She did not write to Augustine for some days. There seemed nothing that
she could say. To say that she forgave him might seem to put aside too
easily the deep wrong he had done her and her husband; to say that she
longed to see him and that, in spite of all, her heart was his, seemed
to make deeper the chasm of falseness between them.
The rain fell during all these days. Sometimes a pale evening sunset
would light the western horizon under lifted clouds and she could walk
out and up and down the paths, among her sodden rose-trees, or down into
the wet, dark woods. Sometimes at night she saw a melancholy star
shining here and there in the vaporous sky. But in the morning the grey
sheet dropped once more between her and the outer world, and the sound
of the steady drip and beat was like an outer echo to her inner
wretchedness.
It was on the fourth day that wretchedness turned to bitter
restlessness, and that to a sudden resolve. Not to write, not even to
say she forgave, might make him think that her heart was still hardened
against him. Her fear had blunted her imagination. Clearly now she saw,
and with an anguish in the vision, that Augustine must be suffering too.
Clearly she heard the love in his parting words. And she longed so to
see, to hear that love again, that the longing, as if with sudden
impatience of the hampering sense of sin, rushed into words that might
bring him.
She wrote:--"My dear Augustine. I miss you very much. Isn't this dismal
weather. I am feeling better. I need not tell you that I do forgive you
for the mistake that hurts us both." Then she paused, for her heart
cried out "Oh--come back soon"; but she did not dare yield to that cry.
She hardly knew that, with uncertain fingers, she only repeated
again:--"I miss you very much. Your affectionate mother."
This was on the fourth day.
On the afternoon of the fifth she stood, as she so often stood, looking
out at the drawing-room window. She was looking and listening, detached
from what she saw, yet absorbed, too, for, as with her son, this
watchfulness of natural things was habitual to her.
It was still raining, but more fitfully: a wind had risen and against a
scudding sky the sycamores tossed their foliage, dark or pale by turns
as the wind passed over them. A broad pool of water, dappling
incessantly with rain-drops, had formed along the farther edge of the
walk where it slanted to the lawn: it was this pool that Amabel was
watching and the bobbin-like dance of drops that looked like little
glass thimbles. The old leaden pipes, curiously moulded, that ran down
the house beside the windows, splashed and gurgled loudly. The noise of
the rushing, falling water shut out other sounds. Gazing at the dancing
thimbles she was unaware that someone had entered the room behind her.
Suddenly two hands were laid upon her shoulders.
The shock, going through her, was like a violent electric discharge. She
tingled from head to foot, and almost with terror. "Augustine!" she
gasped. But the shock was to change, yet grow, as if some alien force
had penetrated her and were disintegrating every atom of her blood.
"No, not Augustine," said her husband's voice: "But you can be glad to
see me, can't you, Amabel?"
He had taken off his hands now and she could turn to him, could see his
bright, smiling face looking at her, could feel him as something
wonderful and radiant filling the dismal day, filling her dismal heart,
with its presence. But the shock still so trembled in her that she did
not move from her place or speak, leaning back upon the window as she
looked at him,--for he was very near,--and putting her hands upon the
window-sill on either side. "You didn't expect to see me, did you," Sir
Hugh said.
She shook her head. Never, never, in all these years, had he come again,
so soon. Months, always, sometimes years, had elapsed between his
visits.
"The last time didn't count, did it," he went on, in speech vague and
desultory yet, at the same time, intent and bright in look. "I was so
bothered; I behaved like a selfish brute; I'm sure you felt it. And you
were so particularly kind and good--and dear to me, Amabel."
She felt herself flushing. He stood so near that she could not move
forward and he must read the face, amazed, perplexed, incredulous of its
joy, yet all lighted from his presence, that she kept fixed on him. For
ah, what joy to see him, to feel that here, here alone of all the world,
was she safe, consoled, known yet cared for. He who understood all as no
one else in the world understood, could stand and smile at her like
that.
"You look thin, and pale, and tired," were his next words. "What have
you been doing to yourself? Isn't Augustine here? You're not alone?"
"Yes; I am alone. Augustine is staying with the Wallace boy."
With the mention of Augustine the dark memory came, but it was now of
something dangerous and hostile shut away, yes, safely shut away, by
this encompassing brightness, this sweetness of intent solicitude. She
no longer yearned to see Augustine.
Sir Hugh looked at her for some moments, when, she said that she was
alone, without speaking. "That is nice for me," he then said. "But how
miserable,--for you,--it must have been. What a shame that you should
have been left alone in this dull place,--and this wretched weather,
too!--Did you ever see such weather." He looked past her at the rain.
