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The Sorceress. Volume 3 of 3

CHAPTER XI

Betty Kingsward lived in what was to her a whirl of pleasure at Portman Square, where everybody was fond of her, and all manner of entertainments were devised for her pleasure. And her correspondence was not usually of an exciting character. Her morning letters, when she had any, were placed by her plate on the breakfast-table. If any came by other posts, she got them when she had a spare moment to look for them, and she had scarcely a spare moment at this very lively and very happy moment of her young career. Besides, that particular evening when Bee’s note arrived was a very important one to Betty. It was the evening on which Miss Lance was to dine with the Lyons. And it was not a mere quiet family dinner, but a party – a thing which in her newness and inexperience still excited the little girl, who was not to say properly “out,” in consequence of her mourning; still wearing black ribbons with her white frocks, and only allowed to accept invitations which were “quiet.” A dinner of twenty people is not exactly an entertainment for a girl of her years, but Betty’s excitement in the debût of Miss Lance was so great that no ball could have occupied her more. There was an unusual interest about it in the whole house, even Mrs. Lyon’s maid, the most staid of confidential persons, had begged Betty to point out to her over the baluster “the lady, Miss Betty, that is coming with your papa.”

“Oh, she’s not coming with papa,” Betty had cried, with a laugh at Hobbs’ mistake, “she is only a great, great friend, Hobbs. You will easily know her, for there is nobody else so handsome.”

“Handsome is as handsome does,” said the woman, and she patted Betty on the shoulder under pretence of arranging her ribbon.

Betty had not the least idea why Hobbs looked at her with such compassionate eyes.

Miss Lance, however, did come into the room, to Betty’s surprise, closely followed by Colonel Kingsward, as if they had arrived together. She was like a picture, in her black satin and lace, dressed not too young but rather too old for her age, as Mrs. Lyon pointed out, who was as much excited about her new guest as Betty herself; and the unknown lady had the greatest possible success in a party which consisted chiefly, as Betty did not remark, of old friends of Colonel Kingsward, with whom she had been acquainted all her life. Betty did not remark it, but Gerald Lyon did, who was more than ever her comrade and companion in this elderly company.

“Why all these old fogies?” he had asked irreverently, as the gentlemen with stars on their coats and the ladies in diamonds came in.

Betty perceived that it was an unusually solemn party, but thought no more of it. It was the evening of the first levee, and that, perhaps, was the reason why the old gentlemen wore their orders. Old gentlemen! They were the flower of the British army. Generals This and That, heads of departments; impossible to imagine more grand people – in the flower of their age, like Colonel Kingsward. But eighteen has its own ideas very clearly marked on that subject. Betty and Gerald stood by, lighting up one corner with a blaze of undeniable youth, to see them come in. The young pair were like flowers in comparison with the substantial size and well worn complexions of their seniors, and they were the only little nobodies, the sole representatives of undistinguished and ordinary humanity round the table. They were not by any means daunted by that. On the contrary, they felt themselves, as it were, soaring over the heads of all those limited persons who had attained, spurning the level heights of realisation. They did not in the least know what was to become of them in life, but naturally they made light of the others who did know, who had done all they were likely to do, and had no more to look to. The dignity of accomplished success filled the young ones with impulses of laughter; their inferiority gave them an elevation over all the grizzled heads; they felt themselves, nobodies, to be almost ludicrously, dizzily above the heads of the rest. Only one of the company seemed to see this, however; to cast them an occasional look, even to make them the confidants of an occasional smile, a raising of the eyebrows, a sort of unspoken comment on the fine company, which made Betty still more lively in her criticisms. But this made almost a quarrel between the two.

“Oh, I wish we were nearer to Miss Lance, to hear what she thinks of it all,” Betty said.

“I can’t think what you see in that woman,” cried Gerald. “I, for one, have no desire to know her opinion.”

Betty turned her little shoulder upon him with a glance of flame, that almost set the young man on fire.

“You prejudiced, cynical, uncharitable, malicious, odious boy!” And they did not say another word to each other for five minutes by the clock.

