Part 4

She must be strong and wise for her child and out of her knowledge of sin and weakness in herself must guide and guard it. But in her yearning, in her brooding thought, was none of the mother's rapturous folly and gladness. She never kissed her baby. Some dark association made the thought of kisses an unholy thing and when, forgetting, she leaned to it sometimes, thoughtless, and delighting in littleness and sweetness, the dark memory of guilt would rise between its lips and hers, so that she would grow pale and draw back.

When first she saw her husband, Augustine was over a year old. Sir Hugh had written and asked if he might not come down one day and spend an hour with her. "And let all the old fogies see that we are friends," he said, in his remembered playful vein.

It was in the long dark drawing-room that she had seen him for the first time since her flight into the wilderness.

He had come in, grave, yet with something blithe and unperturbed in his bearing that, as she stood waiting for what he might say to her, seemed the very nimbus of chivalry. He was splendid to look at, too, tall and strong with clear kind eyes and clear kind smile.

She could not speak, not even when he came and took her hand, and said: "Well Amabel." And then, seeing how white she was and how she trembled, he had bent his head and kissed her hand. And at that she had broken into tears; but they were tears of joy.

He stood beside her while she wept, her hands before her face, just touching her shoulder with a paternal hand, and she heard him saying: "Poor little Amabel: poor little girl."

She took her chair beside the table and for a long time she kept her face hidden: "Thank you; thank you;" was all that she could say.

"My dear, what for?--There, don't cry.--You have stopped crying? There, poor child. I've been awfully sorry for you."

He would not let her try to say how good he was, and this was a relief, for she knew that she could not put it into words and that, without words, he understood. He even laughed a little, with a graceful embarrassment, at her speechless gratitude. And presently, when they talked, she could put down her hand, could look round at him, while she answered that, yes, she was very comfortable at Charlock House; yes, no place could suit her more perfectly; yes, Mrs. Bray was very kind.

And he talked a little about business with her, explaining that Bertram's death had left him with a great deal of management on his hands; he must have her signature to papers, and all this was done with the easiest tact so that naturalness and simplicity should grow between them; so that, in finding pen and papers in her desk, in asking where she was to sign, in obeying the pointing of his finger here and there, she should recover something of her quiet, and be able to smile, even, a little answering smile, when he said that he should make a business woman of her. And--"Rather a shame that I should take your money like this, Amabel, but, with all Bertram's money, you are quite a bloated capitalist. I'm rather hard up, and you don't grudge it, I know."

She flushed all over at the idea, even said in jest:--"All that I have is yours."

"Ah, well, not all," said Sir Hugh. "You must remember--other claims." And he, too, flushed a little now in saying, gently, tentatively;--"May I see the little boy?"

"I will bring him," said Amabel.

How she remembered, all her life long, that meeting of her husband and her son. It was the late afternoon of a bright June day and the warm smell of flowers floated in at the open windows of the drawing-room. She did not let the nurse bring Augustine, she carried him down herself. He was a large, robust baby with thick, corn-coloured hair and a solemn, beautiful little face. Amabel came in with him and stood before her husband holding him and looking down. Confusion was in her mind, a mingling of pride and shame.

Sir Hugh and the baby eyed each other, with some intentness. And, as the silence grew a little long, Sir Hugh touched the child's cheek with his finger and said: "Nice little fellow: splendid little fellow. How old is he, Amabel? Isn't he very big?"

"A year and two months. Yes, he is very big."

"He looks like you, doesn't he?"

"Does he?" she said faintly.

"Just your colour," Sir Hugh assured her. "As grave as a little king, isn't he. How firmly he looks at me."

"He is grave, but he never cries; he is very cheerful, too, and well and strong."

"He looks it. He does you credit. Well, my little man, shall we be friends?" Sir Hugh held out his hand. Augustine continued to gaze at him, unmoving. "He won't shake hands," said Sir Hugh.

Amabel took the child's hand and placed it in her husband's; her own fingers shook. But Augustine drew back sharply, doubling his arm against his breast, though not wavering in his gaze at the stranger.

Sir Hugh laughed at the decisive rejection. "Friendship's on one side, till later," he said.

* * * * *

When her husband had gone Amabel went out into the sycamore wood. It was a pale, cool evening. The sun had set and the sky beyond the sycamores was golden. Above, in a sky of liquid green, the evening star shone softly.

A joy, sweet, cold, pure, like the evening, was in her heart. She stopped in the midst of the little wood among the trees, and stood still, closing her eyes.

