When Amabel waked next morning a bright dawn filled her room. She
remembered, finding it so light, that before lying down to sleep she had
drawn all her curtains so that, through the open windows, she might see,
until she fell asleep, a wonderful sky of stars. She had not looked at
them for long. She had gone to sleep quickly and quietly, lying on her
side, her face turned to the sky, her arms cast out before her, just as
she had first lain down; and so she found herself lying when she waked.
It was very early. The sun gilded the dark summits of the sycamores that
she could see from her window. The sky was very high and clear, and long,
thin strips of cloud curved in lessening bars across it. The confused
chirpings of the waking birds filled the air. And before any thought had
come to her she smiled as she lay there, looking at and listening to the
wakening life.
Then the remembrance of the dark ordeal that lay before her came. It was
like waking to the morning that was to see one on the scaffold: but,
with something of the light detachment that a condemned prisoner might
feel--nothing being left to hope for and the only strength demanded
being the passive strength to endure--she found that she was thinking
more of the sky and of the birds than of the ordeal. Some hours lay
between her and that; bright, beautiful hours.
She put out her hand and took her watch which lay near. Only six.
Augustine would not expect to see her until ten. Four long hours: she
must get up and spend them out of doors.
It was too early for hot water or maids; she enjoyed the flowing shocks
of the cold and her own rapidity and skill in dressing and coiling up
her hair. She put on her black dress and took her black scarf as a
covering for her head. Slipping out noiselessly, like a truant
school-girl, she made her way to the pantry, found milk and bread, and
ate and drank standing, then, cautiously pushing bolts and bars, stepped
from the door into the dew, the sunlight, the keen young air.
She took the path to the left that led through the sycamore wood, and
crossing the narrow brook by a little plank and hand rail, passed into
the meadows where, in Spring, she and Augustine used to pick cowslips.
She thought of Augustine, but only in that distant past, as a little
child, and her mind dwelt on sweet, trivial memories, on the toys he had
played with and the pair of baby-shoes, bright red shoes, square-toed,
with rosettes on them, that she had loved to see him wear with his
little white frocks. And in remembering the shoes she smiled again, as
she had smiled in hearing the noisy chirpings of the waking birds.
The little path ran on through meadow after meadow, stiles at the
hedges, planks over the brooks and ditches that intersected this flat,
pastoral country. She paused for a long time to watch the birds hopping
and fluttering in a line of sapling willows that bordered one of these
brooks and at another stood and watched a water-rat, unconscious of her
nearness, making his morning toilette on the bank; he rubbed his ears
and muzzle hastily, with the most amusing gesture. Once she left the
path to go close to some cows that were grazing peacefully; their
beautiful eyes, reflecting the green pastures, looked up at her with
serenity, and she delighted in the fragrance that exhaled from their
broad, wet nostrils.
"Darlings," she found herself saying.
She went very far. She crossed the road that, seen from Charlock House,
was, with its bordering elm-trees, only a line of blotted blue. And all
the time the light grew more splendid and the sun rose higher in the
vast dome of the sky.
She returned more slowly than she had gone. It was like a dream this
walk, as though her spirit, awake, alive to sight and sound, smiling and
childish, were out under the sky, while in the dark, sad house the
heavily throbbing heart waited for its return.
This waiting heart seemed to come out to meet her as once more she saw
the sycamores dark on the sky and saw beyond them the low stone house.
The pearly, the crystalline interlude, drew to a close. She knew that in
passing from it she passed into deep, accepted tragedy.
The sycamores had grown so tall since she first came to live at Charlock
House that the foliage made a high roof and only sparkling chinks of sky
showed through. The path before her was like the narrow aisle of a
cathedral. It was very dark and silent.
She stood still, remembering the day when, after her husband's first
visit to her, she had come here in the late afternoon and had known the
mingled revelation of divine and human holiness. She stood still,
thinking of it, and wondered intently, looking down.
It was gone, that radiant human image, gone for ever. The son, to whom
her heart now clung, was stern. She was alone. Every prop, every symbol
of the divine love had been taken from her. But, so bereft, it was not,
after the long pause of wonder, in weakness and abandonment that she
stood still in the darkness and closed her eyes.
It was suffering, but it was not fear; it was longing, but it was not
loneliness. And as, in her wrecked girlhood, she had held out her
hands, blessed and receiving, she held them out now, blessed, though
sacrificing all she had. But her uplifted face, white and rapt, was now
without a smile.
Suddenly she knew that someone was near her.
She opened her eyes and saw Augustine standing at some little distance
looking at her. It seemed natural to see him there, waiting to lead her
into the ordeal. She went towards him at once.
"Is it time?" she said. "Am I late?"
Augustine was looking intently at her. "It isn't half-past nine yet," he
said. "I've had my breakfast. I didn't know you had gone out till just
now when I went to your room and found it empty."
She saw then in his eyes that he had been frightened. He took her hand
and she yielded it to him and they went up towards the house.
"I have had such a long walk," she said. "Isn't it a beautiful morning."
"Yes; I suppose so," said Augustine. As they walked he did not take his
eyes off his mother's face.
"Aren't you tired?" he asked.
"Not at all. I slept well."
"Your shoes are quite wet," said Augustine, looking down at them.
"Yes; the meadows were thick with dew."
"You didn't keep to the path?"
"Yes;--no, I remember."--she looked down at her shoes, trying,
obediently, to satisfy him, "I turned aside to look at the cows."
"Will you please change your shoes at once?"
"I'll go up now and change them. And will you wait for me in the
drawing-room, Augustine."
