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.
“You are not like anything I have known, you girls of the period,” cried the angry mother. “You are acquainted with such things as I at my age had never heard of. You make accusations! But now—he shall answer for himself,” she said, flaming with righteous wrath. Mrs. Leigh went to the bell and rang it so violently that the sound echoed all over the house.
“Go and ask your master to come here at once, directly; I want him this moment,” she said, stamping her foot in her impatience. And then there was a pause. The man went off and was seen from the window to cross the street on his errand. Then Bee rose, her tears hastily dried up, pushing back from her forehead her disordered hair.