Lady Channice woke on the morning after her long retrospect bringing
from her dreams a heavy heart.
She lay for some moments after the maid had drawn her curtains, looking
out at the fields as she had so often looked, and wondering why her
heart was heavy. Throb by throb, like a leaden shuttle, it seemed to
weave together the old and new memories, so that she saw the pattern of
yesterday and of today, Lady Elliston's coming, the pain that Augustine
had given her in his strange questionings, the meeting of her husband
and her son. And the ominous rhythm of the shuttle was like the footfall
of the past creeping upon her.
It was more difficult than it had been for years, this morning, to quiet
the throb, to stay her thoughts on strength. She could not pray, for her
thoughts, like her heart, were leaden; the whispered words carried no
message as they left her lips; she could not lift her thought to follow
them. It was upon a lesser, a merely human strength, that she found
herself dwelling. She was too weak, too troubled, to find the swiftness
of soul that could soar with its appeal, the stillness of soul where the
divine response could enter; and weakness turned to human help. The
thought of her husband's coming was like a glow of firelight seen at
evening on a misty moor. She could hasten towards it, quelling fear.
There she would be safe. By his mere presence he would help and sustain
her. He would be kind and tactful with Augustine, as he had always been;
he would make a shield between her and Lady Elliston. She could see no
sky above, and the misty moor loomed with uncertain shapes; but she
could look before her and feel that she went towards security and
brightness.
Augustine and his mother both studied during the day, the same studies,
for Lady Channice, to a great extent, shared her son's scholarly
pursuits. From his boyhood--a studious, grave, yet violent little boy he
had been, his fits of passionate outbreak quelled, as he grew older, by
the mere example of her imperturbability beside him--she had thus shared
everything. She had made herself his tutor as well as his guardian
angel. She was more tutor, more guardian angel, than mother.
Their mental comradeship was full of mutual respect. And though
Augustine was not of the religious temperament, though his mother's
instinct told her that in her lighted church he would be a respectful
looker-on rather than a fellow-worshipper, though they never spoke of
religion, just as they seldom kissed, Augustine's growing absorption in
metaphysics tinged their friendship with a religious gravity and
comprehension.
On three mornings in the week Lady Channice had a class for the older
village girls; she sewed, read and talked with them, and was fond of
them all. These girls, their placing in life, their marriages and
babies, were her most real interest in the outer world. During the rest
of the day she gardened, and read whatever books Augustine might be
reading. It was the mother and son's habit thus to work apart and to
discuss work in the evenings.
Today, when her girls were gone, she found herself very lonely.
Augustine was out riding and in her room she tried to occupy herself,
fearing her own thoughts. It was past twelve when she heard the sound of
his horse's hoofs on the gravel before the door and, throwing a scarf
over her hair, she ran down to meet him.
The hall door at Charlock House, under a heavy portico, looked out upon
a circular gravel drive bordered by shrubberies and enclosed by high
walls; beyond the walls and gates was the high-road. An interval of
sunlight had broken into the chill Autumn day: Augustine had ridden
bareheaded and his gold hair shone as the sun fell upon it. He looked,
in his stately grace, like an equestrian youth on a Greek frieze. And,
as was usual with his mother, her appreciation of Augustine's nobility
and fineness passed at once into a pang: so beautiful; so noble; and so
shadowed. She stood, her black scarf about her face and shoulders, and
smiled at him while he threw the reins to the old groom and dismounted.
"Nice to find you waiting for me," he said. "I'm late this morning. Too
late for any work before lunch. Don't you want a little walk? You look
pale."
"I should like it very much. I may miss my afternoon walk--your father
may have business to talk over."
They went through the broad stone hall-way that traversed the house and
stepped out on the gravel walk at the back. This path, running below the
drawing-room and dining-room windows, led down on one side to the woods,
on the other to Lady Channice's garden, and was a favourite place of
theirs for quiet saunterings. Today the sunlight fell mildly on it. A
rift of pale blue showed in the still grey sky.
"I met Marjory," said Augustine, "and we had a gallop over Pangley
Common. She rides well, that child. We jumped the hedge and ditch at the
foot of the common, you know--the high hedge--for practice. She goes
over like a bird."
Amabel's mind was dwelling on the thought of shadowed brightness and
Marjory, fresh, young, deeply rooted in respectability, seemed suddenly
more significant than she had ever been before. In no way Augustine's
equal, of course, except in that impersonal, yet so important matter of
roots; Amabel had known a little irritation over Mrs. Grey's open
manoeuvreings; but on this morning of rudderless tossing, Marjory
appeared in a new aspect. How sound; how safe. It was of Augustine's
insecurity rather than of Augustine himself that she was thinking as she
said: "She is such a nice girl."
