The Sorceress (complete)

“You wouldn’t know her name if I were to tell you,” he said. And then, after a moment’s hesitation: “Her name,” he went on, “her real name as I call it, is Laura, like Petrarch’s Laura, don’t you know, Bee? But I don’t suppose you do know.”

“Yes, indeed, I do,” said Bee, eagerly. She added in her turn, “I shouldn’t have thought you would know anything like that.”

“No; I’m not up to it,” said Charlie, with unexpected humility; “but I read it all up as soon as she said it. Don’t you think it’s a beautiful name?”

“Yes,” said Bee, yet not with enthusiasm. “But, oh!” she added, “I hope she is not married, Charlie; for that would not be nice at all.”

“Married!” cried Charlie. “I wish you were not such a horrid little – Philistine. But she is not married, if that is any satisfaction to you.”

“And is she – beautiful, Charlie? and are you very, very fond of her? Oh, Charlie!” Bee clasped his arm in both her hands and sobbed. It made her feel wretched, yet filled her with a delicious tender sense of fellow-feeling. If he would only tell her all! It would be hard upon her, and yet it would be a sort of heavenly pang to hear another, and, oh! surely, this time, a happy love tale. Bee sat down close by him, and clasped his arm, and sometimes leaned her head upon it in the warmth of her tenderness and sympathy. And Charlie was persuaded, by degrees, to speak. But his tale was not like Bee’s. It was a tale of a lady who had stooped as from her throne to the young fellow of no account – the ordinary young man, who could not understand how she had come to think of him at all. It was she who had inspired him with his new ambition, who had made him so anxious to distinguish himself, to make something of his life. She had taken the trouble to write to him, to keep him up to it since he had come “down.” She had promised to let him come to see her when he came “up” again, to inspire him and encourage him. “One look at her is better than a dozen coaches,” Charlie cried, in the fervour of his heart.

“Do you mean that you are going to see her – in town?” asked Bee, doubtfully.

“In town? No. She detests town. It’s all so vain and so hollow, and such a rush. She came to live in Oxford at the beginning of last term,” Charlie said.

“Oh,” said Bee, and she found no more to say. She did not herself understand how it was that a little chill came upon her great sympathy with Charlie and this unknown lady of his – friendship, if not love.

CHAPTER XXIX

Colonel Kingsward, however, could not be moved either by Bee’s representations or by anything said by his son to grant to Charlie the permission, and the funds necessary, to pursue his studies in Oxford by going “up” to read “in the Long.” It was indeed very little that Charlie said to his father on the subject. He responded somewhat sullenly to the Colonel’s questions.

“So I hear you want to go back to Oxford to read?”

“Yes,” said the young man.

“You have generally found before this that by the end of the term you had had too much reading.”

No reply.

“I suppose you want to be free of supervision and do exactly what you please. And you find it dull at home?”

“I have never said so,” said Charlie.

“You ought to feel that in the circumstances it was appropriate that it should be dull. Good heavens! Were you contemplating amusing yourself, rioting with your comrades, when your poor mother – ”

“I have never thought of rioting with comrades,” said Charlie, with averted head.

“One knows what that means – going up to read in the Long: boats and billiards and hotels, bands of young men in flannels lounging about, and every decorum thrown to the winds.”

The Colonel looked severely at his son, who stood before him turning over the pages of a book in his hand, with lowering brows and closed mouth.

“You think I don’t know,” he said, sharply; “but you are mistaken. What would have been best for you would have been the discipline of a regiment. I always thought so, but at least I’m not going to permit every decent bond to be broken through.”

“I think, sir,” said Charlie, “that it’s enough to say ‘No,’ without accusing me of things I never thought of.”

“I am the best judge of what is enough,” said the angry father. “If you want a week or so in town, I don’t object; but Oxford in the Long – No. I only hope,” he added severely, “that there’s no woman in the case.”

Charlie’s countenance flushed crimson. He gave his father a furious glance. “If that’s all,” he said, “I may now go, perhaps?”

“Yes, go,” said the Colonel, angrily. He was himself sorry for that last insinuation as soon as his son had left the room. His angry suspiciousness had carried him too far. Not that he blamed himself for the suspicion, but he was aware that to speak of it was a false step and could do no good. If there was a woman in the case, that flying dart would not move the young man to penitence or turn him from any dangerous way. Colonel Kingsward, however, quickly forgave himself for this inadvertence, and reflected with satisfaction that, at least, he had prevented the young fool from making an ass of himself for this summer. And in such cases absence is the best remedy and hinders much mischief. Charlie rejected with indignation the week in town which his father offered. “A week in town!” he said to Bee, contemptuously, “to waste my time and debase all my ideas! What does he think I want with a week in town? That’s the way a fellow’s father encourages him to do the best he can. Cuts off all inspiration, and throws one on the dregs of life! It’s enough to make a man kick over the traces altogether.”

“But, Charlie,” said Bee, with timidity, “don’t you think it’s very, very quiet here. We have nothing to disturb us. If you were to try to do your work at home? – you would have the library to sit in all the week while papa is in town.”

“Out of reach of books, out of reach of any coach – it’s like telling a mason to build a wall without any stone.”

“The library is full of books,” said Bee, with a little indignation.

