THE year went on in its usual routine, the boys came back from school, there was the usual move to the seaside, all mechanically performed under the impulse of use, and when the anniversary came round of the mother’s death, it passed, and the black dresses were gradually laid aside. And everything came back, and everybody referred to Bee as if there had always been a slim elder sister at the head of affairs. Betty came home at the end of the season with a sentiment in respect to Gerald Lyon, and with the prospect of many returns to Portman Square, but nothing final in her little case, nothing that prevented her from being one of the ringleaders in all the mischief which inevitably occurred when the family were gathered together. Bee had become so prematurely serious, so over-wrought with the cares of the family, that Betty, who was too energetic to be suppressed, gradually came to belong rather to the faction of the boys than to share the responsibilities of the elder sister, which might have been her natural place. The second Christmas, instead of being forlorn, like the first, was almost the gayest that had been known in Kingswarden for many years. For the boys were growing, and demanded invitations for their friends, and great skating while the frost lasted, which, as the pond at Kingswarden was the best for a great number of miles round, brought many cheerful youthful visitors about the house. Colonel Kingsward was nothing if not correct; he did not neglect the interests of any of his children. He perceived at once that to have Bee alone at the head of affairs, without any support, especially when his own time at home was so much broken by visits, would be bad at once for her “prospects,” and for the discipline of the family. He procured a harmless, necessary aunt accordingly, a permanent member of the household, yet only a visitor, who could be displaced at any time, to provide for all necessary proprieties, an arrangement which left him very free to go and come as he pleased. And thus life resumed its usual lightness, and youth triumphed, and things at Kingswarden went on as of old, with a little more instead of less commotion and company and entertainment as the young people developed and advanced.
It was perhaps natural enough, too, in the circumstances that Charlie, though the oldest son, should be so little at home. He came for Christmas, but he did not throw himself into the festivities with the spirit he ought to have shown. He was in a fitful state of mind, sometimes in high spirits, sometimes overclouded and impatient, contemptuous of the boys, as having himself reached so different a line of development, and indifferent to all the family re-unions and pleasures. Sometimes it seemed to Bee, who was the only one in the family who concerned herself about Charlie’s moods, that he was anxious and unhappy, and that the air of being bored which he put on so readily, and the hurried way in which he rushed out and in, impatient of the family calls upon him, concealed a secret trouble. He complained to her of want of money, of his father’s niggardliness, of the unhappy lot of young men who never had any “margin,” who dared not spend an extra shilling without thinking where it was to come from. But whether this was the only trouble, or how it came about that he had discovered himself to be so poor, Bee, poor child, who knew so little, could not divine. How miserable it was that it was she who was in the mother’s place! Mamma would have divined, she would have understood, she would have helped him through that difficult passage, but what could Bee do, who knew nothing about life, who thought it very likely that she was making mountains out of molehills, and that all young men were bored and uneasy at home—oh, if people would only be all good, all happy with each other, all ready to do what pleased the whole, instead of merely what pleased themselves!
To Bee, so prematurely introduced into the midst of those jars and individual strivings of will and fancy, it seemed as if everything might be made so easy in life by this simple method. If only everybody would be good! The reader may think it was a nursery view of human life, and yet what a solution it would give to every problem! Colonel Kingsward then would have been more at home, would have been the real father who commanded his children’s confidence, instead of papa, whose peculiarities had to be studied, and in whose presence the children had to be hushed and every occasion of disturbance avoided, and of whom they were all more or less afraid. And Charlie would have been more or less a second to him, thoughtful of all, chivalrous to the girls, fond of home, instead of, as he was, pausing as it were on one foot while he was with his family, anxious only to get away. And Bee—well, Bee perhaps would have been different too had that new, yet old, golden rule come into full efficacy. Oh, if everybody, including always one’s own self, would only be good!
It makes the head go round to think what a wonderful revolution in the world generally the adoption of that simplest method would produce. But in poor Bee’s experience it was the last rule likely to be adopted in Kingswarden, where, more and more to the puzzled consciousness of the girl not able to cope with so many warring individualities, everyone was going his own way.
