Part 11

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."

End of Project Gutenberg's Amabel Channice, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick