I
Lady Channice was waiting for her son to come in from the garden. The
afternoon was growing late, but she had not sat down to the table,
though tea was ready and the kettle sent out a narrow banner of steam.
Walking up and down the long room she paused now and then to look at the
bowls and vases of roses placed about it, now and then to look out of
the windows, and finally at the last window she stopped to watch
Augustine advancing over the lawn towards the house. It was a grey stone
house, low and solid, its bareness unalleviated by any grace of ornament
or structure, and its two long rows of windows gazed out resignedly at a
tame prospect. The stretch of lawn sloped to a sunken stone wall; beyond
the wall a stream ran sluggishly in a ditch-like channel; on the left
the grounds were shut in by a sycamore wood, and beyond were flat
meadows crossed in the distance by lines of tree-bordered roads. It was
a peaceful, if not a cheering prospect. Lady Channice was fond of it.
Cheerfulness was not a thing she looked for; but she looked for peace,
and it was peace she found in the flat green distance, the far, reticent
ripple of hill on the horizon, the dark forms of the sycamores. Her only
regret for the view was that it should miss the sunrise and sunset; in
the evenings, beyond the silhouetted woods, one saw the golden sky; but
the house faced north, and it was for this that the green of the lawn
was so dank, and the grey of the walls so cold, and the light in the
drawing-room where Lady Channice stood so white and so monotonous.
She was fond of the drawing-room, also, unbeautiful and grave to sadness
though it was. The walls were wainscotted to the ceiling with ancient
oak, so that though the north light entered at four high windows the
room seemed dark. The furniture was ugly, miscellaneous and
inappropriate. The room had been dismantled, and in place of the former
drawing-room suite were gathered together incongruous waifs and strays
from dining- and smoking-room and boudoir. A number of heavy chairs
predominated covered in a maroon leather which had cracked in places;
and there were three lugubrious sofas to match.
By degrees, during her long and lonely years at Charlock House, Lady
Channice had, at first tentatively, then with a growing assurance in her
limited sphere of action, moved away all the ugliest, most trivial
things: tattered brocade and gilt footstools, faded antimacassars,
dismal groups of birds and butterflies under glass cases. When she sat
alone in the evening, after Augustine, as child or boy, had gone to bed,
the ghostly glimmer of the birds, the furtive glitter of a glass eye
here and there, had seemed to her quite dreadful. The removal of the
cases (they were large and heavy, and Mrs. Bray, the housekeeper, had
looked grimly disapproving)--was her crowning act of courage, and ever
since their departure she had breathed more freely. It had been easier
to dispose of all the little colonies of faded photographs that stood on
cabinets and tables; they were photographs of her husband's family and
of his family's friends, people most of whom were quite unknown to her,
and their continued presence in the abandoned house was due to
indifference, not affection: no one had cared enough about them to put
them away, far less to look at them. After looking at them for some
years,--these girls in court dress of a bygone fashion, huntsmen holding
crops, sashed babies and matrons in caps or tiaras,--Lady Channice had
cared enough to put them away. She had not, either, to ask for Mrs.
Bray's assistance or advice for this, a fact which was a relief, for
Mrs. Bray was a rather dismal being and reminded her, indeed, of the
stuffed birds in the removed glass cases. With her own hands she
incarcerated the photographs in the drawers of a heavily carved bureau
and turned the keys upon them.
The only ornaments now, were the pale roses, the books, and, above her
writing-desk, a little picture that she had brought with her, a
water-colour sketch of her old home painted by her mother many years
ago.
So the room looked very bare. It almost looked like the parlour of a
convent; with a little more austerity, whitened walls and a few thick
velvet and gilt lives of the saints on the tables, the likeness would
have been complete. The house itself was conventual in aspect, and Lady
Channice, as she stood there in the quiet light at the window, looked
not unlike a nun, were it not for her crown of pale gold hair that shone
in the dark room and seemed, like the roses, to bring into it the
brightness of an outer, happier world.
