The Sorceress. Volume 1 of 3

But when the second chapter of this romance, all so simple, so natural in its first phase, opened out, and there appeared a dark passage behind – a woman wronged who had a claim upon the man, a story, a scandal – whether it were true or untrue! – Colonel Kingsward, in his knowledge of the world, knew that it did not so much matter whether a story was true or untrue. It stuck, anyhow; and years, generations after, when, if false, it had been contradicted and exploded, and acknowledged to be false, people still would shake their heads and say, “Wasn’t there some story?” For this reason he was not very rigid about the facts, part of which, at least, the culprit admitted. There was a woman and there was a story, and all the explanations in the world could not do away with these. What did it matter about the man? He, Colonel Kingsward, was not Aubrey Leigh’s keeper. And as for Bee, there would be some tears, no doubt, as when she was sent to school – a little passion of disappointment, as when she was kept back for a whole year, from seventeen to eighteen, in her “coming out” – but the tears and the passion once over, things would go on the same as before. The little girl would go back to her place, and all would be well.

This was the man’s delusion, and perhaps it was a natural one, and he was conscious of wishing to do the best thing for her, of saving her from the after tortures which a wife has to endure whose husband has proclivities towards strange women, and capabilities of being “led away.” That was a risk that he could understand much better than she could, at her age. The fellow might be proud of her, small blame to him – he might strive to escape from disgraceful entanglements by such an exceptionable connection as that of Colonel Kingsward, of Kingswarden, Harley Street, and the Intelligence Department; he might be very much in earnest and all that. He did not altogether blame the man; indeed, he was willing enough to allow that he was not a bad fellow, and that he was popular among his friends.

But these were not enough in the case of a girl like Bee. And it was certainly for her good that her father was acting. She had known the man a month, what could he be to her in so short a time? This is the most natural of questions, constantly asked, and never finding any sufficient answer. Why should a girl in three or four weeks be so changed in all her thoughts as to be ready to give up her father’s house, the place in which she has all her associations, the company in which she has been so happy, and go away to the end of the world, perhaps with a man whom she has known only for a month? It is the commonest thing in the world, but also the most mysterious, and Colonel Kingsward refused to believe in it, as so many other fathers have done. Bee would cry, and her mother would console her. She would fly into a childish passion, and struggle against her fate – for a few days. She would swear that she would never, never give up that new plaything, and the joy of parading it before the other girls, who perhaps had not such toys to play with – but all that nonsense would give way in a little to firm guidance and considerate care, and the fresh course of amusement and pleasure which the winter would bring.

The winter is by no means barren to those who spend it habitually in town. It has many distractions. There is the theatre, there are Christmas gatherings without number, there are new dresses also to be got for the same, perhaps a pretty new bonnet or two thrown in by a penitent father, very sorry even in his own interests to give his little girl pain. If all these pleasant things could not make up for the loss of a man – of doubtful character, too – whom she had only known for a month, Colonel Kingsward felt that it would be a strange thing indeed, and altogether beyond his power to explain.

CHAPTER XIII

It was not possible, however, to remove Mrs. Kingsward to Kingswarden next day. She was too much fatigued even to leave her bed, and the doctor who came to see her, her own familiar doctor who had sent her to Germany to the celebrated bath, looked a little grave when he saw the condition in which she had come home. “No fatigue, no excitement,” was what he enjoined. She was to have nothing to excite, nothing to disturb her – to go to the country? Oh, yes, but not for some days. To see the children? Certainly, the children could not be kept from their mother; but all in moderation, with great judgment, not too long at a time, not too often. And above all she must not be worried. Nothing must be done, nothing said to cross or vex her. When he heard from the Colonel a very brief and studiously subdued version of a little family business which had disturbed her – “I need not keep any secrets from you, doctor. The fact is that someone wanted to marry my girl Bee, and that I made some discoveries about him which obliged me to withdraw my consent.” The doctor formed his lips into a whistle, to which he did not give vent. “That accounts for it,” he said.

“That accounts for – what?” cried Colonel Kingsward, not without irritation.

“For the state in which I find her. And mind my words, Kingsward, you’d better let your girl marry anybody that isn’t a blackguard than risk that sort of shock with your wife. Never forget that her life – I mean to say that she’s very delicate. Don’t let her be worried – stretch a point – have things done as she wishes. You will find it pay best in the end.”

