The Sorceress (complete)

Mrs. Kingsward looked at them from one to another, and at little Betty between busied in a little book, with that baffled feeling which arises in the mind of a delicate woman when the strong individualities and wills of her children become first developed before her, after that time of their youth when all were guided by her decision, and mamma’s leave was asked for everything. How fierce, how self-willed, how determined in his opposition Charlie looked like his father, not to be moved by anything! And Bee, how possessed by those young hopes of her own, which the mother knew would be of no avail against the fiat gone forth against her! Mrs. Kingsward knew her husband better than her children did. She knew that having taken up his position he would not give in. And Bee, with all that light of resistance in her eyes – Bee as little willing to give in as he! The invalid trembled when she thought of the clash of arms that would resound over her head – of the struggle which would rend her cheerful house in two. She did not at all realise that the cheerful days of that house were numbered – that soon it would be reduced into its elements, as a somewhat clamorous, restless, too energetic brood of children, with a father very self-willed, who hitherto had known nothing of them but as happy and obedient creatures, whose individual determinations concerned games and lessons, and who, so far as the conduct of life was affected, were of no particular account. Mrs. Kingsward was not yet aware that this was the dolorous prospect before her household; she only thought, “How am I to manage them all?” and felt her heart fail before Charlie’s ill humour and parti pris, and before the bright defiance in Bee’s eyes. Poor Aubrey, whom she had learned to look upon as one of her own, half a son, and half a brother – poor Aubrey, who had gone so wrong, and yet had so many excuses for him, a victim rather than a seducer – what was happening to Aubrey this fine September morning? It made her heart sick in her bosom as she thought of all these newly-raised conflicting powers, and she so little able to cope with them. If she did not get strong soon, what would all these children do? Charlie would go back to college, and would be out of it. He had so strong a will, and was so determined to get on, that little harm would happen to him – and besides, he was entirely in accord with his father, which was a great matter. But Bee – Bee! It seemed to Mrs. Kingsward that it was on the cards that Bee might take matters into her own hands, and run away with her lover, if her father would not yield. What else was there for these young creatures? Mrs. Kingsward knew that she herself would have done so in the circumstances had her lover insisted; and she knew that he would no more have consented to such a sentence – never, never! – than he had done to anything he disliked all his life. And Bee was like him, though she had never hitherto been anything but an obedient child. Mrs. Kingsward could not help picturing to herself, as she lay there, the elopement – Bee’s room found empty in the morning, the note left on the table, the so easy, so certain explanation, which already she felt herself to be reading. And then her husband’s wrath, his unalterable verdict on the criminal “never to enter this house again!” Poor mother! She foresaw, as we all do, tortures for herself, which she was never to be called upon to bear.

As for Betty, it was the most tiresome journey in all her little experiences. A long journey was generally fun to Betty. The scuffle of getting away, of seeing that all the little packets were right, of abusing Moulsey for hiding away the luncheon basket under the rugs and the books in some locked bag, the trouble of securing a compartment, arranging umbrellas and other things in the vacant seats to make believe that every place was full, the watch at every station to prevent the intrusion of strangers, the running from one side to another to see the pretty village or old castle, or the funny people at the country stations and the queer names – the luncheon in the middle of the day, which was as good as a pic-nic – all these things much diverted Betty, who loved the rapid movement through the air, and to feel the wind on her face; but none of these delights were to be had to-day. She was in one of the middle places, between Charlie, so glum and in a temper, and Bee, lost in her own thoughts and without a word to say, and opposite to mamma, who was so much more serious than usual, giving little Betty a smile from time to time, but not able to speak loud enough to be heard through the din of the train. She tried to read her book but it was not a very interesting book, and it was short too, and evidently would not last out half the journey. Betty was the only member of the party who had a free mind. The commotion of the romance between Bee and Aubrey had been pure amusement to her. It would be a bore if it did not end in a speedy marriage, with all the excitement of the presents, the trousseau, the dresses (especially the bridesmaids’ dresses), the wedding day itself, the increased dignity of Betty as Miss Kingsward, the pleasure of talking of “my married sister,” the pleasure of visiting Bee, in her own house, and sharing all her grandeur as a county lady. To miss all this would be a real trial, but Betty had confidence in the fitness of things, and felt it was impossible that she should miss all this. And she was at ease in her little mind, and the present dreariness of this unamusing, unattractive journey hung all the more heavy upon her consciousness now.