It was in the early spring that Colonel Kingsward came down from town to Kingswarden, looking less like the adoption of this method than ever before. The children were in the hall when he came, busy with some great game in which various skins which were generally laid out there were in use as properties, making, it must be allowed, a scene of confusion in that place. The Colonel was not expected. He had walked from the station, and the sound of his voice stopped the fun with a sudden horror of silence and fright, which, indeed, was not complimentary to a father. Instead of greetings, he asked why the children were allowed to make such a confusion in the place, with a voice which penetrated to the depths of the house and brought Bee and Betty flying from the drawing-room.
“Papa!” they both cried, in surprise, mingled with alarm. Colonel Kingsward walked into the room they had left, ordering peremptorily the children to the nursery, but finding certain friends of Betty’s there, in full enjoyment of talk and tea, retreated again to his library, Bee following nervously.
“Is your brother here?” he asked, harshly, establishing himself with his back to the fire.
“My brother?” echoed Bee, for indeed there were half-a-dozen, and how was she to know on the spur of the moment which he meant.
Colonel Kingsward looked, in the partial light (for a lamp which smoked had been brought in hurriedly, to make things worse), as if he would have liked to seize his daughter and wring her slender neck. He went on with additional irritation: “I said your brother. The others, I have no doubt, will provide trouble enough in their turn. For the moment it is, of course, Charlie I mean. Is he here?”
“Papa! Why, he is at Oxford, you know, in the schools——”
Colonel Kingsward laughed harshly. “He was going in for honours, wasn’t he? Wanted to go up to read in the long vacation—was full of what he was going to do? Well, it has all ended in less than nothing, as I might have known it would. Read that!” he cried, tossing a letter on the table.
Bee, with her heart sick, took up and opened the letter, and struggled to read, in her agitation, an exceedingly bad hand by an indifferent light. She made out enough to see that Charlie had not succeeded in his “schools,” that he had not even secured a “pass,” that he had incurred the continual censure of his college authorities by shirking lectures, failing in engagements, and doing absolutely no work. So far as was known there was nothing against his moral character, but—— Bee, to whom the censure of the college sounded like a sentence of death, put down the dreadful letter carefully, as if it might explode, and raised large eyes, widened with alarm and misery, to her father’s face.
“Oh, papa!” was all that she could say.
“I telegraphed to him to come home at once and meet me here. The fool,” said Colonel Kingsward, pacing about the room, “is capable of not doing that—of going away—of——”
“Papa, they say there is nothing against his character. Oh! you couldn’t think that he would—do anything dreadful; not disappear, not——” Bee said the rest in an anguish of suspicion and ignorance with her eyes.
“God knows what an idiot like that may do! Things are bad enough, but he will, of course, think them worse than they are. There is one thing we may be sure of,” he said, with a fierce laugh, “Charlie will do nothing to make himself uncomfortable. He knows how to take care of himself.” Colonel Kingsward walked up and down the room, gnawing the end of his moustache. The lamp smoked, but he took no notice of it. “There is one thing certain,” he said, “and that is, there’s a woman in it. I remember now, he was always thinking of something; like an ass, I supposed it was his studies. No doubt it was some Jezebel or other.”
“Papa,” said Bee.
“Speak out! Has he told you anything?” He stopped in front of her, and stood looking with threatening eyes into her face. “If you keep back anything from me,” he said, “your brother’s ruin will be on your head.”
“Papa,” said Bee, faltering, “it is not much I know. I know that there was a lady who lived in Oxford——”
“Ah! The long vacation,” he exclaimed, with another angry laugh.
“He used to write long letters to her, and he told me her name.”
“That is something to the purpose. What was her name?”
“He said,” said Bee, in a horror of betraying her brother, yet impelled to speak, “he said that she was called—Laura, papa.”
“What?” he cried, for Bee’s voice had sunk very low; and then he turned away again with an impatient exclamation, calling her again a little fool. “Laura, confound her! What does that matter? I thought you had some real information to give.”
“Papa,” said Bee, timidly, “there is a little more, though perhaps it isn’t information. When he took me to the Academy in summer I saw him meet a lady. Oh, not a common person, a beautiful, grand-looking lady. But it could not be the same,” Bee added, after a pause, “for she was much older than Charlie—not a young lady at all.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this at the time?” cried Colonel Kingsward. “Can one never secure the truth even from one’s own children? I should have sent him off at once had I known. What do you mean by not young at all?”