“For once you are talking nonsense, my dear fellow,” said Colonel Kingsward; “my wife is not a woman who has ever been set upon having her own way.”

“Let her have it this time,” said the doctor, “and you’ll never repent it. If she wants Bee to marry, let her marry. Bee is a dear little thing, but her mother, Kingsward, her mother – is of far more consequence to you than even she – ”

“That is a matter of course,” said Colonel Kingsward. “Lucy is of more importance to me than all the world beside; but neither must I neglect the interests of my child.”

“Oh, bother the child,” cried the doctor, “let her have her lover; the mother is what you must think of now.”

“You seem tremendously in earnest, Southwood.”

“So I am – tremendously in earnest. And don’t you work your mind on the subject, but do what I say.”

“Do you mean to say that my wife is in a – state of danger?”

“I mean that she must be kept from worry – she must not be contradicted – things must not be allowed to go contrary to her wishes. Poor little Bee! I don’t say you are to let her marry a blackguard. But don’t worry her mother about it – that is the chief thing I’ve got to say.”

“No, I shan’t worry her mother about it,” said the Colonel, shutting his mouth closely as if he were locking it up. When Dr. Southwood was gone, however, he stopped the two girls who were lingering about to know the doctor’s opinion, and detaching Betty’s arm from about Bee’s waist drew his eldest daughter into his study and shut the door. “I want to speak to you, Bee,” he said.

“Yes, papa.” In this call to her alone to receive some communication, Bee, as may be imagined, jumped to a conclusion quite different from what her father intended, and almost for the moment forgot mamma.

“The doctor tells me that above everything your mother must be kept from worry. Do you understand? In the circumstances it is extremely important that you should know this.”

“Papa,” she cried, half in indignation half in disappointment, “do you think that I would worry her – in any circumstances?”

“I think that girls of your age often think that no affairs are so important as your own, and it is very likely that you may be of that opinion, and I wish you to know what the doctor says.”

“Is mamma – very ill?” Bee asked, bewildered.

“He does not say so – only that she is not to be fretted or contradicted, or disturbed about anything. I feel it necessary to warn you, Bee.”

“Why me above the rest?” she cried. “Am I likely to be the one to worry mamma?”

“The others have no particular affairs of their own to worry her with. There must be no private talks, no discussions, no endeavours to get her upon what you may suppose to be your side.”

Bee gave her father a glance of fire, but she felt that a little prudence was necessary, and kept the tumult of feeling which was within her as much as possible in her own breast. “I have always talked to mamma of everything that was in my mind,” she said, piteously. “I don’t know how I am to stop. She would wonder so if I stopped talking; and how can I talk to her except of things that are in my mind?”

“You must learn,” said the Colonel, “to think of her more than of yourself.” He did not at all mean to prescribe to her a course of conduct more elevated than that he meant to pursue himself, but then it was only in action that he meant to carry out his purposes, he was not afraid of committing himself in speech.

Bee looked at him again with a gaze that asked a great many questions, but she only answered, “I will try my very best, papa.”

“If you do, I am sure you will succeed, my dear,” he said, in a gentler tone.

“Is that all?” she asked, hesitating.

“That is all I want with you just now.”

Bee turned away towards the door, and then she paused and made a step back.

“Papa!”

“Yes, Bee.”

“Would you mind telling me – I will not say a word to her – but oh, please tell me – ”

“What is it?” said the Colonel. He went to his writing table, and sitting down began to turn over his papers. His tone was slightly impatient, his eyebrows slightly raised, as if in surprise.

“Papa, you must know what it is. I know that you have seen – Mr. Leigh!”

“How do you know anything about it? What have you to do with whom I have seen? Run away. I do not mean to enter into any explanations on this subject with you.”

“Then with whom will you enter into explanations? You cannot speak to mamma; she must not be worried. Papa, I am not a little girl now, to be told to run away.”

“You seem to be determined not to lose a moment in telling me so.”

“I should not have told you so,” said Bee, looking at him over the high back of his writing-table, “if you had not told me I was not to talk to mamma.”

He looked up at her, and their eyes met; both of them keenly, fiercely blue, lit up with fires of combat. It is often imagined that blue eyes are the softest eyes – but not by those who are acquainted with the kind which belonged to the Kingswards, which might have been called sapphires, if sapphires ever flash and cut the air as diamonds do. They were not either so dark as sapphires – they were like nothing but themselves, two pairs of blue eyes that might have been made to order, so like were they to each other, and both blazing across that table as if they would have set the house on fire.