"It has been wretched," said Amabel; but she spoke, as she felt, in the
past: nothing seemed wretched now.
"And you were staring out so hard, that you never heard me," He came
beside her now, as if to look out, too, and, making room for him, she
also turned and they looked out at the rain together.
"A filthy day," said Sir Hugh, "I can't bear to think that this is what
you have been doing, all alone."
"I don't mind it, I have the girls, on three mornings, you know."
"You mean that you don't mind it because you are so used to it?"
She had regained some of her composure:--for one thing he was beside
her, no longer blocking her way back into the room. "I like solitude,
you know," she was able to smile.
"Really like it?"
"Sometimes."
"Better than the company of some people, you mean?"
"Yes."
"But not better than mine," he smiled back. "Come, do encourage me, and
say that you are glad to see me."
In her joy the bewilderment was growing, but she said that, of course,
she was glad to see him.
"I've been so bored, so badgered," said Sir Hugh, stretching himself a
little as though to throw off the incubus of tiresome memories; "and
this morning when I left a dull country house, I said to myself: Why not
go down and see Amabel?--I don't believe she will mind.--I believe that,
perhaps, she'll be pleased.--I know that I want to go very much.--So
here I am:--very glad to be here--with dear Amabel."
She looked out, silent, blissful, and perplexed.
He was not hard; he was not irritated; all trace of vexed preoccupation
was gone; but he was not the Sir Hugh that she had seen for all these
twenty years. He was new, and yet he reminded her of something, and the
memory moved towards her through a thick mist of years, moved like a
light through mist. Far, sweet, early things came to her as its heralds;
the sound of brooks running; the primrose woods where she had wandered
as a girl; the singing of prophetic birds in Spring. The past had never
come so near as now when Sir Hugh--yes, there it was, the fair, far
light--was making her remember their long past courtship. And a shudder
of sweetness went through her as she remembered, of sweetness yet of
unutterable sadness, as though something beautiful and dead had been
shown to her. She seemed to lean, trembling, to kiss the lips of a
beautiful dead face, before drawing over it the shroud that must cover
it for ever.
Sir Hugh was silent also. Her silence, perhaps, made him conscious of
memories. Presently, looking behind them, he said:--"I'm keeping you
standing. Shall we go to the fire?"
She followed him, bending a little to the fire, her arm on the
mantel-shelf, a hand held out to the blaze. Sir Hugh stood on the other
side. She was not thinking of herself, hardly of him. Suddenly he took
the dreaming hand, stooped to it, and kissed it. He had released it
before she had time to know her own astonishment.
"You did kiss mine, you know," he smiled, leaning his arm, too, on the
mantel-shelf and looking at her with gaily supplicating eyes. "Don't be
angry."
The shroud had dropped: the past was gone: she was once more in the
present of oppressive, of painful joy.
She would have liked to move away and take her chair at some distance;
but that would have looked like flight; foolish indeed. She summoned her
common-sense, her maturity, her sorrow, to smile back, to say in a voice
she strove to make merely light: "Unusual circumstances excused me."
"Unusual circumstances?"
"You had been very kind. I was very grateful."
Sir Hugh for a moment was silent, looking at her with his intent,
interrogatory gaze. "You are always kind to me," he then said. "I am
always grateful. So may I always kiss your hand?"
Her eyes fell before his. "If you wish to," she answered gravely.
"You frighten me a little, do you know," said Sir Hugh. "Please don't
frighten me.--Are you really angry?--_I_ don't frighten you?"
"You bewilder me a little," Amabel murmured. She looked into the fire,
near tears, indeed, in her bewilderment; and Sir Hugh looked at her,
looked hard and carefully, at her noble figure, her white hands, the
gold and white of her leaning head. He looked, as if measuring the
degree of his own good fortune.
"You are so lovely," he then said quietly.
She blushed like a girl.
"You are the most beautiful woman I know," said Sir Hugh. "There is no
one like you," He put his hand out to hers, and, helplessly, she yielded
it. "Amabel, do you know, I have fallen in love with you."
She stood looking at him, stupefied; her eyes ecstatic and appalled.
"Do I displease you?" asked Sir Hugh.
She did not answer.
"Do I please you?" Still she gazed at him, speechless.
"Do you care at all for me?" he asked, and, though grave, he smiled a
little at her in asking the question. How could he not know that, for
years, she had cared for him more than for anything, anyone?