"Yes, she is," said Augustine.
"What did you talk about?"
"Oh, the things we saw; birds and trees and clouds.--I pour information
upon her."
"She likes that, one can see it."
"Yes, she is so nice and guileless that she doesn't resent my pedantry.
I love giving information, you know," Augustine smiled. He looked about
him as he spoke, at birds and trees and clouds, happy, humorous,
clasping his riding crop behind his back so that his mother heard it
make a pleasant little click against his gaiter as he walked.
"It's delightful for both of you, such a comradeship."
"Yes; a comradeship after a fashion; Marjory is just like a nice little
boy."
"Ah, well, she is growing up; she is seventeen, you know. She is more
than a little boy."
"Not much; she never will be much more."
"She will make a very nice woman."
Augustine continued to smile, partly at the thought of Marjory, and
partly at another thought. "You mustn't make plans, for me and Marjory,
like Mrs. Grey," he said presently. "It's mothers like Mrs. Grey who
spoil comradeships. You know, I'll never marry Marjory. She is a nice
little boy, and we are friends; but she doesn't interest me."
"She may grow more interesting: she is so young. I don't make plans,
dear,--yet I think that it might be a happy thing for you."
"She'll never interest me," said Augustine.
"Must you have a very interesting wife?"
"Of course I must:--she must be as interesting as you are!" he turned
his head to smile at her.
"You are not exacting, dear!"
"Yes, I am, though. She must be as interesting as you--and as good; else
why should I leave you and go and live with someone else.--Though for
that matter, I shouldn't leave you. You'd have to live with us, you
know, if I ever married."
"Ah, my dear boy," Lady Channice murmured. She managed a smile presently
and added: "You might fall in love with someone not so interesting. You
can't be sure of your feelings and your mind going together."
"My feelings will have to submit themselves to my mind. I don't know
about 'falling'; I rather dislike the expression: one might 'fall' in
love with lots of people one would never dream of marrying. It would
have to be real love. I'd have to love a woman very deeply before I
wanted her to share my life, to be a part of me; to be the mother of my
children." He spoke with his cheerful gravity.
"You have an old head on very young shoulders, Augustine."
"I really believe I have!" he accepted her somewhat sadly humorous
statement; "and that's why I don't believe I'll ever make a mistake. I'd
rather never marry than make a mistake. I know I sound priggish; but
I've thought a good deal about it: I've had to." He paused for a moment,
and then, in the tone of quiet, unconfused confidence that always filled
her with a sense of mingled pride and humility, he added:--"I have
strong passions, and I've already seen what happens to people who allow
feeling to govern them."
Amabel was suddenly afraid. "I know that you would always be--good
Augustine; I can trust you for that." She spoke faintly.
They had now walked down to the little garden with its box borders and
were wandering vaguely among the late roses. She paused to look at the
roses, stooping to breathe in the fragrance of a tall white cluster: it
was an instinctive impulse of hiding: she hoped in another moment to
find an escape in some casual gardening remark. But Augustine,
unsuspecting, was interested in their theme.
"Good? I don't know," he said. "I don't think it's goodness, exactly.
It's that I so loathe the other thing, so loathe the animal I know in
myself, so loathe the idea of life at the mercy of emotion."
She had to leave the roses and walk on again beside him, steeling
herself to bear whatever might be coming. And, feeling that unconscious
accusation loomed, she tried, as unconsciously, to mollify and evade it.
"It isn't always the animal, exactly, is it?--or emotion only? It is
romance and blind love for a person that leads people astray."
"Isn't that the animal?" Augustine inquired. "I don't think the animal
base, you know, or shameful, if he is properly harnessed and kept in his
place. It's only when I see him dominating that I hate and fear him so.
And," he went on after a little pause of reflection, "I especially hate
him in that form;--romance and blind love: because what is that, really,
but the animal at its craftiest and most dangerous? what is romance--I
mean romance of the kind that jeopardizes 'goodness'--what is it but the
most subtle self-deception? You don't love the person in the true sense
of love; you don't want their good; you don't want to see them put in
the right relation to their life as a whole:--what you want is sensation
through them; what you want is yourself in them, and their absorption in
you. I don't think that wicked, you know--I'm not a monk or even a
puritan--if it's the mere result of the right sort of love, a happy
glamour that accompanies, the right sort; it's in its place, then, and
can endanger nothing. But people are so extraordinarily blind about
love; they don't seem able to distinguish between the real and the
false. People usually, though they don't know it, mean only desire when
they talk of love."
