he 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 raindrops, 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?—Idon'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?"
Augustine did not turn his head in replying:—"Quite as bad, I fancy."
"You and young Wallace hammered at metaphysics, I suppose."
"We did."
"Nice lad."
To this Augustine said nothing.
"They're such a solemn lot, the youths of this generation," said Sir Hugh, addressing Amabel as well as Augustine: "In my day we never bothered ourselves much about things: at least the ones I knew didn't. Awfully empty and frivolous. Augustine and his friends would have thought us. Where we used to talk about race horses they talk about the Absolute,—eh, Augustine? We used to go and hear comic-operas and they go and hear Brahms. I suppose you do go and hear Brahms, Augustine?"
Augustine maintained his silence as though not conceiving that the sportive question required an answer and Amabel said for him that he was very fond of Brahms.
"Well, I must be off," said Sir Hugh. "I hope your heart will ache ever so little for me, Amabel, when you think of the night you've turned me out into."
"Oh—but—I don't turn, you out,"—she stammered, rising, as, in a gay farewell, he looked at her.
"No? Well, I'm only teasing. I could hardly have managed to stay this time—though,—I might have managed, Amabel—. I'll come again soon, very soon," said Sir Hugh.
"No," her hand was in his and she knew that Augustine had turned his head and was looking at them:—"No, dear Hugh. Not soon, please. I will write." Sir Hugh looked at her smiling. He glanced at Augustine; then back at her, rallying her, affectionately, threateningly, determinedly, for her foolish feints. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. "Write, if you want to; but I'm coming," he said. He nodded to Augustine and left the room.
t was, curiously enough, a crippling awkwardness and embarrassment that Amabel felt rather than fear or antagonism, during that evening and the morning that followed. Augustine had left the room directly after Sir Hugh's departure. When she saw him again he showed her a face resolutely mute. It was impossible to speak to him; to explain. The main facts he must see; that her husband was making love to her and that, however deep her love for him, she rejected him.
Augustine might believe that rejection to be for his own sake, might believe that she renounced love and sacrificed herself from a maternal sense of duty; and, indeed, the impossibility of bringing that love into her life with Augustine had been the clear impossibility that had flashed for her in her need; she had seized upon it and it had armed her in her reiterated refusal. But how tell Augustine that there had been more than the clear impossibility; how tell him that deeper than renouncement was recoil? To tell that would be a disloyalty to her husband; it would be almost to accuse him; it would be to show Augustine that something in her life was spoiled and that her husband had spoiled it. So perplexed, so jaded, was she, so tossed by the conflicting currents of her lesser plight, that the deeper fears were forgotten: she was not conscious of being afraid of Augustine.
The rain had ceased next morning. The sky was crystalline; the wet earth glittered in Autumnal sunshine.
Augustine went out for his ride and Amabel had her girls to read with. There was a sense of peace for her in finding these threads of her life unknotted, smooth and simple, lying ready to her hand.
When she saw Augustine at lunch he said that he had met Lady Elliston.
"She was riding with Marjory and her girl."
"Oh, she is back, then." Amabel was grateful to him for his everyday tone.
"What is Lady Elliston's girl like?"
"Pretty; very; foolish manners I thought; Marjory looked bewildered by her."
"The manners of girls have changed, I fancy, since my day; and she isn't a boy-girl, like our nice Marjory, either?"
"No; she is a girl-girl; a pretty, forward, conceited girl-girl," said the ruthless Augustine. "Lady Elliston is coming to see you this afternoon; she asked me to tell you; she says she wants a long talk."
Amabel's weary heart sank at the news.
"She is coming soon after lunch," said Augustine.
"Oh—dear—"—. She could not conceal her dismay.
"But you knew that you were to see her again;—do you mind so much?" said Augustine.
"I don't mind.—It is only;—I have got so out of the way of seeing people that it is something of a strain."
"Would you like me to come in and interrupt your talk?" asked Augustine after a moment.
She looked across the table at him. Still, in her memory, preoccupied with the cruelty of his accusation, it was the anger rather than the love of his parting words the other day that was the more real. He had been hard in kindness, relentless in judgment, only not accusing her, not condemning her, because his condemnation had fixed on the innocent and not on the guilty—the horror of that, as well as the other horror, was between them now, and her guilt was deepened by it. But, as she looked, his eyes reminded her of something; was it of that fancied cry within the church, imprisoned and supplicating? They were like that cry of pain, those eyes, the dark rims of the iris strangely expanding, and her heart answered them, ignorant of what they said.
"You are thoughtful for me, dear; but no," she replied, "it isn't necessary for you to interrupt."