Miss Lance, however, there was no doubt, had a distinguished success. She captivated the gentlemen who were next to her at table, and, what was perhaps more difficult, she made a favourable impression upon the ladies in the drawing-room. Her aspect there, indeed, was of the most attractive kind. She drew Betty’s arm within her own, and said with a laugh, “You and I are the girls, little Betty, among all these grand married ladies;” and then she added, “Isn’t it a little absurd that we shouldn’t have some title to ourselves, we old maids? – for Miss means eighteen, and it’s hard that it should mean forty-two. Fancy the disappointment of hearing this juvenile title and then finding that it means a middle-aged woman.”

She laughed so freely that some of the other ladies laughed too. The attention of all was directed towards the new comer, which Betty thought very natural, she was so much the handsomest of them all.

“You mean the disappointment of a gentleman?” said one of the guests.

“Oh, no, of ladies too. Don’t you think women are just as fond of youth as men are, and as much disgusted with an elderly face veiling itself in false pretences? Oh, more! We think more of beauty than the men do,” said Miss Lance, raising her fine head as if to expose its features to the fire of all the glances bent upon her.

There was a little chorus of cries, “Oh, no, no,” and arguments against so novel a view.

But Miss Lance did not quail; her own beauty was done full justice to. She was so placed that more than one mirror in the old-fashioned room reflected her graceful and not unstudied pose.

“I know it isn’t a usual view,” she said, “but if you’ll think of it a little you’ll find it’s true. The common thing is to talk about women being jealous of each other. If we are it is because we are always the first to find out a beautiful face – and usually we much exaggerate its power.”

“Do you know,” said Mrs. Lyon in her quavering voice, “I almost think Miss Lance is right? Mr. Lyon instantly says ‘Humph!’ when I point out a pretty person to him. And Gerald tells me, ‘You think every girl pretty, aunt.’”

“That is because there is one little girl that he thinks the most pretty of all,” said Miss Lance, with a sort of soft maternal coo in Betty’s ear.

The subject was taken up and tossed about from one to another, while she who had originated it drew back a little, listening with an air of much attention, turning her head to each speaker, an attitude which was most effective. It will probably be thought the greatest waste of effort for a woman thus to exhibit what the newspapers call her personal advantages to a group of her own sex; but Miss Lance was a very clever woman, and she knew what she was about. After a time, when the first fervour of the argument was over, she returned to her first theme as to the appropriate title that ought to be invented for old maids.

“I have thought of it a great deal,” she said. “I should have called myself Mrs. Laura Lance, to discriminate – but for the American custom of calling all married ladies so, which is absurd.”

“I have a friend in New York who writes to me as Mrs. Mary Lyon,” said the mistress of the house.

“Yes, which is ridiculous, you know; for you are not Mrs. Mary Lyon, dear lady. You are Mrs. Francis Lyon, if it is necessary to have a Christian name, for Lyon is your husband’s name, not yours. You are Mrs. Mary Howard by rights – if in such a matter there are any rights.”

“What!” cried old Mr. Lyon, coming in after the long array of gentlemen, “are you going to divorce my wife from me, or give her another name, or what are you going to do? We thought it was we only who could change the ladies’ names, Kingsward, eh?”

Colonel Kingsward had placed himself immediately in front of Miss Lance, and Betty, looking on all unsuspicious, saw a glance pass between them – or rather, she saw Miss Lance look up into her father’s face. Betty did not know in the least what that look meant, but it gave her a little shock as if she had touched an electric battery. It meant something more than to Betty’s consciousness had ever been put into words. She turned her eyes away for a moment to escape the curious thrill that ran through her, and in that moment met Gerald Lyon’s eyes, full of something malicious, mocking, disagreeable, which made Betty very angry. But she could not explain to herself what all these looks meant.

This curious sensation somehow spoiled the rest of the evening for Betty. Everybody it seemed to her after this meant something – something more than they said. They looked at her father, they looked at Miss Lance, they looked even at Betty’s little self, embracing all three, sometimes in one comprehensive glance. And all kinds of significant little speeches were made as the company went away. “I am so glad to have seen her,” one lady said in an undertone to Mrs. Lyon. “One regrets, of course, but one is thankful it is no worse.” “I think,” said another, “it will do very well – I think it will do very well; thank you for the opportunity.” And “Charming, my dear Mrs. Lyon, charming,” said another. They all spoke low and in the most confidential tone. What was it they were all so interested about?