Something old was coming back to her; something new was being given. The memory of her mother's eyes was in it, of the simple prayers taught her by her mother in childhood, and the few words, rare and simple, of the presence of God in the soul. But her girlish prayer, her girlish thought of God, had been like a thread-like, singing brook. What came to her now grew from the brook-like running of trust and innocence to a widening river, to a sea that filled her, over-flowed her, encompassed her, in whose power she was weak, through whose power her weakness was uplifted and made strong.

It was as if a dark curtain of fear and pain lifted from her soul, showing vastness, and deep upon deep of stars. Yet, though this that came to her was so vast, it made itself small and tender, too, like the flowers glimmering about her feet, the breeze fanning her hair and garments, the birds asleep in the branches above her. She held out her hands, for it seemed to fall like dew, and she smiled, her face uplifted.

* * * * *

She did not often see her husband in the quiet years that followed. She did not feel that she needed to see him. It was enough to know that he was there, good and beautiful.

She knew that she idealised him, that in ordinary aspects he was a happy, easy man-of-the-world; but that was not the essential; the essential in him was the pity, the tenderness, the comprehension that had responded to her great need. He was very unconscious of aims or ideals; but when the time for greatness came he showed it as naturally and simply as a flower expands to light. The thought of him henceforth was bound up with the thought of her religion; nothing of rapture or ecstasy was in it; it was quiet and grave, a revelation of holiness.

It was as if she had been kneeling to pray, alone, in a dark, devastated church, trembling, and fearing the darkness, not daring to approach the unseen altar; and that then her husband's hand had lighted all the high tapers one by one, so that the church was filled with radiance and the divine made manifest to her again.

Light and quietness were to go with her, but they were not to banish fear. They could only help her to live with fear and to find life beautiful in spite of it.

For if her husband stood for the joy of life, her child stood for its sorrow. He was the dark past and the unknown future. What she should find in him was unrevealed; and though she steadied her soul to the acceptance of whatever the future might bring of pain for her, the sense of trembling was with her always in the thought of what it might bring of pain for Augustine.

IV

Lady Channice woke on the morning after her long retrospect bringing from her dreams a heavy heart.

She lay for some moments after the maid had drawn her curtains, looking out at the fields as she had so often looked, and wondering why her heart was heavy. Throb by throb, like a leaden shuttle, it seemed to weave together the old and new memories, so that she saw the pattern of yesterday and of today, Lady Elliston's coming, the pain that Augustine had given her in his strange questionings, the meeting of her husband and her son. And the ominous rhythm of the shuttle was like the footfall of the past creeping upon her.

It was more difficult than it had been for years, this morning, to quiet the throb, to stay her thoughts on strength. She could not pray, for her thoughts, like her heart, were leaden; the whispered words carried no message as they left her lips; she could not lift her thought to follow them. It was upon a lesser, a merely human strength, that she found herself dwelling. She was too weak, too troubled, to find the swiftness of soul that could soar with its appeal, the stillness of soul where the divine response could enter; and weakness turned to human help. The thought of her husband's coming was like a glow of firelight seen at evening on a misty moor. She could hasten towards it, quelling fear. There she would be safe. By his mere presence he would help and sustain her. He would be kind and tactful with Augustine, as he had always been; he would make a shield between her and Lady Elliston. She could see no sky above, and the misty moor loomed with uncertain shapes; but she could look before her and feel that she went towards security and brightness.

Augustine and his mother both studied during the day, the same studies, for Lady Channice, to a great extent, shared her son's scholarly pursuits. From his boyhood--a studious, grave, yet violent little boy he had been, his fits of passionate outbreak quelled, as he grew older, by the mere example of her imperturbability beside him--she had thus shared everything. She had made herself his tutor as well as his guardian angel. She was more tutor, more guardian angel, than mother.

Their mental comradeship was full of mutual respect. And though Augustine was not of the religious temperament, though his mother's instinct told her that in her lighted church he would be a respectful looker-on rather than a fellow-worshipper, though they never spoke of religion, just as they seldom kissed, Augustine's growing absorption in metaphysics tinged their friendship with a religious gravity and comprehension.

On three mornings in the week Lady Channice had a class for the older village girls; she sewed, read and talked with them, and was fond of them all. These girls, their placing in life, their marriages and babies, were her most real interest in the outer world. During the rest of the day she gardened, and read whatever books Augustine might be reading. It was the mother and son's habit thus to work apart and to discuss work in the evenings.

