Part 5

She could not look at him. His words in their beautiful unconsciousness appalled her. Yet she had to go on, to profit by her own trance-like strength. She was walking on the verge of a precipice but she knew that with steady footsteps she could go towards her appointed place. She must see just where Augustine put her, just how he judged her.

"You seem to know more than I do, Augustine," she said: "I've not thought it out as you have. And it seems to me that any great emotion is more of an end in itself than you would grant. But if the illicit passion thinks itself real and thinks itself enduring, and proves neither, what of it then? What do you think of lovers to whom that happens? It so often happens, you know."

Augustine had his cheerful answer ready. "Then they are stupid as well as sinful. Of course it is sinful to be stupid. We've learned that from Plato and Hegel, haven't we?"

The parlour-maid came out to announce lunch. Lady Channice was spared an answer. She went to her room feeling shattered, as if great stones had been hurled upon her.

Yes, she thought, gazing at herself in the mirror, while she untied her scarf and smoothed her hair, yes, she had never yet, with all her agonies of penitence, seen so clearly what she had been: a sinner: a stupid sinner. Augustine's rigorous young theories might set too inhuman an ideal, but that aspect of them stood out clear: he had put, in bald, ugly words, what, in essence, her love for Paul Quentin had been: he had stripped all the veils and wreaths away. It had been self; self, blind in desire, cruel when blindness left it: there had been no real love and no fidelity to redeem the baseness. A stupid sinner; that, her son had told her, was what she had been. The horror of it smote back upon her from her widened, mirrored eyes, and she sat for a moment thinking that she must faint.

Then she remembered that Augustine was waiting for her downstairs and that in little more than an hour her husband would be with her. And suddenly the agony lightened. A giddiness of relief came over her. He was kind: he did not judge her: he knew all, yet he respected her. Augustine was like the bleak, stony moor; she must shut her eyes and stumble on towards the firelight. And as she thought of that nearing brightness, of her husband's eyes, that never judged, never grew hard or fierce or remote from human tolerance, a strange repulsion from her son rose in her. Cold, fierce, righteous boy; cold, heartless theories that one throb of human emotion would rightly shatter;--the thought was almost like an echo of Paul Quentin speaking in her heart to comfort her. She sprang up: that was indeed the last turn of horror. If she was not to faint she must not think. Action alone could dispel the whirling mist where she did not know herself.

She went down to the dining-room. Augustine stood looking out of the window. "Do come and see this delightful swallow," he said: "he's skimming over and over the lawn."

She felt that she could not look at the swallow. She could only walk to her chair and sink down on it. Augustine repelled her with his cheerfulness, his trivial satisfactions. How could he not know that she was in torment and that he had plunged her there. This involuntary injustice to him was, she saw again, veritably crazed.

She poured herself out water and said in a voice that surprised herself:--"Very delightful, I am sure; but come and have your lunch. I am hungry."

"And how pale you are," said Augustine, going to his place. "We stayed out too long. You got chilled." He looked at her with the solicitude that was like a brother's--or a doctor's. That jarred upon her racked nerves, too.

"Yes; I am cold," she said.

She took food upon her plate and pretended to eat. Augustine, she guessed, must already feel the change in her. He must see that she only pretended. But he said nothing more. His tact was a further turn to the knot of her sudden misery.

* * * * *

Augustine was with her in the drawing-room when she heard the wheels of the station-fly grinding on the gravel drive; they sounded very faintly in the drawing-room, but, from years of listening, her hearing had grown very acute.

She could never meet her husband without an emotion that betrayed itself in pallor and trembling and today the emotion was so marked that Augustine's presence was at once a safeguard and an anxiety; before Augustine she could be sure of not breaking down, not bursting into tears of mingled gladness and wretchedness, but though he would keep her from betraying too much to Sir Hugh, would she not betray too much to him? He was reading a review and laid it down as the door opened: she could only hope that he noticed nothing.

Sir Hugh came in quickly. At fifty-four he was still a very handsome man of a chivalrous and soldierly bearing. He had long limbs, broad shoulders and a not yet expanded waist. His nose and chin were clearly and strongly cut, his eyes brightly blue; his moustache ran to decisive little points twisted up from the lip and was as decorative as an epaulette upon a martial shoulder. Pleasantness radiated from him, and though, with years, this pleasantness was significant rather of his general attitude than of his individual interest, though his movements had become a little indolent and his features a little heavy, these changes, to affectionate eyes, were merely towards a more pronounced geniality and contentedness.

Today, however, geniality and contentment were less apparent. He looked slightly nipped and hardened, and, seeming pleased to find a fire, he stood before it, after he had shaken hands with his wife and with Augustine, and said that it had been awfully cold in the train.

"We will have tea at half past four instead of five today, then," said Amabel.