She was a tall woman of forty, her ample form, her wide bosom, the
falling folds of her black dress, her loosely girdled waist, suggesting,
with the cloistral analogies, the mournful benignity of a bereaved
Madonna. Seen as she stood there, leaning her head to watch her son's
approach, she was an almost intimidating presence, black, still, and
stately. But when the door opened and the young man came in, when, not
moving to meet him, she turned her head with a slight smile of welcome,
all intimidating impressions passed away. Her face, rather, as it
turned, under its crown of gold, was the intimidated face. It was
curiously young, pure, flawless, as though its youth and innocence had
been preserved in some crystal medium of prayer and silence; and if the
nun-like analogies failed in their awe-inspiring associations, they
remained in the associations of unconscious pathos and unconscious
appeal. Amabel Channice's face, like her form, was long and delicately
ample; its pallor that of a flower grown in shadow; the mask a little
over-large for the features. Her eyes were small, beautifully shaped,
slightly slanting upwards, their light grey darkened under golden
lashes, the brows definitely though palely marked. Her mouth was pale
coral-colour, and the small upper lip, lifting when she smiled as she
was smiling now, showed teeth of an infantile, milky whiteness. The
smile was charming, timid, tentative, ingratiating, like a young girl's,
and her eyes were timid, too, and a little wild.
"Have you had a good read?" she asked her son. He had a book in his
hand.
"Very, thanks. But it is getting chilly, down there in the meadow. And
what a lot of frogs there are in the ditch," said Augustine smiling,
"they were jumping all over the place."
"Oh, as long as they weren't toads!" said Lady Channice, her smile
lighting in response. "When I came here first to live there were so many
toads, in the stone areas, you know, under the gratings in front of the
cellar windows. You can't imagine how many! It used quite to terrify me
to look at them and I went to the front of the house as seldom as
possible. I had them all taken away, finally, in baskets,--not killed,
you know, poor things,--but just taken and put down in a field a mile
off. I hope they didn't starve;--but toads are very intelligent, aren't
they; one always associates them with fairy-tales and princes."
She had gone to the tea-table while she spoke and was pouring the
boiling water into the teapot. Her voice had pretty, flute-like ups and
downs in it and a questioning, upward cadence at the end of sentences.
Her upper lip, her smile, the run of her speech, all would have made one
think her humorous, were it not for the strain of nervousness that one
felt in her very volubility.
Her son lent her a kindly but rather vague attention while she talked to
him about the toads, and his eye as he stood watching her make the tea
was also vague. He sat down presently, as if suddenly remembering why he
had come in, and it was only after a little interval of silence, in
which he took his cup from his mother's hands, that something else
seemed to occur to him as suddenly, a late arriving suggestion from her
speech.
"What a horribly gloomy place you must have found it."
Her eyes, turning on him quickly, lost, in an instant, their uncertain
gaiety.
"Gloomy? Is it gloomy? Do you feel it gloomy here, Augustine?"
"Oh, well, no, not exactly," he answered easily. "You see I've always
been used to it. You weren't."
As she said nothing to this, seeming at a loss for any reply, he went on
presently to talk of other things, of the book he had been reading, a
heavy metaphysical tome; of books that he intended to read; of a letter
that he had received that morning from the Eton friend with whom he was
going up to Oxford for his first term. His mother listened, showing a
careful interest usual with her, but after another little silence she
said suddenly:
"I think it's a very nice place, Charlock House, Augustine. Your father
wouldn't have wanted me to live here if he'd imagined that I could find
it gloomy, you know."
"Oh, of course not," said the young man, in an impassive, pleasant
voice.
"He has always, in everything, been so thoughtful for my comfort and
happiness," said Lady Channice.
Augustine did not look at her: his eyes were fixed on the sky outside
and he seemed to be reflecting--though not over her words.
"So that I couldn't bear him ever to hear anything of that sort," Lady
Channice went on, "that either of us could find it gloomy, I mean. You
wouldn't ever say it to him, would you, Augustine." There was a note at
once of urgency and appeal in her voice.
"Of course not, since you don't wish it," her son replied.
"I ask you just because it happens that your father is coming," Lady
Channice said, "tomorrow;--and, you see, if you had this in your mind,
you might have said something. He is coming to spend the afternoon."
