The Sorceress. Volume 3 of 3

Miss Lance raised herself in a moment from that half-recumbent position against the wall. She recovered herself, got back her colour and the brightness of her eyes, and that look of being perfectly natural, at her ease, unstrained, spontaneous, which she had shown throughout the interview with Charlie. “Certainly,” she said. There did not seem to be time for the twinkling of an eyelid between the one mood and the other. She required no preparation or interval to pull herself together. She looked at the two sisters as if to call them to follow her, and then walked quietly downstairs to be tried for her life – like a martyr – oh, no, for she was not a martyr, but a criminal. She had no confidence of innocence about her. She knew what indictment was about to be brought against her, and she knew it was true. This knowledge, however, gives a certain strength. It gives courage such as the innocent who do not know what charge may be brought against them or how to meet it, do not possess. She had rehearsed the scene. She knew what she was going to be accused of, and had thought over, and set in order, all the pleas. She knew exactly what she had done and what she had not, which was a tower of strength to her, and she knew that on her power of fighting it out depended her life. It is difficult altogether to deny our sympathy to a brave creature fighting for bare life. However guilty he may be, human nature takes sides with him, hopes in the face of all justice that there may be a loophole of escape. Even Bee, coming slowly downstairs after her, already thrown into a curious tumult of feeling by that scene in Charlie’s room, began to feel her breath quicken with excitement even in the hostility of her heart.

There was one thing that Miss Lance had not foreseen, and that burst upon her at once when the maid opened the door – Colonel Kingsward, standing with his arm upon the mantel-piece and his countenance as if turned to stone. The shock which this sight gave her was very difficult to overcome or conceal, it struck her with a sudden dart as of despair; her impulse was to fling down her arms, to acknowledge herself vanquished, and to retreat, a defeated and ruined adventuress, but she was too brave and unalterably by nature too sanguine to do this. She gave him a nod and a smile, to which he scarcely responded, as she went towards Mrs. Leigh.

“How strange,” she said, “when I come to see a new friend to find so old a friend! I wondered if it could be Mr. Leigh’s house, but I was not sure – of the number.”

“I am afraid I cannot say I am glad to see you, Laura,” said Mrs. Leigh.

“No? Perhaps it would have been too much to expect. We were, so to speak, on different sides. Poor Amy, I know, was never satisfactory to you, and I don’t wonder. Of course you only thought of me as her friend.”

“If that were all!” Mrs. Leigh said.

“Was there more than that? May I sit down? I have had a long walk, and rather an exhaustive interview – and I did not expect to be put on my trial. But it is always best to know what one is accused of. I think it quite natural – quite natural that you should not like me, Mrs. Leigh. I was Amy’s friend and she was trying to you. She put me in a very false position which I ought never to have accepted. But yet – I understand your attitude, and I submit to it with respect – but, pardon me – sincerely, I don’t know what there was more.”

Miss Lance had taken a chair, a perfectly upright one, on which few people could have sat gracefully. She made it evident that it was mere fatigue which made her subside upon it momentarily, and lifted her fine head and limpid eyes with so candid and respectful an air towards Mrs. Leigh’s comfortable, unheroic face, that no contrast of the oppressed and oppressor could have been more marked. If anyone had suffered in the matter between these two ladies, it certainly was not the one with the rosy countenance and round, well-filled-out figure; or so, at least, any impartial observer certainly would have felt.

Mrs. Leigh, for her part, was almost speechless with excitement and anger. She had intended to keep perfectly calm, but the look, the tone, the appearance of this personage altogether, brought before her overpoweringly many past scenes – scenes in which, to tell the truth, Miss Lance had not been always in the wrong, in which the other figure, now altogether disappeared, of Aubrey’s wife was the foremost, an immovable gentle-mannered fool, with whom all reason and argument were unavailing, whom everybody had believed to be inspired by the companion to whom she clung. All Amy’s faults had been bound upon Laura’s shoulders, but this was not altogether deserved, and Miss Lance did not shrink from anything that could be said on that subject. It required more courage to say, “Was there anything more?”

“More!” cried Mrs. Leigh, choking with the remembrance. “More! My boy’s house was made unsafe for him, it was made miserable to him, he was involved in every kind of danger and scandal, and she asks me if there was more?”

