The Sorceress (complete)

“You might have done so a week ago, and I should have responded with all mine. But you see me fallen again on darker days. Fate’s against me, it seems, in every way.”

“Why, what’s the matter?” cried his friend. “I expected to see you triumphant. What has gone wrong? Not settlements already, eh?”

“Settlements! They are free to make what settlements they like so far as I am concerned.”

“Kingsward’s a very cool hand, Aubrey. You may lose your head if you like, but he always knows what he is about. You are an excellent match – ”

“You think so,” said poor Aubrey, with a laugh. “Not badly off; a mild, domestic fellow, with no devil in me at all.

“I should not exactly say that. A man is no man without a spice of the devil. Why, what’s the matter? Now I look at you, instead of a victorious lover, you have the most miserable hang-dog – ”

“Hang-dog, that is it – a rope’s end, and all over. Hang it, no! I am not going to give in. Fairfield, I don’t want to speak disrespectfully of any woman.”

“Is it Mrs. Kingsward who is too young, herself, to think of enacting the part of mother-in-law so soon as this?”

“Mrs. Kingsward is a sort of an angel, Fairfield, if it were not old-fashioned to say so – and, alas, I fear, she will not enact any part long, which is so much the worse for me.”

“You don’t say so! That pretty creature, with all her pretty ways, and her daughter just the same age as she! Poor Kingsward. Aubrey, if a man shows a little impatience with your raptures in such circumstances, I don’t think you ought to be hard upon him.”

“I don’t believe he knows what are the circumstances, nor any of them. It is not from that cause, Fairfield. You know Miss Lance, poor Amy’s friend – ”

Once more he grew hot all over as he named her name, and turned his face from his friend’s gaze.

“Remember her! I should think so, and all you had to bear on that point, old man. We have often said, Mary and I, that if ever there was a hero – ”

“Fairfield! they have got up a tale that it was I who kept her at Forest-leigh against poor Amy’s will, and that my poor wife’s life was made miserable by my attentions to that fi – .” Fiend he would have said, but he changed it to “woman,” which meant to him at that moment the same thing.

Fairfield stared for a moment – was he taking a new idea into his commonplace mind? Then he burst into a loud laugh. “You can call the whole county to bear witness to that,” he cried. “Attentions! Well, I suppose you were civil, which was really more than anyone expected from you.”

“You know, and everybody knows, what a thorn in the flesh it was. My poor Amy! Without that, there would have been no cloud on our life, and it all arose from her best qualities, her tender heart, her faithfulness – ”

A dubious shade came over Fairfield’s face. “Yes, no doubt; and Miss Lance’s flattery and blandishments. Aubrey, I don’t mind saying it now that you are well quit of her – that was a woman to persuade a fellow into anything. I should no more have dared to keep her – especially after – in my house, and to expose myself to her wiles – ”

“They never were wiles for me,” said Aubrey, again turning his head away. It was true, true – far more true than the fatal contradiction of it, which lay upon his heart like a stone. “I never came nearer to hating any of God’s creatures than that woman. She made my life a burden to me. She took my wife from me – . She – I needn’t get dithyrambic on the subject; you all know.”

“Oh, yes, we all know; but you were too soft-hearted. You should have risked a fit of tears from poor Mrs. Leigh – excuse me for saying so now – and sent her away.”

“I tried it a dozen times. Poor Amy would have broken her heart. She threatened even to go with her. And they say women don’t make friendships with each other!”

Fairfield shrugged his shoulders a little. “I suffer myself from my wife’s friends,” he said; “there’s always some ‘dear Clara’ or other putting the table out of joint, making me search heaven and earth when there’s anybody to dinner to find an odd man. But Mary has some – ” Sense, he was going to say, but stopped short. Mrs. Fairfield was one of those who had concluded long ago that dear Amy was a little goose, taken sad advantage of by her persistent friend.

“Fairfield,” said Aubrey, “you could do me a great service if you would. Colonel Kingsward has just told me that he can’t send out a royal commission to examine my friends on this subject. You see him sometimes, I suppose. I know you belong to one of his clubs. Still more, he’s at his office all the morning, and you know him well enough to look in upon him there.”

“Well?” said Fairfield, dubiously.

“Couldn’t you stretch a point for my sake, and go – and tell him the real state of affairs in respect to Miss Lance, and how untrue it is, how ridiculously untrue, that she was kept at Forest-leigh by any will of mine? Why, it was a thing, as you have just said, that all the county knew! An infatuation – and nothing less than the bane of my whole married life.”

“Yes, I know – everybody thought so,” Mr. Fairfield said. That new idea – was it perhaps germinating faintly in his mind? – no one had thought of any other explanation, but yet – ”

“If you were only to say so – only as much as that – that all my friends recognised the state of the case.”

“I could say that,” said Fairfield, with hesitation. “Don’t think me unfriendly, Aubrey, but it’s a little awkward for a man to interfere in another man’s affairs, and it’s not only your affairs that I know so well, but you see Kingsward’s too – ”

“I am aware of that, Fairfield; still, to break off what I believe in my heart would be for his daughter’s happiness too – ”

“To be sure there’s the young lady to be taken into consideration,” said Fairfield, dubiously.