He looked at her now, steadily, still pleasantly; but his colour rose.
"Really," he said.
"Isn't it nice. I do hope that it will be fine; these Autumn days are so
uncertain; if only the weather holds up we can have a walk perhaps."
"Oh, I think it will hold up. Will there be time for a walk?"
"He will be here soon after lunch, and, I think, stay on to tea."
"He didn't stay on to tea the last time, did he."
"No, not last time; he is so very busy; it's quite three years since we
have had that nice walk over the meadows, and he likes that so much."
She was trying to speak lightly and easily. "And it must be quite a year
since you have seen him."
"Quite," said Augustine. "I never see him, hardly, but here, you know."
He was still making his attempt at pleasantness, but something hard and
strained had come into his voice, and as, with a sort of helplessness,
her resources exhausted, his mother sat silent, he went on, glancing at
her, as if with the sudden resolution, he also wanted to make very sure
of his way;--
"You like seeing him more than anything, don't you; though you are
separated."
Augustine Channice talked a great deal to his mother about outside
things, such as philosophy; but of personal things, of their relation to
the world, to each other, to his father, he never spoke. So that his
speaking now was arresting.
His mother gazed at him. "Separated? We have always been the best of
friends."
"Of course. I mean--that you've never cared to live
together.--Incompatibility, I suppose. Only," Augustine did not smile,
he looked steadily at his mother, "I should think that since you are so
fond of him you'd like seeing him oftener. I should think that since he
is the best of friends he would want to come oftener, you know."
When he had said these words he flushed violently. It was an echo of his
mother's flush. And she sat silent, finding no words.
"Mother," said Augustine, "forgive me. That was impertinent of me. It's
no affair of mine."
She thought so, too, apparently, for she found no words in which to tell
him that it was his affair. Her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her
eyes downcast, she seemed shrunken together, overcome by his tactless
intrusion.
"Forgive me," Augustine repeated.
The supplication brought her the resource of words again. "Of course,
dear. It is only--I can't explain it to you. It is very complicated.
But, though it seems so strange to you,--to everybody, I know--it is
just that: though we don't live together, and though I see so little of
your father, I do care for him very, very much. More than for anybody in
the world,--except you, of course, dear Augustine."
"Oh, don't be polite to me," he said, and smiled. "More than for anybody
in the world; stick to it."
She could but accept the amendment, so kindly and, apparently, so
lightly pressed upon her, and she answered him with a faint, a grateful
smile, saying, in a low voice:--"You see, dear, he is the noblest person
I have ever known." Tears were in her eyes. Augustine turned away his
own.
They sat then for a little while in silence, the mother and son.
Her eyes downcast, her hands folded in an attitude that suggested some
inner dedication, Amabel Channice seemed to stay her thoughts on the
vision of that nobility. And though her son was near her, the thoughts
were far from him.
It was characteristic of Augustine Channice, when he mused, to gaze
straight before him, whatever the object might be that met his unseeing
eyes. The object now was the high Autumnal sky outside, crossed only
here and there by a drifting fleet of clouds.
The light fell calmly upon the mother and son and, in their stillness,
their contemplation, the two faces were like those on an old canvas,
preserved from time and change in the trance-like immutability of art.
In colour, the two heads chimed, though Augustine's hair was vehemently
gold and there were under-tones of brown and amber in his skin. But the
oval of Lady Channice's face grew angular in her son's, broader and more
defiant; so that, palely, darkly white and gold, on their deep
background, the two heads emphasized each other's character by contrast.
Augustine's lips were square and scornful; his nose ruggedly bridged;
his eyes, under broad eyebrows, ringed round the iris with a line of
vivid hazel; and as his lips, though mild in expression, were scornful
in form, so these eyes, even in their contemplation, seemed fierce.
Calm, controlled face as it was, its meaning for the spectator was of
something passionate and implacable. In mother and son alike one felt a
capacity for endurance almost tragic; but while Augustine's would be the
endurance of the rock, to be moved only by shattering, his mother's was
the endurance of the flower, that bends before the tempest, unresisting,
beaten down into the earth, but lying, even there, unbroken.