THERE was no merry dinner that night in the verandah of the hotel under the clinging wreaths of green. Mrs. Kingsward went up to her room still with her heavy shawl about her shoulders which she had forgotten, though it added something to her discomfort—followed by Bee, pale and rigid, offering no help, following her mother like an angry shadow. Charlie and Betty met them on the stairs and stood aside in consternation, unable to conceive what had happened. Mrs. Kingsward gave them a sort of troubled smile and said: “Get your dinner, dears; don’t wait for us. I am too tired to come down to-night.”
“But, mamma——” they both began in remonstrance.
“Go down and get your dinner,” said Mrs. Kingsward, peremptorily.
As for Bee, she did not look at them at all. Her eyes were fierce with some sentiment which Betty could not divine, and angry, blazing, as if they might have set light to the hotel.
Little Betty pressed against Charlie’s side as they went down, startled and alarmed. “Bee has had a quarrel with mamma,” she whispered, in tones of awe.
“That’s impossible,” said Charlie.
“Oh, no, it’s not impossible. There was once——”
It comforted them both a little in the awful circumstances that such a thing had perhaps happened before. They went very silently and much cast down to that table in the verandah, whither obsequious waiters beckoned them, and contemplated with dismay all the plates laid, all the glitter of the lamps and the glasses.
“I suppose we must not wait for them as they said so,” said Charlie, sitting down in his place at the bottom of the table. “Tell Mr. Leigh—that is the other gentleman—that we are ready.”
“The other gentleman, sir,” said the waiter, who was the pride of the establishment for his English, “has gone out.”
“Gone out!” said Charlie. He could only stare at Betty and she at him, not knowing what to think.
“He has had his letters, too, sir,” said the waiter in a significant tone.
His letters! What could that have to do with it? Charlie also had had his letters, one of them a bill which he did not view with any satisfaction; but even at twenty-one a man already learns to disguise his feelings, and sits down to dinner cheerfully though he has received a bill by the post. Charlie’s mind at first could not perceive any connection between Bee’s withdrawal upstairs and Aubrey’s disappearance. It was Betty who suggested, sitting down very close to him, that it looked as if Aubrey and Bee had quarrelled too.
“Perhaps that is what it is,” she said, as if she had found out a satisfactory reason. “Lovers always quarrel; and mamma will have taken Aubrey’s part, and Bee will be so angry, and feel as if she could never forgive him. There, that is what it must be.”
“A man may quarrel with his sweetheart,” said Charlie, severely, “but he needn’t spoil other people’s dinner for that;” however, they comforted themselves that this was the most likely explanation, and that all would come right in the morning. And they were very young and hungry, having eaten nothing since the veal at one o’clock. And these two made on the whole a very satisfactory meal.
The scene upstairs was very different. Mrs. Kingsward sent Moulsey away on pretence of getting her some tea, and then turned to her daughter who stood by the dressing-table and stared blankly, without seeing anything, into those mysterious depths of the glass which are so suggestive to people in trouble. She said, faintly, “Bee, I would so much rather you would not ask me any more questions to-night.”
“That is,” said Bee, “you would like to send me away to be miserable by myself without even knowing what it is, while you will take your sleeping draught and forget it. How can you be so selfish, mamma? And you have made my Aubrey join in the conspiracy against me—my Aubrey who belongs to me as papa does to you. If you are against us it is all very well, though I can’t imagine why you should be against us—but at least you need not interfere between Aubrey and me.”
“Oh, my dear child, my poor darling!” said Mrs. Kingsward, wringing her hands.
“It is all very well to call me your poor child, when it is you that are making me poor,” said Bee.
She kept moving a little, first on one foot then on the other, but always gazing into the glass which presented the image of an excited girl, very pale, but lit up with a sort of blaze of indignation, and unable to keep still. It was not that girl’s face, however, that Bee was gazing at, but at the dim world of space beyond in which there were faint far-away reflections of the light and the world. “And if you think you will get rid of me like this, and hang me up till to-morrow without knowing what it is, you are mistaken, mamma. I will not leave you until you have told me. What is it? What has papa got in his head? What does he say in that horrid—horrid letter? I wish I had known when I gave it to you I should have thrown it into the river instead of ever letting it come into your hands.”
