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!—"
He went on presently; "And will you go on living here, perhaps alone?"
"Alone, I think; yes, I shall live here; I do not find it dismal, you know."
Sir Hugh felt himself again looking reluctantly into darkness. "But—how will you manage it, Amabel?" he asked.
And her voice seemed to come, in all serenity, from the darkness; "I shall manage it."
Yes, the awe hovered near him as he realised that what, to him, meant darkness, to her meant life. She would manage it. She had managed to live through everything.
A painful analogy came to increase his sadness;—it was like having before one a martyr who had been bound to rack after rack and still maintained that strange air of keeping something it was worth while being racked for. Glancing at her it seemed to him, still more painfully, that in spite of her beauty she was very like a martyr; that queer touch of wildness in her eyes; they were serene, they were even sweet, yet they seemed to have looked on horrid torments; and those white wrappings might have concealed dreadful scars.
He took out his watch, nervously and automatically, and looked at it. He would have to walk to the station; he could catch a train.
"And may I come, sometimes, and see you?" he asked. "I'll not bother you, you know. I understand, at last. I see what a blunder—an ugly blunder—this has been on my part. But perhaps you'll let me be your friend—more really your friend than I have ever been."
And now, as he glanced at her again, he saw that the gentleness was remote no longer. It had come near like a light that, in approaching, diffused itself and made a sudden comfort and sweetness. She was too weary to smile, but her eyes, dwelling gently on him, promised him something, as, when they had dwelt with their passion of exiled love on her son, they had promised something to Augustine. She held out her hand. "We are friends," she said.
Sir Hugh flushed darkly. He stood holding her hand, looking at it and not at her. He could not tell what were the confused emotions that struggled within him; shame and changed love; awe, and broken memories of prayers that called down blessings. It was "God bless you," that he felt, yet he did not feel that it was for him to say these words to her. And no words came; but tears were in his eyes as, in farewell, he bent over her hand and kissed it.
hen 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."