“That’s an excellent point,” he said. “I can’t deny it. What made you so terrifically clever all at once?”

There is nothing more stinging than to be called clever in the midst of a discussion. Bee’s eyes seemed to set fire to her face, at least, which flashed crimson upon her father’s startled sight.

“When one has someone else to think of, someone’s interests to take care of – ”

“Which are your own interests – and vastly more important than anything which concerns your father and mother.”

“I never said so – nor thought so, papa – but if they are different from yours, that’s no reason,” said Bee, bold in words but faltering in manner, “is it, why I should not think of them, if, as you say, they’re my own interests, papa?”

“You are very bold, Bee.”

“What am I to do if I have no one to speak for me? Papa, Aubrey – ”

“I forbid you to speak with such familiarity of a man whom you have nothing to do with, and whom you scarcely know.”

“Papa, Aubrey – ” cried Bee, with astonishment.

Colonel Kingsward jumped up from his table in a fury of impatience. “How dare you come and besiege me here in my own room with your Aubrey? – a man whom you have not known a month; a stranger to the family.”

“Papa, you must let me speak. You allowed me to be engaged to him. If you had said ‘no’ at first, there might, perhaps, have been some reason in it.”

“Perhaps – some reason!” he repeated, with an angry laugh.

“Yes, for even then it was not your own happiness that was in question. It was I, after all, that was to marry him.”

“And you think that is a reason for defying me?”

“It is always said to be a reason – not for defying anybody – but for standing up for what you call my own interests, papa – when they are somebody else’s interests as well. You said we might be engaged – and we were. And how can I let anyone, even you, say he is a stranger? He is my fiancé. He is betrothed to me. We belong to each other. Whatever anyone may say, that is the fact,” cried Bee, very rapidly, to get it all out before she was interrupted.

“It is not at all a cheerful or pleasant fact – if it changes my little Bee, whom I thought I knew, to this flushed and brazen woman, fighting for her – . Go, child, and don’t make an exhibition of yourself. Your mother’s daughter! It is not credible – to assault me, your father, in my own room, for the sake of – ”

“Papa! don’t you remember that it is said in the Bible you are not to provoke your children to wrath? Mamma would have stood up for you, I suppose, when she was engaged to you. I may be flushed,” cried Bee, putting her hands to her blazing cheeks, “how could I help it? Forced to talk to you, to ask you – on a subject that gives you a right to speak to me, your own child, like that – ”

“I am glad you think I have a right to speak as the circumstances demand to my own child,” said the Colonel, cooling down; “but why you should be forced, as you say, to take up such an unbecoming and unwomanly position is beyond my guessing.”

“It is because I have no longer mamma to speak for me,” Bee said.

The creature was not without skill. Now she came back to the point that was not to be gainsaid.

“We have had quite enough of this,” Colonel Kingsward replied. “Your mother, as you are quite aware, never set up her will against mine. She was aware, if you are not, that I knew the world better than she did, and was more competent to decide. Your mother would never have stood up to me as you have done.”

“It would have been better, perhaps, sometimes, if she had,” cried Bee, carried away by the tide of her excitement. Colonel Kingsward was so astounded that he had scarcely power to be angry. He gazed at his excited child with a surprise that was beyond words.

“Oh, papa, papa! Forgive me! I never meant that; it came out before I was aware.”

“The thought must have been there or it could not have come out,” he said.

“Oh, no; there was no thought there. It may be so with you, but not with us, papa. Words come into our mouths. We don’t think them; we don’t mean to say – they only seem to – hook on to – something that went before; and then they come out with a crash. Oh, forgive me, forgive me, papa!”

“I suppose,” he said, with a half laugh, “that may be taken as a woman’s exposition of her own style of argument.”

“Don’t call me a woman,” she said, with her soft small voice, aggrieved and wounded, drawing closer to him. “Oh, papa! I am only your little girl after all.”

“A naughty little girl,” he said, shaking his head.

“And without mamma to speak for me,” added Bee.