“Poor Amy,” said Miss Lance, with a little pause on the name, shaking her head gently in compassion and regret. “Poor Amy put me in a very false position. I have already said so, I ought not to have accepted it, I ought not to have promised; but it was so difficult to refuse a promise to the dying. Let Colonel Kingsward judge. She was very unwise, but she had been my friend from infancy and clung to me more, much more than I wished. She exacted a promise from me on her death-bed that I would never leave her child – which was folly, and, perhaps more than folly, so far, at least, as I was concerned. You may imagine, Colonel Kingsward,” she added, steadfastly regarding him. He had kept his head turned away, not looking at her, but this gaze compelled him against his will to shift his position, to turn towards the appellant who made him the judge. He still kept his eyes away, but his head turned by an attraction which he could not withstand. “You may imagine, Colonel Kingsward – that I was the person who suffered most,” Miss Lance said after that pause, “compelled to stay in a house where I had never been welcome, except to poor Amy, who was dead; a sort of guardian, a sort of nurse, and yet with none of their rights, held fast by a promise which I had given against my will, and which I never ceased to regret. You are a man, Colonel Kingsward, but you have more understanding of a woman’s feelings than any I know. My position was a false one, it was cruel – but I was bound by my word.”

“No one ought to have given such a promise,” he said, coldly, with averted eyes.

“You are always right, I ought not to have done so; but she was dying, and I was fond of her, poor girl, though she was foolish – it is not always the wisest people one loves most – fond of her, very fond of her, and of her poor little child.”

The tears came to Miss Lance’s eyes. She shook her head a little as if to shake them from her eyelashes. “Why should I cry? They have been so long happy, happier far than we – ”

Mrs. Leigh, the prosecutor, the accuser, gave a gulp, a sob; the child was her grandchild, her only one – and besides anger in a woman is as prone to tears as sorrow. She gave a stifled cry, “I don’t deny you were good to the child; oh, Laura, I could have forgiven you everything! But not – not – ”

“What?” Miss Lance said.

Mrs. Leigh seized upon Bee by the arm and drew her forward – Aubrey’s mother wanted words, she wanted eloquence, her arguments had to be pointed by fact. She took Bee, who had been standing in proud yet excited spectatorship, and held her by her own side. “Aubrey,” she said, almost inarticulately, and stopped to recover her breath – “Aubrey – whom you had driven from his home – found at last this dear girl, this nice, good girl, who would have made him a new life. But you interfered, you wrote to her father, you went – I don’t know what you did – and said you had a claim, a prior claim. If you appeal to Colonel Kingsward, he is the best judge. You went to him – ”

“Not to me, I was not aware, I never even saw Miss Lance till long after; forgive me for interrupting you.”

Miss Lance turned towards him again with that full look of faith and confidence. “Always just!” she said. And this time for a tremulous moment their eyes met. He turned his away again hastily, but he had received that touch; an indefinable wavering came over his aspect of iron.

“Yes,” she said, “I do not deny it – it is quite true. Shall I now explain before every one who is here? I think,” she added, after a moment, “that my little Betty, who has nothing particular to do with it, may run away.”

“I!” said Betty, clinging to the back of a chair.

“Go,” said her father, impatiently, “go!”

“Yes, my dear, run away. Charlie must want some one. He will have got over me a little, and he will want some one. Dear little Betty, run away!”

Miss Lance rose from her seat – probably that too was a relief to her – and, with a smile and a kiss, turned Betty out of the room. She came back then and sat down again. It gained a little time, and she was at a crisis harder than she had ever faced before. She had gained a moment to think, but even now she was not sure what way there was out of this strait, the most momentous in which she had ever been. She looked round her at one after another with a look that seemed as secure and confident, as easy and natural, as before; but her brain was working at the most tremendous rate, looking for some clue, some indication. She looked round as with a pause of conscious power, and then her gaze fixed itself on Bee. Bee stood near Mrs. Leigh’s chair. She was standing firm but tremulous, a deeply concerned spectator, but there was on her face nothing of the eager attention with which a girl would listen to an explanation about her lover. She was not more interested than she had been before, not so much so as when Charlie was in question. When Mrs. Leigh, in her indictment, said, “You interfered,” Bee had made a faint, almost imperceptible movement of her head. The mind works very quickly when its fate hangs on the balance of a minute, and now, suddenly, the culprit arraigned before these terrible judges saw her way.

