The Honorable Miss: A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town, L. T. Meade [unputdownable books .txt] 📗

must help me, and be brave. Yes, you must be brave because you know I am doing right."

"I will trust you, Beatrice," said Catherine. Her dark eyes shone, over the pallor of her face there came a glow. She opened the door of her mother's room.

"Here is Beatrice, mother. And may I—may I—stay too?"

"No, Kate, you are unreasonable. What a long time you have kept Beatrice. She has been in the house for ten minutes. I heard you two gossiping in the corridor. Girls are unreasonable, and they don't understand that the impatience of the old is the worst impatience of all. Go, Kate."

Catherine's eyes sought her friend's. They seemed to say mutely:

"Be good to her, Beatrice, she is my mother."

Then she closed the door behind the two.

People who have secrets, who find themselves hemmed into corners, who live perpetually over graves of the dead past, are seldom quite free from fear. Mrs. Bertram had gone through tortures during the last couple of hours. When she was alone with Beatrice she seized her hands, and drew her down to sit on the sofa by her side. Her eyes asked a thousand questions, while her lips made use of some conventional commonplace.

Beatrice was after all an unsophisticated country girl. She had never been trained in finesse; painful things had not come to her in the past of her life, either to conceal or avoid. Now a terrible task was laid upon her, and she went straight to the point.

Mrs. Bertram said: "You look tired, my dear future daughter."

Beatrice made no reply to this. She did not answer Mrs. Bertram's lips, but responding to the hunger in her eyes, said:

"I have got something to tell you."

Then Mrs. Bertram dropped her mask.

"I feared something was wrong. I guessed it from Loftie's manner. Go on, speak. Tell me the worst."

"I'm afraid I must give you pain."

"What does a chit like you know of pain? Go on, break your evil tidings. Nay, I will break them for you. There is to be no wedding tomorrow."

"You are wrong. There is."

"Thank God. Then I don't care for anything else. You are a true girl, Beatrice, you have truth in your eyes. Thank God, you are faithful. My son will have won a faithful wife."

"I trust he will—I think he will. But—"

"You need not be over modest, child. I know you. I see into your soul. We women of the world, we deep schemers, we who have dallied with the blackness of lies, can see farther than another into the deep, pure well of truth. I don't flatter you, Beatrice, but I know you are true."

"I am true, true to your son, and to you. But Mrs. Bertram, don't interrupt me. In being true, I must give you pain."

Again Mrs. Bertram's dark brows drew together until they almost met. Her heart beat fast.

"I am not very strong," she said, in a sort of suffocating voice. "You are concealing something; tell it to me at once."

"I will. Can you manage not to speak for a moment or two?"

"Go on, child. Can I manage? What have I not managed in the course of my dark life? Go on. Whatever you tell me will be a pin-prick, and I have had swords in my heart."

"I am sorry," began Beatrice.

"Don't—do you suppose I care for a girl's sorrow! The sorrow of an uncomprehending child? Speak."

"I have found out," said Beatrice, in a slow voice, "just through an accident, although I believe God was at the bottom of it, something which has saved me from committing a great wrong, which has saved your son from becoming an absolute scoundrel, which has saved us both from a life of misery."

"What have you found out, Beatrice?"

Mrs. Bertram's face was perfectly white; her words came out in a low whisper.

"Beatrice, what have you discovered?"

"That Captain Bertram loves another, that another girl loves him, has almost been brought to death's door because she loves him so well."

"Pooh, child, is that all? How you frightened me."

"Why do you speak in that contemptuous tone. The 'all' means a great deal to Captain Bertram, and to me, and to the other girl."

"Beatrice, you are a baby. What young man of my son's age has not had his likings, his flirtations, his heart affairs? If that is all—"

"It is all, it is enough. Your son has not got over his heart affair."

"Has he not? I'll speak to him. I'll soon settle that"

"Nor have I got over it."

"Beatrice, my dear girl, you really are something of a little goose. Jealous, are you? Beatrice, you ask an impossibility when you expect a young man never to have looked with eyes of affection on any one but yourself."

"I will not marry the man who looks with eyes of affection at another."

"How you bewilder me, and yet, how childish you are. Must I argue this question with you? Must I show you from my own larger experience how attached Loftus is to you? Dear fellow, his very face shows it."

"I don't want you to teach me anything from your experience, Mrs. Bertram. Captain Bertram does not love me. I do not love him; he loves another. She has given him all her heart, all that she can give. He shall marry her;—he shall marry her to-morrow."

Mrs. Bertram rose very slowly.

"Beatrice," she said. "Your meaning is at last plain to me. Noblesse oblige. Ah, yes, that old saying comes true all the world over. You have not the advantage of good birth. I thought—for a long time I thought that you were the exception that proved the rule. You were the lady made by nature's own hand. Your father could be a tradesman—a draper—and yet have a lady for his daughter. I thought this, Beatrice; I was deceived. There are no exceptions to that nobility which only birth can bestow. You belong to the common herd, the canaille. You cannot help yourself. A promise to one like you is nothing. You are tired of Loftus. This is an excuse to get out of a bargain of which you have repented."

"It is not."

Beatrice looked at Mrs. Bertram with eyes that blazed with anger. She walked across the room, and rang the bell. Her ring was imperious. She stood near the bell-pull until Clara, in some trepidation, obeyed the summons.

"Is Captain Bertram downstairs?" asked Beatrice.

"I'll inquire, Miss Meadowsweet."

"I think he is. I think you'll find him in the study. Ask him to have the goodness to come to Mrs. Bertram's room."

Clara withdrew. Beatrice began slowly to pace up and down the floor.

"I belong to the canaille," she murmured. "And my father—my father is taunted because he earned his bread in trade. Mrs. Bertram, I am glad I don't belong to your set."

Beatrice had never been so angry in all her life before. The anger of those who scarcely ever give way to the emotion has something almost fearful about it. Mrs. Bertram was a passionate woman, but she cowered before the words and manner of this young girl. She had taunted Beatrice. The country girl now was taunting her, and she shrank away in terror.

The door was opened, and Loftus Bertram came in. Beatrice went up to him at once.

"I have prepared the way for you, Loftus," she said. "It is your turn now to speak. Tell your mother the truth."

"Yes, my son."

Mrs. Bertram looked up in his face. Her look was piteous; it disarmed Beatrice; her great anger fled. She went up to the poor woman, and stood close to her.

"Speak, Loftus," she said. "Be quick, be brave, be true. Your mother cannot bear much. Don't keep her in suspense."

"Go out of the room, Beatrice," said Loftus. "I can tell her best alone."

"No, I shall stay. It is right for me to stay. Now speak. Tell your mother who you really love."

"Go on, Loftus," said Mrs. Bertram, suddenly. "You love Beatrice Meadowsweet. She angered me, but she is a true and good girl at heart. You love her; she is almost your bride—say that you love her."

"She is the best girl I ever met, mother."

"There, Beatrice, does not that content you?" said Mrs. Bertram.

"Hush," said Beatrice. "Listen. He has more to say. Go on, Loftus—speak, Captain Bertram. Is Josephine not worth any effort of courage?"

"Josephine!" Mrs. Bertram clasped her hands.

Bertram stepped forward.

"Mother, I don't love Beatrice as I ought to love my wife. I do love Josephine Hart, and she is to be my wife to-morrow morning."

"Josephine Hart!" repeated Mrs. Bertram. She looked round at Beatrice, and a smile played all over her face—a fearful smile.

"My son says he loves Josephine Hart—Josephine—and he will marry her!"

She gave a laugh, which was worse than any cry, and fell insensible on the floor.