He looked away from her: "I don't know that it's not necessary," he said. After lunch they went into the garden and walked for a little in the sunlight, in almost perfect silence. Once or twice, as though from the very pressure of his absorption in her he created some intention of speech and fancied that her lips had parted with the words, Augustine turned his head quickly towards her, and at this, their eyes meeting, as it were over emptiness, both he and she would flush and look away again. The stress between them was painful. She was glad when he said that he had work to do and left her alone.
Amabel went to the drawing-room and took her chair near the table. A sense of solitude deeper than she had known for years pressed upon her. She closed her eyes and leaned back her head, thinking, dimly, that now, in such solitude as this, she must find her way to prayer again. But still the door was closed. It was as if she could not enter without a human hand in hers. Augustine's hand had never led her in; and she could not take her husband's now.
But her longing itself became almost a prayer as she sat with closed eyes. This would pass, this cloud of her husband's lesser love. When he knew her so unalterably firm, when he saw how inflexibly the old love shut out the new, he would, once more, be her friend. Then, feeling him near again, she might find peace. The thought of it was almost peace. Even in the midst of yesterday's bewildered pain she had caught glimpses of the old beauty; his kindly speech to Augustine, his making of ease for her; gratitude welled up in her and she sighed with the relief of her deep hope. To feel this gratitude was to see still further beyond the cloud. It was even beautiful for him to be able to "fall in love" with her—as he had put it: that the manifestations of his love should have made her shrink was not his fault but hers; she was a nun; because she had been a sinner. She almost smiled now, in seeing so clearly that it was on her the shadow rested. She could not be at peace, she could not pray, she could not live, it seemed to her, if he were really shadowed. And after the smile it was almost with the sense of dew falling upon her soul that she remembered the kindness, the chivalrous protection that had encompassed her through the long years. He was her friend, her knight; she would forget, and he, too, would forget that he had thought himself her lover.
She did not know how tired she was, but her exhaustion must have been great, for the thoughts faded into a vague sweetness, then were gone, and, suddenly opening her eyes, she knew that she had fallen asleep, sitting straightly in her chair, and that Lady Elliston was looking at her.
She started up, smiling and confused. "How absurd of me:—I have been sleeping.—Have you just come?"
Lady Elliston did not smile and was silent. She took Amabel's hand and looked at her; she had to recover herself from something; it may have been the sleeping face, wasted and innocent, that had touched her too deeply. And her gravity, as of repressed tears, frightened Amabel. She had never seen Lady Elliston look so grave. "Is anything the matter?" she asked. For a moment longer Lady Elliston was silent, as though reflecting. Then releasing Amabel's hand, she said: "Yes: I think something is the matter."
"You have come to tell me?"
"I didn't come for that. Sit down, Amabel. You are very tired, more tired than the other day. I have been looking at you for a long time.—I didn't come to tell you anything; but now, perhaps, I shall have something to tell. I must think."
She took a chair beside the table and leaned her head on her hand shading her eyes. Amabel had obeyed her and sat looking at her guest.
"Tell me," Lady Elliston said abruptly, and Amabel today, more than of sweetness and softness, was conscious of her strength, "have you been having a bad time since I saw you? Has anything happened? Has anything come between you and Augustine? I saw him this morning, and he's been suffering, too: I guessed it. You must be frank with me, Amabel; you must trust me: perhaps I am going to be franker with you, to trust you more, than you can dream."
She inspired the confidence her words laid claim to; for the first time in their lives Amabel trusted her unreservedly.
"I have had a very bad time," she said: "And Augustine has had a bad time. Yes; something has come between Augustine and me,—many things."
"He hates Hugh," said Lady Elliston.
"How can you know that?"
"I guessed it. He is a clever boy: he sees you absorbed; he sees your devotion robbing him; perhaps he sees even more, Amabel; I heard this morning, from Mrs. Grey, that Hugh had been with you, again, yesterday. Amabel, is it possible; has Hugh been making love to you?"
Amabel had become very pale. Looking down, she said in a hardly audible voice; "It is a mistake.—He will see that it is impossible."
Lady Elliston for a moment was silent: the confirming of her own suspicion seemed to have stupefied her. "Is it impossible?" she then asked.
"Quite, quite impossible."
"Does Hugh know that it is impossible?"
"He will.—Yesterday, Augustine came in while he was here;—I could not say any more."
"I see: I see"; said Lady Elliston. Her hand fell to the table now and she slightly tapped her finger-tips upon it. There was an ominous rhythm in the little raps. "And this adds to Augustine's hatred," she said.
"I am afraid it is true. I am afraid he does hate him, and how terrible that is," said Amabel, "for he believes him to be his father."
"By instinct he must feel the tie unreal."
"Yet he has had a father's kindness, almost, from Hugh."
"Almost. It isn't enough you know. He suspects nothing, you think?"
"It is that that is so terrible. He doesn't suspect me: he suspects him. He couldn't suspect evil of me. It is my guilt, and his ignorant hatred that is parting us." Amabel was trembling; she leaned forward and covered her face with her hands.