They arrived next day, having slept at Brussels to break the journey for Mrs. Kingsward, and the Colonel met them, as in duty bound, at Victoria. He gave Charlie his hand, and allowed Bee and Betty to kiss him, but his whole attention, as was natural, was for his wife.

“You look dreadfully tired,” he said, with that half-tone of offence in which a man shows his disappointment at the aspect of an invalid. “You must have been worried on the journey to look so tired.”

“Oh, no, I have not been at all worried on the journey – they have all been so good, sparing me every fatigue; but it is a tiresome long way, Edward, you know.”

“Yes, of course, I know: but I never saw you look so tired before.” He cast a reproachful look round upon the young people, who were all ready to stand on the defensive. “You must have bothered your mother to death,” he said. “I am sorry I did not come out for her myself – undoing all the effect of her cure.”

“Oh, you will see, I shall be all right when I get home,” Mrs. Kingsward said, cheerfully. “As for the children, Edward, they have all been as good as gold.”

“You had better see to the luggage and bring your sisters home in a cab. I can’t let mamma hang about here,” said the Colonel, in his peremptory way. “Moulsey will come with us. I suppose you three have brains enough to manage by yourselves?”

Thus insulting his grown-up children, among whom a flame of indignation lighted up, partially burning away their difficulties between themselves, Colonel Kingsward half carried his wife to the carriage. “I thought at first I should have waited at Kingswarden till you came back. I am glad I changed my mind and came back to Harley Street,” he said.

“Oh, is it to Harley Street we are going?” said Mrs. Kingsward, faintly. “I had rather hoped for the country, Edward.”

“You don’t look much like another twenty miles of a journey,” said her husband.

“Well, perhaps not. I own I shall be glad to be quiet,” the poor lady said. What he wished had always turned out after a moment to be just what his wife wished for all the years of their union. She even meekly accepted the fact that the children – the nursery children, as they were called – the little ones, who were no trouble but only a refreshment and delight, would have been too much for her that first night. Secretly, she had been looking forward to the touch and sight of her placid smiling baby as the one thing that would do her good – and all those large wet kisses of Johnny and Tommy and Lucy and little Margaret, and the burst of delighted voices at the sight of mamma. “Yes, I believe it would have been too much for me,” she said, with a look aside at Moulsey, who, as on many a previous occasion, would dearly have loved to box her master’s ears. “And I do believe it would have been too much for me,” Mrs. Kingsward added, when that confidential attendant put her to bed.

“Perhaps it would, ma’am,” Moulsey said. “They would have made a noise, bless them – and baby will not go to anyone when he sees me – and altogether I shall be more fit for them, Moulsey, after a good night’s rest – ”

“If you get that, you poor dear,” said Moulsey, under her breath. But her mistress did not hear that remark any more than many others which Moulsey made in her own mind, always addressed to that mistress whom she loved. “If he said dying would be good for you, you would say you were sure of it, and that was what you wanted most,” the maid said within herself.

It must not, however, be supposed from this that Colonel Kingsward was not a good husband. He had always been like a lover, though a somewhat peremptory one, to his wife. And without him her young, gay, pleasure-loving ways, her love of life and amusement might have made her a much less successful personage, and not the example of every virtue that she was. Had Mrs. Kingsward had the upper hand, the family would have been a very different family, and its career probably a very broken, tumultuous, happy-go-lucky career. It was that strong hand which had controlled and guided her, which had been, as people say, the making of Mrs. Kingsward; and though she feared his severity in the present crisis, she yet felt the most unspeakable relief from the baffled, helpless condition in which she had looked at her children, feeling herself all unable to cope with them in the presence of papa.

“I wonder if he thinks we are cabbages,” was Bee’s indignant exclamation as he turned his back upon them.

“Apparently,” said Charlie, coming a little out of his sullenness. “Look here, you girls, get into this omnibus – happily we’ve got an omnibus – with the little things, while I go to the Custom House to get the luggage through.”

“Betty, you get in,” said Bee. “I will go with you, Charlie, for I have got mamma’s keys.”

“Can’t you give them to me?” Charlie cast a gloomy look about, thinking that Leigh might perhaps be somewhere awaiting a word, a thought which now for the first time traversed Bee’s mind, too.

“Then, Betty, you had better go with him, for he doesn’t know half the boxes,” she said.

“Oh, you can come yourself if you like,” said Charlie, feeling in that case that this was the safest arrangement after all.