But no, he replied, he couldn't stop for tea: he must catch the four-four back to town: he had a dinner and should only just make it.

His eye wandered a little vaguely about the room, but he brought it back to Amabel to say with a smile that the fire made up for the loss of tea. There was then a little silence during which it might have been inferred that Sir Hugh expected Augustine to leave the room. Amabel, too, expected it; but Augustine had taken up his review and was reading again. She felt her fear of him, her anger against him, grow.

Very pleasantly, Sir Hugh at last suggested that he had a little business to talk over. "I think I'll ask Augustine to let us have a half hour's talk."

"Oh, I'll not interfere with business," said Augustine, not lifting his eyes.

The silence, now, was more than uncomfortable; to Amabel it was suffocating. She could guess too well that some latent enmity was expressed in Augustine's assumed unconsciousness. That Sir Hugh was surprised, displeased, was evident; but, when he spoke again, after a little pause, it was still pleasantly:--"Not with business, but with talk you will interfere. I'm afraid I must ask you.--I don't often have a chance to talk with your mother.--I'll see you later, eh?"

Augustine made no reply. He rose and walked out of the room.

Sir Hugh still stood before the fire, lifting first the sole of one boot and then the other to the blaze. "Hasn't always quite nice manners, has he, the boy"; he observed. "I didn't want to have to send him out, you know."

"He didn't realize that you wanted to talk to me alone." Amabel felt herself offering the excuse from a heart turned to stone.

"Didn't he, do you think? Perhaps not. We always do talk alone, you know. He's just a trifle tactless, shows a bit of temper sometimes. I've noticed it. I hope he doesn't bother you with it."

"No. I never saw him like that, before," said Amabel, looking down as she sat in her chair.

"Well, that's all that matters," said Sir Hugh, as if satisfied.

His boots were quite hot now and he went to the writing-desk drawing a case of papers from his breast-pocket.

"Here are some of your securities, Amabel," he said: "I want a few more signatures. Things haven't been going very well with me lately. I'd be awfully obliged if you'd help me out."

"Oh--gladly--" she murmured. She rose and came to the desk. She hardly saw the papers through a blur of miserable tears while she wrote her name here and there. She was shut out in the mist and dark; he wasn't thinking of her at all; he was chill, preoccupied; something was displeasing him; decisively, almost sharply, he told her where to write. "You mustn't be worried, you know," he observed as he pointed out the last place; "I'm arranging here, you see, to pass Charlock House over to you for good. That is a little return for all you've done. It's not a valueless property. And then Bertram tied up a good sum for the child, you know."

His speaking of "the child," made her heart stop beating, it brought the past so near.--And was Charlock House to be her very own? "Oh," she murmured, "that is too good of you.--You mustn't do that.--Apart from Augustine's share, all that I have is yours; I want no return."

"Ah, but I want you to have it"; said Sir Hugh; "it will ease my conscience a little. And you really do care for the grim old place, don't you."

"I love it."

"Well, sign here, and here, and it's yours. There. Now you are mistress in your own home. You don't know how good you've been to me, Amabel."

The voice was the old, kind voice, touched even, it seemed, with an unwonted feeling, and, suddenly, the tears ran down her cheeks as, looking at the papers that gave her her home, she said, faltering:--"You are not displeased with me?--Nothing is the matter?"

He looked at her, startled, a little confused. "Why my dear girl,--displeased with you?--How could I be?--No. It's only these confounded affairs of mine that are in a bit of a mess just now."

"And can't I be of even more help--without any returns? I can be so economical for myself, here. I need almost nothing in my quiet life."

Sir Hugh flushed. "Oh, you've not much more to give, my dear. I've taken you at your word."

"Take me completely at my word. Take everything."

"You dear little saint," he said. He patted her shoulder. The door was wide; the fire shone upon her. She felt herself falling on her knees before it, with happy tears. He, who knew all, could say that to her, with sincerity. The day of lowering fear and bewilderment opened to sudden joy. His hand was on her shoulder; she lifted it and kissed it.

"Oh! Don't!"--said Sir Hugh. He drew his hand sharply away. There was confusion, irritation, in his little laugh.

Amabel's tears stood on scarlet cheeks. Did he not understand?--Did he think?--And was he right in thinking?--Shame flooded her. What girlish impulse had mingled incredibly with her gratitude, her devotion?

Sir Hugh had turned away, and as she sat there, amazed with her sudden suspicion, the door opened and Augustine came in saying:--"Here is Lady Elliston, Mother."

V

Lady Elliston helped her. How that, too, brought back the past to Amabel as she rose and moved forward, before her husband and her son, to greet the friend of twenty years ago.

Lady Elliston, at difficult moments, had always helped her, and this was one of the most difficult that she had ever known. Amabel forgot her tears, forgot her shame, in her intense desire that Augustine should guess nothing.