The very air about her seemed to tremble; so strange, so incredibly strange was it to hear her own words of helpless avowal; so strange to feel that she must tell Lady Elliston all she wished to know.
"Parting you? What do you mean? What folly!—what impossible folly! A mother and a son, loving each other as you and Augustine love, parted for that. Oh, no," said Lady Elliston, and her own voice shook a little: "that can't be. I won't have that."
"He would not love me, if he knew."
"Knew? What is there for him to know? And how should he know? You won't be so mad as to tell him?"
"It's my punishment not to dare to tell him—and to see my cowardice cast a shadow on Hugh."
"Punishment? haven't you been punished enough, good heavens! Cowardice? it is reason, maturity; the child has no right to your secret—it is yours and only yours, Amabel. And if he did know all, he could not judge you as you judge yourself."
"Ah, you don't understand," Amabel murmured: "I had forgotten to judge myself; I had forgotten my sin; it was Augustine who made me remember; I know now what he feels about people like me."
Again Lady Elliston controlled herself to a momentary silence and again her fingers sharply beat out her uncontrollable impatience. "I live in a world, Amabel," she said at last, "where people when they use the word 'sin,' in that connection, know that it's obsolete, a mere decorative symbol for unconventionality. In my world we don't have your cloistered black and white view of life nor see sin where only youth and trust and impulse were. If one takes risks, one may have to pay for them, of course; one plays the game, if one is in the ring, and, of course, you may be put out of the ring if you break the rules; but the rules are those of wisdom, not of morality, and the rule that heads the list is: Don't be found out. To imagine that the rules are anything more than matters of social convenience is to dignify the foolish game. It is a foolish game, Amabel, this of life: but one or two things in it are worth having; power to direct the game; freedom to break its rules; and love, passionate love, between a man and woman: and if one is strong enough one can have them all."
Lady Elliston had again put her hand to her brow, shielding her eyes and leaning her elbow on the table, and Amabel had raised her head and sat still, gazing at her.
"You weren't strong enough," Lady Elliston went on after a little pause: "You made frightful mistakes: the greatest, of course, was in running away with Paul Quentin: that was foolish, and it was, if you like to call foolishness by its obsolete name, a sin. You shouldn't have gone: you should have stayed: you should have kept your lover—as long as you wanted to."
Again she paused. "Do I horrify you?"
"No: you don't horrify me," Amabel replied. Her voice was gentle, almost musing; she was absorbed in her contemplation.
"You see," said Lady Elliston, "you didn't play the game: you made a mess of things and put the other players out. If you had stayed, and kept your lover, you would have been, in my eyes, a less loveable but a wiser woman. I believe in the game being kept up; I believe in the social structure: I am one of its accredited upholders"; in the shadow of her hand, Lady Elliston slightly smiled. "I believe in the family, the group of shared interests, shared responsibilities, shared opportunities it means: I don't care how many lovers a woman has if she doesn't break up the family, if she plays the game. Marriage is a social compact and it's the woman's part to keep the home together. If she seeks love outside marriage she must play fair, she mustn't be an embezzling partner; she mustn't give her husband another man's children to support and so take away from his own children;—that's thieving. The social structure, the family, are unharmed, if one is brave and wise. Love and marriage can rarely be combined and to renounce love is to cripple one's life, to miss the best thing it has to give. You, at all events, Amabel, may be glad that you haven't missed it. What, after all, does our life mean but just that,—the power and feeling that one gets into it. Be glad that you've had something."
Amabel, answering nothing, contemplated her guest.
"So, as these are my views, imagine what I feel when I find you here, like this"; Lady Elliston dropped her hand at last and looked about her, not at Amabel: "when I find you, in prison, locked up for life, by yourself, because you were lovably unwise. It's abominable, it's shameful, your position, isolated here, and tolerated, looked askance at by these nobodies.—Ah—I don't say that other women haven't paid even more heavily than you've done; I own that, to a certain extent, you've escaped the rigours that the game exacts from its victims. But there was no reason why you should pay anything: it wasn't known, never really known—your brother and Hugh saw to that;—you could have escaped scot-free."
Amabel spoke at last: "How, scot-free?" she asked.
Lady Elliston looked hard at her: "Your husband would have taken you back, had you insisted.—You shouldn't have fallen in with his plans."
"His plans? They were mine; my brother's."
"And his. Hugh was glad to be rid of the young wife he didn't love."
Again Amabel was trembling. "He might have been rid of her, altogether rid of her, if he had cared more for power and freedom than for pity."
"Power? With not nearly enough money? He was glad to keep her money and be rid of her. If you had pulled the purse-strings tight you might have made your own conditions."
"I do not believe you," said Amabel; "What you say is not true. My husband is noble."