There was another pause in which she wondered that he did not hear the
heavy throbbing of her heart. But now there was no retreat; she must go
on; she must understand her son. "Desire must enter in," she said.
"In its place, yes; it's all a question of that;" Augustine replied,
smiling a little at her, aware of the dogmatic flavour of his own
utterances, the humorous aspect of their announcement, to her, by
him;--"You love a woman enough and respect her enough to wish her to be
the mother of your children--assuming, of course, that you consider
yourself worthy to carry on the race; and to think of a woman in such a
way is to feel a rightful emotion and a rightful desire; anything else
makes emotion the end instead of the result and is corrupting, I'm sure
of it."
"You have thought it all out, haven't you"; Lady Channice steadied her
voice to say. There was panic rising in her, and a strange anger made
part of it.
"I've had to, as I said," he replied. "I'm anything but self-controlled
by nature; already," and Augustine looked calmly at his mother, "I'd
have let myself go and been very dissolute unless I'd had this ideal of
my own honour to help me. I'm of anything but a saintly disposition."
"My dear Augustine!" His mother had coloured faintly. Absurd as it was,
when the reality of her own life was there mocking her, the bald words
were strange to her.
"Do I shock you?" he asked. "You know I always feel that you _are_ a
saint, who can hear and understand everything."
She blushed deeply, painfully, now. "No, you don't shock me;--I am only
a little startled."
"To hear that I'm sensual? The whole human race is far too sensual in my
opinion. They think a great deal too much about their sexual
appetites;--only they don't think about them in those terms
unfortunately; they think about them veiled and wreathed; that's why we
are sunk in such a bog of sentimentality and sin."
Lady Channice was silent for a long time. They had left the garden, and
walked along the little path near the sunken wall at the foot of the
lawn, and, skirting the wood of sycamores, had come back to the broad
gravel terrace. A turmoil was in her mind; a longing to know and see; a
terror of what he would show her.
"Do you call it sin, that blinded love? Do you think that the famous
lovers of romance were sinners?" she asked at last; "Tristan and
Iseult?--Abelard and Heloise?--Paolo and Francesca?"
"Of course they were sinners," said Augustine cheerfully. "What did they
want?--a present joy: purely and simply that: they sacrificed everything
to it--their own and other people's futures: what's that but sin? There
is so much mawkish rubbish talked and written about such persons. They
were pathetic, of course, most sinners are; that particular sin, of
course, may be so associated and bound up with beautiful
things;--fidelity, and real love may make such a part of it, that people
get confused about it."
"Fidelity and real love?" Lady Channice repeated: "you think that they
atone--if they make part of an illicit passion?"
"I don't think that they atone; but they may redeem it, mayn't they? Why
do you ask me?" Augustine smiled;--"You know far more about these things
than I do."
She could not look at him. His words in their beautiful unconsciousness
appalled her. Yet she had to go on, to profit by her own trance-like
strength. She was walking on the verge of a precipice but she knew that
with steady footsteps she could go towards her appointed place. She must
see just where Augustine put her, just how he judged her.
"You seem to know more than I do, Augustine," she said: "I've not
thought it out as you have. And it seems to me that any great emotion is
more of an end in itself than you would grant. But if the illicit
passion thinks itself real and thinks itself enduring, and proves
neither, what of it then? What do you think of lovers to whom that
happens? It so often happens, you know."
Augustine had his cheerful answer ready. "Then they are stupid as well
as sinful. Of course it is sinful to be stupid. We've learned that from
Plato and Hegel, haven't we?"
The parlour-maid came out to announce lunch. Lady Channice was spared an
answer. She went to her room feeling shattered, as if great stones had
been hurled upon her.
Yes, she thought, gazing at herself in the mirror, while she untied her
scarf and smoothed her hair, yes, she had never yet, with all her
agonies of penitence, seen so clearly what she had been: a sinner: a
stupid sinner. Augustine's rigorous young theories might set too inhuman
an ideal, but that aspect of them stood out clear: he had put, in bald,
ugly words, what, in essence, her love for Paul Quentin had been: he had
stripped all the veils and wreaths away. It had been self; self, blind
in desire, cruel when blindness left it: there had been no real love and
no fidelity to redeem the baseness. A stupid sinner; that, her son had
told her, was what she had been. The horror of it smote back upon her
from her widened, mirrored eyes, and she sat for a moment thinking that
she must faint.