“I interfered,” Miss Lance said, slowly, “but not because of any prior claim;” – she paused again for a moment – “that would have been as absurd as in the case Colonel Kingsward knows of. I interfered – because I had other reasons for believing that Aubrey Leigh was not the man to marry a dear, good, nice girl.”

“You had – other reasons, Laura! Mind what you are saying – you will have to prove your words,” cried Mrs. Leigh, rising in her wrath, with an astonished and threatening face.

“I do not ask his mother to believe me. It is before Colonel Kingsward,” said Miss Lance, “that I stand or fall.”

“Colonel Kingsward, make her speak out! You know it was because she claimed my son – she, a woman twice his age; and now she pretends – Make her speak out! How dare you? You said he had promised to marry you – that he was bound to you. Colonel Kingsward, make her speak out!”

“That was what I understood,” he said, looking out of the window, his head turned half towards the other speakers, but not venturing to look at them. “I did not see Miss Lance, but that was what I understood.”

Laura sat firm, as if she were made of marble, but almost as pale. Her nerves were so highly strung that if she had for a moment relaxed their tension, she would have fallen to the ground. She sat like a rock, holding herself together with the strong grasp of her clasped hands.

“You hear, you hear! You are convicted out of your own mouth. Oh, you are cruel, you are wicked, Laura Lance! If you have anything to say speak out, speak out!”

“I will say nothing,” said Miss Lance. “I will leave another, a better witness, to say it for me. Colonel Kingsward, ask your daughter if it was because of my prior claim, as his mother calls it, that she broke off her engagement with Aubrey Leigh.”

Colonel Kingsward turned, surprised, to his daughter, who, roused by the sound of her own name, looked up quickly – first at the seemingly composed and serious woman opposite to her, then at her father. He spoke to her angrily, abruptly.

“Do you hear? Answer the question that is put to you. Was it because of this lady, or any claim of hers, that you – how shall I say it? – a girl like you had no right to decide one way or the other – that you broke off – that your mind was changed towards Mr. Aubrey Leigh?”

It appeared to Bee suddenly as if she had become the culprit, and all eyes were fixed on her. She trembled, looking at them all. What had she done? She was surely unhappy enough, wretched enough, a clandestine visitor, keeping Aubrey out of his own house, and what had she to do with Aubrey? Nothing, nothing! Nor he with her – that her heart should now be snatched out of her bosom publicly in respect to him.

“That is long past,” she said, faltering, “it is an old story. Mr. Aubrey Leigh is – a stranger to me; it is of no consequence – now!”

“Bee,” her father thundered at her, “answer the question! Was it because of – this lady that you changed your mind?”

Colonel Kingsward had always the art, somehow, of kindling the blaze of opposition in the blue eyes which were so like his own. She looked at him almost fiercely in reply, fully roused.

“No!” she said, “no! It was not because of – that lady. It was another – reason of my own.”

“What was your reason?” cried Mrs. Leigh. “Oh, Bee, speak! What was it, what was it? Tell me, tell me, my dear, what was your reason? that I may prove to you it was not true.”

“Had it anything to do with – this lady?” asked Colonel Kingsward once more.

“I never spoke to that lady but once,” cried Bee, almost violently. “I don’t know her; I don’t want to know her. She has nothing to do with it. It was because of something quite different, something that we heard – I – and mamma.”

Miss Lance looked at him with a smile on her face, loosing the grip of her hands, spreading them out in demonstration of her acquittal. She rose up slowly, her beautiful eyes filled with tears. She allowed it to be seen for the first time how she was shaken with emotion.

“You have heard,” she said, “a witness you trust more than me – if I put myself into the breach to secure a pause, it was only such a piece of folly as I have done before. I hope now that you will let me withdraw. I am dreadfully tired, I am not fit for any more.”