Lady Elliston looked at her steadily and unflinchingly. "He is not noble," she said.
"What have you meant by coming here today? You have meant something! I will not listen to you! You are my husband's enemy;"—Amabel half started from her chair, but Lady Elliston laid her hand on her arm, looking at her so fixedly that she sank down again, panic-stricken.
"He is not noble," Lady Elliston repeated. "I will not have you waste your love as you have wasted your life. I will not have this illusion of his nobility come between you and your son. I will not have him come near you with his love. He is not noble, he is not generous, he is not beautiful. He could not have got rid of you. And he came to you with his love yesterday because his last mistress has thrown him over—and he must have a mistress. I know him: I know all about him: and you don't know him at all. Your husband was my lover for over twenty years."
A long silence followed her words. It was again a strange picture of arrested life in the dark room. The light fell quietly upon the two faces, their stillness, their contemplation—it seemed hardly more intent than contemplation, that drinking gaze of Amabel's; the draught of wonder was too deep for pain or passion, and Lady Elliston's eyes yielded, offered, held firm the cup the other drank. And the silence grew so long that it was as if the twenty years flowed by while they gazed upon each other.
It was Lady Elliston's face that first showed change. She might have been the cup-bearer tossing aside the emptied cup, seeing in the slow dilation of the victim's eyes, the constriction of lips and nostrils, that it had held poison. All—all had been drunk to the last drop. Death seemed to gaze from the dilated eyes.
"Oh—my poor Amabel—" Lady Elliston murmured; her face was stricken with pity.
Amabel spoke in the cramped voice of mortal anguish.—"Before he married me."
"Yes," Lady Elliston nodded, pitiful, but unflinching. "He married you for your money, and because you were a sweet, good, simple child who would not interfere."
"And he could not have divorced me, because of you."
"Because of me. You know the law; one guilty person can't divorce another. No one knew: no one has ever known: he and Jack have remained the best of friends:—but, of course, with all our care, it's been suspected, whispered. If I'd been less powerful the whispers might have blighted me: as it was, we thought that Bertram wasn't altogether unsuspecting. Hugh knew that it would be fatal to bring the matter into court;—I will say for Hugh that, in spite of the money, he wanted to. He could have married money again. He has always been extremely captivating. When he found that he would have to keep you, the money, of course, did atone. I suppose he has had most of your money by now," said Lady Elliston.
Amabel shut her eyes. "Wasn't he even sorry for me?" she asked.
Lady Elliston reflected and a glitter was in her eye; vengeance as well as justice armed her. "He is not unkind," she conceded: "and he was sorry after a fashion: 'Poor little girl,' I remember he said. Yes, he was very tolerant. But he didn't think of you at all, unless he wanted money. He is always graceful in his direct relations with people; he is tactful and sympathetic and likes things to be pleasant. But he doesn't mind breaking your heart if he doesn't have to see you while he is doing it. He is kind, but he is as hard as steel," said Lady Elliston.
"Then you do not love him any longer," said Amabel. It was not a question, only a farther acceptance.
And now, after only the slightest pause, Lady Elliston proved how deep, how unflinching was her courage. She had guarded her illicit passion all her life; she revealed it now. "I do love him," she said. "I have never loved another man. It is he who doesn't love me."
From the black depths where she seemed to swoon and float, like a drowsy, drowning thing, the hard note of misery struck on Amabel's ear. She opened her eyes and looked at Lady Elliston. Power, freedom, passion: it was not these that looked back at her from the bereft and haggard eyes. "After twenty years he has grown tired," Lady Elliston said; and her candour seemed as inevitable as Amabel's had been: each must tell the other everything; a common bond of suffering was between them and a common bond of love, though love so differing. "I knew, of course, that he was often unfaithful to me; he is a libertine; but I was the centre; he always came back to me.—I saw the end approaching about five years ago. I fought—oh how warily—so that he shouldn't dream I was afraid;—it is fatal for a woman to let a man know she is afraid,—the brutes, the cruel brutes,"—said Lady Elliston;—"how we love them for their fear and pleading; how our fear and pleading hardens them against us." Her lips trembled and the tears ran down her cheeks. "I never pleaded; I never showed that I saw the change. I kept him, for years, by my skill. But the odds were too great at last. It was a year ago that he told me he didn't care any more. He was troubled, a little embarrassed, but quite determined that I shouldn't bother him. Since then it has been another woman. I know her; I meet her everywhere; very beautiful; very young; only married for three years; a heartless, rapacious creature. Hugh has nearly ruined himself in paying her jeweller's bills and her debts at bridge. And already she has thrown him over. It happened only the other day. I knew it was happening when I saw him here. I was glad, Amabel; I longed for him to suffer; and he will. He is a libertine of most fastidious tastes and he will not find many more young and beautiful women, of his world, to run risks for him. He, too, is getting old. And he has gone through nearly all his own money—and yours. Things will soon be over for him.—Oh—but—I love him—I love him—and everything is over for me.—How can I bear it!"