Then she remembered that Augustine was waiting for her downstairs and
that in little more than an hour her husband would be with her. And
suddenly the agony lightened. A giddiness of relief came over her. He
was kind: he did not judge her: he knew all, yet he respected her.
Augustine was like the bleak, stony moor; she must shut her eyes and
stumble on towards the firelight. And as she thought of that nearing
brightness, of her husband's eyes, that never judged, never grew hard or
fierce or remote from human tolerance, a strange repulsion from her son
rose in her. Cold, fierce, righteous boy; cold, heartless theories that
one throb of human emotion would rightly shatter;--the thought was
almost like an echo of Paul Quentin speaking in her heart to comfort
her. She sprang up: that was indeed the last turn of horror. If she was
not to faint she must not think. Action alone could dispel the whirling
mist where she did not know herself.
She went down to the dining-room. Augustine stood looking out of the
window. "Do come and see this delightful swallow," he said: "he's
skimming over and over the lawn."
She felt that she could not look at the swallow. She could only walk to
her chair and sink down on it. Augustine repelled her with his
cheerfulness, his trivial satisfactions. How could he not know that she
was in torment and that he had plunged her there. This involuntary
injustice to him was, she saw again, veritably crazed.
She poured herself out water and said in a voice that surprised
herself:--"Very delightful, I am sure; but come and have your lunch. I
am hungry."
"And how pale you are," said Augustine, going to his place. "We stayed
out too long. You got chilled." He looked at her with the solicitude
that was like a brother's--or a doctor's. That jarred upon her racked
nerves, too.
"Yes; I am cold," she said.
She took food upon her plate and pretended to eat. Augustine, she
guessed, must already feel the change in her. He must see that she only
pretended. But he said nothing more. His tact was a further turn to the
knot of her sudden misery.
* * * * *
Augustine was with her in the drawing-room when she heard the wheels of
the station-fly grinding on the gravel drive; they sounded very faintly
in the drawing-room, but, from years of listening, her hearing had grown
very acute.
She could never meet her husband without an emotion that betrayed itself
in pallor and trembling and today the emotion was so marked that
Augustine's presence was at once a safeguard and an anxiety; before
Augustine she could be sure of not breaking down, not bursting into
tears of mingled gladness and wretchedness, but though he would keep her
from betraying too much to Sir Hugh, would she not betray too much to
him? He was reading a review and laid it down as the door opened: she
could only hope that he noticed nothing.
Sir Hugh came in quickly. At fifty-four he was still a very handsome man
of a chivalrous and soldierly bearing. He had long limbs, broad
shoulders and a not yet expanded waist. His nose and chin were clearly
and strongly cut, his eyes brightly blue; his moustache ran to decisive
little points twisted up from the lip and was as decorative as an
epaulette upon a martial shoulder. Pleasantness radiated from him, and
though, with years, this pleasantness was significant rather of his
general attitude than of his individual interest, though his movements
had become a little indolent and his features a little heavy, these
changes, to affectionate eyes, were merely towards a more pronounced
geniality and contentedness.
Today, however, geniality and contentment were less apparent. He looked
slightly nipped and hardened, and, seeming pleased to find a fire, he
stood before it, after he had shaken hands with his wife and with
Augustine, and said that it had been awfully cold in the train.
"We will have tea at half past four instead of five today, then," said
Amabel.
But no, he replied, he couldn't stop for tea: he must catch the
four-four back to town: he had a dinner and should only just make it.
His eye wandered a little vaguely about the room, but he brought it back
to Amabel to say with a smile that the fire made up for the loss of tea.
There was then a little silence during which it might have been inferred
that Sir Hugh expected Augustine to leave the room. Amabel, too,
expected it; but Augustine had taken up his review and was reading
again. She felt her fear of him, her anger against him, grow.
Very pleasantly, Sir Hugh at last suggested that he had a little
business to talk over. "I think I'll ask Augustine to let us have a half
hour's talk."
"Oh, I'll not interfere with business," said Augustine, not lifting his
eyes.
The silence, now, was more than uncomfortable; to Amabel it was
suffocating. She could guess too well that some latent enmity was
expressed in Augustine's assumed unconsciousness. That Sir Hugh was
surprised, displeased, was evident; but, when he spoke again, after a
little pause, it was still pleasantly:--"Not with business, but with
talk you will interfere. I'm afraid I must ask you.--I don't often have
a chance to talk with your mother.--I'll see you later, eh?"
