"Dear mother," it said. "I think that I shall go and stay with Wallace
for a week or so. I shall see you before I go up to Oxford. Try to
forgive me for my violence last night. I am sorry to have added to your
unhappiness. Your affectionate son--Augustine."
Her mind was still empty. "Has Mr. Augustine gone?" she asked the maid.
"Yes, ma'am; he left quite early, to catch the eight-forty train."
"Ah, yes," said Amabel. She sank back on her pillow. "I will have my
breakfast in bed. Tea, please, only, and toast."--Then, the long habit
of self-discipline asserting itself, the necessity for keeping strength,
if it were only to be spent in suffering:--"No, coffee, and an egg,
too."
She found, indeed, that she was very hungry; she had eaten nothing
yesterday. After her bath and the brushing and braiding of her hair, it
was pleasant to lie propped high on her pillows and to drink her hot
coffee. The morning papers, too, were nice to look at, folded on her
tray. She did not wish to read them; but they spoke of a firmly
established order, sustaining her life and assuring her of ample pillows
to lie on and hot coffee to drink, assuring her that bodily comforts
were pleasant whatever else was painful. It was a childish, a still
stupefied mood, she knew, but it supported her; an oasis of the
familiar, the safe, in the midst of whirling, engulfing storms.
It supported her through the hours when she lay, with closed eyes,
listening to the pour and drip of the rain, when, finally deciding to
get up, she rose and dressed very carefully, taking all her time.
Below, in the drawing-room, when she entered, it was very dark. The fire
was unlit, the bowls of roses were faded; and sudden, childish tears
filled her eyes at the desolateness. On such a day as this Augustine
would have seen that the fire was burning, awaiting her. She found
matches and lighted it herself and the reluctantly creeping brightness
made the day feel the drearier; it took a long time even to warm her
foot as she stood before it, leaning her arm on the mantel-piece.
It was Saturday; she should not see her girls today; there was relief in
that, for she did not think that she could have found anything to say to
them this morning.
Looking at the roses again, she felt vexed with the maid for having left
them there in their melancholy. She rang and spoke to her almost sharply
telling her to take them away, and when she had gone felt the tears rise
with surprise and compunction for the sharpness.
There would be no fresh flowers in the room today, it was raining too
hard. If Augustine had been here he would have gone out and found her
some wet branches of beech or sycamore to put in the vases: he knew how
she disliked a flowerless, leafless room, a dislike he shared.
How the rain beat down. She stood looking out of the window at the
sodden earth, the blotted shapes of the trees. Beyond the nearest
meadows it was like a grey sheet drawn down, confusing earth and sky and
shutting vision into an islet.
She hoped that Augustine had taken his mackintosh. He was very forgetful
about such things. She went out to look into the bleak, stone hall hung
with old hunting prints that were dimmed and spotted with age and damp.
Yes, it was gone from its place, and his ulster, too. It had been a
considered, not a hasty departure. A tweed cloak that he often wore on
their walks hung there still and, vaguely, as though she sought
something, she turned it, looked at it, put her hands into the worn,
capacious pockets. All were empty except one where she found some
withered gorse flowers. Augustine was fond of stripping off the golden
blossoms as they passed a bush, of putting his nose into the handful of
fragrance, and then holding it out for her to smell it, too:--"Is it
apricots, or is it peaches?" she could hear him say.
She went back into the drawing-room holding the withered flowers. Their
fragrance was all gone, but she did not like to burn them. She held them
and bent her face to them as she stood again looking out. He would by
now have reached his destination. Wallace was an Eton friend, a nice
boy, who had sometimes stayed at Charlock House. He and Augustine were
perhaps already arguing about Nietzsche.
Strange that her numbed thoughts should creep along this path of custom,
of maternal associations and solicitudes, forgetful of fear and sorrow.
The recognition came with a sinking pang. Reluctantly, unwillingly, her
mind was forced back to contemplate the catastrophe that had befallen
her. He was her judge, her enemy: yet, on this dismal day, how she
missed him. She leaned her head against the window-frame and the tears
fell and fell.
If he were there, could she not go to him and take his hand and say
that, whatever the deep wounds they had dealt each other, they needed
each other too much to be apart. Could she not ask him to take her back,
to forgive her, to love her? Ah--there full memory rushed in. Her heart
seemed to pant and gasp in the sudden coil. Take him back? When it was
her steady fear as well as her sudden anger that had banished him, he
thought he loved her, but that was because he did not know and it was
the anger rather than the love of Augustine's last words that came to
her. He loved her because he believed her good, and that imaginary
goodness cast a shadow on her husband. To believe her good Augustine had
been forced to believe evil of the man she loved and to whom they both
owed everything.
He had said that he was shut out from her heart, and it was true, and
her heart broke in seeing it. But it was by more than the sacred love
for her husband that her child was shut out. Her past, her guilt, was
with her and stood as a barrier between them. She was separated from him
for ever. And, looking round the room, suddenly terrified, it seemed to
her that Augustine was dead and that she was utterly alone.