The last of the party to go were Miss Lance and Colonel Kingsward. They seemed to go away together as they had seemed to come together.

“Your father is so kind as to see me home,” Miss Lance said, by way of explanation. “I am not a grand lady with a carriage. I am old enough to walk home by myself, and I always do it, but as Colonel Kingsward is so kind, of course I like company best.”

She too had a private word with Mrs. Lyon, at the head of the stairs. Betty did not want to listen, but she heard by instinct the repeated “Thank you, thank you! How can I ever express how much I thank you?” Betty was so bewildered that she could not think. She paid no attention to her father, who put his hands on her shoulders when he said “Good-night,” and said, “Betty, I’ll see you to-morrow.” Oh, of course, she should see him to-morrow – or not, as circumstances might ordain. What did it matter? She was not anxious to see her father to-morrow, it could not be of the least importance whether they met or not; but what Betty would really have liked would have been to find out what all these little whisperings could mean.

Mrs. Lyon came up to her when the last, to wit, Colonel Kingsward following Miss Lance, had disappeared, and put her arms round the little girl. “You are looking a little tired,” she said, “just this last hour. I did not think they would stay so late. It is all Miss Lance, I believe, setting us on to argue with her metaphysics. Well, everybody likes her very much, which will please you, my dear, as you are so fond of her. And now, Betty, you must run off to bed. There’s hardly time for your beauty sleep.”

“Mrs. Lyon,” said Betty, very curious, “was it to meet Miss Lance that all those grand people came?”

“I don’t know what you call grand people. They are all great friends of ours and also of your father’s, and I think you know them every one. And they all know each other.”

“Except Miss Lance,” said Gerald, who was always disagreeable – always, when anyone mentioned Miss Lance’s name.

“I know her, certainly, and better than any of them! And there is nobody so delightful,” Betty cried, with fervour, partly because she believed what she said, and partly to be disagreeable in her turn to him.

“And so they all seemed to think,” said old Mr. Lyon, “though I’m not so fond of new people as the rest of you. Lay hands suddenly on no man is what I say.”

“And I say the same as my uncle,” said Gerald, “and it’s still more true of a woman than a man.”

“You are such an experienced person,” said the old lady; “they know so much better than we do, Betty. But never you mind, for your friend has made an excellent impression upon all these people – the most tremendously respectable people,” Mrs. Lyon said, “none of your artists and light-minded persons! Make yourself comfortable with that thought, and good night, my little Betty. You must not stay up so late another night.”

What nonsense that was of staying up late, when it was not yet twelve o’clock! But Betty went off to her room with a little confusion and bewilderment of mind, happy on the whole, but feeling as if she had something to think about when she should be alone. What was it she had to think about? She could not think what it was when she sat down alone to study her problem. There was no problem, and what the departing guests had said to Mrs. Lyon was quite simple, and referred to something that was their own business, that had nothing to do with Betty. How could it have anything to do with Betty?

Around the corner of the Park, Bee, too, was sitting alone and thinking at the same time, and the two sets of thoughts, neither very clear, revolved round the same circle. But neither of the sisters knew, concerning this problem, whereabouts the other was.

CHAPTER XII

And yet all this time there lay upon Betty’s table, concealed under the pretty laced handkerchiefs which she had pulled out of their sachet to choose one for the party, Bee’s little tremulous letter, expressing a state of mind more agitated than that of Betty, and full of wonderings and trouble. It was found there by the maid who put things in order next morning, when she called the young visitor.

“Here’s a letter that came last night, and you have never opened it,” said the maid, half reproachfully. She, at least, she was anxious to note, had not been to blame.

Betty took it with great sang froid. She saw by the writing it was only Bee’s – and Bee’s news was never imperative. There could not be much to disclose to her of the state of affairs at Kingswarden that was new, since the night before last.

But the result was that Betty went downstairs in her hat and gloves, and that Mr. Lyon and Gerald, who were both sitting down to that substantial breakfast which is the first symbol of good health and a good conscience in England, had much ado to detain her long enough to share that meal.