The Colonel laughed aloud. “You wily little natural lawyer!” he said; but immediately became very grave, for underneath this burst of half angry amusement Bee had given him a shock she did not know of. All unaware of the edge of the weapons which she used with a certain instinctive deftness, it did not occur to her that these words of hers might penetrate not only deeper than she thought, but far deeper than her own thoughts had ever gone. His wife’s worn face seemed suddenly to appear before Colonel Kingsward’s eyes in a light which he had never seen before, and the argument which this child used so keenly, yet so ignorantly, pierced him like a knife. “Without mamma to speak for me!” These words sounded very simple to Bee, a mischievous expedient to trap him in the snare he had laid for her. But if the time should ever come when they should be true! The Colonel was struck down by that arrow flown at a venture. He went back to his table subdued, and sat down there. “That will do,” he said, “that will do. Now run away and leave me to my work, Bee.”

She came up to him and gave him a timid kiss, which the Colonel accepted quietly in the softening of that thought. She roamed about the table a little, flicking off an imperceptible speck of dust with her handkerchief, arranging some books upon the upper shelf of his bureau, sometimes looking at him over that row of books, sometimes lingering behind him as if doing something there. He did not interfere with her movements for a few minutes, in the attendrissement of his thoughts. Without a mother to speak for her! Poor little girl, if that should ever be so! Poor little children unconscious in their nursery crying for mamma; and, oh, worse than all, himself without his Lucy, who had made all the world sweet to him! He was a masterfull man, who would stand to his arms in any circumstances, who would not give in even if his heart was broken; but what a strange, dull, gloomy world it would be to him if the children had no mother to speak for them! He made a sudden effort to shake off that thought, and the first thing that recalled him to himself was to hear Bee, having no other mischief, he supposed, to turn her hand to, heaping coals upon the little bit of fire which had been lighted for cheerfulness only.

“Bee,” he cried, “are you still there? What are you doing? The room is like an oven already, and you are making up a sort of Christmas fire.”

“Oh, I am so sorry – I forgot,” cried Bee, putting down the shovel hastily. “I thought it wanted mending – for you always like a good fire.”

“Not in September,” he said, “and such weather; the finest we have had since July. Come, cease this fluttering about – you disturb me – and I have a hundred things to do.”

“Yes, papa.” Bee’s little figure stole from behind him in the meekest way. She stopped in her progress towards the door to give a touch to the flowers on a side table; and then she went slowly on, going out. She had got her hand upon the handle of the door, and Colonel Kingsward thanked heaven he had got rid of her for the moment, when she turned round, eyeing him closely again though keeping by that means of escape. “Papa,” she said, softly, “after all the talk we have been having – you perhaps don’t remember that – you have never – answered my question yet.”

“What question?” he said sharply.

Bee put her hands together like a child, she looked at him beseechingly, coaxingly, like that child returning to its point, and then she said still more softly, “About Aubrey, dear papa!”

CHAPTER XIV

I will not attempt to follow in detail the course of that autumn. It was a fine season, and Mrs. Kingsward was taken to her home in the country and recovered much of her lost health in the serene ending of the month and the bright days of October, which was a model October – everything that month ought to be. The trees had scarcely begun to take any autumnal colouring upon them when they reached Kingswarden – a house which stood among the Surrey hills; an old house placed not as modern houses are, pitched upon hillsides, or at points where there is “a view.” The old Kingswards had been moved by no such ridiculous modern sentiments. They had planted their mansion in a sheltered spot, where it would be safe from the winds that range over the country and all the moorland heights. The gates opened upon a wild country road with an extravagant breadth of green pathway and grassy bank on either side – enough to have made a farmer swear, but very pleasant to the eye and delightful to a horse’s feet, as well as to the pedestrians, whether they were tramps or tourists, who walked or rode on bicycles – the latter class only – from London to Portsmouth. The house was old, red, and straggling, covered with multitudes of creepers. Sheets of purple clematis – the Jackmanni, if anybody wishes to know; intolerable name for such a royal garment of blossom – covered half-a-dozen corners, hanging down in great brilliant wreaths over old ivy and straggling Virginia creeper and the strong stalks of the climbing roses, which still bore here and there a flower. Other sheets of other flowers threw themselves about in other places as if at their own sweet will, especially the wild exuberance of the Traveller’s Joy; though I need not say that this wildness was under the careful eye of the gardener, who would not let it go too far. I cannot attempt to tell how many other pleasant and fragrant and flowery things there were which insisted on growing in that luxurious place, even to the fastidious Highland creeper, which in that autumn season was the most gay, luxuriant, and delightful of all. The flowers abounded like the children, not to be checked, as healthy and as brilliant, in the fine, peaty soil and pure air. The scent of the mignonette, which in this late season straggled anywhere, seemed to fill half the country round. The borders were crowned with those autumn flowers which make up as well as they can for their want of sweetness by lavish wealth of colour – the glowing single dahlias, which this generation has had the good sense to re-capture from Nature after the quilled and rosetted artificial things which the gardeners had manufactured out of them, and the fine scarlet and blue of the salvias, and the glory of all those golden tribes of the daisy kind that now make our borders bright, instead of the old sturdy red geranium, which once sufficed for all the supplies of autumn, an honest servant but a poor lord. I prefer the sweetness of the Spring, when every flower has a soul in it, and breathes it all about in the air, that is full of hope. But as it cannot always be Spring, that triumph of bright hues is something to mask the face of winter with until the time when the tortured and fantastic chrysanthemum reigns alone.