“I should think,” said Bee, with diffidence and a great anxiety not to exaggerate such a dreadful statement, “that she might perhaps have been—thirty, papa.”
“You little idiot,” her father kindly replied.
Why was she a little idiot? But Bee had not time to go into that question. The evening was full of agitation and anxiety. The poor little girl, unused to such sensations, sat through dinner in a quiver of anxious abstraction, listening for every sound. There were several trains by which he might still come, and at any moment when the door opened Charlie might present himself, pale with downfall and distress, to meet his father’s angry look, whose eyes were fixed on the door whenever it opened with as much preoccupation as Bee’s—with this difference, that Bee’s eyes were soft with excuses and pity, while those brilliant steely eyes which shone from beneath her father’s dark brows, and which were the originals of her own, blazed with anger. When dinner was over, which he hurried through, disturbing the servants in their leisurely routine, Colonel Kingsward again called Bee to him into the library. She was the only person to whom he could talk of the subject of which his mind was full, which was the sole reason for this great distinction, for he had very little patience with Bee’s trembling remarks. “Don’t be a little fool,” was the answer he made to any timid suggestion upon which she ventured; but yet there was a necessity upon him to discuss it with someone, and Bee, however inadequate, had this burden to bear.
“If the woman is the kind you say, and if she thinks there’s anything to be made by it—why the fool may have married her,” he cried. “Heavens! Think of it; married at three and twenty, without a penny! But,” he added, colouring a little, “they are very knowing, these women. She would find out that he was not worth her while, and probably throw him off in time.”
“Oh, papa!” cried Bee, horrified by the thought that her brother might be deserted in the moment of his downfall.
“That is the best we can hope. He will have Kingswarden, of course, when I die, but not a penny—not a penny in the meantime to keep up any such ridiculous—Listen! Is that the train?”
There was a cutting near Kingswarden through which the thundering of the train was heard as it passed. This had been a great grievance at first, but it was not without its conveniences to the accustomed ears of the household now. They both listened with anxiety, knowing that by this time it must have stopped at the station and deposited any passenger, and for the next half-hour watched and waited; Bee, with all her being in her ears, listened with an intensity of attention such as she had never known before, holding her breath; while Captain Kingsward himself, though he kept walking up and down the room, did so with a softened step which made no sound on the thick carpet, not uttering a word, listening too. To describe all the sounds they heard, or thought they heard, how often the gate seemed to swing in the distance, and the gravel start under a quick foot, would be endless. It was the last train; if he did not come now it would be clear that he did not mean to come. And it was now too late for any telegram. When it was no longer possible to believe that he could have been detained on the way, Colonel Kingsward drew a long breath of that disappointment which, in the yielding of nervous tension, is almost for the moment a relief.
“If there is no letter to-morrow morning I shall go up to Oxford,” he said, “and, Bee, if you like, you can come with me. You might be of use. Don’t say anything to Betty or your aunt. Say you are going with me to town by the early train, and that you may possibly not return till next day. There is no need for saying any more.”
“Yes, papa,” said Bee, submissively. That was all he knew! No need for saying any more to Betty, who had known every movement her sister made since ever she was born! But, at all events, Bee made up her mind to escape explanation so far as she could to-night. She paused for a moment at the door of the drawing-room as she passed. No more peaceful scene could have been presented. Betty was at the piano singing one song after another, half for practice, half to amuse the aunt, who sat dozing in her chair by the fire. The others had gone to bed, and careless youth and still more careless age, knowing nothing of any trouble, pursued their usual occupations in perfect composure and calm. The aunt knitted mechanically, and dozed in the warmth and quiet which she loved, and Betty went on singing her songs, indifferent to her audience, yet claiming attention, breaking off now and then in the middle of a line to ask “Do you like that, Aunt Ellen? Are you paying any attention, Aunt Ellen?” “Yes, my dear, I like it very much,” the old lady said, and dozed again. Bee turned away with a suppressed sob. Where was Charlie? In disgrace, perhaps heart-broken, deserted by his love, afraid to meet his father! It was foolish to think that he was out in the night, wandering without shelter, without hope, for there was no need of any such tragic circumstances, but this was the picture that presented itself to Bee’s aching and inexperienced heart.