THE CLOUD BETWEEN US.
It was late when I reached home and, from the darkness in all the
windows, I concluded that my mother and the one country domestic who
comprised our little household had already retired. My hand was raised to
rap at the closed door, when it occurred to me that I might just as well
effect an entrance without disturbing anyone. Our sitting-room window
opened on to the front garden in which I stood and was seldom fastened,
so I stole softly over the sodden grass and pressed the sash upwards. It
yielded easily to my touch and, gently raising myself on to the low stone
window-sill, I vaulted into the room.
At first I thought it was, as I had expected to find it, empty. But it
was not so. Through the open window by which I had just entered the
moonlight was streaming in, casting long, fantastic rays upon the
well-worn carpet and across the quaint, old-fashioned furniture and on
the white tablecloth, on which my homely evening meal had been left
prepared. But my eyes never rested for a moment on any of these familiar
objects, scarcely even noticed them, for another and a stranger sight
held me spellbound. At the farther end of the room, where the shadows
hung darkest and the moonbeams but feebly penetrated, was the kneeling
figure of a woman.
Her perfectly black dress threw the ghastly hue of her strained, wild
face into startling prominence, and her slender arms were stretched
passionately upwards in a gesture full of intense dramatic pathos. Her
eyes were fixed upon a small ebony crucifix which hung against the wall,
and the words were bursting from her white, trembling lips, but whether
of prayer or confession, I could not, or, rather, would not, hear, for I
closed my eyes and the sound of her voice reached me only in an
indistinct moan. It was a sight which has lived in my memory and will
never fade.
Since that awful night in Rothland Wood, my mother's behaviour towards me
had been a source of constant and painful wonder. She had become an
enigma, and an enigma which I somehow felt that it would be well for me
not to attempt to solve.
But even at the times when my loveless surroundings and her coldness had
plunged me into the lowest depths of depression, it had never been an
altogether hopeless state, for somehow I had always felt that her
coldness was not the coldness of indifference, but rather an effort of
will, and that a time would come when she would cast it off and be to me
again the mother of my earlier recollections. But the change was long in
coming.
She was a devout Roman Catholic--a religion in which I had not been
brought up--and in all weathers and at all times of the year, she paid
long and frequent visits to the monastery chapel over the hills. But to
see her as she was now was a revelation to me. I had seen her pray
before, but never like this. She had always seemed to me more of a martyr
than a sinner and her prayers more the prayers of reverent devotion than
of passionate supplication. But her attitude at this moment, her wild,
haggard face, and imploring eyes, were full of revelation to me. Another
possible explanation of her lonely, joyless life and deep religious
devotion flashed in upon me. Might it not be the dreary expiation, the
hard penance of her church meted out for sin?
Half fearing to disturb her, I remained for a brief while silent, but, as
the minutes went on, the sight of her agony was too much for me and I
cried out to her:
"Mother, I am here. I did not know that you were up! I came in through
the window!"
At the first sound of my appealing tones her face changed, as though
frozen suddenly from passionate expressiveness to cold marble. Slowly she
rose to her feet and confronted me.
"Mother, are you in trouble?" I said softly, moving nearer to her;
"cannot I share your sorrow? Cannot I comfort you? Why am I shut out of
your life so? Tell me this great trouble of yours and let me share it."
For many years I had longed to say these words to her, but the cold
impressiveness of her manner had checked them often upon my lips and
thrust them back to my aching heart. Now, when a great sorrow filled her
face with a softer light and loosened for a moment its hard, rigid lines,
I dared to yield to the impulse which I had so often felt--and, alas! in
vain--in vain!
Keener agony, deeper disappointment, I have never felt. Coldness and
indifference had been hard to bear, but what came now was worse. She
shrank back from me--shrank back, with her hands outstretched towards me
and her head averted.
"Philip, I did not know that you were here. I cannot talk to you now. Go
to your room. To-morrow--to-morrow!"
Her voice died away, but her sudden weakness inspired me with no hope,
for it was a physical weakness only. There were no signs of softening in
her face, no answering tenderness in her tones. So what could I do but
go?