And when he asked her this last question, the oppression was too great.
She drew her hand from his, and laid her arms upon the mantel-shelf and
hid her face upon them. It was a helpless confession. It was a helpless
appeal.
But the appeal was not understood, or was disregarded. In a moment her
husband's arms were about her.
This was new. This was not like their courtship.--Yet, it reminded
her,--of what did it remind her as he murmured words of victory, clasped
her and kissed her? It reminded her of Paul Quentin. In the midst of the
amazing joy she knew that the horror was as great.
"Ah don't!--how can you!--how can you!" she said.
She drew away from him but he would not let her go.
"How can I? How can I do anything else?" he laughed, in easy yet excited
triumph. "You do love me--you darling nun!"
She had freed her hands and covered her face: "I beg of you," she
prayed.
The agony of her sincerity was too apparent. Sir Hugh unclasped his
arms. She went to her chair, sat down, leaned on the table, still
covering her eyes. So she had leaned, years ago, with hidden face, in
telling Bertram of the coming of the child. It seemed to her now that
her shame was more complete, more overwhelming. And, though it
overwhelmed her, her bliss was there; the golden and the black streams
ran together.
"Dearest,--should I have been less sudden?" Sir Hugh was beside her,
leaning over her, reasoning, questioning, only just not caressing her.
"It's not as if we didn't know each other, Amabel: we have been
strangers, in a sense;--yet, through it all--all these years--haven't we
felt near?--Ah darling, you can't deny it;--you can't deny you love me."
His arm was pressing her.
"Please--" she prayed again, and he moved his hand further away, beyond
her crouching shoulder.
"You are such a little nun that you can't bear to be loved?--Is that it?
But you'll have to learn again. You are more than a nun: you are a
beautiful woman: young; wonderfully young. It's astonishing how like a
girl you are."--Sir Hugh seemed to muse over a fact that allured. "And
however like a nun you've lived--you can't deny that you love me."
"You haven't loved me," Amabel at last could say.
He paused, but only for a moment. "Perhaps not: but," his voice had now
the delicate aptness that she remembered, "how could I believe that
there was a chance for me? How could I think you could ever come to
care, like this, when you had left me--you know--Amabel."
She was silent, her mind whirling. And his nearness, as he leaned over
her, was less ecstasy than terror. It was as if she only knew her love,
her sacred love again, when he was not near.
"It's quite of late that I've begun to wonder," said Sir Hugh. "Stupid
ass of course, not to have seen the jewel I held in my hand. But you've
only showed me the nun, you darling. I knew you cared, but I never knew
how much.--I ought to have had more self-conceit, oughtn't I?"
"I have cared. You have been all that is beautiful.--I have cared more
than for anything.--But--oh, it could not have been this.--This would
have killed me with shame," said Amabel.
"With shame? Why, you strange angel?"
"Can you ask?" she said in a trembling voice.
His hand caressed her hair, slipped around her neck. "You nun; you
saint.--Does that girlish peccadillo still haunt you?"
"Don't--oh don't--call it that--call me that!--"
"Call you a saint? But what else are you?--a beautiful saint. What other
woman could have lived the life you've lived? It's wonderful."
"Don't. I cannot bear it."
"Can't bear to be called a saint? Ah, but, you see, that's just why you
are one."
She could not speak. She could not even say the only answering word: a
sinner. Her hands were like leaden weights upon her brows. In the
darkness she heard her heart beating heavily, and tried and tried to
catch some fragment of meaning from her whirling thoughts.
And as if her self-condemnation were a further enchantment, her husband
murmured: "It makes you all the lovelier that you should feel like that.
It makes me more in love with you than ever: but forget it now. Let me
make you forget it. I can.--Darling, your beautiful hair. I remember
it;--it is as beautiful as ever.--I remember it;--it fell to your
knees.--Let me see your face, Amabel."
She was shuddering, shrinking from him.--"Oh--no--no.--Do you not
see--not feel--that it is impossible--"
"Impossible! Why?--My darling, you are my wife;--and if you love me?--"
They were whirling impossibilities; she could see none clearly but one
that flashed out for her now in her extremity of need, bright, ominous,
accusing. She seized it:--"Augustine."
"Augustine? What of him?" Sir Hugh's voice had an edge to it.
"He could not bear it. It would break his heart."
"What has he to do with it? He isn't all your life:--you've given him
most of it already."
"He is, he must be, all my life, except that beautiful part that you
were:--that you are:--oh you will stay my friend!"--
"I'll stay your lover, your determined lover and husband, Amabel.