Augustine made no reply. He rose and walked out of the room.
Sir Hugh still stood before the fire, lifting first the sole of one boot
and then the other to the blaze. "Hasn't always quite nice manners, has
he, the boy"; he observed. "I didn't want to have to send him out, you
know."
"He didn't realize that you wanted to talk to me alone." Amabel felt
herself offering the excuse from a heart turned to stone.
"Didn't he, do you think? Perhaps not. We always do talk alone, you
know. He's just a trifle tactless, shows a bit of temper sometimes. I've
noticed it. I hope he doesn't bother you with it."
"No. I never saw him like that, before," said Amabel, looking down as
she sat in her chair.
"Well, that's all that matters," said Sir Hugh, as if satisfied.
His boots were quite hot now and he went to the writing-desk drawing a
case of papers from his breast-pocket.
"Here are some of your securities, Amabel," he said: "I want a few more
signatures. Things haven't been going very well with me lately. I'd be
awfully obliged if you'd help me out."
"Oh--gladly--" she murmured. She rose and came to the desk. She hardly
saw the papers through a blur of miserable tears while she wrote her
name here and there. She was shut out in the mist and dark; he wasn't
thinking of her at all; he was chill, preoccupied; something was
displeasing him; decisively, almost sharply, he told her where to write.
"You mustn't be worried, you know," he observed as he pointed out the
last place; "I'm arranging here, you see, to pass Charlock House over to
you for good. That is a little return for all you've done. It's not a
valueless property. And then Bertram tied up a good sum for the child,
you know."
His speaking of "the child," made her heart stop beating, it brought the
past so near.--And was Charlock House to be her very own? "Oh," she
murmured, "that is too good of you.--You mustn't do that.--Apart from
Augustine's share, all that I have is yours; I want no return."
"Ah, but I want you to have it"; said Sir Hugh; "it will ease my
conscience a little. And you really do care for the grim old place,
don't you."
"I love it."
"Well, sign here, and here, and it's yours. There. Now you are mistress
in your own home. You don't know how good you've been to me, Amabel."
The voice was the old, kind voice, touched even, it seemed, with an
unwonted feeling, and, suddenly, the tears ran down her cheeks as,
looking at the papers that gave her her home, she said, faltering:--"You
are not displeased with me?--Nothing is the matter?"
He looked at her, startled, a little confused. "Why my dear
girl,--displeased with you?--How could I be?--No. It's only these
confounded affairs of mine that are in a bit of a mess just now."
"And can't I be of even more help--without any returns? I can be so
economical for myself, here. I need almost nothing in my quiet life."
Sir Hugh flushed. "Oh, you've not much more to give, my dear. I've taken
you at your word."
"Take me completely at my word. Take everything."
"You dear little saint," he said. He patted her shoulder. The door was
wide; the fire shone upon her. She felt herself falling on her knees
before it, with happy tears. He, who knew all, could say that to her,
with sincerity. The day of lowering fear and bewilderment opened to
sudden joy. His hand was on her shoulder; she lifted it and kissed it.
"Oh! Don't!"--said Sir Hugh. He drew his hand sharply away. There was
confusion, irritation, in his little laugh.
Amabel's tears stood on scarlet cheeks. Did he not understand?--Did he
think?--And was he right in thinking?--Shame flooded her. What girlish
impulse had mingled incredibly with her gratitude, her devotion?
Sir Hugh had turned away, and as she sat there, amazed with her sudden
suspicion, the door opened and Augustine came in saying:--"Here is Lady
Elliston, Mother."
V
Lady Elliston helped her. How that, too, brought back the past to Amabel
as she rose and moved forward, before her husband and her son, to greet
the friend of twenty years ago.
Lady Elliston, at difficult moments, had always helped her, and this was
one of the most difficult that she had ever known. Amabel forgot her
tears, forgot her shame, in her intense desire that Augustine should
guess nothing.
"My very dear Amabel," said Lady Elliston. She swept forward and took
both Lady Channice's hands, holding them firmly, looking at her
intently, intently smiling, as if, with her own mastery of the
situation, to give her old friend strength. "My dear, dear Amabel," she
repeated: "How good it is to see you again.--And how lovely you are."
She was silken, she was scarfed, she was soft and steady; as in the
past, sweetness and strength breathed from her. She was competent to
deal with most calamitous situations and to make them bearable, to make
them even graceful. She could do what she would with situations: Amabel
felt that of her now as she had felt it years ago.
