"I see nothing loveable in you," said Amabel with her inflexible
gentleness. "I loved you because I thought you noble and magnanimous;
but you were neither. You only did not cast me off, as I deserved,
because you could not; and you were kind partly because you are kind by
nature, but partly because my money was convenient to you. I do not say
that you were ignoble; you were in a very false position. And I had
wronged you; I had committed the greater social crime; but there was
nothing noble; you must see that; and it was for that I loved you."
Sir Hugh now got up and paced up and down near her.
"So you are going to cast me off because I had no opportunity for
showing nobility. How do you know I couldn't have behaved as you
believed I did behave, if only I'd had the chance? You know--you are
hard on me."
"I see no sign of nobility--towards anyone--in your life," Amabel
answered as dispassionately as before.
Sir Hugh walked up and down.
"I did feel like a brute about the money sometimes," he
remarked;--"especially that last time; I wanted you to have the house as
a sort of salve to my conscience; I've taken almost all your money, you
know; it's quite true. As to the rest--what Augustine calls my
dissoluteness--I can't pretend to take your view; a nun's view." He
looked at her. "How beautiful you are with that white round your face,"
he said. "You are like a woman of snow."
She looked back at him as though, from the unhesitating steadiness of
her gaze, to lend him some of her own clearness.
"Don't you see that it's not real? Don't you see that it's because you
suddenly find me beautiful, and because, as a woman of snow, I allure
you, that you think you love me? Do you really deceive yourself?"
He stared at her; but the ray only illumined the bewilderment of his
dispossession. "I don't pretend to be an idealist," he said, stopping
still before her; "I don't pretend that it's not because I suddenly find
you beautiful; that's one reason; and a very essential one, I think; but
there are other reasons, lots of them. Amabel--you must see that my love
for you is an entirely different sort of thing from what my love for her
ever was."
She said nothing. She could not argue with him, nor ask, as if for a
cheap triumph, if it were different from his love for the later
mistress. She saw, indeed, that it was different now, whatever it had
been yesterday. Clearly she saw, glancing at herself as at an object in
the drama, that she offered quite other interests and charms, that her
attractions, indeed, might be of a quality to elicit quite new
sentiments from Sir Hugh, sentiments less shadowing than those of
yesterday had been. And so she accepted his interpretation in silence,
unmoved by it though doing it full justice, and for a little while Sir
Hugh said nothing either. He still stood before her and she no longer
looked at him, but down at her folded hands that did not tremble at all
tonight, and she wondered if now, perhaps, he would understand her
silence and leave her. But when, in an altered voice, he said: "Amabel;"
she looked at him.
She seemed to see everything tonight as a disembodied spirit might see
it, aware of what the impeding flesh could only dimly manifest; and she
saw now that her husband's face had never been so near beauty.
It did not attain it; it was, rather, as if the shadow, lifting entirely
for a flickering moment, revealed something unconscious, something
almost innocent, almost pitiful: it was as if, liberated, he saw beauty
for a moment and put out his hands to it, like a child putting out its
hands to touch the moon, believing that it was as near to him, and as
easily to be attained, as pleasure always had been.
"Try to forgive me," he said, and his voice had the broken note of a sad
child's voice, the note of ultimate appeal from man to woman. "I'm a
poor creature; I know that. It's always made me ashamed--to see how you
idealise me.--The other day, you know,--when you kissed my hand--I was
horribly ashamed.--But, upon my honour Amabel, I'm not a bad fellow at
bottom,--not the devil incarnate your son seems to think me. Something
could be made of me, you know;--and, if you'll forgive me, and let me
try to win your love again;--ah Amabel--"--he pleaded, almost with
tears, before her unchangingly gentle face. And, the longing to touch
her, hold her, receive comfort and love, mingling with the new
reverential fear, he knelt beside her, putting his head on her knees and
murmuring: "I do so desperately love you."
Amabel sat looking down upon him. Her face was unchanged, but in her
heart was a trembling of astonished sadness.
It was too late. It had been too late--from the very first;--yet, if
they could have met before each was spoiled for each;--before life had
set them unalterably apart--? The great love of her life was perhaps not
all illusion.
And she seemed to sit for a moment in the dark church, dreaming of the
distant Spring-time, of brooks and primroses and prophetic birds, and of
love, young, untried and beautiful. But she did not lay her hand on Sir
Hugh's head nor move at all towards him. She sat quite still, looking
down at him, like a Madonna above a passionate supplicant, pitiful but
serene.
And as he knelt, with his face hidden, and did not hear her voice nor
feel her touch, with an unaccustomed awe the realisation of her
remoteness from him stole upon Sir Hugh.
Passion faded from his heart, even self-pity and longing faded. He
entered her visionary retrospect and knew, like her, that it was too
late; that everything was too late; that everything was really over.
And, as he realised it, a chill went over him. He felt like a strayed
reveller waking suddenly from long slumber and finding himself alone in
darkness.
He lifted his face and looked at her, needing the reassurance of her
human eyes; and they met his with their remote gentleness. For a long
moment they gazed at each other.
Then Sir Hugh, stumbling a little, got upon his feet and stood, half
turned from her, looking away into the room.
When he spoke it was in quite a different voice, it was almost the old,
usual voice, the familiar voice of their friendly encounters.
"And what are you going to do with yourself, now, Amabel?"
"I am going to tell Augustine," she said.
"Tell him!" Sir Hugh looked round at her. "Why?"
"I must."
He seemed, after a long silence, to accept her sense of necessity as
sufficient reason. "Will it cut him up very much, do you think?" he
asked.
"It will change everything very much, I think," said Amabel.
"Do you mean--that he will blame you?--"
"I don't think that he can love me any longer."
There was no hint of self-pity in her calm tones and Sir Hugh could only
formulate his resentment and his protest--and they were bitter,--by a
muttered--"Oh--I say!--I say!--"