Margaret Oliphant - The Sorceress (complete)

“Oh, I wish, I wish he had!” Mrs. Kingsward said, sighing. “I am not in the least what I used to be, Moulsey; don’t you think I am very different from what I used to be? I have not half the strength.”

“There often is,” said Moulsey, “a time when a lady isn’t so strong, after all these children and everything. It takes a deal out of you, it do. And I don’t hold much with them foreign cures. I’m one that stands for home. And there’s where you ought to be, ma’am, whatever anyone may say.”

“I am sure it is where I wish to be,” said the poor lady, “but we must not be unjust, Moulsey. My cure did me a great deal of good, and I liked being out and seeing everything just as much as the girls.”

“That is just it, ma’am,” said Moulsey; “you’re a deal too much the same as the young ladies, and can’t make up your mind as you haven’t the strength for it. I’m not one to ask any questions, but I can’t help seeing there’s something wrong. Don’t you give in to Miss Bee in everything. I wouldn’t go down to make up the quarrel if I was you. Leave ’em to themselves, and it’ll all come right. Bless us, lovers’ quarrels is nothing – it wouldn’t be half the fun if it wasn’t for that.”

Moulsey knew very well this was no lovers’ quarrel; but it seemed to her a good way of satisfying herself what it was.

“Oh, if that were all!” sighed the poor lady. “Moulsey, you are an old friend, and take an interest in the family. You have known Miss Bee since ever she was born. I don’t know why I shouldn’t tell you. It is no quarrel; it’s something the Colonel has heard about Mr. Leigh.”

“All lies, ma’am, I don’t make no manner of doubt.”

“Do you think so, Moulsey; oh, do you think so? Have you heard anything? You often know more, hearing the servants speak, than we do. If you have any light to throw on the subject, oh, do so, do! I shall be grateful to you all my life.”

“I don’t know as I have any light to throw. I knew as there was some trouble at the time the poor young lady died – some friend of hers, as Mr. Leigh, being a kind-hearted gentleman, couldn’t turn out of the house – and it made a talk. But if there was anything wrong, you take my word, ma’am, it was none of his fault.”

“Ah, it’s so easy to say that, Moulsey; but the man must bear the blame.”

“I’ve always heard, ma’am, as it was the woman that got the blame; and right enough, for they often deserve it the most,” Moulsey said.

“Oh, I wish – I wish, whoever was to blame, that it was not I that had to clear it up,” poor Mrs. Kingsward said.

She would not have said this, poor lady. She would have thought it swearing and unbecoming for a woman’s lips; still, Hamlet’s sentiment was hers, with much stronger reason. She looked like anything but a strong representative of justice as she went downstairs. Charlie had come to give her his arm, and though he was very tender to her, Charlie had no idea of sparing her any more than Bee. He, too, thought that it was only the risk of a headache, and that a headache was no such great matter. Charlie’s idea was, however, that what the governor said was, of all things on earth, the most important to be carried out – especially when it did not concern himself.

Bee was sitting at the window looking out upon the river, seeing the reflections flash and the boats pass. The steamer had just started with its lively freight – the steamboat which had brought them down the stream yesterday, with all its changing groups, and the pairs of German lovers with their arms about each other in the beatitude of the betrothal. All just the same, but how different, how different! She did not rise, but only turned her head when her mother came in. She was on the other side. She did not see, with so many other things in her head, how fragile Mrs. Kingsward looked. Betty was the only one who perceived at all that mamma was less strong than usual, and even Betty took no notice, for she, too, was on the other side. As for Charlie, he stood behind her, a sort of representative of executive force at the back of Justice, backing her authority up. It was he who arranged her chair, her footstool, the shawl Moulsey had insisted she should wear, and which Charlie, who knew nothing about shawls, huddled up about her neck, not unlike the judge’s ermine. He did it all, not with sympathetic touches as the girls would have done had they not been on the other side, but rather with an eye to her dignity as a representative of the law.

And then, just as the hour of noon sounded from all the church clocks, Aubrey came in. He was very pale, but dressed with care, no symptoms of neglect about him, with an air of preparation which became a man who was going to stand his trial. Bee jumped up from her seat and went up to him, putting her hand through his arm, and Betty, half-frightened, with a glance at her mother, offered him a timid hand. She sat down behind them, on a chair that was ranged against the wall. The defendant’s side was her side. She wanted to show that, and yet not to go against mamma. Charlie took no notice at all of the new comer, but stood scowling, looking at nobody, behind his mother’s chair.

Mrs. Kingsward, frightened at her own dignity and breathless with agitation, cried, “Oh, Mr. Leigh!” which was a kind of salutation. She had some papers in her lap, over which her hands fluttered restlessly, her husband’s letter, and something else beside, and she looked at the group before her with a little dubious smile, asking pardon of the culprit whom she had come here – oh, so much against her will – to try for his life.

“Now, mamma,” said Bee, in a cheerful voice, “we are quite ready, Aubrey and I – ”

Mrs. Kingsward’s opening speech was a wonder to hear. She sat and looked at them all for a moment, trying to steady herself, but there was nothing to steady her in what she saw before her – Aubrey and Bee, the pair who had been so sweet to see, such a diversion in all circumstances, so amusing in their mutual absorption, so delightful in their romance. It all flashed back to her mind; the excitement of Bee’s first proposal, the pleasure of seeing “her bairn respected like the lave,” though Mrs. Kingsward might not have understood what these words meant, the little triumph it was to see her child engaged at nineteen, when everybody said there was nobody for the girls to marry – and now to have that triumph turned into humiliation and dismay! And to think of Bee’s bright face overcast, and her happiness over, and poor Aubrey thrown out into the uttermost darkness. Had she seen Charlie it might have given her some support, for Charlie was the impersonation of immovable severity; but Betty’s wistful little face behind the other pair, coming out from Aubrey’s shadow by moments to fix an appealing look upon her mother, was not calculated to make her any stronger. She cleared her throat – she tried hard to steady her voice. She said, “Oh, my dear children,” faltering, and then the poor lady ended in a burst of sobbing and tears. It gave her a little sting and stimulant to see through her weeping that though little Betty ran towards her with kisses and soothing, Bee took no notice, but stood hard and unaffected in her opposition, holding close to Aubrey’s arm. Mrs. Kingsward indeed got no sympathy except from little Betty. Charlie put his hand imperatively upon her shoulder, recalling her to herself, and Bee never moved, standing by the side of Aubrey Leigh. The mother, thus deserted, plucked up a little spirit in the midst of her weakness.

“Bee,” she said, “I do not think it is quite nice of you to stand there as if your own people were against you. We are not against you. There has been, I fear, a great mistake made, which Colonel Kingsward” – here she turned her eyes to Aubrey – “has found out in – in time; though it is a pity, a sad pity, that it was not found out before. If Mr. Aubrey had only been frank and said at once – but I don’t see what difference that would have made. Papa says that from what he has heard and discovered things must not go any further. He is sorry, and so am I, that they have gone so far, and the engagement must be broken off at once. You hear what I say, Bee?”