Her eyes continued to gaze for a long moment into Amabel's eyes before,
as softly and as steadily, they passed to Sir Hugh who was again
standing before the fire behind his wife. "How do you do," she then said
with a little nod.
"How d'ye do," Sir Hugh replied. His voice was neither soft nor steady;
the sharpness, the irritation was in it. "I didn't know you were down
here," he said.
Over Amabel's shoulder, while she still held Amabel's hands, Lady
Elliston looked at him, all sweetness. "Yes: I arrived this morning. I
am staying with the Greys."
"The Greys? How in the dickens did you run across them?" Sir Hugh asked
with a slight laugh.
"I met them at Jack's cousin's--the nice old bishop, you know. They are
tiresome people; but kind. And there is a Grey _fils_--the oldest--whom
Peggy took rather a fancy to last winter,--they were hunting together in
Yorkshire;--and I wanted to look at him--and at the place!--"--Lady
Elliston's smile was all candour. "They are very solid; it's not a bad
place. If the young people are really serious Jack and I might consider
it; with three girls still to marry, one must be very wise and
reasonable. But, of course, I came really to see you, Amabel."
She had released Amabel's hands at last with a final soft pressure, and,
as Amabel took her accustomed chair near the table, she sat down near
her and loosened her cloak and unwound her scarf, and threw back her
laces.
"And I've been making friends with your boy," she went on, looking up at
Augustine:--"he's been walking me about the garden, saying that you
mustn't be disturbed. Why haven't I been able to make friends before?
Why hasn't he been to see me in London?"
"I'll bring him someday," said Sir Hugh. "He is only just grown up, you
see."
"I see: do bring him soon. He is charming," said Lady Elliston, smiling
at Augustine.
Amabel remembered her pretty, assured manner of saying any
pleasantness--or unpleasantness for that matter--that she chose to say;
but it struck her, from this remark, that the gift had grown a little
mechanical. Augustine received it without embarrassment. Augustine
already seemed to know that this smiling guest was in the habit of
saying that young men were charming before their faces when she wanted
to be pleasant to them. Amabel seemed to see her son from across the
wide chasm that had opened between them; but, looking at his figure,
suddenly grown strange, she felt that Augustine's manners were 'nice.'
The fact of their niceness, of his competence--really it matched Lady
Elliston's--made him the more mature; and this moment of motherly
appreciation led her back to the stony wilderness where her son judged
her, with a man's, not a boy's judgment. There was no uncertainty in
Augustine; his theories might be young; his character was formed; his
judgments would not change. She forced herself not to think; but to look
and listen.
Lady Elliston continued to talk: indeed it was she and Augustine who did
most of the talking. Sir Hugh only interjected a remark now and then
from his place before the fire. Amabel was able to feel a further change
in him; he was displeased today, and displeased in particular, now, with
Lady Elliston. She thought that she could understand the vexation for
him of this irruption of his real life into the sad little corner of
kindness and duty that Charlock House and its occupants must represent
to him. He had seldom spoken to her about Lady Elliston; he had seldom
spoken to her about any of the life that she had abandoned in abandoning
him: but she knew that Lord and Lady Elliston were near friends still,
and with this knowledge she could imagine how on edge her husband must
be when to the near friend of the real life he could allow an even
sharper note to alter all his voice. Amabel heard it sadly, with a sense
of confused values: nothing today was as she had expected it to be: and
if she heard she was sure that Lady Elliston must hear it too, and
perhaps the symptom of Lady Elliston's displeasure was that she talked
rather pointedly to Augustine and talked hardly at all to Sir Hugh: her
eyes, in speaking, passed sometimes over his figure, rested sometimes,
with a bland courtesy, on his face when he spoke; but Augustine was
their object: on him they dwelt and smiled.
The years had wrought few changes in Lady Elliston. Silken, soft,
smiling, these were, still, as in the past, the words that described
her. She had triumphantly kept her lovely figure: the bright brown hair,
too, had been kept, but at some little sacrifice of sincerity: Lady
Elliston must be nearly fifty and her shining locks showed no sign of
fading. Perhaps, in the perfection of her appearance and manner, there
was a hint of some sacrifice everywhere. How much she has kept, was the
first thought; but the second came:--How much she has given up. Yes;
there was the only real change: Amabel, gazing at her, somewhat as a nun
gazes from behind convent gratings at some bright denizen of the outer
world, felt it more and more. She was sweet, but was she not too
skilful? She was strong, but was not her strength unscrupulous? As she
listened to her, Amabel remembered old wonders, old glimpses of motives
that stole forth reconnoitring and then retreated at the hint of rebuff,
graceful and unconfused.
