The Sorceress. Volume 1 of 3

“I don’t know why – you shouldn’t believe it. I don’t believe it; I see it, I hear it,” cried Bee. “It’s like a story – and I thought these things were always stories, things made up to keep up the interest in a book – I’m the – deceived heroine, the one that’s disappointed, don’t you know, mamma? We’ve read all about her dozens of times. But she generally makes a fuss over it,” the girl said, with her suffocating laugh. “I shall make – no fuss – Mamma! What is the matter, mamma?”

Nothing more was the matter than the doctor could have told Mrs. Kingsward’s family long ago – a spasm of the heart. She stumbled backward to the sofa, and flung herself down before consciousness forsook her. Did consciousness forsake her at all? Bee rushing to the bell, making its violent sound peal through the house, then flinging herself at her mother’s feet, and calling to her in the helplessness of utter ignorance, “Mamma, mamma!” did not think that she was unconscious. Broken words fell from her in the midst of her gasps for breath, then there was a moment of dread stillness. By this time the room seemed to be full of people – Bee did not know who was there – and then there suddenly appeared out of the mist Moulsey with a glass and teaspoon in her hands.

“Go away, all of you,” cried Moulsey, “she’ll be better directly – open all the windows and take a fan and fan her, Miss Bee.”

The blast of the cold October night air came in like a flood, Bee seemed to come out of a horrible dream in the waft of air brought by the fan which she was herself waving to and fro – and in a little time, as Moulsey said, Mrs. Kingsward was better. The labouring breath which had come back after that awful moment of stillness gradually calmed down and became softer with an occasional long drawn sigh, and then she opened her eyes and said, with a faint smile, “What is it? What is it?” She looked round her for a moment puzzled – and then she said, “Ah! you are fanning me,” with a smile to Bee, but presently, “How cold it is! I don’t think I want to be fanned, Moulsey.”

“No, ma’am, not now. And White is just a-going to shut all the windows. The fire was a bit too hot, and you know you never can bear it when the room gets too hot.”

“No, I never can bear it,” Mrs. Kingsward said, in a docile tone. She followed the lead of any suggestion given to her. “I must have got faint – with the heat.”

“That was just it,” said Moulsey. “When you have a fire in the drawing-room so early it looks so cheerful you’re apt to pile it too high without thinking – for it ain’t really cold in October, not cold enough to have a fire like that. You want it for cheerfulness, ma’am, more than for heat. A big bit of wood that will make a nice blaze, and very little coal, as is too much for the season, is what your drawing-room fire should be.”

Mrs. Kingsward gradually came to herself during this long speech, which no doubt was what Moulsey intended. But she said she felt a little weak, and that she would keep on the sofa until it was time to go to bed. The agitation she had gone through seemed to have passed from her mind. “Read me a little of that story,” she said, pointing to a book on the table. “We left off last night at a most interesting part. Read me the next chapter, Bee.”

Bee sat down beside her mother’s sofa and opened the book. It was not a book of a very exciting kind it may be supposed, when it was thus read a chapter at a time, without any one of the party opening it from evening to evening to see how things went on. But as it happened at this point of the story, the heroine had found out that her lover was not so blameless as she thought, and was making up her mind to have nothing to do with him. Bee began to read with an indignation beyond words for both hero and heroine, who were so pale, so colourless, beside her own story. To waste one’s time reading stuff like this, while the tide of one’s own passion was ten times stronger! She did not think very much of her mother’s faint. It was, no doubt, the too large fire, as Moulsey said.

END OF FIRST VOLUME