She looked with that appeal upon her face, first at one of her judges, then at the other. “If you are satisfied, let me go.” It seemed as if she could not say a word more. They made no response, but she did not wait for that. “I take it for granted,” she added, “that by that child’s mouth I am cleared,” and then she turned towards the door.

Colonel Kingsward, with a little start, came from his place by the mantel-piece and opened it for her, as he would have done for any woman. She let it appear that this movement was unexpected, and went to her heart; she paused a moment looking up at him – her eyes swimming in tears, her mouth quivering.

“How kind you are!” she said, “even though you don’t believe in me any more! but I have done all I can. I am very tired, scarcely able to walk.” He stood rigid, and made no sign, and she, looking at him, softly shook her head – “Let me see you at least once,” she said, very low, in a pleading tone, “this evening, some time?”

Still he gave no answer, standing like a man of iron, holding the door open. She gave him another look, and then walked quietly, but with a slight quiver and half stumble, away. They all stood watching until her tall figure was seen to pass the window, disappearing in the street, which is the outer world.

“Colonel Kingsward – ” said Mrs. Leigh.

He started at the sound of his name, as if he had but just awakened out of a dream, and began to smooth his hat, which all this time he had held in his hands.

“Excuse me,” he said, “excuse me, another time. I have some pressing business to see to now.”

And he, too, disappeared into that street which led both ways, into the monotony of London, which is the world.

CHAPTER XVII

Those who were left behind were not very careful of what Colonel Kingsward did. They were not thinking of his concerns; in the strain of personal feeling the most generous of human creatures is forced to think first of their own. Neither of the women who were left in the room had any time to consider the matter, but if they had they would have made sure without hesitation that nothing which could happen to Colonel Kingsward could be half so important as that crisis in which his daughter was involved.

Mrs. Leigh turned round upon the girl by her side and seized her hands. “Bee,” she cried, “now we are alone and we can speak freely. Tell me what it was, there is nobody here to frighten you, to take the words from your mouth. What was it, what was it that made you turn from Aubrey? At last, at last, it can be cleared up whatever it was.”

Bee turned away, trying to disengage her hands. “It is of no consequence,” she said, “Oh, don’t make me go back to those old, old things. What does it matter to Mr. Leigh? And as for me – ”

“It matters everything to Aubrey. He will be able to clear himself if you will give him the chance. How could he clear himself when he was never allowed to speak, when he did not know? Bee, in justice, in mere justice! What was it? You said your mother – ”

“Yes, I had her then. We heard it together, and she felt it like me. But we had no time to talk of it after, for she was ill. If you would please not ask me, Mrs. Leigh! I was very miserable – mother dying, and nowhere, nowhere in all the world anything to trust to. Don’t, oh! don’t make me go back upon it! I am not – so very – happy, even now!”

The girl would not let herself be drawn into Mrs. Leigh’s arms. She refused to rest her head upon the warm and ample bosom which was offered to her. She drew away her hands. It was difficult, very difficult, to keep from crying. It is always hard for a girl to keep from crying when her being is so moved. The only chance for her was to keep apart from all contact, to stand by herself and persuade herself that nobody cared and that she was alone in the world.

“Bee, I believe,” said Mrs. Leigh, solemnly, “that you have but to speak a word and you will be happy. You have not your mother now. You can’t turn to her and ask her what you should do. But I am sure that she would say, ‘speak!’ If she were here she would not let you break a man’s heart and spoil his life for a punctilio. I have always heard she was a good woman and kind – kind. Bee,” the elder lady laid her hand suddenly on the girl’s shoulder, making her start, “she would say ‘speak’ if she were here.”

“Oh, mamma, if you were here!” said Bee, through her tears.