There were motives now, behind that smile, that softness; motives behind
the flattery of Augustine, the blandness towards Sir Hugh, the visit to
herself. Some of the motives were, perhaps, all kindness: Lady Elliston
had always been kind; she had always been a binder of wounds, a
dispenser of punctual sunlight; she was one of the world's powerfully
benignant great ladies; committees clustered round her; her words of
assured wisdom sustained and guided ecclesiastical and political
organisations; one must be benignant, in an altruistic modern world, if
one wanted to rule. It was not a cynical nun who gazed; Lady Elliston
was kind and Lady Elliston loved power; simply, without a sense of
blame, Amabel drew her conclusions.
There were now lapses in Lady Elliston's fluency. Her eyes rested
contemplatively on Amabel; it was evident that she wanted to see Amabel
alone. This motive was so natural a one that, although Sir Hugh seemed
determined, at the risk of losing his train, to stay till the last
minute, he, too, felt, at last, its pressure.
His wife saw him go with a sense of closing mists. Augustine, now more
considerate, followed him. She was left facing her guest.
Only Lady Elliston could have kept the moment from being openly painful
and even Lady Elliston could not pretend to find it an easy one; but she
did not err on the side of too much tact. It was so sweetly, so gravely
that her eyes rested for a long moment of silence on her old friend, so
quietly that they turned away from her rising flush, that Amabel felt
old gratitudes mingling with old distrusts.
"What a sad room this is," said Lady Elliston, looking about it. "Is it
just as you found it, Amabel?"
"Yes, almost. I have taken away some things."
"I wish you would take them all away and put in new ones. It might be
made into a very nice room; the panelling is good. What it needs is
Jacobean furniture, fine old hangings, and some bits of glass and
porcelain here and there."
"I suppose so." Amabel's eyes followed Lady Elliston's. "I never thought
of changing anything."
Lady Elliston's eyes turned on hers again. "No: I suppose not," she
said.
She seemed to find further meanings in the speech and took it up again
with: "I suppose not. It's strange that we should never have met in all
these years, isn't it."
"Is it strange?"
"I've often felt it so: if you haven't, that is just part of your
acceptance. You have accepted everything. It has often made me indignant
to think of it."
Amabel sat in her high-backed chair near the table. Her hands were
tightly clasped together in her lap and her face, with the light from
the windows falling upon it, was very pale. But she knew that she was
calm; that she could meet Lady Elliston's kindness with an answering
kindness; that she was ready, even, to hear Lady Elliston's questions.
This, however, was not a question, and she hesitated for a moment before
saying: "I don't understand you."
"How well I remember that voice," Lady Elliston smiled a little sadly:
"It's the girl's voice of twenty years ago--holding me away. Can't we be
frank together, now, Amabel, when we are both middle-aged women?--at
least I am middle-aged.--How it has kept you young, this strange life
you've led."
"But, really, I do not understand," Amabel murmured, confused; "I didn't
understand you then, sometimes."
"Then I may be frank?"
"Yes; be frank, of course."
"It is only that indignation that I want to express," said Lady
Elliston, tentative no longer and firmly advancing. "Why are you here,
in this dismal room, this dismal house? Why have you let yourself be
cloistered like this? Why haven't you come out and claimed things?"
Amabel's grey eyes, even in their serenity always a little wild, widened
with astonishment. "Claimed?" she repeated. "What do you mean? What
could I have claimed? I have been given everything."
"My dear Amabel, you speak as if you had deserved this imprisonment."
There was another and a longer silence in which Amabel seemed slowly to
find meanings incredible to her before. And her reception of them was
expressed in the changed, the hardened voice with which she said: "You
know everything. I've always been sure you knew. How can you say such
things to me?"
"Do not be angry with me, dear Amabel. I do not mean to offend."
"You spoke as though you were sorry for me, as though I had been
injured.--It touches him."
"But," Lady Elliston had flushed very slightly, "it does touch him. I
blame Hugh for this. He ought not to have allowed it. He ought not to
have accepted such misplaced penitence. You were a mere child, and Hugh
neglected you shamefully."
"I was not a mere child," said Amabel. "I was a sinful woman."
Lady Elliston sat still, as if arrested and spell-bound by the
unexpected words. She seemed to find no answer. And as the silence grew
long, Amabel went on, slowly, with difficulty, yet determinedly opposing
and exposing the folly of the implied accusation. "You don't seem to
remember the facts. I betrayed my husband. He might have cast me off. He
might have disgraced me and my child. And he lifted me up; he sheltered
me; he gave his name to the child. He has given me everything I have.