This was the sort of garden they had at Kingswarden; not shut off in a place by itself, but bordering all the lawns, which were of the velvet it takes centuries to perfect. The immediate grounds sloped a little to the south, and beyond them was a very extensive, if somewhat flat, prospect, ending on the horizon in certain mild blue shadows which were believed to be hills. There was not much that could be called a park at Kingswarden. The few farms which Colonel Kingsward possessed pressed his little circle of trees rather close; but as long as the farms were let the family felt they could bear this. It gave them a comfortable feeling of modest natural wealth and company; the yeomen keeping the squire warm, they in their farmsteadings, he in the hall.

And the autumn went on in its natural course, gaining colour as it began to lose its greenness and the days their warmth. The fruit got all gathered in after the corn, the apple trees that had been such a sight, every bough bent down with its balls of russet or gold, looked shabby and worn, their season done, the hedges ran over with their harvest, every kind of wild berry and feathery seedpod, wild elderberries, hips and haws, the dangerous unwholesome fruit of the nightshade, the triumphant wreaths of bryony of every colour, green, crimson, and purple. The robins began to appear about Kingswarden, hopping about the lawns, and coming very near the dining-room windows after breakfast, when the little tribe of the nursery children had their accustomed half-hour with mamma, and delighted in nothing so much as to crumble the bread upon the terrace and tempt the redbreasts nearer and nearer. When, quite satisfied and comforted about his wife’s looks, Colonel Kingsward went off to the shooting, this little flock of children trailed after mamma wherever she went, a little blooming troop. By this time Charlie had gone back to Oxford, and the little ones liked to have the run of the lawns outside and the sitting rooms within, with nothing more alarming than Betty to keep them in order. It is to be feared that the relaxation of discipline which occurred when papa was absent was delightful to all those little people, and neither was Mrs. Kingsward sorry now and then to feel herself at full ease – with no necessity anywhere of further restraint than her own softened perceptions of family decorum required. It was a moment in which, if that could be said, she was self-indulgent – sometimes not getting up at her usual hour, but taking her breakfast in her room, with clusters of little boys and girls all over her bed, and over the carpet, sharing every morsel, climbing over her in their play. And when she went out to drive she had the carriage full of them; and when she took her stroll about the grounds they were all about, shouting and racing, nobody suggesting that it would be “too much for her,” or sending them off because they disturbed mamma. She was disturbed to her heart’s content while the Colonel was away. She said, “You know this is very nice for a time, but it would not do always,” to her elder daughter: but I think that she saw no necessity, except in the return of her husband, why it should not do, and she enjoyed herself singing to them, dancing (a very little) with them, playing for them as only the mother of a large family ever can play, that simple dance music which is punctuated and kept in perfect time by her heart as much as by her ear. For myself, I know the very touch upon the piano of a woman who is the orchestra of the children, who makes their little feet twinkle to the music. There is no band equal to it for harmony, and precision, and go. They enjoyed the freedom of having no one to say, “Hush, don’t make such a noise in the house,” of the absence of all the disturbable people, “the gentlemen,” as the servants plainly said, “being away” more, Mrs. Kingsward sometimes thought, with a faint twinge of conscience, than it was right they should enjoy anything in the absence of papa. Charlie was quite as bad as papa, and declared that they made his head ache, and that no fellow could work with such a row going on; it made the little carnival all the more joyous that he was out of the way.