She broke down altogether and became inarticulate, sobbing with her face buried in her hands. The ordeal of the last two days had been severe. Charlie and his concerns and the appearance of Miss Lance, and the conflict only half understood which had been going on round her, had excited and disturbed her beyond expression, as everybody could see and understand. But, indeed, these were but secondary elements in the storm which had overwhelmed Bee, which was chiefly brought back by that sudden plunge into the atmosphere of Aubrey. The sensation of being in his house, which she might in other circumstances have shared with him, of sitting at his table, in his seat, under the roof that habitually sheltered him – here, where her own life ought to have been passed, but where the first condition now was that there should be nothing of him visible. In Aubrey’s house, but not for Aubrey! Aubrey banished, lest perhaps her eyes might fall upon him by chance, or her ears be offended by the sound of his voice! Even his mother did not understand how much this had to do with the passion and trouble of the girl, from whose eyes the innocent name of her mother, sweetest though saddest of memories, had let forth the salt and boiling tears. If Mrs. Leigh had been anybody in the world save Aubrey’s mother, Bee would have clung to her, accepting the tender support and consolation of the elder women’s arms and her sympathy, but from Aubrey’s mother she felt herself compelled to keep apart.

It was not until her almost convulsive sobbing was over that this question could be re-opened, and in the meantime Betty having heard the sound of the closing door came rushing downstairs and burst into the room: perhaps she was not so much disturbed or excited as Mrs. Leigh was by Bee’s condition. She gave her sister a kiss as she lay on the sofa where Mrs. Leigh had placed her, and patted her on the shoulder.

“She will be better when she has had it out,” said Betty. “She has worked herself up into such a state about Miss Lance. And oh, please tell me what has happened. You are her enemy, too, Mrs. Leigh – oh, how can you misjudge her so! As if she had been the cause of any harm! I was sent away,” said Betty, “and, of course, Bee could not speak – but I could have told you. Yes, of course, I knew! How could I help knowing, being her sister? I can’t tell whether she told me, I knew without telling; and, of course, she must have told me. This is how it was – ”

Bee put forth her hand and caught her sister by the dress, but Betty was not so easily stopped. She turned round quickly, and took the detaining hand into her own and patted and caressed it.

“It is far better to speak out,” she said, “it must be told now, and though I am young and you call me little Betty, I cannot help hearing, can I, what people say? Mrs. Leigh, this was how it was. Whatever happened about dear Miss Lance – whom I shall stick to and believe in whatever you say,” cried Betty, by way of an interlude, with flashing eyes, “that had nothing, nothing to do with it. That was a story – like Charlie’s, I suppose, and Bee no more made a fuss about it than I should do. It was after, when Bee was standing by Aubrey, like – like Joan of Arc; yes, of course I shall call him Aubrey – I should like to have him for a brother, but that has got nothing to do with it. A lady came to call upon mamma, and she told a story about someone on the railway who had met Aubrey on the way home after that scene at Cologne, after he was engaged to Bee, and was miserable because of papa’s opposition.” Betty spoke so fast that her words tumbled over each other, so to speak, in the rush for utterance. “Well, he was seen,” she resumed, pausing for breath, “putting a young woman with children into one of the sleeping carriages – a poor young woman that had no money or right to be there. He put her in, and when they got to London he was seen talking to her, and giving her money, as if she belonged to him. I don’t see any harm in that, for he was always kind to poor people. But these ladies did, and I suppose so did mamma, and Bee blazed up. That is just like her. She takes fire, she never waits to ask questions, she stops her ears. She thought it was something dreadful, showing that he had never cared for her, that he had cared for other people even when he was pretending, I should have done quite different. I should have said, ‘Now, look here, Aubrey, what does it mean?’ – or, rather, I should never have thought anything but that he was kind. He was always kind – silly, indeed, about poor people, as so many are.”

Mrs. Leigh had followed Betty’s rapid narrative with as much attention as she could concentrate upon it, but the speed with which the words flew forth, the little interruptions, the expressions of Betty’s matured and wise opinions, bewildered her beyond measure.

“What does it all mean?” she asked, looking from one to another when the story was done. “A sleeping carriage on the railway – a woman with children – as if she belonged to him? How could a woman with children belong to him?” Then she paused and grew crimson with an old woman’s painful blush. “Is it vice, horrible vulgar vice, this child is attributing to my boy?”

The two girls stared, confused and troubled. Bee got up from the sofa and put her hands to her head, her eyes fixed upon Mrs. Leigh with an appalled and horrified look. She had not asked herself of what Aubrey had been accused. She had fled from him before the dreadful thought of relationships she did not understand, of something which was the last insult to her, whatever it might be in itself. “Vulgar vice!” The girls were cowed as if some guilt had been imputed to themselves.