She bent forward on her knees and convulsive sobs shook her.
Her words seemed to Amabel to come to her from a far distance; they echoed in her, yet they were not the words she could have used. How dim was her own love-dream beside this torment of dispossession. What—who—had she loved for all these years? She could not touch or see her own grief; but Lady Elliston's grief pierced through her. She leaned towards her and softly touched her shoulder, her arm, her hand; she held the hand in hers. The sight of this loss of strength and dignity was an actual pain; her own pain was something elusive and unsubstantial; it wandered like a ghost vainly seeking an embodiment.
"Oh, you angel—you poor angel!" moaned Lady Elliston. "There: that's enough of crying; it can't bring back my youth.—What a fool I am. If only I could learn to think of myself as free instead of maimed and left by the wayside. It is hard to live without love if one has always had it.—But I have freed you, Amabel. I am glad of that. It has been a cruel, but a right thing to do. He shall not come to you with his shameless love; he shall not come between you and your boy. You shan't misplace your worship so. It is Augustine who is beautiful and noble; it is Augustine who loves you. You aren't maimed and forsaken; thank heaven for that, dear."
Lady Elliston had risen. Strong again, she faced her life, took up the reins, not a trace of scruple or of shame about her. It did not enter her mind to ask Amabel for forgiveness, to ask if she were despised or shrunk from: it did not enter Amabel's mind to wonder at the omission. She looked up at her guest and her lifted face seemed that of the drowned creature floating to the surface of the water.
"Tell me, Amabel," Lady Elliston suddenly pleaded, "this is not going to blacken things for you; you won't let it blacken things. You will live; you will leave your prison and come out into the world, with your splendid boy, and live."
Amabel slightly shook her head.
"Oh, why do you say that? Has it hurt so horribly?"
Amabel seemed to make the effort to think what it had done. She did not know. The ghost wailed; but she could not see its form.
"Did you care—so tremendously—about him?"—Lady Elliston asked, and her voice trembled. And, for answer, the drowned eyes looked up at her through strange, cold tears.
"Oh, my dear, my dear," Lady Elliston murmured. Her hand was still in Amabel's and she stood there beside her, her hand so held, for a long, silent moment. They had looked away from each other.
And in the silence each knew that it was the end and that they would see each other no more. They lived in different planets, under different laws; they could understand, they could trust; but a deep, transparent chasm, like that of the ether flowing between two divided worlds, made them immeasurably apart.
Yet, when she at last gently released Amabel's hand, drawing her own away. Lady Elliston said: "But,—won't you come out now?"
"Out? Where?" Amabel asked, in the voice of that far distance.
"Into the world, the great, splendid world."
"Splendid?"
"Splendid, if you choose to seize it and take what it has to give."
After a moment Amabel asked: "Has it given you so much?"
Lady Elliston looked at her from across the chasm; it was not dark, it held no precipices; it was made up only of distance. Lady Elliston saw; but she was loyal to her own world. "Yes, it has," she said. "I've lived; you have dreamed your life away. You haven't even a reality to mourn the loss of."
"No," Amabel said; she closed her eyes and turned her head away against the chair; "No; I have lived too. Don't pity me."
t was past five when Augustine came into the empty drawing-room. Tea was standing waiting, and had been there, he saw, for some time. He rang and asked the maid to tell Lady Channice. Lady Channice, he heard, was lying down and wanted no tea. Lady Elliston had gone half an hour before. After a moment or two of deliberation, Augustine sat down and made tea for himself. That was soon over. He ate nothing, looking with a vague gaze of repudiation at the plate of bread and butter and the cooling scones.
When tea had been taken away he walked up and down the room quickly, pausing now and then for further deliberation. But he decided that he would not go up to his mother. He went on walking for a long time. Then he took a book and read until the dressing-bell for dinner rang.
When he went upstairs to dress he paused outside his mother's door, as she had paused outside his, and listened. He heard no sound. He stood still there for some moments before lightly rapping on the door. "Who is it?" came his mother's voice. "I; Augustine. How are you? You are coming down?"
"Not tonight," she answered; "I have a very bad headache."
"But let me have something sent up." After a moment his mother's voice said very sweetly; "Of course, dear." And she added "I shall be all right tomorrow."
The voice sounded natural—yet not quite natural; too natural, perhaps, Augustine reflected. Its tone remained with him as something disturbing and prolonged itself in memory like a familiar note strung to a queer, forced pitch, that vibrated on and on until it hurt.