“No, Betty had better go. Betty, you know Moulsey’s box and that new basket that mamma brought me before we left the Baths.”

“Come along yourself, quick, Bee.”

“No, I shall stop in the omnibus.”

“When you have made up your minds,” cried Betty, who had slipped out of the vehicle at the first word. Betty thought it would be more fun to go through the Custom House than to wait all the time cooped up here.

And Bee had her reward; for Aubrey was there, waiting at a distance till the matter was settled. “I should have risked everything and come, even if the penalty had been a quarrel with Charlie,” Aubrey said, “but I must not quarrel with anyone if I can help it. We shall have hard work enough without that.”

“You have seen papa?”

“Yes, I have seen him: but I have not done myself much good, I fear,” said Aubrey, shaking his head. “Bee, you won’t give me up whatever they may say?”

“Give you up? Never, Aubrey, till you give me up!”

“Then all is safe, my darling. However things look now they can’t hold out for ever. Lies must be found out, and then – in time – you will be able to act for yourself.”

“Do you think papa will stand to it like that, Aubrey?”

Aubrey shook his head. He did not make any reply.

“Tell me. Is it a lie?” she said.

He bent down his head upon her hand, kissing it.

“Not all,” he said, in an almost inaudible voice. “ I said that – at Cologne – ”

“I did not understand,” said Bee. “No; it does not matter to me, Aubrey – not so very much; but if you promised – ”

“I never promised – never! My only thought was to escape – ”

“Then I can’t think what you have done wrong. Aubrey, is she tall, with dark hair, and beautiful dark eyes, and a way of looking at you as if she would look you through and through?”

“Bee!” he said, gripping her fast, as if someone had been about to decoy her away.

“And a mouth,” said Bee, “that is very pretty, but looks as if it were cut out of steel? Then, I have seen her. She sat down by me one day in the wood, when I was doing that sketch, and gave me such clever hints, telling me how to finish it, till she made me hate it, don’t you know. Is she horribly clever, and a good artist? and like that – ”

“Bee! What did that woman say to you?”

“Nothing very much. Asked me about the people at the hotel, and if there were any Leighs – not you, she pretended, but the Leighs of Hurst-leigh, whom she knew. I thought it very strange at the time why she should ask about the Leighs without knowing anything – and then I forgot all about it. But to-day it came back to my mind, and I have been thinking of nothing else. Aubrey – she is older than you are?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And she made you promise to marry her?” said Bee, half unconscious yet half conscious of that wile of the cross-examiner, coming back to the point suddenly.

“Never, Bee, never for one moment in my misery! That I should have to make such a confession to you! – but there was no promise nor thought of a promise. I desired nothing – nothing but to escape from her. You don’t doubt my word, Bee?”

“No; I don’t doubt anything you say. But I think she is a dreadful woman to get anybody in her power, Aubrey. My little drawing was for you. It was the place we first met, and she told me how to do it and make it look so much better. I am not very clever at it, you know; and then I hated the very sight of it, and tore it in two. I don’t know why.”

“I understand why. Bee, you will be faithful to me, whatever you are told?”

“Till I die, Aubrey.”

“And never, never believe that for a moment my heart will change from you.”

“Not till I hear it from yourself,” she said, with a woeful smile. The despair in him communicated itself to her, who had not been despairing at all.

“Which will never be – and when you are your own mistress, my darling – ”

“Oh, we shan’t have to wait for that!” she cried, with a burst of her native energy. “Dear Aubrey, they are coming back; you must go away.”

“Till we meet again, darling?”

“Till we meet again!”

CHAPTER XII

Bee stole into her mother’s room as she went upstairs before that first dinner at home which used to be such a joyous meal. How they had all enjoyed it – until now. The ease and space, the going from room to room, the delight in finding everything with which they were familiar, the flowers in the vases (never were any such flowers as those at home!), the incursions of the little ones shouting to each other, “Mamma’s come home!” Even the little air of disorder which all these interruptions brought into the orderly house was delightful to the young people. They looked forward as to an ideal life, to beginning all their usual occupations again and doing them all better than ever. “Oh, how nice it is to be at home!” the girls had said to each other. Instead of those hotel rooms, which at their best are never more than hotel rooms, a genre not to be mistaken, how delightful was the drawing-room at home, with all its corners – Bee’s little table where she muddled at her drawings, mamma’s great basket of needlework where everything could be thrown under charitable cover, Betty’s stool on which she sat at the feet of her oracle of the moment, whoever that might be, and all the little duties to be resumed – the evening papers arranged for papa (as if he had not seen enough of them in the daytime in his office!), the flowers to see after, the little notes to write, all the pleasant common-places of the home life. But to-night, for the first time, dinner was a silent meal, hurried over – not much better than a dinner at a railway station, with a sensation in it of being still on the road, of not having yet reached their destination. The drawing-room was in brown holland still, for they were all going on to Kingswarden to-morrow. The house felt formal, uninhabited, as if they had come home to lodgings. All this was bad enough; but the primary trouble of all was the fact that mamma was upstairs – gone to bed before dinner, too tired to sit up. Such a thing had never happened before. However tired she was, she had always so brightened up at the sensation of coming home.