Mrs. Lyon did not come downstairs in the morning, so that they used the argument of helplessness, professing themselves unable to pour out their own tea.

“And what business can Betty have of such importance that she must run out without her breakfast?” said the old gentleman.

“Oh, it is news I have heard which I must take at once to papa!”

The two gentlemen looked at each other, and Mr. Lyon shook his big, old head.

“I would not trouble your papa, my dear, with anything you may have heard. Depend upon it, he will let you know anything he wishes you to know – in his own time.”

“But it is news – news,” said Betty; “news about Charlie!”

Then she remembered that very little had been said even to the Lyons about Charlie, and stopped with embarrassment, and her friends could not but believe that this was a hasty expedient to conceal from them that she had heard something – some flying rumour which had set her little impetuous being on fire. When she had escaped from their sympathetic looks and Gerald’s magnanimous proposal to accompany her – without so much as an egg to fortify him for the labours of the day! – Betty set out, crossing the Park in the early glory of the morning, which feels at nine o’clock what six o’clock feels in the country, to carry the news to her father.

Charlie found, and ill; and demanding to see Miss Lance, his health and recovery depending upon whether he should see her or not! Betty’s first instinct had been to hasten at once to George Street, Hanover Square, but then she remembered that papa presumably was the one who was most anxious about Charlie and had the best right to know, and it was perhaps better not to explain to the friends in Portman Square why Miss Lance should go to Charlie. Indeed, when she had set out, a great many questions occurred to Betty, circulating through her lively little mind without any possibility of an answer to them. Why should Charlie be so anxious to see Miss Lance? Why had he been so long there, ill, and nobody come to tell his people of it? And what was Bee doing in Curzon Street, in Aubrey Leigh’s house, which was the last house in the world where she had any right to be? But she walked so fast, and the sunny air with all its movement and lightness so carried her on and filled her with pleasant sounds and images, that these thoughts, blowing like the wind through her little intelligence, had not much effect on Betty now – though there was incipient trouble in them, as even she could see.

Colonel Kingsward was seated at his breakfast when his little girl burst in upon him in all the freshness of the morning. Her youth and her bloom, and her white frock, notwithstanding its black accoutrements, made a great show in the dark-coloured, solemn, official-looking room, with its Turkey carpets and morocco chairs. The Colonel was evidently startled by the sight of her. He said, “Well?” in that tone of self-defence, and almost defiance, with which a man prepares for being called upon to give an account of himself; as if anything so absurd could be possible as that Betty, little Betty, could call upon her father to give an account of himself! But then it is very true that when there is something to be accounted for, the strongest feel how “conscience doth make cowards of us all.”

“Oh,” she cried, breathless, “Papa – Charlie! Bee has found Charlie, and he’s been very ill – typhoid fever; he’s getting better, and he’s in London, and she’s with him; and he wants but to see Miss Lance. Oh, papa, that’s what I came about chiefly – he wants to see Miss Lance.”

Colonel Kingsward’s face changed many times during this breathless deliverance. He said first, “He’s at Mackinnon’s, I know;” then, “In London!” with no pleasure at all in his tone; and finally, “Miss Lance!” angrily, his face covered with a dark glow.

“What is all this?” he cried, when she stopped for want of breath. “Charlie – in town? You must be out of your senses. Why, he is in Scotland. I heard from – , eh? Well, I don’t know that I had any letter, but – . And ill – and Bee with him? What is the meaning of all this? Are you both mad, or in a conspiracy to make yourselves disagreeable to me?”

“Papa!” cried Betty, very ready to take up the challenge; but on the whole the news was too important to justify a combat of self-defence. She produced Bee’s note out of its envelope, and placed it before him, running on with a report of it while the Colonel groped for his eyeglass and arranged it upon his nose.

“A lady came and fetched her,” cried Betty, hurriedly, to forestall the reading, “and brought her up to town and took her to him – oh, so bad – where he had been for weeks; and she told him you had been to Oxford, and something about Miss Lance; and he wants to see Miss Lance, and calls and calls for her, and won’t be satisfied. Oh, papa!”