"My very dear Amabel," said Lady Elliston. She swept forward and took both Lady Channice's hands, holding them firmly, looking at her intently, intently smiling, as if, with her own mastery of the situation, to give her old friend strength. "My dear, dear Amabel," she repeated: "How good it is to see you again.--And how lovely you are."

She was silken, she was scarfed, she was soft and steady; as in the past, sweetness and strength breathed from her. She was competent to deal with most calamitous situations and to make them bearable, to make them even graceful. She could do what she would with situations: Amabel felt that of her now as she had felt it years ago.

Her eyes continued to gaze for a long moment into Amabel's eyes before, as softly and as steadily, they passed to Sir Hugh who was again standing before the fire behind his wife. "How do you do," she then said with a little nod.

"How d'ye do," Sir Hugh replied. His voice was neither soft nor steady; the sharpness, the irritation was in it. "I didn't know you were down here," he said.

Over Amabel's shoulder, while she still held Amabel's hands, Lady Elliston looked at him, all sweetness. "Yes: I arrived this morning. I am staying with the Greys."

"The Greys? How in the dickens did you run across them?" Sir Hugh asked with a slight laugh.

"I met them at Jack's cousin's--the nice old bishop, you know. They are tiresome people; but kind. And there is a Grey _fils_--the oldest--whom Peggy took rather a fancy to last winter,--they were hunting together in Yorkshire;--and I wanted to look at him--and at the place!--"--Lady Elliston's smile was all candour. "They are very solid; it's not a bad place. If the young people are really serious Jack and I might consider it; with three girls still to marry, one must be very wise and reasonable. But, of course, I came really to see you, Amabel."

She had released Amabel's hands at last with a final soft pressure, and, as Amabel took her accustomed chair near the table, she sat down near her and loosened her cloak and unwound her scarf, and threw back her laces.

"And I've been making friends with your boy," she went on, looking up at Augustine:--"he's been walking me about the garden, saying that you mustn't be disturbed. Why haven't I been able to make friends before? Why hasn't he been to see me in London?"

"I'll bring him someday," said Sir Hugh. "He is only just grown up, you see."

"I see: do bring him soon. He is charming," said Lady Elliston, smiling at Augustine.

Amabel remembered her pretty, assured manner of saying any pleasantness--or unpleasantness for that matter--that she chose to say; but it struck her, from this remark, that the gift had grown a little mechanical. Augustine received it without embarrassment. Augustine already seemed to know that this smiling guest was in the habit of saying that young men were charming before their faces when she wanted to be pleasant to them. Amabel seemed to see her son from across the wide chasm that had opened between them; but, looking at his figure, suddenly grown strange, she felt that Augustine's manners were 'nice.' The fact of their niceness, of his competence--really it matched Lady Elliston's--made him the more mature; and this moment of motherly appreciation led her back to the stony wilderness where her son judged her, with a man's, not a boy's judgment. There was no uncertainty in Augustine; his theories might be young; his character was formed; his judgments would not change. She forced herself not to think; but to look and listen.

Lady Elliston continued to talk: indeed it was she and Augustine who did most of the talking. Sir Hugh only interjected a remark now and then from his place before the fire. Amabel was able to feel a further change in him; he was displeased today, and displeased in particular, now, with Lady Elliston. She thought that she could understand the vexation for him of this irruption of his real life into the sad little corner of kindness and duty that Charlock House and its occupants must represent to him. He had seldom spoken to her about Lady Elliston; he had seldom spoken to her about any of the life that she had abandoned in abandoning him: but she knew that Lord and Lady Elliston were near friends still, and with this knowledge she could imagine how on edge her husband must be when to the near friend of the real life he could allow an even sharper note to alter all his voice. Amabel heard it sadly, with a sense of confused values: nothing today was as she had expected it to be: and if she heard she was sure that Lady Elliston must hear it too, and perhaps the symptom of Lady Elliston's displeasure was that she talked rather pointedly to Augustine and talked hardly at all to Sir Hugh: her eyes, in speaking, passed sometimes over his figure, rested sometimes, with a bland courtesy, on his face when he spoke; but Augustine was their object: on him they dwelt and smiled.

The years had wrought few changes in Lady Elliston. Silken, soft, smiling, these were, still, as in the past, the words that described her. She had triumphantly kept her lovely figure: the bright brown hair, too, had been kept, but at some little sacrifice of sincerity: Lady Elliston must be nearly fifty and her shining locks showed no sign of fading. Perhaps, in the perfection of her appearance and manner, there was a hint of some sacrifice everywhere. How much she has kept, was the first thought; but the second came:--How much she has given up. Yes; there was the only real change: Amabel, gazing at her, somewhat as a nun gazes from behind convent gratings at some bright denizen of the outer world, felt it more and more. She was sweet, but was she not too skilful? She was strong, but was not her strength unscrupulous? As she listened to her, Amabel remembered old wonders, old glimpses of motives that stole forth reconnoitring and then retreated at the hint of rebuff, graceful and unconfused.