And papa, though kind, was very grave. The happiness of getting his family back did not show in his face and all his actions as it generally did. Colonel Kingsward was very kind as a father, and very tender as a husband; the severity of his character showed little at home. His wife was aware of it, and so were the servants, and Charlie, I think, had begun to suspect what a hand of iron was covered by that velvet glove. But the girls had never had any occasion to fear their father. Bee thought that the additional gravity of his behaviour was owing to herself and her introduction of a new individual interest into the family; so that, notwithstanding a touch of indignation, with which she felt the difference, she was timid and not without a sense of guilt before her father. Never had she been rebellious or disobedient before; and she was both now, determined not to submit. This made her self-conscious and rather silent; she who was always overflowing with talk and fun and the story of their travels. Colonel Kingsward did not ask many questions about that. What he did ask was all about “your mother.”

“She is not looking so well as when she went away,” he said.

“Oh, papa, it’s only because she’s so tired,” cried little Betty. Betty taking upon her to answer papa, to take the responsibility upon her little shoulders! But Bee felt as if she could not say anything.

“Do you really think so?” he said, turning to that confident little speaker – to Betty. As if Betty could know anything about it! But Bee seemed paralysed and could not speak.

She stole, as I have said, into her mother’s room on her way upstairs, but she had hardly time to say a word when papa came in to see if Mrs. Kingsward had eaten anything, and how she felt now that she was comfortably established in her own bed. It irritated Bee to feel herself thus deprived of the one little bit of possible expansion, and stirred her spirit. With her cheek to her mother’s, she said in her ear, “Mamma, I saw Aubrey at the station,” with a thrill of pleasure and defiance in saying that, though secretly, in her father’s presence.

“Oh, Bee!” said Mrs. Kingsward, with a faint cry of alarm.

“And he told me,” continued Bee, breathless in her whisper, “that papa was firm against us.”

“Bee! Bee!”

“And we promised each other we should never, never give up, whatever anyone might say.”

“Oh, child, how dare you, how dare you?” Mrs. Kingsward said.

How Bee’s heart beat! What an enlivening, inspiriting strain of opposition came into her mind, making her cheeks glow and her eyes flame! The whisper was, perhaps, a child’s device, perhaps a woman’s weakness, but it exhilarated her beyond description to say all this in the very presence of her father. There was a sensation of girlish mischief in it as well as defiance, which relieved all the heavier sentiments that had weighed down her heart.

“What are you saying to your mother, Bee? She must not be disturbed. Run away and let her rest. If we are to go back to Kingswarden to-morrow she must get all the rest that is possible now.”

“I was never the one to disturb mamma,” said Bee, bestowing another kiss on her mother’s cheek.

“Oh, be a good child, Bee!” pleaded Mrs. Kingsward, almost without sound; for by this time the Colonel was hovering over the bed, with a touch of suspicion, wondering what was going on between these two.

“Yes, mamma dear, always,” said Bee, aloud.

“What is she promising, Lucy? And what were you saying to her? Bee should know better at her age than to disturb you with talk.”

“Oh, nothing, Edward. She was only giving me a kiss, and I told her to be a good child – as I am always doing; thinking to be heard, you know, for so much speaking,” the mother said, with a soft laugh.

“Bee has always been a sufficiently good child. I don’t think you need trouble yourself on that point. The thing is for you to get well, my dear, and keep an easy mind. Don’t trouble about anything; leave all that to me, and try and think a little about yourself.”

“I always do, Edward,” she said with a smile.