It will be as well to carry this incident to its completion at once. Mr. Fairfield at the last allowed himself to be convinced, and he went that afternoon to the club, to which he still belonged by some early military experiences, and where Colonel Kingsward was one of those who ruled supreme. He knew exactly when to find him at the club, where he strolled in after leaving his office, to refresh himself with a cup of tea, or something else in its place. The intercessor went up to the table at which the Colonel sat with the evening paper, and conversed for a little on the topics of the day. After these had been run over, and the prospects of war slightly discussed – for Colonel Kingsward had not much respect for Mr. Fairfield’s opinion on that subject – the latter gentleman said abruptly —

“I say, Kingsward, I am very sorry to hear there is some hitch in the marriage which I was so glad to hear of last week.”

“Ah, oh! So Leigh has been with you, I presume?” the Colonel replied.

“Yes; and, upon my life, Colonel, there is not a word of truth in any talk you may have heard about that Miss Lance – . We all know quite well the whole business. You should hear Mary on the subject. Of course, he can’t say to you, poor fellow, that his first wife was a little queer, and that that woman made her her slave.”

“No; it wasn’t to be expected that he would tell me that.”

“But it’s true. She got completely the upper hand of that poor little thing. The husband had no influence. I believe he hated her – like the devil.”

“You think so,” said the Colonel, with a strange smile, “yet it is a curious thing that he endured her all the same, and also that a wife should insist so in keeping another woman in her husband’s constant company – and an attractive woman, as I hear.”

“Oh! a devil of a woman,” cried Fairfield. “I was telling Aubrey I should no more have ventured to expose myself to her blandishments – . One of those sort of women, you know, that you cannot abide, yet who can turn you round their little finger.”

“And what did he say to that?” the Colonel asked, still with that smile.

“Oh, he said she never had any charm for him – and I believe it – for what with poor little Mrs. Leigh’s whims and vagaries, and the other’s flatteries and adulation and complete empire over her, his life was made a burden to him. You should hear Mary on that subject – none of the ladies could keep their patience.”

“Yet it appears Mr. Aubrey Leigh kept his – until he got tired,” said the Colonel. “Believe me, Fairfield, when there is such an unnatural situation as that, there must be more in it than meets the eye.”

Fairfield, a good, steady soul, who generally had his ideas suggested to him, went away very serious from that interview. It was very strange indeed that a woman should prefer her friend to her husband, and make things wretched for him in order to keep her comfortable – it was very curious that with a woman so much superior to Amy in the house, a woman of the kind that turn men’s heads, that mild Aubrey Leigh, who was not distinguished for force of character, should have never sought a moment’s relief with her from poor Mrs. Leigh’s querulousness. Fairfield accelerated his departure by an hour or two in order not to meet Aubrey again before he had poured those strange doubts and suggestions into his own Mary’s ears.

CHAPTER XI

The party of travellers whose progress had hitherto been like that of a party of pleasure, who had been interested in everything they saw, and hailed every new place with delight, as if that had been the haven of all their hopes, travelled home from Cologne in a very different spirit. For one thing, it could not be concealed that Mrs. Kingsward was ill, which was a thing that she herself and the whole family stoutly, one standing by another, had hitherto been able to deny. She had not gone far, not an hour’s journey, when she had to abandon her seat by the window – where it had always been her delight to “see the country,” and point out every village to her children – and lie down upon the temporary couch which Moulsey prepared for her with shawls and cushions along one side of the carriage. She cried out against herself as “self-indulgent” and “lazy,” but she did not resist this arrangement. It effectually took any pleasure that there might have been out of the journey: for Bee, as may be supposed, though she was not melancholy, and would not admit, even to Betty, in the closest confidence, that she was at all afraid of the ultimate issue, was certainly self-absorbed, and glad not to be called upon to notice the scenery, but allowed to subside into a corner with her own thoughts. Charlie was in the opposite corner, exceedingly glum, and not conversible. Bee would not speak to him or look at him, and even Betty, that little thing, had said, “Oh, Charlie, how could you be so nasty to Aubrey?” for her sole salutation that morning. He was not sure even that his mother, though he had stood on her side and backed her up, was pleased with him for it. She talked to him, it is true, occasionally, and made him do little things for her, but rather in the way in which a mother singles out the pariah of the family, the one who is boycotted for some domestic offence, to show him that all are not against him, than in the tone which is used to a champion and defender. So it was not wonderful that Charlie was glum; but to see him in one corner, biting or trying to bite the few hairs that he called his moustache, with his brows bent down to his chin, and his chin sunk in the collar of his coat – and Bee in another, very different – indeed, her face glorified with dreams, and her eyes full of latent light, ready to flash out at any moment – was not cheerful for the others.