There were motives now, behind that smile, that softness; motives behind the flattery of Augustine, the blandness towards Sir Hugh, the visit to herself. Some of the motives were, perhaps, all kindness: Lady Elliston had always been kind; she had always been a binder of wounds, a dispenser of punctual sunlight; she was one of the world's powerfully benignant great ladies; committees clustered round her; her words of assured wisdom sustained and guided ecclesiastical and political organisations; one must be benignant, in an altruistic modern world, if one wanted to rule. It was not a cynical nun who gazed; Lady Elliston was kind and Lady Elliston loved power; simply, without a sense of blame, Amabel drew her conclusions.

There were now lapses in Lady Elliston's fluency. Her eyes rested contemplatively on Amabel; it was evident that she wanted to see Amabel alone. This motive was so natural a one that, although Sir Hugh seemed determined, at the risk of losing his train, to stay till the last minute, he, too, felt, at last, its pressure.

His wife saw him go with a sense of closing mists. Augustine, now more considerate, followed him. She was left facing her guest.

Only Lady Elliston could have kept the moment from being openly painful and even Lady Elliston could not pretend to find it an easy one; but she did not err on the side of too much tact. It was so sweetly, so gravely that her eyes rested for a long moment of silence on her old friend, so quietly that they turned away from her rising flush, that Amabel felt old gratitudes mingling with old distrusts.

"What a sad room this is," said Lady Elliston, looking about it. "Is it just as you found it, Amabel?"

"Yes, almost. I have taken away some things."

"I wish you would take them all away and put in new ones. It might be made into a very nice room; the panelling is good. What it needs is Jacobean furniture, fine old hangings, and some bits of glass and porcelain here and there."

"I suppose so." Amabel's eyes followed Lady Elliston's. "I never thought of changing anything."

Lady Elliston's eyes turned on hers again. "No: I suppose not," she said.

She seemed to find further meanings in the speech and took it up again with: "I suppose not. It's strange that we should never have met in all these years, isn't it."

"Is it strange?"

"I've often felt it so: if you haven't, that is just part of your acceptance. You have accepted everything. It has often made me indignant to think of it."

Amabel sat in her high-backed chair near the table. Her hands were tightly clasped together in her lap and her face, with the light from the windows falling upon it, was very pale. But she knew that she was calm; that she could meet Lady Elliston's kindness with an answering kindness; that she was ready, even, to hear Lady Elliston's questions. This, however, was not a question, and she hesitated for a moment before saying: "I don't understand you."

"How well I remember that voice," Lady Elliston smiled a little sadly: "It's the girl's voice of twenty years ago--holding me away. Can't we be frank together, now, Amabel, when we are both middle-aged women?--at least I am middle-aged.--How it has kept you young, this strange life you've led."

"But, really, I do not understand," Amabel murmured, confused; "I didn't understand you then, sometimes."

"Then I may be frank?"

"Yes; be frank, of course."

"It is only that indignation that I want to express," said Lady Elliston, tentative no longer and firmly advancing. "Why are you here, in this dismal room, this dismal house? Why have you let yourself be cloistered like this? Why haven't you come out and claimed things?"

Amabel's grey eyes, even in their serenity always a little wild, widened with astonishment. "Claimed?" she repeated. "What do you mean? What could I have claimed? I have been given everything."

"My dear Amabel, you speak as if you had deserved this imprisonment."

There was another and a longer silence in which Amabel seemed slowly to find meanings incredible to her before. And her reception of them was expressed in the changed, the hardened voice with which she said: "You know everything. I've always been sure you knew. How can you say such things to me?"

"Do not be angry with me, dear Amabel. I do not mean to offend."

"You spoke as though you were sorry for me, as though I had been injured.--It touches him."

"But," Lady Elliston had flushed very slightly, "it does touch him. I blame Hugh for this. He ought not to have allowed it. He ought not to have accepted such misplaced penitence. You were a mere child, and Hugh neglected you shamefully."

"I was not a mere child," said Amabel. "I was a sinful woman."

Lady Elliston sat still, as if arrested and spell-bound by the unexpected words. She seemed to find no answer. And as the silence grew long, Amabel went on, slowly, with difficulty, yet determinedly opposing and exposing the folly of the implied accusation. "You don't seem to remember the facts. I betrayed my husband. He might have cast me off. He might have disgraced me and my child. And he lifted me up; he sheltered me; he gave his name to the child. He has given me everything I have. You see--you must not speak of him like that to me."