After his solitary meal he took up his book again in the drawing-room. He read with effort and concentration, his brows knotted; his young face, thus controlled to stern attention, was at once vigilant for outer impressions and absorbed in the inner interest. Once or twice he looked up, as a coal fell with a soft crash from the fire, as a thin creeper tapped sharply on the window pane. His mother's room was above the drawing-room and while he read he was listening; but he heard no footsteps.
Suddenly, dim, yet clear, came another sound, a sound familiar, though so rare; wheels grinding on the gravel drive at the other side of the house. Then, loud and startling at that unaccustomed hour, the old hall bell clanged through the house.
Augustine found himself leaning forward, breathing quickly, his book half-closed. At first he did not know what he was listening for or why his body should be tingling with excitement and anger. He knew a moment later. There was a step in the hall, a voice. All his life Augustine had known them, had waited for them, had hated them. Sir Hugh was back again.
Of course he was back again, soon,—as he had promised in the tone of mastery. But his mother had told him not to come; she had told him not to come, and in a tone that meant more than his. Did he not know?—Did he not understand?
"No, dear Hugh, not soon.—I will write."—Augustine sprang to his feet as he entered the room.
Sir Hugh had been told that he would not find his wife. His face wore its usual look of good-temper, but it wore more than its usual look of indifference for his wife's son. "Ah, tell Lady Channice, will you," he said over his shoulder to the maid. "How d'ye do, Augustine:" and, as usual, he strolled up to the fire.
Augustine watched him as he crossed the room and said nothing. The maid had closed the door. From his wonted place Sir Hugh surveyed the young man and Augustine surveyed him.
"You know, my dear fellow," said Sir Hugh presently, lifting the sole of his boot to the fire, "you've got devilish bad manners. You are devilishly impertinent, I may tell you."
Augustine received the reproof without comment.
"You seem to imagine," Sir Hugh went on, "that you have some particular right to bad manners and impertinence here, in this house; but you're mistaken; I belong here as well as you do; and you'll have to accept the fact."
A convulsive trembling, like his mother's, passed over the young man's face; but whereas only Amabel's hands and body trembled, it was the muscles of Augustine's lips, nostrils and brows that were affected, and to see the strength of his face so shaken was disconcerting, painful.
"You don't belong here while I'm here," he said, jerking the words out suddenly. "This is my mother's home—and mine;—but as soon as you make it insufferable for us we can leave it."
"Youcan; that's quite true," Sir Hugh nodded.
Augustine stood clenching his hands on his book. Now, unconscious of what he did, he grasped the leaves and wrenched them back and forth as he stood silent, helpless, desperate, before the other's intimation. Sir Hugh watched the unconscious violence with interest.
"Yes," he went on presently, and still with good temper; "if you make yourself insufferable—to your mother and me—you can go. Not that I want to turn you out. It rests with you. Only, you must see that you behave. I won't have you making her wretched."
Augustine glanced dangerously at him.
"Your mother and I have come to an understanding—after a great many years of misunderstanding," said Sir Hugh, putting up the other sole. "I'm—very fond of your mother,—and she is,—very fond of me."
"She doesn't know you," said Augustine, who had become livid while the other made his gracefully hesitant statement.
"Doesn't know me?" Sir Hugh lifted his brows in amused inquiry; "My dear boy, what do you know about that, pray? You are not in all your mother's secrets."
Augustine was again silent for a moment, and he strove for self-mastery. "If I am not in my mother's secrets," he said, "she is not in yours. She does not know you. She doesn't know what sort of a man you are. You have deceived her. You have made her think that you are reformed and that the things in your life that made her leave you won't come again. But whether you are reformed or not a man like you has no right to come near a woman like my mother. I know that you are an evil man," said Augustine, his face trembling more and more uncontrollably; "And my mother is a saint."
Sir Hugh stared at him. Then he burst into a shout of laughter. "You young fool!" he said.
Augustine's eyes were lightnings in a storm-swept sky.
"You young fool," Sir Hugh repeated, not laughing, a heavier stress weighting each repeated word.
"Can you deny," said Augustine, "that you have always led a dissolute life? If you do deny it it won't help you. I know it: and I've not needed the echoes to tell me. I've always felt it in you. I've always known you were evil."
"What if I don't deny it?" Sir Hugh inquired.
Augustine was silent, biting his quivering lips.
"What if I don't deny it?" Sir Hugh repeated. His assumption of good-humour was gone. He, too, was scowling now. "What have you to say then?"
"By heaven,—I say that you shall not come near my mother."
"And what if it was not because of my dissolute life she left me? What if you've built up a cock-and-bull romance that has no relation to reality in your empty young head? What then? Ask your mother if she left me because of my dissolute life," said Sir Hugh.
The book in Augustine's wrenching hands had come apart with a crack and crash. He looked down at it stupidly.