Mrs. Kingsward looked at them from one to another, and at little Betty between busied in a little book, with that baffled feeling which arises in the mind of a delicate woman when the strong individualities and wills of her children become first developed before her, after that time of their youth when all were guided by her decision, and mamma’s leave was asked for everything. How fierce, how self-willed, how determined in his opposition Charlie looked like his father, not to be moved by anything! And Bee, how possessed by those young hopes of her own, which the mother knew would be of no avail against the fiat gone forth against her! Mrs. Kingsward knew her husband better than her children did. She knew that having taken up his position he would not give in. And Bee, with all that light of resistance in her eyes – Bee as little willing to give in as he! The invalid trembled when she thought of the clash of arms that would resound over her head – of the struggle which would rend her cheerful house in two. She did not at all realise that the cheerful days of that house were numbered – that soon it would be reduced into its elements, as a somewhat clamorous, restless, too energetic brood of children, with a father very self-willed, who hitherto had known nothing of them but as happy and obedient creatures, whose individual determinations concerned games and lessons, and who, so far as the conduct of life was affected, were of no particular account. Mrs. Kingsward was not yet aware that this was the dolorous prospect before her household; she only thought, “How am I to manage them all?” and felt her heart fail before Charlie’s ill humour and parti pris, and before the bright defiance in Bee’s eyes. Poor Aubrey, whom she had learned to look upon as one of her own, half a son, and half a brother – poor Aubrey, who had gone so wrong, and yet had so many excuses for him, a victim rather than a seducer – what was happening to Aubrey this fine September morning? It made her heart sick in her bosom as she thought of all these newly-raised conflicting powers, and she so little able to cope with them. If she did not get strong soon, what would all these children do? Charlie would go back to college, and would be out of it. He had so strong a will, and was so determined to get on, that little harm would happen to him – and besides, he was entirely in accord with his father, which was a great matter. But Bee – Bee! It seemed to Mrs. Kingsward that it was on the cards that Bee might take matters into her own hands, and run away with her lover, if her father would not yield. What else was there for these young creatures? Mrs. Kingsward knew that she herself would have done so in the circumstances had her lover insisted; and she knew that he would no more have consented to such a sentence – never, never! – than he had done to anything he disliked all his life. And Bee was like him, though she had never hitherto been anything but an obedient child. Mrs. Kingsward could not help picturing to herself, as she lay there, the elopement – Bee’s room found empty in the morning, the note left on the table, the so easy, so certain explanation, which already she felt herself to be reading. And then her husband’s wrath, his unalterable verdict on the criminal “never to enter this house again!” Poor mother! She foresaw, as we all do, tortures for herself, which she was never to be called upon to bear.

As for Betty, it was the most tiresome journey in all her little experiences. A long journey was generally fun to Betty. The scuffle of getting away, of seeing that all the little packets were right, of abusing Moulsey for hiding away the luncheon basket under the rugs and the books in some locked bag, the trouble of securing a compartment, arranging umbrellas and other things in the vacant seats to make believe that every place was full, the watch at every station to prevent the intrusion of strangers, the running from one side to another to see the pretty village or old castle, or the funny people at the country stations and the queer names – the luncheon in the middle of the day, which was as good as a pic-nic – all these things much diverted Betty, who loved the rapid movement through the air, and to feel the wind on her face; but none of these delights were to be had to-day. She was in one of the middle places, between Charlie, so glum and in a temper, and Bee, lost in her own thoughts and without a word to say, and opposite to mamma, who was so much more serious than usual, giving little Betty a smile from time to time, but not able to speak loud enough to be heard through the din of the train. She tried to read her book but it was not a very interesting book, and it was short too, and evidently would not last out half the journey. Betty was the only member of the party who had a free mind. The commotion of the romance between Bee and Aubrey had been pure amusement to her. It would be a bore if it did not end in a speedy marriage, with all the excitement of the presents, the trousseau, the dresses (especially the bridesmaids’ dresses), the wedding day itself, the increased dignity of Betty as Miss Kingsward, the pleasure of talking of “my married sister,” the pleasure of visiting Bee, in her own house, and sharing all her grandeur as a county lady. To miss all this would be a real trial, but Betty had confidence in the fitness of things, and felt it was impossible that she should miss all this. And she was at ease in her little mind, and the present dreariness of this unamusing, unattractive journey hung all the more heavy upon her consciousness now.

They arrived next day, having slept at Brussels to break the journey for Mrs. Kingsward, and the Colonel met them, as in duty bound, at Victoria. He gave Charlie his hand, and allowed Bee and Betty to kiss him, but his whole attention, as was natural, was for his wife.

“You look dreadfully tired,” he said, with that half-tone of offence in which a man shows his disappointment at the aspect of an invalid. “You must have been worried on the journey to look so tired.”

“Oh, no, I have not been at all worried on the journey – they have all been so good, sparing me every fatigue; but it is a tiresome long way, Edward, you know.”

“Yes, of course, I know: but I never saw you look so tired before.” He cast a reproachful look round upon the young people, who were all ready to stand on the defensive. “You must have bothered your mother to death,” he said. “I am sorry I did not come out for her myself – undoing all the effect of her cure.”

“Oh, you will see, I shall be all right when I get home,” Mrs. Kingsward said, cheerfully. “As for the children, Edward, they have all been as good as gold.”