Today, when her girls were gone, she found herself very lonely. Augustine was out riding and in her room she tried to occupy herself, fearing her own thoughts. It was past twelve when she heard the sound of his horse's hoofs on the gravel before the door and, throwing a scarf over her hair, she ran down to meet him.

The hall door at Charlock House, under a heavy portico, looked out upon a circular gravel drive bordered by shrubberies and enclosed by high walls; beyond the walls and gates was the high-road. An interval of sunlight had broken into the chill Autumn day: Augustine had ridden bareheaded and his gold hair shone as the sun fell upon it. He looked, in his stately grace, like an equestrian youth on a Greek frieze. And, as was usual with his mother, her appreciation of Augustine's nobility and fineness passed at once into a pang: so beautiful; so noble; and so shadowed. She stood, her black scarf about her face and shoulders, and smiled at him while he threw the reins to the old groom and dismounted.

"Nice to find you waiting for me," he said. "I'm late this morning. Too late for any work before lunch. Don't you want a little walk? You look pale."

"I should like it very much. I may miss my afternoon walk--your father may have business to talk over."

They went through the broad stone hall-way that traversed the house and stepped out on the gravel walk at the back. This path, running below the drawing-room and dining-room windows, led down on one side to the woods, on the other to Lady Channice's garden, and was a favourite place of theirs for quiet saunterings. Today the sunlight fell mildly on it. A rift of pale blue showed in the still grey sky.

"I met Marjory," said Augustine, "and we had a gallop over Pangley Common. She rides well, that child. We jumped the hedge and ditch at the foot of the common, you know--the high hedge--for practice. She goes over like a bird."

Amabel's mind was dwelling on the thought of shadowed brightness and Marjory, fresh, young, deeply rooted in respectability, seemed suddenly more significant than she had ever been before. In no way Augustine's equal, of course, except in that impersonal, yet so important matter of roots; Amabel had known a little irritation over Mrs. Grey's open manoeuvreings; but on this morning of rudderless tossing, Marjory appeared in a new aspect. How sound; how safe. It was of Augustine's insecurity rather than of Augustine himself that she was thinking as she said: "She is such a nice girl."

"Yes, she is," said Augustine.

"What did you talk about?"

"Oh, the things we saw; birds and trees and clouds.--I pour information upon her."

"She likes that, one can see it."

"Yes, she is so nice and guileless that she doesn't resent my pedantry. I love giving information, you know," Augustine smiled. He looked about him as he spoke, at birds and trees and clouds, happy, humorous, clasping his riding crop behind his back so that his mother heard it make a pleasant little click against his gaiter as he walked.

"It's delightful for both of you, such a comradeship."

"Yes; a comradeship after a fashion; Marjory is just like a nice little boy."

"Ah, well, she is growing up; she is seventeen, you know. She is more than a little boy."

"Not much; she never will be much more."

"She will make a very nice woman."

Augustine continued to smile, partly at the thought of Marjory, and

## partly at another thought. "You mustn't make plans, for me and Marjory,

like Mrs. Grey," he said presently. "It's mothers like Mrs. Grey who spoil comradeships. You know, I'll never marry Marjory. She is a nice little boy, and we are friends; but she doesn't interest me."

"She may grow more interesting: she is so young. I don't make plans, dear,--yet I think that it might be a happy thing for you."

"She'll never interest me," said Augustine.

"Must you have a very interesting wife?"

"Of course I must:--she must be as interesting as you are!" he turned his head to smile at her.

"You are not exacting, dear!"

"Yes, I am, though. She must be as interesting as you--and as good; else why should I leave you and go and live with someone else.--Though for that matter, I shouldn't leave you. You'd have to live with us, you know, if I ever married."

"Ah, my dear boy," Lady Channice murmured. She managed a smile presently and added: "You might fall in love with someone not so interesting. You can't be sure of your feelings and your mind going together."

"My feelings will have to submit themselves to my mind. I don't know about 'falling'; I rather dislike the expression: one might 'fall' in love with lots of people one would never dream of marrying. It would have to be real love. I'd have to love a woman very deeply before I wanted her to share my life, to be a part of me; to be the mother of my children." He spoke with his cheerful gravity.

"You have an old head on very young shoulders, Augustine."

"I really believe I have!" he accepted her somewhat sadly humorous statement; "and that's why I don't believe I'll ever make a mistake. I'd rather never marry than make a mistake. I know I sound priggish; but I've thought a good deal about it: I've had to." He paused for a moment, and then, in the tone of quiet, unconfused confidence that always filled her with a sense of mingled pride and humility, he added:--"I have strong passions, and I've already seen what happens to people who allow feeling to govern them."