“What kind of books? Military books, and travels, and things for reference – old peerages, and so forth – and some of the heavy old reviews, and a few novels. Much good a man who is going in for real reading would get out of those!”

“But you have your own books – all those that you carry about with you, Charlie.”

“Oh!” he said, with impatience, “What are they? Horrible cribs and things, that I promised not to use any more.”

“Does Laura,” said Bee, with a little awe, “say you are not to use cribs?”

“And as for the quiet,” said Charlie, continuing his strain of complaint, “if you call that quiet! When you never know that next moment there may not be a rush down the nursery stairs like wild horses let loose, and shrieks all over the house for Bee or for nurse, sending every idea out of a man’s head; or else baby screaming fit to bring down the house. You know nothing about it, to be sure; it is like talking to the wind to talk to a little thing like you. A man can’t work unless he’s in the right place for working. If any difficulty arises in a passage, for instance, what do you think I am to do here?”

“Do you go to – Laura, when there is a difficulty about a passage, Charlie?”

“No, you little fool!” With a flush of anger and shame he begged her pardon next minute. “But it is so hard to explain things to you, Bee. You are so ignorant – naturally, for, of course, you never were taught anything. Don’t you know that Oxford is full of coaches?” he said.

“That was just what I was thinking of, Charlie – if you will not be angry, but let me speak.”

“Speak away,” he said. This was on Monday, after Colonel Kingsward had left. The days which he spent at Kingswarden were the heaviest, as has been said, to the young party; nevertheless when he went away the blank of that long world of a week, without any communication to speak of from without, closed down alarmingly upon the elders of the family. Even when papa was cross, when he was dissatisfied with his dinner or found fault with the noise of the children, it was more or less an event. But when he departed there was a sense of being cut off from all events, separated from the world altogether, shut out from the news and the hum of society, which was very blank and deadening. Bee and Charlie dined alone, and it was dreary; they spent the evening together, or else – one in the library, one in the garden, where the beauty of the summer evening was terrible to the one poor little girl with her recollections, incapable of shutting them out in that utter stillness, and trying very ineffectually not to be unhappy. When Charlie threw open the window of the library and strolled forth to join her, as he generally did, it was a little better. Bee had just done very conscientiously all her duties in the nursery – had heard the children say their prayers, in which they still, with a little pause of awe, prayed God to bless dear mother – and had made all the valorous little efforts she could to keep down the climbing sorrow. When she heard the sound of the library window she quickly dried her eyes and contrived to smile. And she was a very good listener. She suffered Charlie to talk about himself as much as he pleased, and was interested in all he said. She made those little allusions to Laura which pleased him, though he generally answered with a scornful word, as who should say that “a little thing like you” was incapable of comprehending that lady. But this was the sole diversion of these young people in the evening. People called in the afternoon, and there was occasionally a game of tennis. But in the evening they were almost invariably alone.

They were strolling about the garden on this occasion when the young man bewailed himself. Bee, though she made those allusions to Laura, had never got over that little chill in respect to her which had arisen in the most capricious, causeless way when she knew that Laura lived in Oxford. Nothing could be more unreasonable, but yet it was so. It suggested something fictitious in her brother’s eagerness to get back, and in his supposed devotion to his work. Had his Egeria been anywhere else Bee would not have felt this; but she did feel it, though she could not tell why. She was very anxious to please him, to content him, if possible, with his present life, to make her sympathy sweet to him, seeing that he had nobody but herself to console him, and must be separated from Laura until October. Poor Charlie! It was hard indeed that this should be the case, that he should have so dull a home and no companion but his sister. But it could not be helped; his sister, at least, must do what she could.

“You must not be angry,” said Bee, very humbly. “It is only an idea that has come into my head – there may be nothing at all in it – but don’t please shut me up as you do sometimes – hear me out. Charlie! there is Mr. Delaine.”

“Mister – what?” said Charlie, which indeed did not show a very complaisant frame of mind – but a curate in the country is of less importance in the horizon of the son of a house who is at Oxford than he is in that of the daughter at home.

“Mr. Delaine,” repeated Bee. “You don’t remember him, perhaps, at all. He is the curate. When he came first he was said to be a great scholar. He took a first class. You need not say, pooh! Everybody said so, and it is quite true.”

“A first in theology, I suppose,” said Charlie, disdainfully.

“No, not that – that’s not what people call a first. Mr. Burton, I have always heard, is a good scholar himself, and he said a first; of course you know better than I do what that means.”

“Well,” said Charlie, “and supposing for the sake of argument that he took a first – what then?”

“Why, Charlie dear! He is an Oxford man too; he must know all the things you want to know – difficult passages and all that. Don’t you think, perhaps – ”

“Oh, a coach!” cried Charlie. Then he paused, and with withering satire, added “No doubt, for little boys – your curate might do very well, Bee.”

“He is not my curate,” said Bee, with indignation; “but I have always heard he was a great scholar. I thought that was what you wanted.”

“It is not to be expected,” said her brother, loftily, “that you should know what I want. It is not a coach that is everything. If that were all, there need be no such things as universities. What a man needs is the whole machinery, the ways of thinking, the arrangements, the very atmosphere.”

He strolled along the walk with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders up to his ears.