Colonel Kingsward had arranged his pince-nez very carefully; he had taken up Bee’s note, and went over it word by word while Betty made her breathless report. When he came to the first mention of Miss Lance he struck his hand upon the table like any other man in a passion, making all the cups and plates ring.

“The little fool!” he said, “the little fool! What right had she to bring in that name? It was this that called forth Betty’s exclamation, but no more was said by either till he read it out to the end. Then he flung the letter from him, and getting up, paced about the room in rage and dismay.

“A long illness,” said the Colonel, “was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to him to sweep all that had passed before out of his mind; and here does this infernal little idiot, this little demon full of spite and malice, get at the boy at his worst moment and bring everything back. What right had she, the spiteful, envious little fool, to bring in the name of a lady – of a lady to whom you all owe the greatest respect?”

“Papa!” cried Betty, overwhelmed, “Bee couldn’t have meant any harm.”

Colonel Kingsward was out of himself and he uttered words which terrified his daughter, and which need not be recorded against him – for he certainly did not in cold blood wish Bee to fall under any celestial malediction. He stormed about the room, saying much that Betty could not understand; that it was just the thing of all others that should not have happened, and the time of all others; that if it had been a little later, or even a little earlier, it would not have mattered; that it was enough to overturn every arrangement, increase every difficulty. He was not at all a man to give way to his feelings so. His children, indeed, until very lately, had never seen him excited at all, and it was an astonishment beyond description to little Betty to be a spectator of this scene. Indeed, Colonel Kingsward awoke presently to a sense of the self-exposure he had been making, and calmed down, or, at least, controlled himself, upon which Betty ventured to ask him very humbly what he thought she had better do.

“May I go to Miss Lance and tell her? She is not angry now, nor unhappy about him like – like us,” said Betty, putting the best face upon it with instinctive capacity, “and she might know what to do. She is so very kind and understanding, don’t you know, papa? – and she would know what to do.”

For the first time Colonel Kingsward gave his agitated little visitor a smile. “You seem to have some understanding, too, for a little girl,” he said, “and it looks as if you would be worthy of my confidence, Betty. When I see you this afternoon I shall, perhaps, have something to tell you that – ”

There came over Colonel Kingsward’s fine countenance a smile, a consciousness, which filled Betty with amaze. She had seen her father look handsome, commanding, very serious. She had seen him wear an air which the girls in their profanity had been used in their mother’s happy days to call that of the père noble. She had seen him angry, even in a passion, as to-day. She had heard him, alas! blaspheme, which had been very terrible to Betty. But she had never, she acknowledged to herself, seen him look silly before. Silly, in a girl’s phraseology, was what he looked now, with that fatuity which is almost solely to be attributed to one cause; but of this Betty was not aware. It came over his countenance, and for a moment Colonel Kingsward let himself go on the flood of complacent consciousness, which healed all his wounds. Then he suddenly braced himself up and turned to Betty again.

“Perhaps,” he said, in his most fatherly tone, for it seemed to the man in this crisis of his life that even little Betty’s support was something to hold by, “my dear child, your instinct is right. Go to Miss Lance and tell her how things are. Don’t take this odious letter, however,” he said, seizing Bee’s note and tearing it across with indignant vehemence, “with all its prejudices and assumptions. Tell her in your own words; and where they are – and – Where are they, by the way?” he said, groping for the fragments of the letter in his waste-paper basket. “I hope you noted the address.”

He had not then, it was evident, noted the address, nor the name of Mrs. Leigh, nor in whose house Charlie was. Betty’s heart beat high with the question whether she should call his attention to these additional facts, but her courage failed her. He had cooled down, he was himself again: and after a moment he added, “I will write a little note which you can take,” with once more the smile that Betty thought silly floating across his face. She was standing close by the writing-table, and Betty was not aware that there was any harm in the natural glimpse which her keen eyes took, before she was conscious of it, of the note he was writing. It was not like a common note. It did not begin “Dear Miss Lance,” as would have been natural. In short, it had no beginning at all, nor any signature – or rather it was signed only with his initial “F.” How very extraordinary that papa should sign “F.” and should not put any beginning to his letter. A kind of wondering consternation enveloped the little girl. But still she did not in the least understand what it meant.