Amabel was suddenly afraid. "I know that you would always be--good Augustine; I can trust you for that." She spoke faintly.

They had now walked down to the little garden with its box borders and were wandering vaguely among the late roses. She paused to look at the roses, stooping to breathe in the fragrance of a tall white cluster: it was an instinctive impulse of hiding: she hoped in another moment to find an escape in some casual gardening remark. But Augustine, unsuspecting, was interested in their theme.

"Good? I don't know," he said. "I don't think it's goodness, exactly. It's that I so loathe the other thing, so loathe the animal I know in myself, so loathe the idea of life at the mercy of emotion."

She had to leave the roses and walk on again beside him, steeling herself to bear whatever might be coming. And, feeling that unconscious accusation loomed, she tried, as unconsciously, to mollify and evade it.

"It isn't always the animal, exactly, is it?--or emotion only? It is romance and blind love for a person that leads people astray."

"Isn't that the animal?" Augustine inquired. "I don't think the animal base, you know, or shameful, if he is properly harnessed and kept in his place. It's only when I see him dominating that I hate and fear him so. And," he went on after a little pause of reflection, "I especially hate him in that form;--romance and blind love: because what is that, really, but the animal at its craftiest and most dangerous? what is romance--I mean romance of the kind that jeopardizes 'goodness'--what is it but the most subtle self-deception? You don't love the person in the true sense of love; you don't want their good; you don't want to see them put in the right relation to their life as a whole:--what you want is sensation through them; what you want is yourself in them, and their absorption in you. I don't think that wicked, you know--I'm not a monk or even a puritan--if it's the mere result of the right sort of love, a happy glamour that accompanies, the right sort; it's in its place, then, and can endanger nothing. But people are so extraordinarily blind about love; they don't seem able to distinguish between the real and the false. People usually, though they don't know it, mean only desire when they talk of love."

There was another pause in which she wondered that he did not hear the heavy throbbing of her heart. But now there was no retreat; she must go on; she must understand her son. "Desire must enter in," she said.

"In its place, yes; it's all a question of that;" Augustine replied, smiling a little at her, aware of the dogmatic flavour of his own utterances, the humorous aspect of their announcement, to her, by him;--"You love a woman enough and respect her enough to wish her to be the mother of your children--assuming, of course, that you consider yourself worthy to carry on the race; and to think of a woman in such a way is to feel a rightful emotion and a rightful desire; anything else makes emotion the end instead of the result and is corrupting, I'm sure of it."

"You have thought it all out, haven't you"; Lady Channice steadied her voice to say. There was panic rising in her, and a strange anger made part of it.

"I've had to, as I said," he replied. "I'm anything but self-controlled by nature; already," and Augustine looked calmly at his mother, "I'd have let myself go and been very dissolute unless I'd had this ideal of my own honour to help me. I'm of anything but a saintly disposition."

"My dear Augustine!" His mother had coloured faintly. Absurd as it was, when the reality of her own life was there mocking her, the bald words were strange to her.

"Do I shock you?" he asked. "You know I always feel that you _are_ a saint, who can hear and understand everything."

She blushed deeply, painfully, now. "No, you don't shock me;--I am only a little startled."

"To hear that I'm sensual? The whole human race is far too sensual in my opinion. They think a great deal too much about their sexual appetites;--only they don't think about them in those terms unfortunately; they think about them veiled and wreathed; that's why we are sunk in such a bog of sentimentality and sin."

Lady Channice was silent for a long time. They had left the garden, and walked along the little path near the sunken wall at the foot of the lawn, and, skirting the wood of sycamores, had come back to the broad gravel terrace. A turmoil was in her mind; a longing to know and see; a terror of what he would show her.

"Do you call it sin, that blinded love? Do you think that the famous lovers of romance were sinners?" she asked at last; "Tristan and Iseult?--Abelard and Heloise?--Paolo and Francesca?"

"Of course they were sinners," said Augustine cheerfully. "What did they want?--a present joy: purely and simply that: they sacrificed everything to it--their own and other people's futures: what's that but sin? There is so much mawkish rubbish talked and written about such persons. They were pathetic, of course, most sinners are; that particular sin, of course, may be so associated and bound up with beautiful things;--fidelity, and real love may make such a part of it, that people get confused about it."

"Fidelity and real love?" Lady Channice repeated: "you think that they atone--if they make part of an illicit passion?"

"I don't think that they atone; but they may redeem it, mayn't they? Why do you ask me?" Augustine smiled;--"You know far more about these things than I do."