He shook his head, but agitation had brought a colour to her cheeks, and to persuade one’s-self that it is only fatigue that makes a beloved face look pale is so easy at first, before any grave alarm has been roused. Yet, Colonel Kingsward’s mind was not an easy one that night. He was au fond, a severe man, very rigid as to what he thought his duty, taking life seriously on the whole. His young wife, who loved pleasure, had made him far more a man of society than was natural or indeed pleasing to him; but he had thus got into that current which it is so difficult to get out of without a too stern withdrawal, and his large young family had warmed his heart and dressed his aspect in many smiles and graces which did not belong to him by nature. The mixture of the rigid and the yielding had produced nothing but good effects upon his character till now. But there is no telling what a man is till the first conflict of wills arises in his own household. Hitherto there had been nothing of the kind. His children had amused him and pleased him and made him proud. Their health, their prettiness, their infantile gaiety and delight in every favour accorded to them had been all so many tributes to his own supreme influence and power. Their very health was a standing compliment to his own health and vigour, from whom they took their excellent constitutions, and to the wonderful care and attention to every law of health which he enforced in his house. Not a drain escaped trapping, not a gas was left undisposed of where Colonel Kingsward was. He had every new suggestion in his nursery that sanitary science could bring up. “And look at the result!” he was in the habit of saying. Not a pale face, not a headache, not an invalid member there. And among the children he was as the sun in his splendour. Every delight rayed out from him. The hour of his coming home was watched for; it was the greatest treat for the little boys to go in the dogcart with Simmons, the groom, to fetch papa from the station, while the others assembled at the door as at a daily celebration to see him arrive. Charlie was now a man grown, but he was a good boy, full of all right impulses, and there had never been any difficulty with him.

Thus Colonel Kingsward had been kept from all knowledge of those contrarieties of nature which appear even in the most favoured regions. He was of opinion that he surrounded his wife with every care, bore everything for her, did not suffer the winds of heaven to visit her cheek too roughly. And it was true. But he was not at all aware that she saved him anything, or that his joyful omnipotence and security from every fret and all opposition depended upon her more than on anything else in the world. He did not know the little inevitable jars which she smoothed away, the youthful wills growing into individuality which she kept in check. Which was a pity, for the strong man was thus deprived of the graces of precaution, and knew no more than the merest weakling what, as his children grow into men and women, every man has to face and provide against. If Colonel Kingsward was too arbitrary, too trenchant in his measures, too certain that there was no will but his own to be taken into account, the blame must thus be partially laid upon those natural fictions of boundless love and duty and sweet affectionate submission, which grow up in the nursery and reign as long as childhood lasts – until a more potent force of self or will or love, comes in to put the gentle dream to flight.

It was thus that Colonel Kingsward considered the matter about Bee. It had been, of course, necessary to cross Bee two or three times in her life before. It had been necessary, or at least he had thought it necessary, to send her to school; it had been thought expedient to keep her back a year longer than she wished from appearing in the world. These decisions had cost tears and a little struggle, but in a few days Bee had forgotten all about them – or so, at least, her father thought. And a lover – at nineteen – what was that but another plaything, a novelty, a compliment, such as girls love? How could it mean anything more serious? Why, Bee was a child – a little girl, an ornamental adjunct to her mother, a sort of reflection, not to be detached for a long time from that source of all that was delightful in her. Colonel Kingsward had felt with a delighted surprise that the child and the mother did “throw up” each other when he began to go out with them together. Bee’s young beauty showing what mamma’s had been, and Mrs. Kingsward’s beauty (so much higher and sweeter than any girl’s wild-rose bloom could be) showing what in the after days her child would grow to. To cut these two asunder for a stranger – another man, an intruding personality thrusting himself between the child and her natural allegiance – was oppressive in any shape. At the first word, indeed, and in the amusement furnished him by the letters that had been poured upon him, Colonel Kingsward’s consent had been given almost without thought. Aubrey Leigh was a good match, he had a fine place, a valuable estate, and was well spoken of among men. If Lucy was so absurd as to wish her daughter to marry; if Bee, the silly child, was so foolish as to think of leaving her father’s house for another, that was probably as good a one as she could have chosen. I don’t know if fathers generally feel it a sort of desecration when their young daughters marry. Some fathers do, and some brothers, as if the creature pure by nature from all such thoughts were descending to a lower place, and becoming such an one as themselves. Colonel Kingsward was not, perhaps, visionary enough for such a view, yet he was slightly shocked in his sentiment about the perfection of his own house by this idea on his child’s part of leaving it for another. However, it was true he had a very large family, and to provide so well for one of them at the very outset of her career was a thing which was not to be despised.