Betty walked away along Pall Mall and Piccadilly, and by the edge of the Park to George Street, Hanover Square. It is not according to the present fashion that a girl should shrink from walking along through those busy London streets, where nobody is in search of adventures, at least at that hour of the morning. Her white morning frock and her black ribbons, and her early bloom, like the morning, though delightful to behold, did not make all the passers by stand and stare as the movements of a pretty girl used to do, if we are to credit the novels, in the beginning of the century. People, perhaps, have too much to do nowadays to give to that not unusual sight the attention which the dandies and the macaroni bestowed upon it, and Betty was so evidently bent on her own little business, whatever it was, that nothing naturally occurred to detain her.

It was so unusual for her to have a grave piece of business in hand that she was a little elated by it, even though so sorry for Charlie who was so ill, and for Bee who was so perturbed about everything. Betty herself was not perturbed; she was full of the pleasure of the morning and the long, interesting walk, and the sense of her own importance as a messenger. If there did occasionally float across her mind the idea that her father’s demeanour was strange, or that it was odd that he should have signed his note to Miss Lance with an F., it was merely a momentary idea and she did not question it or detain it. And poor Charlie! Ill – not able to get out this fine weather; but he was getting better, so that there was really nothing to be troubled about.

Miss Lance was up, but had not yet appeared when Betty was shown into her little drawing-room. She was not an early riser. It was one of her vices, she frankly allowed. Betty had to wait, and had time to admire all her friend’s knick-knacks, of which there were many, before she came in, which she did at last, with her arms put out to take Betty maternally to her bosom. She looked in the girl’s face with a very intent glance before she took her into this embrace.

“My little Betty, so early,” she said, and kissed the girl, and then looked at her again, as if in expectation of something; but as Betty could not think of anything that Miss Lance would be expecting from her, she remained unconscious of any special meaning in this look.

“Yes, I am early,” she said; “it is because I have something to tell you, and something to ask of you, too.”

“Tell, my dear little girl, and ask. You may be sure I shall be at your service. But what is this in your hand – a note for me?”

“Yes, it is a note for you, but may I tell you first what it is about?” Betty went on quickly with her story, though Miss Lance, without waiting for it, took the note and opened it. “Miss Lance, Charlie is found; he has been very ill, and he wants to see you.”

“To see me?” Miss Lance looked with eyes of sympathy, yet great innocence, as if at an impossible proposal, at the breathless girl so anxious to get it out. “But, Betty, if he is with your friends, the Mackinnons, in Scotland – ?”

“Oh, Miss Lance, I told you he was not there, don’t you remember? He has never been anywhere all this time. He has had typhoid fever, and on Thursday Bee was sent for, and found him still ill, but mending. And when he heard you were in town he would give her no peace till she wrote and asked you to come and see him. And she did not know your address so she wrote to me. I went to tell papa first, and then I came on here. Oh, will you come and see Charlie? Bee said he wanted to get into a hansom and come to you as soon as he heard you were here.”

“What induced them to talk of me, and why did she tell him I was here?” Miss Lance cried, with a momentary cloud upon her face, such as Betty had never seen there before. She sat down suddenly in a chair, with a pat of her foot upon the carpet, which was almost a stamp of impatience, and then she read Colonel Kingsward’s note for the second time, with her brows drawn together and a blackness about her eyes which filled Betty with alarm and dismay. She looked up, however, next minute with her countenance cleared. “Your father says I am to use my own discretion,” she said, with a half laugh; “that is not much help to me, is it, in deciding what is best to do? So he has been ill – and not in Scotland at all?”

“I told you he was not in Scotland,” cried Betty, a little impatient in her turn. “Oh, Miss Lance, he has been ill, he is still ill, and won’t you come and see him when he wants you so? Oh, come and see him, please! He looks so ill and wretched, Bee says, and weak, and cannot get back his strength; and he thinks if he could see you – ”

“Poor boy – silly boy!” said Miss Lance; “why does he think it will do him good to see me? I doubt if it would do him any good; and your father says I am to use my discretion. I would do anything for any of you, Betty, but perhaps I should do him harm instead of good. Have you got your sister’s letter?”