The Honorable Miss Part 46

"No, mother, she would prefer to come here. She has"--here his face turned pale--"she has a good deal to say to you--important things to speak about." His voice trembled. "You will see her alone. You will not hurry her. Beatrice is the best--the best girl in the world."

Bertram looked very pale when he said this.

"How strange you look, Loftus!" said his mother. "And your words are very queer. Is anything the matter? Are you concealing any thing from me?"

"Beatrice will tell you," he said. And he hurried out of the room.

A few minutes before six o'clock Beatrice arrived. Mrs. Bertram had given directions that she was to be sent at once to her private room.

Clara had these instructions, and was about to carry them out literally when Catherine and Mabel ran into the hall.

They greeted Beatrice with raptures, and Mabel said in an eager voice:

"We have not yet seen you in your bridal dress, Bee. You know it was an old promise that we should see you in it the day before the wedding.

Don't stay long with mother, Bee. Catherine and I can walk back with you, and you can try on your dress while we are by."

"My dress is all right," said Beatrice. "I have tried it; it fits. I don't want to put it on to-night. I am tired."

Her face was pale, her expression anxious.

Mabel hung back and looked disappointed.

"But you promised," she began.

"Hush, Mabel," said Catherine. She hid quick intuitions, and she saw at a glance that something was the matter.

"Bee would not break her promise if she could help it," she said to her sister. "Don't you see that she looks very tired. Bee, shall I take you to mother?"

"Yes, Catherine," replied Beatrice.

The two girls walked away together. As they mounted the stairs, Catherine stole another glance at her friend. Then almost timidly she put her hand through Beatrice's arm.

"To-morrow, Bee," she said, with a loving hug, "you will be _my_ real, real sister."

Beatrice stopped, turned round, and looked at Catherine.

"Kitty, I can't deceive you. I--love you, but I am not going to be what--what you suppose."

"Then there is something wrong!" exclaimed Catherine. "I feared it from my mother's face when I saw her an hour ago. Now I am sure. Bee, are you going to fail us at the last moment? Oh, Beatrice, you have made him so nice, and we have all been so happy, and mother has said more than once to me, 'Beatrice Meadowsweet has saved us,' and now, just at the very last, just at the very end, are you going to be a coward--a deserter?"

"No," said Beatrice. "I won't desert you. I won't fail you. It is given to me to save your brother Loftus, to really save him. Don't be frightened, Kitty. I have a hard task to go through. I have to say some things to your mother which will try her. Yes, I know they will try her much, but I am doing right, and you 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 G.o.d. Then I don't care for anything else. You are a true girl, Beatrice, you have truth in your eyes. Thank G.o.d, 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-p.r.i.c.k, 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 G.o.d 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?"