Darling, you are ridiculous, enchanting--with your barriers, your
scruples." The fear, the austerity, he felt in her fanned his ardour to
flame. His arms once more went round her; he murmured words of
lover-like pleading, rapturous, wild and foolish. And, though her love,
her sacred love for him was there, his love for her was a nightmare to
her now. She had lost herself, and it was as though she lost him, while
he pleaded thus. And again and again she answered, resolute and
tormented:--"No: no: never--never. Do not speak so to me.--Do not--I beg
of you."
Suddenly he released her. He straightened himself, and moved away from
her a little. Someone had entered.
Amabel dropped her hands and raised her eyes at last. Augustine stood
before them.
Augustine had on still his long travelling coat; his cap, beaded with
raindrops, was in his hand; his yellow hair was ruffled. He had entered
hastily. He stood there looking at them, transfixed, yet not astonished.
He was very pale.
For some moments no one of them spoke. Sir Hugh did not move further
from his wife's side: he was neither anxious nor confused; but his face
wore an involuntary scowl.
The deep confusion was Amabel's. But her husband had released her; no
longer pleaded; and with the lifting of that dire oppression the
realities of her life flooded her almost with relief. It was impossible,
this gay, this facile, this unseemly love, but, as she rejected and put
it from her, the old love was the stronger, cherished the more closely,
in atonement and solicitude, the man shrunk from and repulsed. And in
all the deep confusion, before her son,--that he should find her so,
almost in her husband's arms,--a flash of clarity went through her mind
as she saw them thus confronted. Deeper than ever between her and
Augustine was the challenge of her love and his hatred; but it was that
sacred love that now needed safeguards; she could not feel it when her
husband was near and pleading; Augustine was her refuge from oppression.
She rose and went to him and timidly clasped his arm. "Dear Augustine, I
am so glad you have come back. I have missed you so."
He stood still, not responding to her touch: but, as she held him, he
looked across the room at Sir Hugh. "You wrote you missed me. That's why
I came."
Sir Hugh now strolled to the fire and stood before it, turning to face
Augustine's gaze; unperturbed; quite at ease.
"How wet you are dear," said Amabel. "Take off this coat."
Augustine stripped it off and flung it on a chair. She could hear his
quick breathing: he did not look at her. And still it seemed to her that
it was his anger rather than his love that protected her.
"He will want to change, dearest," said Sir Hugh from before the fire.
"And,--I want to finish my talk with you."
Augustine now looked at his mother, at the blush that overwhelmed her as
that possessive word was spoken. "Do you want me to go?"
"No, dear, no.--It is only the coat that is wet, isn't it. Don't go: I
want to see you, of course, after your absence.--Hugh, you will excuse
us; it seems such a long time since I saw him. You and I will finish our
talk on another day.--Or I will write to you."
She knew what it must look like to her husband, this weak recourse to
the protection of Augustine's presence; it looked like bashfulness, a
further feminine wile, made up of self-deception and allurement, a
putting off of final surrender for the greater sweetness of delay. And
as the reading of him flashed through her it brought a strange pang of
shame, for him; of regret, for something spoiled.
Sir Hugh took out his watch and looked at it. "Five o'clock. I told the
station fly to come back for me at five fifteen. You'll give me some
tea, dearest?"
"Of course;--it is time now.--Augustine, will you ring?"
The miserable blush covered her again.
The tea came and they were silent while the maid set it out. Augustine
had thrown himself into a chair and stared before him. Sir Hugh, very
much in possession, kept his place before the fire. Catching Amabel's
eye he smiled at her. He was completely assured. How should he not be?
What, for his seeing, could stand between them now?
When the maid was gone and Amabel was making tea, he came and stood over
her, his hands in his pockets, his handsome head bent to her, talking
lightly, slightly jesting, his voice pitched intimately for her ear, yet
not so intimately that any unkindness of exclusion should appear.
Augustine could hear all he said and gauge how deep was an intimacy that
could wear such lightness, such slightness, as its mask.
Augustine, meanwhile, looked at neither his mother nor Sir Hugh. Turned
from them in his chair he put out his hand for his tea and stared before
him, as if unseeing and unhearing, while he drank it.
It was for her sake, Amabel knew, that Sir Hugh, raising his voice
presently, as though aware of the sullen presence, made a little effort
to lift the gloom. "What sort of a time have you had, Augustine?" he
asked. "Was the weather at Haversham as bad as everywhere else?"