You see--you must not speak of him like that to me."
Lady Elliston had gathered herself together though still, it was
evident, bewildered. "I don't mean to blame Hugh so much. It was your
fault, too, I suppose. You asked for the cloister, I know."
"No; I didn't ask for it. I asked to be allowed to go away and hide
myself. The cloister, too, was a gift,--like my name, my undishonoured
child."
"Dear, dear Amabel," said Lady Elliston, gazing at her, "how beautiful
of you to be able to feel like that."
"It isn't I who am beautiful"; Amabel's lips trembled a little now and
her eyes filled suddenly with tears. Tears and trembling seemed to bring
hardness rather than softening to her face; they were like a chill
breeze, like an icy veil, and the face, with its sorrow, was like a
winter's landscape.
"He is so beautiful that he would never let anyone know or understand
what I owe him: he would never know it himself: there is something
simple and innocent about such men: they do beautiful things
unconsciously. You know him well: you are far nearer him than I am: but
you can't know what the beauty is, for you have never been helpless and
disgraced and desperate nor needed anyone to lift you up. No one can
know as I do the angel in my husband."
Lady Elliston sat silent. She received Amabel's statements steadily yet
with a little wincing, as though they had been bullets whistling past
her head; they would not pierce, if one did not move; yet an involuntary
compression of the lips and flutter of the eyelids revealed a rather
rigid self-mastery. Only after the silence had grown long did she
slightly stir, move her hand, turn her head with a deep, careful breath,
and then say, almost timidly; "Then, he has lifted you up, Amabel?--You
are happy, really happy, in your strange life?"
Amabel looked down. The force of her vindicating ardour had passed from
her. With the question the hunted, haunted present flooded in. Happy?
Yesterday she might have answered "yes," so far away had the past
seemed, so forgotten the fear in which she had learned to breathe. Today
the past was with her and the fear pressed heavily upon her heart. She
answered in a sombre voice: "With my past what woman could be happy. It
blights everything."
"Oh--but Amabel--" Lady Elliston breathed forth. She leaned forward,
then moved back, withdrawing the hand impulsively put out.--"Why?--Why?--"
she gently urged. "It is all over: all passed: all forgotten. Don't--ah
don't let it blight anything."
"Oh no," said Amabel, shaking her head. "It isn't over; it isn't
forgotten; it never will be. Hugh cannot forget--though he has
forgiven. And someday, I feel it, Augustine will know. Then I shall
drink the cup of shame to the last drop."
"Oh!--" said Lady Elliston, as if with impatience. She checked herself.
"What can I say?--if you will think of yourself in this preposterous
way.--As for Augustine, he does not know and how should he ever know?
How could he, when no one in the world knows but you and I and Hugh."
She paused at that, looking at Amabel's downcast face. "You notice what
I say, Amabel?"
"Yes; that isn't it. He will guess."
"You are morbid, my poor child.--But do you notice nothing when I say
that only we three know?"
Amabel looked up. Lady Elliston met her eyes. "I came today to tell you,
Amabel. I felt sure you did not know. There is no reason at all, now,
why you should dread coming out into the world--with Augustine. You need
fear no meetings. You did not know that he was dead."
"He?"
"Yes. He. Paul Quentin."
Amabel, gazing at her, said nothing.
"He died in Italy, last week. He was married, you know, quite happily;
an ordinary sort of person; she had money; he rather let his work go.
But they were happy; a large family; a villa on a hill somewhere;
pictures, bric-a-brac and bohemian intellectualism. You knew of his
marriage?"
"Yes; I knew."
The tears had risen to Lady Elliston's eyes before that stricken, ashen
face; she looked away, murmuring: "I wanted to tell you, when we were
alone. It might have come as such an ugly shock, if you were unprepared.
But, now, there is no danger anymore. And you will come out, Amabel?"
"No;--never.--It was never that."
"But what was it then?"
Amabel had risen and was looking around her blindly.
"It was.--I have no place but here.--Forgive me--I must go. I can't talk
any more."
"Yes; go; do go and lie down." Lady Elliston, rising too, put an arm
around her shoulders and took her hand. "I'll come again and see you. I
am going up to town for a night or so on Tuesday, but I bring Peggy down
here for the next week-end. I'll see you then.--Ah, here is Augustine,
and tea. He will give me my tea and you must sleep off your headache.
Your poor mother has a very bad headache, Augustine. I have tried her.
Goodbye, dear, go and rest."