It was late before she was allowed to see her brother next day, and Bee,
in the meantime, left to her own devices, had not known what to do. She
had taken pen and paper two or three times to let her father know that
Charlie was found, but her mind revolted, somehow, from making that
intimation. What would happen when he knew? He would come here
immediately; he would probably attempt to remove Charlie; he would
certainly order Bee away at once from a place so unsuitable for her. It
was unsuitable for her, and yet--She scarcely saw even Mrs. Leigh after
breakfast, but was left to herself, with the door open into that
sanctuary which was Aubrey’s, with all his books and the newspapers laid
out upon the table. Bee sat in the dining-room and looked into that
other secluded place. In the light of day she dared not go into it. It
seemed like thrusting herself into his presence who had no thought of
her, who did not want her. Oh, not for Aubrey! Aubrey would not for the
world disturb her, or bring any embarrassment into her mind. Aubrey
would rather disappear from his own house, as if he had never existed,
than remind her that he did exist, and perhaps sometimes thought of her
still. Did he ever think of her? Bee knew that it would be wrong and
unlike Aubrey if he kept in these rooms the poor little photograph of
her almost childish face which he had once prized so much. It would have
been indelicate, unlike a gentleman; and yet she made a hasty and
furtive search everywhere to see if, perhaps, it might be somewhere, in
some book or little frame. She would have been angry had she found it,
and indignant; yet she felt a certain desolate sense of being altogether
out of the question, steal into her heart, when she did not find it--in
the inconsistencies of which the heart is full.
It was mid-day when she was called upstairs, to find Charlie established
in the room which should have been the drawing-room, and round which she
threw another wistful look as she came into it in full daylight. Oh, not
a woman’s room in any way, with none of those little photograph frames
about which strew a woman’s table--not one, and consequently none of
Bee. She took this in at the first glance, as she made the three or four
little steps between the door and Charlie’s couch. He was more
hollow-eyed and worn in the daylight than he had been even on the night
before, his appearance entirely changed from that of the commonplace
young Oxford man to an eager, anxious being, with all the cares of a
troubled soul concentrated in his eyes. Mrs. Leigh sat near him, and
the nurse was busy with cushions and pillows arranging his couch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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