance, and Betty, looking on all unsuspicious, saw a glance pass between them – or rather, she saw Miss Lance look up into her father’s face. Betty did not know in the least what that look meant, but it gave her a little shock as if she had touched an electric battery. It meant something more than to Betty’s consciousness had ever been put into words. She turned her eyes away for a moment to escape the curious thrill that ran through her, and in that moment met Gerald Lyon’s eyes, full of something malicious, mocking, disagreeable, which made Betty very angry. But she could not explain to herself what all these looks meant.
This curious sensation somehow spoiled the rest of the evening for Betty. Everybody it seemed to her after this meant something – something more than they said. They looked at her father, they looked at Miss Lance, they looked even at Betty’s little self, embracing all three, sometimes in one comprehensive glance. And all kinds of significant little speeches were made as the company went away. “I am so glad to have seen her,” one lady said in an undertone to Mrs. Lyon. “One regrets, of course, but one is thankful it is no worse.” “I think,” said another, “it will do very well – I think it will do very well; thank you for the opportunity.” And “Charming, my dear Mrs. Lyon, charming,” said another. They all spoke low and in the most confidential tone. What was it they were all so interested about?
The last of the party to go were Miss Lance and Colonel Kingsward. They seemed to go away together as they had seemed to come together.
“Your father is so kind as to see me home,” Miss Lance said, by way of explanation. “I am not a grand lady with a carriage. I am old enough to walk home by myself, and I always do it, but as Colonel Kingsward is so kind, of course I like company best.”
She too had a private word with Mrs. Lyon, at the head of the stairs. Betty did not want to listen, but she heard by instinct the repeated “Thank you, thank you! How can I ever express how much I thank you?” Betty was so bewildered that she could not think. She paid no attention to her father, who put his hands on her shoulders when he said “Good-night,” and said, “Betty, I’ll see you to-morrow.” Oh, of course, she should see him to-morrow – or not, as circumstances might ordain. What did it matter? She was not anxious to see her father to-morrow, it could not be of the least importance whether they met or not; but what Betty would really have liked would have been to find out what all these little whisperings could mean.
Mrs. Lyon came up to her when the last, to wit, Colonel Kingsward following Miss Lance, had disappeared, and put her arms round the little girl. “You are looking a little tired,” she said, “just this last hour. I did not think they would stay so late. It is all Miss Lance, I believe, setting us on to argue with her metaphysics. Well, everybody likes her very much, which will please you, my dear, as you are so fond of her. And now, Betty, you must run off to bed. There’s hardly time for your beauty sleep.”
“Mrs. Lyon,” said Betty, very curious, “was it to meet Miss Lance that all those grand people came?”
“I don’t know what you call grand people. They are all great friends of ours and also of your father’s, and I think you know them every one. And they all know each other.”
“Except Miss Lance,” said Gerald, who was always disagreeable – always, when anyone mentioned Miss Lance’s name.
“I know her, certainly, and better than any of them! And there is nobody so delightful,” Betty cried, with fervour, partly because she believed what she said, and partly to be disagreeable in her turn to him.
“And so they all seemed to think,” said old Mr. Lyon, “though I’m not so fond of new people as the rest of you. Lay hands suddenly on no man is what I say.”
“And I say the same as my uncle,” said Gerald, “and it’s still more true of a woman than a man.”
“You are such an experienced person,” said the old lady; “they know so much better than we do, Betty. But never you mind, for your friend has made an excellent impression upon all these people – the most tremendously respectable people,” Mrs. Lyon said, “none of your artists and light-minded persons! Make yourself comfortable with that thought, and good night, my little Betty. You must not stay up so late another night.”
What nonsense that was of staying up late, when it was not yet twelve o’clock! But Betty went off to her room with a little confusion and bewilderment of mind, happy on the whole, but feeling as if she had something to think about when she should be alone. What was it she had to think about? She could not think what it was when she sat down alone to study her problem. There was no problem, and what the departing guests had said to Mrs. Lyon was quite simple, and referred to something that was their own business, that had nothing to do with Betty. How could it have anything to do with Betty?
Around the corner of the Park, Bee, too, was sitting alone and thinking at the same time, and the two sets of thoughts, neither very clear, revolved round the same circle. But neither of the sisters knew, concerning this problem, whereabouts the other was.