“Bee, you must know that this passion is very wrong and very improper. You ought not to face me like that, and demand an answer. I am your mother,” said Mrs. Kingsward, but with a falter which was all unlike that assumption of authority, “and I have no need to tell you anything more than I think is for your good.”
“Ah! I know where that comes from,” cried Bee; “that’s papa’s thunder! that’s what he has told you to say! You don’t believe, yourself, that you have a right to hang up a poor girl over some dreadful, dreadful abyss, when she was so happy and never suspected anything.” Here Bee’s voice faltered for a moment, but she quickly recovered herself. “And to drag her away from the one person that could support her, and to cut the ground from under her feet, and never to tell her what it means!”
It was at this point that Moulsey, with a little discreet cough to herald her approach, came into the room, bearing a tray with tea, and a little cover from which came a faint but agreeable odour. Mrs. Kingsward was in great trouble about her child, but she was much exhausted and in want of physical support, and it did seem to her hard that she might not be permitted to eat the smallest of cutlets before embarking on a scene such as she knew this would be. Oh, why didn’t papa come and say it himself, when there was so much that was dreadful to say?
“Shall I fetch something for Miss Bee, too?” said Moulsey. “It ain’t a good thing for a young creature to go without her dinner. If she’s not going down, ma’am, as would be much the best, I’ll just run and fetch a little something for Miss Bee too.”
“Indeed, indeed, Bee, Moulsey is right. Think how miserable the others will feel all alone, and thinking something has happened. Do go down, darling, and strengthen yourself with a little food, and take a glass of wine just for once to please me. And after that you shall be told everything—all that I know.”
Bee grew paler and paler, standing there before the glass, and her eyes blazed more and more. “It is as bad as that, then!” she said under her breath to herself, and then went away from where she was standing to the further end of the room. “I shall wait here, mamma, till you have had your tea. I know you want it. Oh, go away Moulsey! Let me alone! No, you shall not bring me anything! or, if you do, I will throw it out of the window,” she said, stamping her foot. The dark end of the room seemed suddenly lighted up by a sort of aurora borealis, with the fire of poor Bee’s burning eyes and the flashes here and there of her white frock—oh, poor white frock! put on in the sunshine of life and happiness to please her love, and now turned into a sort of sacrificial robe.
“Take it away, Moulsey; I can’t eat anything—I can’t, indeed—no more than Miss Bee—”
“But you must, ma’am,” said Moulsey. “Miss Bee’s young; she’s had nothing to drain away her strength. But it’s far different with you, after all your family and so weak as you are. If Miss Bee were a real good girl, as I always thought her, she’d go away and get something herself just for her poor mamma’s sake, and leave you alone for a moment to get a little peace and rest.”
“There is no rest for me,” murmured the poor lady. “Oh, papa, papa, why didn’t you come and tell them yourself?”
