XXV.
MRS. CLEPHANE excused herself from coming down to dinner; Aline was to say that she was very tired, and begged that no one should disturb her. The next morning, she knew, Chris was returning to Baltimore. Perhaps in his absence she would be able to breathe more freely, see more clearly.
Anne, as usual, respected her mother’s wishes; she neither came up nor sent to enquire. But the next morning, in the old way, fresh and shining, she appeared with Mrs. Clephane’s breakfast-tray. She wanted to be reassured as to her mother’s health, and Kate, under her solicitous eye, poured out a cup of tea and forced down a bit of toast.
“You look tired, mother. It’s only that?”
“Only that, dear.”
“You didn’t tell me that Aunt Enid had been in last night about the house next door—” Anne spoke the least little reproachfully.
“I’m sorry. I had such a headache that when she left I went straight to my room. Did she telephone you?”
“Uncle Hendrik did. Isn’t it the greatest luck? It will be such fun arranging it all.” The girl pausedand looked at her mother. “And this will make you decide, darling, won’t it?”
“Decide?”
“To stay on here. To keep this house for yourself. It will be almost like our all being together.”
“Yes—almost.”
“You will stay, won’t you?”
“Stay here? I can’t—I can’t!” The words escaped before Mrs. Clephane could repress them. Her heart began to rush about in her like a caged animal.
Anne’s brows darkened and drew together. “But I don’t understand. You told Chris you would—”
“Did I? Perhaps I did. But I must sometimes be allowed to change my mind,” Mrs. Clephane murmured, forcing a thin smile.
“To change your mind about being with us? You don’t want to, then, after all?”
Mrs. Clephane pushed the tray away and propped herself on her elbow. “No, I don’t want to.”
“How you say it, mother! As if I were a stranger. I don’t understand....” The girl’s lip was beginning to tremble. “I thought ... Chris and I both thought....”
“I’m sorry. But I must really decide as I think best. When you are married you won’t need me.”
“And shan’t you need me, mother? Not a little?” Anne hesitated, and then ventured, timidly: “You’re so alone—so awfully alone.”
“I’ve always been that. It can’t be otherwise. You’ve chosen ... you’ve chosen to be married....”
Anne stood up and looked down on her with searching imperious eyes. “Is it my being married—or my being married to Chris?”
“Ah—don’t let us talk of that again!”
The girl continued to scrutinize her strangely. “Once for all—you won’t tell me?”
Mrs. Clephane did not speak.
“Then I shall ask him—I shall ask him in your presence,” Anne exclaimed in a shaking voice.
At the sound of that break in her voice the dread of seeing her suffer once more superseded every other feeling in the mother’s breast. She leaned against the pillows, speechless for a moment; then she held out her hand, seeking Anne’s.
“There’s nothing to ask, dear; nothing to tell.”
“You don’t hate him, mother? You really don’t?”
Slowly Kate Clephane articulated: “I don’t—hate him.”
“But why won’t you see him with me, then? Why won’t you talk it all out with us once for all? Mother, whatisit? I must know.”
Mrs. Clephane, under her daughter’s relentless eyes, felt the blood rising from her throat to her pale lips and drawn cheeks, and to the forehead in which her pulses must be visibly beating. She laythere, bathed in a self-accusing crimson, and it seemed to her that those clear young eyes were like steel blades plunging into the deepest folds of her conscience.
“You don’t hate him? But then you’re in love with him—you’re in love with him, and I’ve known it all along!” The girl shrilled it out suddenly, and hid her face in her hands.
Kate Clephane lay without speaking. In the first shock of the outcry all her defences had crashed together about her head, and it had been almost a relief to feel them going, to feel that pretences and disguises were at an end. Then Anne’s hands dropped to her side, and the mother, meeting her gaze, lost the sense of her own plight in the sight of that other woe. All at once she felt herself strong and resolute; all the old forces of dissimulation were pouring back through her veins. The accusing red faded from her face, and she lay there and quietly met the question in Anne’s eyes.
“Anne!” she simply said, with a little shrug.
“Oh, mother—mother! I think I must be going mad!” Anne was on her knees at the bedside, her face buried in the coverlet. It was easier to speak to her while her eyes were hidden, and Kate laid a hand on her hair.
“Not mad, dear; but decidedly over-strung.” She heard the note of magnanimity in her own voice.
“But can you forgive me—ever?”
“Nonsense, dear; can I do anything else?”
“But then—if youdoforgive me, really—why must you go away? Why won’t you promise to stay with us?”
Kate Clephane lay against her pillows and meditated. Her hand was still in Anne’s hair; she held the girl’s head gently against the coverlet, still not wishing her own face to be too closely scrutinized. At length she spoke.
“I didn’t mean to tell you just yet; and you must tell no one.” She paused, and rallied her failing courage. “I can’t promise to stay with you, dear, because I may be going to get married too.” The first words were the most difficult to say; after that she heard her voice going on steadily. “Fred Landers has asked me to marry him; and I think I shall accept.... No; don’t hug me too hard, child; my head still aches—There; now you understand, don’t you? And you won’t scold me any more? But remember, it’s a secret from every one. It’s not to be spoken of till after you’re married.... Now go.”
After Anne had left her, subdued but jubilant, she lay there and remembered, with a twinge of humiliation, that the night before she had hurried downstairs in a mad rush to death. Anything—anything to escape from the coil of horror closing in on her!... And it had sufficed to her to meet Enid Drover in the hall, with that silly chatter about the housenext door, to check the impulse, drive her back into the life she was flying from.... She reflected with self-derision that all her suicidal impulses seemed to end in the same way; by landing her in the arms of some man she didn’t care for. Then she remembered Anne’s illuminated face, and lay listening to the renewed life of the house, the bustle of happy preparations going on all about her.
“Poor Fred! Well—if it’s what he wants—” she thought. What she herself wanted, all she now wanted, was never again to see that dreadful question in Anne’s eyes. And she had found no other way of evading it.