“Is your brother here?” he asked, harshly, establishing himself with his back to the fire.
“My brother?” echoed Bee, for indeed there were half-a-dozen, and how was she to know on the spur of the moment which he meant.
Colonel Kingsward looked, in the partial light (for a lamp which smoked had been brought in hurriedly, to make things worse), as if he would have liked to seize his daughter and wring her slender neck. He went on with additional irritation: “I said your brother. The others, I have no doubt, will provide trouble enough in their turn. For the moment it is, of course, Charlie I mean. Is he here?”
“Papa! Why, he is at Oxford, you know, in the schools——”
Colonel Kingsward laughed harshly. “He was going in for honours, wasn’t he? Wanted to go up to read in the long vacation—was full of what he was going to do? Well, it has all ended in less than nothing, as I might have known it would. Read that!” he cried, tossing a letter on the table.
Bee, with her heart sick, took up and opened the letter, and struggled to read, in her agitation, an exceedingly bad hand by an indifferent light. She made out enough to see that Charlie had not succeeded in his “schools,” that he had not even secured a “pass,” that he had incurred the continual censure of his college authorities by shirking lectures, failing in engagements, and doing absolutely no work. So far as was known there was nothing against his moral character, but—— Bee, to whom the censure of the college sounded like a sentence of death, put down the dreadful letter carefully, as if it might explode, and raised large eyes, widened with alarm and misery, to her father’s face.
“Oh, papa!” was all that she could say.
“I telegraphed to him to come home at once and meet me here. The fool,” said Colonel Kingsward, pacing about the room, “is capable of not doing that—of going away—of——”
“Papa, they say there is nothing against his character. Oh! you couldn’t think that he would—do anything dreadful; not disappear, not——” Bee said the rest in an anguish of suspicion and ignorance with her eyes.
“God knows what an idiot like that may do! Things are bad enough, but he will, of course, think them worse than they are. There is one thing we may be sure of,” he said, with a fierce laugh, “Charlie will do nothing to make himself uncomfortable. He knows how to take care of himself.” Colonel Kingsward walked up and down the room, gnawing the end of his moustache. The lamp smoked, but he took no notice of it. “There is one thing certain,” he said, “and that is, there’s a woman in it. I remember now, he was always thinking of something; like an ass, I supposed it was his studies. No doubt it was some Jezebel or other.”