These piteous tones went to Bee’s heart. They moved her half with contempt, half with compassion—with something of that high indignant toleration of weakness which is one kind of pity. If mamma could eat and drink at such a moment, why shouldn’t she be left to do it? The girl started up and left the room in the quick flashing impulse of her passion. She walked up and down in the corridor outside, her arms folded over her high-beating, tumultuous heart. Yes, no doubt she was going to be miserable, all her happiness was cut down and withered away, but in her present passionate impulse of resistance and gathering of all her forces to resist the catastrophe, which she did not understand, it could scarcely be said that she was wretched yet. What was it—what was it? she was saying to herself. It might still be something that would pass away, which would be overcome by the determined, impassioned stand against it, which Bee felt that it was in her to make. The thing that was worst of all, that stole away her courage, was that Aubrey had failed her. He should have been there by her side whatever happened. He ought not to have abandoned her. No doubt he thought it was more delicate, more honourable, more something or other; and that it was his duty to leave her to brave it alone. It must have been one of those high-flown notions of honour that men have. Honour! to leave a girl to fight for herself and him, alone—but, no doubt, that was what had seemed right in his eyes. Bee walked up and down in the half-lighted passage, sometimes almost pushing against someone going up or down, waiters or chambermaids or surprised guests, who looked after her when she had passed; but she did not take any notice of them, and she heard as she passed her mother’s door little sounds of tea-cups and dishes, and Moulsey’s voice saying “A little more,” and her mother’s faint replies. Poor mamma! After all, what ever it was, it could not be her affair as it was Bee’s. She would be unhappy about it, but not all unhappy. She had the others, who were all right. She had papa. It would not shatter her to pieces even if one of the children was to be shipwrecked. It was the shipwrecked one only who would be broken to pieces. For the first time in her life Bee felt the poignant sensation, the jealous pride, the high, desolate satisfaction of suffering. The others could all eat and do the ordinary things. She was elevated over all that, silent as on a Peak in Darien. She felt almost a kind of dreadful pleasure in the situation, smiling to herself at the sounds of her mother’s little meal. She could dine while Bee was miserable. They could all dine—Charlie (which was natural), Betty, even Aubrey. She had no doubt that he, too, must be seated, feeling as a man does that dinner must go on whatever happens, at the table downstairs.
After a while, which seemed a long time to Bee, Moulsey came out with the tray. She was startled, and exclaimed under her breath at the appearance of the girl walking up and down in the corridor: “I did think you would have had the sense to go and join the others, Miss Bee.” Bee was too much uplifted, too distant on her high pinnacle of martyrdom, to make any reply, but when Moulsey ventured to add a word of advice, to the effect that she must be careful of her mamma and not weary her with questions and she so tired and so weak, the girl flashed forth all her heart of indignation. “She has eaten her cutlet, it appears,” cried Bee. “I should think she may answer my questions.”
“Oh!” cried the maid, who had the privileges of an old servant, “you have got a heart without pity. You are just like your papa!”
Bee swept past her into the room, where poor Mrs. Kingsward, who after all had eaten but a morsel, sat lying back in an easy chair awaiting the dreadful conflict which she knew was coming. Poor lady, she had lost all her brightness, that pretty grace of the young mother among her grown up children, which prompted so many compliments. She lay back in her easy chair, feeling as she said “any age”—as old as any woman on the edge of the grave, not knowing how she was to bear the onslaught that was coming, and how she was to say what had to be said. He had borne it far better than Bee—poor Aubrey, poor Aubrey! whom she must not call Aubrey any more. He had not denied anything, he had fallen as it were at her feet, like a house that had been undermined and had no sound foundations, but Bee was different. Bee was a tower that had foundations—a girl that was able to stand up even to papa, and why—why had he not come to give forth his sentence in his own way?
Bee came forward flashing into the light, in that white frock which shone, and with those eyes that blazed through all the neutral tints in the room. She did not sit down, which would have been a little relief, but seized a chair and stood with her hand upon the back, leaning upon it.
“I hope, mamma,” she said, pitiless, “that you liked your tea, and ate something—and that you are better now.”
“Oh, Bee!” cried the poor lady; “if there is one reproach more dreadful than another it is this of being able to eat when you ought to be overwhelmed with trouble.” Mrs. Kingsward could scarcely keep from crying at the imputation. And Bee, I fear, knew that it was the unkindest thing that could be said.
“Now, mamma,” she resumed, almost stonily, “it is time that you should tell me what has happened. We arrived here all quite happy—it is just an hour ago——” here Bee’s voice shook a little, but she commanded it with an effort—“I ran up to dress for dinner, and when I came back in about ten minutes I found you and Aubrey—with your letters—looking as if you had both been dead and buried while I was away. You wouldn’t answer me, and he never said a word. You had done something to him in that little time to make him turn away from me, and yet you will not tell me what it is. Here I am alone,” said Bee, once more with a quiver in her voice. “Aubrey ought to be standing by me. I suppose he is having his dinner downstairs, too, and thinking no more of me. I just stand alone, nobody caring in all the world. What is the meaning of it, mamma?”