"You really should learn to control yourself—in every direction, my dear boy," Sir Hugh remarked. "Now, unless you would like to wreak your temper on the furniture, I think you had better sit down and be still. I should advise you to think over the fact that saints have been known before now to forgive sinners. And sinners may not be so bad as your innocence imagines. Goodbye. I am going up to see your mother. I am going to spend the night here."
Augustine stood holding the shattered book. He gazed as stupidly at Sir Hugh as he had gazed at it. He gazed while Sir Hugh, who kept a rather wary eye fixed on him, left the fire and proceeded with a leisurely pace to cross the room: the door was reached and the handle turned, before the stupor broke. Sir Hugh, his eyes still fixed on his antagonist, saw the blanched fury, the start, as if the dazed body were awakening to some insufferable torture, saw the gathering together, the leap:—"You fool—you young fool!" he ground between his teeth as, with a clash of the half-opened door, Augustine pinned him upon it. "Let me go. Do you hear. Let me go." His voice was the voice of the lion-tamer, hushed before danger to a quelling depth of quiet.
And like the young lion, drawing long breaths through dilated-nostrils, Augustine growled back:—"I will not—I will not.—You shall not go to her. I would rather kill you."
"Kill me?" Sir Hugh smiled. "It would be a fight first, you know."
"Then let it be a fight. You shall not go to her."
"And what if she wants me to go to her.—Will you kill her first, too—"—The words broke. Augustine's hand was on his throat. Sir Hugh seized him. They writhed together against the door. "You mad-man!—You damned mad-man!—Your mother is in love with me.—I'll put you out of her life—"—Sir Hugh grated forth from the strangling clutch.
Suddenly, as they writhed, panting, glaring their hatred at each other, the door they leaned on pushed against them. Someone outside was turning the handle, was forcing it open. And, as if through the shocks and flashes of a blinding, deafening tempest, Augustine heard his mother's voice, very still, saying: "Let me come in."
hey fell apart and moved back into the room. Amabel entered. She wore a long white dressing-gown that, to her son's eyes, made her more than ever look her sainted self; she had dressed hastily, and, on hearing the crash below, she had wrapped a white scarf about her head and shoulders, covering her unbound hair. So framed and narrowed her face was that of a shrouded corpse: the same strange patience stamped it; her eyes, only, seemed to live, and they, too, were patient and ready for any doom.
Quietly she had closed the door, and standing near it now she looked at them; her eyes fell for a moment upon Sir Hugh; then they rested on Augustine and did not leave him.
Sir Hugh spoke first. He laughed a little, adjusting his collar and tie.
"My dear,—you've saved my life. Augustine was going to batter my brains out on the door, I fancy."
She did not look at him, but at Augustine.
"He's really dangerous, your son, you know. Please don't leave me alone with him again," Sir Hugh smiled and pleaded; it was with almost his own lightness, but his face still twitched with anger.
"What have you said to him?" Amabel asked.
Augustine's eyes were drawing her down into their torment.—Unfortunate one.—That presage of her maternity echoed in her now. His stern young face seemed to have been framed, destined from the first for this foreseen misery.
Sir Hugh had pulled himself together. He looked at the mother and son. And he understood her fear.
He went to her, leaned over her, a hand above her shoulder on the door. He reassured and protected her; and, truly, in all their story, it had never been with such sincerity and grace.
"Dearest, it's nothing. I've merely had to defend my rights. Will you assure this young firebrand that my misdemeanours didn't force you to leave me. That there were misdemeanours I don't deny; and of course you are too good for the likes of me; but your coming away wasn't my fault, was it.—That's what I've said.—And that saints forgive sinners, sometimes.—That's all I want you to tell him."
Amabel still gazed into her son's eyes. It seemed to her, now that she must shut herself out from it for ever, that for the first time in all her life she saw his love.
It broke over her; it threatened and commanded her; it implored and supplicated—ah the supplication beyond words or tears!—Selflessness made it stern. It was for her it threatened; for her it prayed.
All these years the true treasure had been there beside her, while she worshipped at the spurious shrine. Only her sorrow, her solicitude had gone out to her son; the answering love that should have cherished and encompassed him flowed towards its true goal only when it was too late. He could not love her when he knew.
And he was to know. That had come to her clearly and unalterably while she had leaned, half fallen, half kneeling, against her bed, dying, it seemed to her, to all that she had known of life or hope.
But all was not death within her. In the long, the deadly stupor, her power to love still lived. It had been thrown back from its deep channel and, wave upon wave, it seemed heaped upon itself in some narrow abyss, tormented and shuddering; and at last by its own strength, rather than by thought or prayer of hers, it had forced an outlet.
It was then as if she found herself once more within the church. Darkness, utter darkness was about her; but she was prostrated before the unseen altar. She knew herself once more, and with herself she knew her power to love.