"Yes." She saw that he was still frightened, and remembering how strange
she must have looked to him, standing still, with upturned face and
outstretched hands, in the sycamore wood, she smiled at him:--"I am
well, dear, don't be troubled," she said.
In her room, before she went downstairs, she looked at herself in the
glass. The pale, calm face was strange to her, or was it the story, now
on her lips, that was the strange thing, looking at that face. She saw
them both with Augustine's eyes; how could he believe it of that face.
She did not see the mirrored holiness, but the innocent eyes looked back
at her marvelling at what she was to tell of them.
In the drawing-room Augustine was walking up and down. The fire was
burning cheerfully and all the windows were wide open. The room looked
its lightest. Augustine's intent eyes were on her as she entered. "You
won't find the air too much?" he questioned; his voice trembled.
She murmured that she liked it. But the agitation that she saw
controlled in him affected her so that she, too, began to tremble.
She went to her chair at one side of the large round table. "Will you
sit there, Augustine," she said.
He sat down, opposite to her, where Sir Hugh had sat the night before.
Amabel put her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands.
She could not look at her child; she could not see his pain.
"Augustine," she said, "I am going to tell you a long story; it is about
myself, and about you. And you will be brave, for my sake, and try to
help me to tell it as quickly as I can."
His silence promised what she asked.
"Before the story," she said, "I will tell you the central thing, the
thing you must be brave to hear.--You are an illegitimate child,
Augustine." At that she stopped. She listened and heard nothing. Then
came long breaths.
She opened her eyes to see that his head had fallen forward and was
buried in his arms. "I can't bear it.--I can't bear it--" came in gasps.
She could say nothing. She had no word of alleviation for his agony.
Only she felt it turning like a sword in her heart.
"Say something to me"--Augustine gasped on.--"You did that for him,
too.--I am his child.--You are not my mother.--" He could not sob.
Amabel gazed at him. With the unimaginable revelation of his love came
the unimaginable turning of the sword; it was this that she must
destroy. She commanded herself to inflict, swiftly, the further blow.
"Augustine," she said.
He lifted a blind face, hearing her voice. He opened his eyes. They
looked at each other.
"I am your mother," said Amabel.
He gazed at her. He gazed and gazed; and she offered herself to the
crucifixion of his transfixing eyes.
The silence grew long. It had done its work. Once more she put her hands
before her face. "Listen," she said. "I will tell you."
He did not stir nor move his eyes from her hidden face while she spoke.
Swiftly, clearly, monotonously, she told him all. She paused at nothing;
she slurred nothing. She read him the story of the stupid sinner from
the long closed book of the past. There was no hesitation for a word; no
uncertainty for an interpretation. Everything was written clearly and
she had only to read it out. And while she spoke, of her girlhood, her
marriage, of the man with the unknown name--his father--of her flight
with him, her flight from him, here, to this house, Augustine sat
motionless. His eyes considered her, fixed in their contemplation.
She told him of his own coming, of her brother's anger and dismay, of
Sir Hugh's magnanimity, and of how he had been born to her, her child,
the unfortunate one, whom she had felt unworthy to love as a child
should be loved. She told him how her sin had shut him away and made
strangeness grow between them.
And when all this was told Amabel put down her hands. His stillness had
grown uncanny: he might not have been there; she might have been talking
in an empty room. But he was there, sitting opposite her, as she had
last seen him, half turned in his seat, fallen together a little as
though his breathing were very slight and shallow; and his dilated eyes,
strange, deep, fierce, were fixed on her. She shut the sight out with
her hands.
She stumbled a little now in speaking on, and spoke more slowly. She
knew herself condemned and the rest seemed unnecessary. It only remained
to tell him how her mistaken love had also shut him out; to tell,
slightly, not touching Lady Elliston's name, of how the mistake had come
to pass; to say, finally, on long, failing breaths, that her sin had
always been between them but that, until the other day, when he had told
her of his ideals, she had not seen how impassable was the division.
"And now," she said, and the convulsive trembling shook her as she
spoke, "now you must say what you will do. I am a different woman from
the mother you have loved and reverenced. You will not care to be with
the stranger you must feel me to be. You are free, and you must leave
me. Only," she said, but her voice now shook so that she could hardly
say the words--"only--I will always be here--loving you, Augustine;
loving you and perhaps,--forgive me if I have no right to that,
even--hoping;--hoping that some day, in some degree, you may care for me
again."
She stopped. She could say no more. And she could only hear her own
shuddering breaths.
Then Augustine moved. He pushed back his chair and rose. She waited to
hear him leave the room, and leave her, to her doom, in silence.
But he was standing still.
Then he came near to her. And now she waited for the words that would be
worse than silence.
But at first there were no words. He had fallen on his knees before
her; he had put his arms around her; he was pressing his head
against her breast while, trembling as she trembled, he
said:--"Mother--Mother--Mother."
All barriers had fallen at the cry. It was the cry of the exile, the
banished thing, returning to its home. He pressed against the heart to
which she had never herself dared to draw him.
But, incredulous, she parted her hands and looked down at him; and still
she did not dare enfold him.
"Augustine--do you understand?--Do you still love me?--"
"Oh Mother," he gasped,--"what have I been to you that you can ask me!"
"You can forgive me?" Amabel said, weeping, and hiding her face against
his hair.
They were locked in each other's arms.
And, his head upon her breast, as if it were her own heart that spoke to
her, he said:--"I will atone to you.--I will make up to you--for
everything.--You shall be glad that I was born."