“Bee, you are very hard upon me. And poor Aubrey, he is having no dinner—of that I am sure.”
“You called him Mr. Leigh downstairs.”
“So I did, and so I must, and all of us; but I cannot have you speaking of him like that, poor, poor fellow; and just for this once—— Oh, Bee, my darling, don’t stand and look at me so! I would rather have died than say it either to him or to you. Your papa has been hearing I don’t know what, and he has changed his mind about Mr. Leigh altogether, and says it must not be.”
“What must not be?”
“Oh, Bee! Oh, don’t take it so hard! Don’t look like that! Your—your—engagement, my darling. Have patience; oh, have patience! He has heard something. Men hear things that we would never hear. And he doesn’t deny it. Oh! he doesn’t deny it. I had a hope that he would contradict it at once, and flare up in a rage like you, and say it wasn’t true. But he doesn’t deny it—poor boy, poor boy! And after that, how can I say one word to papa?”
“My engagement?” said Bee, in a hoarse voice. She had been staring at her mother as in a dream—only partially hearing, not understanding at all the rest that was said. “My engagement? He gave his consent. It was all settled. You would not allow us till the letter came, but then it was consent.”
“Yes, yes, dear. That was at first. He consented at first because—and now it appears he has heard something—someone has called upon him—he has discovered—and he writes to me that it must be broken off. Oh, Bee, don’t think my heart doesn’t bleed for you. I think it will kill me. He says it must be broken off at once.”
“Who says so?” said Bee, in her passion. “He! One would think you were speaking of God—that can say ‘Yes’ to-day and ‘No’ to-morrow, and build things up and then snatch them down. But I will not have it! I am not a doll, to be put in one position and then in another, as anybody pleases. My engagement! It is mine; it is not his.”
“Bee, think; it is papa you are speaking of. Dear, I feel for you—I feel for you! but so does he. Oh, my darling, you don’t know what you are saying. Do you think he would do anything to make you unhappy if he could help it—your papa, Bee, who has been so good to you all your life?”
“I do not care how good he has been. He is not good now. How will it harm him? He sits at home, and he thinks he can do as he pleases. But not with me. It is my affair more than it is his. He thinks he can break his word and it doesn’t matter—but I have given my word, and it does matter. Break my engagement!” cried Bee, her young bosom swelling, the sob rising in her throat that would soon choke her voice. “It is mine and not his; and nobody in the world shall break it. You can tell him so, mamma, or I will write myself and tell him so. I am not a wax image to take any shape he pleases. Who is he? He is not God——”
“Bee—he is your father——”
“Oh, my father! Yes, I do whatever he tells me. If he says I am to fetch anything I run like a little dog. I have never been disobedient. But this—this is different. I am not a child any longer. And, mamma, not for him nor for anyone—not even for you will I take back my word.”
“Bee! You make me say a great deal more than I meant to say. I thought you would have been a good child and seen that papa must know best. My poor, poor little girl, there is worse behind. Mr. Leigh, whom we all thought so much of——”
“Aubrey,” Bee managed to say, though for no other word could she command her voice.
“Darling, he has deceived us. He is not what he seems. He has done, oh, so wrong—there have been things—that you ought never to hear——”
“Stop!” said Bee. She had to speak in monosyllables with her labouring breath. “Wait!—not behind his back.” She rushed to the bell and rung it so wildly that both waiter and chambermaid appeared in alarm, with Moulsey rushing in calling for a doctor, and saying that her lady was going to faint. Bee pushed the woman aside and turned to the waiter, who stood anxious at the door. “Mr. Leigh!” she cried, impatiently; “the gentleman—who was with us: tell him—to come here.”
“The tall young gentleman?” said the waiter.
“No—the other: tell him he is to come here—instantly—this moment.”
“I beg your pardon, miss,” said the man. “The other gentleman? He have been gone away this half-hour.”
“Gone away!” she cried. And it seemed to Bee that the blackness of darkness closed over her and the room and everything in it. She did not faint, oh no, no such happiness—but everything grew dark, and through the dark she heard her own voice speaking—speaking, and did not know what she said.