Her life and all its illusions passed before her; by the truth that irradiated the illusions, she judged them and herself and saw what must be the atonement. All that she had believed to be the treasure of her life had been taken from her; but there was one thing left to her that she could give:—her truth to her son. When that price was paid, he would be hers to love; he was no longer hers to live for. He should found his life on no illusions, as she had founded hers. She must set him free to turn away from her; but when he turned away it would not be to leave her in the loneliness and the terror of heart that she had known; it would be to leave her in the church where she could pray for him.
She answered her husband after her long silence, looking at her son.
"It is true, Augustine," she said. "You have been mistaken. I did not leave him for that."
Sir Hugh drew a breath of satisfaction. He glanced round at Augustine. It was not a venomous glance, but, with its dart of steely intention, it paid a debt of vengeance. "So,—we needn't say anything more about it," he said. "And—dearest—perhaps now you'll tell Augustine that he may go and leave us together."
Amabel left her husband's side and went to her chair near the table. A strange calmness breathed from her. She sat with folded hands and downcast eyes.
"Augustine, come here," she said.
The young man came and stood before her.
"Give me your hand."
He gave it to her. She did not look at him but kept her eyes fixed on the ground while she clasped it.
"Augustine," she said, "I want you to leave me with my husband. I must talk with him. He is going away soon. Tomorrow—tomorrow morning early, I will see you, here. I will have a great deal to say to you, my dear son."
But Augustine, clutching her hand and trembling, looked down at her so that she raised her eyes to his.
"I can't go, till you say something, now, Mother;"—his voice shook as it had shaken on that day of their parting, his face was livid and convulsed, as then;—"I will go away tonight—I don't know that I can ever return—unless you tell me that you are not going to take him back." He gazed down into his mother's eyes.
She did not answer him; she did not speak. But, as he looked into them, he, too, for the first time, saw in them what she had seen in his.
They dwelt on him; they widened; they almost smiled; they deeply promised him all—all—that he most longed for. She was his, her son's; she was not her husband's. What he had feared had never threatened him or her. This was a gift she had won the right to give. The depth of her repudiation yesterday gave her her warrant.
And to Amabel, while they looked into each other's eyes, it was as if, in the darkness, some arching loveliness of dawn vaguely shaped itself above the altar.
"Kiss me, dear Augustine," she said. She held up her forehead, closing her eyes, for the kiss that was her own.
Augustine was gone. And now, before her, was the ugly breaking. But must it be so ugly? Opening her eyes, she looked at her husband as he stood before the fire, his wondering eyes upon her. Must it be ugly? Why could it not be quiet and even kind?
Strangely there had gathered in her, during the long hours, the garnered strength of her life of discipline and submission. It had sustained her through the shudder that glanced back at yesterday—at the corruption that had come so near; it had given sanity to see with eyes of compassion the forsaken woman who had come with her courageous, revengeful story; it gave sanity now, as she looked over at her husband, to see him also, with those eyes of compassionate understanding; he was not blackened, to her vision, by the shadowing corruption, but, in his way, pitiful, too; all the worth of life lost to him.
And it seemed swiftest, simplest, and kindest, as she looked over at him, to say:—"You see—Lady Elliston came this afternoon, and told me everything."
Sir Hugh kept his face remarkably unmoved. He continued to gaze at his wife with an unabashed, unstartled steadiness. "I might have guessed that," he said after a short silence. "Confound her."
Amabel made no reply.
"So I suppose," Sir Hugh went on, "you feel you can't forgive me."
She hesitated, not quite understanding. "You mean—for having married me—when you loved her?"
"Well, yes; but more for not having, long ago, in all these years, found out that you were the woman that any man with eyes to see, any man not blinded and fatuous, ought to have been in love with from the beginning."
Amabel flushed. Her vision was untroubled; but the shadow hovered. She was ashamed for him.
"No"; she said, "I did not think of that. I don't know that I have anything to forgive you. It is Lady Elliston, I think, who must try and forgive you, if she can."
Sir Hugh was again silent for a moment; then he laughed. "You dear innocent!—Well—I won't defend myself at her expense."
"Don't," said Amabel, looking now away from him.
Sir Hugh eyed her and seemed to weigh the meaning of her voice.
He crossed the room suddenly and leaned over her:—"Amabel darling,—what must I do to atone? I'll be patient. Don't be cruel and punish me for too long a time."
"Sit there—will you please." She pointed to the chair at the other side of the table.
He hesitated, still leaning above her; then obeyed; folding his arms; frowning.
"You don't understand," said Amabel. "I loved you for what you never were. I do not love you now. And I would never have loved you as you asked me to do yesterday."
He gazed at her, trying to read the difficult riddle of a woman's perversity. "You were in love with me yesterday," he said at last.
She answered nothing.
"I'll make you love me again."
"No: never," she answered, looking quietly at him. "What is there in you to love?"
Sir Hugh flushed. "I say! You are hard on me!"
"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."